[Avodah] Cave or desert island

[Michael Makovi]

> There's an interesting article on www.azure.co.il, by a rabbi at Bar
> Ilan. He shows that the covenant section of Shemot has striking
> similarities to a Hittite suzerainty treaty. The nafka mina, he says,
> is that the brit was not made with the nation as a collective, as it
> was with each individual unto himself.

 I just checked:
 The article is "G-d's Alliance with Man" by Joshua A. Berman.

 It turns out he's not a rav.
"Joshua A. Berman is an Associate Fellow at the Shalem Center and a lecturer
in the Bible department at Bar-Ilan University. This essay is adapted from
his forthcoming book Biblical Revolutions: The Transformation of Social and
Political Thought in the Ancient Near East."

 I might add that Berman's opposition to the nation as a collective is not
absolute. He says, "One is tempted to say that the role of the subordinate
king is played here by the corporate body of the people of Israel as a
whole. *And perhaps this is true to a certain extent.* [emphasis mine] Yet,
within the Sinai covenant itself we see that God in fact relates to
individual Israelites. ... We may conclude, therefore, that to *some
degree*[emphasis not mine] the subordinate king with whom God forms a
political
treaty is, in fact, each individual within the Israelite polity; that every
man in Israel is to view himself as accorded the status of a king—a servile,
subordinate king under the protection of and in gratitude to a divine
sovereign."

In the proceeding portion, it is clear that the notion he is arguing
against, is not that the nation is in fact a collective. Rather, his
argument is that were the covenant with the entire nation as a nation, then
the king and the priests could represent the whole nation, and the
individuals would have no religious duties, as was the case in Mesopotamia.
Rather, each individual is a priest with as many duties (save a few
exceptions) as a melech or a kohein. Thus, for example, the kohein is
forbidden to mark his body, and later, so is the layman.

So Berman's argument is only against the fact that the nation is one organic
whole that can be represented by one individual. He has nothing against the
idea that the nation is a collective composed of a mosaic of
equally-liable-and-important individuals.

Mikha'el Makovi
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