On Biblical Israel and a Palestinian Jew and Today’s Israel and Palestinian Arabs…and a Path to Peace.
To be most Jewish, to be most true and observant of Jewish identity as well as purpose, is to work to provide political, social, economic, religious and geographical autonomy and freedom to all of Israel’s neighbors. This includes, of course, most obviously and urgently, today’s Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank as well.
Two things about this rather bald statement above: First, who am I, not a Jew, to say what is most Jewish? I don’t know the Jewish life and experience from the inside out. So, you are right to be skeptical of my observations. But I do have observations, and they come with love and respect and honor for the Jewish people and religion as well as from my biblical studies, such as they are. Secondly, the Jewish people today I’m sure are saying the same thing about their neighbors, local and international nation/state, most especially the Palestinians: to be most true to and observant of Muslim, Christian and other religious identity and purpose, granting autonomy and freedom to Israel (to say nothing of respecting their right to exist!) is key and paramount.
That said, my observations below are mine and mine alone and mistakes made mine alone. Please reach out and correct me if I am misguided.
I say this move to a different and distinct relationship for Israel with the Palestinians would be the most authentically Jewish action to take because of the Hebrew Scripture’s clear description of just who Israel is and what Israel does. Genesis 12:1-3 says it plainly twice: Israel is called out by God (a most gracious action) not only then as “blessed” but to as well be a “blessing” to all others (a continuation of a most gracious action).
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3)
This key first statement of Israel’s founding (a call out from God) could easily be, and is, overlooked because of all the rankling that quickly follow in Genesis over who can be certain of and distinct in one’s calling (e.g. circumcision? An elderly woman having a baby?). But the foundational and fundamental nature of the new tribal community (Israel) was clearly stated and set: blessed to be a blessing.
Some theologians say that biblical Israel was blessed in and by three things: 1) land 2) offspring (family/descendants) 3) blessing others. The first two, geography and progeny, it seems to me, got most if not all of the attention by ancient Israel and, as human nature is wont to do, were turned to be treated by the tribes and then nation as entitlements they were due rather than gifts they were given. The calls of the prophets to Royalty and Subjects to an ethic that reflects a covenant made with God rather than assuming God would always have their back reflects the truth of this sense of entitlement. Ancient Israel got this notion about land that said “this is our land no matter what because God chose us,” and a notion about lineage that said “we are God’s people no matter what because God chose us.” So, a problem with entitlement that the prophets engaged. But what of the “blessed to be a blessing?” I wonder if it ever took hold. Back then, or now. And, mind you, this is not a particular Jewish challenge. It is, it seems to me, a condition of all persons. The staking of identity and purpose on self-righteousness and the self-aggrandizing grounds for personal protection of safety, success, status and means is a penchant of all humanity.
And this, the fact that all humanity, not just a Jewish portion, is stuck in this self-protection and self-promotion hell (war is hell) is precisely why we have the biblical narrative in the first place: it is a description of how all humanity refuses to see all of life as pure gift wherein all people, all tribes, have enough, do enough and are enough, and how God continually, deliberatively and faithfully keeps creating life and giving life away to humanity until humanity finally just kills God because they, we, don’t want to hear about such nonsense anymore, this business of finding life only by giving your life (and land, and wealth, and all the stuff you hold dear) away.
Think about it. Israel’s call to be a peculiar and distinct people came, in the Narrative, at precisely the point where the whole world order had unraveled and a rescue plan of global proportions was needed. Genesis chapters 1-11 tell a story of devolving chaos. Abraham and Sarah were called upon and called out (by the way, the Narrative makes it clear too that they had no meritorious credentials for this calling – something we might do well to remember when it comes to our own callings) to, as it were, carry the torch of God to come and save the day. Genesis 12 opens up not just a new chapter in that writing, but a new chapter in human salvation. This couple, this tribe, this nation, this Israel, was (is) to be a shining light through whom all creation would be blessed and healed. They were not carved out of humanity to be an enclave, but to be an ensign of who God is and how God operates: God gives all humanity it’s soul, it’s salvation, it’s healing. God doesn’t give Israel salvation through humanity. God gives humanity salvation through Israel. Israel is given land and family not to hold on to it but to give it away (blessed to be a blessing) and thus be the sign of how all humanity is to operate for a world that is whole and good.
But Israel did not do this. They were Enclave, not Ensign, under the cover of ritual religiosity that allowed the spiritual and political elite to hold power and maintain that power with alliances with other empires, most notably and destructively, Rome.
Enter this itinerant Rabbi, Jesus, from the North Country (ancient Galilee. I am calling him a Palestinian Jew because he was a Jew in Palestine, simple as that) who was so single-mindedly focused on God (Yahweh in his tradition) that he evidently mystically self-identified as God’s Son (see the Gospel According to John) which identity, not incidentally, is what the whole nation state of Israel saw themselves to be. So there was that, that single-minded focus on God. But also this: a single-hearted focus on the life and plight of the economically oppressed, politically marginalized and socially deprived people of God whom Rome and it’s Herodian minions had under their thumb. This Rabbi Jesus (“Joshua,” “save us!”) infamously was reported to have said he came to set Israel right, not the whole world. Mind you, he saw himself as Israel! This account (see Matthew 15) has always set the Christian world on edge because it sounds like Jesus was being exclusive (“he is supposed to love all people!”) and parochial [“Jesus can’t be about just some people, can he!? If that’s the case, what about us “Gentiles” (anybody not Israel!)!? Oh my goodness! Jesus can’t exclude us, can he?!”]. But, no, it is true. Be honest. He was being exclusive until that non-Israeli woman set him straight. And why the particularity, the exclusivity? Because Israel had a job to do and Jesus saw himself as the one who arrived to make that exactly happen. Because again, remember, the mission, the job to be done, of Israel being the blessing to all ethnicities (literally the Greek word typically translated as “nations”). Jesus’ mission was to get Israel to do Israel’s job – be the blessing, be “light to the nations” (see Isaiah 61). If Israel would be Israel, Jesus’ work was done because all, not just Israel would have enough, do enough, and be enough.
But Jesus was killed. Israel would not be the ensign, but would remain the enclave. And, so, the disconcerting (because how could God die!?) declaration of the Christian faith is that God goes to ultimate lengths, death, in order to love, in order to be the one open to all ethnicities, come what may. To be the blessing that Israel as a tribe/nation would not be.
I started out by saying that today’s Israel would be most Jewish if they allowed freedom and autonomy to all of their neighbors including the Palestinians. If they lived out all three dimensions of their blessing and calling (land, family, blessing all others) they would be most true to who they are as the chosen people of God. Is it possible for them to do this? I don’t know. But I do know it takes intention and self-sacrifice and love and, likely, death. Witness Jesus.
Do I expect this to happen? I am more than skeptical. And why? Because no nation in history has lived out its life in such a manner.
Not even America, whom many like to think is some kind of moral and social exception, high-minded and warm hearted, conveniently forgetting the land absconded from the Native Americans and the enslaved servitude of a whole race from another continent (black Africans) whose blood, sweat and tears were poured out under intentional and malicious domination. America, hardly the one who is “blessing all others.” And not just then. Now. Listen to our policies and military interventions under the cover of “our national interest” and question with me, please, how the interest of other nations, divorced from ours, actually is our motivation. I do not belittle nor forget the many blessings America is and has been to me and others. I am simply saying this “blessing” to others is usually done with self-interest, and would not be done if we got less out of the deal than others, to say nothing of dying as a nation so others could live. American Exceptionalism likes to use Jesus’ words about a “city built on a hill” being a “light to all nations” (Matthew 5) as proof that the American way of life, culture and government, is a divine gift to the world and all others are deficient, flawed and destined for the dust-pin of history. This is the very same theology and politic that got Israel into trouble in the first place. It’s the same attitude of “we are due this,” “we have been blessed” (and “could it be because we are so special and not because of no reason at all?”). Everybody, including the United States, conveniently forgets the third part of that Abrasarhic (my term for Abraham and Sarah) blessing that is being a blessing to others. That third part itself is easily corrupted to be a way that the wealth (what land, aka real estate, and family, aka inheritors, are, not just in the ancient world) transforms people into Gracious Benefactors who do the “poor” and “needy” such favor by assisting them. But without such corruption, that “blessed to be a blessing” component of the Calling is the great equalizer, the catalyst for making “you have enough, you do enough, and you are enough,” an actual working model for international relations as well as personal well-being.
No, no nation has lived out its life as a blessing to others. Why should we expect Israel to be any different?
Wait. What was that? Why should Israel be any different than any other nation in history to live on behalf of others? Because, oh my goodness, they were (divinely!) called to do just that! Genesis 12!
And I am not saying Israel got it wrong and Christianity got it right. Christianity gets it wrong too. Christians the world over more often than not turn their Christianity into another religion with cultural and ritual and doctrinal boundaries and requirements just in the same way other faith traditions do.
So my argument here is not to justify any atrocities by today’s Palestinians but rather to cast light on what Israel’s founding called them to be. I am saying that Israel, because of human nature, got it wrong and gets it wrong. And when I say “because of human nature” I am saying intentionally this is not something Israel gets wrong because of some peculiarity of being Jewish! This is human nature, not a cultural or ethnic or religious nature, as if Jews by their nature are some kind of pariah and plague on the world. Please! This is the exact demonic motivation and thinking that has driven people the world over, including the Nazis (then and now) to kill, maim and strategically commit genocide against the Jewish race for centuries. Israel’s Jewish human nature, just as the same Gentile (anybody not Jewish) human nature, finds safety and security in seeing resources and wealth as being scarce that must be protected and stockpiled rather than produced and shared. It is this human nature of self-protection and self-preservation by holding on to resources that are yours and not sharing with others because of either your pride (“I worked hard for this!”) or your despair (“What will become of me if I share!?”) that God acted upon to break up and destroy by calling Abraham and Sarah to the task. But human nature just cannot and will not destroy itself. Israel would not die to itself. Who will? Nobody of human nature. Only God can do such killing and dying.
The extraordinary claim of Christianity is that God does his killing of the human nature and dying of the human nature in Jesus of Nazareth.
Christianity is not some kind of corrective course, a turn in the right direction, an improved version of religion. If Christianity is anything at all, it is being actually Jewish, because it is being Jesus Christ who is, by definition, the person for others.
I know that this can sound like Jews today don’t know who they are, that they are actually Jesus Christ in disguise. Or, Christians today don’t know who they are, that they are actually Jews. I am not saying that both are the opposite of each other, thus the same, but just don’t know it. I am saying both come from and are the radical (source root) that is the unconditional giving and loving (blessing) of God for the world but both, Christians and Jews have taken their blessing to be a blessing to mean their blessing to hold and give only if others are like them. You might think Christians would perhaps know better since they carry the name of the one (Christ) who broke up this self-serving hegemony. As I said above, no, Christians the world over more often than not turn their Christianity into another religion with cultural and ritual and doctrinal boundaries and requirements just in the same way other faith traditions do. What I am saying here is that Jesus did not come to establish a new religion, or a better one, but rather destroyed them all by taking us all back to our human nature that wants to get rid of God because God is at the same time just too easy (“You just can’t just let anybody in, can you!!?) and too demanding (“I just can’t let myself be taken out of the game of salvation can !!?” and “I can’t just keep loving others and blessing others and giving myself over to others whether they deserve it or not, can I !!?”).
And get rid of God we did. Until God came back. And this way of life that is blessed to be a blessing is now signed, sealed and delivered as the way of living for all humanity, not just Jews or Christians. Resurrection!
Jesus was not inventing, in other words, some new redemptive technique because all others had failed. He was actually living out the original calling: land, family, blessing others. And, to make a finer point, Abraham and Sarah (and all the Hebrew tribe/nation) were (and are) not some kind of new salvation story (redemptive technique) because the creation up to their generation had missed the mark. Abraham and Sarah were simply another iteration of what God intended and started when out of darkness there was light: land, family, blessing others.
Creation (okay, you can put the names Adam and Eve on the event, though they are not historical persons) living out the calling of Creation
Abraham and Sarah living out the calling of Creation.
Jesus living out the calling of Creation.
Where does that leave us?
You guessed it: living out the calling of Creation: land, family, blessing others.
Is it possible?
Yes, but as I said, not by human nature but by God. And all that talk in the Christian New Testament about the Holy Spirit is precisely about how this gets done by God. It is God’s Spirit living and acting out on our lives and in our lives that does the deed. All of us, all tribes and nations, can live out the calling of land, family and blessing others, that way of life where all have enough, do enough and are enough.
Palestinians, led by the Spirit of God (not their human nature, but God’s nature) can recognize Israel as a legitimate and sovereign people and nation.
Israel, led by the same Spirit of God (not their human nature, but God’s nature) can recognize the Palestinians as a legitimate and sovereign people and nation.
Notwithstanding the fact that I will be accused (in all of this I have shared) of grandstanding or pontificating and giving advice way out of my league or authority, I humbly suggest the peace is possible in the Middle East. Israel must publicly recognize the Palestinians have a right to exist and to have a nation of their own and must assist them in all of this. Hamas and Hezbollah (and Iran) must publicly recognize the Israelis have a right to exist and to have a nation of their own and must assist them in all of this. Somebody must make the first move. Is it possible, given Israel’s birthright (“blessed to be a blessing”), that Israel could be the first to make that move? Somebody, please, for the love of God and humanity, most literally, make this move.
