To Be a Jew

CHAPTER 1

The Cornerstones of Judaism

ISRAEL—THE PEOPLE

The terms Hebrew, Israelite, and Jew have historically been used synonymously and interchangeably. The Bible refers to Abraham as Ibri (Hebrew), probably because he migrated from the other side (east) of the Euphrates River and Ibri means “from the other side.” Israel was the alternate name of Jacob, the grandson of Abraham. Hence his twelve sons and their descendants became known as the children of Israel, or the Israelite Nation or People. Jew is derived from Judah, the son of Israel, the most prominent of the Twelve Tribes. This became the prevalent name for the entire people when the Judeans from the Kingdom of Judea survived the downfall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C.E. when Ten Tribes were led into captivity. Thus today, the people are called Jewish, their faith Judaism, their language Hebrew,^* and their land Israel.

This people, Israel, started life as one family tracing its antecedents back to Abraham, the Hebrew who lived approximately 3800 years ago. The monotheistic faith firmly held by Abraham, and the “Covenant with God” entered into by him and reaffirmed by his descendants, identified this family as the adherents of a special faith. The family did not claim exclusive rights to this faith, but on the contrary, were eager to attract others to it. As this God-intoxicated family and those who joined them in faith grew in number, accepting the Torah as their Divine Constitution, taking possession of the land promised to them by the Master of the universe, they assumed the characteristics of a nation, a people speaking a common language, living within a specified geographic area, sharing common memories and a common destiny, and exercising the attributes of national sovereignty.

On the basis of their origin, Jews everywhere have regarded themselves as members of a family, an expanded family to be sure, and oftentimes a far-flung family, but a family nevertheless. Membership in this family derives from the mother. The child of any Jewish woman is thus considered to be a member of the family. But membership in the family has never been limited by birth. It has always been open to all, and those who share the faith of this family may be “adopted” into it. Thus, the convert to Judaism not only becomes a partner in faith with the children of Israel, but through faith, the proselyte himself becomes one of the children of Israel, sharing fully in its heritage and its privileges and assuming its burdens and tribulations. In accepting the Jewish faith, the proselyte thus joins the Jewish people or nation. In accepting the religious duties of the present, and in assuming the spiritual mission of the future, he also ties himself to the collective past.

Although the natural tendency for any family is to be exclusive and to look inward, this particular family was never exclusive. In times of persecution it was sometimes forced to withdraw in self-defense, but generally it looked outward and reached out to the world at large. When the central sanctuary in Jerusalem was built, Jews saw it as a “House of Prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7, see also Kings I 8:41–43).

In the very emphasis upon the particular, this singular family reflected the noblest form of universalism. The universalism that permeates the faith of Israel is reflected not only in its theological formulations and in its visions of the future, but in the very composition of its people. This seemingly “exclusive” people includes those whose skins range from the lightest to the darkest in colors, and within it a broad range of cultural diversity is represented. Yet despite the diversity that exists among them and the multitude of languages they speak, Jews regard themselves as related, as true brethren stemming from a common Semitic family. Although it is religion which unites them and it is only on the basis of religion that newcomers are admitted into fellowship, this feeling of kinship is very strong—and the mystery deepens when we realize that even Jews who rebel against the faith and discard its religious beliefs and practices are still regarded as Jews, and generally themselves still feel the bonds of kinship.

This sense of kinship felt by the Jewish people may be more of a “mystical” experience than a rationally definable one. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why Jews have never quite been able to fit into the convenient categories used by historians or sociologists to define nations, races, religions, and other social groupings. Except for the fact that the Jews obviously do not constitute a race (for race is a biological designation), the Jews are not just a religious faith, even though they are that; and they are not just a nation, even though they are that too, according to definitions of the term “nation.” The problem is usually resolved by using the term “people” instead of either “faith” or “nation.”

This difficulty in categorizing the Jewish people may well be part of their uniqueness. It is a uniqueness which according to the believer was given its permanent stamp by the Divine command, “You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6).

The Jewish people were once described in these poetic terms:

Although a small people, separate and distinct, Israel has nevertheless not been a withdrawn people. Though standing alone, it has not stood aside. Jewish history is interlaced with that of every other nation and empire. “Jews… have witnessed and taken part in more of the human career, they have recorded more of it, shaped more of it, originated and developed more of it, above all, suffered more of it, than any other people,” wrote Ernest van den Haag. The history of the Jews has been a history of interaction with the rest of the world—although Western scholars reared in a Christian-dominated society have tended to perceive only myopically the role of the Jew and of Judaism in that history, and to treat condescendingly anything that related to Jews or to Judaism. Textbooks of history, sociology or philosophy rarely have anything significant to say about the Jewish people or Jewish thought after the beginning of the Christian era. The bias against Judaism and the Jews that was reflected for so long in the texts and the curricula of the Christian universities was bequeathed to the secular academic world even after theological influence waned and the institutions became secular. Even Jews who entered this academic milieu were subtly influenced by the existing bias and unquestioningly accepted it themselves. Generally ignorant of their own history and philosophy, they fell sway to the notion that serious Jewish thought beyond the Biblical period either did not exist or did not merit the concern of serious scholarship.

Though denied, despised, rejected, persecuted, confined, and restricted through history, Jews and Judaism, the people itself and its sacred books, have nonetheless often set in motion forces that marked major revolutionary changes and advances in Western religions, in the natural and medical sciences, and in social philosophies. The contributions by individual Jews in every field of creative endeavor, in the advancement of human knowledge, in the elimination of suffering, in the development of commerce, have filled volumes. Judaism’s traditional emphasis on social justice through social action has had a noticeable effect in contemporary times.

For a people who have always been numerically insignificant, “the fewest of all the nations,” ha-m’at mikol ha-amim to use the words of the Torah, to have compiled such a record of achievements, and to have been on the scene of world history for so long while surviving all attempts to assimilate it and even to annihilate it, something more must be involved than the capacities of the people themselves.

The devout Jew looks upon that “something more” as a fulfillment of Divine prophecy that “through you and your descendants will all the families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 28:14), and as a vindication of Israel’s Covenant with God: “For you are a holy people unto the Lord your God, and you did God choose to be unto Him a treasured people from among all the peoples upon the face of the earth” (Deut. 14:2). The devout Jew accepts the status with humility and thanksgiving, seeing it as a yoke and a burden as well as a distinction. He sees himself as a servant of the Lord, ready to do His bidding at all times. Serving the Lord takes many forms: spending one’s life studying Torah, faithfully observing the ritual and ethical commandments, struggling for justice and righteousness in society. The learned and observant Jew ignores none of the ways.

Whatever the believing Jew may find himself doing in fulfillment of that role, and whatever apparent “smallness” or “insignificance” his existence may appear to have, for him there is cosmic significance and purpose in doing the bidding of the Lord.

The skeptical Jew, on the other hand, who does not at all see himself as a servant of the Lord, is embarrassed by any reference to Israel’s enjoyment of Divine favor or any notion of a special national mission. Such talk even on the part of non-Jews tends to embarrass him, and he is eager to repudiate all such notions. But his attempts at repudiating the meaning of Jewish history are invariably contradicted by history itself, which does not permit Jews to become “like all the other nations,” to become merely another national entity among nations.

We believe that the nations and peoples of the world have their Divine purposes and their assigned roles to fulfill, too, for God is the God of all the world, not just of Jewry. And we see our divinely ordained assignment as involving a unique role, one to which history itself bears witness. It implies a special purpose in life, a reason for our existence. That purpose is not to make Jews of all the world, but to bring the peoples of the world, whatever their distinctive beliefs may be, to an acknowledgment of the sovereignty of God and to an acceptance of the basic values revealed to us by that God. It is to serve as a means by which blessing will be brought to “all the families of the earth” (Genesis 12:3).

It is this mission which underlies for Jews the coming of the day “when the world shall be perfected under the reign of the Almighty, and all mankind will call upon Thy name.” It is only in these terms, supernatural though they be, that any plausible explanation can be offered for Israel’s ability to survive against the many obstacles and threats to its very existence, and its success in penetrating the thought of most nations. It is in these terms that we discover meaning even in Israel’s historical suffering and dispersion, as in its achievements, its strengths, and its restoration to Zion.

ISRAEL—ITS LAND

The bond between the Jewish people and the land which came to be known as Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, began at the time of Abraham.

Thus began Israel’s bond to what was then—3800 years ago—the land of Canaan and was to become the land of Israel. The long sojourn by the children of Israel in Egypt, where they were enslaved and oppressed, was followed by their mass exodus and their return to the land that had been promised them. In the final prophecy to Moses just before his death, we read again “And the Lord said to him; this is the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, ‘I will give it to your offspring’” (Deut. 34:4). Hence the name: The Promised Land; it was promised to Israel.

The exodus from Egypt and the possession of the land of Israel, serve as the historical fulcrum of Israel’s Covenant with God. It was only on the soil of Israel that all the commandments of the Lord could be implemented; it was only on the soil of Israel, “at the place that He will choose” (Mt. Moriah in Jerusalem) that the permanent central sanctuary of the Jewish people could be built; it was only on the soil of Israel that the children of Israel would realize their fullest potential as a people; it was only on the soil of Israel that God’s promises to Israel and His blessings would take on reality—if Israel proved itself worthy by its adherence to the commandments and by its loyalty to the Covenant. As the people were called upon to become a “holy people,” their land was to be a “holy land.” It was not to be defiled by the pagan practices that were then prevalent in the land and in the world at large. These pagan rites, the abominations, the idolatries, the Israelites were bidden to purge from the soil.

According to Nachmanides (Rabbi Moses ben Nachman, the great scholar and sage who lived in the thirteenth century), to take possession of the Holy Land and to live in it must be counted among the Biblical commandments incumbent upon Jews to fulfill. It is written “You shall take possession of the land and dwell therein, since I have given you this land to inherit it” (Numbers 33:53). He sees Israel’s possession of the Holy Land as tied in fact to the destiny of the world. “So long as Israel occupies it, the earth is regarded as subject to Him,” said Nachmanides. A contemporary American folk philosopher may have inadvertently made the same point: “I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel, so will it go with all of us.”¹

Ever since the Israelites first settled the land of Canaan about 3200 years ago (approximately 1200 B.C.E.), the land was never again devoid of Jews. Though they were conquered by foreign armies and ruled by foreign rulers, sometimes becoming a minority in their own country when the majority fled or was expelled, they never entirely left it. Many Jews stayed even after the destruction of the First Temple and the downfall of the First Commonwealth in the year 586 B.C.E., when large numbers of other Jews were exiled to Babylonia. The Babylonians had conquered the land and exiled most of its people, but by 515 B.C.E., after the Babylonians themselves were conquered by the Persians, the Jews were ready to return to rebuild what had been destroyed and to reestablish the Second Commonwealth, symbolized by the rebuilding of the Second Temple.

About five and a half centuries later, in 70 C.E., the destruction of the Second Temple and the downfall of the Second Commonwealth at the hands of the Romans dealt another severe blow to the Jewish people. Several attempts to reestablish independence and to throw off the yoke of foreign rule took place during the next sixty-five years, but all these attempts failed. While small settlements of Jews remained on the soil, the bulk of the people scattered to countries far and wide, almost literally to the ends of the earth.

Wherever they were, Jews dreamed of some day returning and reestablishing their independence, of restoring their national existence. They dreamed of it and prayed for it; never for a day was the Holy Land out of their thoughts. During the centuries, the land was overrun by a series of invading and conquering armies—Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, European Crusaders, Turks, and finally by British forces during World War I. And while individual Jews throughout the centuries sometimes returned to the Holy Land, if only to finish out their years and be buried there, an organized effort for a mass return and resettlement of the land aiming toward the reestablishment of an independent sovereign Jewish State did not begin to materialize until the latter part of the nineteenth century. Zionism, the name given to this organized effort, was and is a struggle for national liberation and for the crystallization of a national identity on the part of a nation that had been forced to wander from country to country over the centuries.