Racial/Tribal Memory

1758tribe//01/2018

The Tribe

There is an ancient tribe living among us. Their language is the oldest continuously surviving western language, matched only in the East by Chinese.  Unlike other tribes which had religions focusing on idols and statues, the God this tribe worships is invisible and portable.

It had to be. If your god was a huge statue of the Buddha and you suddenly had to leave the country, you could not take your idol with you. Conquerors traditionally destroyed the resident idols and erected their own. This tribe, having no idols, could leave and retain their identity.

What they do have is their book. They are sometimes called “people of the book.” Their book is a strange collection of stories of dysfunctional families, brothers murdering brothers, adultery, incest, concubines and expulsions, indentured servitude and betrayal, all written in the ancient language filled with ambiguity and subject to endless interpretation. Yet in spite of that difficulty, that tribe’s book has been endlessly translated, cherry picked, and adopted even though the tribal members themselves are often shunned and persecuted.

The rules of ethics and behavior laid down in that tribal document are the foundation of western civilization.

Unlike tribes where the leaders demand absolute obedience without question, this argumentative tribe has always been taught to questions and challenge, in a word to think, to learn, and, since their book is so difficult to fully understand, to study. They seek knowledge.

It’s a winning discipline,

The tribe’s peculiar customs have kept them apart from their neighbors. For this they have been suspect. They have been persecuted for their beliefs and expelled, exiled, even murdered. In turn they have been expelled and enslaved by the Romans, the Spanish, the French, the Germans and the English. There was even a program to exterminate all of them.

Are they so different? So dangerous? They do not seek to conquer or to dominate. Their prayers are always for peace. When they are successful they are the subject of envy. People think these tribal members are smart.

There is nothing remarkable about that: they seek knowledge. By Darwinian survival of the fittest, the many expulsions have purged  the tribe of the weak and the slow-witted.

So who are these strange tribal members and what is their language and their book? The language is Hebrew. They call their book the Torah and they are Jews. Who would have thought?