Life is like a game. It may be far more serious than a game, and we play “life” without being asked if we want to play. But there are similarities nonetheless.

No one wins all the time. But if I go into a rage, stay bitter, and try to get back at you when I lose, I lose triply. Once – I lose the game. Twice – I lose your respect. Triple – my loss becomes perpetuated, as I continue suffering after the game is over. No one likes sore losers, and you won’t want to play with me again. Except, perhaps, to have the fun of getting me into another rage and having me look like an enormous idiot.

Another thing that is likely to happen is that I will overreact to future losses. My pent up resentment is unleashed with every new loss. We will never become friends if I don’t let go of my resentments toward you.

On the other hand, if I lose gracefully, commend you for having played better than me, and make a decision to try to play better next time, you will respect and like me. I will have turned my loss into a partial gain.

Jews seem to have made it part of our culture to remember our past defeats and keep them fresh in our minds. Perhaps this has helped keep us together, but it has also helped keep us apart from the Gentiles. We have difficulty trusting them because we suspect they are capable of doing to us what their ancestors did to ours. And they can’t respect us because we look like sore losers who can’t get over our past losses. Thus, they may keep on being mean to us, as we have unwittingly created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In recent years, Jews have come across like sore losers in our attempts to get European countries and their banks to make restitution for money and property lost to Jews who perished during World War II. It is perfectly okay for individual Jews who can prove that their property was confiscated to bring lawsuits. But class action lawsuits are another matter. These lawsuits have succeeded in getting millions of dollars to be distributed to individuals who cannot prove their loss, and to Jewish organizations whose only claim to Holocaust money is that they serve Jewish causes. I can't help wondering if these millions of dollars were worth the price. They caused tons of ill will between Jews and Europeans and seemed to confirm the stereotype that the only thing Jews care about is money. Six millions Jews dead, and fifty years later we want their material possessions.

Of course not all Jews who survived the Holocaust rebounded. But as a group, we can be very proud of them. They started over in new countries, often without any professions and with little knowledge of their new homelands’ languages and culture. Within one generation, their offspring are mostly middle class and higher. The millions of dollars won through class action lawsuits may have brought temporary help to some individuals and groups, but money is quickly spent and forgotten. In the long scheme of things these awards may have made little difference to our wellbeing. But if the closing chapter of the saga of the Holocaust is the story of our haggling over money, we will have permanently eroded respect for ourselves and our ancestors.

Every group in the world has lost people and possessions through illegal attacks. Many groups have been wiped off the face of the planet. Some were absorbed into other groups. Some were scattered over other countries and continents. If justice requires that all property obtained illegally be returned to its original inhabitants, every one of us would be kicked out of our homes and be in the impossible situation of trying to figure out where on Earth we belong. So let’s stop being sore losers. We should be grateful we are still here and aspire to do better in the future.

Conclusion

It's about time we Jews stopped thinking like victims and treating everyone like enemies.  People do have a right to think and talk badly of us, just as we do of others.  Maybe we'll even learn something of value from their criticism, so we should thank them.  We should only act when others commit true crimes against us.  And even then, we need to do it in the right way.