Violence Through View Of Jewish Philosopher

One upon a time, a baby was born into newly married Russian couple. This family lived in an affluent suburban city near Moscow during the 'Perestroika' period. The baby was growing up without any knowledge of what was happening in the world outside his family. The baby's life was filled with toys, food, warm blankets and surrounded with loving adults. He was not aware of hunger, man-made or nature-made pain through violent acts or floods, fear or death. As the baby aged into a boy and later into young man, he faced vast volumes of human history. One day he picked up 20th century volume, as he was looking through the pages, he stopped and read a nine letter word: 'HOLOCAUST.' He looked down at the first sentence and started reading: "Jews were sent to ghettos and camps because their own and only offense was the Jewish blood that flowed in their veins... The Holocaust stretched over six years. Those were years when every minute, every second, every split second held more than it could bear. Pain and fear reigned, but even then, in the midst of hunger and humiliation, the amazement sprouted: "Is this a man?" (Appelfeld, 2005, p.239).

He asked himself 'why would a human being purposely single out another human being on the basis of ethnicity or physical appearance. Aren't we all human beings residing on the planet earth? Why don't we acknowledge our humanity first, and use our differences as a way to celebrate our uniqueness?' The thought passed through his mind as 'It's impossible. It has never happened in the world history. Human beings were and still are engaged in fight for resources and power. Since the hunter gathering societies, human beings created the world model as such that humans built relations among themselves by introducing the fact of being different by blood, race, and religion. Such relations created the need to consolidate the resources in the hands of one group while trying to exclude others from obtaining them without a payment. The result of consolidating resources in one group's hands gave them acknowledgment from other groups of their power in order for others to use the resources needed for survival. Such accommodation led to wars, conquests and revolutions as different groups that were united on their differences from other groups wanted to capture resources that would lead to control others. As the result, it led to killing off whole groups. That is known in today's world as genocide, especially when the resources were getting tight and the question becomes which group should survive and which group should perish. At the same time, groups who had resources that gave power over others had to create tactics that would keep them in power without being challenged by others. The result was creation of alliances that gave certain privileges to groups in exchange for their support of current ruler group. Based on the ruler group selection process, factors like blood, race and religion became to play even more role into defining who would receive privileges and who would be excluded thus creating class of wealth and oppressed. Therefore, any group who were able to change leadership over control of resources utilized the same discriminatory and oppressive tactics against groups that were once in power due to the fact as payback for earlier times of being oppressed and discriminated in every level of life. Over time, humans forget about being humans rather took identification on themselves of the places they resided and created a loop of power to support already created systems of wealth and oppression. In any country and at any point of time, there would be at least a group of people who would feel they have been discriminated against and group of people who would oppress others in order to stay in power and accumulate wealth.'

As he was thinking, he sat down on a blue with black ornament sofa, closed the book and thought 'If it's true when the humans use violence as a weapon to control the oppressed group from uniting to fight the current wealth-power group. The violence produce fear while placing a higher value on your and your family's lives so a person would think twice prior to engaging in anti-wealth-power group action. The result is we live in the system that helps to maintain oppression, discrimination while ignoring factor like humanity and ascribing us to groups based on our physical appearances, blood relations, race relations, religion, and connecting us to geographical places. What's next? Is there an end to the madness where a human being is ready to exploit another being just to get richer and to exercise power over somebody's life and decide who lives and who dies? Wait, Soloveitchik described two distinct personalities of Adam the first and Adam the second. He used these two personalities to describe a human nature.' He looks at the book shelf and finds a small book in between two old volumes of 11th and 12th century history. He stands up and reaches to get that book, he slowly pulls it out. The pages of the book had yellowish color that showed the quality and age of the paper. He read the cover The Lonely Man of Faith by Soloveitchik. He remembered reading it for his Jewish Philosophy class, but now it appears even more relevant to the topic he was thinking than ever before.

'Soloveitchik wrote that Adam the first could be portrayed through formula such as "humanity = dignity = responsibility = majesty" (Soloveitchik, 1965, p.16). This formula was created to show the quest of Adam the first to obtain control over his environment, so he could imitate the Almighty as the creator. For Adam the first the quest starts with identifying himself as human who needs to obtain dignity in order to satisfy Psalmist requirement when they proclaimed that "thou made him a little lower than the angels and hast crowned him with glory and honor" (Soloveitchik, 1965, p.13). In other words, Psalmists introduced the concept that to become human, one needs to live with dignity. The dignity was defined as man's ability to dominate his environment and to exercise control over it. Adam the first learned that dignity comes with responsibility that would be placed upon him once he accomplishes obtaining control over his environment. To do that, Adam is using his creativity, aggressiveness and never quit mind set to gain needed position to rule over his environment (Soloveitchik, 1965).

At the same time, Soloveitchik described Adam the second through the other kind of formula like humanity = redemption = 'I' existence = companionship. This formula was created to show that Adam the second has a different kind of quest where he tries to find himself and his role in the world. For Adam the second the quests starts with identifying himself as human who tries to understand the living