artist's conception of Abraham 



To continue our essays on some major world religions and the survival usefulness of their moral codes, let's consider Judaism. 

Judaism is the first of what are called the Abrahamic religions, which means it was,  its followers believe, founded by a man named "Abraham" probably about three thousand years ago. 

Like Christianity is supposed to be, and like Islam is, Judaism is distinguished from many other world religions today, and even more so of the ancient world, by its belief in only one god. 

Are there survival advantages to such a belief as a cornerstone of one's religious belief system and practice? Actually, there are some clear-cut ones. 

If you believe in a deity, that means that you believe you are being watched and judged in all of the actions of your life every minute of your life. That's what belief in a deity means. Under such a worldview, you may cheat or lie or even kill in this life and escape punishment, but these sins are all being noted on your record and one day you will have to answer for them. 

The effect of such a belief on the patterns of behavior of ordinary people living ordinary lives is to make them more honest and respectful in their dealings with each other. This kind of behavior has clear value for all social interactions and especially those that we list under the title of "commerce". Buying and selling of all goods and services just happens more efficiently when every merchant and customer can, for the most part, trust that the goods are effective as advertised and that the price is fair. In short, belief in the kind of entity that qualifies to be called "God" is a very subtle even insidious way to make society more cohesive and efficient.

Belief in only one god toughens the system even further. Societies that believe in many gods are giving an opportunity to their citizens to try to play these gods against each other, like spoiled children do when they try to play Dad against Mom so that they can sleep over at a friend's house, or even Grampa against both parents when they want a motorcycle. 

Monotheism rules these machinations out. One god, one code of right and wrong, and one authority to whom you must answer. Judaism offered something very practical to the human race long ago.  

The downsides of modern Judaism are not so nice to look at. For example, schools for Palestinian children in Israel are funded at levels much below the level that is standard for Jewish schools. And Palestinians are denied other rights. All of this is easy to research online.

One further wonders whether, in Jewish eyes, the killing of a 9 year old Palestinian boy who is throwing rocks at an Israeli tank in Gaza is morally as serious as the killing of a 9 year old Jewish boy by a Palestinian rocket. The answer certainly appears to be, "Well, no." 

My biggest worry with the Jews of the twenty-first century is with the Zionists, a category that does not include all Jews, let us not forget. But I worry over the wavering, unclear standard of what makes a human being morally considerable under Judaism. Does the other person have to be a Jew to be considered fully human in Zionist eyes? 

I have a theory, though I'm not sure how one would ever verify it with hard, indisputable, physical evidence. My theory is that the biggest hurdle the Jews of the modern era are facing is getting over the whole idea of their being somehow "God's chosen people" (which is what they called themselves for centuries). In today's world, any such talk just sounds like one more form of collective madness. 

For centuries, Christians spoke of humanity as being made up of Christians and heathens. Those were the most basic categories of human beings. The ancient Greeks called themselves "Hellenes" and called everyone else "barbarians". The Muslims have spoken for centuries of the faithful and the infidel. The word "Masai" in Masai means "people". So does the word "Innu" in Innu. The Chinese saw only civilized persons (Chinese) and gweilo (barbarians). Everyone not Japanese, for centuries, for the Japanese, was Gaijin. The examples go on and on, from all over the world.  

I can't help but wonder if there isn't a gene in all of us that makes us lean toward xenophobia. It is so naturally a part of the human psyche that social conditioning alone doesn't seem like an adequate explanation. Such a human flaw would have the advantage of making us into our own predators, in the sense our using war to cut out the weaker societies and their cultures from the human meme pool. But that only used to be an advantage for the big picture of humanity. Our hazards today are too huge for us to keep on with this obsolete mechanism of cultural evolution. We have to grow up.    

In any case, the Jews are going to have to get over the "chosen people syndrome" just as surely as Muslims, Christians, Chinese, and all of us are going to have to get over our biases. They are either over or we're over. As a species. It is that clear cut.