Ted Cruz and the Meaning of Israel (6)

Senator Ted Cruz informs us that he is “the leading defender” of Israel_S because of two main reasons: first, the Bible says that God blesses those who bless Abraham, and second, Israel_S is the strongest ally of the United States in the Middle East. As previously noted, the Senator’s first reason does not come directly from the Bible, which is what he wants us to believe—it is not the result of taking the Bible literally. Rather, it comes from premillennial dispensationalism, the paradigm of choice among a large group of evangelicals today. As I have been trying to show in these blog posts, Ted Cruz’s Christian Zionist understanding of Genesis 2:3a is not supported by logic, history, or the Bible itself.

One of the many problems with Cruz’s argument is that it assumes a mythic view of the Jewish people. This view, constructed by Zionist historians and disseminated by Zionist educators and propagandists, claims that the world’s Jewish population is an ethnic and cultural unity that has somehow remained static and homogeneous across more than three millennia. In this view, there’s no practical difference between the descendants of Abraham mentioned in the Old Testament and the Israelis Jews today.

Here’s the argument in a nutshell:

SENATOR TED CRUZ: . . . as a Christian growing up in Sunday school, I was taught, from the Bible, those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed. And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things.

Referring to the relevant biblical verse, Cruz went to say:

SENATOR TED CRUZ: He’s talking about the nation of Israel, yes. Nations exist. And he’s discussing a nation. A nation was . . . the people of Israel is the nation. They’re the descendants of Abraham.

The verse in question doesn’t use the word “Israel” at all. Rather, it reports God saying to Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse” (Genesis 12:3a). The Senator, like other Christian Zionists, assumes that this divine promise to Abraham extends to Abraham’s descendants as well, which he then incorrectly identifies as Israel_D. But notice that Cruz only quotes the first half of the verse and not the second half, which says: “and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3b). In the unlikely event that he contemplates the entire verse, Cruz might realize that it presents God’s promise to Abraham as radically inclusive, even universal, applying to “all the families of the earth.” Of course, later in the Bible God himself chooses Abraham’s second son, Isaac, as the recipient of the divine covenant, excluding not only Ishmael (Abraham’s firstborn) but also the other six sons born after Isaac. Then, in the next generation, the divine covenant passes on to Jacob, the younger of Isaac’s twin sons, excluding the elder twin, Esau. Latter in the biblical narrative, Jacob is given the title “Israel_J” and his descendants come to be known as Israelites or Israel_D.

Ted Cruz and his Christian Zionist supporters use the phrase “descendants of Abraham” as if it referred only to the progeny of Jacob. But the Old Testament tells us that Abraham’s other sons—Ishmael (Genesis 17:20; 25:12‒16) and his six younger brothers (Genesis 251–4)—as well as Esau, the elder son of Isaac (Genesis 36:9), also became ancestors in their own right. This is supposed to be the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham: “You will be the father of many nations” (Genesis 17:4). In other words, the Old Testament itself does not identify the descendants of Jacob as the only people who could claim Abraham as their biological ancestor. While the Scripture elevates Israel_D (the descendants of Jacob) as the recipients of the covenant and focuses exclusively on their stories, its readers cannot ignore the divine promise that Abraham is to be the ancestor “of many nations,” not just one.

There is a subtle tension in the Book of Genesis itself regarding how the divine blessing could only be inherited by one of Abraham’s sons and then by one of Isaac’s sons—yet, from that point onwards it somehow becomes the birthright of each and every descendant of Jacob, no matter how distanced they might be from the Patriarchs. There is also the drama of the inheritance going to the younger son in each case, despite the assumption of primogeniture, a plot twist that has generated its own theological speculations. Within the biblical narrative, at least one aspect of the issue is highlighted in how Esau complains to his father Isaac for having been excluded from the inheritance. While raising his voice and weeping, Esau says: “Have you only one blessing, father? Bless me, me also, father!” (Genesis 27:38). Perhaps Abraham could have asked God the same question!

This issue has more than just theological significance, given that the biblical notion of a “chosen people” (or at least its dominant interpretation) continues to engender a sense of superiority and entitlement in certain groups of people, arming them with a powerful justification for dehumanizing the other. The remedy for such moral disengagement, in my view, can only come from within the source of the malady itself, i.e., the Bible.

The Old Testament’s preference for Isaac over Ishmael and Jacob over Esau is one of its central themes. Consequently, Israel_D being only a subset of the “children of Abraham” poses a relatively minor difficulty for Cruz. But then comes a bigger problem. Since he is a U.S. Senator who wants to base his political advocacy on the idea that Israel_S represents Israel_N and that Israel_N is the same as Israel_D, he needs something more concrete than half a biblical verse in order to prove his justification.

Let’s suppose that Senator Cruz is sincere in his desire to support Israel_D (the descendants of Jacob) in accordance with what he believes to be a biblical mandate. To fulfill this imperative in today’s world, as opposed to the world depicted in the Book of Genesis, Cruz needs to find a way of identifying the people who fit this description. But Israel_D is a millennia-old religious concept; it is not the type of demographic category whose members can be realistically identified as such; there is, after all, no reliable method we can use to trace anyone’s genetic heritage all the way back to a man who, according to an ancient text, lived almost four thousand years ago. According to popular estimates based on biblical chronology, there have been about 100 generations since Jacob, making it impossible to confirm or reject anyone’s claim of belonging to his lineage. Cruz avoids this problem altogether, simply by assuming—incorrectly—that Israel_D is identical with contemporary Jews; he further imagines—incorrectly—that this population is a single, ethnically homogenous, political community, i.e., Israel_N.

It is not clear whether the Senator is trying to deceive us or himself, or both. Everything that a politician says needs to be taken with a generous sprinkling of salt. In the case of Cruz, it is easy to see that his reasoning is inconsistent. Despite his rhetoric, Cruz’s love and loyalty are directed neither at the descendants of Jacob (since he doesn’t know who they are) nor at the totality of contemporary Jews (since they do not have the same interests and aspirations). In fact, he does not care about serving any particular group of people. Rather, his love and loyalty are directed at an inanimate and impersonal, but clearly identifiable, entity, called Israel_S—a modern, secular, settler colonial, apartheid state, one that is based on an ethno-nationalist ideology that requires it to dominate, subjugate, and ultimately eliminate the native population. This is the entity to which Cruz has devoted his life-energy, making it into an object of his adoration and fidelity, regardless of the cost. All that the Senator wants to do is advance the interests of Israel_S, while his appeal to the half-verse in the Book of Genesis functions as a wink to Christion Zionists and a red herring for everyone else. It’s almost like he is worshipping the Golden Calf while loudly insisting that he just wants to be blessed by God.

As a category, Israel_D is not identical with the Jews or the Jewish people. Cruz appeals to the Bible, but he forgets that the Bible is a religious Scripture, that Judaism is a religion, and that the adherents of Judaism are called Jews. Consequently, Jews are the people who are obligated to follow the 613 commandments recorded in the Torah, the first of the three main parts of the Jewish Bible. This is obviously a religious definition, but there is no logically consistent way of defining a Jew other than by reference to Judaism. From this viewpoint, the reason why the Hebrew Scripture gives center stage to the descendants of Jacob is not because they were carrying Abraham’s DNA but because they were the ones who received the Torah at Sinai and agreed to fulfill its demands. This is the decisive event that marks the birth of Israel_C—the covenant community—as distinct from Israel_D which had, by this point in the biblical narrative, already existed for a few centuries. The unique nature of the Sinai event in the biblical narrative cannot be overstated, nor can we disregard its implications for Jewish identity. The two-way promise made at Sinai between God and the Israelites represents a radically transformative moment, for that’s when what was merely a large tribe became a covenant community as well. Receiving the Torah at Sinai gave the Israelites’ connection to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob a new, cosmic significance; it relativized the biological and elevated the spiritual. As soon as the descendants of Jacob entered into a covenant with God, their blood relations became subservient to their new role as custodians and followers of the Torah. It is not hard to imagine how a covenant with God would override all other obligations, loyalties, and affiliations—“you shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3 & Deuteronomy 5:7).

An ethnicity is a closed group; the only way to join an ethnicity is through birth, and birth alone. A covenant community, in contrast, is open to anyone who is willing to enter the covenant. Just as Jacob’s descendants were not the only people who could claim Abraham as their ancestor, in the same way they were not the only people allowed to enter into a covenant with God. While Israel_D formed the core of this covenant community, it did not have an exclusive access to, or a monopoly over, the covenant itself. Consider, for example, that according to the biblical narrative “many other people” (Exodus 12:38) had joined the Israelites at the time of exodus; some translators use the phrase “mixed multitude” to describe the people who left Egypt under Moses. This suggests that when Israel_C came into being through receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai, it already included people who were not Jacob’s literal descendants. God’s covenant was with the Israelites, but by that point in the story the Israelites were no longer ethnically pure. Put differently, the covenant community transcended the ethnic group even at the moment of its birth.

Nor was this the only instance when individuals from outside Israel_D joined the covenant community. Numerous other instances are mentioned in the Old Testament when non-Israelites were absorbed into Israel_C through informal conversion or gradual assimilation (Exodus 12:48–49; Numbers 15:14–16; Joshua 6:25; 9:22–27; Ruth 4:13–16; Judges 1:16 & 4:11; Esther 8:17). Converts to Judaism included Ruth the Moabite, who became the ancestor of King David. The Israelites often married outsiders, notwithstanding Ezra’s attempt to prohibit the practice. In all likelihood, the “foreigners” or “resident aliens,” who are described as living among the Israelites, were eventually absorbed into the covenant community as well. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scripture, known as the Septuagint, introduced the Jewish religion throughout the Greco-Roman world, and the Hasmonean Kingdom (140 BCE to 63 BCE) is known for having forced non-Jewish people to convert to Judaism, particularly in the regions of Idumea and Galilee. Judaism then became an actively proselytizing religion, winning converts from all over the Roman Empire until the rise of Christianity in the fourth century CE. Some of these converts or their descendants even became famous as Jewish scholars, such as Rabbi Akiva.

So, when Senator Ted Cruz claims that the “descendants of Abraham” and the contemporary Jewish people are one and the same, he is doubly wrong—first, because Abraham in the biblical narrative is “the father of many nations,” not just the Israelites, and second, because the biblical narrative shows that the Israelites frequently converted and assimilated other people who were unrelated to Jacob. The only way for Cruz to correct these errors is for him to recognize that Judaism is a religion, not an ethnicity, and that it is most definitely not a nationality.

It is not impossible for Cruz to recognize these and related misinterpretations, but that would require him to take the Bible seriously. Unfortunately, the Senator is a very busy man and the Bible is not an easy read.