Jewish Identity: From Blog Posts to Book
The purpose of “Jewish Identity” and these blog posts is to combine them into a published book entitled Safe Schools for Jewish Students: An Educator’s Guide to Preventing Antisemitism and Strengthening Belonging.
Go here for the full Table of Contents.
Chapter 1 – Jewish Identity
Jewish Identity
“The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation.”
—John Adams, in a letter to F. A. Van der Kemp, 1808.
“We owe to the Jews in the Christian revelation a system of ethics which […] would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind.”
“Israel was not created in order to disappear; Israel will endure and flourish.”
“The whole world must see that Israel must exist and has the right to exist.”
The Aspects of Jewish Identity
The Land
The Jewish Holy Book, the Torah, commonly referred to as the Five Books of Moses, tells the story of the first monotheist in the region, Abraham, and his relationship with his one god. Abram, born in the city of Ur in Canaan around 1800 BCE, was directed by the Lord to move out of his homeland and live in the land which stretched from the Nile to the Euphrates River (Genesis 15:18) with the promise that his descendants would become a great nation of people, the Jewish people (Genesis 12:2).
Abram, renamed Abraham by God (“father of many”), bought a field in Hebron (Genesis 23:16-20). Since then, Jews lived in the city of Hebron with disruptions, including the expulsion by the Crusaders in 1100, the pogrom of the Ottoman Turks in 1517, a requirement to pay for the land again in 1807. Then came the 1929 Massacre of Hebron when Arab rioters killed 67 Jews. Today, 80% of Hebron is run by the Palestinian Authority where about 200,000 Palestinians live and Jews are forbidden to live, and 20% is run by the Israeli government where 1,000 Jews and 40,000 Palestinians live.
Jacob purchased a plot of land in Shechem (Genesis 33:19) and was buried there. Jews lived there until the Roman conquest in the first century BCE when the Roman general Sextus Vettulenus Cerialis destroyed Shechem. Years later, the Romans rebuilt the city and named it Flavia Neapolis (“New City”), now called Nablus. Today, Nablus is controlled by the Palestinian Authority and no Jews are allowed to live there.
King David conquered the city of Jerusalem from the Jebusites around 1000 BCE (2-Samuel 5:1-9) and later bought the nearby land (2-Kings 24:24). Jerusalem is the city considered most holy to the Jewish people. In the Torah, “Tsion” (Zion) refers to this city and the surrounding region. King David’s rule of the commonwealth of Israel lasted from 1000 BCE to 586 BCE, and Israel existed a second time as a commonwealth under King Solomon’s rule from 167 BCE to 63 BCE. At no other time in history has Jerusalem and the region of ancient Israel been a commonwealth, country, or state until the founding of Israel in 1948.
Over the millennia, while the Jewish people were cast and forced to live outside of their ancestral homeland, the Jewish capital has always been Jerusalem.
The Language
Though the origin of when Hebrew was first spoken is unknown, there are claims of the first written document dated from around 1200 BCE, and the first Biblical text is from 700 BCE. Then, around 580 BCE, when the first commonwealth of Israel was conquered by the Babylonians, Hebrew stopped being spoken and the common language of the region of Israel became Aramaic with Hebrew remaining a written language. Throughout the millennia, Jews studied Hebrew in the form of the holy texts and prayed in the direction of Jerusalem in Hebrew, but Hebrew did not return as a common language until the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Biblical Hebrew and modern Hebrew have a few interesting differences. For example, in the Torah, “Va-yomer Moshe” is often translated as “And Moses said,” but the literal translation in modern Hebrew is, “And Moses says.” Modern Hebrew uses “v” to mean “and,” whereas Biblical Hebrew uses “v” to indicate past tense. So the true translation of the Biblical text would be, “Moses said.” In modern Hebrew, the way to indicate past tense is now a conjugation depending on who’s being talked about (me, you, he, she, we, they, etc.). In this case, “Moshe amar” is the modern way to say, “Moses said.”
The Religion
Judaism, alongside Zoroastrianism, is among the oldest monotheistic religions. Practicing Jews pray three times a day as did King David (Psalm 55:18): once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening. Jews pray in the direction of Jerusalem as has been the tradition since the time of Daniel who did so when banished from Judea to Babylon (Daniel 6:11). A few hundred years after Daniel’s time, the Greeks ruled over Judea and coined the term of the rituals practiced by the Judean people as “Judaism.” If you could sum up the most important prayers recited during a regular day, it might be these: the Shema, a declaration of God’s oneness, and the Amidah, a collection of 18 benedictions drafted by Ezra the Scribe and the Men of the Great Assembly in the 5th century BCE, and codified in the 2nd century CE.
The 18 benedictions are in three parts: praise, requests, and gratitude. First, there’s praise for the Jewish ancestors, the recognition of God’s power over nature, and God’s holiness. Second, there are requests for personal restoration, the providing of human needs, the national restoration of Israel, and the restoration of Justice. Lastly, there’s gratitude for God hearing the prayers, God’s miracles, and peace.
The Moral Code
Judaism is based on the Ten Commandments, many of them focusing on one’s behavior to others, including don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie under oath, and don’t be jealous of your neighbors. Included as a bonus are 603 other laws in the Torah (613 total) in case any followers of Judaism became interested in legal matters.
And if that wasn’t enough, Judaism included an oral law written down later in the form of the Talmud. The Talmud is a 63 tractate series that translates into about a 70-volume English language series of discussions among rabbis over the centuries on how to interpret the laws.
For example, while some rabbis may say, “Don’t steal” is to be interpreted as an act of taking one’s physical belongings without permission, other rabbis have included the act of taking emotional belongings. In other words, if one greets you, you must reply and not ignore that person. Otherwise, you’re “stealing” their day, their good mood (Berakhot 6b:37).
Takeaway
The Jewish people spent centuries wandering the world and never misplaced their instruction manual. They are living proof that memory can outlast empires. As Mark Twain said, “All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains.” (From Concerning the Jews, 1899). In short, Jews are united by a homeland, a language, a faith, and the firm belief that every topic deserves further discussion.
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Author Biography of Safe Schools for Jewish Students
Ezra Barany loves riveting readers with Jewish thrillers. His first two books in The Torah Codes series were award-winning international bestsellers. In his free time, he has eye-opening discussions on the art of writing novels with his wife and book coach Beth Barany. A high school physics teacher, Ezra lives in Oakland with his beloved wife and two cats working on the next book. Ezra, not the cats.
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