The people, Israel, long in diaspora, rarely with sovereignty, and critique of a state

I’m no dummy. This post is honest, forthright, careful, but concludes with some controversy. By my tradition, you and I are created in the image of the Holy One, and I encourage you to hold that in mind as you read this. We are all processing. We should be charitable and respectful. I see you, see me. Shalom, salaam, peace.

❤ -jPK.

What’s up with jPK?

I haven’t been around here lately. For that, I apologize, sincerely. I ask for your understanding, and I thank you for your patience with me. Our relationship as writer and reader is tender and new: I’ve maintained this space for less than a year, and I sincerely hope to have not violated the trust that readers have placed in my effort. I am truly sorry for my absence. If you read no more than this paragraph, I want you to hear this apology. It is not lost on me that you trusted me enough to open your inbox to my reflections, and I do not take that lightly.

I am deeply committed to this work, and this work is deeply personal. I dropped the ball the past few weeks, and that’s on me. I am sorry. I hope you will continue to welcome me into your online lives.

The Stories We Tell and Traditions

Let’s name it. I have struggled to know where to be vocal with the Israel-Hamas war and where to be silent. Today, I am addressing the war with the only thing I have, authenticity. Weekly, I bring to readers an academically informed and historically accurate essay about a passage of sacred literature and its setting within Second Temple Period Judaism.

Through the historical lens, I have joined scholarly consensus to present what is likely true about the stories that exist within the people of Israel and its extension to early, or proto-Christianity. For example, I have characterized the gospel accounts as proclamations about the historical Jesus that draw from the Scriptures of Israel to construct narratives that argue on behalf of Jesus as a messianic figure. My view is that a portion of preserved saying and stories served as an early-first century core around which later gospel writers constructed their accounts. Some Jewish people, namely the gospel writers, indeed took Jesus to be the messiah; others did not. Some non-Jewish people took Jesus to be the messiah; others did not. This history matters. I have not sought to confirm or challenge theological belief or doctrine; rather, my effort is to supply historical and source critical context and leave it to readers to consider their downstream commitments.

In the same treatment, I have presented views about the Hebrew Bible, though to a lesser extent because the thrust of this space, that is, this newsletter, in its earliest manifestation, was to address a mostly Christian audience to share insights about the historical Jesus and development of the gospels. But the presentation has been there, for example, that the Exodus is an origin story constructed around a preserved core, perhaps from a small group that did flee from Egypt and joined the early Israelites or the constructed narratives from a Canaanite tradition that did experience oppression at the hands of an Egyptian empire. We may consider this understanding of the Exodus narrative as “mythologized history.”

Whether the Hebrew Bible or Greek Scriptures, I have become comfortable with marrying ancient history with modern scholarship. The stories we tell and the traditions we hold need not be factually accurate to still be true. And yet, the sacred literature is not divorced completely from history. I am deeply reverent of the sacred literature because few other documents preserve and produce the meaning that shape people’s lives, families, and communities.

As for the Israel-Hamas war, this has deeply upset what I understand from the historical realities of the people of Israel. Not the 20th century history but the 10th, before the common era, and so on. Some may consider my treatment here as irrelevant, as naive, or as one-sided. My peers on the left continue to weaponize language of colonization and genocide. I think some of the rhetoric is correct and some is mistaken.

Let me first say this: My wife posted a picture of our family lighting Shabbat candles with a caption about hoping for peace, and one person in our network criticized her for failing to address Palestinians. This is antisemitism. I make online content about Jewish interpretation of Torah, and one person commented with a string of emojis that included reference to anti-Jewish tropes and to the Holocaust. This is antisemitism.

Lighting shabbat candles and sharing scholarship about Torah are not pro-Israel positions, anymore than you going to church does not categorically align you with newly elected House speaker Mike Johnson who said his entire worldview is the Bible.

But today’s post isn’t to everyone. I’m sharing this with you, friends, because I love lighting Shabbat candles, and hosting Seders, and learning Torah, and teaching about the historical (Jewish) Jesus, and going to the deli, and opining about the Jewish mystical ideas that kids’ names shape who they become. I love the meaning-making and community practices of the people I call mine. I have witnessed such hawkish behavior from fellow siblings that my sense of who we are may become uprooted by the calls for war, blockade, violence, and conquering. Yuck.

So like I’ve always tried to do here: I present some context that I think is relevant, I try to be careful about how much bias shows up (pure objectivity is myth), and I leave it to readers to take what they like and dismiss the rest. I love a people. I hate the actions of the state that is represented by the most nationalistic and extreme manifestations of that people.

A Fictional Book Does Not Justify Your Right to the Land

I hear this often that “the Bible,” a “fantasy book,” does not justify claims to land. Agree. And, remarking only on the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, to call it a book is ignorant. It is not a book. It is a collection of human-authored source documents that, sure, I wouldn’t say justifies a claim to the land, yet these documents, through both archeology and through shared cultural ideas and literary traditions, connects these documents to things like the Ugaritic texts, or the code of Hammurabi, or papyrus discovered in Egypt. Together, these documents place the people of the stories and their authors and composition in the land for thousands of years. We cannot say, or at least, I do not think that we should, say, “Gd promised this land to Abraham; therefore, it’s our land.” And yet, I think we could say, “The connection of writing about the Gd of Israel and its qualitative and rhetorical interaction with Baal, the Canaanite deity, goes some way to arguing that the people have been in the land for thousands of years.”

I think this is what people get wrong about the Bible. They dismiss the entire thing out of hand for being fiction. The counter-argument is that the writing style, the genres, the shared legislative traditions with neighboring tribes and nation-states, and so on, do not “prove the Bible is true”; rather, these data speak in favor of particular periods of authorship, within certain geographic and cultural contexts. We do not take the claims of the Bible to be factually true; instead, we take the claims about the Bible to be true. And what I’ve done just there is re-articulation of the entire project for this newsletter: To increase biblical literacy and to precisify our thinking about the sacred literature. They present to us stories that give meaning to our lives, even if not fully historical.

“Am Yisrael Chai”

I’ve argued so far that the sacred literature is non-factual; that the stories and traditions are valuable; and that distinguishing between biblical claims and biblical authorship is an important and worthwhile task. Stories, traditions, and authorship: What do these share in common? Mainly that these are the products of people, and people are not nation-states. Nation-states are boundaries that may circumscribe populations within their borders, but a state existing or not existing bears no direct influence on the stories, traditions, and authorship of a people, unless the state exercises that influence through power over those people to shape those stories and traditions in a particular direction. A state exercising coercive power will influence stories, but stories continue irrespective of a state. We humans are storytellers. The state has only the power to coerce, suppress, or uplift a people’s story telling. The stories belong to the people.

The people of Israel are a people of diaspora, and our stories are in this context. Scholarly consensus holds that many documents that comprise the Torah were brought to their final form during the exilic period. And we’ve continued to live in diaspora, especially since the sacking of the Second Temple by Rome in the first century (ca. 70 CE). Though, before that was the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE. Before that, the conquering of Northern Israel by the neo-Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BCE.

In fact, in terms of autonomous rule, Israel has enjoyed very little of that sovereignty. For around 150 years, beginning with the Maccabean revolt and installation of the Hasmonean Dynasty, the backdrop to the Hanukkah story, concluding with Roman occupation and installation of the Herodian Dynasty. Most of Israel’s existence has been as a loose confederation of tribes, as a vassal state to other empires, or as an occupied Roman territory.

When we think of “Am Yisrael chai,” or “The people of Israel live,” we must be clear-eyed about its origin in post-1945 Europe. Israel, historically, is a people, not a state. We are a people of diaspora. In the “About the Author” page for this newsletter, I describe myself as a product of the diaspora, not being raised Jewish, but recognizing that it is my family heritage, and here I am doing my best to learn, practice, and honor that tradition; my tradition. I feel deeply connected to my people—in my blood, bones, and being. To observe this tenuous connection with my people is to also observe that for people with complicated identities and also Jews-by-choice, that is, converts, we are joining the people whose origin includes a story about standing together to receive the Law. It is just that: A story. That which we tell ourselves to make meaning. Something that is not factual but we find to be true, nonetheless. When we liberate ourselves from facts and embrace what is true, we gain authority over our stories to use them toward love, justice, and repair:

The world stands on three things: Torah, the service of God, and deeds of kindness.” – Shimon the Righteous (Pirkei Avot 1:2).

The question before us is this: Are we acting as a people or are we acting as a state? As a people, here are some of the things that some of us do: We light Shabbat candles for peace and hope for the world to come. As a people, we pursue justice. As a people, some of us eat kosher to honor the lives of animals and reduce suffering; on the other hand, some of us are vegan for the same reasons. As a people, we repair the world. As a people, we honor acts of loving-kindness.

I risk drawing criticism from anyone who reads this by not “condemning Hamas,” or not “Calling for an end to the genocide.”

My understanding of my people is that we have tashlich, we have hope, we have teshuvah, we have tzedakah, we have the lulav, the hanukkiah, the book of life, we have b’nei mitvah, and the modeh ani, and the shema, we have each other, and we have a responsibility to repair the world. And we have Hillel, “If not now, when?”

Ironic maybe, then, that me, someone who is not recognized as Jewish by some movements, is here reminding us of our Jewishness. The other thing about that tenuous identity like mine and like those of Jews-by-choice is that on Israel it is easy to complain that we do not really understand the connection to haaretz. That may be so, but I’d say this: If not for me embracing that identity and sharing that with my children, I risk cutting off a line of connection and a new generation. Isn’t that just what some fear may happen if Israel is lost, that we face an existential crisis?

We are a people of the diaspora, and maybe it’s time for someone inarguably from that setting to remind us we are a people, not a state.