‘David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants’

Friday last, I was privileged to accompany our students, Sonia Redman and Liahm Simon, to the Mikolot public speaking competition semi-finals, in which I was serving as one of the judges. The student participants from Moriah and Emanuel engaged in rounds of impromptu, as well as prepared, speeches. Liahm and Sonia represented our School in a most admirable and honourable fashion with Sonia advancing to the Finals. We are proud to share here their five minute prepared speeches for you to enjoy.

Rabbi Daniel Siegel

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants,’ he writes the following: “Much of what we consider valuable in our world arises out of these kinds of lopsided conflicts, because the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty.”

Using the Jewish people as a reference point, discuss the idea of success despite struggle.

Sonia Redman (Year 11)

Abraham Maslow once said: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail”. It’s easy to look at the success of the Jewish people, and see it as a result of centuries of strife and persecution. But this should not be the case. The success of the Jewish people should not be indefinitely tied to their oppression. So when Malcolm Gladwell writes “the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty”, I dismiss this idea of needing to overcome adversity in order to reach success. Because it is not our oppression as a Jewish people of which success is an outcome, it is ourselves.

My mother passed away when I was five years old, and for 10 years I felt like a terrible victim. I felt alone, angry and scared. For years I waited for some semblance of good to arise from such misery, because I felt that I deserved it. But it was only years later, when I took responsibility for generating my own positive energy and happiness, that was I able to move on. Victimhood creates an insatiable desire for external support, for success because “we deserve it”. The first rule for success is that you cannot solely rely on it to materialise as compensation for your previous hardships. Ultimately it is you who must find the incentive to succeed.

How does this concept apply to the Jewish nation? Having survived over 2,000 years of persecution, the Jews are practically the trailblazers of this notion of victimhood. Whether it is the Roman conquest, the Spanish inquisition, the pogroms of Eastern Europe, the Nazi genocide, multiple Arab invasions, or Hamas terror, we have endured plenty of oppression. Indeed, our history has forged a Jewish identity in which our success is far too dependent on persecution and victimisation by our oppressors. And while we cannot build the future of Judaism without faith in the values of our traditions and history, it is important to not use the plight of the Jewish people in the past as the core impetus for our growth as a nation.

I’m not objecting to the memory of oppression. The Torah itself constantly tells us to remember being slaves in Egypt—but as the prelude to the Exodus and reaching Sinai. Even the Jewish concept of teshuvah – or repentance – is forward oriented. It does not dwell on what happened any more than necessary to propel you forward to a more positive future. Just as difficulties you face throughout your life don’t define your potential nor take credit for your achievements, the persecution of the Jewish people should not be accepted as the reason behind the strong sense of cultural identity that Jews have successfully established and continue to develop.

Yes, the narrative of the Jewish people is wrought with great battles, exile and the return to the Jewish homeland despite all odds, but we forget about the morals, the stories of great achievements and ideological advances that have placed Judaism in the centre of innovation and progress. Why focus on hardship as the reason behind our success as a nation, and not consider the examples in which the Jewish people have flourished outside of persecution? Why don’t we relish in the ways in which Israel has solidified its place in modern society, through the ground breaking settlements in the Negev, the advancement of science and technology, and the prominence of Jewish culture and heritage? Claiming Jewish prosperity based on oppression feels disempowering to me when we think of the myriad of other factors that have contributed so greatly to our success. This focus on victimisation ignores the complex interplay of cultural values, progress and principles that have lead to where our nation stands today.

I am not naïve. Jews are victimised in this world, simply because they are Jewish. That is repugnant, and it must be fought, and overcome. But this must not be our sole reason to grow our communities, to stimulate Jewish education, to practise our religion. This must not be our incentive. What arises if this is the case, is that Judaism becomes more adaptive to persecution than it is to an open, free, and welcoming society–that Judaism paradoxically needs oppression in order to survive. If we continue striving for success because of our struggles, our nation is doomed to live precariously on a pendulum perpetually swinging in a wide arc between the extremes of persecution and indifference. In this reactive model, Jews have little power over their ultimate destiny and success.

But we can prevent this. As the new generation of Jewish people, we do not need to be persecuted, impoverished, discriminated against, hated, and victimised in order for us to succeed as a Jewish people. We must be more aspirational than defensive, and we must learn that the responsibility for success lies in our own efforts to continue the Jewish tradition, rather than the challenges our people have faced. Only when we realise that it is ourselves, and only ourselves, that can take responsibility for the success of the Jewish people, can the seeds of change begin to sprout.

Liahm Simon (Year 11)

The Jewish people have faced persecution for millennia with resilience shown by the world’s Jewry on a day to day basis. The heroic story of David and Goliath is only as heroic as the hero, David, who was an underdog and small in stature compared to the mighty Goliath.  

We humans, people, sentient beings, are emotionally connected to every second of our life, whether it be our deep intrinsic emotional connection to our closest loved ones or the joy we feel when a cute dog passes by us.  

A lopsided conflict, the possibility of an upset, the thought of an underdog winning attracts attention worldwide because of the thrill of the unthinkable, the adrenaline rush of escaping the unescapable, or beating the unbeatable.  

The feelings of success after a struggle are stronger than success without a struggle. Imagine a war, an asymmetrical war but not what one might imagine, not a new fighter jet against an old one, but a war without a struggle, a war of total dominance, a complete lack of regard for the enemy. Some might call it a war crime, some might call it amazing planning, others will beg for mercy, for peace, for a show of solidarity against what some will label freedom fighters and others terror. 

There will always be an opposing opinion about any show of war, there will always be two sides to the story. Judaism opposes any asymmetrical struggle or warfare, in fact the Jewish obligation is that before initiating any war, one must first invite the other party for a peace offering as an attempt to prevent war. The Torah does recognise that the realistic truth is that there is always going to be war in a world of sentient beings, a world of emotions and connection, a world of materialistic values and inherent beliefs.  

Judaism defines war in 2 ways: milchemet reshut and milchemet mitzvah, a ‘discretionary war’ as opposed to a ‘war of obligation’. An obligated war, and a chosen war, the acknowledgment of the necessity of war. The State of Israel is a country of countless Nobel Laureates, in fact the highest per capita in the world, from Physics to Maths to the Peace Prize. Israel and the Jewish people have won them all. A minority, a targeted minority, was able to so emphatically overcome the odds of survival to not just survive but thrive.  

Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, so poignantly stated that: “If we succeed in settling the Negev, we will succeed in having a Jewish Land.” Some might question this statement, but the sentiment echoed is the same as Malcolm Gladwell’s in that when you conquer the giant you succeed in greatness and beauty, and we can all stand proudly knowing we live in the time of a thriving, great Jewish state.  

Every person has the ability to fight, the physical strength or the mental aptitude, but when combined into a conflict, some rise and some fall. HaRav Kook said: “I don’t speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I don’t have the power to remain silent.” This statement encompasses Judaism and the Jewish belief that you always have power and that being a bystander to a crime is the same as committing the crime.  

This same teaching can be applied to a battle; sometimes one must lift oneself up and walk into battle, to defend what they must, even when they believe it is an uphill battle. The resilience that it takes to win one as an underdog is of such great magnitude that once the war is over, the greatness of the battle begins to transcend onto the population. This culminates in a valued and esteemed win against the odds, and the subsequent greatness and beauty from a position of perceived weakness, tragedy and loss.   

The most poignant and prominent of examples within the Jewish community is the aforementioned battle for the State of Israel. After some of the world’s greatest atrocities known to humankind were levelled against the Jewish People, the resilience taken to form the almighty Israel is what Malcolm Gladwell refers to as the art of battling giants: “The Jewish people are a people of fight and resilience. Throughout history, we have been and have been used as scapegoats for worldwide atrocities. We refuse to bow our heads in defeat, and instead stare into the eyes of the giant, determined to win. This leads me to believe that the success of a battle is all the greater if the scale of the fight is all that larger”.