{"id":68289,"date":"2020-01-08T09:29:47","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T07:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=68289"},"modified":"2023-08-03T08:55:21","modified_gmt":"2023-08-03T05:55:21","slug":"many-bodies-of-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/many-bodies-of-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"Many Bodies Of Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"
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One of the ways in which Judaism distinguishes itself from other religious communities is the important, perhaps even defining, role played by descent. Whereas the paradigmatic Bahai, Muslim, or Christian is one who has seen the light, the vast majority of Jews made no active choice to affiliate themselves with Judaism at all \u2014 they were simply born. The modern Jewish thinker who gave perhaps the most forceful and eloquent articulation of this aspect of Jewishness was Michael Wyschogrod. In <\/span>The Body of Faith<\/span><\/i>, he states that rather than using a \u201cspiritual criterion\u201d to determine the holy community, God chose \u201ca corporeal election\u201d \u2014 the \u201celection of the people of Israel as the people of God,\u201d Wyschogrod writes, \u201cconstitutes the sanctification of a natural family.\u201d The bodily existence of the Jewish people is the dwelling-place of God in the world. For Wyschogrod this does not mean that spiritual and theological matters are unimportant. On the contrary, what makes the Jewish body special is its unconditional sanctification to God. But it does mean that \u201cJudaism is not a set of ideas.\u201d Strikingly, Wyschogrod concludes that \u201cif anything, it is the Jewish people that is Judaism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While Wyschogrod\u2019s formations are particularly stark, this understanding of what constitutes the Jewish people is historically fairly typical. Occasionally, though, we have seen indications of another approach to the covenant \u2014 one which focuses not on descent, but belief and practice. One of the earliest and most moving of these can be found in Isaiah 56. Here, the prophet addresses several communities which do not seem to fit into a familial definition of Jewishness. The \u201ceunuchs\u201d are not able to participate in the divine command to beget children, and the \u201cforeigners\u201d to whom the prophet speaks were apparently not seen as able to \u201cbecome Israelite\u201d in the sense in which we think of converts as capable of becoming Jewish today. The prophet declares that these apparently unassimilable bodies can still, through observance of the Sabbath and moral conduct, be attached to the Lord.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He goes even further in his declaration that the Temple \u2014 which, as a place in which activity is restricted not only to Israelite men, but to the priestly caste, represents the most exclusivist idea of covenant \u2014 will become \u201ca house of prayer for all peoples.\u201d The \u201cLORD God,\u201d according to the prophet, \u201cwill gather still more to those already gathered\u201d \u2014 perhaps a vision of a time when the covenant will no longer be restricted to the Israelites at all, but expand until it includes all the families of the earth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moments like this are relatively rare in the history of Jewish thought; more common is the emphasis on descent represented by Wyschogrod. But, in an era in which Jewish identity is contested as perhaps never before, it is important that we attend to the minority reports as well. They may well provide voices which prove crucial to our attempt to live out the covenant in the years to come.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":false,"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"Many Bodies Of Faith","main_caption":"Is the bodily existence of the Jewish people the dwelling-place of God in the world? Isaiah offers an alternative: a covenant open to all","main_caption_size":"2","sub_caption":"","preview_embedded":"","preview_image":false,"preview_video":"","external_link":"","link_for_pay":false,"tile_gallery_items":false,"credits":""},"alternate_tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"","hide_media":false},"tile_group":{"preview_image_url":false,"main_caption":"","sub_caption":"","":null,"popup_package_extra_content":"","read_time":""},"home_color":"","home_gallery_top":"","home_gallery_middle":"","home_gallery_book":"","home_gallery_bottom":"","seo":{"seo_title":"","seo_description":"","seo_default_title":"","seo_default_description":""},"links":false,"send_noty":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68291,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68289\/revisions\/68291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}