{"id":74935,"date":"2020-05-19T16:53:04","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T13:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=74935"},"modified":"2020-05-19T16:53:04","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T13:53:04","slug":"ezekiel-the-individualist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/ezekiel-the-individualist\/","title":{"rendered":"Ezekiel The Individualist"},"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":[],"acf":{"old_id":"74935","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":64460,"related_cahpter":"485","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"He doesn\u2019t care who your daddy was\r\n\r\n","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the ideas which pervades Jewish liturgy is that of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">zechut avot <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014 the merit of the ancestors. This idea appears in the most quotidian and the most dramatic moments of our prayers: we begin the daily <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">amidah <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">by invoking \u201cour God and the God of our fathers: God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob\u201d; and in the fraught climax of the Rosh Hashanah liturgy we implore God to remember the extraordinary merit of Abraham, willing to offer his precious son up to God, and to judge us favorably on Abraham\u2019s account. This positive, constitutive connection with the deeds of our ancestors is one of the most enduring themes of Jewish thought. Even those who may not feel particularly \u2018religious\u2019 are often reluctant to discard their connection to the Jewish tradition at least in part because this sense of an ancestral claim is so deeply resonant.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A moment in the 33rd chapter of Ezekiel seems to call this entire way of thinking into question. Israelites remaining in the land connect their claim of sovereignty \u2014 unchanged, in their view, by the political reality of Babylonian rule \u2014 to the merit of Abraham. \u201cAbraham was but one man,\u201d they say, \u201cyet he was granted possession of the land. We are many; surely, the land has been given as a possession to us\u201d (verse 24). The prophet, in turn, forcefully rejects the arrogance which he sees as animating this claim: \u201cYou have relied on your sword, you have committed abominations, you have all defiled other men\u2019s wives\u2014yet you expect to possess the land!\u201d (verse 26). Whether the remaining Israelites have a claim on the land of Canaan depends not on the merit of their ancestor, but on their own conduct, which is sorely lacking.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This shocking rejection of the doctrine of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">zechut avot <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is perhaps but the most climactic moment of a tendency to be found throughout the Book of Ezekiel. Again and again in Ezekiel\u2019s prophecies we find a moral theory which is both individualist and perfectionist: \u201cThe righteousness of the righteous shall not save him when he transgresses, nor shall the wickedness of the wicked cause him to stumble when he turns back from his wickedness. The righteous shall not survive through his righteousness when he sins\u201d (33:12). Each person\u2019s relationship to God is considered individually, rather than as a part of the people, and Ezekiel places demands on the individual which seem impossibly strict \u2014 we are all on a narrow bridge, and not only are the deeds of the ancestors of no help, even our own past merits are irrelevant.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Generally speaking, Ezekiel\u2019s ethics have not furnished the lines along which most Jewish moral thinking, which stresses the importance of the collective, has developed. But his doctrine offers a stark challenge to the ways in which this corporate morality can so often serve as a source of excuses and a means of avoiding difficult questions about our own conduct.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":74937,"id":74937,"title":"ez33-difference","filename":"ez33-difference.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/ez33-difference.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/ezekiel-the-individualist\/ez33-difference\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"ez33-difference","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":74935,"date":"2020-05-19 13:52:49","modified":"2022-03-27 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