Hoods

"As for me, I am in your hands: do to me what seems good and right to you."
Jeremiah 26.14 [JPS Tanakh 1985]

What makes you a person?

Wait just a moment before you answer that. Think about it. What is it that makes you "somebody"?

If there was only you in the world then how would you define your "personhood"?

We tend to define our personhood is defined by our relations to other persons.

Good. Bad. Happy. Sad. Thoughtful. Thoughtless.

We compare ourselves to those around us. We try to emulate those persons whose "image" resonates within us. We try to become the "likeness" of those whom we love or who pluck the strings of our thoughts or feelings.

Eventually we build relationships. Family. Friends.

Then communities and states and eventually even nations. But these things do not last.

Well, do they???

Some relationships are not built to last.

Times change. We change or we refuse to change. Marriages desolve. Friends abandon us or we abandon them. Communities, states, even nations fail. These things all fail because the relationship, the image and likeness, were not really true ones. They were not based on a solid foundation.

Yet...

There is one "community" that has lasted at the very least three thousand years: The Jews.

Think about that.

Three thousand years.

That is a very long time.

The real beginning is lost in the sands of southern Iraq. Maybe that beginning is a myth. After all, archaeology has uncovered a lot of things in the last one hundred years. Myths that read very much like what is written in the chapters of Genesis [Bereshit].

Over the years, thousands of clay tables have been recovered. Some of those myths recovered on those clay tables, written in the cuneiform script, are at least a thousand years older than the earliest versions of Genesis.

Among them are myths of Gods and places and peoples once unknown.

Yet even were we to cut out most of Genesis and toss it away as a "rip off" of these earlier semitic and pre-semitic myths, there is still three thousand years of Jewish History.

It was Yakob who really founded the people called the Israelites. According to one of those old stories from Genesis, Yacob struggled with G-d all one night until G-d gave him a blessing. While G-d was at it, G-d gave Yakob a new name: Yisrael, "He who struggles with G-d". His children and their families were called the Yisraelites after the patriarch. The story goes that 60 went down to Mitzrayim, what we call Egypt today, and 600,000 returned [Or so the story goes...] with Moses, Miriam, and Aaron!

But something curious happened on the way back.

"God heard their moaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them." Exodus 2.24-25 [JPS Tanakh 1985]

What does "took notice of them" mean? Very simple. G-d acknowledged these people were something special: G-d had a relationship with them and to them. G-d, being G-dlike, very conveniently happened to find a fellow who was on the run from the Mitzrayimi authorities. G-d enticed him into a conversation. The rest is a very good story.

"Come, therefore, I will sent you to Pharoah, and you shall free My people, the Israelites, from Egypt." Exodus 3.10

"Are you kidding?" the simple fellow says. "I talk funny. I'm not likeable. No one is going to believe me." Notice that G-d did think anything of this fellow having killed someone. It would have been interesting to see how G-d would have responded if Moses had played the "murder card".

G-d had acknowledged the Israelites. G-d took notice. They were not just any old people they were G-d's people. G-d did not take these excuses for an answer. Moses of course did what he had been asked to do.

But how do you make a people a People? How do you define them?

G-d's answer was giving them a common identity, common values, a common sense of purpose. G-d made them different by giving them a relationship to something greater than themselves indiviually.

So what did G-d do? G-d gave the unlikeable, funny talking fellow rules and commandments and said to these freed slaves "You shall be my people and I shall be your G-d".

What happened? They bought the idea hook, line, and sinker.

The Jews became a people.

A very funny, different kind of people with a different kind of G-d than any other god anyone had never before seen. It seemed like a good deal at the time. G-d gave the Jews peoplehood and the Jews gave to G-d their acknowledgement of G-d's Godhood. Well, didn't we? Don't we today?

"Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad."

Listen Israel YHVH our God, YHVH is One

"Baruch Ata Adonai, Eluheinu Melech HaOlam."

Blessed are you YHVH, Our God Ruler of the World / Universe

For only a few brief periods were the Jews ever a "real" nation. Today's secular "State of Israel" is the third incarnation. The nations have come and gone but Israel the people has remained.

Why?

Because for all of being a stiff-necked, stubborn argumentative, people, the Jews have clung to their values, their traditions, their humor, their vision, their faith and mythical history. These things have kept them alive. They have re-invented themselves and their G-d and their religion many times. I know, I know. There are some that would not agreed with that satement but go back and look at the Tanakh. Read the talmud. It's true.

They have over three thousand years set the rules to define their peoplehood: be born a Jew or follow certain rules and become one.

To become a Jew one cannot just go to the Israeli Embassy and say "I want to be one of you". You can't become Jewish that way. The State of Israel does not have a "naturalization service".

So how do you become a Jew? How do you joining their people-hood?

I am making that journey:

You have to accept the 'yoke of the Covenant". You have to make their G-d, your G-d, You have to make sacrifices. For males that includes one of blood. Finally G-d's people have to acknowlege you as one of them.

Now there is at least one web site that I know of that a friend pointed out that gives you most of the rules. I was, if you recall unaware of this site. There is one thing that I do not think this site mentions and I recently became aware of from my rather obsessive reading.

You don't become a Jew until the night you have completed all of the required Mitzvot and recite the Sh'ma before the congregation. Then and only then are you a Jew. Not a moment before.

I did not discover this until I happened to be browsing one of the CCAR's responsa and realized that community acknowledgement and acceptance is a requirement not only for participation in services but also recognition as a "real" member of the community.

But time and history plays also into who is "people" and who is not.

In the 1800s some Jews "broke away" deciding that they could have Modernity and Judaism as well. While some Jews held to the old ways and the old laws and traditions. Some of the "oldtime" Jews eventually went to Israel. These "traditionalists" that ultimately define who is a Jew and who is called a Rabbi in the Nation-State of Israel.

By their definition, any one that does not follow the orthodox path is not a Jew. They do not recognize non-orthodox Rabbis nor do the recognize non-orthodox conversions. They say if you are not one of us then you're not quite Jewish.

So not only am I not a person now because I have not completed my conversion. I will in the eyes of the orthodox community still not be a person when I do complete it.

Rabbi has tried to calm my concern saying that if I die before I complete the required Mitzvot they'll still bury me as a Jew. I told him I'm not in that much of a hurry... and besides I believe I already am a Jew today. Right now. This moment.

Why? Because I am engaged with my community. I am engaged with my family. I am engaged with wrestling with G-d.

But.

As I said there are some who do not think this is enough.

But I'll save that for another time.

HaGedi