Rabbi Lance Sussman
This week’s Torah portion is Vayechi: Genesis 47:28 – 50:26
Like many of you, I have been watching Ken Burns’ six-part documentary on the American Revolution. It is a magnificent narration of the origins of the United States.
Based on original research and augmented with powerful illustrations, it details the complexity of the American Revolution, which was also a war of independence and a brutal Civil War.
Burns makes it clear that the American Revolution was not just the doing of “marble men” and lofty ideas but a complex, struggle which produced a new national identity.
The same level of complexity is typical of the emergence of any nation.
The United Kingdom has a complex story of origin as does Germany, Russia, India and even modern-day Israel. History is not linear. It is multidimensional. History is always dynamic and messy.
What is true about the modern world is also true about the ancient world. Modern scholarship has proven that the biblical account of our ancestors is a quilted narrative with many layers.
While the Bible tells the story of how the family of Abraham and Sarah evolved into the Hebrews who became the Israelites and ultimately the Jews, archeology, textual analysis and contemporaneous evidence from outside the Bible suggest a different story.
This does not mean that the great religious insights and ethical thought of the Bible is in any way diminished. It only means that the historical story is different than the narrative of faith. Both are part of modern Jewish life. Both provide the foundations of wisdom.
An important point of departure in investigating the origins of the Jewish people can be found in this week’s Torah portion, Vayechi 49:9-12. The portion is the final parsha of the Book of Genesis and includes the story of the dying patriarch Jacob blessing each of his sons.
According to the biblical text, each of Jacob’s sons but not his daughter become the head of a tribe of Israel. In this portion, Jacob shares his final words with each of his sons, defines their character and in the case of Judah, predicts their future.
Jacob is clear about the future of Judah, whose name means “praise” or “thanks.” “The scepter shall not depart from Judah,” the patriarch declares unequivocally.
In other words, although not the first born of Jacob, Judah will emerge as the leader of the people and in the long run of history, the king of Israel will be born of Judean descent.
Written after these events, modern scholars do not agree on the origins of the tribes of Israel, including Judah. Scholars also do not agree on the time or nature of a united monarchy.
However, a Kingdom of Judah was ultimately established with Jerusalem as its capital. In the post-exilic periods, Judah was restored under the Persians and continued until destroyed by the Romans.
In later thought, the primacy of Judah not only applied to this world but also was associated with the coming of the Messiah and the world to come. With the advent of modern Zionism in the 19th century, the idea of a third Judean state in the land of Israel was realized and in 1948, Israel was established.
Tragically, during the Middle Ages and in our own time, the enemies of the Jews have attempted to recast our name as Jews into a term of derision and formulated wild conspiracy theories about world domination.
In the face of these charges and the outrageous violence it has precipitated, it is important to remember the narratives of our origins and our noble past. Our mission, our ancestors taught us, was to preserve our tradition for our people and to be a light to the nations of the world.
Lance J. Sussman, Ph.D. is rabbi emeritus of Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel and a past chair of the Board of Governors of Gratz College. Currently, he is a vice president of the Board of Rabbis and with writing partner Lynda Barness is completing a biography of Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf, the founder of Delaware Valley University.