WHO IS FAMILY?

We all know the basic Biblical story of the origins of Israel as a people and a nation. Jacob's family went down into Egypt. We were slaves in Egypt. We got out. We wandered around for 40 years or so. We were organized into twelve tribes, descended from the sons of Jacob so we were one big, extended family, milling about in Sinai - some 600,000 strong says the Torah. Then, after Moses' death, we invaded the land of Canaan and conquered it in a swift (and, to modern sensibilities, very unpalatable) genocidal campaign. The land was then divided among the twelve tribes. That, at least, is the story as related in the Torah and the Biblical book of Joshua. The story ends in Joshua, Chapter 24 with all the tribes - one big happy, family - gathered at Shechem for a renewal of the Divine covenant.

The problems start when we turn the Biblical page into the next book, Judges (a great book, by the way). Judges relates the next part of Biblical history. According to scholars, it contains some of the oldest bits of writing in the Bible. When we get to Judges, there are an awful lot of Canaanites around considering that they had been endlessly slaughtered in Joshua. Moreover, much of the land does not seem to be under Israelite control. The tribes are hard-pressed by other powers. Judges like Deborah and Gideon arise over and over to confront the latest opponent. 

Worse, the book of Judges describes a disunited collection of tribes that may not even be the canonical twelve. When Deborah and her general, Barak, go up to fight the Canaanite general, Sisera, she calls on tribes like Machir and Gilead --- neither of them canonical sons of Jacob. Gilead doesn't come. Neither does the tribe of Dan "Why does he stay by his ships?" asks Deborah (Judges 15:17). Ships? Sea-faring is an odd occupation for a collection of desert nomads.

Modern archeology finds no evidence of a vast horde of slaves leaving Egypt and, in spite of some initially encouraging reports, not a lot of evidence for an abrupt conquest of the land. Instead, scholars have offered us a host of theories. It maybe that tribes from Transjordan (modern Jordan), moved into the hill country of Canaan because it was relatively empty compared to the settled plains down toward the Mediterranean. It maybe that members of the lower classes in the Canaanite city-states revolted and headed for the hills in search of greater opportunity (known as "revolting peasant theory"…really). It maybe that advances in technology like better cisterns made it possible to engage in settled farming up in the hills, allowing nomadic shepherds to establish more substantial settlements. And the tribe of Dan? Maybe they came from the sea and joined up with the Israelite confederacy "For in those days the Dan … had not yet come into an inheritance among the tribes of Israel" (Judges 18:1).

Maybe some small group or groups did leave Egypt to get away from the forced labor that was common there. Maybe they did make their way into Canaan, more as an infiltration than an invasion. Perhaps they brought with them a monotheistic worship of an unseen God and a story of bondage and liberation. That story would have resonated with others. When droughts came, many people from Canaan found their way into Egypt and, perhaps, into bondage because, as the Bible tells us, there was always food in Egypt. So maybe the God of Moses and story of the Exodus gradually came to be the God and the story of the hill tribes. Mind you, that conversion was not simple, quick, or complete judging by the numerous instances of apostasy in Judges and the subsequent books of Samuel and Kings.
I am making a hybrid story out of a welter of competing hypotheses. There are vociferous arguments about all of these ideas but, to my amateur eye, there is a general consensus that the people of Israel grew in the land by some mix of persuasion, intermarriage, warfare, and immigration. Eventually, there was a kingdom and a people who identified themselves as a nation and whose national story was the story of an extended family.

So, what is the point of this little bit of potted history? So much of our discourse is about the Jewish "People" in an almost tribal sense. I have wondered how these ideas and the associated language might need change in era (and in a congregation) with many more Jews-by-Choice, blended Jewish families, and children adopted into Jewish families. Can that congregation speak of itself as the Children of Israel? My reading of this history suggests that no change may be necessary. Early in our history, membership in the Jewish "family" was as much a matter of choice and affiliation as of birth. That conglomeration was commanded, as we are commanded at ever Passover seder, to behave as if we, ourselves, went forth from Egypt. We usually understand that "as if" to reflect our distance in time from the events of the central family narrative. We should also consider the possibility that most or all of our specific biological ancestors were not there at all. They might have been revolting peasants or sea-farers looking for an inheritance. Nevertheless, by our ancestors' act of affiliation or by our own, we are all Children of Israel. We went down to Egypt, we were slaves to Pharaoh, and we were redeemed. Perhaps our era is like the time of the Judges. There are many tribes out there that might become tribes of Israel if we do not allow ourselves to be absorbed by the surrounding Canaanites and Philistines.

Jeremy Wolfe