The Jewish 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Jews of All Time (2 page)

“I am what I am,” God declared to Moses. The God of Moses and the Israelites is
one
god; Moses, however, was a man with faults like other men, never a minor god (unlike the pharaohs of Egypt and emperors of Rome, who fancied themselves gods). Monotheism, the belief in one god, displaced forever the primitive worship of gods in the guise of animals. Each person’s experience of God must be personal,
that
person’s experience. God can only be comprehended in the abstract, not through graven images. Distinct from the deathly imagery of the Egyptian gods, the God of Moses is always the God of life, affirmation, and existence, of what is and what is next. The Hebrew word for God, YHWH, means “to be.”

The Lord’s prophet, Moses, the political leader, remains a vital symbol in the righteous fight against persecution. In our times, the biblical exhortation “Let my people go!” became the clarion call of the American civil rights movement, and was later sounded for Soviet refuseniks.

Moses always fought injustice. As a young Egyptian prince, he slew a brutal overseer and buried him in a shallow grave. As a noble, Moses could have ordered the overseer to halt his abuse of a slave. Instead, in a blind rage, Moses felled the overseer. It is as if Moses wished to be uncovered as an imposter. He also stopped two Hebrews from fighting, defended his soon-to-be Midian wife and her sisters from marauding shepherds, and led a rebellion against a great, oppressive, and suffocating power.

His every act has rich, symbolic meaning: After killing the overseer, he fled into the desert, began a family with Zipporah and her wise father, sheik Jethro, and purged his soul of Egyptian customs. Moses knew that his murder of the overseer was produced by an uncontrollable rage against Egyptian tyranny. Slavery and the worship of animals had made Jewish life in Egypt an abomination. All human life, whether slave or pharaoh, must be held sacred. God directed Moses to free the slaves from their bondage so that they might pray to Him.

Although Moses pleaded with his cousin to let the Israelites go, and despite fearful plagues, Pharaoh’s heart turned to stone; his silence brought repeated pestilence and sure death on Egypt. Whether the plagues and the drowning of Egyptian charioteers in the Red Sea are viewed today as magic or gospel, the events are based in history. The Egyptians did drown Hebrew babies in the Nile as a vicious method of controlling a swelling slave population, and the Red Sea was really a sea of reeds, a swamp in which chariot wheels could easily become mired.

The rabbis of later generations directed the observant not to rejoice at these miracles. Rather, the lesson of the Exodus is one of compassion: Do not hate the Egyptians, as you were once strangers in their land. At the Passover Seder, the spilling of a few drops of wine reminds observant Jews that their joy in salvation is diminished—the cup of happiness is not full—when others suffer or are despised. This remarkable conciliatory response to the pain of the defeated defines not only Judaism but also all western civilization.

The burning bush also sears a new meaning into suffering humanity. No longer are animal gods to be worshipped. The golden calf and all who bow down to it are condemned and destroyed in Old Testament fury. A burning bush that is not consumed manifests God’s omnipotent control over nature. (The burning bush has also been seen as a symbol of Jewish survival and of the visionary wisdom of Moses.)

The laws given in the desert, the Sinai covenant, are known today as Mosaic law. Although more ancient codes have been discovered in the ruins of Mesopotamia (especially the Code of Hammurabi) and while Jewish law has much the same structure and diction of other laws of antiquity, Judaism was the first system of human beliefs that respected human life. Most ancient governments valued property over people. Crimes against property were punishable by death. Murderers, on the other hand, could compensate the relatives of their victims by paying them or by sacrificing a valuable slave. Jewish law is consumed with caring for morality and social values. There has been nothing in history quite like it.

Moses, the prophet and giver of laws, is revered by Christians and Muslims, albeit in slightly different ways. After Abraham, of course, Moses is viewed as the second most important figure. Many events in the New Testament seem modeled on Moses’ life and work. Jesus’ young life parallels that of Moses. An evil king threatens to kill newborns, the prophet flees into exile in the desert, only to return to “free” his people. When the prophet is absent from his people, he is despised among men, his preaching forgotten. The Sermon on the Mount is meant to enrich the covenant given at Sinai. Jesus is depicted as a “second Moses.” Both Moses and Jesus are referred to as “redeemer.” For Saint Paul, the faith of Moses is a religion of law, while that of the Christians rests in the grace of God in the Christ. For Christians, however, Jesus is the Son of God, while for Jews, Moses remains a man, an ambassador of God’s laws.

For Islam, Moses, like Muhammad, received God’s revelation through a book. Both are recipients of God’s laws. Muhammad, too, must flee into the desert to Medina, but he returns in triumph, leading to his blessed death and ascent into Heaven. What distinguishes Islam from Judaism and Christianity is the Muslim belief that Muhammad is the final
seal
of all biblical prophecy, proclaiming the word of God in its purest state.

Moses, unlike Buddha or Confucius, was not an inward-looking mystic. For Moses, perfect life is not found adrift in the sea of the infinite. Judaism and the religions it gave rise to, Christianity and Islam, call their followers to interact with God through everyday behavior controlled by His laws. Moses, like Jesus and Muhammad, not only has visions of God, but also speaks directly to Him. Mankind must likewise dream of heavenly grace while living together in a community governed by ethics and morality.

I
n any ranking of the most influential Jews in history, Jesus of Nazareth must be listed near the top. If history is carefully examined, with an open mind and cold logic, the true effect of his
ethos
must be viewed, however, as less influential than Moses’. The traditions established by Moses defined the Jewish people and formed the basis of the three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Any person, Jew, Christian, or Muslim, must recognize that many of Jesus’ teachings contain essential truths and exhibit the highest standards of ethical behavior. The bright light of his vision has illuminated innumerable souls and inspired the creation of many of the greatest artistic masterworks. Yet so many in the world have failed, century after century, to obey his good and wise moral teachings. The meek have not inherited the earth. From the savagery and destruction of the Crusades through the “ethnic cleansing” of today, humankind has repeatedly failed this son of man. People of all faiths continue to show that they need the guidance of Mosaic law to survive each other.

There have been countless and notable exceptions to the murderous misuse of Jesus’ name by the wicked. The abolition of slavery during the American Civil War, the saving of Jewish lives by righteous Gentiles during the Holocaust despite indescribable risk, and the caring for the sick by saintly women such as mothers Teresa in Calcutta and Hale in Harlem, are recent examples (from untold many).

Jesus’ example of pacifism has had a vast and supremely beneficial influence on the faithful of all religions. His lesson of turning one’s cheek was the first example of pacifism in Western history and surely one of its most important civilizing teachings. Regrettably, there remain instances in life when aggression can only be halted with arms. Christian pacifism was wholly ineffective against the Nazi terror. Jesus’ spirit of nonviolence, however, has returned in recent times in the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (also influenced by the example of the Hindu Mahatma Gandhi whose
Satyagraha
was derived from Tolstoy). However, nonviolent resistance to tyranny is only possible in the rare circumstance when a society is fundamentally just.

If Jesus’ message of peace had been followed, Europe would not have been continually ravaged over the centuries by vicious religious and cultural wars: Crusaders on their way to battle in the Holy Land massacring defenseless Jews as easy practice for the slaughter of Muslims, Spaniards expelling or burning infidels in an Inquisition of organized hate or raping the New World of its people and natural riches, Catholic France battling Protestant England, Napoleonic wars of conquest and domination, mass annihilation of millions of innocents by post-Christians Hitler and Stalin, Irish maiming Irish, Croats killing Serbs killing Bosnians.

Only the most narrow-minded would deny that Jesus would have been repulsed by these thousands of years of carnage (especially the near destruction of his people in the Holocaust). The sins committed in his name by churches, governments, and individuals must be separated from his legacy of love and charity. His essential message was not to separate but to bring people together. A crucial mission of the contemporary church must be to recognize how easily his revelations can be turned by the false prophets of bigotry into unmitigated hate.

How would Jesus have reacted to the dozens of creeds founded in his name? When he made Simon and Andrew into “fishers of men,” could Jesus have imagined not only the Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant churches, but also the infinite, ever-changing, denominations? Surely, the ability of Christianity to adapt to disparate cultures (think of a Catholic mass in Boston versus one in East Africa) allowed it to spread and to multiply the faithful. Jesus’ dreams of brotherhood and an afterlife in Paradise proved universally acceptable to peoples of diverse cultures and backgrounds. The largely insular and national religion of Judaism became through his changes to it and personal example (as molded by Saint Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles) a path of instant and easy conversion for multitudes.

Examining Jesus’ life and thoughts raises many unanswered questions. He is often impossible to pin down, an enigma. His use of parables, wondrous tales, homespun stories, to make a point, render him incapable of encapsulation. However, he seemed always to cast doubt on assumptions.

During a time of brutal Roman oppression and zealous opposition, Jesus urged his fellow Jews not to revolt, but to render to Caesar what was Caesar’s. Did he foresee the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the dispersion of Palestinian Jewry, or was his “prediction” created by later Christian theologians to justify the rise of their religion and to show allegiance to Rome during the Judean revolts?

Jesus’ views on personal possessions are well known. He urged that people sell what they own and give to the poor. In this, Jesus was squarely in the tradition of Jewish charitable giving (or
tsedakah
). Yet, over history, how many Christian kings or papal rulers have given up their treasure for the downtrodden?

The basic ethical principles of Christianity were first enunciated by Jesus. With a charismatic presence, vibrant mind, and skillful way with words, Saint Paul interpreted Jesus’ teachings and developed them into a religion. Although it is unclear what Christianity would have been without Paul, it would not have survived so vigorously without his proselytizing and theology.

The ability of Jesus to undermine conventional wisdom made him controversial in his time. His teachings retain their freshness and controversy today. They are often easy and difficult to understand at the same time. In the tradition of the great rabbi and Pharisee Hillel (who may have been his teacher), Jesus quoted Scripture for emphasis. He was also influenced by the Essenes, a monastic Jewish group of believers in rites of purification, sacred priestly garments and ritual, devotion to the poor, and worship away from the pomp of the great Temple centered in Jerusalem. Jesus surely thought of himself as a reformer, seeking in the tradition of the Jewish Baptist and Essene sects to purify religious practice.

It is difficult, however, to find the true man in the New Testament. The Gospels were written many years after his death, serve institutional purposes, are inconsistent with each other, and cannot be viewed as reliable sources of his life. Was his name Joshua, Y’shua, Yehoshua? We cannot be sure of any of this. There are often cited references to him in the works of ancient writers—Josephus, Tacitus, and Suetonius—but are these accretions added by medieval translators? Enough ancient shards have been retrieved from the desert sands to confirm Jesus’ existence. So, why have so many in the world over and over again forgotten his lessons? Myths have overwhelmed truths.

Indeed, his preaching of the Golden Rule accentuates his concern for mankind. This concern is derived directly from Jewish tradition. Before Jesus, Rabbi Hillel stated that the Golden Rule was the fundamental principle of Judaism. Of course, prior to Hillel, Confucius and ancient Hindu poetry contain the identical principle, and it was found later in the sayings of Muhammad. There can be no monopoly on virtue.