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By Root 375 0

person in God's image. In order to do that, however, we Jews need to survive, to live with a certain security and respect. Having lived so long in societies where our own full humanity was questioned, we naturally became busy with issues of self-preservation and defense. Even today, in an age when we are less threatened than in almost any prior age, we bear the burden of historical memory (reinforced a thousandfold by the all-too-recent Holocaust and now by the promulgation of Nazi-like views in parts of the Islamic world) that makes us think and act defensively.

Having shared with you so much of what I mean by “God” and “Torah,” I now need to turn to the third leg of the classical Jewish triad and address the question of “Israel.”26 I begin with what is bedrock for me, the verse from which I very nearly chose this book's title: “I will dwell amid the Children of Israel and become their God. Then they will know that I am Y-H-W-H their God who brought them forth from the Land of Egypt to dwell within them. I am Y-H-W-H their God” (Ex. 29:45-46). Israel is a dwelling place for God in this world. We are a living parallel to the mishkan, a wandering sanctuary for the divine presence. Our task through history is ever the same: to constitute a human community in which God is present, in which that presence is felt from within and seen from without. As each person is the image of God, an embodiment of divinity, so are we as a people to bear that living presence within us. This is the purpose of the whole enterprise, the reason God brought us forth from Egypt. We are liberated from human bondage in order to become an earthly familial home, a dwelling, for Y-H-W-H, the ever-living force that redeemed us.

To understand Judaism and the Jewish mindset, one needs to understand that our most basic statement of faith involves this collective experience of liberation from bondage. The full text called the shema’, recited morning and evening, concludes with the sentence “I am Y-H-W-H your God who brought you out of the Land of Egypt to be your God; I am Y-H-W-H your God” (Num. 15:41). The ten commandments are introduced by “I am Y-H-W-H your God who brought you out of the Land of Egypt, from the house of bondage” (Ex. 2o:2).27 These verses are two of many, scattered through Torah and the prophetic writings that repeat this theme. In this way Judaism differs from both Christianity and Islam, where the most essential faith message is directed to the individual. Jewish faith is about belonging to this liberated community of former slaves. Being “Israel” means identifying fully with that experience, as though it had just happened yesterday.

Although we were victimized in Egypt as members of a particular clan, we came out of the experience with a universal message. What was done to us, the dehumanization and degradation wrought by slavery, must never happen to another person or group anywhere. (The wisest survivors of our more recent trials know and proclaim this as well.) All of being is one; each human is the image of God. We, Israel, have been lifted out of slavery to bear witness to that truth.

Whom do we mean when we say “Israel?” The classic definition, those born into the Jewish people plus those who properly convert, is too simple, begging too many vexing questions. Is it all those who identify with this liberation from bondage? That seems too broad, for the story of Egypt has indeed become the property of all humanity. The fact is that there are many Israels. “Who is my Israel?” I ask myself. Who constitutes the community in whose midst I seek to share both my struggle for liberation and my joy in celebrating that freedom? You indeed are my Israel. You for whom I write, you whom I teach, you with whom I feel a deep kinship of shared human values and love of this Jewish language. Are you all Jews, in the formal sense? I'm not much worried about that question. In fact I am especially happy there are non-Jewish readers, especially Christians, with whom I share so much, along on this journey. But such readers might want to know on what