A fierce attack on J Street wasn’t the only notable element of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren’s address to the biennial convention of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism earlier in the week.

During the prepared portion of his remarks, Oren issued a surprising proclamation of a personal belief in a divine plan behind the creation of the State of Israel. He said:

“A God who fixes laws throughout the physical space can also intercede through the course of human history. Perfectly logical. To believe in the God of history is to believe in the reason why a tiny remnant of [the Jewish] people, rising from the ashes of the Holocaust, returned to [Israel].

… To believe in a God who cares about history leads one to assume that there is a reason why, some 3,00 years ago, this obscure group of nomads, wandering somewhere around the Middle East, came up with these extraordinary notions of a single God, and the extraordinary notion of universal morality. And there’s a reason why that faith enabled that people to survive as a people when so many other peoples have vanished, in spite of expulsions, inquisitions, and massacres. And there’s a reason to believe why this people was given a land in which to realize its national destiny, and to understand why that people, bound by its faith, longed to return to that land, even when that people was exiled.”

The remarks seemed well received by the audience.

Of course they were well received. Who doesnt like to hear that their state is Divinely ordained? Americans had and some still have notions like this about our country as do many countries.

I can only imagine how Oren resolves the contradiction between the Jewish discovery of “extraordinary notion of universal morality” and God’s (?) decision to give the land to the Jewish people “in which to realize it’s national destiny.” The idea that the creation of the State of Israel is divinely ordained is the core problem we face. The founders of the State of Israel left God out of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, yet recently a poll reported that the majority of secular Israelis base Israel’s right to the land of Israel on God’s promise of the landto the Jewish people. Here the ambassador of Israel, the official representative of the State, confirms that this is the way he sees it too. Very hard to argue with a Divine right.

Israel is a nation state like any other nation state. It is no more Divinely inspired than any other state and it’s policies are also dependent on the Government of Israel and not on God.

I really appreciate your post and the important and compelling discussion that has developed. I think you are right that the Torah and especially the Prophets make our tenure on the land conditional on our behavior. This is the normative understanding in Rabbinic Judaism for the exile from the land – “mipnay chataeynu”/it is because of our sins that we were exiled. These words are repeated constantly in our liturgy, especially in the festival (Shalosh Regalim) liturgy.

In our context today, the conditional nature of our tenure on the land is particularly important given that the State of Israel evicted the native inhabitants to create the State and is continuing to do so till today through continued settlement on the West Bank, land confiscation, discriminatory residency laws, home demolition and much else. The list is long and ugly.
(My passion on this issue is particularly strong today, having just returned from a visit to Bethlehem where I met several Palestinians who reported how they or members of their families who had lived in Jerusalem for years had lost their residency rights, while you and I could go there tomorrow, become citizens and we would retain our citizenship forever.)

You don’t address those passages of Torah especially in Deuternonomy that command us to wipe out the seven Canaanite nations in explicitly violent language. I raise this as I think we need to acknowledge that there are teachings in Torah that privilege the Jewish people’s ownership of the land that we simply reject. We reject them, just like the Rabbis rejected the laws regarding the rebellious child, because they violate our understanding of the core ethical principles of Judaism. We can go about this like the rabbis by interpreting these passages in such a way that they no longer mean what they say or we can just say we reject them. My preference is the latter although I am happy to follow the Rabbinic method as long as it leads to the same ethical result.

I am comfortable saying that just as Christianity and Islam have teachings that legitimate violence and prejudice so does Judaism and all three religions shouldn’t pretend that our tradition is pure and righteous. I am quite tired of hearing Muslims describe how all of Islam is peace loving without one word that legitimates violence. I am sure that the core of Islam is peace loving but I am also sure that it has passages that are less than fully peaceful, just like Judaism and Christiantiy and all other traditions.

The core principles of our tradition (the dignity of all people, the pursuit of justice, the acts of compassion/gemilut hasadim and tikkun) are sacred, and of ultimate importance. We must unambiguously and clearly reject the teachings that privilege the Jewish people over others including the teachings that privilege our connection to the land over the connection of other peoples. When I hear these passages read in shul without the rabbi or someone in authority saying that we reject these teachings or at least that we reinterpret them, it makes me cringe.

Once again, thanks for launching this important discussion.

Your understanding of idolatry is compelling and it resonates powerfully for me.

However you are misunderstanding my original point about Canaanite idolatry. When I said these laws are not relevant any more, I was only saying that since the Canaanites are long gone from the land, the laws that guard against engaging in their specific practices simply do not apply.

Now that there is a modern state of Israel, the reality is fundamentally different than in Biblical times. Today the land is considered holy by two other monotheistic faiths. As such, there is great danger in attaching relevance to the laws that commanded the Israelites to dislodge the idolatrous Canaanites after entering the land.

Using your definition of idolatry (‘the idolater looks to the immediate source of power, love, wealth and asks: How can they serve me?”) I would further claim that it is profoundly idolatrous to consider the land to ipso facto “belong” to Jews alone (again, see Leviticus 25:23). This is tantamount to the claim, “how can our immediate power over this land (and its inhabitants) serve us (namely Jews alone)? Indeed, this fundamentalist/ultra nationalist viewpoint might well be viewed as the “new Jewish idolatry.”

I appreciate the need to root out idolatry in our world, and I honor and respect the place that your comment comes from. If I may, however, offer a possible alternative in thinking:

When we study a work of art, we come to understand the artist on a deep level. If you believe, as I do, that the Torah is the creation of several generation of writers surrounding the Babylonian exile, then by studying the Torah we come to know their struggles to understand God and their place in the world around them.

If you also believe, as I do, modern advances in astro-physics that postulate all matter in this universe was contained in the singularity that gave rise to the Big Bang, then every sub-atomic particle in your body–including the electrons which leap across synapses in your brain when you have thoughts–were present at the moment of creation. And if we acknowledge a Creator that set the whole thing into motion, then the whole of your being is part of the great Artwork by the greatest of all Artists. And as I said before, getting to know that work of art brings you into an understanding of the Artist.

Therefore, I believe that revelations and truths we discover by turning inward–through prayer or meditation–are no less valid than those that were arrived at externally.

My apologies for taking this thread so far from its original topic. Got a little carried away…

You write: “But there are specific laws in the Torah that are connected to a certain ancient time and place (ie Canaanite idolatry) that simply don’t apply to our day any more. Those laws are less compelling than the essential assumptions undergirding the law itself (ie, that if we do not behave in a Godly way on the land, we will not have a future upon it.)”

I would have to disagree with you on this point. Specifically regarding idolatry, the first of all negative commandments, one must ask what idolatry really is. When the Torah prohibits one from serving “other gods”, exactly which other gods are being referred to? The common conception of idolatrous gods is that they are imaginary, but Idolatry, in essence, should be understood as the idea of relating not to the supernal Source of all existence, but to the channels that flow from the Source and serve to bring down energy into the world (ie. Sun and other elements). The Rambam says that originally, close to the beginning of the world’s history people acknowledged God. Then came a stage when people reasoned that since God uses agencies such as the forces of nature to accomplish His will, surely it would be fitting to give honor to these forces as His emissaries. They began to accord honor to the intermediaries as well as to God. And eventually, they forgot about God.

The difference between worshipping Source and Idols is one who worships the Source directly is concerned about what his/her obligations are; what does God demand of me? How do I sacrifice myself, give myself to a cause of God. One who serves the intermediaries is concerned about what they can do for him/her- the intermediaries are, after all, the immediate source of all human needs, all natural functions of the world. The idolater looks to the immediate source of power, love, wealth and asks: How can they serve me? That I am everything and my gods are to serve me.

This also explains why images of idolatrous worship are often in human form- idolatry is really worship of the self and the graven images are projections of the self. This is the modern form of idolatry and thus the example does apply to our time. And this gets back to another of your points that continues to bother me and I preface this as one who does not have an axe to grind, but is merely a seeker of truth. It seems curious to me how one can extract a teaching from Torah (ie. living in the land), call it an essential teaching, and then use it as a moral source to back up a preconceived worldview, but then disregard other teachings of Torah as insignificant or not pertinent to the complexity of the world we live in. This to me seems idolatrous and self serving.

For me, I understand that much has changed since biblical times as we live in a very complex world. However, one thing that hasn’t changed and one that all of Torah attempts to remedy is that of human nature. And this is why, to me at this point of understanding in my life, picking and choosing whatever is good for me and supports my preconceived worldview, is very narrow minded and a modern form of idolatry.

Dan, is your God is only interested in whether Jews obey the laws God gave them? Do those laws permit or encourage or simply have nothing to say about, for example, the burning of mosques to drive non-Jews from the land? Is the land for Jews only? Are Jews required to actively purge the land of non-Jews?

You ask:

Isn’t it specifically the Jewish Law that has informed our moral behavior? Aren’t behavior and law intricately tied? Isn’t the purpose of law to inform our behaviors and if so how can it be less compelling? Doesn’t the letter of Jewish Law attempt to proscribe and define behavior (Halacha) and the spirit of the law attempt to define Torah’s “essential teaching”

Of course law and behavior are connected. But there are specific laws in the Torah that are connected to a certain ancient time and place (ie Canaanite idolatry) that simply don’t apply to our day any more. Those laws are less compelling than the essential assumptions undergirding the law itself (ie, that if we do not behave in a Godly way on the land, we will not have a future upon it.)

As to the more general question on the authoritative nature of halacha: as I stated above, I am a Reconstructionist and thus do not view Jewish law as binding as it has traditionally been understood. There are many reasons for this:

- The halachic process, which used to be creative and dynamic, has become for all intents and purposes, petrified. While in the past, halacha functioned as a body of tradition that could adapt to the needs of the Jewish people throughout the ages, today it functions as a rigid body of law, changeable only under rarified circumstances by the proper authorities.

- Halacha is simply not equipped to deal with the complexity of contemporary concerns. The halachic method presumes that all questions can be handled with reference to legal precedent, but this in a rapidly changing post-modern world, this is no longer so. New issues certainly can be guided by old values, but they must ultimately be discussed in the context of the world in which we now live – a world that could have scarcely been fathomed by the ancient sages.

- For religious law to function as truly authoritative, it must have an organized structure to develop and adjudicate it – a structure that presumably must be able to sanction anyone who disobeys. Jewish law simply doesn’t function this way anywhere in the world. Even in closed Orthodox communities, members voluntarily choose to place themselves under the “yoke of the law,” but they can choose to leave it any time they like. It is naive to assume halacha can truly serve as binding law in this day and age.

- According the values of Western democracy (values I assume we cherish) we believe that individuals ought to make religious choices autonomously. Individual religous freedom is at direct odds with authoritarian religious law. A Reconstructionist appoach assumes most Jews today would never choose to return to a community in which traditional laws were enforced coercively.

According to the founder of Reconstructionism, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, Jewish law and tradition has a “vote but not a veto.” We take halacha seriously as our inherited spiritual heritage – we are guided by its spirit but not strictly bound by its specifics.

To answer to Richard, above:

Yes, I am rejecting the Torah’s answer to the question it poses because that answer is, as I have just said, not applicable to our day. It is up to us to find an answer that is indeed compelling and relevant. I am proposing one such answer: our humane treatment of those who also dwell on the land (which as you point out, is actually commanded elsewhere in Torah.).

I appreciate this conversation immensely and hope at least that my thoughts have raised some challenges to what I believe is a very real misinterpretation of the Torah’s concept of covenant. The essence of the promise of the land is its conditional – not unconditional – nature.