Abraham gave rise to a nation of Hebrews people who live "on the other side." by Rabbi Ken Spiro

Transcription

1 2008 Abraham gave rise to a nation of Hebrews people who live "on the other side." by Rabbi Ken Spiro More than 100 years ago author Mark Twain pondered the enigma of the Jews and posed a fascinating question: If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning, are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all ages: and has done it with his hands tied behind him. 1

2 The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished... All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? 1 The answer to his question can be found in the remote beginnings of the Jewish people in the earliest stories in the Bible. Just as these early stories define the paradigm for future events, so too, the earliest personalities in Genesis define the model for the collective nature of the Jewish people throughout history. If this is the case, then from the Jewish perspective, the most important biblical character to understand is Abraham the first Jew, or perhaps more accurately, the proto-jew. Abraham personifies everything that could be characterized as the Jewish personality. His strength, sense of mission and idealism are reflected in all the generations of the Jewish people that have come after him. 2 Abraham was certainly one of the great truth-seekers of all time. He was also famous for his kindness and hospitality. 3 But in studying his story, the one attribute that stands out more than any other is his uncompromising drive to change the world this drive truly epitomized the essence of what Abraham was about and it came to epitomize his descendants, the Jewish people. To stand alone for thousands of years against the entire world, to dedicate oneself, heart and soul, to the ultimate cause of Tikkun HaOlam requires tremendous strength of character. This outstanding feature of Abraham s personality can be seen manifest in every generation of the Jewish people as an indelible mark of the collective Jewish character. 1 Twain, Mark, The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, New York: Doubleday: 1963, p See also Concerning the Jews, an essay by Mark Twain in Harper s magazine, September The Talmud (in Tractate Shabbat 97a) discusses this concept and uses the phrase Hem maminim b nei maminim, They (the Jews) are believers, the sons of believers. The first believer was, of course, Abraham. He passed on to his children a kind of spiritual genetics -- a drive and intensity that has always characterized the Jewish people. 3 See Talmud, Tractate Sota 10b, for an explanation of how Abraham used hospitality as a tool to bring people he encountered back to God. 2

3 It is because of this drive that the Jews have historically been tremendous over-achievers and have stood at the forefront of virtually every major advance, cause, or social movement in world history. (Jews have not only been awarded a disproportionate number of Nobel prizes for their intellectual contributions, but have led movements such as communism, socialism, feminism, civil rights, labor unionization, etc.) 4 Notes social philosopher Ernest Van den Haag in his classic work The Jewish Mystique: Asked to make a list of the men who have most dominated the thinking of the modern world, many educated people would name Freud, Einstein, Marx and Darwin. Of these four, only Darwin was not Jewish. In a world where Jews are only a tiny percentage of the population, what is the secret of the disproportionate importance the Jews have had in the history of Western culture? 5 The Jews have invented more ideas, have made the world more intelligible for a longer span and for more people than any other group. They have done this indirectly, always unintentionally and certainly not in concert, but nevertheless comprehensibly... Jews may call themselves humanists, or atheists, socialists or communists... they may even dislike their Jewishness and deny it in scientific terms. But, rarely do they refuse to carry it... They won t give up being Jewish even when they consciously try to when they change their names, intermarry and do everything to deny Jewishness. Yet they remain aware of it, and though repudiating it, they cling to it; they 4 Disproportionate is really an understatement. Take virtually any cause in modern history (communism, socialism, civil rights, anti-apartheid, labor unionization, anti-globalization, SDS, feminism etc.) and if it wasn t founded by Jews (who make up just one-quarter of one percent of the world s population) it is disproportionately run by Jews. The explanation of this phenomenon is that nothing comes as close to Abraham s original mission to perfect the world as a cause. This explains why so many Jews today, the vast majority of whom are disconnected from their Jewish heritage, nonetheless still have that high-powered Jewish soul pushing them to make an impact. 5 Van Den Haag, Ernest, The Jewish Mystique, New York: Stein and Day, 1969, p

4 may repress it, but do act it out symptomatically. Their awareness of their Judaism is shared by others simply because their denial is so ambivalent. Unconscious or not, at least some part of every Jew does not want to give up its Jewishness. 6 Unconscious or not, at least part of every Jew does not want to give up the legacy of Abraham. As Van den Haag concludes: Jews continue to feel the yoke, the task, the moral mission of being Jews of preserving themselves as such, and to the surprise, scorn, and at times hatred of the rest of the world, of refusing to become anything else. 7 The moral mission of the Jews was called into action, when God spoke to Abraham (then called Abram) and sent him on a journey of a lifetime a journey which still continues for his descendants: God said to Abram, Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father s house to the land that I will show you. 8 Abraham s Journey We know that the Bible isn t like the writings of Charles Dickens. Dickens got paid by the word, and he would be as verbose as possible. God is the exact opposite. Rather than fill the text of the Bible with pages of details, He limits the narrative to the bare minimum, giving us only relevant information that we need to know. So the question we have to ask is: Why does God, Who uses words so sparingly throughout the whole Bible, state this command so emphatically and seemingly repetitively? Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father s house. If you grew up in a specific house for a specific period of time, that would be home for you. Whenever you would think of home, no matter where you 6 The Jewish Mystique, pp The Jewish Mystique, p Genesis 12:1. 4

5 had lived after that and how comfortable you had been, that would be the place to come to mind. Connection to home is very deep and fundamental. So God is saying to Abraham: Don t just leave your land and your hometown, separate yourself from it all on the most basic emotional level. More importantly from the macrocosmic, historical perspective God is saying to Abraham, and therefore to the Jewish people, his descendants: Separate yourself completely and go in a different direction. The journey that God is directing Abraham to undertake is not just a physical journey, it s a journey through history that is going to be different from anyone else s. Abraham is going to become a father to a unique nation with a unique destiny: a nation that dwells alone and is not reckoned among the rest of the nations. 9 As noted, we see this concept of the Jews as a unique nation manifesting itself in the double-standard constantly applied to modern Israel. This is the first unique characteristic of Jewish history. In this command to Abraham, we see God directing him not only to leave his homeland, but to go to a specific piece of real estate which will later be know as the Land of Israel. This is the initial promise of the land to Abraham and his descendants, which will be repeated by God several times thereafter. From this point on, we will see that there is a special relationship between the Land of Israel and the Jews. This special relationship is the second unique aspect of Jewish history. (We will discuss this relationship in more detail in the next class.) The third unique aspect of Jewish history we see in the next verse: I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you and make your name great; and you will be a blessing Numbers 23:9. 10 Genesis 12:2. 5

6 This verse conveys God s promise that He will be actively involved in Jewish history: I will make you... In the 17 th century when Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher of the Enlightenment, was asked by Louis XIV for proof of the supernatural, he answered, The Jewish people, your Majesty. Why? Because he realized that for the Jewish people to survive to the 17 th century, violated all the laws of history. Can you imagine what he d say seeing that the Jews made it to the 20 th century?! Jewish history is a supernatural phenomenon. The Jewish people should never have come into existence. Abraham s wife Sarah was barren, and that should have been it. Abraham would have died childless, and his mission would have died with him. But it didn t. A miracle happened. Besides Pascal, many scholars and well-known personalities have taken note that Jewish history is in fact unique and that it violates all the laws of history. Writes the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev: [The Jews ] destiny is too imbued with the metaphysical to be explained either by material or positive historical terms... Their survival is a mysterious and wonderful phenomenon, demonstrating that the life of this people is governed by special predetermination... The survival of the Jews, their resistance to destruction, their endurance under absolutely peculiar conditions and the fateful role played by them in history; all these point to the particular and mysterious foundations of their destiny The Jewish people came into being miraculously and survived all of human history miraculously, outlasting even the greatest empires. Things have happened to the Jews that haven t happened to other peoples. This is so because the Jews are a nation with a unique mission, a nation with a unique history a nation whose role is so essential that they cannot be allowed to disappear. 11 Berdyaev, Nikolai, The Meaning of History, London: World, 1935, pp

7 To live for 2,000 years as a nation without a national homeland is not normal. It s unique in human history. To re-establish a homeland in the place that was yours 2,000 years ago is not normal. It s unprecedented in human history. A Blessing There are more unique aspects of Jewish history spelled out in God s communication to Abraham. The fourth is found in the latter half of the verse quoted earlier: and you will be a blessing. The tiny Jewish nation that should never have come into existence and should certainly never have survived will profoundly impact all of humanity. 12 More than 3,700 years after the birth of Abraham, there is no doubt that the world has been profoundly blessed by the Jews. In the words of John Adams, second president of the United States: I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation... They have given religion to three quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind, more and more happily than any other nation, ancient or modern. 13 You can see the incredibly positive impact the Jews have had on the world. The most basic of all is that the Jews have contributed the values that are now linked with democracy the values that come from the Torah respect for life, justice, equality, peace, love, education, social responsibility etc. And finally, the fifth unique aspect of Jewish history: 12 For a more detailed explanation of this impact see WorldPerfect: The Jewish Impact on Civilization. 13 From his letter to F.A. Van der Kemp,

8 I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you, and through you, will be blessed all the families of the earth. 14 God is saying here to Abraham that he and the Jewish people, his descendants, will be under God s protection. The empires, nations and peoples that are good to the Jews will do well. Empires, nations and peoples that are bad to the Jews will do poorly. And He repeats that the whole world is going to be changed positively by the Jewish people. You can literally chart the rise and fall of virtually all the nations of the Western World and the Middle East by how they treated the Jews. Consider, for example, Spain, Turkey, Germany, Poland, United States of America, etc. (Ironically, most nations have treated the Jews both benevolently and malevolently. It is an oft repeated pattern that the Jews are first invited into a country and later persecuted and expelled from the same country. We will see this pattern time and time again as we go through the history of the Jews in Diaspora.) Part of this phenomenon, by the way, is not so supernatural, because if you have a group of people living within your country an educated, driven, dedicated, loyal, creative, well-connected people and if you re nice to them and you allow them to participate and contribute in a meaningful way, your country is going to benefit. If you crush those people and expel them, you re going to suffer, because of the economic fallout. But, of course, there s much more going on than just that. In the words of Thomas Newton, the Bishop of Bristol, who lived in the late 1700s: The preservation of the Jews is really one of the most signal and illustrious acts of Divine Providence and what but a supernatural power could have preserved them in such a manner as none other nation upon earth has been preserved. Nor is the Providence of God less remarkable in the destruction of their enemies, than in their preservation... We see that the great empires, which in their turn subdued and oppressed the people of God, are all come to ruin And if such has been the fatal end of the enemies and oppressors of the 14 Genesis 12:3. 8

9 Jews, let it serve as a warning to all those, who at any time or upon any occasion are for raising a clamor and persecution against them. 15 So we have a final pattern the rise and fall of nations and empires is going to be based on how they treat the Jews, which is an amazing idea, and one you can clearly demonstrate in human history. So from these three verses in Genesis we see the key underlying patterns of all of Jewish history. Abraham s journey is the paradigm. His personal life (and the life of his immediate descendants) is going to be a mini-version, a microcosm, of what Jewish history is all about. 15 Gould, Allan ed., What Did They Think of the Jews? Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1997, pp