The Ashkenazi Revolution

42domestically. King David let the work of inquisitor be done by others,mainly Yoav Ben Zeruiah. David himself sought to avoid, as much aspossible, the second role, and he wished to be only a commander. Buthistory was stronger than he, and when it forced him to hand over the sonsof Mipibosheth to the Gibeonites he added himself to the list of inquisitors.In the story of Jephtah, we see, in an intensely dramatic way, the bitternecessities of the other side of the coin, the necessity of a king to also be aninquisitor. In our own generation, Ben-Gurion carried out, after his initialdecisive victories, the inquisitorial campaign involving the ship Altalena.Begin refused to be dragged into a civil war, and this we should count tohis credit, but he cruelly brought about his own internal inquisitorialcampaign when he banished the democratic elements from his party andturned it into a totalitarian barracks. The strength of the prophet was in hisrebellion against the inquisitorial policies of the king and in his preachingfor divine judgment.7The division of the families of the Patriarchs, into a congregation ofpeoples, took place through a series of increasingly fierce civil wars. Theexpulsion of Hagar and Ishmael was a step toward civil war, whoseseverity was abated by virtue of the fact that Hagar was an Egyptianconcubine and Ishmael, the half Egyptian son of a concubine. Much moreserious was the dramatic civil war that took place in the family of Isaac.Jacob fled for his life from Esau, and on his return to the land of Canaan,feared an armed attack from the camp of Esau. The struggle reached a newstage in the gloomy story of Joseph, with a long chain of miracles savinghim from death at the hands of his brothers, and his ascent to greatness inEgypt. The expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael, the appropriation of thebirthright, through deceit, from Esau by Jacob, the selling of Joseph and allthat it involved – these occurrences created an immutable reality andprevented the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, from coalescing intoone people. Rather it turned them into a divided congregation of peoplesthat was consumed by complexities and eaten by internal scheming.