The Ashkenazi Revolution

30The term “a congregation of peoples” is made into a linguistic formulathat denotes this group of nations or that association of nations which bearsthe name “the People of Israel.” The small family of Isaac forms a link ofpassage between two great families, that of Abraham and that of Jacob.But even as the large family of Abraham was the formative house of “amultitude of nations”, the family of Jacob was the formative house of thePeople of Israel exclusively, in its many tribes.2The sources tell us, in unambiguous language, that the People of Israel wasnever a people but rather a group of peoples, or an association of peoples.But we have ignored the explicit words of the Patriarchs and have, in ourstubbornness, professed the opinion that says the People of Israel is onepeople, a people just like any other people. There are several reasons forthis stubbornness. The unity of God appears to be evidence of the unity ofthe people. The unity of the land also seems to hint that the people isunited. But we did not wish to err after the European peoples, who hadimposed upon themselves unified nations. But this is not the point: ThePeople of Israel is a people of time and it is worthwhile to always marchwith the course of time. That is to say, in order to be an eternal people, it isnecessary to be a chain of peoples competing with each other so that thebest of them carry on the continuity and hand over the crown one to theother, just as it is with a relay race.In our efforts to flee the reality of the multi-national Jewish People, wehave grasped the term “tribe” and emphasized that our people was a peopleof tribes, just like any primitive people, and that this undesirable conditionhas lasted a long time, to our regret, more than it should have… but thisexcuse is a poor one. The word “judge” (shofet) and the word “tribe”(Shevet) are of the same root. A judge is also one who holds a staff, that isto say, he punishes with a whip or staff (also called a shevet - translator).At the head of the entire Jewish People, during the time of the Patriarchsand the judges, there was a judge. This practice was a necessary result of areligious outlook. God was, in the eyes of Abraham, the “judge of all the