1.
Only a week separates the catastrophe that destroyed the world in the Flood from the revolution that brought the Abrahamic message to humankind. Between judgment and mercy. The Bible skips ten generations in the sweep of a single chapter and arrives at the beginning of our people's history.
Not long ago, I stood at Tel Hebron, before walls dated to the 18th century BCE, the era of Abraham. I trembled at the thought that I might be looking at the same wall he saw upon reaching that city.
The Abrahamic revolution was born out of disaster. The moral, spiritual, and cultural reordering of the world emerged from humanity's failure. Between the catastrophe and the change lay ten generations, and if we subtract Abraham himself, we get nine cosmic months of gestation. If you will, reversing the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's formula, we might speak of the birth of divine music from the spirit of pagan tragedy: The Apollonian principle of law and Torah beginning with the founder of our nation, following the Dionysian disintegration of values that marked the era of Noah.
2.
The story of our people begins with the divine command: "And the Lord said to Abram: 'Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you.'" (Genesis 12:1)
With that verse begins the Abrahamic movement, against the conventions and beliefs of his time. Abram (later renamed Abraham) leaves the heart of civilization to journey to a land he does not know and whose very name he has yet to learn. Where should he go? I will show you which land I meant; for now, go forth, uproot yourself from the fixation of your culture and its faiths.
In the 12th century, the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides (the Rambam) described the childhood of our nation's founder as recorded by the sages. He called Abraham "the steadfast one," and for good reason:
"Once this steadfast one was weaned, he began to wander and explore in his mind, although still young, and he contemplated day and night. He marveled how it was possible for this celestial sphere to be in constant motion without a director, and who could guide it, for it is impossible for it to guide itself. He had no teacher and no one to inform him of anything. Instead, he was submerged in the darkness of ignorance among foolish idolaters, with his father and mother being among them, and he worshiped with them. His heart wandered and understood."
Thus, Abraham's ultimate journey from his land and birthplace began in childhood, with an intellectual movement that refused to be cowed by social pressure or popular opinion, seeking only truth.
3.
"I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing." (Genesis 12:2)
On my last visit to the ANU Museum in Tel Aviv (highly recommended!), I watched a presentation that compressed our people's history into a few minutes. It began with Abraham but claimed he founded a new religion. Not so. As the verse makes clear, Abraham leaves his homeland and goes to a new land in order to found a great nation.
Our great innovation was the creation of a nation, one defined by a unique faith and a distinct moral system. The national idea contained within it the religious element, not the other way around.
Later, when Abraham's descendants leave Egypt, they do not emerge as a "religion" but are born from Egypt's womb as a new nation with a sharply distinct identity from their masters. Only a nation could receive the Torah, not isolated individuals, even as great as Abraham and Moses. We declare this truth each time we are called to the Torah: "Who has chosen us from among all nations", and only then "has given us His Torah."
That is the Abrahamic message: a nation living in its own land, realizing its eternal values in every sphere of life. As Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook wrote, this was so that "it be known that not only great and pious individuals, saints and ascetics, live by the light of the divine ideal, but entire nations, refined and perfected in all cultural and civic dimensions; entire nations encompassing every stratum of human society."
4.
"I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you." (Genesis 12:2–3)
This verse is a cornerstone of Evangelical Christian belief. The late American pastor Jerry Falwell used to say: "I personaly believe that God deals with all nations in relation to how these nations deal with Israel. I think history supports this. I premise that on what God said to Abraham: 'I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you.'"
Pastor John Hagee often lists the nations that blessed the Jews and were blessed in turn, and, conversely, those that persecuted the Jews and fell from greatness, some vanishing altogether from history: "Where are the Babylonians? Where are the Romans? Where are the Greeks? Where are the Persians? Where is the Ottoman Empire? Where is that lunatic Adolf Hitler and his Nazi hordes? They are all historical footnotes in the bone yard of human history. (And) where is Israel? Where are the Jewish people? They are alive and well in the only democratic society in the Middle East. The Jewish people have survived pogroms and persecutions. They have outlasted Pharaoh's slavery and Hitler's Final Solution. They are the living testimonial that there is a God in heaven who keeps His word."
5.
In 2014, I attended the annual summit of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), where I heard a religious leader repeat this idea. She said that, in her belief, the reason the US is a global superpower lies in its support for Israel, in accordance with God's promise to Abraham. I still remember her words: "I am a Christian Zionist because I am a patriotic American."
That is why they call themselves "Christian Zionists", because they support the return of the Jewish people to Zion, as promised by the prophets of Israel in the Bible.
Years later, I took this idea into my diplomatic work. Speaking in the Italian Senate, I said that Italy's support for Israel should not stem only from our shared interests, but also from the fact that Israel is the forward outpost of the entire West, defending the values of Judeo-Christian civilization. There is a reason the enemies of the West target us first, they understand this. Our war is also your war, I said.
At the end of my remarks, three senators approached me and said: "We support Israel, but today we understand why, because we are patriotic Italians."
6.
And still within this first chapter of our national story comes the foundational event of the "Covenant Between the Pieces": "And [the Lord] said to Abram: Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land not their own, where they will be enslaved and afflicted for four hundred years… but afterward they shall go out with great wealth… and the fourth generation shall return here..." (Genesis 15:13-16).
Here lies the historical formula we have encountered throughout our history, appearing already at its beginning: one day you will go into exile, and there you will be treated as temporary guests, or as slaves, even if you have lived in that land for centuries. But ultimately, "He has set an end to darkness" (Job 28:3): you will leave the house of bondage, whether it be Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Rome, Spain, Morocco, or Germany, and return to this land.
You will surely return. This is the eternal covenant that God established with the founder of our nation, like a law of nature: the people of Israel will come home to their ancient land, whether after 400 years, 70 years, or even 2,000 years, there will always be a generation whose descendants "shall return here." We have seen it with our own eyes.
