Not in God's Name

by Jonathan Sacks

  16. Nahmanides, Commentary to Gen. 25:22.

  17. The readings given in this and the following chapters are not necessarily to be found in the classic Jewish exegetical literature, but that is the point: there is, I argue, a meaning below the surface that is different from the one on the surface. This approach is similar to the phrase used by Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam, c. 1085–1158) in his phrase ‘the deep plain sense of Scripture’ (omek peshuto shel mikra); see his Commentary to Gen. 37:2.

  18. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, p. 169.

  19. Maimonides holds that the wrestling match took place in a vision (The Guide for the Perplexed, II:42). Nahmanides strongly objects: if the encounter was a vision, why did Jacob limp subsequently? (Nahmanides, Commentary to Gen. 18:1). Gersonides and Abrabanel defend Maimonides’ interpretation: it is possible for an intense psychological experience to have psychosomatic effects.

  20. There is, of course, a famous verse (Mal. 1:2–3) that seems to contradict this: ‘ “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” the Lord says. “Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated.” ’ This, however, refers to specific circumstances in Israel’s later history, during a period of conflict between the Israelites and the Edomites. In any case, Nahmanides and R. David Kimche (Commentaries to Gen. 29:31) point out that the word senuah, when contrasted with ahuvah (‘loved’), does not mean ‘hated’, but rather ‘loved, but loved less intensely’. That is also its meaning in Deut. 21:15.

  R. Elijah of Vilna (the Vilna Gaon), in his notes at the end of Sa’arat Eliyahu, translates the phrase in Malachi as ‘I hate the subsidiary part of Esau, but the main part – his head – is hidden next to our Father in Heaven, and that is why Jacob says, “I have seen your face and it is like seeing the face of God.” ’ This passage is developed at length by R. Abraham Isaac Kook (Iggerot Rayah, vol. 1, letter 112), to prove that eventually there will be a reconciliation between Jacob and Esau, i.e. between Jews and Christians, as also between Jews and Muslims (‘the brotherly love of Esau and Jacob, of Isaac and Ishmael, will assert itself above all the confusion that the evil brought on by our bodily nature has engendered’). For an English translation, see Ben Zion Bokser, Abraham Isaac Kook: The Lights of Penitence, The Moral Principles, Lights of Holiness, Essays, Letters, and Poems, New York, Paulist Press, 1978, pp. 338–9.

  Chapter 8

  1. Mishnah, Avot 2:5.

  2. For literary analyses of the Joseph narrative, see Eric I. Lowenthal, The Joseph Narrative in Genesis, New York, KTAV, 1973; Uriel Simon, Joseph and his Brothers: A Story of Change, trans. David Louvish, Ramat Gan, Israel, Lookstein Center, 2002; James L. Kugel, In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1994.

  3. Gen. 24:67.

  4. Gen. 29:18, 20, 30.

  5. Gen. 37:3, 4; 44:20.

  6. Rashi, Commentary to Gen. 37:2, on the basis of Genesis Rabbah 84:3.

  7. R. Hayyim of Kossov, Torat Hayyim to Gen. 37:18.

  8. See previous chapter, note 6.

  9. See Rashi, Commentary ad loc., who attributes this phrase to ‘the holy spirit’. The classic Jewish commentators are unused to the concept of irony. On the use of irony in the Bible, see Edwin M. Good, Irony in the Old Testament, Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1965.

  10. See Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages, their Concepts and Beliefs, trans. Israel Abrahams, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1987, pp. 462–71.

  11. See especially Rom. 7:7–24.

  12. See Urbach, The Sages, pp. 471–83; Solomon Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology: Major Concepts of the Talmud, New York, Schocken, 1961, pp. 219–343.

  13. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Teshuvah, 2:2.

  14. Ibid., 2:1.

  15. Esau had earlier said, ‘The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob’ (Gen. 27:41). Apparently, fraternal revenge was not permitted during a father’s lifetime.

  16. I am indebted for these examples to Bill Bryson, Mother Tongue, London, Penguin, 1991, p. 63.

  Chapter 9

  1. See David Diringer, Writing, New York, Praeger, 1962; The Alphabet: A Key to the History of Mankind, New York, Funk & Wagnalls, 1968; The Story of the Aleph Beth, New York, Yoseloff, 1958; Robert K. Logan, The Alphabet Effect: A Media Ecology Understanding of the Making of Western Civilization, Cresskill, NJ, Hampton Press, 2004; John Man, Alpha Beta: How our Alphabet Changed the Western World, London, Headline, 2000; David Sacks, The Alphabet: Unravelling the Mystery of the Alphabet from A to Z, London, Hutchinson, 2003. On early semitic scripts, see Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography, Jerusalem, Magnes Press, 1982. On Hebrew letters, see Marc-Alain Ouaknin’s delightful Mysteries of the Alphabet: The Origins of Writing, trans. Josephine Bacon, New York, Abbeville Press, 1999. On the impact of literacy on consciousness, see Walter J. Ong’s masterly and suggestive works, The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1967; and Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, London, Routledge, 1991. See also Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977; The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986; The Interface between the Written and the Oral, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987.

  2. There are many biblical examples. Every seven years the king was commanded to assemble the nation and ‘read aloud this Torah before them in their hearing’ (Deut. 31: 10–13). When ‘the book of the law’ was rediscovered in the reign of King Josiah, ‘He went up to the temple of the Lord with the men of Judah, the priests and the prophets – all the people from the least to the greatest – and read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the Temple of the Lord’ (2 Kgs 23:2). In the historic gathering of those who had returned from Babylon, Ezra ‘read [the Torah] aloud from daybreak till noon, in the presence of the men, women and others who could understand, and all the people listened attentively to the book of the Torah’ (Neh. 8:3).

  3. Nahmanides and R. David Kimche, Commentaries ad loc.

  4. Targum Onkelos and Rashbam, Commentary ad loc.

  5. Ibn Ezra, Commentary ad loc.

  6. R. Naftali Berlin, Ha’amek Davar ad loc., suggests that Leah was unable to go out with the flocks because the bright sunlight hurt her eyes.

  7. Genesis Rabbah 70:16; Midrash Sekhel Tov (Buber), 29:17; 30:7.

  8. There is a rabbinic tradition that the patriarchs kept the commands of the Mosaic covenant before it was given to the nation at Mount Sinai. Nahmanides explains, however, that they did so only in the land of Israel. Jacob’s deathbed blessings were uttered in Egypt. See Nahmanides, Commentary to Gen. 26:5.

  9. Rashi to Gen. 22:1.

  Chapter 10

  1. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, New York, Pantheon Books, 2012.

  2. One of the most powerful of all stories of role reversal is, however, a religious one. After King David has fallen in love with Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite, he sends her husband into battle knowing that he will be killed. He then marries her. Nathan the prophet approaches the king, ostensibly to seek his advice. He tells him the following story. There are two men in a certain town, one rich, the other poor. The rich man has large flocks and herds, the poor one only a single lamb which he cherishes as if it were his child. A traveller arrives, and the rich man, preparing a feast for the visitor, is reluctant to kill one of his own animals, so he takes the poor man’s sheep instead. As the story proceeds, David gets more and more angry, until he bursts out, saying, ‘The man who did this deserves to die.’ Then Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man.’ The story is told in 2 Samuel 11–12. It is the most effective example of role reversal I know.

  3. See Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, Seattle, University of
Washington Press, 1982.

  4. See Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, New York, Columbia University Press, 1980; Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1985.

  5. Talmud Yerushalmi, Rosh Hashanah 3:5.

  Chapter 11

  1. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1996, p. 310.

  2. The Talmud Yerushalmi, Megillah 1:11, 71b, records a dispute between R. Eliezer and R. Johanan, on just this question. One holds that Gen. 10 describes the situation after Gen. 11. The other maintains that the two chapters are in correct chronological sequence.

  3. J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1, Grand Rapids, MI, Brazos, 2005, p. 224.

  4. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Melakhim 9:1. See David Novak, The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism: An Historical and Constructive Study of the Noahide Laws, New York, E. Mellen Press, 1983; Natural Law in Judaism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

  5. I say this mindful of centuries of criticism of the idea. See, for a recent example, Clifford Longley, Chosen People: The Big Idea that Shaped England and America, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 2002.

  6. Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5.

  7. Rabbinic tradition speaks of Abraham making disciples, but that is oral tradition, not written, explicit text.

  8. R. Abraham Isaac Kook, Orot haKodesh, vol. 3, 15.

  9. Tosefta, Sanhedrin 13:2.

  10. Mishnah, Avot 3:14.

  11. The title of an article by B.S. Lewis puts it bluntly: ‘I’m right, you’re wrong, go to hell’, The Atlantic Monthly, May 2003.

  Chapter 12

  1. William Blake, ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ (c. 1818).

  2. Sanhedrin 71a.

  3. Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 49a.

  4. Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, scene 3.

  5. Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 28a.

  6. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Melakhim 5:4.

  7. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Melakhim 6:5.

  8. See Rabbi N.L. Rabinovitch, Responsa Melomdei Milchamah, Maaleh Adumim, Maaliyot, 1993, pp. 22–5.

  9. Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, Kedushat Levi, Jerusalem, 2001, section on Purim; Gerald Cromer, ‘Amalek as Other, Other as Amalek: Interpreting a Violent Narrative’, Qualitative Sociology, 24.2, 2001, pp. 191–202.

  10. See David Cook, Understanding Jihad, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2005.

  11. Mishnah, Shabbat 6:4.

  12. Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 63a.

  13. Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 30b.

  14. Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 10b.

  15. Bamidbar Rabbah 13:15.

  16. Maharsha, Chiddushei Aggadot to Berakhot 58a.

  Chapter 13

  1. Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 86b.

  2. See the interesting essay on Josephus as survivor in Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973, pp. 274–82.

  3. Josephus, The Jewish War, trans. G.A. Williamson, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1959, chs. 9–23.

  4. Tosefta, Chagigah 2:9.

  5. The Jewish War, p. 264.

  6. Ibid., p. 135.

  7. For a balanced survey of the subject, see David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History, New York, Schocken Books, 1986.

  8. Abraham Lincoln, ‘Second Inaugural Address’, in Andrew Delbanco (ed.), The Portable Abraham Lincoln, New York, Viking, 1992, p. 321.

  9. Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 55.

  10. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, abridged with an introduction by Thomas Bender, New York, Modern Library, 1981, p. 185.

  11. Ibid., pp. 187–88.

  12. R. Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (Netziv), Ha-amek Davar to Gen. 11:4.

  13. Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 1, new edn., London, Routledge Classics, 2002.

  14. Aristotle, The Politics, ed. Stephen Everson, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988, 1261a16-23, p. 21.

  15. For a good summary, see Harry Redner, Ethical Life: The Past and Present of Ethical Cultures, Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2001, pp. 68–85.

  16. 1 Sam. 8:7.

  17. Thomas Paine, Political Writings, ed. Bruce Kuklick, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 3.

  18. Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller (1764), l. 427.

  19. Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, London, Institute of Economic Affairs, 1991, p. 53.

  20. Rousseau called his secular substitute ‘civil religion’. J.-J. Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997.

  21. Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 88a; Avodah Zarah 2b.

  22. Eric Voegelin, Order and History, vol. 1, Israel and Revelation, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1956, p. 37.

  23. Graeme Wood, ‘What ISIS Really Wants’, The Atlantic, March 2015.

  24. The classic work on the subject is Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, London, Paladin, 1972.

  25. Matthew Arnold, ‘Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse’ (c. 1850).

  26. J.L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, Harmondsworth, Peregrine, 1986.

  27. Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, New York, Basic Books, 1985, p. 145.

  28. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, p. 253.

  29. Maharal, Be’er haGolah, Jerusalem, 1972, pp. 150–51.

  30. John Stuart Mill, ‘Utilitarianism’, On Liberty, Considerations on Representative Government, ed. H.B. Acton, London, Dent, Everyman’s Library, 1972, p. 85.

  31. Kierkegaard actually said, ‘The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.’

  Chapter 14

  1. Martin Luther King, Strength to Love, New York, Harper & Row, 1963.

  2. That is what is so offensive about Jean-Paul Sartre’s book, Sur le Question Juif, published in 1946. Written immediately after the Holocaust, it is ostensibly a book against antisemitism. Sartre’s central thesis is that Jews do not create antisemitism; antisemitism creates Jews. Jews, he says, have nothing in common except that they are the objects of hatred. Therefore to be Jewish is to defy that hatred. By Sartre’s own standards, this is ‘inauthentic’ existence. Authenticity, he believed, meant living in a certain way because you have chosen to, not because someone else has forced you to. Yet this is the only form of existence he accords to Jews: Jews exist because other people hate them. Such is the power of antisemitism that Sartre, seeking to reject it, reinvents it.

  3. On memory, see Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor, Jewish History and Jewish Memory, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1982; Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed., trans., and with an introduction by Lewis A. Coser, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992; Eviatar Zerubavel, Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2003. On the misuse of memory in modern ethnic conflict, see Stuart J. Kaufman, Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2001.

  4. Babylonian Talmud, Baba Metzia 32b.

  5. Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1996.

  6. Henri Atlan, ‘Founding Violence and Divine Referent’, in Paul Dumouchel (ed.), Violence and Truth: On the Work of René Girard, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1988, pp. 198–208.

  7. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Deot 7:8.

  8. See Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World, London, Continuum, 2005, pp. 175–84.

  9. Jack Miles, God: A Biography, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, pp. 397–408.

  10. William Shakespeare, Sonnets, 129.

  11. Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy, trans. Ilse L
asch, Boston, Beacon Press, 1992.

  12. Phyllis Chesler, The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 2003, p. 105.

  Chapter 15

  1. See Graeme Wood, ‘What ISIS Really Wants’, The Atlantic, March 2015.

  2. Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, London, Secker and Warburg, 1952, p. 103.

  3. Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, London, Allen and Unwin, 1961, Introduction.

  4. Wood, ‘What ISIS Really Wants’.

  5. John Locke, Political Essays, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 152.

  6. Spinoza – in some ways a very un-Jewish thinker, in others a very Jewish one – writes: ‘Every man’s true happiness and blessedness consists solely in the enjoyment of what is good, not in the pride that he alone is enjoying it, to the exclusion of others. He who thinks himself the more blessed because he is enjoying benefits which others are not, or because he is more blessed or more fortunate than his fellows, is ignorant of true happiness and blessedness, and the joy which he feels is either childish or envious or malicious. For instance, a man’s true happiness consists only in wisdom, and knowledge of the truth, not at all in the fact that he is wiser than others, or that others lack such knowledge: such considerations do not increase his wisdom or true happiness. Whoever, therefore, rejoices for such reasons, rejoices in another’s misfortune, and is, so far, malicious and bad, knowing neither true happiness nor the peace of the true life.’ Or, in the language of contemporary economics, blessedness is not a positional good. Benedict Spinoza, A Theologico-Political Treatise, trans. R.H.M. Elwes, Mineola, NY, Dover Publications, 2004, p. 43.

  7. Michael Walzer, Arguing about War, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2004, p. 51.

  8. ‘Does our religion agree with the idea of suicide? Is the Muslim permitted to blow himself up among others because they are enemies? The sacred [Islamic] sources referred to this as one of the greatest sins. Throughout 14 centuries, all the [jurisprudent] literature regarding Jihad has not permitted harming innocent women and children. Moreover, even if the enemy has violated all things sacred and killed [Muslim] women and children, [Islam] forbids responding in kind’ (Dr Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, Al-Raya, Qatar, 25 July 2005).