A rap video was posted to YouTube on Sunday by Roy Kornblum expressing what many Jews have experienced since the horrific Palestinian Hamas massacre of Israelis on October 7 and the ensuing wave of Jew-hatred that has engulfed so much of the world. His song, titled “0.2%”, describes how our diversity perplexes us, making our identity difficult to pin down. But our enemies have always remained laser focused on wiping us out. We seem so insignificant, representing an infinitesimal 0.2% of the population. Yet for better or worse, we remain in the spotlight. Even though we are so few, we have within us the ability to spread light in a very dark world. But only if we are strong from within.
Roy has not translated his song to English so Israel365 News is presenting a translation along with the powerful Hebrew original.
“Not in your city and not nearby.
We are only 15 million people, out of 8 billion. That’s it. But this small amount is already too much for Nasrallah or Sinwar. And if it means something to them, it should also mean something to me.
To be a Jew.
Is it my religion? Is it my nationality? Or is it who I am? Because to be a Jew is more than Ben Gurion, more than Shimon Peres, more than Bibi or Gantz or Lapid or any fat politician.
And it is surely not dependent on Mizrachi , Ashkenazi, or Yemenite. Here’s the proof; Me.
One quarter Syrian, one quarter Ukrainian, half Moroccan, and I’m still a Jew.
There is a German Jew, an Australian Jew, an American Jew. We’re all still Jews. There’s a Jew from Be’eri, there’s a Jew from Kiryat Malachi, a Jew from Jerusalem. And they’re all still Jews.
A woman can post pictures in a bikini all week but when Shabbat ends she posts a story about baking Challah.
There is a Jew who puts tattoos on his arms but also puts on Tefillin because it feels right.
There is a Jew who meets someone that he’s never seen before in his life, another Jew, and he hugs him as if he’s known him forever.
There is a Jew who doesn’t remember the prayers for the Yom Kippur war. But when the cantor sings “our sins are before you”, he sings with him, and gives his son a high five so that he will join in too.
There is one who learns all day in yeshiva and speaks to the master of the world, a woman who does her hair, a man who doesn’t care what anyone thinks and says he’s an atheist and as far as he is concerned, there is no God.
But when his son goes into Gaza, he slips a book of Psalms into his pack.
Someone who gets excited that we’re only .2% and we still won so many Nobel Prizes.
Someone who hasn’t worked for six months, he lounges at home killing time, smoking cheap cigarettes and watching ‘Friends’.
But if he hears about some nobody who drew a Swastika on the door of a school in some New Guinea, he’lll get angry as if they drew it on his car.
We’re a mix
We are Chraime, a spicy fish stew from Northern Africa, Injera, a flatbread from Ethiopia, and Gefilte fish, a bland Asheknazi fish dish.
We sing “My god, My god”, we are the pop star Noa Kirel, Judah Maccabee, singer Chanan Ben Ari, Elie Wiesel, Elijah the Prophet, Bnei Brak, Tel Aviv, Netanya and Paris, Beer Sheva and Cairo.
So what is the Jew? Where should we begin to explain what I am thinking about? When I think about a Jew, there are two things that are rooted in our tradition: Morality and dispute
We’re crazy about arguing. But we don’t care about winning. Arguing is just in order to be smarter, to be more Jewish. Even in Japan, people learn Talmud just in order to be more intelligent.
And morality? That is the root source that we argue about. The Jews invented the morality that everyone lives on today. Whether it’s judging between men, rights versus requirements, the value of life, relations between patients and doctors. Jews invented ethics way before Aristotle or Nietzsche. And way before America. Morality doesn’t come from Geneva or Rome or Greece. It comes from the Rambam, from King Solomon.
It comes from here.
But lately, disputes have changed to arguments, and the arguments have changed to hatred. Fear has gotten stronger as belief gets weaker in us. We made a covenant with God but we are not holding up our end of the bargain.
When you think about it, we all have a connection that goes back thousands of years. There’s a connection between us.
Every Jew needs to travel in the world with the knowledge that he is a product of this, that he is a light unto the nations. There are eight billion people in this world but everything is dark.
But you don’t need eight billion lights in order to bring light to it all.
It’s enough to have 0.2%
But it’s also dark among us and we can’t find the switch to turn it on. Instead of pointing fingers, we should begin with a house check.
We are a bunch of stiff-necked people.
Even when security is insecure, our self-confidence is always extreme. They’ll never move us; not left, not right.
The concept of stiff-necked comes from the period when they were killing people with guillotines.
That is to say, we had a neck that was impossible to cut.
But if we let our light fade, the guillotine will not come from outside.
It will come upon us from within.
0.2% is not just how many we are in the world.
It is how much we understand who we are in the world. While we’re trying to find our identity, we got lost.
On the seventh of October, they didn’t cry out, “Kill Israel.”
They cried out, “Kill the Jew”.
So if they want me to die because I am a Jew, shouldn’t I at least learn what it is to be a Jew. I don’t know what it means, but there has to be a meaning. It must be, yet I still don’t understand what it means.
But I know it is more than just being 0.2%.”
