(Note: This is part 1; the conclusion will appear in the January 1997 issue of Outpost.) Subject to persecution over many centuries, Jews have inevitably developed, and displayed in their communal life, psychological stigmata of the chronically oppressed. Various strands of this Jewish reaction have been written about at length. Generally ignored, however, is a fundamental psychological response to abuse that has figured prominently in Jewish communal history not only in the Diaspora but also in Israel, among Jews living under very different social and political conditions. This response is one widely noted and studied in children subjected to early abuse and other traumas: An inclination to blame themselves for their misfortune. A recurrent theme in such children's comprehension of their trauma is that bad things have happened to them because they have been "bad." Psychiatrists and others have often interpreted this predilection as reflecting children's naivete. Abusive or neglectful parents typically convey to their children the message that actions against them are a response to offending behavior, and the children, in their innocence, absorb such messages at face value. Other observers have emphasized the role of childhood narcissism: children are inclined to see themselves as the center of their world, and to ascribe to themselves grandiose powers, and this predisposes them to assuming responsibility for whatever befalls them, good or ill. But for a more basic psychological explanation, consider the existential predicament of abused children. Having typically no avenue of escape from their harrowing environment, such children are left with essentially two choices. They can see themselves as the victims of circumstances entirely beyond their control, and endure the hopelessness that would flow from that insight. Or they can ascribe the abuse to their own misbehavior, assume responsibility, and endure the 'guilt' of that comprehension but thereby also create and sustain an illusion of control, a hope that by reforming, by becoming 'good,' they can elicit an end to the abuse and set their lives right. While the former perspective is the truer one, the latter offers the irresistible attraction of enabling the child to stave off despair. It is this factor that underlies children's predisposition to take parents' accusations at face value and that sustains children's grandiosity, their investment in unrealistic faith in their own powers to transform their situations. A similar tendency to assume responsibility for their misfortunes and to cling to unrealistic images of transforming their predicaments by reforming themselves is a common theme among peoples subjected to abuse, and nowhere more so than among the Jews. That is, the

varying responses of individual Jews and of Jewish communities to the bigotry and oppression encountered over the centuries have included a persistently recurring one of taking to heart the indictments of their persecutors and seeing self-reform as the path to relief. One might discern in this inclination to assume collective responsibility for communal traumas, the influence of the traditional historicism of the Jewish faith: The Biblical, and subsequent rabbinical, comprehension of Jewish history as a playing out of the relationship between G-d and the people, with disaster and exile perceived as consequences of the people's transgressions, and adherence to the Covenant eliciting prosperity and a flourishing in the Land. But, in fact, such an interpretation of communal disasters is far from an exclusive characteristic of the Jews. For while other faiths and cultures may be less history-oriented in comprehending the relationship between the communal and the divine, societies have commonly interpreted disasters as the product of religious transgressions and divine retribution. Moreover, the recurring particular propensity among segments of Jewish populations to take to heart, like the abused child, the indictments of persecutors, and to ascribe to themselves the power to change dramatically the attitudes of their tormentors by reforming, is in many respects a contravention of the religious tradition. For it shifts the focus of redemption from the rapport with G-d to the rapport with the persecutors. This propensity is primarily a product of the Jews' long history of oppression, slaughters, and dislocations. The weight of this predilection in the psychological lives of individual Jews obviously varies greatly and is determined by many factors, including all one's experiences at home and in the wider world and how those experiences reinforce or counterbalance such a perspective. But through the centuries, the impulse among Jews to blame themselves for communal traumas or to embrace the anti-Jewish indictments of the larger societies in which they have lived, has been strong enough often enough to influence significantly the social and political history of Jewish communities. Indeed, so powerful has been this impulse among Jews that it has not only put its stamp on life in the Diaspora but has also proved to be a potent social and political factor in Israel, among Jews (Continued on p.4)

December 1996               - 3 -               Outpost