EXOD314 The national character of the covenant is clear-cut in both biblical and rabbinic literature. The covenant is specifically between God and the Jewish people; its terms do not apply to others: [Exodus 19:5-6; Leviticus 20:24, 26; Psalms 147:19-20]. The Rabbis continued this theme. Probably the best indication of this is what they say with reference to the Sabbath, which is the symbol of the ongoing covenant between God and Israel and consequently, according to the Rabbis, the equivalent of all of the other commandments. (Cf. J. Nedarim 38b and Exodus Rabbah 25:12). The Torah says: [Exodus 31:16-7.] On this the Rabbis commented: Mekhilta d-Rabbi Yishamael, Ki Tissa on Exodus 31:17). This is not simply a matter of ideology: it has a pervasive effect on practice as well. Specifically, Jewish law operates like any other legal system in assuming that its rights and obligations apply fully only to the members of the national group. The Rabbis made this explicit by asserting that non-Jews are subject to only the seven commandments given to the children of Noah -- that is, prohibitions against murder, idolatry, incest, eating a limb torn from a living animal, blasphemy, and theft and requirement to establish laws and courts. (T. Avodah Zarah 8:4; B. Sanhedrin 56a, 60a). Non-Jews are given certain protections and privileges in Jewish law, (M. Gittin 5:8, T. Gittin 5:4-5) as aliens often are in other legal systems, but they are not required to take on “the yoke of the commandments” (a rabbinic expression) (See, for example, Sifra “Shemini” 12:4, on Leviticus 11:45 (57b) and M. Berachot 2:2 because that was exclusively a feature of God's covenantal relationship with the Jews. That part of the Jewish covenantal notion should be fairly easy for Christians to understand because Christianity also conceives itself as the prime way of relating to God -- indeed, as the “New Covenant” that supersedes the “Old Testament.” Anyone who refuses to believe in Jesus is, according to the Christian scriptures, condemned: “No one who believes in him [Jesus] will be condemned; but whoever refuses to believe is condemned already because he has refused to believe in the name of God's only Son.” (John 3:18. Compare also John 15:1-6, Acts 4:12, I Corinthians 1:18, and 2 Corinthians 2:15). Indeed, despite all the progress in Catholic-Jewish relations since the Vatican issued its 1965 document Nostra Aetate, in a recent papal statement on the subject, the Vatican asserted that Catholicism is the only “instrument for the salvation of all humanity,” that all other faiths are “gravely deficient,” and that even other denominations of Christianity “suffer from defects.” (Sheler (2000) “Pull Back or Reach Out? Interfaith Statements Seem to Differ Markedly,” U.S. News and World Reports (September 18), 74. The Vatican document is called Dominus Iesus, and it was issued on September 6, 2000.) It makes perfect sense that people of all faiths should consider their own to be the best, for otherwise why would they affirm it? In contrast to the three Western religions, many Eastern religions do not claim to have an exclusive hold on the truth or the good and, therefore, permit adherents to embrace several religions simultaneously; but even followers of those religions clearly think that their chosen faith(s) is (are) the best. Minimally, people think that their own faith is best for them, and many would go further, claiming that their faith is best for everyone. What is probably harder to communicate is the fact that for the Jewish tradition the superiority of Judaism does not mean, as it historically has for much of Christianity and apparently still does for Catholicism, that it is the only way in which people can fulfill God's will for mankind and be “saved” (a word that means in Christianity to be delivered from sin but in Judaism means instead liberation from the dangers and limitations of life, including rule by others). Jews are required to obey the law because they are part of God's covenant with Israel at Sinai; (See, for example, Deuteronomy 7:9-11). Non-Jews were never part of the Sinai covenant and, therefore, are not obligated under it. This does not mean, though, that non-Jews are excluded from God's concern or prevented from enjoying God's favor. On the contrary, if they abide by the seven commandments given to Noah and seek to be righteous, they have done all that God wants of them. “The pious and virtuous of all nations participate in internal bliss,” the Rabbis said (Sifra on Leviticus 19:18) -- a sharp contrast to the eternal damnation inherited by those who reject Jesus according to some versions of Christianity. Even at the prime moment of nationalistic triumph, the Exodus from Egypt, the Rabbis picture the ministering angels singing songs of praise over the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, but God rebukes them, saying, “My children lie drowned in the sea, and you sing hymns of triumph?” (B. Megillah 10b). Thus, contrary to many versions of Christian and Muslim faiths, the Jewish covenant does not entail exclusivity or triumphalism. Moreover, the Rabbis did not seek to convert non-Jews to Judaism, and many of them maintained that the righteous among the idolaters of ancient times shall inherit a place in the world to come. (T. Sanhedrin 13:2; and in regard to the chidren on Gentiles, T. Sanhedrin 13:1).

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EXOD320 … the Torah does not portray the Israelites themselves as all that pious or moral. On the contrary, it makes clear that God's choice of Israel for this task is not based on any rational grounds. It is not because of Israel’s greatness that God chose Israel for this task, for Israel is among the smallest of peoples. It is also not because of the people Israel’s goodness, for they stubbornly persist in their evil ways. (Deuteronomy 7:7). Indeed, shortly after entering into the covenant at Mount Sinai, that people abandoned God for the Golden Calf, and they sinned again in not trusting God to take them into the Promised Land after ten of the twelve spies report the difficulty of the task ahead. (Exodus 32-34 and Numbers 13-14. See also Deuteronomy 9:5). In both cases, God seriously considers destroying the people forthwith and starting over again with Moses leading some other people; But Moses, using a series of lawyerly arguments, prevails on God to retain His ties with the people Israel. Thus Israel’s size, piety, and goodness are not the reasons that God chose it as His people; it is rather because of God's love for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; His promises to them; and His need for a model people that He agrees to continue His relationship with their descendants, no matter what. The Jewish people, though, are to be what the Moabite seer Balaam described as “a people that dwells apart, not reckoned among the nations.” (Numbers 23:9; Deuteronomy 32:12, 33:28, Jeremiah 49:31, Micah 7:14).

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EXOD321 See [[EXOD912]] Exodus 24:7 do DORFFDRAG 62-3

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EXOD326 See [[EXOD912]] Exodus 24:7 do DORFFDRAG 62-3

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EXOD334 See [[EXOD40]] Exodus 2:12 struck DORFFDRAG 33-4

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EXOD336 Thus the Jewish and American understandings of the nature of community and of the status of the individual within the community have some important similarities. In the minds of many American Jews, these mask the significant differences between the two concepts. Indeed, many American Jews want to believe that their Jewish self and their American self fit neatly together, like hand in glove, with no contradictions or even tensions. As we have seen, though, American ideology depicts the community in a “thin” sense, by which membership is completely voluntary and may be revoked by the individual at anytime and by which the purpose of the community is predominantly pragmatic. In contrast, Judaism’s sense of community is “thick,” which means that its members are organically part of the communal corpus and cannot sever themselves from it and that the purpose of community, while partly pragmatic, is essentially theological, to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

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EXOD350 [Continued from [[934]] Deuteronomy 18:22 prophet DORFFDRAG 40-1]. This practical problem of distinguishing a true prophet from a false one, coupled with the conviction of several prophets that God's punishment of the people for disobedience would include not only the destruction of the Temple but also the cessation of prophecy, (Amos 8:11-12; Micah 3;4,6,7; Jeremiah 18:18, 23:29-40; and Ezekiel 7:26) together meant that by the end of the biblical period prophecy was no longer seen as the vehicle for knowing God's will. Indeed, the prophet Zachariah already foresees a time when “every ‘prophet’ will be ashamed of the ‘visions’ [he had] when he ‘prophesized,’” and the prophet's own mother and father will say to the prophet, “You shall die, for you have lied in the name of the Lord” and they themselves “will put him to death when he ‘prophesizes.’ (Zekhariah 13:3-4). This, however, did not remove the statements of God as the objective criterion that would determine the true and the good. The way that we would know God's will, however, changed: It would now be through the interpretation and application of the Torah, the one text that all Jews accepted as true Revelation from God. Study, in other words, became the post biblical form of God's revelation, (B. Bava Batra 12a) making it a religious experience as well as an educational and legal one. It is for this reason that Jewish law obligates Jews to study the Torah throughout their lives, even if they are poor and even if such study involves them in debates with their teachers or parents, for nothing less than knowing God's will is at stake. Rabbis, who gain their authority at least in part from their expertise in the texts and traditions of Judaism, would often differ with each other in discerning the will of God, and that might be frustrating at times; but one must learn to live with that indeterminacy and open one's mind to the multiplicity of meanings inherent in both the law and lore of the Torah: Lest a person say, “Since some scholars declare a thing impure and others declare it pure, some pronounce it to be permitted while others declare it forbidden, some disqualify an object [as ritually fit] while others uphold its fitness, how can I study Torah under such circumstances?” Scripture states, “They are given from one Shepherd” (Ecclesiastes 12:11): one God has given them, one leader [Moses] has uttered them at the command of the Lord of all creation, blessed be He, as it says, “And God spoke all these words” (Exodus 20:1). You, then, should make your ear like a grain receiver and acquire a heart that can understand the words of the scholars who declare a thing impure as well as those who declare it pure, the words of those who declare thing forbidden as well as those who pronounce it permitted, and the words of those who disqualify an object [as ritually fit] as well as those who uphold its fitness. ... Although one scholar offers his view and another scholar offers his, the words of both are all derived from what Moses, the Shepherd, received from the One Lord of the universe. Avot d-Rabbi Natan 18:3; T. Sotah 7:7; B. Hagigah 3b; and Numbers Rabbah 14:4.

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EXOD361 See [[GEN854]] Genesis 15:16 iniquity DORFFDRAG 66

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EXOD369 The other peoples of the world, whom the biblical authors and the talmudic rabbis knew, were, by and large, not monotheists, but idolaters, whether Canaanite, Greek, or Roman. The Hebrew Bible is relentlessly opposed to idolatry, prominently enshrining the prohibitions against it in the Decalogue announced on Mount Sinai and repeating it as well in many other places in the Bible. (Exodus 20:3-6 and Deuteronomy 5:7-10. Examples of other places that mention this prohibition: Deuteronomy 4:15-19, 23-24, 28; 7:25; and 8:19). Moreover, according to the Torah, the reason God wants the Israelites to occupy the Land of Israel and displace the seven nations already there is precisely because of the natives’ idolatry and the immorality to which it led them. (Genesis 15:16 and Deuteronomy 9:4-5). The Bible speaks, for example, of the sacrifice of children to Molech and of sanctified acts of adultery and incest within the Canaanite cult. (See Leviticus 18; 2 Kings 21:3-7 and 23:4-12; Jeremiah 7:30-31). The Rabbis carried this further. They devoted an entire tractate of the Mishnah and Talmud -- Avodah Zarah -- to the subject of idolatry to define it clearly and to prevent Jews from getting too close to idolatry or idolaters lest they be tempted by such practices. In some passages, the Rabbis actually made fun of idolatry (e.g. B. Avodah Zarah 2ff), and they wrote liturgy that thanks God for enabling Jews to be part of those who spend their time in studying and practicing the Jewish tradition rather than being among those who waste their lives away following the emptiness and immorality of idolatry. (J. Berachot 7d). Another part of the Jewish rejection of idolatry is based on theological considerations. Worshipping the sun, moon, or stars amounts to making part of reality the whole of it, taking one of God's creatures as God Himself. That error is even more egregious if one makes an idol of a human artifact, for then one reduces God to what human beings can make. Thus idolatry involves both moral and theological errors that ultimately makes it impossible even to recognize God let alone to worship God properly. To accomplish their divinely ordained task, then, Israel had to remain separate and apart from the other nations that might lead them astray: “’You shall be holy’ [means that] even as I am holy, so you too should be holy; as I am separate [the prime meaning of the Hebrew word usually translated “holy”], so you too should be separate.” (Sifra, “Shemini 12:4 on Leviticus 11:45, p. 57b.) The Torah records that fraternization with the Moabites led the Israelites to both idolatry and immorality, (Numbers 25) and that early incident set the stage for the Jewish tradition's evaluation of non-Jews.

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EXOD407 Many traditions articulate their fundamental assertions about the nature of life in their central stories, the tales describing their founding and many of their basic convictions. Judaism's central story, for example, is Exodus- Sinai; Christianity's is the Passion-Resurrection of Jesus; and the central story of the United States is the American Revolution and the adoption of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. When core commitments are described in story form, it is easy for adherents to understand the affirmations, to remember them, and to apply them to daily life. ... In the beginning of the Bible, there is Genesis, in which we hear about Creation and meet the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. The central Jewish story, though, comes later: It is the Exodus from Egypt to meet God at Sinai and to continue to the Promised Land. The last four of the five books of the Torah all revolve around the Exodus from Egypt, the trek to Sinai, the Revelation the forty years in the wilderness, and the anticipated end of reaching the Promised Land, together with the laws and theological concepts that are announced along the way. Like the Torah, much of the later Jewish tradition also concentrates on these events. Thus the Exodus from Egypt is the paradigm that is repeatedly invoked when the authors of traditional Jewish prayers wanted to demonstrate that God acts in history and that God has been, and will be, our Redeemer. Passover, of course, focuses on the Exodus story, and, at least in rabbinic tradition, Shavuot does as well, marking the time when the revelation at Sinai occurred. The Torah also connects Sukkot, the harvest festival, to this story, asserting that the festival should remind us of the huts in which the Israelites lived as they wandered through the wilderness on their way to Israel. (Leviticus 23:42-43). Even the Sabbath, first announced in the Torah as a reminder of Creation, shifts in focus in the book of Deuteronomy from slavery in Egypt. (Genesis 2:1-3 and Exodus 20:11 tie to Sabbath to Creation, whereas Deuteronomy 5:15 ties it to the Exodus). Thus the story is not only a prime feature of Jewish sacred scripture but also permeates Jewish liturgy and holidays.

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