Part One – Stories from the Family Album
The Bible is the family album of the Jewish people; it is our family history, our archive. These are the stories that we tell by the light of candles on festival nights, the stories we teach our children so that they may know who they are and from where they come.[1]
One of the most remarkable things about these stories is that they paint portraits of complicated and imperfect people, of real people, living real lives. These are not fairytales about an idyllic past full of one-dimensional heroes. In these people, we find both strength and weakness. While some accounts tell of brave and noble deeds, other stories, often about the same people, are of shameful, ignoble, and sometimes confusing behavior.
We read about David, King of Israel. Here was a fierce warrior who composed beautiful psalms (songs) to God. In his story, we also find the adulterer who arranges for the death of his lover’s husband. We read of Samson, a Judge of Israel, full of immense physical strength yet lacking in even the most basic common sense. And what of the matriarch, Rebecca, who schemes with her son Jacob so that he can impersonate his brother Esau in order to obtain the blessing intended for the first born son?
The fact that we tell stories that do not always show our family in a good light reveals something about who we are. A family, like any other, remembering actual relatives and what happened to them, heroes and villains alike. Indeed, these stories are about real people – even if, as many Jews believe, some of the stories are not factual. Nevertheless, they are all true.
How can that be? How can a story be both true and not factual at the same time? The term factual refers to the historical authenticity of the Bible, that is, whether or not the Bible is an accurate account of people, places, and events that actually took place. While some Jews read the Bible literally, even the most religious Jews believe that God sometimes speaks in metaphor and symbolism.
Thus, we can say that these stories are completely true in the same sense that Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet resonates with truth. Hamlet may never have actually spoken the words, “To be, or not to be.” Yet, when we read Shakespeare’s play we learn something about what it means to be human. We learn human truths, regardless of whether we learn facts.
Thus, the stories that we tell about our ancestors in the Bible reveal something about how we see ourselves, and who we see ourselves becoming. They tell of our dreams and hopes and strength, as well as our failures, frustrations, and weakness. They tell of our relationship to God, to our community, and to the nations and people around us.
We’ll begin this introduction to Judaism by opening up the family album of the Jews and telling a few old stories. Although the Bible begins with Creation, we will start where our family begins, with Abraham and Sarah. Considered the first Jew, Abraham is one of the two central figures in the evolution and history of the Jews as told in the Bible, and the first chapter of this book will focus on him. The other central figure is Moses , to whom we will devote the second chapter.
The story of Abraham and his wife, Sarah, who were originally called Avram (Abram) and Sarai, is found in the Book of Genesis. In Hebrew, Genesis is called Beraisheit, which means, “In the beginning…” Jews call the first five books of the Bible the Torah , which means Teaching. Now, let us begin with the Torah and see what we can learn.
Chapter 1 – Abraham
Abraham and Sarah, their son Isaac and Rebecca, and their son Jacob and his two wives, Rachel and Leah, are the founding fathers and mothers of Judaism.
The Bible tells us that Abraham, through his father Terakh, was a descendent of Noah’s son Shem. From a narrative standpoint, Abraham grew up in the Chaldean city of Ur (in ancient Babylon) where he married Sarah. His nephew Lot also lived there. When did this happen? Most biblical scholars put the date of Abraham’s migration into Canaan somewhere around 2000 B.C.E., although we cannot be certain of this.
We are told that Terakh gathered his family together and left Ur to migrate to Canaan. They only went so far, and then they settled in the city of Haran. And there they live and prosper – until, for no apparent reason, God speaks to Abraham.
Lech lecha
ma’artzecha – “Get thee
out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto
the land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I
will bless thee, and make thy name great; and be (to) thee a blessing. And I
will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee I will curse; and in
thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”
(Genesis
12:
1-3)
So, God speaks to Abraham, and this is the beginning of the family that we call the Jewish people.
Now, Jews are always asking questions. So we’ll start right here with a question – why did God choose Abraham to establish this great nation ? Was there something special about him? We don’t really know. The Bible does not tell us. However, there are legends and stories not found in the Bible , which have been gathered and retold in the Talmud and other texts that do attempt to give us answers.
One story in particular may shed some light on this question. It is a tale that virtually all Jewish children learn about Abraham when he was a boy . As the story goes, Abraham’s father Terakh owned a shop where he made and sold clay and wooden figurines of the local gods. In fact, Terakh was a maker of idols. One day the idol maker went out to run some errands, and he left his son Abraham to tend the shop.
While Terakh was gone, Abraham took a hammer and smashed all except one of the idols. Then he put the hammer in the hand of the idol that remained intact. When his father returned to the shop and saw the destruction of his livelihood, he was furious with his son and demanded an explanation. Abraham told him that the idols had quarreled over an offering of food that someone had brought into the shop. Finally, the biggest idol had picked up a hammer and smashed all of the other idols so that it could eat the food in peace.
“What?” Terakh says to his son Abraham . “Do you think I’m an idiot? I made these statues with my own hands. They’re nothing but wood and clay. They can’t move! They can’t do anything!”
“Exactly” says young Abraham . “So why do we worship them if they have no power?”
This story does not tell us how Terakh replied, but the ancient sages who collected these stories want us to understand that even before God spoke to him, Abraham recognized that idolatry was, if not wrong, then certainly ineffective. There are other stories about Abraham, about his bravery, his righteousness, and his generosity.[2] They tell us that Abraham had to pass ten (some say twenty) trials of faith during his lifetime in order to be worthy of his destiny. One of the ordeals that Abraham had to face was to go into self-imposed exile – at the age of seventy-five – based only on the word of an unseen, unknown God who speaks to him, as it were, out of nowhere.
Lech lecha ma’artzecha – “Get thee out of thy country...”
God speaks to Abraham – and Abraham hears. And, maybe that’s what makes Abraham different. Maybe God spoke to many people in Haran, but Abraham was the only one who could hear. [3]
So, Abraham hears the voice of God. He gathers all of his belongings – his flocks and herds, tents and goods – and with his wife Sarah and his nephew Lot, he leaves his home in Haran. They travel to Canaan, the land of the Canaanites, and they come to rest in Shechem. There, God speaks to Abraham again, saying, “To your children I will give this land.” In recognition of God’s promise, Abraham builds an altar to the Lord. It is the first of many such altars.
As would be expected in a nomadic shepherd life, Abraham and his clan rarely stay in one place for long. The Bible records numerous episodes and adventures as they travel to Egypt to escape famine, migrate throughout the region, and later return to Canaan.
Throughout this period, God continues to speak with Abraham and to promise that his descendents will be as numerous “as the grains of dust in the earth, as numerous as the stars in the sky” and that they will inherit the land as far as Abraham can see in all directions.
On one of these occasions, God tells Abraham,
'Look now toward heaven, and count the stars, if thou be able to count them'; and He said unto him: 'So shall thy seed be.' And he trusted in the Lord, and it was counted for righteousness. And He said unto him: 'I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.' ...
In that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: 'Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates’ (Genesis 15: 5-7, 18)
Here we have the establishment of the great covenant between God and Abraham , a covenant that is central to the history and to the very existence of the Jewish people. We’ll talk more about what the covenant means to Jews later; for now, let’s continue with the story.
Despite all of God’s promises, to their great sorrow, Abraham and Sarah have no children. How can Abraham’s descendents inherit the land when he has no descendents? Abraham reminds God of this on several occasions, but each time God assures him that he will have heirs of his own flesh and blood.
Finally, Sarah takes matters into her own hands. She offers Hagar, her Egyptian maidservant, to Abraham as a wife. She thinks that if her husband can have children with Hagar, then they can fulfill the destiny that has been promised. Abraham consents to this arrangement. He is eighty-six years old when his son Ishmael is born to Hagar.
... Continued in chapter one of Be Thou Holy!
Footnotes:
[1] Speaking of the Bible as the album of the Jews, and comparing truth and factuality (in the Bible and in Shakespeare) are not my own concepts. Although I have since encountered them elsewhere, I first came across these ideas in Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book, To Life!
[2] By tradition, Abraham is said to be the essence of righteousness, a man who was completely just, wise, compassionate, brave, and a model of the observant Jew even before the Torah and the commandments were given. However, if you read the complete story of Abraham in the Torah, then you may wonder about this. You will encounter situations where his actions seem questionable, perhaps morally ambiguous, and even incomprehensible. Examples of this may be found in Abraham’s relationships with Sarah, with Hagar and Ishmael, and with Isaac, his most beloved son. Without going into more detail, let me only say that here, at the very beginning of our story, we have already encountered a complex, multi-faceted, and imperfect individual: a human being.
[3] Actually, I like the idea that God didn’t choose Abraham for some arbitrary reason, but rather that Abraham was special because he listened, because he paid attention. Abraham heard the voice of Spirit in the world when others around him did not. This parallels something we’ll see later on concerning Moses and how he, too, was different from those around him.