The Ashkenazi Revolution

16the descendants of Noah. God became especially angry with the buildersof the Tower of Babel, for in their collective strength, He saw a competitorto Himself. In the end, God revealed Himself to Abraham. He told him“get going” and then made with him the treaty of “between the two pieces”.Thus Abraham became the one who held the honor of being a quasi-god,which had been that of Adam and afterwards of Noah. Except that a farreachingchange had taken place. The honor ceased being one of anindividual and turned into one of a people. As its final crystalization, thishonor reached a dramatic level between our Patriarch Jacob and the angelat the pass of Jabbok. “The (angel) said, your name will no longer becalled Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with peopleand prevailed.” Jacob turned into a quasi-god, whose descendants possesseverlasting life.The strength of Israel is that the goal, which stands before its eyes, is not anunclear world to come, as we find among other peoples, but it is an ancientand tangible state of affairs, a freedom of clarity in the soul of the people.The People of Israel is a people that goes around seeking to renew, as ofold, ideal situations which date to antiquity. The People of Israel refuses toforget the ideal situation that Adam found himself in when he was created,when he was a quasi-god and an important partner to his creator. TheJewish yearning is to renew and maintain this situation and to take itsplace, within it, as the chosen people. The People of Israel did not acceptwith resignation the banishment fromheaven and it demands thenullification of this decree - but not a general nullification for all humanity,rather for the Jewish People exclusively. The People of Israel demands,from the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He, that He nullify the decree and that Hefulfill the promises. This mutual relationship between the God of Israeland the People of Israel creates a situation unique in its kind, a situation ofconstant love and of constant litigation, within which each side makesheard to the other words of pleasantness and affection, words of anger andsubmission, warnings and pleadings, supplications and excuses. The secretof the longevity of the People of Israel is hidden in its perpetual youth, inits adolescence which always exists and springs forth from its clinging tothe youth of the cosmos, just as man was a quasi-god and the relationship