6. Powerlessness as Ideology
Jews changed:
- From both a philosophical-theological perspective - encouraged and developed
by generations of rabbinic thinkers;
- From a real-politik perspective - caused by the realities of power wherever
they lived.
The path of power was not the Jews’ way.
They moved away from the earlier model which had accepted physical power
as something desirable, at least in order to ward off potential aggressors.
In the course of the long medieval centuries of Jewish life in the Diaspora,
an ideology of powerlessness developed among Jews.
This idea was not, however an invention of Rabbinic Judaism. Some of the
Prophets had phrased it most eloquently, centuries previously:
Not by might and not by power, but by My spirit, says the G-d of hosts (armies)
Zechariah 4:6
However, the Prophet Zechariah was merely echoing an earlier and fuller
statement by Isaiah, at the beginning of Chapter 31, that: All power lies
with G-d and it is up to G-d to use it; G-d is the real commander of armies.
Physical strength is for non-Jews, while Jews have a different way: they must
trust in G-d, from whom all strength ultimately proceeds.
This was part of an extraordinary, thorough-going, millennia-long transformation
of the model Jew into a creature of book learning, whose aim in life is to
worship G-d, who will cover up and hide all aspects of physicality, prized
by other nations, but regarded condescendingly by Jews as uncivilised.
The Jew became “theologised”: the physical Jew was secondary
to a great cerebral ideal.
An other-worldly and highly spiritualised Jew replaced the physical this-worldly
Jew as a model for Jewish life.
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