As a dutiful parent I have been working through Star Wars with Libi. To this ends I had the opportunity to rewatch the original canon over the last few months. There is a particularly important scene during Luke’s training with Yoda in Dagobah where he needs to confront the dark side of the Force in the Cave of Evil. The scene opens up with Luke saying, ” There is something not right here.” Yoda tells him he must go in to confront what is there. Luke asks, “What is in there?” Yoda replies, “Only what you take with you?” Feel free to watch:

Luke confronted the Dark Spirit in the form of Darth Vader within and defeated it in a lightsaber duel, dipping into the passion of the dark side in the process. It was there that he realized what would happen if he turned to the dark side of the Force. Behind the mask of Darth Vader, he saw his own face. It also presaged the revelation that Vader was, unknown to him at the time, actually his father, Anakin Skywalker.

I was thinking about this recently when trying to explain the most recent attack on the Jewish community in Australia to Libi. I explained that there has been a ton of anti-Zionist activity there since October 7th. Clearly any attempt to claim that Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitic after this shooting is a lie. Of course any one has the right to disagree with a policy or action of the Israeli government or army, but that is a far cry from trying to delegitimate Israel’s right to exist. How can someone argue that the call to “Globalize the Intifada” is anything other than incitement of violence again Jews worldwide? But this still did not move her past the fundamental question, “Why do people hate Jews so much?”

All of this got me thinking about the start of the project called the Jewish people. There God blessed Avram. There we read:

I will make of you a great nation, And I will bless you; I will make your name great, And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. And curse the one who curses you; And all the families of the earth Shall bless themselves by you. (Genesis 12:2-3)

I always thought that this was a blessing for us or about us. We would be a great nation, Avram’s name would be made great, and we would be a blessing. You could argue that through Judaism, Christianity and Islam Avram’s name is well known. But when it comes to the other two claims, it seems pretty counterfactual. From a numbers perspective are we a great nation? There are around 2.4 billion Christians in the world. There are 2 billion Muslims in the world. There are 1.2 billion Hindus in the world. There are 1.8 billion atheists (some of whom are Jewish). And around 500 million Buddhist in the world. As of 2025, the global Jewish population is estimated to be around 15 to 15.8 million, representing approximately 0.2% of the world’s total population. That is hardly a great nation. But that is not the most confusing part. In what way are we a blessing? And what does this have to do with Star Wars?

The Cave of Evil is a foil for Luke to see something deep about himself. So too, the Jewish people are a blessing in that we are a foil for the rest of society. If people bless us their civilization will flourish and they will be blessed. If they curse us their will be cursed and their civilization will perish. This reminds me of that famous quote by Mark Twain on the Jewish people. He wrote:

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world in all ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greeks and Romans followed and made a vast noise, and they were gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, and have vanished. The Jew saw them all, survived them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities, of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert but aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jews; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?

Mark Twain ,September 1897

The quote, widely attributed to Soviet writer and journalist Vasily Grossman, is:

 Antisemitism is a mirror for the failings of individuals, social structures and state systems. Tell me what you accuse the Jews of, I’ll tell you what you are guilty of. 

The appearance of antisemitism is always an early warning sign of a dangerous dysfunction within a culture. The Jewish People has been a test for the health of a society throughout history. The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. The blessing is not that we will be blessed by the dominant society accommodating us, but rather, we are the oil test for those societies’ own flourishing. If people seek to kill us or stand by as we get killed, their society is in peril. Just as Luke does, others will find the inner truth of their society by how they treat the Jewish community.