The Hardest Jewish Lesson I’m Teaching My Children
Words of Wisdom with Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar
This Dvar Torah on Parashat Balak was edited from one written by Dr. Mijal Bitton, the Rosh Kehilla of The Downtown Minyan, and Scholar in Residence at the Maimonides Fund. You can follow Dr. Bitton on her weekly Torah Substack on living Jewishly.
Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash
Can we develop the courage to be despised, and the strength to be beloved? That is the Jewish paradox
A few weeks ago, riding the subway in New York City, I spotted a woman reading a book titled, “The Courage to Be Disliked.”
I reached for my gold hostage-tag necklace and found myself repeating: “the courage to be disliked.”
Then I tried a different variation: “the courage to be despised.”
In recent years, Jews across the West (especially those visibly connected to Israel) have felt a rising tide of hostility. Legal protections remain in place, and allies have not entirely disappeared.
But the climate has shifted — and we need to prepare. Not just politically or strategically, but emotionally and spiritually.
We must find the courage to accept that we may be disliked, even despised, for our Jewish commitments. Not by strangers in distant corners of the world, but in the very spaces that once felt like home.
And yet, alongside that courage, we must also cling to another sacred calling: the aspiration to be beloved, to make God’s name beloved, to be a light to the nations.
These are not contradictory. The courage to be despised and the aspiration to be beloved are not opposites.
They are paradoxical, inseparable truths of what it means to be a Jew.
And nowhere is this tension more visible than in this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Balak, where an outsider looks at Jewish difference and finds himself torn between curse and blessing.
In our Torah portion, the Moabite king Balak, fearing the growing strength of the Israelites, seeks to fight them — not through military means, but through spiritual force.
He hires Bilaam, the only non-Israelite prophet mentioned in the Torah, hoping he can use divine power to curse the Jewish people and weaken them.
Bilaam famously encounters a talking donkey, is rebuked by God, and ultimately finds himself unable to curse.
Standing above the Israelite camp with God’s words in his mouth, he blesses them instead.
Among his most enduring lines is this description: “It is a people that dwells alone and is not reckoned among the nations.” [Numbers 23:9]
That verse has echoed through Jewish memory for generations.
Some read it as a badge of honor: our sacred capacity to stand apart.
Others see it as a marker of divine choseness.
And some hear it as a warning: that our difference will always leave us isolated.
The power of the text is its ambiguity.
Bilaam’s blessing reveals the double-edged nature of Jewish distinctiveness: It can provoke admiration or alienation, blessing or persecution — sometimes all at once.
As a mother, I have come to think more and more about this paradox.
I want to raise children who understand kiddush Hashem (sanctifying God’s name), who move through the world with dignity and delight, who learn to make Judaism visible — and beloved — to others.
But the past two years have awakened in me another resolve: to raise children who can face the world’s anger without flinching.
I want them to have the courage to be despised for their Jewish commitments, and the strength to live a Judaism that aspires to reveal the ways of Torah as paths of lovingkindness.
How can I teach them both to be apart and part of the world?
This same paradox haunted Simon Rawidowicz, the 20th-century Jewish philosopher.
Rawidowicz, a Polish-born philosopher who settled in the U.S. and wrote in the shadow of the Holocaust, understood both the beauty and the cost of Jewish difference.
He argued that U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt’s famous Four Freedoms (used to justify America’s entry into World War II) were missing a fifth: Libertas Differendi, the freedom to be different.
For Rawidowicz, this wasn’t an offshoot of other freedoms. It was foundational: the right to live as distinct individuals and groups, with distinct practices and beliefs, without justification or apology.
He quoted Bilaam’s line from this week’s parasha — about the Jewish people being “a nation that dwells alone” — to affirm that Jewish distinctiveness is essential to who we are.
Jews have insisted on being different, even when the world has not forgiven us for it.
But, crucially, Rawidowicz did not see Jewish particularity as a rejection of others.
On the contrary, it becomes redemptive when paired with a defense of everyone’s right to be different… to safeguard the dignity of difference itself.
That orientation feels especially urgent now.
Rawidowicz’s response to the paradox of Jewish difference — Are we part of the world or apart from it? — was not to resolve it, but to live it.
To embrace a set of commitments that remain in tension.
Here’s how I’ve come to see that tension: We must have the courage to be despised for our loyalties, but we must not stop there.
We are also called to aspire to be beloved, not for the sake of acceptance or popularity, but because we are commanded to make God’s name beloved in the world.
As Rawidowicz wrote: “Do not try to hide the Different inside you. Carry it with open pride to yourself and to the world!”
Here in America, we Jews will continue to navigate a political landscape where both the left and the right pose real dangers to Jewish flourishing.
And both Israelis and Jews connected to Israel will face a world that is increasingly hostile to both Israel and to Jews.
This will require fighting new battles: in public diplomacy, in building bridges, in finding allies, and in fighting for our rights.
For these wars, we’ll need to draw on both strands of our inheritance.
To embody what Bilaam himself glimpsed: a people who can stand apart without growing hard, who can remain different while still radiating moral light.
Our task will not be simple.
We must protect what is ours — and offer it as a gift.
Survive difference — and sanctify it.
Raise children who know how to stand tall in the face of contempt — and who still dream of being a blessing.
We need the courage to be despised, and the strength to be beloved.
