One curious(and insightful) Jew

The following post contains almost none of my own words. I wrote a post entitled ‘People and places’ last week and received a response that I felt compelled to answer from a wonderful writer who I’ve been following for a long time, you can find a link to her blog “The Curious Jew” on my sidebar. This is what she starts with:

“So you may be interested to know that is very much the theme of Judaism! Our nationhood is predicated upon our choice to dedicate ourselves to God, our keeping of Torah and mitzvot, no matter where we are throughout the world. We have sustained ourselves as a nation throughout the world for centuries, and while Israel is a fantastic place and wonderful for the Jews, if God forbid it should ever fall, it would not mean the end of the Jews.” – Chana

I got the source of the idea for that idea from Paul Johnson’s ‘A History of the Jews’, it is located in part two: Judaism, page 83, please note my emphasis in bold and comment in italics:

“Hence it was during the Exile that ordinary Jews were first disciplined into the regular practice of their religion. Circumcision, which distinguished them ineffaceably from the surrounding pagans, was insisted upon rigorously, and the act became a ceremony and so part of the Jewish life cycle and liturgy. The concept of the Sabbath, strongly reinforced by what they learned from Babylonian astronomy, because the focus of the Jewish week …The Jewish year was now for the first time punctuated by the regular feasts: Passover celebrated the founding of the Jewish nation; Pentecost the giving of the laws, that is the founding of their religion; Tabernacles, the wanderings in the desert where nation and religion were brought together; and as the consciousness of individual responsibility sank into their hearts, the Jews began to celebrate too the New Year in memory of creation, and the Day of Atonement in anticipation of judgment. Again, Babylonian science and calendrical skills helped to regularize and institutionalize this annual religious framework. It was in exile that the rules of faith began to seem all-important: rules of purity, of cleanliness, of diet. The laws were now studied, read aloud, memorized. It is probably from this time that we get the Deuteronomic injunction(the first paragraph of the Shema): ‘These commandments which I give you this day are to be kept in your heart; you shall repeat them to your sons, and speak of them indoors and out of doors, when you lie down and where you rise. Bind them as a sign on the hand and wear them as a phylactery on the forehead; write them on the doorposts of your homes and your gates.” In exile the Jews, deprived of a state, became a nomocracy – voluntary submitting to rule by a Law which could only be enforced by consent. Nothing like this had occurred before in history.”

I’ll let The Curious Jew bring me home:

“And the answer is exactly as you said: the core of the religion, God and His people. We are a nation predicated, not upon time and space, but upon ourselves- how we act, the ethics, morals and virtues laid out for us...this is what makes us Jewish.”