- Rabbinic Judaism (2nd–18th century)
Israel (the Jewish people)
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Choice and covenant
The concluding phrase of the second benediction of the liturgical section—“who has chosen thy people Israel in love”—clearly states that God’s choice to establish a relationship with Israel in particular was determined by divine love. The patriarchal narratives, beginning with the 12th chapter of Genesis, presuppose the choice, which is set forth explicitly in Deuteronomy 7:6–8 in the New Jewish Version:
For you are a people consecrated to the Lord your God: of all the peoples on earth the Lord your God chose you to be His treasured people. It is not because you are the most numerous of peoples that the Lord set His heart on you and chose you—indeed you are the smallest of peoples; but it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath He made with your fathers that the Lord freed you with a mighty hand and rescued you from the house of bondage, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
Later rabbinic traditions on occasion sought to base God’s choice upon some special merit of Israel, and the medieval poet and theologian Judah ha-Levi suggested that the openness to divine influence originally present in Adam continued only within the people of Israel.
The background of this choice is the recurring disobedience of humankind narrated in Genesis 2–11 (the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, and the Tower of Babel). In the subsequent chapters of Genesis, Abraham and his descendants are singled out not merely as the object of the divine blessing but also as its channel to all humanity. The choice, however, demands a reciprocal response from Abraham and his lineage. That response is obedience, as exemplified in the first instance by Abraham’s readiness to leave his “native land” and his “father’s house” (Genesis 12:1). This twofold relationship was formalized in a mutually binding agreement, a covenant between the two parties. The covenant, thought by some modern biblical scholars to reflect the form of ancient suzerainty treaties, indicates (as in the Ten Utterances, or Decalogue) the source of Israel’s obligation—the acts of God in history—and the specific requirements those acts impose. The formalization of this relationship was accomplished by certain cultic acts that, according to some contemporary scholars, may have been performed on a regular basis at various sacred sites in the land before being centralized in Jerusalem. The content of the covenantal obligations thus formalized was Torah. Israel was bound in obedience, and Israel’s failure to obey provided the occasions for the prophetic messages. The prophets, as spokespersons for God, called the community to renewed obedience, threatened and promised disaster if obedience was not forthcoming, and sought to explain the covenant’s persistence even when it should have been repudiated by God.
The choice of Israel is expressed in concrete terms in the requirements of the precepts (mitzwot, singular mitzwa) that are part of Torah. The blessing recited before the public reading of the pentateuchal portions on Sabbath, festivals, holy days, fasts, and certain weekdays refers to God as “He who chose us from among all the peoples and gave us His Torah,” thus emphasizing the intimate relationship between the elective and revelatory aspects of God.
Israel’s role was not defined solely in terms of its own obedience to the commandments. Abraham and his descendants, for example, were seen as the means by which the estrangement of disobedient humankind from God was to be overcome. Torah was the formative principle underlying the community’s fulfillment of this obligation. Israel was to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6) functioning within humanity and for its sake. This task is enunciated with particular earnestness in the writings of the Prophets. In Isaiah 43–44, Israel is declared to be God’s witness and servant, who is to bring the knowledge of God to the nations, and in 42:6–7 it is described as a “covenant of the people, to be a light of the nations, to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prisons, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.” This double motif of a chosen people and a witness to the nations, joined to that of the righteous king, developed in the biblical and postbiblical periods into messianism in its several varieties.
The intimate relation between choice, covenant, and Torah determined the modality of Israel’s existence. Religious faith, far from being restricted to or encapsulated in the cult, found expression in the totality of communal and individual life. The obligation of the people was to be the true community, in which the relationship between its members was open, in which social distance was repudiated, and in which response to the divine will expressed in Torah was called for equally from all. One of the important recurring themes of the prophetic movement was the adamant rejection of any tendency to limit divine sovereignty to the partial area of “religion,” understood as the realm of the priesthood and cult. Subsequent developments continued this theme, though it appeared in a number of other forms. Pharisaic Judaism and its continuation, Rabbinic Judaism, resolutely held to the idea of the all-pervasive functioning of Torah, so that however the various Jewish communities over the centuries may have failed to fulfill this idea, the self-image of the people was that of a “holy community.”
Israel and the nations
The double motif of “treasured people” and “witness” was not without its tensions as it functioned in ongoing history. Tensions are especially visible in the period following the return from the Babylonian Exile at the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 5th century bce. It is, however, doubtful whether the use of such terms as nationalism, particularism, or exclusivism are of any great help in understanding the situation. Emphasis has, for example, been laid upon Ezra 9:2 and 10:2, in which the reestablished community is commanded to give up wives taken from “the peoples of the land.” This is taken as an indication of the exclusive and nationalistic nature of Judaism, without reference to the situation in which a harassed contingent of returning exiles sought to maintain itself in a territory surrounded by politically unfriendly if not hostile neighbors. Nor does this recognize that foreigners were admitted to the Jewish community; in the following centuries, some groups engaged in extensive missionary activities, appealing to the individuals of the nations surrounding them to join themselves to the God of Israel, the one true God and the creator of heaven and earth.
A more balanced view recognizes that, within the Jewish community, religious universalism was affirmed by the same people who understood the nature of Jewish existence in politically particularistic (i.e., nationalistic) terms. To neglect either side is to distort the picture. In no case was the universalism disengaged from the reality of the existing community, even when it was expressed in terms of the ultimate fulfillment of the divine purpose, the restoration of the true covenantal relationship between God and all humankind. Nor was political particularism, even under circumstances of great provocation and resentment, misanthropic. The most satisfactory figure in describing the situation of the restored community, and one that continues to be useful in dealing with later episodes, is that of the human heartbeat, made up of two functions, the systole, or contraction, and the diastole, or expansion. There have been several periods of contraction and of expansion throughout the history of Judaism. The emphasis within the abiding tension has been determined by the historical situation in which the community has found itself. To generalize in one direction or the other is fatal to an understanding of the history and faith of the “holy community.”
The people and the land
Closely related to the concept of Israel as the chosen, or covenant, people is the role of the land of Israel. In the patriarchal stories, settlement in Canaan is an integral part of God’s fulfillment of the covenant. The goal of the Israelites who escaped from Egypt and of those who returned from the Babylonian Exile is the same land, and entry into it is understood in the same fashion. As there was the choice of a people, so there was the choice of a land—and for much the same reason. It was to provide the setting in which the community could come into being as it carried out the divine commandments. This choice of the land contrasts significantly with the predominant ideas of other peoples in the ancient world, in which the deity or divinities were usually bound to a particular parcel of ground outside of which they lost their effectiveness or reality. Although some such concepts may very well have crept into Israelite thought during the period of the kings (from Saul to Jehoiachin), the crisis of the Babylonian Exile was met by a renewal of the affirmation that the God of Israel was, as Lord of all the earth, free from territorial restraint, though he had chosen a particular territory for this chosen people. Here again the twofold nature of Jewish thought becomes apparent, and both sides must be affirmed or the view is distorted.
Following the two revolts against Rome (66–73 ce and 132–135 ce), the Jews of the ever-widening dispersion continued, as they had before these disasters, to cherish the land. Once again it became the symbol of fulfillment, so that return to it was looked upon as an essential part of messianic restoration. The liturgical patterns of the community, insofar as they were concerned with natural phenomena (e.g., planting, rainfall, harvest, and the annual cycle) rather than historical events, were based on geography, topography, and agricultural practices of the land. Although some Jews continued to live in the land, those in the distant dispersion idealized it, viewing it primarily in eschatological terms—their destination at the end of days, in the world to come. The 11th-century poet Judah ha-Levi not only longed for it in verse but also gave it a significant role in his theological interpretation of Judaism and eventually sought to return to it from his native Spain.
It was not, however, until the 19th century that the land began to play a role other than the goal of pilgrimage or of occasional settlement by pietists and mystics. At the end of the 19th century the power of the territorial concept was released in eastern Europe in a cultural renaissance that focused, in part, on a return to the land and, in western and central Europe, in a political movement coloured by nationalist motifs in European thought. The coming together of these two strains of thought gave rise to Zionism. This predominantly political movement reflected a dissatisfaction with the overall status of the Jewish people in the modern world.
The political emphasis of Zionism aroused considerable opposition from three competing views of the status of the Jewish people. The first opposition came from some traditionalist Jews (now called “Orthodox” or “ultra-Orthodox”) who were convinced that the Jewish nation must remain a solely religious community in the Diaspora and even in the land of Israel. They accepted the political rule of the Gentiles until the time when God will send his messiah to redeem the Jewish people by supernaturally returning all of them to the land of Israel in order to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.
The second opposition came from acculturated Jews in western Europe and North America who believed that Jews are part of larger secular polities and that their role in them should be that of a communion of like-minded religious believers, similar to that of the Catholic and Protestant denominations.
The third opposition came from some eastern European Jews who maintained that the Jewish people should seek their own national status in the territories in which they were presently living, similar to the resurgence of nationalism among a number of smaller nations living under the Austro-Hungarian or Russian empires. It was not until the Nazi Holocaust in the middle of the 20th century that the vast majority of Jews regarded Zionism, if not as the solution to the “Jewish question,” then as something the Jews could not very well survive without. After this time, Jewish opposition to Zionism was confined to peripheral groups on the right who still saw Zionism as pseudo-messianism and to peripheral groups on the left who still saw Zionism as isolating Jews from more important universalist goals.
Modern views of the people Israel
The nature of the people Israel and of the land of Israel has been variously interpreted in the history of Jewish thought. In modern times some interpretations have been deeply influenced by contemporary political and social discussions in the general community. Thus, for example, Zionist theoreticians were influenced by concepts of political nationalism on the one hand and by socialist ideas on the other. Further, the challenge to traditional theological concepts in the 19th century raised issues about the meaning of the choice of Israel, and Jewish thinkers borrowed from romantic nationalism ideas such as the “genius” of the people. In the 20th century, attempts were made to approach the question sociologically, dismissing the theological mode as unhelpful. The concept of the chosen people was accordingly understood as indicating a specific role deliberately undertaken by the Jewish people and similar to that espoused by other groups (e.g., manifest destiny by the American people). The establishment of the State of Israel motivated some thinkers to call for a repudiation of the idea, in keeping with the position that normal existence for the Jews requires the dismissal of such concepts. Although only a small minority of Jewish thinkers espoused this position, the concept of the choice of Israel was not without theological difficulties. In the late 20th century there were also some important attempts by Jewish thinkers to develop a theology of election.
The most important scholarship on the concept of “chosenness” was Michael Wyschogrod’s The Body of Faith (1983) and David Novak’s The Election of Israel (1995). Wyschogrod held that the people of Israel were elected because of God’s exceptional love for them and that God’s love existed prior to the revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai. Novak also accepted the traditional belief that God formed a unique relationship with Israel but maintained that God extends his covenant to the world and that the particularity of Israel’s election is implicated in the general covenant with the world and vice versa.
Humanity
The image of God
In Genesis 1:26, 27; 5:1; and 9:6 two terms occur, “image” and “likeness,” that seem to indicate clearly the biblical understanding of essential human nature: humans are created in the image and likeness of God. Yet the texts in which these terms are used are not entirely unambiguous; the idea they point to does not appear elsewhere in Scriptures, and the concept is not too prominent in the rabbinic interpretations. What the image and likeness of God, or the divine image, refers to in the biblical texts is not made explicit, and, in light of the fact that the texts are dominated by psychosomatic conceptions of the nature of humanity (i.e., involving both soul and body), it is not possible to escape entirely the implication of “bodily” similarity. What the terms meant in their context at the time and whether they reflect mythological usages taken over from other Middle Eastern thought are by no means certain. However, according to Akiba, the most prominent 2nd-century-ce rabbi, the “image” of God seems to mean the unique human capacity for a spiritual relationship with him; this interpretation thus avoids any suggestion of a physical similarity between God and humans.
The earthly-spiritual creature
A dualistic interpretation of humanity was offered in parts of the ancient Jewish community that were deeply influenced by Greek philosophical ideas. In this understanding, the divine likeness is identified with the immortal, intellectual soul as contrasted to the body. Other ancient and modern thinkers have understood the likeness as ethical, placing particular emphasis on freedom of the will. Clearly, no doctrine of humanity can be erected on the basis of these several verses alone—a broader view must be taken. A careful examination of the biblical material, particularly the words nefesh, neshama, and ruaḥ—which are often too broadly translated as “soul” and “spirit”—indicates that these terms must not be understood as referring to the psychical side of a psychophysical pair. A human being does not possess a nefesh but rather is a nefesh, as Genesis 2:7 says, “wayehi ha-adam le-nefesh ḥayya” (“…and the man became a living being”). Humans are, for most of the biblical writers, “a unit of vital power,” not a dual creature separable into two distinct parts of unequal importance and value. While this understanding of human nature dominated biblical thought, in apocalyptic literature (2nd century bce–2nd century ce) the term nefesh was viewed as a separable psychical entity with existence apart from the body. This conception of human nature was not entirely divorced from the unitary biblical view, but a body-soul dualism (see mind-body dualism) was effectively present in such literature. In the Alexandrian version of Hellenistic Judaism, the orientation toward Greek philosophy, particularly the Platonic view of the soul imprisoned in the flesh, led to a clear-cut dualism with a negative attitude toward the body. Rabbinic thought remained closer to the biblical position, at least in its understanding of the human being as a psychosomatic unit, even though the temporary separation of the components after death was an accepted position.
The biblical view of the human as an inseparable psychosomatic unit meant that death was understood to be human dissolution. Although a human being ceased to be, this dissolution was not utter extinction. Some of the power that functioned in the unit may have continued to exist, but it was not to be understood any longer as life. The existence of the dead in sheol, the netherworld, was not living but the shadow or echo of living. For most biblical writers this existence was without experience, either of God or of anything else; it was unrelated to events. To call it immortality is to empty that term of any vital significance. The concept of sheol, however, along with belief in the possibility of the miraculous restoration of dead individuals to life and even the idea of the revival of the people of Israel from the “death” of exile, provided a foothold for the development of belief in the resurrection of the dead body at some time in the future. The stimulus for this may have come from ancient Iranian religion, in which the dualistic cosmic struggle is eventually won by life through the resurrection of the dead. This idea appeared in sketchy form in postexilic writings (Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2). In this view there is life only in the psychosomatic unit now restored. This restoration was bound up with the eschatological hope of Israel and was limited to the righteous. In subsequent apocalyptic literature, a sharper distinction between body and soul was entertained, and the latter was conceived of as existing separately in a disembodied state after death. Although at this point the doctrine of the resurrection of the body was not put aside, the direction of thinking changed. The shades of sheol were now thought of as souls, and real personal survival—with continuity between life on earth and in sheol—was posited. Greek ideas, with their individualistic bent, influenced Jewish thought, so that the idea of a resurrection that was in some way related to a final historical consummation began to recede. True life after death was now seen as release from the bondage of the body, so that in place of or alongside of the afterlife of physical resurrection was set the afterlife of the immortal soul.
It was not the status of the soul, however, that concerned the biblical and rabbinic thinkers. Instead, the latter’s discussions of biblical themes emphasized the ethical import of the composite nature of human beings. Humans are in a state of tension or equilibrium between the two foci of creation, the “heavenly” and the “earthly.” They necessarily participate in both. But this means that they are the only creatures who can truly serve their creator, for they alone, partaking of both sides of creation, may choose between them. It is this ability to make an ethical choice that is the distinguishing mark of humans. It is not derived from the “heavenly” side but resides in the dual nature of human existence. This view is clearly not a type of body-soul dualism in which the soul is the source of good and the body the basis of evil. Such an attitude, however, did appear in some rabbinic material and was often affirmed in medieval philosophical and mystical speculations and by some of the later moralists. An important development of biblical-rabbinic ideas, these later commentaries represent authentic attempts to come to terms with other currents of thought and with the problems and uncertainties inherent within the earlier materials themselves.
The ethically bound creature
Humankind is then viewed as ethically involved. The central theme of the first 11 chapters of Genesis focuses on this responsibility, for the implicit assumption of the pre-patriarchal stories is the human ability to choose between obedience and disobedience. Rabbinic Judaism, taking up the covenant-making episode between God and Noah (Genesis 9:8–17), developed it as the basis of humanity’s ethical obligation. All humanity, not merely Israel, is engaged in a covenant relationship with God, which was spelled out in explicit precepts—variously enumerated as 6, 7, or even 10 and occasionally as many as 30—that reflect general humanitarian behavior and are intended to assure the maintenance of the natural order by the establishment of a proper human society. The covenant with Israel was meant to bring into being a community that would advance the development of this society through its own obedience and witness.
Human nature, viewed ethically, was explained in Rabbinic Judaism not only as a tension between the “heavenly” and “earthly” components but as a tension between two “impulses.” Here again, fragmentary and allusive biblical materials were developed into more-comprehensive statements. The biblical word yetzer, for example, means “plan,” that which is formed in human minds. In the two occurrences of the word in Genesis (6:5; 8:21), the plan or formation of the human mind is described as raʿ, perhaps “evil” in the moral sense or maybe no more than “disorderly,” “confused,” “undisciplined.” Other occurrences in the Bible do not have this modifier. Nonetheless, the Aramaic translations (Targumim) invariably replaced it with bisha (“wicked”) wherever it occurred. Rabbinic literature created a technical term, ha-raʿ (“the evil impulse”), to denote the source within humans of their disobedience, and subsequently the counter-term yetzer ha-ṭov (“the good impulse”) was used to indicate humans’ obedience. These terms more clearly suggest the ethical quality of human duality, while their opposition and conflict point to human freedom and the ethical choices humans must make. Indeed, it is primarily within the realm of the ethical that Judaism posits freedom, recognizing the bound, or determined, quality of much of humans’ natural environment or physiological makeup.
This ethically free creature stands within the covenant relationship and may choose to be obedient or disobedient. Sin, then, is ultimately deliberate disobedience or rebellion against the divine sovereign. This is more easily observed in relation to Israel, for it is in this connection that the central concern of Judaism is most evident and discussed in greatest detail. The covenant relationship is not limited to Israel, because, according to Judaic tradition, all humankind stands within a covenant relation to God and is commanded to be moral and just; therefore, the same choice is made universally. In technical language, the acceptance of divine sovereignty by the people of Israel and by individuals within that community is called “receiving the yoke of the kingship.” This involves intellectual commitment to a basic belief, as expressed by the Deuteronomic proclamation: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one!” It also imposes obligations regarding communal and individual behavior. These two responses are understood to be inextricably bound, so that rejection of the divine sovereign is manifest as denial of God both intellectually and practically. It amounts to “breaking the yoke of the kingship.” In more specific terms, sin is sometimes summed up under three interrelated headings: idolatry, murder, and illicit sexual behavior, each of which involves rebellion, for it involves activities that deny—if not God’s existence—his commanding relationship and the requirement of human response. Such behavior destroys the community and sets individual against individual, thus thwarting the ultimate purpose of God, the perfected human society.
If humans are free to choose rebellion and to suffer its consequences, they are also able to turn back to God and to become reconciled with him. The Bible—particularly the prophetic writings—is filled with this idea, even though the term teshuva (“turning”) came into use only in rabbinic sources. Basically, the idea grows out of the covenant: the opportunity to return to God is the result of God’s unwillingness—despite human failures—to break off the covenant relationship. Rabbinic thought assumed that even the direst warnings of utter disaster and rejection imply the possibility of turning back to God, motivated by remorse and the desire for restoration. Divine readiness and human openness are the two sides of the process of reconciliation. What was expressed in prophetic literature in relation to the immediate historical and political situation was stated in the synagogal liturgy in connection with pentateuchal and prophetic lessons and the homilies developed from them. Thus, the divine invitation was constantly being offered. Humans are called upon to atone for their rebellion by positive action in the other direction and are summoned to reconstitute wholeness in their individual and communal life.
Jewish existence, as it developed under rabbinic leadership following the two disastrous rebellions against Rome, was an attempt to reconstitute a community of faith expressed in worship in an ordered society in which the individual would live a hallowed life of response to the divine will. Although this plan was not spelled out in detail, it was probably understood to be the paradigm for the eventual reconstruction of humanity.
Medieval and modern views of man
Although the Jewish view of human nature was centrally concerned with ethics, metaphysical issues, however rudimentary in the beginning, were also included in the developing discussion. Medieval philosophers, for example, sought an accommodation between the doctrine of the resurrection of the body and the concept of the immortality of the soul. The greatest of them, Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), propounded an extremely subtle position that equated immortality with the cleaving of the human intellect to the active intellect of the universe, thus limiting it to philosophers or to those who accepted a suitable philosophical theology on faith. Little or no consensus was evident in the modern period, though the language of resurrection or immortality was still used, even when its content was uncertain. Alongside this lack of agreement, however, Judaism’s basic affirmation about human nature remained the same: a human being is to be understood, however else, as a creature who makes free ethical choices for which he is responsible.
