Page 32 - HaMizrachi Yom HaAtzmaut 5783 USA

Israel

The Heart of Judaism

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks ל״צז

This article was first featured in the inaugural edition of HaMizrachi in April 2018.
We republish it here in honor of Israel’s 75th anniversary.

eventy years since the estab- If on the other hand there are only par- avoid. It would be the only nation in the
lishment of the modern State ticulars – only a multiplicity of cultures world whose sovereign was G-d Himself,
of Israel is a fitting moment to and ethnicities with no universal moral and whose constitution – the Torah – was
Sremind ourselves of a mystery principles to bind them – then the natural His word.
at the heart of Judaism. state of the world is a ceaseless prolifer- Judaism is the code of a self-governing

Why Israel? Why does the Hebrew Bible ation of warring tribes. That is the risk society. We tend to forget this, since
so resolutely and unerringly focus on this today, in a post-modern, morally relativ- Jews have lived in dispersion for two
place, what Spinoza called a mere ‘strip istic world with ethnic conflicts, violence thousand years, without the sovereign
of territory’? The G-d of Abraham is the and terror scarring the face of many parts power to govern themselves, and because
G-d of the whole world, a G-d unbounded of the globe. modern Israel is a secular state. Judaism
by space. Why then does He choose any The Abrahamic covenant as understood is a religion of redemption rather than
particular space, let alone one so small by Judaism is the only principled way salvation: it is about the shared spaces of
and vulnerable? of avoiding these two scenarios. Jews our collective lives, not an interior drama
The question, ‘Why Israel?’ is the geo- belonged somewhere, not everywhere. of the soul, though Judaism, in the books
graphical way of asking ‘Why the Jews?’ Yet the G-d they worship is the G-d of of Psalms and Job, knows this as well.
The answer lies in the duality that defines everywhere, not just somewhere. So Jews The Jewish G-d is the G-d of love: You shall
Jewish faith and constitutes one of its were commanded to be neither an empire love the L-rd your G-d with all your heart,
most important contributions to civi- nor a tribe, harboring neither universal all your soul and all your might. You shall
lization. Judaism embodies and exem- aspirations nor tribal belligerence. Theirs love your neighbor as yourself. You shall
plifies the necessary tension between was to be a small land, but a significant love the stranger. The Hebrew Bible is a
the universal and the unique, between one, for it was there, and there alone, that book suffused with love – the love of G-d
everywhere in general and somewhere they were to live their destiny. for humanity, and the love of a people for
in particular. That destiny was to create a society that G-d. All its tense emotions of anger and
If there were only universals, the world would honor the proposition that we jealousy are part of the story of that often
unreciprocated love.
would consist of empires, each claiming are all created in the image and likeness
the totality of truth and each demonstrat- of G-d. It would be a place in which the But because Judaism is also the code of
ing that truth by attempting to conquer freedom of some would not lead to the a society, it is also about the social emo-
or convert everyone else. If there is only enslavement of others. It would be the tions: righteousness (tzedek/tzedakah),
one truth, and you have it, then others opposite of Egypt, whose bread of afflic- justice (mishpat), loving-kindness (chessed)
do not. They are living in error. That has tion and bitter herbs of slavery they were and compassion (rachamim). These struc-
been the justification of many crimes in to eat every year on the festival of Pass- ture the template of biblical law, which
the course of history. over to remind them of what they were to covers all aspects of the life of society, its

32 |