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Bereishis

The Definition of Jewishness in Genesis

By Rabbi Joel Finkelstein

I would like to focus on the theme that Rabbi Yonatan Grossman of Yeshivat Har Etzion mentioned in his article on the Avot.  He posits that a person is only a founding father if he leaves the homeland as Avraham did. I believe we can expand this notion of leaving the homeland to all the Matriarchs and Patriarchs, and unlike R. Grossman who believes that it is Isaac is the one who is left out, it is actually Rachel who does not fit the mold.  What is it that determines one’s “Jewishness” or status as a Patriarch or Matriarch? Or, simply what do all the Patriarchs and Matriarchs have in common?  They all left from somewhere. Why is that important? Because in order to become Jewish one has to leave all previous religious ties.

Avraham and Sarah we know were told to “Go forth (Lech Lecha) from your land, your homeland and the house of your father to the land that I will show you. And Avram went as G-d spoke to him, and Lot went with him…. Avram took his wife Sarai, and Lot his nephew, and all the wealth they had amassed and the souls they had made in Haran, and they went to go to the land of Canaan….”. Although Sarai is not described as going independent of Avraham, she does uproot herself from her family and homeland, albeit as part of Avraham’s entourage.

Now, when it comes to Isaac, one might maintain, as R. Grossman does, that he never uproots or goes anywhere. I believe that this is a mistake. Isaac, of course, typifies the Jew who is born and raised in his homeland. How is such a Jew to emulate Avraham and become “Jewish”? Is every Jew supposed to leave the homeland of Israel in order to be Avrahamic? No, for this there is an institution called, “aliya laregel”, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in which a person uproots himself from home and goes to someplace of greater holiness. For this reason, the covenant with G-d is twice described as involving this pilgrimage. In Exodus chapters 23 (Parashat Mishpatim) and 34 (Parashat Ki Tissa) the pilgrimage is contained as part of the covenant with G-d. If the Jews are to be Jews, they must uproot themselves constantly and go to a place of holiness as Avraham had done before them. They must go from the Land of Israel to a place of greater holiness, the Land of Moriah.

What did Isaac do to uproot himself? “After these matters, G-d tested Avraham, and He said, “Avraham” and he said, “Here I am”. And He said take please your son, your only son, the one you love, Isaac, and go forth (Lech Lecha) to the Land of Moriah…” (Vayera)  Avraham’s task, together with Isaac, was to uproot himself from where he was and to go on yet another adventure. Neither Isaac nor Avraham could remain complacent in the land. They had to “go” somewhere to show their commitment and to shake them out of complacency.

One might argue that Isaac was not asked to go to Moriah but only Avraham, but I believe that just as Sarai had a secondary role to Avraham in her leaving, Isaac, the ultimate follower, became who he was together with his father. The verses which do not include Isaac as a forefather are emphasizing his secondary role but the many verses which do include Isaac as a forefather see his leaving home as an act of “leaving”, thereby qualifying him to be a forefather. 

Furthermore, both Avraham and Isaac are asked to leave their family behind, in a sense. Not only is Sarah left behind, but according to the original instructions, Isaac and Avraham are to be separated. Isaac is to be slaughtered. This is a greater sacrifice than just leaving the “house of your father”.

What about Lot and Ishmael? Lot leaves Avraham, thereby showing that he leaves the fold. One is supposed to leave one’s original setting, in order to join the Avrahamic sect, but leaving the Avrhamic sect permanently is not a positive act.

Rivka obviously earns her status as a member of the tribe by agreeing to leave her family and go off with a strange man, “for G-d has made his trip successful”, ie. it was seen as a sign from G-d that she should go. “They called Rebecca and they said to her, will you go with this man, and she said she will go.” Her departure is more parallel to Avraham than the departure of Yaakov, which is inverse (Yaakov leaves Canaan. Rivka and Avraham leave Charan). She certainly earns her status as “Avrahamic”.

Jacob, as Rabbi Grossman pointed out, is told to leave his house, by his father, of all people. “Get up and go (kum lech) to Paden Aram to the house of Betuel the father of your mother…” He is also told later to return to Canaan, thereby paralleling Avraham’s arrival from Charan. Jacob tells Rachel and Leah that G-d told him the following: Now get up and leave from this land and return to your homeland. The words “homeland “ and “land” are reminiscent of the statement to Avraham to leave his homeland and land. 

Esav, however, does go away, but only to neighboring Edom which is more of an act of settling Israel than an act of leaving Israel. As some commentators to the Passover Haggadah have pointed out, he who goes down to Egypt (as Yaakov does) merit to inherit Israel. He who tries to settle down right away (as Esav does) will not inherit the land.

Rachel and Leah also leave their homeland, but with a twist. Jacob tells Rachel and Leah that G-d told him the following: “Now get up and leave from this land and return to your homeland.” Rachel and Leah responded and said to him, “Do we still have any portion or inheritance in the house of our father? Weren’t we considered to him as strangers…? Whatever G-d says to you, you should do….” And Rachel stole the terafim….(Vayetze)

In stating that they have no portion in the house of their father they are cutting their ties with Laban and his ideologies. However, once Rachel steals the terafim, some sort of semi-idolatrous soothsaying device, she has failed to cut off all ideological connections with home. “Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, remove the foreign gods which are with you…and they gave to Jacob all the gods which were in their hands… and Jacob hid them under the tree….” It was clear to Jacob, as he brought his family back to Canaan that unless they severed their ties with idolatry, their arrival in Canaan would be of no religious significance. In fact, right after this, Rachel died. 

Now does that make Rachel less of a matriarch than others? Yes, and this explains why she is not buried with Jacob. However, Rachel is revived posthumously. Firstly, her death atones. Just as Isaac was to be severed from his family by death, Rachel actually is tragically separated from her beloved husband by death. As the Rabbis say (Talmud, Yoma 85b), death is also an atonement. Furthermore, when Jeremiah (ch. 31) describes Rachel as crying for her children who are no longer, ie. who are in exile, she is vicariously leaving Israel with them, and as G-d promises her that “veshavu vanim ligvulam” that children will return to their boundaries, she is vicariously and posthumously returning to Israel, but this time unencumbered by terafim and the like. Rachel performs her purest act of leaving with her death and beyond. 

(Rabbi Amnon Bazak’s remarks, which describe Rachel’s atonement in the naming of Joseph and Benjamin (Ben-Oni), only complement my theory that Rachel eventually undoes her linkage to her background.)

Now we can understand a bit more about the significance of Ruth’s leaving of her ancestral home. Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you for where you go I will go, where you sleep I will sleep, your people are my people and your G-d is my G-d. Where you die I shall die and there I shall be buried.” (Ruth, I) She is identifying with the fate and faith of Naomi. Leaving one’s national heritage is part of embracing a new identity and eternity.

We find that when Boaz flattered Ruth, he practically alludes to Avraham and his wanderings from his homeland and house of his father. “Boaz responded to her  (Ruth) and said, it was surely told to me all that you have done for your mother in law. You left your father and mother and your homeland and you have gone to a land you did not know three days ago.” (Ruth, II, 11)

This notion that it is important to leave one’s family (of course with all due respect to one’s parents) in order to embrace a new faith is rooted in the notion of marriage. Just as in marriage, the Torah says, “Therefore a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife and be as one” (Genesis II), so in conversion a person must leave one’s family and previous faith in order to embrace G-d. We know of course that our relationship to G-d is compared to a bride and groom, as in, “The rejoicing of a bride for a groom, your G-d will rejoice over you” (Isaiah 62) We can now appreciate the verse in Jeremiah (2, 2) “I remember your kindness of youth, the love of your courtship, going after Me in the wilderness in an unplanted land…” The willingness to follow G-d, to leave everything else in favor of G-d, is the ultimate act of commitment to G-d.

We can also use repentance as a model for this discussion. What Maimonides writes regarding repentance is true of conversion as well. “What is repentance? That the sinner should leave his sin and remove it from his mind and affirm in his heart that he will not do it again… Among the ways of Teshuva are… and he changes his activities totally for the good, and he exiles from his place for exile atones for sin for it makes a person humble…” (Maimonides, Laws of Teshuva, II, 2, 4) By leaving the place of origin, be it Canaan in the case of Jacob, or Charan in the case of all the others, they were showing regret for the past and were atoning for their sins by the affliction of exile.

The laws of conversion in the Talmud are derived from Israel’s early embrace of Judaism. “With three things Israel entered the covenant, with milah, with immersion, and with sacrifice.  Milah was in Egypt… immersion was in the desert… (Laws of Forbidden Relations, XIII, 1-3). It might be argued that implicit in the requirements for conversion is not only circumcision, immersion, and sacrifice, but the leaving from somewhere, for after all, in the midsts of the national conversion at Sinai and during the exodus, the exodus took place. This is why the Exodus is so crucial to our faith; it is a sign of the ultimate commitment of Israel to G-d.

What does all this tell us about what Judaism is? The Torah always encourages spiritual growth. It eschews complacency and stagnation. We need to learn new lessons in new places and to sift out all the bad influences from our environment. To be a Jew we need to be like Avraham and like all the other patriarchs and matriarchs and march forward.