Rabbi David Wolpe writes about the strange nature of the world’s enduring hatred:
Nearly 70 years ago, the British historian Cecil Roth published a book titled "Jewish Contributions to Civilization." I don’t know if anyone read it, but it did no good. Within seven years, a third of all the Jews in the world had been killed. The Jewish contribution did not seem to persuade the world that the Jewish people were worth preserving.
The year 1938 is not 2005, but the theme of cataloguing remarkable Jewish achievement endures. I regularly receive e-mails detailing the astonishing percentage of Jewish Nobel Prize winners, along with advances in science, thought and culture that have been driven by Jewish intellect and application. Beneath these statistics and names is the plea: "Why are we so hated by a world for which we have done so much?"
The sad truth is that the world does not reciprocate its benefactors. The wondrous lineage of Isaiah and Maimonides and Jonas Salk and Albert Einstein never turned an anti-Semite to tolerance or love. Writing of the biblical Joseph, the poet Delmore Schwartz recorded in his journal these heartbreaking lines: "The gift is loved but not the gifted one/ The coat of many colors is much admired/ By everyone, but he who wears the coat/ is not made warm."
In one of her best posts (and that’s saying something), Anne Lieberman writes on a related note about the world’s double standards.