In a class led by Rabbi Andrew Bachman, of Congregation Beth Elohim, we studied a letter from Moses ben Maimon (1125-1204) to Rabbi Obadia, a convert to Judaism. Rabbi Obadia had asked if his status as a convert excluded him from those prayers and blessings that alluded to the Jews’ common ancestry. Was he permitted to say, for example, “God of our fathers,” or “You who have brought us out of the land of Egypt?”
Moses ben Maimon, medieval philosopher and physician, also known as Maimonides, was one of the greatest rabbinical scholars in Jewish history. Thus his answer to Rabbi Obadia carries great weight. Ben Maimon responded that Rabbi Obadia could say all the prayers and blessings without changing them in the least. This is because Abraham converted many people, bringing them “under the wings of the divine presence.” Just as he converted his contemporaries, so all future converts are considered the disciples and thus the children of Abraham, who was the ancestor of Obadia no less than of Maimonides himself.
Obadia’s question concerned a topic that had been much on my mind. I'd been thinking about my own identity in part because I had recently reviewed a volume of essays about language and ethnic identity and in part because in the evening of my life, having known five generations of my family, I increasingly see myself as a link between the future and the past.
Jews’ common ancestry may be a myth, but if so it is a most powerful one. I consider myself a Jew by virtue of birth, whether or not my ancestors ever lived in Palestine. For all I know, they could have converted to Judaism in, say, the 18th century. But it doesn’t matter. Even though there’s no historical evidence for the existence of the Biblical patriarchs and matriarchs, even though Genesis and Exodus may be literary creations rather than historical accounts, I descend, in an admittedly mystical fashion, from Abraham, just as did Maimonides and Obadia. Judaism is, in other words, not only a religion. It is also an ethnicity, a collective defined by belief in a common ancestry.
Of my many identities, some are no longer active. My identity as a student is unlikely to be revived and my identity as a soldier cannot. My identities as university professor and academic researcher have long been in mothballs, unlikely to be taken out for an airing. My identity as an Israeli, now that I’m back in the United States, has become almost vestigial, although I retain a lively interest in the news from Israel. Whereas my Israeli identity has weakened here, my American identity never lessened during our 36 years in Israel.
It turns out that my identities as an American and as a Jew, both acquired at birth, are the ones that have lasted the longest. Of the two, my Jewish identity is the stronger. In part this is the consequence of encountering Antisemitism in school, but that ‘s not the most important reason. My Jewish identity seems primordial, imbibed with my mother’s milk, whereas my American identity does not. I could have been born anywhere, but as the child of my parents, I’d be a Jew, whether or not I ever observed any of the religion’s rituals or commandments.
Even so, my Jewish ancestry began at the earliest during the second millennium before the Common Era, whereas the bulk of my ancestors, like everyone else’s, lived for innumerable generations before that. If we go back far enough, to the divergence of homo sapiens from other hominids about two and half million years ago, everyone on earth is probably related to everyone else. Thus, it’s curious that such a slight sliver of time, the generations since Abraham, should have had such a powerful impact. And it's remarkable that even if Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, along with the Books of Genesis and Exodus, should be fictional, it doesn't matter at all.
(c) 2010-2011 Anchises-an old man's journal All rights reserved.
It has become fashionable to "debunk" the historicity of Biblical narrative. Scholars of this persuasion love to point out that there is no historical record of the exodus. And any claim to a Hebrew presence in Canaan/Palestine is savagely attacked by those who have their own political agenda. And while there is apparently some archaeological record of the Hebrews' presence in eretz Yisrael in the time of King Solomon, little or nothing of the kind confirms their presence at the time of King David.
ReplyDeleteSo I was interested in a relatively recent article in the National Geographic concerning recent excavations that MIGHT attest to Hebrew presence in eretz Yisrael in the time of King David. Of course, as Anchises says, it doesn't matter to my identity as a Jew. All the same, my pulse quickens at the mere possibility that there might be some historical truth behind this part of biblical narrative.
The Jews scriptural "history" has for millenia entered the status of myth, which has its own reality. But mythic reality does not necessarily rule out historical reality. And I have seen too many examples of mythic stories -- such as the fall of Troy, which turn out to have some archaeological correlative.
My mother used to tell me, "You might as well be Jewish, because the world won't let you be anything else." That more or less expressed the level of Jewish observance in the house where I was raised. I wonder what my mother would say if she knew that I, like Anchises, WANT to identify myself as a Jew -- I cannot be anything else, because I feel that it is in my bones.
Paul, many thanks. I agree.
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