Israel – Divinely Given Birthright?

 

“The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had parted from him, ‘Raise your eyes and look out from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west. For I give all the land that you see to you and your offspring forever’.” (Torah, Genesis 13.14-15)  Generations later, the Lord honored that promise when he led Moses and the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. “I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians and to bring them out of the land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the region of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, Hivites and the Jesubites.” (Torah, Exodus 3.8)

     This ancient Hebrew scripture is (among others) the very foundation of Jewish claim to the land of Israel. This claim has also led to centuries of argument, struggle and tremendous bloodshed in that region of the world.  In light of that bloodshed – which continues today, it is my belief that Israel must look beyond the land itself, and find a way to incorporate other aspects of scripture into their life as a nation – in particular God’s command to love  (treat humanely) one’s neighbor. This does not disallow the right of the Jews to live in their homeland, but rather allows for the possibility for others to have a home there as well.  I do not take lightly the responsibility for peace on the part of the Palestinians, but I believe the onus is on the Israelis since they occupy the land.

     I cannot make this assertion however, without first attempting to explore the evolution of the Jewish claim to Israel – from its history, to modern interpretation, to the problems associated with the claim itself, (e.g., historical inaccuracies). I want to recognize the complexities of the issue, and touch on the catastrophic consequences that have resulted from such literal interpretation of the scripture – consequences that in and of themselves, lead me to conclude that Israel must re-evaluate its sole claim to the land if peace is to be achieved. 

     Theologians, biblical scholars, and religious leaders of all faiths have been dissecting and analyzing the holy scriptures of the Torah and Christian Old Testament for centuries.  The scripture itself clearly states that God made an everlasting covenant with Abram (later changed to Abraham). God – for his part of the covenant – promised Abraham the land occupied by the Canaanites, and directed that he and his descendants claim this land as their own. Circumcision and strict adherence to the Noahide laws were man’s part of the bargain. 

    These directives by God are visited over and over throughout Jewish scripture – from Genesis, to Exodus, through Deuteronomy and beyond. Each time, God makes clear that the Jews are to lay claim to the land – even if it means the eventual dispossession of the gentiles there. Deuteronomy 12.29 in the Torah reads, “When the Lord your God has cut down before you the nations that you are about to enter and dispossess, and you have dispossessed them and settled in their lands, beware of being lured into their ways after they have been wiped out before you.”

     But is the scripture historically accurate? Although it is true that the Torah is consistent on the notion of a covenant, the words of God with regard to that covenant and what He is trying to accomplish are not always consistent.

In her book A History of God, Karen Armstrong looks at these inconsistencies, and the possible reasons behind them. Armstrong says, “When the Israelites recounted the story of the Exodus, they were not as interested in historical accuracy as we would be today.  Instead they wanted to bring out the significance of the original event, whatever that may have been.”

     Armstrong indicates that some scholars believe the Exodus to be just a myth, although with a real peasant revolt somewhere behind it. Armstrong also looks at Deuteronomy as another possible myth – one to further the notion of chosenness or “election” of the Jewish people. This concept of chosenness in her opinion was a natural progression from the book of Exodus – where Moses and his people were sent to the Promised Land, ambivalent to the plight of the existing Canaanite population, and directed to eradicate all other religions being practiced in Canaan.  Finally, Armstrong explores the notion that the reformers rewrote history, and that later historical books (Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) were written with the idea of God creating a “Holy war of extermination in Canaan.”  Through Armstrong, we see that the God of Genesis establishes a type of father/son covenant between Abraham and his scion. But as the covenant continues through Exodus, God is now an angry and violent God who tortures and kills the Egyptian people.

     Let’s look at this notion of God slaying the Egyptians for a moment – because it contradicts everything God promised to Abraham.  Let’s remember that the Egyptians are descendants of Abraham’s other son Ishmael, who was born of an Egyptian mother. Ishmael, a circumcised boy, was also deemed by God to be blessed, and a forbearer of great nations like his brother Isaac.  Genesis 17.18 of the Torah finds Abraham pleading for blessings on his son Ishmael. “O that Ishmael might live by Your favor!” God replies in Genesis 17.20, “As for Ishmael, I have heeded you. I hereby bless him. I will make him fertile and exceedingly numerous. He shall be the father of twelve chieftains, and I will make of him a great nation.” If God truly did kill the Egyptians, he reneged on his promise to Abraham. Consider further then, that the scion of Ishmael – as descendants of Abraham – might be entitled to at least share in the land.

     Returning to scripture now, we see that the violence gets worse as the books of Torah move forward from Exodus.  The God of Deuteronomy has now become director of a total “dispossession” and destruction of all peoples (other than the chosen people) living in the area of Canaan. 

The question must be asked then – is it history that is inconsistent? Or is it God?  I would tend to give God the edge in such an argument. Perhaps the focus then, should be on what people believe to be the truth – and what the implication of those perceived truths has on the state of Israel. Rabbi Joseph Teluskin in his book Jewish Literacy discusses that although Jews are sometimes uncomfortable with the notion of chosenness, it is still the Jews who have spread the word of God throughout the world. He quotes Rabbi Louis Jacobs to back up this assertion. Jacobs said, “We are not discussing a dogma incapable of verification, but the recognition of sober historical fact. The world owes to Israel the idea of one God of righteousness and holiness. This is how God became known to mankind.”

     Now clearly the Rabbis, in using the term “historical fact”, see the scriptures as absolute truths. (Again, if we are to take the Torah literally, shouldn’t the descendents of Ishmael also have a right to live on the land promised to Abraham?) But the Rabbis are not alone in the belief that Judaism spread the notion of one God. Keith Ward in his book, A Case For Religion, writes, “Ethical Monotheism can be said to have its origin with the ancient Hebrews and their conviction that God has chosen a specific people, the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to enter into an especially intimate relationship – a covenant with God.” Professor Ward also stated in a lecture at Hartford Seminary (June, 2004), that he does believe God has a covenant with the Jewish people, and that they will endure as a result of that covenant. 

It must be noted however, that Professor Ward is at the same time concerned with the problems on limiting one’s focus to Israel’s covenant. In his book God: A Guide For the Perplexed, Ward says, “Human history is an arena of judgment on sin and salvation from evil, which is to be brought about through Israel. Yet, this conception is still limited. It is centered on the destiny of Israel, and it leaves God’s choice of Israel and any greater purposes for the world largely unexplored.”

     So we’ve seen what the scripture says, and the assertions that scripture gives credence to a covenantal relationship with God. But we’ve also discussed the situation regarding Ishmael, which in and of itself reflects the problems of focusing on one promise by God and ignoring another. It greatly limits the possibilities for the rest of the world to have a relationship with God.

     History has also shown that Judaism progressed (or regressed?) from focusing on the importance of their own relationship with God, to focusing on the land to which he brought them. To be fair – and accurate – the Jewish people faced enormous hardships and tragedies, – not the least of which were the destruction of the second temple, continual dispossession themselves, and brutal enslavement and oppression by powerful empires. The weight of these hardships over time led many to search for something more. They needed something tangible to hold to. They needed Israel.

  In his book The Dimensions of Job: A Study of Selected Readings, Nahum Glatzer presents many essays on the sufferings of the Jewish people, and their need to hope for a return to Israel. An essay in Glatzer’s book by Robert Gordis, explores this concept. He says, “God has eternity at His command, and nations are long-lived. This is particularly true of Israel. In Ben Sira’s words: ‘ The life of a man is but a few days, but the life of Jeshurun days without number.’”

     Margarete Susman in her essay God the Creator (Dimensions of Job…, Glatzer) further explores the plight of the Jews. She writes, “Since the destruction of the Temple and the journey into exile, they’ve recognized no country but the one on which the temple stood, and for the sake of the temple they’ve remained homeless.”  As Susman noted, the destruction of the 2^nd temple seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for many Jews of that era. Of all the hardships faced by their people over the centuries, even dispossession itself does not seem to have had the psychological effect that the loss of the temple did. The Land of Milk and Honey may still have existed, but without the temple, their notion of being God’s chosen people had greatly faded.

    Historically, this may also have been the beginning of different factions of Judaism. There were those Jews as Susman had noted, that would see the loss of the temple as an end to their identity as a nation. Others, in their desire to persevere, altered their view of the temple as the centerpiece of their existence, and returned to their focus of God – or the Shekinah – as still holding them together as a people.  Karen Armstrong writes, “The loss of the Temple which had been the inspiration of the new Judaism was a great grief, but with hindsight it seems that the Jews of Palestine who were often more conservative than the Hellenized Jews of the Diaspora, had already prepared themselves for the catastrophe…God would live in a loving brotherhood, not in a stone temple.”

     As Armstrong has pointed out, even in the early centuries after the Temple had been destroyed, the notions of Judaism were starting to split. The Jews of the Diaspora started to focus on a return to the homeland to rebuild the Temple and thus rebuild their identity as a people. The Jews who actually lived in Palestine, were not going to limit their identity to the existence of a building.

     So how does all of this relate to modern Judaism? Surely the destruction of the Temple in 132 CE was not still the prominent focus for Jews of the last two centuries?  Indeed not. The Jews of the late 19^th century were seeing increasingly widespread anti-Semitism. This not only increased their desire to focus on the homeland, but also their hope of turning focus away from the historical notion of “chosenness” which fueled hatred toward the Jews.  Rabbi Teluskin wrote, “…it is not surprising that some Jews have wanted to do away with the belief in Jewish chosenness.  The most noted effect to do so was undertaken by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, founder of the small but influential Reconstructionist movement. Kaplan advocated dropping chosenness for two reasons: to undercut accusations that the Chosen People idea was the model for racist ideologies, and because it went against modern thinking to see the Jews as a divinely chosen people.”  So the notion of Zionism had become a political reaction to the anti-Semitism of the time. Religion was beside the point. Although the Jews of the time still believed in God, their concern for the state of Israel was becoming their primary concern.

  Karen Armstrong writes about Franz Rosenzweig, and his concerns about what was happening. “Rosenzweig’s universal vision of religion made him suspicious of the new political Judaism that was emerging as a response to the new anti-Semitism. But Jews who fell victim to the escalating anti-Semitism did not feel they could afford the political disengagement. They could not sit back and wait for God to rescue them but redeem their people themselves.”  Armstrong writes about an influx of Jews from Eastern Europe in the late 19^th century who felt they needed a homeland as part of their identity. Zionists turned from the notion of God as savior, and turned toward the notion of Israel as destiny.

     It is clear then, that as time went on, the people whose ancestors originated worship of the one true God, were now becoming more secular in their thinking. Armstrong writes, “By working the land, which Zionists claimed had been neglected by the Arabs, the Jews would conquer it for themselves and at the same time, redeem themselves from the alienation of exile…the Zionist no longer needs God; he himself is the creator.”

     But what of those who still were deeply immersed in the religion of Judaism? Didn’t they see this new Zionism as a form of blasphemy?  While it’s true that the watering down of their religious beliefs troubled many, they didn’t see it as the end of Jewish practices.  Armstrong writes of Kabbalist Abraham Isaac Kook – the chief Rabbi for the Palestinian Jews – who was not at all horrified at the notion of Zionism. He saw it more as a “phase”, and one that could even help the Jews by bringing them closer to God (without their even knowing it). More and more Jews (like David Ben Gurion in the early 20^th century) made their way back to Israel.  Zionism was taking hold, but faith in God still lingered – even if it was an unspoken faith.

     That faith all but disappeared for many Jews with the horrors of the Holocaust.  Whereas the Jews of the 2^nd century had splintered into those who believed the idea of God was dependent on a Temple, versus others who saw a God existing outside the temple (the God of a “loving brotherhood”, as Armstrong noted), the Jews of the 20^th century further splintered off into those who still believed in God, and those who had nothing left to believe in but the land.  Throughout history, nothing seems to have shaken the faith of the Jewish people (and that of people everywhere) as the evils of the holocaust. How could a loving and powerful God allow the brutalization and extermination of 6 million of his “chosen” people? How could a loving God allow innocent children to be executed and not intervene?  For many Jews, God seems to have died along with the victims at Auschwitz.

     For these people in particular then, a belief in the land was still something to hold onto. God was beside the point now. For many, he no longer existed and maybe never did. The only truth lay in the soil of their homeland. The land of Israel. Israel represented the very core of their being, and their souls had become intertwined with the land – rather than with the God of scripture who brought them there.  Ironically, many of the same people in Israel who claimed a birthright to the land, did not even worship or believe in the God that gave them that birthright. Keith Ward in his 2004 lecture at Hartford Seminary said this is true of many if not most Israelis today (who reportedly tend to lean toward atheism).

     So we’ve seen the history of the Hebrew covenant. We’ve explored the changing face of Judaism from those who clung to the God of the Temple and those who clung to the land of the Temple. And we’ve seen the evolution of a people who clung to a nation to stay close to their God, to a people who (although certainly not all) now cling only to the nation, and can’t reconcile the notion of God based on modern day horrors.  Where does that leave the state of Israel today, and the legitimacy of the Jews’ claim of a Divinely deeded homeland?

     Even if we accept the argument that a loving God promised land to the Jews, was it truly meant to be an exclusive promise?  Did God intend this extreme exclusivity to reach a point where “the land of milk and honey” would become a land of war and death?  As the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries have demonstrated, an enormous amount of blood has been spilled by Jews and Arabs alike – in a fight not only about the land (particularly the holy city of Jerusalem), but also the rights of the Palestinian people to have a homeland of their own.

    The Jews exiled thousands of Palestinian settlers in 1948, resulting in decades of poverty and horrific living conditions for these exiles. The desperation of the Palestinian people has created extremist terrorist factions, whose only goal is to eradicate as many Israelis as they can – this because they know that the likelihood of a Palestinian state is dim.  In light of that prospect, the bloodshed is often less about the rights of the Palestinians, and more about the bloodshed itself.

      But, for the Jews who remain in modern day Israel, are these extreme measures truly based on a God-given birthright, or pure Zionism – and at what cost? Keith Ward makes the following observation in A Case For Religion. “The vast majority of Jews see the foundation of Israel as a secular state in 1948, as the restoration of the homeland they lost under Roman occupation in 132 CE. (But), the settlement of Israel at the cost of the dispossession of thousands of Palestinians is one of the most intractable political problems of the modern world. It is too simple to say that the problem is a religious cause.  The main cause is the Shoah and the promise of a homeland by the British.  The strong desire for a homeland is naturally closely bound up with religious sentiments where they exist, but those vary from extreme territorial expansionism to a desire for simple coexistence with Palestinians.”

     As I mentioned in the beginning, there has been a strong belief by Jews throughout the ages that Israel was given to them by God.  Clearly they have a case for claiming Israel – based not only on holy scripture, but on their endurance as a people through unspeakable horror and suffering. The heart and soul of the Israeli people is now intertwined with their homeland, and they will continue to fight (literally) to keep that land.  It is no coincidence that during the high holy days, Jews raise their glasses and say “next year in Jerusalem.”  Their hopes – their very futures – are tied to belief in everlasting peace and prosperity in Jerusalem.

     At the same time, we must also take into consideration the promise of God concerning Ishmael, the notion by biblical scholars (per Karen Armstrong) that certain books of the Torah could be mythical in nature, and most importantly the enormous day to day suffering of the Palestinian people.

In the final analysis, I believe that Israel must look at scripture in total, look at the history of the land (including the destruction and dispossession of other peoples going back to the time of the Canaanites), and God-willing, open their hearts and minds to the notion of sharing the land with the Palestinians. Not just for the reasons I mentioned above, but because the Jews in particular understand the notion of suffering. Ironically, it is the Jews who could probably – above all other peoples – empathize with the plight of the Palestinians.

     A Time Magazine article several years before his death, quoted Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat as having said, “I’m not going to surrender.”  The article also discussed “years of violence (between Jews and Palestinians) with no signs of ending.”  The Jews will fight to hold on to Israel, and the Palestinians will fight to return. If the bloodshed continues between these two peoples, “Next year in Jerusalem” may be the ominous prediction of the end of a nation, rather than the hopeful beginning of everlasting peace.