A 1755 copper engraving showing Lisbon, Portugal, in flames and a tsunami overwhelming the ships in the harbor. (Image courtesy Wikipedia/Creative Commons)
(RNS) — I came to Lisbon for a post-Passover getaway.
Lisbon is a beautiful city. Its people are gracious. Its sites are compelling. Its wine is delicious.
But, almost wherever you go, you remember that Lisbon was the place where a world view collapsed and where a new world view was born.
On Nov. 1, 1755, two natural disasters decimated Lisbon.
First, there was a massive earthquake, and then, in its wake, a massive tsunami. If you ask the historians how many people died on that day, they don’t know: 15,000? 50,000? 60,000? (This is a great video on the topic.)
Here was the bitter irony. Nov. 1 was All Saints Day, and there was barely a city in Europe that had striven to be more saintly than Lisbon. Of its 250,000 residents, 25,000 of them — 10% of the population — were priests or monks or nuns.
Which gave rise to the theological question: How could this have happened to this holy city?
No other moment in the history of humanity shook faith the way that day in Lisbon did. In the 1700s, people used the word “Lisbon” the way we use the word “Auschwitz” today.
The destruction of Lisbon created waves of religious doubt and secularism. Barely four years after the disaster, Voltaire wrote about Lisbon in his famous satire, “Candide.”
The aftershocks continue to this day.
To quote my teacher, Thomas Long:
The seismic shock waves that destroyed Lisbon were soon followed by moral and theological shock waves that shook the intellectual, philosophical, and religious foundations of Europe and the West, and continue to shake them to this day … The Lisbon tragedy happened in the midst of a major turning point in human understanding, right in the middle of the breakup of the way that medieval society viewed the world and the emergence of a new set of assumptions about knowledge, reason, and nature — a time we have come to call the Enlightenment. The Lisbon earthquake, then, not only toppled churches, shops, and homes; it also symbolized the toppling of an old world and the way that world grasped faith and held on to hope.
Which brings me to Oct. 7, and the more than six months since that black Sabbath.
The attacks of Oct. 7 were the earthquake.
Then, the aftershocks — the war in Gaza, the world’s responses and the ever-present threat of Iran.
FILE – Visitors look at photos of Israeli people who were killed during the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 and those who died during the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, displayed on a giant screen at the National Library in Jerusalem, Israel, Jan. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, File)
And then, the tsunami — of raw Jew hatred.
More aftershocks: American Jews have been shaken in their previous secular faith in the university.
Ever since medieval times in Europe, the university was the way that Jews, among others, entered the world of culture, letters and thought.
For American Jews, in particular, the university degree was the ticket into the middle class. We fought hard to blow open the gates of elite institutions, and we fought hard to stay there.
And yet, here we are. It is happening on campus after campus, especially those elite campuses that Jews sought and fought to enter. It has happened like the post-rain sprouting of mushrooms on a lawn. The pro-Palestinian tent cities are popping up. Students have been chanting pro-Palestinian slogans — some of which have fully metastasized into antisemitism.
Let me be clear, especially to Jewish young people who consider themselves part of this campus movement.
If protesters were merely saying: We want dignity for Palestinians — mainstream American Jewish leaders would agree.
If protesters were merely saying: More humanitarian aid for Gaza — mainstream American Jewish leaders would agree.
If protesters were saying: We want a two-state solution — many mainstream American Jewish leaders would agree. At least, with the ultimate goal.
If protesters were saying: We disagree with the policies of the Netanyahu government — many mainstream American Jewish leaders would agree, and they have said so, loudly and often.
But that is not what protesters are saying. They have demonstrated a fundamental inability to distinguish between humanitarian and political goals and the willful hatred of a state, its people and of all Jews.
Let me be clear about something else. I deplore and condemn the violence on the part of pro-Israel students. It is harmful, on every level. We know better. We must be better.
A sign reading “Welcome to the People’s University for Palestine” is displayed in front of tents erected at the pro-Palestinian demonstration encampment at Columbia University in New York, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
This is what makes Columbia 2024 different from Columbia 1968 — and other college campuses during the Vietnam period.
We marched against the American involvement in Vietnam. We marched in support of the Vietnamese people.
We did not call for the destruction of the United States. Nor did we call for the murder of Americans, everywhere and anywhere.
When China was willfully destroying Tibetan independence, no one said of China: “Destroy it!” Neither did Chinese students on college campuses feel threatened.
During the anti-apartheid movement, South Africans living in the United States did not feel they were in danger — and, certainly, South African students on college campuses did not fear for their safety.
What does “globalize the intifada mean?” There is only one interpretation of that slogan, and it is fiendish. It means there must be no place on the planet where Jews will feel safe. That is, by definition, Jew-hatred.
“Zionists don’t deserve to live,” said Khymani James, a protest leader at Columbia University, who has since been banned from the university for that statement. James has since apologized for the statement — but how could any Jew sympathetic to Zionism — in other words, the majority of Jews — not fear the spread of such sentiments?
These are the aftershocks of the Oct. 7 earthquake. At the very least, those aftershocks should provoke soul-searching on the part of American Jews and their institutions. Are we doing all that we can — to provide our young Jews with Jewish minds, Jewish souls and Jewish backbones?
But, those aftershocks run wider, and deeper.
American Jews worry. We want our young people to be safe on college campuses — safe from harm and safe from attacks on their core identities as Jews.
But, beyond this, American Jews and others see what is happening on college campuses, and they are seeing a descent into chaos and nihilism.
Because the inability to distinguish between political speech and hate speech is a failure in basic morality.
Perhaps we were wrong in believing universities have, or should have, a role in shaping our young people’s moral worldviews. Once upon a time, academia had such a role. No longer.
So, here is a question.
Beyond the family, what institutions can and should provide young people with a moral vision?
I would hope: religious institutions.
Are they doing that? Are they still capable of doing that?
Therein lies another minor earthquake of questions.