The Israelites
Sir: Bruce Chatwin's article (8 April) revives some well-worn anti-semitic formulations. He portrays the Jews as essentially herd-minding nomads, with a periodic itch for land-grabbing. As some of your readers may be impressed by Mr Chatwin's show of learning, may I point out some of his errors?
1. Moses never suggested. that God intended the Israelites merely to herd their sheep through the Promised Land. This is a confused rendering of Numbers 20: 24, where Moses requested permission to go through the kingdom of Edom peacefully on the way to the Promised Land. On the contrary, Moses' picture of the Promised Land was one of settled agriculture (see Deuteronomy, passim).
2. 'Behold a people that dwells alone' is not a reference to nomadism, but to the uniqueness of Israelite monotheism. . . the Israelites identified themselves with the wanderers. They traced their descent from Seth, who replaced Abel as the archetypal shepherd.' According to the Bible, not only the Israelites, but the whole human race is descended from Seth, who was the ancestor of Noah. There is no indication in the Bible, incidentally, that Seth was a shepherd. Adam and Noah are portrayed as agriculturists.
4. 'Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos and Hosea are all nomadic revivalists.' Rubbish. The denunciation of those who lay field to field' is not directed against agriculture, but against monopolist practices in agriculture (see Leviticus, 25, for the distributist ideal). The prophets were all devotees of agriculture. Jeremiah's praise of the Rechabites was for their faithfulness to their vows, not for their nomadic way of life, which he did not recommend to his fellow-Jews. The highest ideal of the prophets was to 'beat swords into ploughshares'.
5. 'Orthodox Jews opposed the State of Israel on the grounds that their destiny was fulfilled in Exile.' Rubbish. Some Orthodox Jews believed so strongly in the return of all Jews to Israel under the leadership of the Messiah that they could not accept the leadership of Theodor Herzl or Chaim Weizmann. The legend of the Wandering Jew is a Christian, not a Jewish, legend.
To sum up, there is no religion more firmly based on agriculture than Judaism (read the Order of the Mishnah entitled 'Seeds). Exile and wandering are regarded as misfortunes not as ideals. The aim of wandering in the desert was to reach the Promised Land. The desert-wandering was remembered as a time of trial and suffering. The alleged tension between nomadism and 'settlement' does not exist and has no relevance to the present conflict between 'doves' and 'hawks' in Israel. Judaism stresses the holiness of the Land, but this factor is not a bar to compromise, restraint and concessions in international affairs, but may, on the contrary, be a stimulus to them.
Hyam Maccoby Leo Baeck College, 33 Seymour Place, London W1
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