A plea to pay attention to our Patriarch Abraham
Parashat Lech Lecha
In one context, the Talmudic term, “haters of the Jewish people” refers to internecine antagonism between sectors of the Jewish people. (Bavli, Pesachim 49b) In that context, the Talmud describes the antipathy of “secular” Jews for rabbinic tradition. I would broaden the phrase, sonei yisrael today. There is a dismissive arrogance of sectors of the national religious community in Israel for Jews in America, and there is an equally painful elitist movement in America calling themselves “diasporic Jews,” uncoupling themselves from the Jewish aspiration to create and maintain a sovereign state in the Land of Israel. This fissure is heartbreaking and reflects the extremisms that have now overtaken the Jewish people.
At the same time, Jewish attention in America is currently hyperfocused on antisemitism. I do not deny the existence of antisemitism. Anti-Jewish animus has always existed historically in many societies and civilizations. I do not deny that there is more blatant antisemitic rhetoric in America and Europe than over the past decades since WWII. The world is now inundated by extremist narratives on the left and the right. Millions of people are decrying the failures of liberal democracies and calling for “law and order” regimes that they think will punish the wealthy elite and redress the injustices of liberalism. These trends are symptomatic of potentially dangerous times for Jews who are perceived as other, as outsiders, as the cause of the ills of liberalism, as elite and as disproportionately powerful. I do not deny that today anti-Jewish hatred often links–overtly or covertly– all Jews to Israel, castigates all Jews as complicit in genocide, and then often serves as a mandate for antisemitic rhetoric or violence. (Note, for example, the case of the stolen sukkah from Hillel House at the University of Oregon in Corvallis, Oregon in September, 2026).
I would like to present three critical points in this essay, and then suggest a way of understanding what Torah tradition teaches about Avraham as a response to all of them, collectively.
(1) Despite everything we hear and see about antisemitism, antisemitism is a smokescreen that enables Jews to perpetuate the narrative of victimhood which inoculates us from any process of teshuvah. The obsession with antisemitism blocks introspection and thinking critically about actions perpetuated by the, or in the name of, the Jewish people. All of the energy devoted to fighting antisemitism, for example, criticizing the current mayor of New York City, acts as a diversion from the real challenge at hand. Our own prophetic tradition teaches us to ask, “What is our vision for the Jewish people and for the world in the next generation?” We need a vision for the future. The historical experience of Jews throughout the Diaspora is not a lachrymose narrative from catastrophe to catastrophe. Over many centuries and in many different lands, the Jewish people learned the wisdom of humility, flexibility, compromise, and how to value and dignify host cultures of people from whom we differ significantly.
(2) The deeply nativistic nationalism reflected by the government and military ethos in Israel and supported by large sectors of the population has resulted in unfathomable unethical and immoral attitudes and behaviors. These behaviors continue to result in nothing short of a desecration of God’s name associated with the Jewish people. Of course Jews in the Diaspora who see “religious Jews” in Israel murdering Palestinian villagers, destroying their property, humiliating them, and stealing their produce, disassociate themselves from a regime that not only tolerates these actions but actively promotes them with statements by powerful government officials, police who tolerate such criminality and theological rhetoric that emphasizes Jewish ownership of the land rather than responsibility for it and its residents. What has come to characterize national religious norms in Israel (and in America) have extant public voices that are racist, hateful, cruel, and inciteful of violence. Such popular phrases as, We will show them who is the landlord (here in Israel) underscores a mindset of brutality and belies the value of nuance and perspective.
(3) The diasporic movement emerging from growing numbers of young Jews in America and led intellectually by a select group of academics and rabbis exposes, to me, a heartless lack of empathy for the Jewish people and an arrogance that suggests a pathetic misunderstanding of the theological foundation of Jewish identity historically. Everyone can cherry-pick their sources and build a narrative to suit their worldview. Nevertheless, there is a consistent current that runs wide and deep throughout our halachic, theological-midrashic and liturgical sources that all evoke a yearning for and aspiration to build a Jewish society in the land of Israel–whatever the borders of that country might be. (The Torah itself has two different visions of the borders of the land. The expansive vision is described, for example, in the “Covenant of the Pieces” in Bereshit/Genesis 15:18, while a more pragmatic, narrower set of borders is found in Bemidbar/Numbers 34. This means, minimally, that the Torah understands that borders are fungible and might shift over time and circumstance. Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef himself was willing to trade land for a lasting and authentic peace. See, Techumin, 10, pp. 34-37, ““Mesirat Shetachim be-Eretz Yisrael bi-Mekom Pikuach Nefesh,” and Yabia Omer, vol. 10, Choshen Mishpat, Siman 6.)
By “de-coupling” “authentic Judaism” from nationalism, the participants in the movement of Diasporic Jews are merely turning their backs on confronting the moral, ethical, political and military challenges of the Jewish people’s dream of building a society that can provide an exemplar of human and humane civilization. This is precisely what the world needs today: a group of people willing to look inwards, assume responsibility for misdeeds and unethical decisions, and build a society that would enable all human beings who live there and all nations who see it to exclaim along with Ya’akov/Jacob, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not realize it… this is none other than the house of God.” (Bereshit/Genesis 28:16-18) Instead, the Jews of the Diasporic movement have decided to disassociate themselves from the rest of the Jewish people in a self-serving manner as if to remove themselves from anything that the State of Israel has done that embarrasses, shames, or repulses them. Meanwhile, they have not renounced their American citizenship when the history of the United States is replete with official policies that promoted genocide and slavery.
Shaul Magid is one of the most important leaders of the diasporic movement. Of course Magid’s understanding of exile as the cauldron within which Jews historically maintained a moral “positionality” is well taken. (See his essay, The Necessity of Exile.) That is precisely what nativistic national religious Jews in Israel do not understand. Our task as a people is to bring the “moral and existential positionality” we learned in the diaspora to bear on the way a Jewish country governs, protects its citizens, and treats non-Jewish citizens and non-Jewish residents. And yes, Jews have flourished for centuries throughout the Diaspora. It is precisely the gathering of all of those layers of diasporic experience that makes the kaleidoscopic culture of Israel so exhilarating and richly layered. Yet, to reject the aspirational project of building a country infused by the values epitomized by Avraham Avinu, the foundational personality for the fulfilled vision of the Jewish nation, is one-sided and heartbreakingly cruel. How can diasporic Jews walk away from their brothers and sisters and cousins, any more than religious nationalist Jews in Israel can dismiss American Jews? How can these groups turn their backs on each other and profess a love of Jewish peoplehood?
The misguided, absurd understanding of the spiritual mission of the Jewish people perpetuated by the movement of “Diasporic Judaism” is reflected by the Mission Statement and description of a proposal to open a Diasporic, Anti-Zionist Jewish Day School in the Boston area. Their website claims that they will teach love, justice and freedom as central values. All of these values that the school will strive to teach are resonant with authoritative teachings of Jewish religious tradition. Major daily prayers emphasize peace. We have ritualized the celebration of human freedom; anyone who thinks that the narratives of the Book of Exodus and Pesach itself apply only to Jews reads those sources narrowly. Justice is central; one of the seven mitzvot taught for all of humanity includes the ethical mandate to design an honest, truthful, uncorrupt judiciary.
Strangely, the group has written that Our name calls back to the biblical story of brothers Cain and Abel, which teaches us the importance of mutual obligation, shared humanity, and interdependence! This reveals the most egregious part of their own self-understanding. Cain and Abel “teach us the importance of mutual obligation, shared humanity, and interdependence?!” In fact, Jewish tradition is preoccupied with what the story of Cain and Abel teaches us about human nature (there were no Jews at that time. The narrative is about humanity at large.) What would drive human beings to murder their brothers? The ancient rabbis give three answers: money, religious political power, and lust. (See, Bereshit Rabbah 22:7) These are precisely the corruptions challenging the Jewish people and the entire Western world today: wealth, power (in the name of religion) and immorality. The Diasporic Judaism movement is solving this problem by fleeing from the rest of the Jewish people. That is understandable; the challenges of corruption and cruelty in the name of the Jewish State seem insurmountable. But as members of a Jewish family with a shared tradition their decision to secede is heartbreaking and self-serving.
Parashat Lech Lecha introduces Avram, becoming covenantally, Avraham. For all of Avraham’s failures and mistakes (lying about Sarah to save himself, not standing up to God at the Akeda as he did in Sdom and Amorrah), Avraham epitomizes all of the values that challenge current policies, entrenched attitudes, violence in Israel, anti-Zionist, “Diasporic” platforms, and the hysteria over anti-semitism that has diverted Jewish public attention from deeper, internal issues. Avraham, from a young age, had an intuitive feeling for the Creator of the Universe, and as such, understood that God had a vision for all humanity. This depiction of Avraham is found in the famous midrash of Avraham smashing his father’s idols, reflecting his commitment to truth. Avraham would not tolerate anything that camouflages the truth. Secondly, there are several traditions in which God saw that Avraham could receive two large kidneys, functioning as sources of wisdom, throughout which Torah values would flow (Bereshit Rabbah 61:1, Midrash Tanchuma Vayigash 12, and Avot d’Rabbi Natan 33). Avraham knew what was right, he felt it, it flowed from inside of him.
Rashi selected midrashic teachings that highlighted additional qualities of Avraham’s character. You will be a blessing God said to Avraham (Bereshit/Genesis 12:2). Rashi wrote: [God means to say to Avraham that as of this moment,] blessings are placed in your hands. Until now, the blessings for humanity were in My hands. I blessed Adam and Noah. However, now you [have the power] to bless whomever you think. According to this midrash, God sees that Avraham values humanity. He can see the goodness in all people; remember, there were no Jews in the world. The story of Avraham is the story of how the Jewish people, regardless of historical circumstances, should see all human beings. Here God endows Avraham with the power to bless. Blessing someone is a powerful gesture of love, admiration, dignity and respect. As a result of the way Avraham views other people, nations, and cultures, all the families of the world will become blessed by virtue of their relationship with Avraham. (12:3) The word for nations and cultures and peoples is, “families” of the world. Disparate cultures will see Avraham, he will inspire them, they will adopt shared values in their own way, and the world will be filled with a diverse, blessed humanity.
In the same verse, God also told Avraham to travel to the land that I will show you. Rashi comments that God did not reveal the destination in order to deepen Avraham’s feeling of yearning and love for the homeland he is leaving: God did not reveal the [name of] the land of Israel immediately, in order that [his homeland] became more deeply beloved in his eyes. This compelling clarification of Rashi is based on the super-commentary Siftai Chachamim by Rabbi Shabbetai ben Yosef Bass (Poland, 1641–1718). In other words, God wanted Avraham to preserve his love for his diasporic homeland throughout his journey and also when he settled in the land of Israel. Jewish identity requires a constant balance and tension between appreciation of and love for the blessings of the diaspora along with the challenges and opportunities of building a sovereign entity. Both temper each other. Avraham’s love of his original homeland enabled him to interact with the residents of Canaan with dignity, respect and humility–despite the fact that he was a monotheist and they were pagans.
The Torah’s narrated voice then tells us, the future readers, that …then, the Canaanites resided in the land (12:6). Rashi wrote that then the Canaanites continuously conquered the land. The word, “then,” is ambiguous. Does the Torah mean only “then,” in the days of Avraham? Rabbi Shabbetai ben Yosef notes that of course not! The Canaanites tried continuously to take the land, throughout the lifetime of Moshe and beyond. According to Rashi then, the Torah is teaching that from the days of Avraham there will be tension between two visions: a vision for sharing the land, and a vision of warfare and conquest. The vision of conquest has overshadowed the possibility of sharing a love for the same land through blessing, dignity, negotiation and honor. These were the values and ways of Avraham. He spoke multiple languages, he negotiated with the residents in the land. He fought wars when necessary–to free his nephew who was being held hostage, but he also entered into peace treaties with the King of Sdom and with Avimelech.
The anti-zionists, the nativist religious nationalists, and the secularists can all learn from Avraham. Instead of vilifying each other, it is time to turn inwards. It is time to look at each other and build enough trust to nourish a love of peoplehood. The humility required to live in the diaspora will enable religious zionists to mollify their extremist and racist attitudes. Israel has allowed and perpetuates tremendous suffering; even if the war in Gaza had to be fought in the way it was, how can the Jewish people fail to see the human suffering it has caused? This applies to many Zionists in America as well. The courage of Israelis should inspire the Jews of the diaspora. How can Jews in the diaspora simply divorce themselves from half of our people? There is too much finger-pointing, too much corruption, too much arrogance, too much unwillingness to admit avarice and mendacity, too much suffering, too much unbridled power. Avraham understood all of this. That is why God chose him to be different. After the generations of cruelty before the flood, and the generations of arrogance that built the Tower of Bavel, and the fratricide of Cain against his brother Abel, God wanted one human being to be different. This is supposed to be our legacy. How dare we abandon that privilege, that blessing, and that charge?