Rabbi Alvin Kass Chief Chaplain of the NYPD

How to Win Your Special Identity

At the end of the Biblical book of Genesis, the patriarch Jacob summons his sons before he dies. He declares to them: "Gather yourselves together that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the end of days." What follows, however, does not contain any end-of-days revelations. That is why the ancient rabbis suggested that Jacob’s original intention was actually to reveal the "end of days"; but he did not do so, they say, because of one of two reasons. Either he could not endure viewing the troubles and tribulations that were to come upon his descendants, or because his power of prophecy departed from him.

What Jacob does instead is to describe the characteristic features of his sons, implying that that their individual personalities might imprint themselves on the images of the tribes formed by them. Jacob refers to this description as if he were revealing the future to them. What Jacob is actually telling us is that a person’s destiny is integrally related to and dependent upon the basic features of his identity. Our lives often become confused and entangled for lack of a clear understanding of whom and what we really are. From this perspective Jacob’s testament was indeed a "blessing" because it was meant to help his children find their proper identity. To a great extent this also charted their future destiny.

People are frequently frightened to face their own identity. They hide under different masks as a way of self-protection; but this hiding is only a temporary delusion that leads nowhere. Reuben, Shimon, and Levi and the rest of Jacob’s sons may not have willingly accepted Jacob’s description of the features of their individual personalities. Those revealed some very unpleasant, along with some other, more flattering characteristics of their personalities. Jacob, however, did not wait for their reactions. He knew that this was his last chance to express his views on the subject; and felt it was his paternal duty to share them honesty with his children. This, he believed, would help them find their way, towards the future, in which they were destined to assume their roles as heads of the tribes of Israel.

There are many Jews who find it difficult to acknowledge their Jewish identity and feel the necessity to water it down with other modifiers. That was surely the thinking of the Hebrew poet Y. L. Gordon who told his nineteenth century contemporaries in Russia: "Be a man when you go outside, and a Jew within your tent." Gordon was exhorting his fellow Jews to confine their Jewish identity to the home and just be universal human beings in their interactions with the external world. However, the famed Zionist thinker Ahad Ha’am pointed out at the time that just as there is no animal-in-general, but only a lion, leopard or a dog, there is also no man-at-large, but only an Englishman, a Frenchman, or an Italian, each being indivisible. None can be one half of something on the outside, and the other half of something else inside the tent.

There is a story told about a meeting between David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, and Leon Blum, the well-known Socialist leader and former prime minister of France who was a Jew. In the course of conversation, Blum lost no time in reminding Ben-Gurion that he, Blum, was "first of all a Frenchman, then a Socialist, and only then a Jew. To which Ben-Gurion immediately responded:" It is quite all right, Monsieur Blum, you most likely know that in Hebrew we read from right to left."

It has been pointed out that Jews are the only ethnic community in the United States who are referred to as "American Jews" unlike other groups who are referred to as "Italian Americans" or "Irish Americans". I do not know what significance is to be attached to this linguistic usage; but Jewishness ought to manifest itself in all that we do. The values, principles, ideals and well-being of world Jewry should be elements that are ineluctably present in all areas of our endeavor and thought.

Prior to his death, Jacob pleaded with his sons: "Assemble and hearken O sons of Jacob; hearken to Israel your father." Even though at the moment you may be only "sons of Jacob" if you listen carefully to what I have to tell you about yourselves, you may live to be descendants of "Israel your father," the one who wrestled with God and with man, thereby winning his own special identity.