Why Is Judaism The Smallest Of The Abrahamic Religions? – OpEd

Judaism is the oldest, and the smallest of the three Abrahamic religions because Judaism is a boutique religion. Just as a boutique small-capacity hotel can provide more personalized service than typical large hotels, so Judaism enables Jews to question God (as Abraham did while trying to save the sinners of Sodom (Genesis 18:17-33) while remaining loyal to our covenant with God. 

Numerically small religions with long histories are not as likely to be corrupted by establishment power. 

And nature teaches us that the largest known genome belongs to a tiny fern ‘Tmesipteris oblanceolata’; which is just 15 centimeters long, while its genome dwarfs human genomes by more than 50 times.

For Jews belonging and behaving are more important than believing. As our Rabbis taught: “If one sees a crowd of Israelites say, Blessed is the One who is a sage of enigmas, for the mind of each (person) is different from that of another, just as the face of each is different from that of another.” (Talmud Berakhot 58a)

According to a very recent PhD thesis survey of 55 converts in the Los Angeles area by Dr. Stephanie Cubba (one third of whom converted in 2023) when asked about their motivations for formally converting 67% said that they were seeking a religion with room for questioning.

Prophet Abraham was the first Biblical person to be called a “Hebrew” (Genesis 14:13). The term Hebrew comes from the verb to go over a boundary, like the Euphrates or Jordan river, or to be an immigrant because the first thing God told Prophet Abraham was: “The LORD said to Abram, “Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s household, and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing….” (Genesis 12:1-2)

The term ivri (a Hebrew) first appears in the Torah, when Prophet Abraham is called “the Hebrew: “And it was told to Abram the Hebrew” (Genesis 14:13) Prophet Joseph uses this name as both a geographical and an socio-ethnic term: “I was kidnapped from the land of the ivrim”  (Genesis 40:15), and “The Egyptians could not eat with the ivrim, since that would be an abomination” (Gen. 43:32) God tells Moses: “Tell him (Pharaoh) the God of the Hebrews encountered us. (Exodus 3:18)

So Prophet Abraham was the first Islamic Hebrew as the Qur’an 3:67 states: “”He (Abraham) was not Yahuudiyyan, “a Jew”, nor Nasraaniyyan, “a Christian”, but rather a Haniifan i.e. “a monotheistic Hebrew believer submitting (Islam) to the one imageless God who created all space and time; and who made Prophet Abraham the Hebrew’s descendants through Prophets Isaac and Jacob (Israel), into a great multitude of monotheists called the People of Israel-Banu Israel.

“And who is better in religion than one who submits himself to Allah while being a doer of good and follows the religion of Abraham, inclining toward truth? And Allah took Abraham as an intimate friend.” (4:125)

The word Muslim is a religious identity term that refers to faithful monotheistic believers both Muslims and Non-Muslims. The word Hebrew is a linguistic, geographical and ethnic identity term like German [a language], Germany{a country] and Germans [a people]. The word descendent is a biological inherited birth identity term like nobility or tribe.

However, Jews have many names to self-identify because they have been immigrants for a little more than half of their 36 centuries of Jewish history. Even more important, by God’s design Prophet Abraham’s biological descendants through Isaac and Jacob became the first ongoing monotheistic community to last to this very day. 

“And remember Our servants, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – those of strength and [religious] vision. Indeed, We chose them for an exclusive quality: remembrance of the home [the “safe haven” Land of Israel]. And indeed they are to Us among the chosen and outstanding.” (Qur’an 38:45-7)

Prophet Joseph uses the name as both a geographical and an socio-ethnic term: “I was kidnapped from the land of the ivrim” (Genesis 40:15), and “The Egyptians could not eat with the ivrim, since that would be an abomination” (Gen. 43:32)

The Hebrew tribal nation did not acquire its better known name; the Children (Descendants) of Israel (in Hebrew B’nai Israel, in Arabic Banu Israel) until a few centuries after Prophet Abraham the Hebrew. Exodus chapter 1 shows how the Hebrews became the Children of Israel: 

“The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live? The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.” (Exodus 1:7-19)

In Exodus chapter 2 when Pharaoh’s daughter (and her mother) see baby Moses floating on the Nile in a basket they both felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said. Then his sister (Prophet Miriam) asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” (Exodus 2: 6-7) 

So from Prophet Abraham the Hebrew, to the time of Prophet Moses they are Hebrews. Then before the covenant with God their name becomes Banu Israel. 

This new name for the 12 tribes of Hebrews comes from Abraham’s grandson, Prophet Jacob’s encounter with God’s agent in a dramatic physical and spiritual wrestling match.

Professor Meira Z. Kensky of Coe Collage in a very insightful article in the Times of Israel (November 18, 2021) alerts us to how Prophet Jacob makes a series of strategic preparations in anticipation of meeting his long estranged and perhaps violent brother Esau. Instead of the expected confrontation, we get a totally unexpected and unanticipated wrestling match between Jacob and a mysterious man.

The Torah states: Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled physically and spiritually with him until daybreak.” (Genesis 32:25) This struggle  literally comes out of nowhere. Jacob prevails in the hours-long struggle, but he is wounded in the thigh (verse 26). The man tries to leave, but Jacob says he will not release him until the man blesses him (verse 27). 

Here is another unexpected situation where Prophet Jacob—though wounded—prevails, and Jacob intends to learn what it all means. So the man asks Jacob his name, and then he gives Jacob a new name (Genesis 32:29 “He said, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and you prevailed.”

This encounter is the moment where Prophet Jacob receives the name that will become the name of the Jewish nation after the Exodus from Egypt, for the next 3,300 years. 

This is the name used by both the Christian New Testament and the Muslim Qur’an. 

It also is a name (Israel) which includes a shocking concept; “…for you have striven with God and with men, and you have prevailed.”

Israelite is the name used in both the Christian New Testament and the Muslim Qur’an where the name “Bani Israel” (Children of Israel) is mentioned 40 times. The name “Israel” is mentioned 2,319 individual times in the Hebrew Bible because the historical experiences of the nation of Israel (The children of Jacob/Israel) is the central focus of all the books in the Hebrew scriptures; except for the Book of Job.

Since Jacob gets renamed Israel by God’s agent, it is critical to think about what this narrative is saying about the People of Israel as a whole; as well as the Holy-land of Israel in particular. This nighttime encounter takes place at the ford of the Jabbok river, the eastern frontier of Canaan. The Jabbok is elsewhere marked by the Bible as a political boundary (Torah Numbers 21:24, Torah Deuteronomy 3:16) and becomes one of the boundaries of Israelite territory (Bible Judges 11:13-22). 

By crossing this river, Jacob, representing Israel, crosses from outsider status into a promised by God land, reenacting Abraham’s call. “So when he (Prophet Abraham) turned away from them (his homeland’s idol worshippers) and from those whom they worship besides God, We gave him Isaac and Jacob and each one of them We made a prophet.” (Quran 19:49) “And We bestowed upon him Isaac and a grandson Jacob, and made each of them righteous.” (Quran 21:72)

“… and of the descendants of Abraham and Israel, and of those whom We guided and chose.  When the verses of the Most Merciful were recited to them, they fell down prostrating and weeping.” (Quran 19:58)

So where did the name Jew come from? The Hebrew version is יְהוּדִי for a male and יְהוּדִיָּה for a female. But if you’d read the Hebrew Bible – in Hebrew or in English, you will see the words יהודי and יהודייה are strikingly… absent because יהודי and יהודייה come from the name יְהוּדָה – one of the sons of Jacob, but also the part of the Land of Israel named after that son. In English, that piece of land is called Judea.

The term Yehudi (יְהוּדִי) occurs 74 times in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible. The plural, Yehudim (הַיְּהוּדִים) first appears in 2 Kings 16:6 where it refers to a defeat for the Yehudi army or nation, and in 2 Chronicles 32:18, where it refers to the language of the Yehudim (יְהוּדִית). 

Jeremiah 34:9 has the earliest singular usage of the word Yehudi. In Esther 2:5–6, the name “Yehudi” (יְהוּדִי) has a generic aspect, in this case referring to a man from the tribe of Benjamin: “A Jewish man (a man from Judea) was in Shushan the capital, and his name was Mordecai, who was exiled from Jerusalem… (Book of Esther 2:5-6)

Jew is the name of individual Jewish people and Jews is the plural name. Israeli is the name for Jewish citizens of the modern State of Israel. Prophet Abraham’s many descendants through his grandson Jacob/Israel have many names; but have remained one people for more than 35 centuries.