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It is an act of bad faith for Jews to respond to Egypt’s revolution with fear instead of hope “In Egypt it was the moral force of nonviolence, not terrorism, not mindless killing … that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.” Borrowing the language of Martin Luther King , President Obama’s response to Hosni Mubarak’s departure invited us to see Egypt’s stirring 18-day revolution not only as a political event of significance but as part of a grander moral and spiritual drama. I recognise the notion of bending “the arc of history toward justice”. It forms part of my understanding of a Judaic vision for humanity. So I was saddened by the predominantly muted and apprehensive response to these uplifting events from many of my fellow Jews in the UK and in Israel. How is it possible, I have wondered, not to be moved and inspired by the sight of a people finding its voice to join protests against decades of dictatorship, corruption, brutality and repression? Protests that were remarkably peaceful given the suppressed fury that must reside in the hearts of so many at the conditions they have had to endure. How is it not possible to rejoice when, as in 1989, the tide of history enables a swath of humanity to liberate themselves from hard-hearted rulers and move towards a more life-affirming and just ordering of society? Is it because this begrudging Jewish response has been dictated not by a recognition of the power of the human spirit to overcome oppression, but by fear? This fear has focused on the Muslim Brotherhood, which has kept a low profile over these last weeks, and the danger of a fundamentalist form of Islamism taking over in the region. As if Egypt is another Iran. Which for many reasons – historical, cultural, demographic and geographic – it isn’t. But the spectre of Israel once again surrounded by implacable annihilatory enemies haunts the Jewish imagination. It’s as if fear is soldered to our soul. Fear that past patterns of prejudice will be repeated and thereby determine our future. I find this kind of fearfulness both dispiriting and a betrayal of the Judaism I hold dear. For our response to these events to be dictated by our fears, rather than our hopefulness about the human spirit, is an act of bad faith: it reneges on the spiritual vision of our Judaic heritage. In secular terms, it puts us as Jews on the wrong side of history – it puts us on the side of repression and brutality. It puts us, so to speak, on the side of Pharaoh rather than Moses. In religious terms, it fails to understand that the biblical phrase that we lovingly repeat each year when we tell our own story of liberation, “Let my people go … “, is the voice of the divine, of God, of the sacred principle that freedom from oppression is the right of every people. That is the vision at the heart of prophetic Judaism: freedom from oppression, each person to have the opportunity to sit under their vine and their fig tree where no one shall make them afraid. Isn’t that what the people of Egypt want too? Fear is a great dictator – to overthrow its tyranny within us is a spiritual challenge. Yes, Egypt has a long way to go: the transition from military to civilian rule will no doubt be bumpy. But as a Jew I celebrate, as Obama was celebrating, the movement of the human spirit towards freedom. All that those crowds possessed was, as the Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif put it , “words and music and legitimacy and hope”. We have seen what powerful weapons these can be when wielded with determination, courage and vision. Religion Judaism Israel Middle East Egypt Howard Cooper guardian.co.uk