It should not surprise us that there is a blessing in the Amidah that asks Hashem to fight evil. After all, if there is any people that has had to confront evil at its very worst, it is the Jewish people. Is it not our heartfelt wish that “all wickedness instantly perish, and may all Your enemies quickly be destroyed, etc.?” Such a blessing would be unremarkable, and surely heartfelt in its delivery!
But the blessing begins in a most peculiar way: “May there be no hope for slanderers.” Of all the evil actors with whom we unfortunately have come into contact—think Oct. 7—why single out slanderers, of all people? A review of the history of this blessing doesn’t help us very much. Assuming that at some point there was a group of people that committed slander against us, our traditional sources are very unclear regarding who these slanderers might be; what exactly they were slandering; and to whom. Might it have been collaborators with the Greeks, revealing Jewish rebel plans? Might it have been members of the nascent Christian sect, denouncing Jews to the Romans? Or Jewish-Christians denigrating the rabbinic traditions? Or could this be a euphemism for apostates, heretics, Christians, gnostics….? Who knows?
Rather than trying to determine some fixed historical context, perhaps we can look at the act of slander itself, and ask ourselves what there is about slander that makes it so uniquely offensive. What comes to mind is the classic trick question, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” Such a question obviously has no proper answer. If you say “No” you are in effect saying, “I am still beating my wife.” If you say “Yes” you are in effect saying, “I used to beat my wife, but I don’t’ anymore.”
Slanderers do something similar. They make a vicious and false statement. If you deny it, you give credence to the accusation. If you don’t deny it, you let the accusation stand unchallenged. A recent example comes from Norman Finkelstein, a notorious and crude anti-Zionist who, among other things, called Elie Wiesel the “clown of the Holocaust circus.” He declared that Israeli soldiers “shoot Palestinian children for sport.”
How in the world can one respond to such a statement? “No they don’t” seems hardly adequate. “I call blood libel,” may be a little better, but not much. “You’re a lying ********” might feel good, but doesn’t serve to undo the damage done by the slanderer, who will routinely pick up thousands upon thousands of “likes” on line, by those who consider him, G-d help us, an “expert” who has “dared to tell the truth” that no one else will.
No wonder we turn to Hashem for help, and for a specific kind of help at that. Unlike other “enemies,” who we pray will “be destroyed,” regarding the slanderer, we simply ask that “there be no hope.” We hope, in other words, that people will not be so gullible, or so hateful, that they accept the words of the slanderer as truth.
Pray hard.