Genesis v. genocide: Are you a friend of Abraham or a Joshua Jew?

By the time Sarah dies, God has promised to give Abraham all the land that he can see and walk on, not once but four times. And yet, when he goes to bury Sarah, Abraham describes himself as having no rights in the land: “Ger v’toshav anokhi imachem, I am a stranger and sojourner with/among you” (Gen. 23:4). He asks the tribe of the Hittites to acknowledge not his power but his vulnerability.

We could chalk this up to the idea that his time to inherit the land is “not yet” – he is told that there are four hundred years to go before it will be his (Gen. 15:13). Or we could attribute his deference to a rational fear that if he were to take the land he has been promised, the tribes of the Canaanites would make war against him. But Abraham, in the war of the three kings against the four kings, has already shown himself to be militarily mighty, able to defeat the kings who have already triumphed, and strong enough to tip the balance of power toward whichever tribe he allies with (Gen. 14:13-15).

If it’s not fear then what motivates Abraham’s deference? The Torah teaches us that this vulnerability that Abraham finds in himself is not just a temporary state – rather, it is the state that God will prescribe for all the Israelites who will live in the land. In the laws of the Shmitah or sabbatical year, we read: “You may not sell the land permanently, for you are strangers and sojourners with Me, ki gerim v’toshavim atem imadi” (Lev 25:23). In other words, Avraham is not describing his temporary disenfranchisement until God gives him or his descendants the go-ahead to conquer. Rather, he is prophetically foretelling his descendants who they must be if they are to sustain themselves in the land.

This aversion to taking the land by force is consistent throughout the book of Genesis. We learn that every time Isaac digs a well, the Philistine shepherds take it over. But Isaac’s response is not to fight over the well. Two times after he digs wells he retreats. Only when he digs the third well does he find that no one contests it. He names the well Rechovot because “now Hashem has made enough room for us and we can be fruitful in the land” (Gen.26:22).

The same pattern is found with Jacob. When he comes to the place called Shechem, he leases space to erect his tents and pen his flocks (Gen. 33:19). But when Dinah is taken by force, raped by the namesake of the city, Shechem the son of Hamor, a radically different story unfolds.* Jacob’s sons convince all the men of Shechem to undertake circumcision so that they can intermarry with Jacob’s family (Gen. 34:15). Then Shimon and Levi take their swords and attack and kill all the men in the city, who are impaired while they are recovering from the operation (Gen. 34:25).

Were Shimon and Levi wrong? The end of the story leaves us hanging. Jacob berates his sons because they have made him “stink” to the people of the land. “I am few and they will gather against me…I will be destroyed” (Gen. 34:30). It sounds like he is facing a PR problem and a strategic problem caused by their actions, not a genocide-is-morally-repugnant problem.

Does Genesis then countenance genocide? We don’t understand the meaning of the story of Shechem until the end of Jacob’s life, when he curses Shimon and Levi. Not only does he curse them for their violence, but he permanently bars them from possessing land in Canaan (Gen. 49:5-7). In other words, the consequence of their taking the land by force is that they are entirely disenfranchised from owning land.**

The book of Joshua, of course, tells a different story, mostly valorizing both conquest and genocide.*** Joshua clearly contradicts the Torah: not only does the very end of Joshua completely erase the story of genocide at Shechem (Josh. 24:32), but the tribe of Shimon gets an inheritance right alongside the other tribes (Josh. 19:1).

Today we have Torah Jews – I mean people who honor the image of God in all human beings, whether Jewish or not, and who reject both taking the land by force and any ideas or actions that even hint towards genocide. This includes the conduct of the war in Gaza. And we have Joshua Jews, who believe in conquest, who justify killing tens of thousands, normal morality be damned, many of whom like to see themselves as “Torah-true”.

Joshua Jews – Jews who reject what the stories of the ancestors in Genesis are teaching us — include those radical settlers in the West Bank who think they can take possession of the land by carrying out pogroms. Joshua Jews include Netanyahu and his fascist allies, who last summer rejected a ceasefire deal that would have brought the hostages home, going against advice from the negotiators and the generals, because they want to continue making war. The six hostages were killed immediately after that deal was rejected. They include the people in Israel’s government who are ready to kill tens of thousands in Gaza with impunity. The same people are eager to destroy Bedouin villages inside Israel and build Jewish communities in their place, as we saw last week in the Negev at Umm al-Hiran.

Then there are the beinonim – the in-between Jews, who believe the propaganda of the government, who close their eyes to reality. They justify the occupation of the West Bank, feeding themselves on delusions that it’s not “occupied” land but “disputed” land. As if the military of one people were not ruling over another people. They also blame Hamas, may those murderers rot, for all the deaths of Gazan civilians, denying what is morally obvious: Israel has complete responsibility for the way it conducts its war. They are the people who would rather believe that starvation in Gaza is not real, that death figures are made up, that tens of thousands of children in Gaza have not been killed, than question the “purity” of the IDF.

This past week, Ben Gvir’s Ministry of National Security razed the unrecognized Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran to the ground. If you want to know which kind of Jew you are, this is a good test. Let’s be clear about the facts: Umm Al-Hiran was founded when the government forced that group of Bedouin to leave the western Negev so that the land could be appropriated for Kibbutz Shoval. The government placed them in Umm al-Hiran and told them this would be their home — without giving them the deed. That was in 1952. Then decades later the government refused to recognize the village (which also means, no electricity, no services, and no vote) – because it wanted to “Judaize” the Negev. The same was true of the village of A-tir, destroyed so as to be replaced by Jewish “Yatir”, and it is also the case with some other unrecognized Bedouin villages.

Erasing Bedouin villages to make room for Jewish communities is the kind of blatant racism that seems close to the level of apartheid. Joshua Jews justify this by ignoring promises made by the government, by denying normal human decency, and by embracing the ideology of Jewish supremacy. Torah Jews understand that the Bedouin in these villages are facing a Kafka-esque hell that no human being should ever be subject to. And the beinonim, the in-betweeners, see this as an unfortunate but legal and legitmate process by which the state exercises its sovereignty.

Do we want to be a friend of Abraham’s, the friend of God? Or do we want to ignore the lessons of Genesis and live lives that are the exact opposite of what the Torah demands of all people living in the land of promises? If we take the covenant seriously, Israel’s government has already chosen the failing side of this wager. What will the Jewish people choose?

* According to the Torah Dinah is raped, but The Red Tent, Anita Diamant’s feminist retelling of Dinah’s story, imagines that she is actually in love with Shechem.

** Why doesn’t Jacob curse Shimon and Levi at the time of the incident? One interpretation is that he was terrified of them.

*** Note: There are some verses in Joshua which suggest the land was not gained by military conquest, like Josh. 24:12. Likewise, there are some verses in Deuteronomy that are consonant with the book of Joshua’s idea of conquest. The pattern of Torah vs. Joshua is coherent, but in both directions there is mosaicism — occasional elements more consistent with one that are found in the other.