The Chosen People

Ruminations

of

B.W. Wojciechowski

We live in unstable times, as usual. The reason is simple: our social structures are infantile, we are in political diapers, socially speaking; with shrill cries, and unappealing messes, all of it suffused by off-putting odors. But we pretend to love it all and hope for a more mature future, a future where we can be proud and happy with what we have created.

In all of this, we have been greatly influenced by religions, religions which have tried to determine how we should behave and to what end. The variety of such explanations is staggering. All of our progress is littered with ideas that have now been rejected and thought to be the outdated attempts of ill-informed thinkers of times past. However, progress has been made. At this time monotheism is winning hearts and minds and its ramifications permeate many disparate societies either directly or by including ideas plagiarized from Christianity.

Let me examine how monotheism and its dominance came to be. In terms of the Bible, it all starts in Egypt, though other records of uncertain date credit Zarathustra with preaching monotheism in Iran in the 18th century BC. Zoroastrianism bears many similarities to Christianity[1], but this is not the topic here. Zarathustra’s lesser-known theology is still active in Iran and India among the Parsi but the better-known instance of early monotheistic religions is the attempt of the Egyptian Pharaoh, Akhenaten, to introduce monotheism in Egypt in the 15th century BC.

The religious establishment of Egypt resented this newfangled idea and considered it to be a threat to the long-lasting religious establishment that had held Egypt together for millennia. When it survived the challenge of monotheism it continued to dominate Egyptian society for a thousand years into the future.

The religious establishment of Egypt made sure that Akhenaten “disappeared,” from unknown causes. His tomb has never been found. The one built for him was unoccupied. Serious attempts were made to erase him from Egyptian history and mentions of him in temples and other sites were diligently chiseled out of the stone, to be replaced by other glyphs. It’s amazing that we know he existed at all.

But Akhenaten had a largely unknown brother named Thutmose. He too disappears mysteriously from the record. As the brother of the Pharaoh, Thutmose had considerable influence and was well plugged-in into society. When his brother Akhenaten “disappeared,” Thutmose seems to have decided that he wanted to continue his brother’s work but not in Egypt, Wise enough. He had a small following among Egyptians and more among slaves of various ethnicities to whom monotheism and freedom from Egyptian oppression were attractive. Thutmose may have been an old-fashioned “concerned” person. The Old Testament tells the story of what happened.

(Thut)mose, who appears as Moses in the Bible, petitioned the authorities that followed Akhenaten, led by the short-term and unremarkable Pharaohs Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten, to let his supporters leave Egypt. At the time, Egyptian politics were in turmoil after the suspicious “removal” of Akhenaten, and his successors would not yield to this outrageous and destabilizing demand in the name of a bunch of nobodies by the brother of a vilified Pharaoh. That could lead to a loss of face and Pharaonic power.

According to the Bible, it was because of this denial that at this time several “plagues” descended on Egypt. Rational proposals have been put together explaining that a cataclysmic explosion of the volcano Santorini could have caused the misfortunes that descended on Egypt. The Old Testament describes the misfortunes and explains that God sent these plagues to convince the authorities to let Moses lead his followers out of Egypt.

Both explanations hold water and both could be true. According to Possibilities and Probabilities (I have an essay on this on Medium), the possibility that Santorini would have a cataclysmic explosion was there. The probability of it happening just then could depend on certain other things besides pure chance. It could be due to the influence of an intelligent entity, God. The fact is that probabilities can be changed by an intelligent power, the existence of the 747 is proof of that. But even a frying pan is unlikely to appear by chance.

The Egyptian authorities relented. Moses led this mass of assorted followers, originating from many lands of the Middle East, over the Isthmus, and into the Sinai desert. Intervening adventures, such as the parting of the waters in the swamps along the way, are also physically possible. It seems to be a phenomenon brought on by a persistent strong wind over a shallow lake/swamp that was on the way. leave it to the reader to look for the details and descriptions of a similar event observed by Major General Alexander Tulloch in 1882, during an English invasion of Egypt. A pursuing Egyptian army might well have come upon the crossing just as the wind died down. The possibility was there and the probability just happened … or?.

Some may be surprised, but recent investigations are showing that many of the stories and place names in the Old Testament are supported by archeological, scientific, and historical evidence. The Old Testament may be biased, it may exaggerate, it may add some whimsy, but it is in large part a history of ancient times.

The mob led by Moses was not composed of Jews, If such a group existed, they were mixed with many other captives collected by Egyptians in wars. The Old Testament tells us the escapees were polytheistic and anything but homogeneous in their beliefs. Many Canaanites[2] among the throng worshiped Baal, a widely worshiped god in their contemporary Middle East which now includes Israel.

(Thut)Mose, the brother of the monotheistic Akhnaton was not happy. His flock was not sufficiently unified and largely pagan. He went on a retreat up Mount Sinai and came down after 40 days and nights with the revelation that he had communicated with the one true God who gave him the Ten Commandments that the wandering crowd must obey. These were carved in stone and were to be the founding directive of a new monotheism for all who worship Him.

The crowd had been meandering in the desert for some 40 years (Why 40 again, It appears in the Bible159 times.) and longed to settle down and have more fertile land to tend. But all such lands in their vicinity were already settled. However, now Moses had a unified throng of followers. They had not only survived 40 years in the desert but they were now unified in the Monotheism revealed to Moses. They decided to win land for themselves by taking it from others.

As the desert-wandering peoples fought their way to occupy regions of modern-day Israel, they met some of their fellow clansmen and assembled the lore of their ancestors which is recorded in the Old Testament. The story of Adam and Eve, of the forefather Abraham, the flood, and so on were tales of bygone times at the time of Moses. Using these legendary stories to attest to their antiquity, they founded their kingdom, and called it Israel, after a son of the long-ago Abraham, whom they claimed as their common ancestor. And so they became Jews.

Abraham may be a historical figure since legends of his life are shared by several Mid-Eastern cultures, including the original tribes of Arabia who were to become Muslims. Abraham was originally an idol worshiper but converted to monotheism at the age of 40 (!!). According to tradition he lived in the 18th century BC, well before Akhenaten and around the time of Zarathustra. There is even reason to think that Abraham was influenced by Zoroastrianism. Monotheism was germinating as an idea well before it became commonly accepted. Many scholars see Zoroastrianism as the possible origin of monotheism.

The name of Israel was chosen by the consensus of the 12 tribes of wanderers who conquered the land of Israel, indicating that at that time it was not an entirely homogeneous community. Perhaps due to the variety of people who escaped their days of slavery during the Flight from Egypt. Today the history of the tribes is so confusing that only a specialist can unravel it for those who are interested.

The newly-organized Israelites declared themselves to be God’s Chosen People. This they claimed was their destiny from God reaching back to the time of Abraham. This allowed them to treat all others as clearly less favored by God and therefore not as deserving to inhabit the land now occupied by the Israelites. In fact, God made them dominant in all other aspects. This concept not only emboldened the Israelites but offended everyone else.

Today the genetic makeup of those who declare themselves to be of the Hebrew persuasion includes numerous individuals whose genes do not show any content of the original stock from ancient Israel or even the Middle East. The theological question arises: are those individuals also Chosen? Is allegiance to the faith of the Jewish diaspora enough to be Chosen? Perhaps, but it remains a theological conundrum that is sure to muddy the waters if you care to jump in.

The fortunes of Israel are recorded in the Old Testament with times of glory punctuated by defeats. However, just as the Egyptians survived millennia of tribulations due to a robust religion, the Israelites also survived due to religious coherence. Nonetheless, not all went well for the Chosen People. They were neighbored by powerful empires such as Assyria and Babylon and were frequently fighting among themselves, with less powerful neighbors, and a host of adversaries. Those times involved a lot of conflicts. Then came the Roman occupation,

The Romans had no end of troubles and insurrections in Israel and finally decided to expel and destroy these troublesome folk from the land of Israel. The sentiments of that time and the procedures invoked are sometimes mirrored in modern resolutions of local disputes. Intransigence and total elimination of adversaries, if possible, was the prevailing principle of the region.

And then, suddenly, a bright light shone on the region when the Biblically promised Messiah appeared in Israel in the year 0 AD, on our modern calendar.

All agree that Jesus Christ (Christ means Messiah and is the title bestowed on Jesus by His followers), was a great prophet. Christians accept Him as God Himself who sent his only son to save us from our sins. The theology of Christianity is confusing in this respect since Jesus committed his soul to his Father when dying on the cross. In fact, there is a Trinity of entities of the Christian monotheistic God: God the Father, His son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Perhaps the idea of a single God capable of appearing in the form of several Avatars is the easiest way to understand the Christian Trinity. The idea of Avatars[3] appears in Hinduism though it is never mentioned in Christianity. Once again subtle connections between Judaism, Egyptian influences, and Zoroastrianism hover over the gelling of what is now Christianity. But I want to avoid theological disputes here and will leave it at that.

There is no doubt that Jesus in His life was a practicing Jew and a reformer of Judaism. He measures up to the promised Messiah of the Old Testament but the Jewish religious establishment refused to recognize Him as such. There is something of the fate of Akhnaton in this dispute, except that we know what happened to Jesus. The religious establishment of Israel convinced the occupying Roman authorities to execute Him as a dangerous heretic and a social disruptor. This was done. But in this case, the record of the life of Jesus was preserved in the recollections of His early followers and later chronicles of oral history.

By the time He was crucified on demand of the Hebrew establishment, Jesus had at least 12 faithful Disciples and probably many more followers in Israel. The Disciples, the followers, and “converts” began to proselytize the teachings of Jesus throughout the Roman Empire. The teachings were truly revolutionary for the time and threatened the unfettered powers of Kings, Emperors, and established religions, including traditional Judaism.

Teachings that stand out in the recollections of Jesus are the strongly proclaimed directive to “love one another” and to be “forgiving,” and include the promise of redemption of the souls of those who followed the teachings of Jesus and the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses. Putting it all together, one can reasonably conclude that modern Christianity is a reformed successor of ancient Judaism.

Since the Jewish establishment refused to give credence to Jesus and his teachings, a new, religion was born — Christianity. This new religion has deep connections with ancient teachings of the Old Testament but, not unexpectedly, the schism from Judaism blossomed into hostility, as schisms often do.

In due course, the Roman Empire accepted Christianity as the state religion, ensuring the isolation of the old-believer Jews, the Hebrews, from future social trends. The Jews were scattered all over the Roman Empire and more, but remained clannish and increasingly isolated their communities from the slowly evolving societies of non-Jews; the Goim.

In the 7th century AD, Islam was formed by a new prophet, Mahomet. This religion accepted some of the Old Testament, and Jesus as a prophet, but unlike Christianity, which preached Love and Forgiveness, soon took on a bellicose turn. Mahomet personally took part in armed confrontations. The reasons were many but in essence, unlike Jesus, Mahomet was a social leader and had to deal with real armed enemies. The temporal power of Mahomed left scars on Islam. Time has distorted the original concept of a righteous Jihad, and it now stands for a much less laudable form of conflict with the world beyond Islam. Early approaches have ossified in a form that Mahomet may not approve of, and their compilation in the late 7th century AD is socially retrogressive compared to Christianity.

Conquest and if necessary forcible submission of non-believers is a core part of the teaching of current Islam. Whenever the conversion was not enforced, the no-believers were legally made second-class citizens, subject to special taxes and other impositions. The firmness of Muslim beliefs and the primitive tenor of the early times when Islam was formed, made it a powerful force amidst the chaos and tribalism in the Mid-Eastern provinces of the failing Roman Empire.

Since The Roman Empire was Christian, Jews were inclined to cooperate with the Muslims who were ethnically their cousins. It was a marriage of convenience and an unstable one as time would show. After the forces of Islam, coming from northern Africa, conquered the post-Roman and Christian Iberian Peninsula in 711 AD, the large Jewish communities, both preexisting in Spain and newly arrived with the Muslims, prospered under the rule of the conquering Mahomedans. The Umayyad Caliphate in Spain reached a peak of splendor and power in the 10th century but the native Christian population of Spain was oppressed, continued to be resentful, and was determined to be rid of the occupiers.

For over 700 years, beginning in the 8th century, the Iberians were under foreign occupation. But in the end, in the late 15th century they managed to free their country and expelled all Muslims. They did not slaughter them, or enslave them, as Mid-Eastern powers were inclined to do, but let them go back to North Africa, their ancestral lands. Only modern Jews have beaten that seven-hundred-year record of displacement, returning to the lands of ancient Israel after two millennia.

A religious court was set up in Spain to winkle out those who pretended to be Christians in order to stay in the Spain of their birth. It gained infamy for its methods. That is a modern view. The Inquisition was a more or less normal court looking for heretics and individuals who posed a danger to society. Among those were Jews and other non-Christians as well as collaborators with the Muslim occupiers. They were given a choice: they could convert to Christianity or would be expelled.

Many Jews pretended to convert but could be detected as Jews by the simple test of making the suspect eat pork. Pork is forbidden in Jewish dietary proscriptions and the secret Jews could not comply. They became known as Chuletas (pork chops), and were expelled Those who converted were later called marranos. This effort at religious cleansing resulted in the discovery of so many pretenders that a mass expulsion of all Jews was ordered in 1492 AD.

The Jews were no longer welcomed in their ancestral lands in the Middle East, now populated by Mahomedans, and migrated north and east in Europe. There they were also unwelcome, partly because they were held responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus, but also because they were clannish and failed to assimilate.

But even earlier, in 1343, a Polish King, Casimir the Great, invited Jews to settle in lands under Polish domination. The skills and connections of the Jewish diaspora were expected to improve the economics of the kingdom. Jews in large numbers came, and settled in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus, all lands under the King’s rule at the time.

Some prospered and set up centers of culture in several locations. Wilno (Vilnius), Kraków, and other important cities became centers of Jewish culture and scholarship. However, in small villages, after centuries of cohabitation with the local populations, the Jews once more failed to assimilate and remained clannish. Not many prospered in the isolated villages. With time, many villages became totally inhabited by Jews as the Goim moved away. All this began to rankle and antisemitism began to descend on the Jewish communities. It increased until the 18th century when Pogroms (suppressions) of Jews became a problem in the eastern regions, which by now were Russian-dominated.

Despite revisionist history, the Jewish clannishness at this time led to revolts among Jews themselves against their own fundamentalist Rabies. Many Jewish villages tended to be completely isolated from their surrounding neighbors due to clannishness and religious hostilities. The Fiddler on the Roof presents something of these times. Because of this lack of cooperation, the Jewish villages were noticeably poorer and backward. Isolationism will do that to communities, not just Jewish ones, though Mennonites and other isolationist communes survive in modern times. But in the late 18th century ferment was in the air both within and against the Jewish isolationist communities.

Late in the 19th century, a couple of Jewish intellectuals, Marx and Engels, followed up on an idea that had been germinating among 18th-century AD intellectuals. The idea was to promote universal equality, abolish aristocracy, and religiosity that held power, and suppressed “the people,” Jews included. This idea appealed to “common people” whether they were Jewish or not. The opportunity was there for Jews to become legally equal with the rest of “the people” and perhaps gain some secular power without risking their religion or distinctiveness. It was a revolutionary idea but in keeping with the intellectual currents of the time, particularly in France and England. The new social contract was to become known as Socialism.

Revolutionary ideas can lead to bloody revolutions. And so it was with Socialism. This ideology owes much to Christian ideology but introduces an active suppression of a belief in God, eliminates the idea of unconditional brotherly love among all people, tolerance of departures from some common beliefs, etc. Since love conquers all, free love (Eros that is, not Agape) was promoted by socialists, and the bourgeois idea of family was to be abolished. In many ways, Socialism took a step back from the tolerance Christianity struggled to introduce and reactivated Mid-Eastern intolerant fundamentalism. Despite preaching equality etc., the ideology soon established a privileged class of “leaders” who assumed many of the privileges of previous social movers and shakers.

Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose?

It did not work well for the Jewish diaspora. The traditional antisemitism of Europe soon re-emerged. No sooner was the socialist/communist revolution successful in Russia than Jewish influence in the upper echelons of the resultant dictatorship became resented. The Jews were once again suspected of conspiracies, clannishness, and all kinds of self-seeking maneuvers. Closed societies are often accused of misdeeds and the Jewish communities were certainly not transparent.

As the 20th century progressed Socialism became an ideology that attracted the masses in Europe, caused a revolution in Russia, and reached for power in Germany after it lost WWI. Germany was in disarray and a new ideology arose in the chaos. To stop the chaos the National Socialist Party, Nazis, rose up and took power in the dispirited land of a talented people. One could not have imagined that such a people could become a source of unspeakable horrors if its talents were directed to evil ends.

The Germans were persuaded by a charismatic leader, Hitler, that they belonged to an ancient super race of “Arians.” It was up to them to save the world from Communism and Christianity by assuming rule over the countries of Europe and more. To give credit where credit is due, the surging Nazis reconstructed Germany from a dispirited chaos into an industrial and military power in no more than a decade. An amazing performance but built on a false premise and therefore prone to irrationality. The irrationality turned out to be profound, variegated, and only accepted as long as a charismatic leader, Hitler, could proclaim and enforce it.

To purify the race for the benefit of German Arians, social cleansing had to remove the infirm, the mentally challenged, and all lesser ethnic groups in Germany and Europe as a whole. Among the least valuable such groups were Jews and Gypsies. The Nazies proceeded to eliminate these people and other “Untermenschen” by employing industrial-scale murder of members of the “lesser” groups. Some 20 million members of the “defective” groups were systematically murdered and mostly cremated. Of these, there were some 6 million Jews, from all over Europe. The depravity was such that the bones of the cremated innocents were sometimes used as fertilizer. That kind of recycling has not yet been proposed in our times. But there may well be such ecologically sound ideas in the back of the minds of our “progressive” thinkers. After all …. who knows.

When Germany was defeated in WWII there was a great deal of sympathy for the surviving Jews and an international consensus emerged to repatriate (?) those Jews who wanted it, back to what used to be Israel but was now populated by Muslims and called Palestine. This is not the only idiotic move made by the victorious allies of WWII, but it is outstanding.

Jews by the thousands longed to have their own country. That one can understand. A Zionist migration to Palestine began before WWI. In the beginning, migrating Jews simply bought land from the local Arabs. However, this migration became a problem. The inhabitants of Palestine did not want to be slowly displaced from the land they had inhabited for many generations. Unlike the Muslims expelled from Spain to North Africa, the Jews wanted to replace a people embracing a hostile religion. How is one to resolve that? On top of that, both the immigrant Jews and the resident Muslims had Middle Eastern cultural similarities and would not be easily displaced, as were the Germans who were displaced from the ex-German regions of what is now France.

For that matter millions of Europeans, including Poles and Germans, and many in the Balkans found themselves outside the borders of their ancestral sites. The reason they thrive in their adopted countries is that displaced Europeans assimilate within a few generations and become patriotic members of their new societies. The USA is a prime example but German names are also common in Poland, France, and elsewhere. People like that are often outstanding patriots of their adopted lands.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe is a revered Polish Saint. His father was an ethnic German and his mother was Polish. In 1914 his father was captured by the Russians and hanged for his part in fighting for an independent Poland. His son, now revered as Saint Maximillian Kolbe developed a strong religious yearning from early life. He died a martyr who gave his life to protect a Polish army sergeant sentenced to die in a Nazi concentration camp.

On the other hand, the new Israel involved a mass of displaced people who were not welcomed as refugees elsewhere among the Muslim countries. They too remain clannish in regard to their ancestry and willing to fight forever to regain the lands both they and the Jews claimed as theirs. Add to this the fact that the displaced people are Muslims whose religion expects them to fight for their cause with the promise of 72 virgins each, waiting in heaven for those who die fighting for a cause approved by their clergy. The readiness to die for their cause is very strong among Muslims. Jews, however, do not expect virgins as a reward. They just want the Palestinians to forgive and forget. Fat chance.

The result is that a significant alliance of Muslim powers is now dedicated to the annihilation of modern Israel. Israel is a modern entity in the middle of a medieval ethos. However, its ethos is ancient too. They fight fire with even more fire to survive. The Israelites face implacable violence and are prepared to be equally fierce in self-defense. Even then they try to preserve some of the niceties of Christian Europe. The mellowing of European cultures and more forgiving social structures makes extreme measures less common in Europe and also influences modern Israel.

However, mindless violence is not entirely unknown when expansionist politics dominate, as evidenced by the recent Russian attempt to occupy Ukraine and the earlier Nazi claims to “Lebensraum” in WWII. The recent history of Germany and various communist and nationalist forces attests to the fact that Christian tenets are far from ensuring Agape and Morality after 2,000 years of trying.

And so, here we are again. Jews have largely used up their claims of victimhood from WWII and are accumulating enemies. Their neighbors in the Middle East fear and hate them with a passion that post-Roman Christianity tries to eliminate in Europe. Current Islam, on the other hand, feeds on hatred and is unlikely to change soon. There is little sign of reform in Islam, perhaps because even thinking of reform invites a death sentence from Islam’s religious authorities.

It is tragic to think that the power of technology and intellect may not be enough to preserve Israel. But what can it do, Jews believe that they are special, a Chosen People. As long as this idea dominates their society, and their actions and expectations, they will be in danger. Hitler’s thousand-year Reich of Pure Arians may have survived if the rest of the world had not disabused the Germans of their imagined Arian superiority.

I want to end with current news. The new Israel has been attacked by Hamas, an Islamic fighting force whose behavior can reasonably be described as medieval, though their arms are more up-to-date. The Israelis responded with massive violence and a declared goal of totally annihilating this implacable enemy. To date, most casualties on both sides have been civilians, who are powerless to stop the violence. The remarkable fact is that all over the world Israel is blamed for the violence initiated by the Hamas invasion. Go figure.

Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

What is stoking the fire

that has consumed Jews for millennia?

Tell me, please.

[1] Zoroastrianism predates religious concepts of later times such as monotheism, messianism, belief in free will, judgment after death, the concepts of heaven, hell, angels, and demons, and even more that have appeared in later religious and philosophical systems. These include philosophies and theologies such as those in the Abrahamic Religions, Gnosticism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

[2] The region known as Canaan encompassed southern Levant. Today it contains Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, and the southern regions of Syria and Lebanon.

[3] Avatar derives from a Sanskrit word meaning “descent.” When it appeared in English in the late 18th century, it referred to the descent of a deity to the earth.