Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster explains how Jews view Abraham and why he comes to regard himself as a 'resident alien'.
A new book on Abraham has succinctly outlined the existential fate of Jews in diaspora. Anthony Julius (the lawyer who successfully defended Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin publishers in the case taken against them by the convicted antisemite, David Irving) has now written a profound exposition on ‘Abraham: The First Jew’ (Yale University Press 2025).
Even this title is controversial. Some Muslims dispute that Abraham is the first Jew, as they argue incorrectly that the first religion was Islam (actually dating from 700 CE). Some also dispute the claim for different reasons, including that Abraham couldn’t have been Jewish, as he didn’t keep all the commandments, which hadn’t yet been given. However, from the Jewish perspective Abraham was the first Jew because he defined what it is to be Jewish.
Julius divides Abraham’s life into two parts. During part one of his life Abraham lived comfortably with his father and family under King Nimrod in Ur of the Chaldees. His father sold idols for a living. Gradually however Abraham reached the state of ‘impertinent disquiet’. This probably means that Abraham was beginning to think the unthinkable and was on the brink of doing something about it. Is this maybe what chutzpah is all about?
Abraham is no longer happy with his comfortable life. But is thought enough, or do we sometimes have to break away from our old life and become a new person? Abraham takes action. He destroys his father’s idols and is brought before Nimrod. According to midrash (in a story that is not recorded in the Hebrew Bible itself), Abraham is tossed into a fiery furnace and survives.
Abraham then leaves Ur with his wife Sarai and nephew, Lot, on the road to the Promised Land. Abraham 1 has now become Abraham 2. After a number of adventures, in Genesis 18 Abraham is circumcised as a sign of his covenant with G-d and, while resting in the heat of the day, he encounters three guests.
Abraham treats these guests hospitably and immediately encounters Sodom where nephew Lot is in danger. Sodom is a place which outlaws hospitality and G-d wants to punish Sodom. Abraham argues with G-d regarding the impending destruction of Sodom and loses. Not even 10 righteous men could be found and Sodom is therefore destroyed. However, Abraham ‘had held G-d to His own standards’, thus setting a precedent for all Jews as ‘G-d-arguers.’ Being a G-d-arguer is described as being in a covenantal relationship with G-d. The relationship between G-d and Abraham combines both ‘openness to G-d’ and ‘absorption in G-d.’
In addition, Abraham now creates an ‘elective national family’ named ‘Israel’, composed of a mixture of family and fellow citizens. This is a ‘counter community’ because it is not ‘constituted by blood.’ Israel is ‘particularist but non exclusivist’ and is ‘inaugurated by the covenant of circumcision.’ Conversion is where ‘soul-perfecting and nation-forming meet.’ Abraham himself is a convert, a ‘convert from Ur’s conformity of spirit and slavishness.’
The most significant event for Abraham after the Sodom encounter is known as the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22). This is not a ‘sacrifice’, but a test. On arrival in Haifa at Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) 2006, I was invited to join a women’s discussion group frequented by the wife of the Chief Rabbi. The first experience of this group, meeting at the end of the 2nd Lebanon War, was their lambasting (in rapid Hebrew) of Abraham for (in their opinion) passively surrendering to G-d’s request that Abraham should bind his son. What about wife Sarah who in the Jewish interpretation died on hearing the news. It appeared even 20 years ago therefore that a number of rabbis and Jewishly observant female scholars were highly critical of Abraham, who, in their view, had been prepared to argue with G-d on behalf of Sodom, but was not prepared to argue for the life of his own son!
According to Julius, the command to ‘bind’ Isaac ‘ruptures’ Abraham’s knowledge of G-d. He has to choose between alienation from family and alienation from G-d. He chooses alienation from family. The Akedah ‘is an episode of radical and destructive violence.’ It proves traumatic for Abraham. ‘He has an experience of G-d-forsakenness’. His entire system of reference has collapsed. He is more than hopeless: ‘he is in spiritual disarray.’ According to Jewish interpretation, Sarah dies immediately after and doesn’t speak to Abraham or Isaac again.
Perhaps the most striking point made by Julius is that on purchasing the plot of land to bury his wife, Abraham describes himself as a ‘resident alien’ (‘stranger and sojourner’ in the King James), ‘ger toshav’ in Hebrew (Genesis 23). Usually this phrase is taken to be a technical term to describe a person living in an area but who does not (yet) belong to the group who already lives there. But Julius turns this technical term into a description of existential angst within Abraham himself. What does it mean to be a human being alive on this earth? We may be here living on earth, but actually we are not of the earth. We are therefore aliens in our own home.
Therefore, when Abraham, ‘the first Jew’, dies, he dies ‘homeless,’ i.e. ‘far from his place of birth, among strangers.’ G-d’s promise in respect of the Land had not yet been fulfilled. It is in this sense that Jews regard Abraham not only as the first Jew but the first homeless Jew - and why this has been the default position of the Jew for the last 4,000 years of Jewish history.
