CrashCourse3

Crash Course in Jewish History Part 4: Abraham's Journey

By: Rabbi Ken Spiro

History is a guidebook for the future. The early lessons of Jewish history reveal a pattern, so we have to pay extra special attention to
anything that happens at this period of time.

    When we meet Abraham in the Bible in the Book of Genesis, he is already 75 years old, which is interesting because we'd love to know
    what Abraham did as a little kid and what sports he played, etc. But God doesn't want to fill our brains with extraneous information. He
    only wants to give us the messages we need to learn, because He's trying to teach us and guide us.

The story of Abraham begins when God first speaks to him. This means that Abraham lived his whole life without prophecy, without
any kind of outside confirmation that his ideology of monotheism is correct, and this says a lot about Abraham's dedication to truth.

    In an entirely polytheistic world, Abraham chose to see the reality of one God and to dedicate himself to a mission -- if necessary, at the
    cost of his own life -- of bringing that reality to human consciousness. He did so not because God needs people to die for Him, but
    because that's reality.

    It's one thing if God is regularly speaking to you, you'll take any pain to live in that reality, but to just go on the basis of your own
    conviction takes some doing. And this gives us a little indication of what a great human being Abraham was and what a tremendous
    idealist he was. He did not mind standing "on the other side" -- and that is the meaning of the word Ivri, "Hebrew."

And this is why I call Abraham "the proto-Jew." From Abraham onward, we see this idealism -- an uncompromising drive to "change the
world" -- in the Jewish personality.

    Abraham passed on this drive to his descendants, who have been at the forefront of virtually every major advance, cause, or social
    movement in world history. (Jews have not only been awarded a disproportionate number of Nobel prizes for their intellectual
    contributions, but have led movements such as communism, socialism, feminism, civil rights, labor unions, etc.) Notes non-Jewish
    historian Ernest Van den Haag:

         Asked to make a list of the men who have most dominated the thinking of the modern world, many educated people
         would name Freud, Einstein, Marx and Darwin. Of these four, only Darwin was not Jewish. In a world where Jews are only
         a tiny percentage of the population, what is the secret of the disproportionate importance the Jews have had in the
         history of Western culture? (Ernest Van den Haag, Ernest, The Jewish Mystique.)

The answer to Van den Haag's question is understanding the personality of Abraham.

THREE PATTERNS

So now let's take a look at how Abraham is introduced in the Bible -- not for purposes of Bible study but to identify the sweeping
patterns we encounter here, of which we can identify three.

Number one:

God said to Abram, "Go from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father's house to the land that I will show
you. (Genesis 12:1)

    We see here that God is not like Charles Dickens. Dickens got paid by the word, and he would be as verbose as possible. God is the
    exact opposite. So the question we have to ask is: Why does God, who uses words so sparingly throughout the whole Bible, repeat this
    command so emphatically? "Separate yourself completely, not just from your land, but from your birthplace, from your father's house."

    If you grew up in a specific house for a specific period of time, that will always be home for you. When you think of home, no matter
    where you've lived after that and how comfortable you've been, you'll always think about it as home. There's a very deep connection. So
    God is saying to Abraham: "Separate yourself on the most basic emotional level."

More importantly, from the macrocosmic, historical perspective, God is saying to Abraham, and therefore the Jewish people: "Separate
yourself completely and go in a different direction."

    The journey that God is directing Abraham to undertake is not just a physical journey, it's a journey through history that is going to be
    different from anyone else's. Abraham is going to become a father to a nation that is not reckoned among the rest of the nations, a nation
    that dwells alone.

This is the first unique characteristic of Jewish history.

Number two we learn in the next verse:

"I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you and make your name great; and you will be a blessing." (Genesis
12:2)

This verse conveys God's promise that He will be actively involved in Jewish history: "I will make you ..."

    In the 17th century when Blaise Pascal, the great French enlightenment philosopher, was asked by Louis XIV for proof of the
    supernatural, he answered, "The Jewish people, your Majesty." Why? Because he knew Jewish history and he realized that for the
    Jewish people to survive to the 17th century, violated all the laws of history. Can you imagine what he'd say seeing the Jews made it to
    the 20th century?! Jewish history is a supernatural phenomenon.

Jewish people should have never come into existence. With Abraham's wife Sarah being barren, that should have been it. Abraham
would have died, and his mission would have died with him. But it didn't. A miracle happened.

Thus we learn that the Jewish people come into being miraculously and survive all of human history miraculously, outliving some of the
greatest empires that ever were.

This is so because the Jews are a nation with a unique mission, a nation with a unique history. Things happen to the Jews that don't
happen to other peoples.

To live for 2000 years as a nation without a national homeland is not normal. It's unique in human history. To re-establish a homeland in
the place that was yours 2000 years ago is not normal. It's unique in human history.

And number three:

"I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you, and through you, will be blessed all the families of the
earth." (Genesis 12:3)

    God is saying here to Abraham that he and his descendants -- the Jews -- will be under God's protectiion. The nations and peoples who
    are good to the Jews will do well. Empires and peoples that are bad to the Jews will do poorly. And the whole world is going to be
    changed by the Jewish people.

    That is one of the great patterns of history. You can literally chart the rise and fall of virtually all the civilizations in the western world by
    how they treated the Jews. A part of it is supernatural for sure, whether it's Spain or Germany or Poland or America or Turkey. We will
    see this as we go through the timeline.

    Part of it, by the way, is not so supernatural, because if you have a group of people living within your country -- an educated, driven,
    dedicated, loyal, creative, well-connected people -- and you're nice to them and you allow thhem to participate and contribute in a
    meaningful way, your country is going to benefit. If you crush those people and expel them, you're going to suffer, because of the
    economic fallout. But, of course, there's much more going on than just that.

So we have a third pattern -- that the rise and fall of nations and empires is going to be based on how they treat the Jews, which is an
amazing idea, and one you can clearly demonstrate in human history.

    You can see the incredibly positive impact the Jews have had on the world. The most basic of all is that the Jews have contributed the
    values that are now linked with democracy -- the values that come from the Torah -- respect for life, justice, equality, peace, love,
    education, social responsibility etc.

So from these three verses in Genesis we see the key underlying patterns of Jewish history.

Abraham's journey is the paradigm. His personal life and the life of his immediate descendants is going to be a mini-version, a
microcosm, of what Jewish history is all about.

NEXT: THE PROMISED LAND

                                Click here for the previous articles in this series.
                            Crash Course in Jewish History Part 3: The World of Abraham
                             Crash Course in Jewish History Part 2: The Bible as History
                              Jewish History Crash Course Part 1: Why Study History