Once Again

Instead of the idiocy reflected in the video we ad libbed last eve, we thought it prudent to try and write something a little more rational. So Happy Jewish New Year my friends. Shana Tova! This time of Rosh Hashana is a time of reflection for the Jewish faith. I'm taking a class this semester at the Center of Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, called Cultures of the Jews. It is important to note the fact that it is not called culture of the Jews. There is not one culture of the Jews. This is a religion and a population that has changed over time, been influenced and has influenced the majority cultures they have lived amongst. They have lived in Palestine, Egypt, and throughout most of the rest of the world in the Jewish Diaspora. They have spoken different languages, been influenced in different ways, but there has been something that has tied this people together over thousands of years, and kept them somehow separated from their neighbors. They have held some Jewish culture or identity which reminded them of their difference, and they have chosen it, and embraced it. At different times, like in the times of the Maccabees, there has been active conversion by the Jewish people of gentiles into the Jewish faith and tribe. At times in the past the difference between Jew and non-Jew has been much more fluid. It is important to remember that Abraham was not a Jew, and he was the father of both Isaac and Ishmael, one, Isaac, who became the father of Jacob, who became Israel, and Ishmael who is known as the father of the Arab peoples who would give birth to the Muslim faith. David himself is the great grandson of a Moabite. If we go back further in the Hebrew Bible which is the foundation of both Christianity and Islam, we find one people. "Now the whole earth had one language and the same words...And the Lord said, "look they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech." (Genesis [B'reshiyth] 11:1-9) Indeed we have been confused, but even here in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, we find in the origin story One people, scattered and dispersed and confused by different languages. It was this one people who were the mothers and fathers of the Jews, the Muslims, the Buddhists, the Scientologists, the Hindus, the Christians, and the rest. According to this story, these first people were the mothers and the fathers of us all. It was only after we became confused that we began to see ourselves as separate peoples who built up faiths and cultures around ourselves, blocking ourselves off from our fellow brother and sister human beings and began to identify ourselves as us and them. My people, your people, well even in the founding story of the Jewish people, it's right there, we are all one people, if you just read back a few pages before Jacob wrestles with the Angel who is afraid of the light and gets "blessed" with the name Israel. (Genesis 32:26-28) Within the field of Anthropology we find the same phenomenon, they identify this people and that people and focus on all the differences, but if we just go back far enough in their discoveries, we see our common heritage, and find all our hominid ancestors emerging in Africa, the Greek word for which is Ethiopia. So if we go back far enough we find that we are all Ethiopians, every human being alive on earth. We are all one people. And if, as the Lord states in Genesis 11:6, that "nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them," then we can most certainly begin to manifest our oneness again, which has been hidden from us for thousands of years by our confusion. We have proved our creative capabilities by our inventions, the microchip, the cellular phone, the rocket ship and space station, the walls we have built up around ourselves in our cultures, we have been marvelous creators, creating what we have proposed. It is time now, in this time of reflection, to propose we all come together again and create harmony, peace, unity, love, and respect for our Ultimate Creator, that which gave us the power of creation. So much power was put in our hands, and it is time we used it for good, for truth, justice, and righteousness. It begins with all of us acknowledging that we are one people, one human race. We are all Jews, we are all Muslims, we are all Buddhists, we are all what we are, perfect and imperfect, empty and whole, we're just a bunch of lost Ethiopians longing to know ourselves again as who we really are.