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G-d said to Abram, "Leave your land, your birthplace and your father's house to the land that I will show you." [94] 151
Why was Abraham called ha-Ivri ("the Hebrew", Gen. 14: 13)? Because all the world was on one side (ever) and he was on the other. [95] 152
After Babel, the Torah focuses its attention not on humanity as a whole (whose covenant is never revoked) but on one person and a single family that eventually becomes a tribe, then a collection of tribes, then a nation. G-d's call to Abram is, among other things, a call to be different. He is to uproot himself from all the normal bases of identity (parents, birthplace, land). He and his descendants will be unique. They will become the only nation whose identity is founded not on "natural" factors but on a specific covenant with G-d. The first sign of that covenant is circumcision. Later, with the exodus and the revelation at Sinai, Israel will become the people whose way of life and historical destiny testify to the presence of G-d in their midst. As opposed to the nations and empires of the ancient world, their identity will not be "organic" or "cosmological" but covenantal. They are called on to be different:
Now if you obey Me and keep My covenant, you shall be My special treasure among all the nations, even though all the world is Mine. You will be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation to Me. [96] 153
You shall be holy to Me, for I, G-d, am holy, and I have separated you out from among the nations to be Mine. [97] 154
Do not follow the ways of Egypt where you once lived, nor of Canaan, where I will be bringing you. Do not follow their customs. [98] 155
It is a people that dwells apart,
Not reckoned among the nations. [99] 156
To be a Jew is to be called on to be apart from, yet a part of, society as a whole, to contribute to its welfare while being faithful to the distinctive covenant of Jewish identity and singularity - to be a "countervoice in the conversation of mankind". This is how R. Joseph Soloveitchik expresses the idea:
We Jews have been burdened with a twofold task . . . We think of ourselves as human beings, sharing the destiny of Adam in his general encounter with nature, and as members of a covenantal community which has preserved its identity under most unfavorable conditions, confronted by another faith community. We believe we are the bearers of a double charismatic load, that of the dignity of man, and that of the sanctity of the covenantal community. In this difficult role, we are summoned by G-d, who revealed himself at both the level of universal creation and that of the private covenant, to undertake a double mission - the universal human and exclusive covenantal confrontation. 157
Rabbi Soloveitchik here defines the dual identity of the Jew (what Samson Raphael Hirsch called Mensch-Yisroel), as embodying both the universal and particularistic dimensions of human existence. To be a Jew is therefore to be true to the particular covenant with Abraham and at the same time a blessing to humanity as a whole. This latter point ("through you shall all the nations of the earth be blessed") is stated no less than five times in the Book of Genesis.[100] 159
This concept of dual identity - honouring both our uniqueness and universality, being true to our faith and a blessing to those not of our faith - is one of the truly great Jewish contributions to humanity, opposed as it is to tribalism on the one hand, Platonic or Enlightenment universalism on the other. However, it raises a fundamental question. If G-d can be reached, and salvation achieved, by the seven Noahide commands, why the need for a further and different covenant with Abraham and the children of Israel? Why did G-d propose it? Why did Israel accept? If G-d is the G-d of all mankind, and "the pious of the nations of the world have a share in the world to come" why did Israel take on the burden of 613 commandments, not seven? Why, throughout the often tragic pages of Jewish history, did they stay obstinately loyal to their faith when (in Judah Halevi's phrase) "with a word lightly spoken" they could have abandoned it, joined the dominant culture (Greece, Rome) or religion (Christianity, Islam) and put an end to their persecution? This is the question of questions in Judaism, and much ink has been spent on answering it. 159
The first twelve chapters of the Torah constitute one of the great meta-narratives of Western civilization (the anti-Platonic or counter-philosophical 160 narrative). It is a story of divine expectation and disappointment. It tells of how G-d created mankind in His image, and of how, repeatedly, man failed to live up to that image, sometimes by being less than human (Cain's fratricide, a world "filled with violence"), at other times aspiring to be more than human (eating forbidden fruit, aspiring to build a tower that reaches heaven). The central drama is the Flood. In it, measure for measure, G-d destroys those who were destroying His world (the world he declared "very good"). After it, G-d lowers his expectations and makes a morally minimal covenant with mankind - the Noahide laws.
It is as if He had said to Noah and his descendants: "At least do this. I can ask no less if humanity is to survive. There must be knowledge of and respect for the one G-d. There must be justice and the sanctity of human life. There must be sexual fidelity, a respect for the property of others, and for the welfare of animals who feel pain as you do. These are not the supreme expressions of life in the presence of G-d. They are the barest essentials if humanity is to honour the trust I have placed in it as guardian of creation. I have promised that I will never again destroy your world as I did in the Flood. You must now promise in return not to destroy My world."
G-d then turned, not to all men but to one, Abraham, and said: "With you and your descendants - those who are faithful to My word - I will make not a minimal but a maximal covenant. Israel, the children of your grandson, will become the people in whose history and way of life My presence will become visible to all those among whom you live. You will be (in Isaiah's words) 'My witnesses.161' 'And all the people of the earth shall see that the name of G-d is written upon you.162' I ask you to become the role models, exemplars and embodiments of My word, My love and My presence in the affairs of mankind. All mankind is in My image, but you I have called My child - 'My son, my firstborn, Israel.163' Others will know Me through creation; you alone will know Me through revelation and redemption. Others will know Me as Elokim. You alone will know My proper name Hashem. You will be the first people through whom I reveal my presence in history when I redeem you from slavery in Egypt. You will be the only people born as a nation in and through a covenant with G-d, whose laws are not human but Divine. To you I entrust my greatest treasure, the architecture of holiness, the Torah. As the priest is to Israel, so will you be to the nations of the world.164 Other nations will have other gifts - the arts, the sciences, the almost infinite varieties of human culture - but you will have the one I cherish more than all. You will have the gift of My presence, and through it you will give light to all the world."
The clearest articulation of this view is twice given by the greatest of the prophets, Moses, near the beginning of his great vision of the covenant, the book of Deuteronomy:
See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the Lord my G-d has commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this is your wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people." What other nation is so great as to have their G-d near to them the way the Lord our G-d is near to us whenever we pray to Him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this entire Torah I am setting before you today. [101] 165
Search into days gone by, long before your time, from the day when G-d created man on earth; search from one end of heaven to the other, and ask if any deed as mighty as this has been seen or heard. Did any people ever hear the voice of G-d speaking out of the fire, as you heard it, and remain alive? Or did ever a god attempt to come and take a nation for himself away from another nation, with a challenge, and with signs, portents, and wars, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with great deeds of terror, as the Lord your G-d did for you in Egypt in the sight of you all? [102] 166
Note the precision of these statements. Israel is singled out with reference to revelation ("righteous decrees and laws", "speaking out of the fire") and redemption ("near to us whenever we pray", taking "a nation from another nation"). There is no reference to G-d-in-creation, which is the shared patrimony of mankind. In the particularity of its being, Israel lives in the close, continuous presence of G-d, through its laws (revelation) and its history (redemption). The briefest expression of this idea was given by Rabbi Akiva:
Beloved is mankind for it was created in the image of G-d . . . Beloved is Israel for they are called G-d's children . . . [103] 167
All can come to know G-d through meditation on the universe as G-d's creation, and on humanity as G-d's image. What makes Israel different is that it has also known God-as-parent through the dual acts of parenthood, teaching (revelation) and rescuing (redemption).
A key-word in understanding Jewish destiny is the one with which the Torah begins: bereishith. On this, Rashi writes:
This phrase ["In the beginning, G-d created"] calls out for explanation in the manner that our rabbis explained it, namely [G-d created the world] for the sake of the Torah which is called (Prov. 8:22) "the beginning of his way", and for the sake of Israel who are called (Jer. 2:3) "the beginning of his increase." [104] 168
The precise significance of this idea is often lost because of an ambiguity in the word "beginning". In biblical Hebrew, the word for "beginning" in the sense of the first in a chronological series is not reishith but techilah or hatchalah.169 The word reishith means something else: metonymy, the part that exemplifies the whole. Thus the reishith ("first") of produce was to be offered to G-d, or to the priest, or eaten under conditions of special sanctity170, not to show that it alone was holy (= belonging properly to G-d) but to show that all is holy. "The reishith of wisdom is the fear of G-d"171 does not mean that the fear of G-d is chronologically the first step in acquiring wisdom, but rather that it must be a constant accompaniment of it. Reishith means the part that serves as an interpretive key to the rest, the particular embodiment of a universal truth. That is Israel's destiny among the families of mankind. There are two ways of understanding this idea.
The first is that in the act of creation G-d delegated to humanity His creative and sovereign powers ("fill the earth and subdue it", "the heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth he has given to mankind 172" ). The very act of creation therefore represents a "hiding" of the "face" of God (olam, "universe", and ne'lam, "hidden, concealed", are semantically related in Hebrew). But Judaism rejects the concept of a deus absconditus, a wholly hidden G-d. Instead, G-d reserves a certain domain in which He remains a perceptible presence. That is the meaning of kadosh, "holy", namely the space that G-d has set apart as a constant reminder of the universal truth that ultimately He, not man, is creator and sovereign. Entering the holy means, for human beings, a renunciation of all divinely delegated powers. Here G-d rules, not man. Were everything holy, there would be no room for human freedom and creativity. Were nothing holy, there would be no place in which man could meet G-d as living presence173. Thus G-d identifies certain times, places and people as kadosh, "set apart". In time, it is the seventh: the seventh day, Shabbat, the seventh month, Tishri, the seventh - sabbatical - year, and the seventh septennial cycle - the jubilee . In place, it is the land of Israel; and among peoples, the children of Israel ("a kingdom of priests and a holy nation"174 ). Israel is the particular embodiment of the universal truth that to be human is to live under the sovereignty of G-d.
Another way of stating this is to recall that there are two ways of teaching any skill, including virtue: by universal rules and by particular examples. Without universal rules there can be no institutions (from games to societies to human rights and responsibilities). But without particular examples there can be no learning powerful enough to fire the imagination (imagine learning music without ever hearing a musician, or leadership without having seen a leader). The Noahide covenant represents the universal rules; the people of Israel the particular example - the nation in whose history and way of life the presence of G-d is peculiarly, uniquely, transparent. What for other nations is natural (children, a land, laws, freedom, security) in Israel is anything but natural. Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel are infertile, unable to have children except by a miracle. Israel suffers repeated exiles. Its laws come from G-d. Its freedom and security can never be taken for granted. Everything about it points to something beyond it: the G-d of revelation and redemption, with whom Israel's relationship defines the course of its covenantal history.
These two ways of putting it are not identical, but they explain the unique understanding in Judaism of the relationship between the particular and the universal. They are not an either/or. To the contrary, it is precisely in and through its particularity that Israel symbolises the universal condition of mankind. The writer who has best expressed this idea is the Catholic historian Paul Johnson:
The Jews were not just innovators. They were also exemplars and epitomizers of the human condition. They seemed to present all the inescapable dilemmas of man in a heightened and clarified form. They were the quintessential "strangers and sojourners". But are we not all such on this planet, of which we possess a mere leasehold of threescore and ten? . . . It seems to have been the role of the Jews to focus and dramatize these common experiences of mankind, and to turn their particular fate into a universal moral.175
G-d is universal, Torah particular, but it is only through particularity that we come to understand what it is to be a person, and what it is to have a personal relationship with G-d. It is through the particularity of his relationship with the children of Israel that G-d provides mankind with a living example of a nation whose history and way of life testify to His presence in the world. Israel is to humanity what the Sabbath is to time: "holy", that is to say, transparent to the will (revelation) and saving acts (redemption) of G-d.176
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