When studying the life of Avraham, we often wonder what about him was so special that he became the first Jew in all of history. As the progenitor of Judaism he laid the foundations of the western world’s entire body of religious thought.[1] Not only did Judaism give birth to two other world religions, Christianity and Islam, but it also became the root source of the modern world’s legal systems and its concepts of justice and morality. What was Avraham’s secret?
Conventional wisdom on the subject puts forth the notion that Avraham “discovered” God after mankind had fallen prey to idol worship, and that this was his main contribution to the world. This however, cannot be the whole story. It is clear from the Torah that many other individuals also recognized God as their object of worship. We read, for example, that Avimelech, King of Gerar, and Melchizedek, King of Salem, believed in God even before they met Avraham.[2] More importantly though, introducing the world to monotheism without also offering a way of life that allows a person to forge a connection to the one and only God, without morality and justice, does not seem like such a revolutionary breakthrough. If this was Avraham’s contribution, and no more, how did he manage to capture the hearts and minds of the entire western world?
Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel (1883-1946) z.l., former Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, suggested that Avraham became the father of all western religions, justice, and morality by replacing a single word.[3] And it was this semantic change that set humanity on a new course for the rest of history.
When Adam first meets his wife Chava (after God formed her from Adam’s rib), he identifies her with the words: “This now is the bone of my bones and the flesh of my flesh.”[4] This statement strikes us as slightly odd, since we would have expected a person on the level of Adam to speak about his soul mate in spiritual terms, rather than make reference to her physical constitution. This is even more startling when we consider that they had not yet eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and as such lived on an extremely rarified plane of existence within the Garden of Eden.
During the following centuries we see many times that human beings continued to see themselves in terms of flesh. Even the Torah, which originally called man a “nefesh chaya”—a living, speaking being,[5] also describes man in terms of his flesh. We see this most clearly in the story of Noach and the flood.
“And God saw the earth and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.” [6]
However, once Avraham enters the Biblical narrative, man is never again described as flesh. From this moment onwards, mankind once more becomes elevated to the level of soul—nefesh.[7]
This strongly suggests that Avraham’s most important contribution to the world was not so much the discovery of God, but rather the transmission of the message that the human being is more soul than flesh. By teaching mankind to think of himself as a nefesh, rather than just another form of flesh, Avraham laid the foundations of morality and simultaneously pushed the role of religion into entirely new realms. Where religion previously functioned merely to make people aware of the one, true God’s existence, now it would also serve to make man aware of his soul, and that as a moral being he is responsible for his actions.
We see how Avraham managed to inspire even the most depraved characters to change their language from physical to spiritual in an episode involving the King of Sedom. After Avraham rescued Lot in the context of a much bigger war, the King of Sedom says, “Give me the souls and take the goods for yourself.”[8]
One must merely consider the abominable practices associated with the ancient pagan cults or Plato’s criticism of the Greek’s polytheistic religion[9] and the great moral evils it bred, to realize that religion and morality do not always go hand-in-hand. With the advent of Judaism, however, the world was introduced to the idea that religion and ethical living are inseparable, because when man is seen in terms of soul, then he can be asked to behave in an ethical manner (because soul implies existence beyond the physical). Once man discovers who he really is, then values such as “kedusha” (holiness) and “tahara” (spiritual purity) become relevant realities.
This weltanshauung infiltrated western civilization as a result of Avraham’s revolution—when he replaced the word flesh in mankind’s understanding of self, with the word soul.
[1] There are some who suggest that Avraham’s ideas reached the Orient through the sons he sent to the East with “gifts” and thus he may have influenced the development of Eastern spiritual practices as well.
[2] Bereishith:14
[3] LeNevuchei le-Tekufa, 1928
[4] Bereishith, 2.23
[5] Bereishith, 2:7
[6] Bereishith 6:12
[7] See for example Bereishith 12:13.
[8] Bereishith, 13:21.
[9] The Republic, 111, p.250-1, Jowett’s translation.
