Thread by @rabbisacks

Here is a thread from my Covenant & Conversation essay on #Balak called "Not Reckoned Among the Nations". You can read it in full here: bit.ly/2JPC7bv and download the accompanying Family Edition here: bit.ly/32ykyFv. #ShabbatShalom

There are nations with many religions: #multicultural #Britain is one among many. There are religions governing many nations: #Christianity and #Islam are obvious examples. Only in the case of #Judaism is there a one-to-one correlation between #religion and #nationhood.

Without #Judaism there would be nothing (except #antisemitism) to connect #Jews across the world. And without the #Jewish nation Judaism would cease to be what it has always been, the #faith of a people bound by a bond of collective #responsibility to one another and to #God.

Bilaam was right. The #Jewish people really are unique. Nothing therefore could be more mistaken than to define #Jewishness as a mere #ethnicity. If ethnicity is a form of culture, then Jews are not one ethnicity but many.

In #Israel, Jews are a walking lexicon of almost every #ethnicity under the sun. If ethnicity is another word for race, then conversion to #Judaism would be impossible (you cannot convert to become Caucasian; you cannot change your race at will).

What makes #Jews “a nation dwelling alone, not reckoned among the nations,” is that their #nationhood is not a matter of #geography, #politics or #ethnicity.

It is a matter of religious vocation as God’s covenant partners, summoned to be a living example of a nation among the nations made distinctive by its faith and way of life.

Lose that and we lose the one thing that was and remains the source of our singular contribution to the heritage of #humankind. When we forget this, sadly, #God arranges for people like Bilaam to remind us otherwise. We should not need such reminding.