The Evolving Covenant: Jewish History and Why It Matters

By Hillel Katzir

The relationship of the Jewish people with God can be seen as like that of parent and child: as much as the parent cares for the child, the parent must prepare the child for adulthood by gradually stepping back and allowing the child to take ever greater responsibility. This overview of Jewish history sees God as preparing the Jewish people in just this way, for partnership with God in the ongoing project of bringing order to a chaotic world in order to complete an unfinished Creation; and, by setting an example, to invite all of humanity into that partnership as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483653327

Hillel Katzir

Hillel Katzir is the rabbi of Temple Shalom synagogue in Auburn, Maine. He lived in Israel for nine years, was a member of a kibbutz, and served in the Israel Defense Forces. He has taught Judaism, Biblical Hebrew, and interfaith topics at the University of Southern Maine and at Bangor Theological Seminary, and he is Director of the Hate Crimes Response Project of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine. He frequently speaks to church, school and civic groups about Judaism, and about the need for understanding and acceptance between people of different faith backgrounds.

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Copyright © 2013 by Hillel Katzir.

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Rev. date: 06/24/2013

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

Judaism: Religion, Nationality or Culture?

The Bible as a Source of History—How, and Why, We Read the Bible

CHAPTER 1 PATRIARCHS

Abraham

Covenant

Arguing with God

Testing God

Covenant between the generations

The older shall serve the younger

A Portable God

Israel: struggling with God

Joseph

Sibling Rivalries

Shema Yisrael

CHAPTER 2 ‘FREEDOM FROM’ AND ‘FREEDOM FOR’

Maintaining Jewish identity

Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh

Freedom Isn’t Free

Suffering of Others

Re-Birth of a Nation

Sinai

Seeing the Presence of God

Commandments

Holy sites, holy ground

The 40-year adolescence

Life is a Journey

CHAPTER 3 SETTLING AND TESTING

Peer Pressure

Conquest of the Land

They did what was right in their own eyes

A united monarchy

Centralized power

A nation divided

Ethics over ritual

Ten Lost Tribes

The role of the prophet

The beginning of the end?

CHAPTER 4 EXILE AND RETURN: THE SECOND TEMPLE PERIOD

Revolutionary innovations

Returnees and Diaspora

The ‘Second Temple’ Period

Alexander the Great and Hellenism

Maccabees and rededication

Rome

Factionalism

Judaism and Jesus

Rabbinic Judaism—a new beginning

The Temple destroyed—again

CHAPTER 5 TURNING INWARD

Medieval persecutions

The Golden Age of Spain

Mysticism as a response to exile and rationalism

Hassidic Judaism

Ghettoes—imposed inwardness

CHAPTER 6 THE MODERN ERA: FIXING A BROKEN WORLD

Haskalah—beginning the return outward

New forms of Judaism

The Goldene Medineh—Jews come to America

Tikkun Olam

Anti-Semitism and Holocaust

Interfaith relations since the Holocaust

Soviet Jewry

CHAPTER 7 ISRAEL

A disclaimer

Zionism

Revival of Hebrew

Early Zionist Settlement

British Mandate

Independence: a nation reborn again

The Arab-Israeli conflict

A first peace

Palestine

Settlements

One person’s opinion

CHAPTER 8 A JEWISH FUTURE: ORDER OR CHAOS?

Jewish divisions

The Diaspora—assimilation, or a Jewish future?

Judaism still has something to contribute

Jews by choice

A note about translation and transliteration

Translating Hebrew words into English is notoriously tricky. Hebrew is often a more subtle language than English, so that a Hebrew word may often be legitimately translated using several different English words; but if only one English word is used, many of the nuances of the Hebrew word are lost. A good example is how, if you lay several different English translations of the Hebrew Bible next to each other and compare the words of a given verse, they will often use different English words to translate the same original Hebrew text, thereby yielding sometimes quite different meanings. Sometimes, the choice of which English word to use is driven by the theology or agenda of the translator. Translation is interpretation!

The translations from Hebrew to English in this book are mine, and I take full responsibility for them. There are occasional exceptions, biblical quotes from different editions of the Bible; in those cases, the translations are labeled as to their source.

There is more than one way that Hebrew words are transliterated into English letters. Although my system may differ from others, I have tried to at least be consistent throughout the book. Here are some pronunciation aids to my transliterations:

ḥ or ch = as in the Scottish loch (ch is never as in the English ‘church’)

kh = as in the German Bach

i = ee as in English beet

u = oo is in English boot

For Jews who seek a different perspective on their history;

For Christians who seek a perspective on the Jewish origins of Jesus; and

For all who seek knowledge of others, to break down the Otherness that divides us.

INTRODUCTION

Judaism is the language of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. It is a language consisting of relationships, ritual, and memory.

The conversation that is carried on in this language, between God and the Jews, and among Jews themselves—the overarching goal of these special relationships—is nothing less than tikkun olam, repairing a broken world.

Relationships can be ends in themselves, a sharing of who we are with someone we love and trust. But we also have, in our lives, relationships that rise to a higher level. The Jewish tradition calls such a relationship a covenant, or in Hebrew ‘brit’: a close partnership of love and commitment, with a goal to be achieved together.

A commonly cited example of a brit is the human covenant of marriage—a relationship between two people implying a special commitment by each partner to the growth and development of the other, and of the relationship; and often with a shared goal, of creating a home together, possibly raising children, and a shared feeling of facing the world as a united front. One of the Hebrew words for ‘marriage’—nisu’in—comes from a root meaning ‘to raise up to a higher level,’ suggesting that such a raising up is one of the things that being in a covenant can do for all concerned.

All these and more have been part of the Jewish covenant with the Divine since the biblical Abraham and Sarah, and especially since Sinai. Although life has rarely been easy for the Jews, we have had this relationship to help us through; we have been able to feel that we are not alone as we face an often-hostile world, and that we have an important role to play in that world.

As in any long-term relationship, there have been many ups and downs in our covenant with God. There have been times in the course of Jewish history when we have wondered if our Partner in the relationship is still there, or is paying attention! Sometimes, our tradition tells us, our Partner has wondered if we were still there, still committed to the relationship!

Another human covenant, the one between parent and child, could also serve as a metaphor for the long history of our relationship with God. That, too, is a relationship that evolves and develops over time: parents must do almost everything for a small child; but the parents’ job is eventually to give the child room to grow, and, in the end, to let the child go into the world as an adult, hopefully ready to face life on his or her own, while knowing that the parents’ love is always there as a support. This pattern can also be seen in the Jewish covenant with God.

There are, then, many ways to look at this long-term connection. The approach that we will take in this book is mostly based on the parent-child model of covenant: at the start of the relationship, we needed God to do many things for us that we could not do for ourselves. Over the course of our history, sometimes with two steps forward and one step back, we have grown into taking on more and more responsibilities for ourselves, and, like a parent, God has seemed to step back, allowing and encouraging us to do so. Our challenge has sometimes been to remember that God’s love is still there for us, and that God’s expecting us to take responsibility for ourselves is a demonstration of that love, not a lessening of it.

It may seem to some that God has completely disappeared. Some may see this as abandonment, that God is ‘dead,’ or that the covenant is no longer in force. Rabbi Irving Greenberg has suggested that, since the Holocaust, when many Jews felt that God had broken the covenant, the relationship has become voluntary, rather than commanded, but that, nevertheless, most Jews have chosen to voluntarily remain within it.¹

Others may see God’s seeming lack of presence as simply the logical conclusion of the parent-child metaphor: we are (hopefully!) grown up now; our Parent is not dead, but is there in the background, watching in loving support as we live our own lives based on the way our Parent ‘raised’ us.

Judaism: Religion, Nationality or Culture?

Judaism is a faith tradition,² like Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism. But Judaism is different from those traditions in at least two significant ways.

First, Judaism is not a universal religious path like those other faiths, in the sense that anyone can join them, regardless of who they are and where they come from, just by accepting certain beliefs. Judaism is the national religion of a particular people, the Jewish People. Judaism does not seek converts, although it does accept them; and when someone converts to Judaism, he or she, in addition to accepting a new faith, is also joining a People—a tribe, so to speak—with a shared history, language, culture, and future.

Second, given that Judaism is more than just a faith tradition, it is possible for someone to be a Jew and not religious. The Jewish tradition accepts anyone born to a Jewish mother as a Jew, whether or not he or she practices the Jewish religion.³ It would, therefore, not be an oxymoron for someone to call himself a Jewish atheist. Alongside religious Jews, there are cultural Jews, gastronomic Jews (their Jewish identity is based on what they eat), Jews whose Jewish identity is based in victimhood, particularly since the Holocaust; the list goes on. Jewish culture has become so pervasive in some places that, as the late comedian Lenny Bruce once put it: If you are from New York and you’re Catholic, you’re still Jewish; and if you are from Butte, Montana, you’re still goyish (like non-Jews) even if you’re Jewish!⁴

Historically speaking, Judaism is a throwback, to the time when knowing what country someone came from was the same as knowing what his or her faith was, and vice versa. In biblical times, what would become Judaism was the national religion of a small kingdom in the Middle East called Judah, or Judea. Both the state and the religion were centered on the hilltop city of Jerusalem, where Judeans (the citizens of that kingdom) would bring sacrifices to their God at a Temple.

In the 6th century B.C.E., that kingdom was conquered by the Babylonians, the Temple and state were destroyed, and its leaders and many of its citizens were taken into exile in Babylonia. About fifty years later, Babylonia was in turn conquered by the Persians, who told the Judeans in Babylonia that they could go home and rebuild their Temple, as long as they accepted that they were a province of the Persian Empire.

The Judean exiles in Babylonia had not been treated badly, other than not being allowed to go home. During those fifty years, babies had been born to the Judeans in Babylonia. Those babies grew up with an identity as Judeans in exile; so when the Persians said they could go ‘home,’ home to them was Babylonia, and many stayed. Other Judeans went to live in other places; but they retained their identity as Judeans in exile. Over time, as the political independence of Judea, in which they had never lived, receded into history, the religious tradition became the major part of who they were. The tradition, however, continued to include hopes and prayers of one day returning to the homeland and reviving both the state and the religion in their ancient forms.

Eventually, for many, those hopes and prayers became somewhat abstract with the passage of the centuries. For many Jews, the Land of Israel was something they prayed to return to, but never thought of as a real place where they might someday live.

Nevertheless, the maintaining of that identity, of the sense of a tie to the original homeland, is a major part of what makes Jews, Jews. It is necessary to understand that origin, and that connection, in order to understand the history of the Jews that we are undertaking in this book: that identity has (at least until modern times) always included the idea of an eventual return of all the exiles to the homeland, and a re-establishment of a Jewish state.

There have been Jews who have envisioned that re-established homeland as a return to the Judean state of Biblical times, ruled (in theory, at least) by the teachings of Torah and the prophets; while, today, others have preferred to see it as a state just like any other in the world today, that happens to be populated by Jews. It could be phrased as a difference between a Jewish State and a State for Jews. That difference continues to be argued in Israel, and throughout the Jewish world, today.

Over the centuries, the Messianic idea, in addition to the re-establishment of a Jewish state, has come to include the religious vision of an ideal world, a completed creation, for all human beings. In that sense, Judaism is a universal religion, because it seeks the ultimate good for all of God’s world and all who live in it.

The Bible as a Source of History—How, and Why,

We Read the Bible

For the early part of Jewish history, our primary—often our only—source is the Bible.⁵ It is important, therefore, to talk about the role of the Bible in Judaism, and in what sense it can be used as a source of Jewish history.

If Jewish tradition saw the Bible as purely a Jewish book, then it could have started with Chapter 12 of Genesis, when we first meet Abraham, the father of the Jewish People; or with the Book of Exodus, which begins a focus on the Jewish experience specifically. The reason it doesn’t begin in one of those places is that Judaism sees the universal stories told in Genesis as essential to the Jewish world view.

According to the Bible, all human beings are descended from one person, whom the Bible calls, in Hebrew, HaAdam (which could be translated as ‘the Earthling’ because that first human was formed from the earth, adama in Hebrew). There is no need to take the story literally to read into it a message that Judaism sees all people as equally children of God. In recent times, this view has been vindicated by the finding of geneticists that we are all 99.9% genetically identical!

What this means for the way Jews read the Bible is that, in light of that Creation story, we are required to recognize the common humanity of all human beings, even—perhaps especially—the ones we may not like!

The Creation story in Genesis teaches that the first human being was created both male and female, and in the Divine Image (Gen. 1:27). The Talmud, a massive compendium of rabbinic interpretations of the Torah, says that God created all human beings from this first human, so that, later, no one can say My ancestors were created before yours (B. Sanhedrin 38a), or, as in the view of some biblical commentators, that male is superior to female.

This story, along with the rest of the Pentateuch (the Five Books of Moses), became part of the Christian Bible, and therefore part of the religious patrimony of many millions of people who are not Jews. But even if the story were only part of the Jewish Bible, it would still be necessary to Judaism. It raises questions that are essential to the Jewish world view: what does it mean that we are all created in the Divine Image? What does it mean that we are all descended from the same individual? What does it mean that we live in a world, flawed as it is, that God called very good (Gen. 1:31)?

As Judaism tells the story, God gave our earliest ancestors ten generations following Adam and Eve to get it right, and they blew it. This required a new creation story, another try. God erased the first experiment, destroying the world by means of the Flood, with only Noah and his family, and the animals on the ark, left to start over again.

God then gave us another ten generations, and we still didn’t get it right. So God decided to try yet again, but realized that starting from scratch again wasn’t the answer. This time, the new creation effort was going to be an ongoing project. God established a relationship with one man, Abraham (Avraham in Hebrew, the ‘father of many’), which, over many generations, would grow into a special relationship with that man’s descendants, who would become known as Israelites and, eventually, Jews.

Again, these stories require Jews to ask themselves essential questions, such as: what does it mean that God created order out of chaos; that human beings, created by God, turned God’s creation back toward chaos; and that God had to return the world to chaos again in order to start all over again with Noah and his family? Are we still making chaos where God creates order? Or, by our actions, are we helping God to once again bring about order?

One conclusion that Judaism has taken from these stories is that God created human beings with free will, in the hope that we would choose to be God’s partners in completing Creation, i.e., in bringing this chaotic world at last to order. According to this world view, God’s commandments to the Jewish People are meant to give us a framework from which we are asked by God to demonstrate to other children of God how to live in God’s ordered creation, without dragging it back toward chaos; and how we will hopefully bring about more order, until the world is what both God and we want it to be. Only then, according to this view, will the Messiah come!

There are those who read the Bible’s stories literally: that such individuals, with those names and with the characteristics ascribed to them in the Bible, spoke the very words attributed to them, and so on.

Modern liberal Judaism, what I have taught in many sermons and classrooms and what I seek to teach in this book, generally does not take the Bible literally in that way. Rather, the Bible is seen as a collection of stories about paradigmatic characters, people who might have lived and said those words. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether they did or not: like any good work of fiction, those words and actions have things to teach us about what it means to be human, and what it means to be in relationship with each other, with the world, and with an idea that we call God.

The Bible teaches that we are who we are in relation to others. Creation was the creation of the entire world, the world in which all of God’s creatures live in relation to each other. So we begin with what Judaism sees as the focus of all relationships: God.

Unlike some religious traditions, Judaism tells us very little about what we are expected to believe about God. But it does tell us a little: