{"id":51916,"date":"2019-03-24T16:00:25","date_gmt":"2019-03-24T14:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=51916"},"modified":"2022-10-15T13:29:04","modified_gmt":"2022-10-15T10:29:04","slug":"the-eternal-covenant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-eternal-covenant\/","title":{"rendered":"The Eternal Covenant"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[395,462,354],"acf":{"old_id":"51916","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":33923,"related_cahpter":"182","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"The basis of collective Jewish destiny, and shared fate as a people","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My journey into Jewish identity begins five hundred years ago in Spain, in a place called Calatayud, in the study of the rabbi of the town, Rabbi Isaac ben Moses Arama\u2026 Moses, at the end of his life, renews the covenant of Sinai, some forty years later, with the members of the new generation:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAll of you are standing today in the presence of the Lord your God&#8230;I am making this covenant with its oath, not only with you who are standing here with us today in the presence of the Lord our God but also with those who are not here with us today\u201d (29:14).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The words are familiar, but a question has occurred to him. Good! This is the way he usually starts a sermon. But as he searches for an answer, he finds himself becoming more enmeshed in perplexity. With a tremor he realizes that this is no ordinary question, for it threatens to unravel his entire life\u2019s work, and indeed his very identity. Eventually he finds an answer and delivers the sermon. But the question has not gone away. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The question, as he eventually formulated it, was this: Moses states that he is making the covenant not only with those who were there but also with those who were not there. To whom was he referring as not having been there? Clearly he did not mean members of the nation at that time. They were all there, as the text makes emphatically clear. Nor was he referring to the previous generation. They had already accepted the covenant at Mount Sinai. He meant, as Rashi explains, <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">those who are not yet born<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> &#8211; the generations to come. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hence the vital importance of this text. It is the very basis of Jewish destiny, the collective immortality of the people of Israel. The covenant will be eternal. It will bind all future generations. Jews will be born into its obligations. They will be, in the talmudic phrase, <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">mushba ve-omed mi-Sinai<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, \u201calready forsworn at Sinai.\u201d There is no need for assent, consent or confirmation. Converts excepted, Jews do not become Jews. They are Jews by birth. Jewish identity, then, is not only a faith, but a fate. It is not an identity we assume, but one into which we are born. That is the proper understanding of the passage as Jewish tradition, and Arama himself, had always read it.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p><i>A Letter in the Scroll<\/i>, p.11-12<\/p>\n","image":{"ID":51917,"id":51917,"title":"dt29-covenant","filename":"dt29-covenant.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/dt29-covenant.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-eternal-covenant\/dt29-covenant\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"dt29-covenant","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":51916,"date":"2019-03-24 14:00:06","modified":"2022-10-15 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