Judaism

bringing ancient tribal religion of the Middle East
             into contemporary culture


Antisemitism is on the rise.

It's nothing new.

The Jews have inspired hatred
  in many times and places
    almost wherever and whenever
      they have been
        an identifiable minority.

They began, as did every human grouping
                  as a tribal people.

Humans have been tribal far longer
  than we have been races, ethnic groups, nations,
     or any other mythical form of identification.

The Jews brought their tribe (or tribes)
   into many other societies,
       and sometimes they were welcome
           at least at first.

Their uniqueness and their ability to stand out
             among other peoples
          is based on their history.

Their history reaches all the way back
    to the founding myth of 3 Western religions.

Abraham is the father figure.

His faith in one God became the basis for
               ethical monotheism.

Abraham's one God was YHWH,
   Who became the tribal god
        of the 12 ancient tribes
            who claimed to be descendents
                  of Abraham.

His near sacrifice of his favored son
   became the myth at the core
       of the relationship of the one God
           with the people of the one God.

You see, human sacrifice was the rule
              in Abraham's time.

The first born male child
       had to be offered to the gods.

Before slaughtering his favored son on the altar,
     Abraham heard a voice,
           his own conscience?
               the voice of YHWH?
                   his love for his son?

Whatever the origin of the voice,
    Abraham heard that he was not to kill the boy,
        and a substitute sacrifice was offered instead.

From that one experience of hearing a voice,
    Judaism, Christianity and Islam were born.

Whether any such single event ever happened,
   whether there was ever such a person as Abraham,
      the story is part of the foundation
         of the faiths and societies most familiar to us.

In the myths of Genesis,
   Abraham's favored son had two sons,
       and from his son Jacob, aka Israel,
           were born twelve patriarchs,
               each of them the father of a tribe,
                   the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

All of those Tribes ended up in Egypt
    during a time of terrible famine.

All twelve escaped slavery
   during a highly mythological miracle,
       the crossing of the Red (or Reed) Sea.

All twelve tribes settled in Canaan,
    usurping, and  not for the last time,
         land that had previously belonged to others.

Over the ensuing centuries,
    two nations were formed of the Twelve Tribes,
        Israel and Judah, north and south.

The northern kingdom was overrun by Assyrians,
   and the southern kingdom became a vassal state.

The northern tribes of Israel were lost to history,
   but not to themselves:
      they were simply assimilated
         and became the Samaritans.

The southern tribe and nation of Judah
    was taken away by the Babylonians
        and returned by the Persians.

The legend of the Twelve Lost Tribes of Israel
    (Judah and Levi, the priestly tribe were never lost.)
         became an obsession
             especially in the United States
                 in the early 19th Century.

One new myth,
  that the Twelve Tribes were led to North America,
     became the basis for the Mormon church (LDS).
           (We'll talk more about all that later!)

While the Judahites of old were in captivity
    in Babylon,
          the term Judahite was shortened to Jew
              and their tribal religion
                  became known as Judaism.

Much of the Hebrew Bible was compiled in Babylon
    as well as the Babylonian Talmud,
         both of which laid the foundation
           of Rabbinic Judaism as we know it today.

After all, those Jewish priests and scribes,
    now without their Temple,
        needed something worthwhile to do!

The Law, the Prophets and the Writings were what
   the Jews called the Scriptures,
       what we call the Old Testament.

By the end of the first century of the Common Era,
   the Hebrew Bible had taken on most of the form
       that we know today.

The Jews did not all leave Babylon,
    and beginning in the era following the Exile,
        they began to scatter all over the known world.

Under Greek rule following Alexander the Great,
   many Jews were Hellenized,
       which means mostly that they spoke Greek.

Accordingly, a translation of the Hebrew Bible,
    called the Septuagint, came into being.

The myth of its development
   was that Seventy scholars (hence Septuagint)
       were sequestered to translate
            the Five Books of the Law, the Torah.

When they emerged with their translations,
   they were exactly the same, word for word.

Their miraculously produced translation
   was used all over the Greek and Roman world,
     and it became the Bible of the early Christians,
         at least during the century or two
            in which the New Testament was being
               written and compiled.

The schools of rabbis who were teaching and writing
    during the first century of the Common Era
         became the foundation of Rabbinic Judaism.

One of those rabbis who founded a school
    seeking to reform Judaism
         was Rabbi Jesus ben Joseph,
              Jesus of Nazareth.

Under Roman rule in their province of Syria,
    Jerusalem had a great deal of autonomy.

The Jewish Temple functioned
    under a Jewish council,
         and a religious - political party,
             the Saducees, prevailed.

A different party, the Pharisees,
    developed synagogues
         which were found in virtually every town
               in Judea, the Greco-Latin name for Judah.

There were also synagogues all over the Empire.

Most of the Jews outside of Galilee and Judea
      spoke Greek and were at home in Rome.

Many of the Jews in the home country
    were also thoroughly acculturated to Rome,
         but by no means all.

A third party among them, the Zealots,
      sought to rebel against Rome,
          and that rebellion inevitably ended in tragedy,
               more than once.

Religious extremism generally does not end well,
    and it sometimes does not expect to end well,
         at least in this world.

It is a lesson that the modern world needs to learn:

No matter what we may believe,
  the idea that we alone are right,
    and that we must impose our beliefs on others
      will result in destruction and death,
         most of all on those of us
            who believe and behave in such a way.

In 70 C.E. Roman legions destroyed Jerusalem
         and the Jewish Temple.

The Temple has never been rebuilt,
    so Judaism today is built upon the synagogue,
        the local gathering place anywhere
            in which Jews can study their scriptures
                 and worship their God.

The rabbis of every time and place
     since the fall of the Temple
           have found ways to adapt their communities
                to the world in which they live
                    while living out their traditions
                         and  fulfilling the Mission of Israel.

As I understand that Mission,
 it is simply to show and teach the world
 about the loving concern of the one God of the Jews
  for all people, including the Jews.

This Mission alone would not be enough to inspire
  the kind of hatred Jewish people have experienced
    in our own times and places
      and for centuries past in many other lands.

Religious and political leaders can too easily invoke
  ancient tribal hatred and prejudice,
    twisting it to their own advantage.

With the holocaust,
   the murder of at least 6 million Jews,
      a new kind and degree of organized hatred
         resulted in brutal antisemitism
            with totally destructive violence.

Today the denial that the holocaust took place
    or was as bad as history records
       is itself an expression of antisemitism.

The establishment of a Jewish state in the late 1940s
  has brought about a new hope for many Jews
    while exacerbating hatred in their own homelands.

There were people already in the land in the 1940s
  just as there were when the tribes first wandered in
    from Egypt,
      and some of those people did not and do not
        want to assimilate
          and become part of the Jewish tribe.

There are no easy answers,
   either for the hatred seen in Israel
      or for that seen in Coeur D'Alene
         and other cities here
            and around the world.

Yet as Unitarian Universalists,
   whether or not we believe in the God of the Jews
        at all,
            we do believe in coexistence
                with people of every tribe and nation.

If we live up to our own principles,
    we can lead the way in our own UU mission
         to a way of life that can bring peace on Earth
               and hope to all kinds of people,
                    Jews and Gentiles
                         and those who consider themselves
                               to be neither. 

Shalom!

Peace, Salaam, Shalom!

Omeyn.