Page 12 - HaMizrachi 1 Chicago Edition

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

The Heart of Judaism

eventy years since the If there were only universals, the world nor a tribe, harbouring neither universal
establishment of the modern State would consist of empires, each claiming the aspirations nor tribal belligerence. Theirs
S of Israel is a fitting moment to totality of truth and each demonstrating was to be a small land, but a significant one,
remind ourselves of a mystery at the heart that truth by attempting to conquer or for it was there, and there alone, that they
of Judaism. convert everyone else. If there is only one were to live their destiny.
truth, and you have it, then others do not.
Why Israel? Why does the Hebrew Bible They are living in error. That has been the That destiny was to create a society that
so resolutely and unerringly focus on this justification of many crimes in the course would honour the proposition that we are
place, what Spinoza called a mere ‘strip of of history. all created in the image and likeness of God.
territory’? The God of Abraham is the God It would be a place in which the freedom of
of the whole world, a God unbounded by If on the other hand there are only some would not lead to the enslavement of
space. Why then does He choose any par- particulars – only a multiplicity of cultures others. It would be the opposite of Egypt,
ticular space, let alone one so small and and ethnicities with no universal moral whose bread of affliction and bitter herbs
vulnerable? principles to bind them – then the natural of slavery they were to eat every year on the
state of the world is a ceaseless proliferation
The question, ‘Why Israel?’ is the of warring tribes. That is the risk today, in
geographical way of asking ‘Why the Jews?’ a post-modern, morally relativist world
The answer lies in the duality that defines of avoiding these two scenarios. Jews "
with ethnic conflicts, violence and terror
Jewish faith and constitutes one of its most scarring the face of many parts of the globe.
important contributions to civilization. The Abrahamic covenant as understood Judaism
Judaism embodies and exemplifies the by Judaism is the only principled way
necessary tension between the universal embodies and
and the unique, between everywhere in belonged somewhere, not everywhere.
general and somewhere in particular. Yet the God they worship is the God of exemplifies
everywhere, not just somewhere. So Jews
were commanded to be neither an empire the necessary
tension

between the

universal and

the unique,

between

everywhere in

general and

somewhere in

particular

“Doing good” for the elderly in Lod

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