The Rabbi vs. the Jewish People
On Lech Lecha and the tension between Jewish religion and Jewish peoplehood
The accompanying shiur is available on the Orthodox Union's parsha learning app: All Parsha.
One could argue that the most important dialogue in the entire Torah appears in Parshas Lech Lecha. One could also argue, as I will, that it has been either overlooked or completely misunderstood. And that dialogue is the conversation between Avraham and God leading up to the Bris Bein Babesarim, the Covenant of the Parts.
God takes Avraham outside. Or, as Rashi explains, he shows Avraham that he will transcend the normal course of history.
“I am the God who took you out of Ur Kasdim,” God tells Avraham, “and I will give you this land as an inheritance.”
So far, so good.
Then things get confusing.
“How do I know,” Avraham asks, “that I am to inherit it?”
Avraham’s Question: Did Avraham doubt God’s promise?! God said he would give Avraham the land of Israel—shouldn’t that promise be more than enough? One passage in the Talmud does, in fact, criticize Avraham for asking this question. What exactly prompted Avraham’s doubt?
God’s answer is no less clear. In response to Avraham, God tells him to make a covenant, known as the Bris Bein Habesarim, the Covenant of the Parts. God then reveals to Avraham that his children will be enslaved in Egypt for 400 years—the fourth generation will be redeemed.
(Side note: Rav Hutner in his work Pachad Yitzchak notes that the exile is phrased in terms of year, an amount of time, while the redemption is phrased in terms of generations, human lives. He cites a tradition from the Vilna Gaon: הקלקולים נתלים בזמן, והתיקונים באדם—destructiveness is a product of time, constructiveness is from within mankind. A spiritual law of entropy of sorts.)
God’s Answer: What is God’s answer to Avraham? And what does it have to do with enslavement in Egypt? Some explain that the slavery is a punishment for Avraham’s doubt. Even so, seems like a strange punishment. Why would slavery in Egypt be the right response to Avraham’s concern?
To understand this dialogue, we need to explore an overlooked but sadly still relevant chapter from Jewish history: The Rabbi who opposed Jewish peoplehood.
Thankfully, Elmer Berger has been largely forgotten from the annals of Jewish history. Sadly, his ideas still percolate in certain anti-Zionist circles.
Elmer Berger (1908-1996) was a reform rabbi who was one of the most outspoken voices against Zionism. Where other anti-Zionists were content with marching or issuing statements, Elmer Berger, tried (unsuccessfully) to actually influence American foreign policy. By the end of his life, he became a pariah even in the anti-Zionist organization he founded, the American Council for Judaism. Yet his passing at the age of 88 was notable enough to merit a New York Times obituary, which correctly described him as “A Foe of Zionism as Well as Israel.”
As upsetting as his ideology may be, and it is repugnant, many of his ideas continue to reverberate in certain progressive circles. In some ways, he can be seen as the inverse of the anti-Zionism of Neturei Karta, the maddening Hassidic-looking protestors who outrageously protest against Israel. In some ways, as we will explore, the enduring legacy of Berger may be even more dangerous.
In 1885, 13 years before Berger was born, the Reform movement issued a statement regarding the nature of Judaism and the Jewish people. Known as the Pittsburg Platform, Reform rabbis from around the United States declared:
We recognize, in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect, the approaching of the realization of Israel’s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men. We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.
Judaism, they explained, was not a people or a cohesive nation but a community of religious practice.
Isaac Mayer Wise, the most renowned rabbi in the United States at the time, presided over the conference. His daughter Miriam married Adolph Ochs, founder of the New York Times.
Even at the time, Wise faced a great deal of criticism for his association with the Pittsburgh Platform. As Sefton D. Temkin writes in his eye-opening biography, Creating American Reform Judaism: The Life and Times of Isaac Mayer Wise, some demanded that Wise resign, some congregations even left the movement altogether. As a whole, the Reform movement has deliberately distanced itself from those statements made in 1885. One contemporary Reform rabbi, Amiel Hirsch, has been vocal about the importance of emphasizing the essential nature of Jewish peoplehood. Berger, however, never let go of these radical ideas.
Berger’s biography, aptly titled Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism, can be read as the origin story of the anti-Zionism that has become far too common on college campuses and certain progressive circles throughout the United States. Much of his ire is from the relationship between American Jewry and Israel. In particular, Israel’s “Law of Return,” which guarantees Israeli citizenship to all Jews, was seen by Berger as undermining Jews’ ties to America. As he writes in his bluntly titled memoirs, Memoirs of an Anti-Zionist Jew:
The Knesset adopted "The Law of Return," granting anyone recognized by Israeli standards as a Jew the right to immigrate to Israel. This was followed by the "Law of Nationality" which, in effect, automatically granted immediate Israeli citizenship to any Jew who immigrated under the "Law of Return." The intent and language of the Nationality Law assumed every Jew possessed the right of a national of Israel and could "return" to his citizenship whenever he or she so elected. We continued to petition the United States government to take action which would invalidate the application of these laws to Americans. But the bureaucratic pattern remained much the same.
The Jewish People, according to Berger, were not a people—but a religion. And if that is in fact the case, what claim would a Jew in Brooklyn have for the land of Israel?
Berger was not content rabble-rousing. He petitioned the U.S. State Department to reject the notion of Jewish peoplehood. In 1963, Berger sent a rambling 43-page letter to Assistant Secretary of State Phillip Talbot decrying what he felt was the dual loyalties of the American Jewish community that the “Law of Return” necessarily required. Berger wrote:
By Zionist-Israel definition this "Jewish people" collectivity includes all individuals identified as Jews, regardless of their legal citizenship or nationality, and the Zionist State of Israel claims that this "Jewish people" entity has "rights" in and obligations to the State of Israel. The same Zionist-Israel sovereignty further claims that this system of "right" and obligations is inscribed and recognized in international law. The legal claims of this Zionist-Israel state are intended to impose upon some American Citizens, designated by their religious faith, a type of second nationality involving "rights" in and obligations to the foreign state.
Phillip Talbot, thankfully, did not seem too interested in Berger’s concerns. Talbot did reply but declined to meet with Berger. “I remain doubtful,” Talbot wrote, “that a formal meeting of the type you describe would lead to useful results.”
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on the exchange, with a May 11, 1964 headline: “State Department Rebuffs Council for Judaism; Refuses Request for Meeting.” “The Department of State did not endorse any of the claims and charges made by the American Council for Judaism alleging dual loyalty implications in Zionism,” the JTA reported, “and the Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East, Phillips Talbot, refused to meet with heads of the Council on this subject.”
Berger’s efforts to reframe Judaism as solely a religion rather than a people failed.
But his ideas, however failed, should not be overlooked. As we see today, some still marshal the idea that Judaism is exclusively a religion rather than a people to question the bonds between Jews today and the State of Israel. Berger successfully persuaded Professor William Mallison Jr. to write an article in George Washington Law Review affirming his positions on the non-existence of Jewish peoplehood. His ideology, as Jonathan Marc Gribetz argues in his article, “The PLO’s Rabbi: Palestinian Nationalism and Reform Judaism,” was even adopted by the Palestinian liberation movement.
Few noticed and even fewer remember Elmer Berger. There was a young law student who paid close attention to Berger’s efforts to undermine the legal character of Jewish peoplehood. This law student wrote a 47-page treatise on “The Jewish People Concept in International Law,” rebutted the claims of Berger, Mallison, and the American Council of Judaism. “The history of the Jewish people is so permeated by persecution and oppression,” the paper contends, “that the need for extending some measure of protection has been evidenced by many acts of humanitarian intervention and intercession.”
The name of that young law student? Abe Foxman, future National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, known as the ADL.
Despite these insidious efforts, the concept of Jewish peoplehood remains intact.
“I am the God who took you out of Ur Kasdim,” God tells Avraham.
Who was that God and what happened at Ur Kasdim?
Ur Kasdim, Rashi explains, is where Avraham was thrown into a fiery furnace rather than worship idols. After being thrown into a furnace, a miracle happened and Avraham was saved from the furnace.
And that is exactly what concerned Avraham. Yes, this was the God who saved him from the furnace after he risked everything for his religious commitment—but what if his children and future generations don’t have the same commitment?
במה אדע.
How will I know, Avraham asks, that my descendants will also be a part of this promise? What if they don’t possess the same commitment that I exhibited in Ur Kasdim? Will You, God, be a God for them as well? Will they be included in God’s promise of the land?
Avraham is concerned that the God of Ur Kasdim was the God for those committed. Those willing to jump into a furnace. But Avraham didn’t just want a promise for those religiously committed, he wanted God’s promise to be for everyone in his family.
Avraham was asking God that his promise should not be based on religious commitment but rather based on familial connection. He wanted the essence of Judaism to be a family, a people, not a religious community.
And that, God explains, will require a different experience. To transform Judaism into an essential familial connection, it cannot be based on the religious sacrifice of Ur Kasdim but rather on the familial persecution of Mitzryaim, Egypt.
The God of Ur Kasdsim was for those ready to sacrifice, the God who redeemed the Jewish people from Mitzrayim was for anyone who was a part of the Jewish family.
And that explains both Avraham’s question and God’s answer of the Bris Bein Habesarim.
The revelation of Ur Kasdim was for a religious community. The revelation of the God of redemption from Egypt was for a family.
If you listen closely to the original language of the Torah, the parallels are clear.
In our parsha, God reveals Himself:
אֲנִי ה’, אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִיךָ מֵאוּר כַּשְׂדִּים
After we are redeemed from Egypt God reintroduces Himself at Sinai:
אָנֹכִי ה’ אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִיךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מִבֵּית עֲבָדִ͏ים׃
Avraham’s question and God’s response transformed a religion into a people. The recipients of God’s promise for the Land of Israel was not to a religious community, but to the Jewish people.
As Rabbi Soloveitchik writes in his 1978 essay, “The Community”:
…Judaism has stressed the wholeness and the unity of Knesset Israel, the Jewish community. The latter is not a conglomerate. It is an autonomous entity, endowed with a life of its own. We, for instance, lay claim to Eretz Israel. God granted the land to us as a gift. To whom did He pledge the land? Neither to an individual, nor to a partnership consisting of millions of people. He gave it to the Knesset Israel, to the community as an independent unity, as a distinct juridic metaphysical person. He did not promise the land to me, to you, to them; nor did He promise the land to all of us together. Abraham did not receive the land as an individual, but as the father of a future nation. The owner of the Promised Land is Knesset Israel, which is a community persona. However strange such a concept may appear to the empirical sociologist, it is not at all a strange experience for the Halachist and the mystic to whom Knesset Israel is a living, loving, and suffering mother.
Shabbos Reads — Books/Articles Mentioned
Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism, Jack Ross
The Believer, Armin Rosen
Memoirs of an Anti-Zionist Jew, Elmer Berger
Creating American Reform Judaism: The Life and Times of Isaac Mayer Wise, Sefton D. Temkin
The PLO’s Rabbi: Palestinian Nationalism and Reform Judaism, Jonathan Marc Gribetz
The Community, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik
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Reading Jewish History in the Parsha has been generously sponsored by my dearest friends Janet and Lior Hod and family with immense gratitude to Hashem.