Turning on the lights – Bo
Despite the plague of darkness which came upon Egypt, the Israelites had light in their dwellings (Ex. 10:21-23).
The statement is meant literally but throughout history there has also been a metaphorical dimension. The world was often dark and gloomy and it tried to drag the Jews into the general bleakness.
Churchill, on the other hand, said that some people liked Jews and some didn’t, but no-one could ignore the Jews or deny that they had given intellectual and spiritual light to mankind.
Jonathan Sacks granted that many Jewish ideas were part of general culture but Jews remained special because no-one else took the great ideas as seriously as Judaism did.
