The Politics of Responsibility

The 26th chapter of Vajikra sets out with stunning clarity the terms of Jewish life under the covenant.

On the one hand there's an idyllic picture of the blessings of divine favour.

If Israel follows God's decrees and keep his commands, there'll be rain, the earth will yield its fruit,

there'll be peace and the people will flourish. They'll have children, the divine presence will be in their

midst. God will make them free. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk,

with heads held high. The other side of the equation, though,

is terrifying, the curses that will befall the nation should the Israelites fail to honour their

mission as a holy nation. But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands,

I will bring on you sudden terror, wasting diseases, and fever that will destroy your

sight and drain away your life. Your plant seed in vain because your enemies will eat it. If after all

this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over, and so on,

and so on. Read in its entirety, this passage is more like Holocaust literature than anything else.

The repeated phrases, if after all this, if despite this, if despite everything, come like hammer blows of fate.

It's a passage shattering in its impact, all the more so, since so much of it came

true at various times in Jewish history. Yet the curses end with the most profound promise

of ultimate consolation. Despite everything, God will not break his covenant with the Jewish people.

Collectively, they'll be eternal. They may suffer,

but they'll never be destroyed. They will undergo exile, but eventually they'll return.

Stated with the utmost drama, this is the logic of covenant. Under other conceptions of history

or politics, covenant sees nothing inevitable or even natural about the fate of a people.

Israel won't follow the usual laws of the rise and fall of civilization.

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