Cultural Unity Among the Ancient Israelites

Dear Readers,

I just got one question for you: What is the world coming to and why are there so many creeps trying to take away my Bible?

Yee-haw!

Gee whiz, will you look at this?

Seriously, folks, just look at this:

http://cbs3.com/local/Bible.Show.and.2.1027339.html

That newspaper article says that in Philadelphia- where the Liberty Bell still rings out sweet melodies of freedom, though I fear the melodies of freedom are sneakily being replaced with the jingles of tyranny- right there in Philadelphia, some judges ripped a Bible out of a little boy’s hands when all he wanted to do was bring the Good Book to Kindergarten for show and tell.

Now isn’t that a shame?

Those judges just tore the Bible from the faithful hands of that little boy (who, by the way, is the great great grandson of Johnny Appleseed!) And that’s exactly how it happened!

I think that’s just a shame.

Seriously, though, that article is just an example of how public schools have become a cultural battleground in our melting pot/salad bowl country.

I think school has become a cultural battleground because to teach the youth of our nation, we have to first answer the questions, “What is worth knowing? Whose history should be passed on to the rising generation? What and whose literature should be passed on? What values should be transmitted?” Those are really hard questions. A lot of people have a lot of different answers.

And the questions become even harder in our country because America houses so many different cultures. Perhaps nowhere else have so many diverse people come together to live within the same geo-political boundaries.

With so many different people sharing the land, and with so many different cultures being represented in our schools, it’s hard to come up with a unified story of our nation- a myth that unites us in vision, identity, and purpose.

When I think of a people who all share a common story and common identity, I think of the ancient Israelites led by Moses through the wilderness. What a wonderful story they had to claim as their own- they escaped the cruel slavery of Egypt and were headed to the Promised Land. They had God as their leader. Several elements bound my spiritual and literal ancestors together.

They were bound together geographically. They all lived in the same small place. Once in a while they encountered other people in their wanderings, but mostly it was just them out there in the desert- keeping to themselves, not mixing in too much with other cultures.

Modern America, on the other hand, has a gigantic land mass, plus a few islands and territories.

They were bound together ethnically- they were all descendants of Jacob a.k.a. Israel, and so they saw themselves as one big family. They also kept extensive genealogical records and each Israelite defined himself as a member of one of the 12 tribes of Israel. Since they were all genetically related, I’m assuming that they shared a common skin color and other physical traits. Maybe they were relatively short with red hair and big noses- I don’t know.

Modern America, on the other hand, contains people with all sorts of different physical traits.

They were bound together linguistically. They all spoke the same language.

In contrast, modern Americans mostly speak English, but many of us primarily speak Spanish or other languages.

They were bound together by military endeavors. The Israelites had common enemies. First it was the Pharaoh who "knew not Joseph", and then it was the people they had to kick out of the Promised Land. There’s not much that unites people more than having a common enemy.

In America, we were sort of united against a common enemy after 9/11. Or at least Americans demonstrated patriotism more after the 9/11 attacks. But many Americans are Arab-Americans who have conflicted feelings, just like Japanese-Americans or German-Americans probably had loyalty issues in World War II. Also, our enemy isn’t very clearly defined. We’re fighting against sneaky people who look like the good guys, rather than against a group of people that is clearly marked by ethnicity or some other characteristic, like dress. (Wouldn’t it be easier if jihad-waging terrorists wore uniforms like in more traditional wars, so we could more easily identify them?)

They were bound together religiously. The ancient Israelites all believed in the great I AM. Sure, every once in a while some of them backslid and worshiped golden calves and such, but they had seen Moses part the Red Sea, and they sang a song about it, and they taught their children about it. The parting of the Red Sea must have been figured prominently in their textbooks. They all kept the Sabbath day holy. The ancient Israelites’ government was a theocracy, I’d say.

America, on the other hand, is the home of a plethora of divergent religions, spiritual and philosophical attitudes- and they have a hard time co-existing.

They were bound together in their diet. The ancient Israelites all ate manna that fell from Heaven. Don’t you feel a connection with other people when you eat the same thing they do?

Modern America eats all kinds of different stuff from all over the place. Also, some fare sumptuously at feasts, and some are obliged to gather up the crumbs that fall from the tables of the rich.

They were bound together by a mission from God to prosper, to procreate, to increase their numbers, to wax strong in the land, to build a city, to build a temple, to become educated, to become a shining example for all the world, until the fame of Jerusalem and her kings was spread throughout all the world, and nobility from all around came to take the Promised Land Tour, including the Queen of Sheba.

America doesn’t have that same vision of a promising future for a chosen people that Moses’ followers did. I think that awareness of other cultures and nations has prevented us from rooting for the home team, so to speak. It’s like, some Americans are thinking these days, “if we try to make America prosper, well… our country isn’t any better than anybody else’s, and our customs aren’t any better than any other customs... we don’t want to be egotistical… we don’t really need to be a superpower, we’re not a lighthouse to the world, so… there no point in behaving like brave pioneers anymore because the West has already been won (meaning the West has already been stolen from Native Americans, whose culture was actually better than the culture that we’ve built on top of their ancient burial grounds and holy mountains) … so we’ll just float along doing our mediocre, relativistic thing, and we’ll try as hard as we can to equally value every culture and lifestyle on the planet, except for our own materialistic, prideful, soulless culture, which we'll do our best to denigrate, because we've been on top for so long, that some other culture needs to be on top next... we need to balance the scales a bit and give other people a shot at prosperity and intellectual dominance.”

Maybe we should call the ancient Israelites ethnocentric, xenophobic, and egotistical- they unashamedly asserted the superiority of their culture.

But I think they were great! I love them! They are my people! I feel that I am a part of them. I feel like it was a little bit of me that put lamb’s blood on the posts of my door when the angels came to kill the first born male children in Egypt. I feel like it was a little bit of me that went walking from Egypt, walking from slavery to liberty, with flocks and herds and women and children. I feel like it was a little bit of me that saw Moses part the Red Sea, that saw water gush from the rock, that ate manna every day and tired of the taste, and I feel like it was a little bit of me that fought giants, and saw the walls of Jericho tumble, and built a temple.

Is that weird?

I claim the ancient Israelite’s history as my own- which in a way is strange and maybe unfair, but it makes sense intuitively. For some reason, I feel that blood-lines count- genealogy and cultural heritage and a shared belief mean something transcedent.

Back to Israel’s cultural unity… maybe I’m exaggerating and oversimplifying it. There were divisions among the ancient Israelites led by Moses and Joshua and the other prophets and judges, and of course there were lots of multi-cultural concerns for them when they encountered other cultures. But for a while there, while they were wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, they were pretty insulated, cut off from the rest of the world.

Now compare the ancient Israelites’ culture to Americans’ culture today. It’s so different! Now we have foreign film, foreign merchandise, foreign food, anthropologists telling us about a ga-zillion different cultures, languages, etc. the Internet… globalization is setting in…

Some Americans might be becoming so open minded, well-read and well-traveled that we’ve lost a sense of a concrete self.

Some people like E D Hirsch and William Bennet have tried to reinforce the notion of a national American identity into schools. Other people, though, like Howard Zinn, have emphasized difference between cultures, class struggle, which practically makes students believing in and identifying with a singular “national identity” impossible.

Hmmm...

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa