Rabbi Amiel Hirsch
Sapir Journal, Vol. 5, Spring 2022
“Judaism absent Jewish peoplehood is not Judaism; it is something else. Whenever Jews abandoned their ideological — or practical — commitment to Am Yisrael, they eventually drifted away.”
The Jewish story begins in Genesis chapter 12:
And God said to Abram: “Go forth from your native land . . . to a land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation . . . and you shall be a blessing . . . and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves through you.” And Abram passed through the land . . . and God said, “I will assign this land to your offspring.”
From this point forward, and forevermore, the Torah establishes two foundational principles of what became Judaism:
Nationhood and national territory.
Abraham was selected to found a nation, and like all other nations of antiquity, the Israelites required national territory — the Land of Israel — in which to fulfill their collective purpose. The entire remainder of Tanakh, at its most basic level, is about the unfolding destiny of the descendants of Abraham, defined first and foremost in a manner that’s physical rather than merely spiritual.
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