I admire the Jews.
This season invites reflection and perspective. This reflection started for me at the beginning of worship one Sunday.
Jewish and Christian scripture contains the story of a nomad, Abram, who reported that the Creator of the universe appeared to him and said that through him all the people of the world would be blessed. That is a truly remarkable claim.
Even people who hated Abram’s people or who his people disliked would benefit from the Jews. Abram did NOT report that the Almighty had said Abram could expect “more and more for me and mine.”
The way the story is told the man and his wife were childless and probably past 80. There was no human reason to expect kids. There are reports in both Jewish and Christian holy books that “God’s people” ignored and disobeyed God. They were flawed in every way that the rest of humanity errs. Pride, greed, lust, idolatry, you name it, Jews did it. Just like their neighbors.
It is easy to understand and imagine human failings. My own life provides too many examples of mixed motives or worse for me to judge others.
Even more challenging, their neighbors did not like the Jews. I am not 4000 years old, so I can’t promise all the reports are true. The Jews were conquered and carried off, enslaved, and persecuted.
Since the Dark Ages, many countries have attacked, deported, or attempted to annihilate Jews. The Assyrians, Babylonians, Hittites, and other local neighbors were also conquered and moved out of their homeland. Their languages were extinguished, and they dissolved in history. Today, only the Jews have a homeland and have preserved their language. That seems unique.
In more modern times, countries have restricted Jews to the Ghetto and limited the ways they could make a living. There have been persecutions and pogroms. There was the Holocaust.
Even though they are less than 1% of the world’s population, Jews account for more than 20% of Nobel laureates. They have made a disproportionate number of major contributions to business, science, medicine, music, and many other fields.
No heritage is perfect, not mine, not yours, not the Jews. We are all flawed. It is not remarkable that any person acts badly, or every tribe has bad actors. What seems remarkable is that this relatively small population seems to have fulfilled the calling they were given. All the people of the world have been blessed.
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Who or what do you admire?
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Terry Moore, CCIM, is the author of Building Legacy Wealth: How to Build Wealth and Live a Life Worth Imitating. Read his “Welcome to My Blog.”