Contra Mel Gibson
To counter the anti-Semitic consequences of Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion …” I am hereby publishing parts of Chapter 8 of my forthcoming book A Jewish Philosophy of History. Please disseminate this material.
The Chosen People: Part I
Out of all the people that are on the face of the earth, the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people belonging exclusively to Him. (Deuteronomy 14:2)
This people have I created that they may relate My praise. (Isaiah 43:21)
To begin to appreciate the concept of the Chosen People, it will be helpful to review what some Gentile philosophers, historians, and statesmen have said about Jews and Judaism.
Ancient and Modern Philo-Semitism
In contrast to the vilification of Jews by the generality of mankind, many of the most learned Gentiles have admired the Jewish people. Theophrastus (372-287 BCE), Aristotle’s student and successor at the Lyceum, referred to the Jews as “a nation of philosophers.”[1] Clearchus, another student of Aristotle, and in the first rank of peripatetic philosophers, records his having heard his master tell of an encounter with a Jew from Judea (the ancient name of “Palestine”). Aristotle relates that the man spoke Greek, and adds: “During my stay in Asia, he visited the same places as I did, and came to converse with me and some other scholars, to test our learning. But as one who has been intimate with many cultivated persons, it was rather he who imparted more to us than we to him.”[2]
Numenius (fl. 150-176 CE), a Syrian philosopher who is regarded as a founder of neoPlatonism, greatly admired the Jews, especially Moses. He is recorded as having said, “For what else is Plato than Moses speaking Attic Greek.”[3] Porphyry records a direct quotation from Genesis by Numenius, whose frequent use of both the Pentateuch and the Prophets, which he interpreted allegorically, is attested by Origen (c. 184-254 CE), the well-known early Christian theologian.
What made the Jews philosophers par excellence is that they regarded every aspect of existence as part of an integrated whole. Where others saw chance, they saw God incognito. Where others saw blind fate they saw Providence. For the God of the Bible is not only the God of Nature but the God of History. Hence history has to be rational and purposeful. This Jewish idea, which underlies Western philosophies of history, cannot but elevate the thoughts of statesmen.
John Adams, Harvard graduate and second President of the United States, said of the Jewish people:
They have done more to civilize men than any other Nation. They are the most glorious Nation that ever inhabited the earth. The Romans and their Empire were but a bauble in comparison to the Jews. They have given religion to three-quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of Mankind more, and more happily than any other Nation, ancient or modern.[4]
Historian and statesman Thomas B. Macaulay declared, in a debate in 1833 in the British House of Commons over whether Jews should have their legal and political disabilities removed by law:
In the infancy of civilization, when our island was as savage as New Guinea, when letters and arts were still unknown in Athens, when scarcely a thatched hut stood on what was afterwards the site of Rome, this condemned people had their fenced cities and cedar palaces, their splendid temple, … their schools of sacred learning, their great statesmen and soldiers, their natural philosophers, their historians and poets.[5]
This reference to the Temple of the Jews, as well as to their schools of sacred learning and natural philosophers, suggests that the civilization of ancient Israel harbored no tension or dichotomy between religion and science (i.e., natural philosophy)—which is why Judaism has been called the religion of reason. Friedrich Nietzsche has written: “Wherever the Jews have attained to influence, they have taught to analyze more subtly, to argue more acutely, to write more clearly and purely: it has always been their problem to bring people to ‘raison.’”[6]
In fact, the term religion (dat) is the greatest obstacle to an understanding of Judaism. The word itself does not even appear in the Hebrew Bible, except in the Book of Esther, and there it means law or decree. Although the Torah has certain aspects of religion, the term cannot capture the vast intellectual breadth of the Torah, which embraces, in addition to ethics, cosmology, astronomy, agronomy, zoology, anatomy, medicine, hygiene, family purity, economics, government, civil and criminal law-subjects in which Jews have been the teachers of mankind.
Ponder in this connection the views of Henri Baruk, a biologist, psychopharmacologist, psychologist, sociologist, and a member of the Medical Academy of Paris. Professor Baruk used Torah laws for both individual and group therapy and with remarkable success. Applied with expertise, these laws, he discovered, overcome toxicities, psychopathologies, and intra-group conflict. Having characterized the Torah as “the most complete science of man,” Baruk writes:
Though this extensive science has been vulgarized by the religions which have spring from it, it still remains little known and even misunderstood. The[se] religions … took mainly from its moral principles with, moreover, various modifications which left out Hebraic Law, Hebraic biology, Hebraic sociology, etc.,—in a word, the concrete and material parts of the Torah. Complete and scrupulously exact study of the Torah is indispensable if one is to capture its spirit. Then again the Torah forms an indivisible whole, and one cannot study it in borrowed versions or excerpts without completely falsifying its meaning and spirit.[7]
(To be continued)
[1] Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (3 vols.; Jerusalem, The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974), I, 10.
[2] Ibid., I, 50. See Josephus, Complete Works (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1999), Against Apion, p. 948.
[3] Stern, II, 210. Numenius lived in Apamea, which had a considerable Jewish population.
[4] Cited in Pathways to the Torah (Jerusalem: Aish HaTorah Publications, 1988), p. A6.2.
[5] Cited in Alan M. Dershowitz, Chutzpah (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1991), p. 105.
[6] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1960), p. 289. T. Common, trans.
[7] Henri Baruk, Tsedek (Binghamton, NY: Swan House Publishing Co., 1972), pp. 80, 133-140.
The Chosen People: Part II
Out of all the people that are on the face of the earth, the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people belonging exclusively to Him. (Deuteronomy 14:2)
This people have I created that they may relate My praise. (Isaiah 43:21)
Perhaps no Gentile thinker has appreciated the magnificence of the Jewish people more than Nietzsche. I quote from The Dawn of Day, where he speaks of “The People of Israel”:
In Europe they have gone through a school of eighteen centuries, such as no other nation can boast of … In consequence whereof the resourcefulness in soul and intellect of our modern Jews is extraordinary. In times of extremity they, least of all the inhabitants of Europe, try to escape any great dilemma by recourse to drink or to suicide—which less gifted people are so apt to fly to. Each Jew finds in the history of his fathers and grandfathers a voluminous record of instances of the greatest coolness and perseverance in terrible positions, of the most artful and clever fencing with misfortune and chance; their bravery under the cloak of wretched submissiveness, their heroism in the spernere se sperni [despising their despisers] surpass the virtues of all the saints.
Nietzsche continues:
People wanted to make them contemptible by treating them scornfully for twenty centuries, by refusing to them the approach to all dignities and honorable positions, and by pushing them all the deeper down into the mean trades—and, indeed, they have not become genteel under this process. But contemptible? They have never ceased believing themselves qualified for the highest functions; neither have the virtues of all suffering people ever failed to adorn them. Their manner of honoring parents and children, the reasonableness of their marriages and marriage customs make them conspicuous among Europeans. Besides, they know how to derive a sense of power and lasting revenge from the very trades which were left to them (or to which they were abandoned) … Yet their vengeance never carries them too far, for they all have that liberality even of the soul in which the frequent change of place, climate, customs, neighbors, and oppressors schools man; they have by far the greatest experience in human relationships …
Now Nietzsche concludes his encomium:
Where shall this accumulated wealth of great impressions, which forms the Jewish history in every Jewish family, this wealth of passions, virtues, resolutions, resignations, struggles, victories of all sorts—where shall it find an outlet, if not in great intellectual people and work? On the day when the Jews will be able to show as their handiwork such jewels and golden vessels as the European nations of shorter and less thorough experience neither can nor could produce, when Israel will have turned its eternal vengeance into an eternal blessing of Europe: then once more that seventh day will appear, when the God of the Jews may rejoice in Himself, His creation, and His Chosen People—and all of us will rejoice with Him![8]
The Origin of the Chosen People
The concept of the Chosen People has its origin in Abraham, the father of the Jewish people. God said to “Abram”:
Go for yourself—away from your land, from your birthplace, and from the home of your father, to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you great. You shall become a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and he that curses you, I will curse. All the families of the earth shall be blessed through you (Genesis 12:1-3).
That blessing is nothing less than ethical monotheism, which has civilized much of mankind. By itself, monotheism, as the great philosopher-mathematician Alfred North Whitehead discerned, is the basis of modern science. Whitehead saw that monotheism involves the idea of a rationally ordered universe, a presupposition of scientific inquiry. No wonder Jews have excelled in science! When divorced from ethics, however, science has become a curse. Let us therefore try to understand the man who conferred the blessing of ethical monotheism upon mankind.
Without any teacher, and in opposition to the polytheism and vicious practices of his contemporaries, Abraham discovered, through reason and observation, that this vast multifarious universe is an integrated whole created by one supreme and transcendent Being of infinite wisdom and power (Genesis 14:22). Over the course of years thousands of people gathered about him and became part of his household. Such was his greatness as a teacher and leader of men that he was called a Prince of God (Genesis 23:6). He discerned the providential kindliness of God and deduced therefrom His code of conduct for men (Genesis 26:5). Abraham saw that the world was designed for man’s use and happiness, hence that Man is the purpose of creation. He reasoned that since the Creator showed nothing of Himself but His deeds, then it is His will that men should know Him by the graciousness of His deeds, an attribute they ought to emulate in their relations with one another.
Despite Abraham’s greatness, he was ever humble, regarding himself as mere dust and ashes (Genesis 16:17). In his dealings with men—even enemies—he manifested unequalled hospitality and magnanimity, for which reason he is the exemplar of graciousness (hesed), that purely voluntary and overflowing kindness that seeks neither reward nor recognition (Genesis 14:22-23, 18:1-8, 23). He taught these principles and this manner of service to all that would listen to him. In short, Abraham developed in himself superior intellectual and moral qualities which became part of his being and were transmitted to his seed forever (Megilla 13b). It was because of his superlative character that God changed his name to Abraham, which means father of multitude of nations (Genesis 17:5), and sent him forth to found a new nation in a new land. This nation, Israel, was to be an Abraham writ large.
(to be continued)
[8] Friederich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1903), pp. 203-206, J. Volz, trans.
The Chosen People: Part III
Out of all the people that are on the face of the earth, the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people belonging exclusively to Him. (Deuteronomy 14:2)
This people have I created that they may relate My praise. (Isaiah 43:21)
The ethical monotheism discovered by Abraham and transmitted to his descendants is the only solid and rational basis for the moral unity of the human race or the idea of the human community. Isaac Breuer, who studied Philosophy, History, and German Philology, at the universities of Marburg and Berlin, and who received a doctorate in law at the University of Salzberg, writes:
The idea of the human community is one of the most beautiful pearls in the treasure of Jewish doctrine; it is a basic truth of Judaism; it is that Jewish idea which first set out on its triumphal procession from the Jewish camp into the whole world; it is the first message of salvation which Israel brought to a society of states which knew only force and the misuse of power. “God created man in His image. In the likeness of God He created him” [Genesis 1:26]. Here we have the lapidary sentence from Holy Writ which proclaims through all ages the inalienable, godlike nobility of man as such.[9]
Breuer goes on to point out that although the idea of the human community is a Jewish concept, it is obviously not the sole concept or even the basis of Judaism. The basis of Judaism is to be found not in its universalism, which it bestowed upon mankind, but in its particularism, namely, in Jewish law. The reason is this: God creates not only individuals but nations with distinct ways of life. For these ways of life to be mutually reinforcing and not mutually obstructive, they require the rational constraints of the Seven Noahide Laws of Universal Morality.
Rooted in ethical monotheism, the Seven Noahide Laws prohibit, on the one hand, idolatry, blasphemy, murder, stealing, immorality, and cruelty to animals, and require, on the other hand, the establishment of courts of justice to try violations against these prohibitions.
The seven universal laws of morality may rightly be called a “genial orthodoxy.” This genial orthodoxy transcends whatever social or economic distinctions exist among men: It holds all men equal before the law. By so doing it places constraints on governors and governors alike and thereby habituates men to the rule of law. This Hebraic orthodoxy subordinates to the rule of law any ethnic differences that may exist among the groups composing a society. It moderates their demands and facilitates coordination of their diverse interests and talents. In short, this genial orthodoxy conduces to social harmony and prosperity.
It should be emphasized that the Noahide Laws of Universal Morality can be elaborated in various ways and are therefore applicable to the variety of particular nations comprising mankind. Israel’s world-historical function, therefore, is to provide mankind the example of a nation that synthesizes particularism and universalism, which it can only do as a nation consecrated to God. By affirming a plurality of nations, and by qualifying this particularism with laws of universal morality, Israel avoids the political, cultural, and religious imperialism of Islam, and which once animated Christianity. At the same time, Israel avoids the moral decay evident among democracies that have separated morality from public law. Despite its moral decay, contemporary democracy is commonly regarded as the touchstone of what is good and bad. Democracy thus constitutes the idolatry of the modern era. Mankind desperately needs Israel—of course, an Israel dedicated to God.
Only a nation dedicated to God can inspire and elevate mankind. Leo Jung eloquently writes:
Had Judaism been entrusted to all nations, it would have lost color and intensity. As everybody’s concern it would have remained nobody’s concern…. Ideals are better entrusted to minorities as their differentiating asset, because of which they live…. Judaism, given at once to the shapeless multitudes of the world, would have become a meaningless phrase … Hence it was bestowed upon one nation as its heirloom, as the single reason for its existence, as the single argument of its national life, as the aim and end of its struggles and labors.
The Jewish people thus received a charge that was to inspire its life, but the benefit of which was to accrue to all the world. At the beginning of Jewish history, Abraham, the first Jew, received the universal call, ‘And thou shalt be a blessing to all the nations of the world.’ For the consummation of this ideal, Israel is to walk apart. It will not be counted among the nations … Guided exclusively by the will of God, living by His commandments and dying if need be for the sanctification of His name, Israel is to present the example of a whole nation elevated, ennobled, illumined by the life in God and encouraging thereby a universal imitatio Dei.[10]
(to be continued)
[9] Isaac Breuer, Concepts of Judaism (Jerusalem Israel Universities Press, 1974), p. 68.
[10] Leo Jung, Judaism in a Changing World (New York: Jonathan David Publishers, 1939), pp. 15-16.
The Chosen People: Conclusion
Out of all the people that are on the face of the earth, the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people belonging exclusively to Him (Deuteronomy 14:2).
This people have I created that they may relate My praise (Isaiah 43:21).
To see why mankind needs a Chosen People, ponder the words of physicist Gerald L. Schroeder:
In his closing address, Moses adjures the people to “Remember the days of old, consider the years of each generation” (Deut. 32:7). Kabalah tells us these “days of old” are the [esoteric] six days of Genesis, and “the years of each generation” are the historical records of civilization. Understanding the events of our cosmic and social past is a key to discovering the immanence of God. The Bible insists the evidence is there for us to discover God in this world: “You shall know that I am the Eternal” (Ex. 6:7; Ex. 29:46; Deut. 4:39).
If studying history is indeed the path for all humanity to discover God, then the reason for one of the more contentious and misunderstood issues of the Bible becomes clear. Having a people chosen to be “holy” becomes a necessity, both biblically and scientifically. The Hebrew word for holy is kodesh, which means separate, set apart…. In the language of experimental science, this “holy” people is an identifiable control group set apart against which the flow of history can be compared…”[11]
The best control is one that is present in the actual environment. The problem becomes how to maintain the separate identity of that people even while they are part of society in general. The Torah accomplishes this by presenting them with a list of constraints (foods, clothing, holidays). For three thousand years it has succeeded. To compensate for the burden of being set aside, those chosen to be separate needed a reward to offset the difficulty of the task. According to the Bible, that reward included a method, not necessarily unique or exclusive, to help in discovering and understanding the transcendental unity that forms the base of our universe.
Dr. Schroeder points out that being “holy” does not mean being intrinsically better. “God tells the Israelites that their being chosen is not because they have inherently superior virtues as a people” (Deut. 9:4-6). Being chosen “means being made visible as a symbol.” It is in this light that we are to understand why the Jews alone have a universal history and were destined, after horrific dispersion (Deut. 30:1-5), to return to the Land of Israel where they are now the focus of mankind’s (“incomprehensible”) attention. But now we can better understand why the Jews have always been in the forefront of science!
As the present writer shows elsewhere, the history of science, along with developments in philosophy, religion, and world politics, have been geared to the rebirth of Israel, on whose Final Redemption ultimately depends the universal acceptance of ethical monotheism. Obviously the Jewish people must hearken to the Torah if they are to fulfill the mission for which they were chosen. Indeed, they will have to reveal the Torah as the paradigm of how man should live. This would place in question the adequacy of Judaism’s two offspring, Christianity and Islam. Let us consult two Gentile writers, the historian Arnold Toynbee and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Professor Toynbee once described the Jewish people as a fossilized relic of an obsolete culture. Consider, however, his more recent assessment:
I dare say that Judaism will bring a new message to the world. Looking from the outside, it seems extraordinary that twice in the course of history the Jews have allowed outsiders to run away with their religion to spread it over the world in garbled form. I am talking, of course, of early Christianity and Islam. It is something almost comic that outsiders should seize some of the essential truths of Judaism and put them in, what must seem to the Jews, a garbled form of Judaism, and make a worldwide religion of them while the Jews themselves kept their religion to themselves.
Is not the real future of the Jews and Judaism to spread Judaism in its authentic form rather than its Christian and Moslem forms over the whole world and human race! After all, the Jews must have a more authentic form of Jewish monotheism than the Christians or Moslems have. And is that not going to be the ultimate solution of the relations between Jews and the rest of the world?[12]
Now a word from Nietzsche:
In the Jewish “Old Testament,” the book of divine justice, there are human beings, things, and speeches in so grand a style that Greek and Indian literature have nothing to compare with it. With terror and reverence one stands before these tremendous remnants of what man once was, and will have sad thoughts about ancient Asia and its protruding little peninsula Europe, which wants by all means to signify as against Asia the “progress of man.” To be sure, whoever is himself merely a meager, tame domestic animal … has no cause for amazement or sorrow among these ruins—the taste of the Old Testament is a touchstone for “great” and “small”—perhaps he will find the New Testament … rather more after his heart …”[13]
The ruins of which Nietzsche speaks will also be found in present-day Israel, whose political, judicial, and cultural elites are abysmally ignorant of the “Old Testament” and therefore hinder Israel’s Final Redemption. Nevertheless, that Redemption will necessarily come:
God is not a man that he should lie, nor a human being that he should change His mind. Would He promise and not do it, or speak and not confirm it? (Numbers 23:19). In the end of days, when you are in distress … you will return unto HaShem your God, and hearken to His voice. For HaShem your God is merciful. He will not abandon you. He will not forget the Covenant which He swore to your forefathers (Deut. 4:30-31)
HaShem, the God of History, will therefore bring about the Final Redemption of His Chosen People. Illuminated by the Torah, Israel will shine forth “as a light unto the nations” (Isaiah 42:6).
[11] Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom (New York: Broadway Books, 1997), pp. 76-78.
[12] Cited in Raphael Eisenberg, Survival: Israel and Mankind (Jerualem: Feldheim, 1991), pp. 161-162.
[13] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche (New York: Modern Library, 1968), Aph. 52, W. Kaufmann, trans.
