I found myself thinking about something extraordinary today, and I felt the need to share it. Judaism is one of the few major world religions with no ambition to convert humanity, conquer the world, or impose its beliefs on others. In fact, we make it very difficult to convert to Judaism. Think about the world around us. Muslim supremacists seek to impose their interpretation of Islam on society, establish a caliphate, and govern people’s lives through Sharia law. They want to dictate how others live. Christianity has historically sought to spread its faith across the world through conversion, at times using empires and political power to do so. Communists have historically sought to spread their ideology worldwide, reshaping entire societies according to their political vision. The Chinese Communist Party extends its authoritarian influence through surveillance technologies, censorship, economic pressure, and political control. Ideological progressives increasingly demand conformity to their worldview, seeking to determine what people can say, what they should believe, and which opinions society will tolerate. Qatar, whose citizens represent roughly 0.004% of humanity, invests billions in universities, media, lobbying, and political networks to expand its global influence. A tiny population with enormous resources and ambitions to shape institutions and public opinion far beyond its borders. Imperialists have spent centuries conquering territories and imposing their cultures, political systems, and beliefs on others. And then there are the Jews. We don’t need anyone to become Jewish. We don’t ask Christians to observe Shabbat, Muslims to eat kosher, or the Chinese to study the Torah. We don’t demand that other countries adopt Jewish law. We have no ambition to dictate how anyone else should live. We simply want to live as Jews, preserve our traditions, raise our children, and live freely in our ancestral homeland. Nothing less. Nothing more. Yet for centuries, we have been persecuted, expelled, massacred, and accused of plotting to control the world. The people who have no ambition to convert the world are constantly accused of controlling it. The people who simply want to preserve their identity are accused of threatening everyone else’s. And the world’s one Jewish state is portrayed as a threat to world peace. Perhaps the problem was never what Jews wanted to impose on the world. Perhaps the problem is that Jews have consistently refused to surrender their identity to those determined to impose their worldview upon us. We don’t want to rule the world. We don’t want to convert the world. We simply want the right to live in it as Jews. And apparently, even that is too much for some to accept.