The Ashkenazi Revolution

29As for me, my covenant is with you and you shall be the father of amultitude of nations. Your name will no longer be called Abram but yourname will be Abraham for I have made you the father of a multitude ofnations. I shall make you fruitful very much and make you into nations andkings will issue from you” (Genesis 17).This national pluralism does not only apply to Abraham, the father ofIshmael and the sons who his last wife bore him, Keturah, from whomsprang a long list of nations. This pluralism also applies to Sarah, whoseonly son was Isaac. Concerning Sarah God said, “I shall bless her and Ishall also give you a son through her and I have blessed her and nations andkings will come from her” (Genesis 17). Isaac is not a father of “manynations” like his father, but the father of two nations, Israel and Edom.When he blessed his son Jacob, he used ambiguous words: “God almightywill bless you, make you fruitful and multiply you and you will be acongregation of peoples” (Genesis 28:3). There is a vast differencebetween the word hammon (used with Abraham – translator) and the wordqahal (used with Jacob – translator). The word hammon implies amultitude that includes mixture and diversity but qahal implies a multitudeof one unity. The family of the last Patriarch, Jacob, with his two wivesand two concubines, was destined from the beginning to be a householdwithin which would form not one people, but a procession of peoples thatare bound together by shared principles. The clear individualism of each ofthe sons of Jacob, which is obvious from the blessing of the father to hissons (Genesis 49), is so great that it is destined from the beginning tofrustrate any possibility of a full and complete integration. In his words toJoseph, his beloved son, Jacob repeats the blessing that his own father hadblessed him with and says:God almighty appeared to me in Luz, in the land of Canaan, and Heblessed me and said, ‘behold, I shall make you fruitful and multiply youand make you into a congregation of peoples and I shall give you this landfor your descendants as an eternal holding’” (Genesis 48).