The Curse
Prof. Paul Eidelberg
According to the first sentence of Israel's May 14, 1948 "Proclamation of the State," the Land of Israel, [Palestine] was the birthplace of the Jewish people [העם היהודי]. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books."
The first sentence of the Proclamation implies that the Jews did not become a people until the conquest of Canaan by Joshua, hence only after the Law-giving at Mount Sinai. The Book of Deuteronomy tells a different story, but some preliminary definitions are necessary.
First, we must define the difference between a "people" and a "nation." Here I will rely on the fourth-century Aramaic translation of the great Babylonian convert to Judaism, Onkelos (which has been rendered into English and annotated by Israel Drazin and Stanley M. Wagner). However, before consulting Onkelos, let us recall Numbers 23:9 which highlights the unique character of the Jewish people: "Behold a people(עם = ahm) that dwells alone and shall not consider itself [as simply one] among the nations [goyim = plural of גו' ].
As commentators have noted, whereas an ahm ( (עםsignifies a collectivity united by a religious heritage, goy (גו') signifies a collectivity united only on the basis of a common territory or homeland. The Torah designates the Jews aa an ahm as well as a goy kodesh, a Holy Nation (which makes it an ahm). The distinction between an ahm and a goy (עם and a גו') in secular terms corresponds to the difference between a people and a nation.
A people may be monocultural, united not only by language, but also by culture, i.e., endogamous patterns of marriage and by shared religious beliefs and values rooted in a common and immemorial past. Conversely, a nation can be multicultural as well as monocultural. For example, the Poles and Lithuanians have historically put their ethnicity and national interests ahead of their common religion, Catholic Christianity. This subordination of religion to nationality (or ethnicity) is to be attributed to the fact that both peoples possessed nationhood long before they were forced to accept Christianity. What distinguishes the Jews, however, is religious nationhood. The "Old Testament," unlike the "New," does not record the source of a religion, but rather the divine founding of a people-cum-nation, and prior to the establishment of its territorial domain.
Now let us consult Onkelos with some help from his two translators Drazin and Wagner. Our text is Deuteronomy 26:17-19:
You have made the Lord [HaShem] an object of your love this day [the day before the Children of Israel crossed the Jordan River and entered the Promised Land], to be [your God], that you will walk in the ways that are right before Him and keep His laws, His commandments, and his ordinances … The Lord has made you an object of His love this day, to be His beloved people [ahm], as He told you keeping all His commandments. And He will set you high above all the nations [goyim plural of goy] that he has made, in praise, in renown, and in honor, and so you shall be a holy people [an ahm kodesh] before the Lord your God, as He said [i.e. promised].
It should be evident from the preceding that the first sentence of the Proclamation of the State of Israel is misleading, to say the least. By asserting that the Jews became a people in the Land of Israel (Palestine), the secular authors of that document deliberately denied the Covenant that made the Jews a people before they crossed the Jordan River and entered the Land of Israel.
This explains why the only name that appears in the text of the Proclamation of the State of Israel is that of Theodor Herzl. It also explains why the authors of that document refused to include the name of God, but instead, as a concession to the rabbis that signed that document, substituted the biblical term "Rock of Israel."
But this is not the end of the story. If the opening statement of the Proclamation of the State is deemed misleading if not false vis-à-vis the verses from Deuteronomy cited above, then that statement is a subtle denial of the God as the Law-Giver at Mount Sinai, hardly mitigated by the Proclamation's inclusion of the phrase "Rock of Israel."
Now, at risk of being condemned by apologists of the Proclamation of the State, a document cherished by State's ruling class, I dare say that the first sentence of that document is the source of a terrible and self-inflicted curse.
That a curse has descended upon Israel is intimated by the fact that regardless of which party or party leader has been at the helm, it has pursued, year after year, for more than two decades, the same demonstrably futile and existentially fatal policy of "land for peace" – the very land on which the Jews first became a people, and NOT at Sinai.
The curse has taken or ruined the lives of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children. I repeat: the curse originated in that first sentence of the Proclamation, would have the Jewish People believe that they became a People not by virtue of the Torah to which they gave their solemn word at Mount Sinai, but only by after they entered Eretz Israel.
What incredible irony! Having denied the Sinai Covenant, the swath of land that supposedly made them a people is now claimed by an "invented" people, the Palestinians, as prophesied in Deuteronomy 32:21: "I will vex them with that which is a non-people ((לא-עם and ano god ((לא-אל."
As serious scholars know, the Palestinians are not a people but an aggregation of terrorist groups hailing from North Africa and the Middle East. As for Allah, let others serious scholars comment on this subject.☼
