Rashi’s famous first comment on the whole Torah asks (paraphrasing), “If the Torah is about instructions for life, why does it start ‘In the beginning of God’s creating…’ instead of with the first mitzvah?” His answer? 

“This is because should the nations of the world say to Israel, ‘You are robbers, for you have taken by force the lands of the Seven Nations [i.e. Israel], the Jews will say to them: ‘All the earth belongs to God. He created it and gave it to whomever He saw fit. It was His will to give it to them and it was His will to take it from them and give it to us.” 

This answer is as amazing as it is impertinent. Amazing, because this 11th-century sage so keenly predicted the attitudes of the modern world and the heart of the Middle East conflict. “Free Palestine” protestors across the world insisting that the Jewish people stole the land and are nothing more than colonizers. Impertinent because why would citing our Bible be evidence against someone else’s claim to life, land, and home? 

It would be one thing if Judaism was a proselytizing religion, converting the masses as its goal. Though Judaism obviously believes it’s the correct religion, it doesn’t believe it is the correct religion for everyone. In fact, it resists converts making it very difficult for kosher conversions. It would be another thing if Judaism demanded that everyone at least read the Torah, even if they don’t believe in it. Then maybe this Rashi would make sense in that at least everyone was on the same page understanding that God created the world. But that’s not the case either. According to the Talmud, on the 8th of Teves, it is said 72 rabbis were forced to translate the Torah into Greek for the first time and that is considered a tragic day. 

So if the Jewish people don’t force their religious beliefs on other people themselves, why would the beginning of our Torah be proof to anyone else? 

I think we’ve been interpreting this Rashi backwards. 

The Jewish people do strive to convince the world that Hashem is the One True God. But we don’t do that via forced conversions. We don’t even do it by being humanitarians at the price of Torah acceptance. We convince the world of Hashem by being the miraculous people He chose us to be. Being a minority of a minority, it is clear the Jewish people have impacted the world in a disproportionate way. For good and for bad. Jonas Salk, Albert Einstein, Stan Lee, Jerry Seinfeld and many others became the defining name of their fields. Unfortunately Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and Bernie Madoff are also the first names when you think of #MeToo, trafficking, and Ponzi schemes. Our mark on the world is undeniable. 

So when the dispersed few refugees and holocaust survivors managed to fend off the attacking five Arab countries in 1948, the victory was the proof of God, not the other way around. Yes, God created the world and He decides who lives where. And for 2,000 years He decided the Jews needed to live elsewhere. 

In America, the Federal Holiday known as Columbus Day was observed. Many people refuse to call it that and instead refer to the day as Indigenous People’s Day. To me, that reads as a gesture in name only. Is anyone who calls it Indigenous People’s Day willing to give up where they live so the Native Americans can have their home back? I’ve not seen it. For millennia, land was taken through conquering. Israel is the only modern nation whose legitimacy and proposed borders were explicitly established through a formal United Nations vote, Resolution 181. Yet despite that, Israel is still called an occupier and a colonizer. 

Rashi wasn’t giving Jews an argument to win debates with the nations. He was giving us the lens to understand our own story, that our very survival and return are the evidence of God’s authorship. The truth is the only way the Jewish people could have returned to their homeland and held on to it this long is because of the myriad of miracles that happen everyday. There is no non-believer who accuses Israel of illegitimacy who is going to be swayed by “In the beginning…” But for those who are willing to open their eyes to the history and persistence of the Jewish people and they sincerely ask why? Then Rashi’s answer makes a whole lot of sense.