On being a resident alien

Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster explains how Jews view Abraham and why he comes to treat himself as a ‘resident alien’. 

A latest 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 within 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 primary Jew, as they argue incorrectly that the primary religion was Islam (actually dating from 700 CE). Some also dispute the claim for various reasons, including that Abraham couldn’t have been Jewish, as he didn’t keep all of the commandments, which hadn’t yet been given. However, from the Jewish perspective Abraham was the primary Jew because he defined what it’s to be Jewish. 

Julius divides Abraham’s life into two parts. During part considered one of his life Abraham lived comfortably together with his father and family under King Nimrod in Ur of the Chaldees. His father sold idols for a living. Gradually nonetheless Abraham reached the state of ‘impertinent disquiet’. This probably signifies that Abraham was starting to think the unthinkable and was on the point of doing something about it. Is this possibly what chutzpah is all about?

Abraham is not any longer glad together with his comfortable life. But is believed enough, or can we sometimes must break away from our old life and change into a latest person? Abraham takes motion. He destroys his father’s idols and is brought before Nimrod. According to midrash (in a story that is just not recorded within the Hebrew Bible itself), Abraham is tossed right into a fiery furnace and survives.

Abraham then leaves Ur together with his wife Sarai and nephew, Lot, on the road to the Promised Land. Abraham 1 has now change into Abraham 2. After quite a lot of adventures, in Genesis 18 Abraham is circumcised as an indication of his covenant with G-d and, while resting in the warmth of the day, he encounters three guests.

Abraham treats these guests hospitably and immediately encounters Sodom where nephew Lot is at risk. Sodom is a spot which outlaws hospitality and G-d desires to punish Sodom. Abraham argues with G-d regarding the approaching destruction of Sodom and loses. Not even 10 righteous men might be found and Sodom is subsequently 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 each ‘openness to G-d’ and ‘absorption in G-d.’

In addition, Abraham now creates an ‘elective national family’ named ‘Israel’, composed of a combination of family and fellow residents. This is a ‘counter community’ since it is just 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 vital event for Abraham after the Sodom encounter is referred to as the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22). This is just not a ‘sacrifice’, but a test. On arrival in Haifa at Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) 2006, I used to be invited to affix a women’s discussion group frequented by the wife of the Chief Rabbi. The first experience of this group, meeting at the tip of the 2nd Lebanon War, was their lambasting (in rapid Hebrew) of Abraham for (of their opinion) passively surrendering to G-d’s request that Abraham should bind his son. What about wife Sarah who within the Jewish interpretation died on hearing the news. It appeared even 20 years ago subsequently that quite a lot of rabbis and Jewishly observant female scholars were highly critical of Abraham, who, of their view, had been prepared to argue with G-d on behalf of Sodom, but was not prepared to argue for the lifetime of his own son!

According to Julius, the command to ‘bind’ Isaac ‘ruptures’ Abraham’s knowledge of G-d. He has to choose from 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 greater than hopeless: ‘he’s in spiritual disarray.’ According to Jewish interpretation, Sarah dies immediately after and doesn’t speak to Abraham or Isaac again.

Perhaps essentially 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’ within the King James), ‘ger toshav’ in Hebrew (Genesis 23). Usually this phrase is taken to be a technical term to explain an individual living in an area but who doesn’t (yet) belong to the group who already lives there. But Julius turns this technical term into an outline of existential angst inside Abraham himself. What does it mean to be a human being alive on this earth? We could also be here living on earth, but actually we aren’t of the earth. We are subsequently aliens in our own residence. 

Therefore, when Abraham, ‘the primary Jew’, dies, he dies ‘homeless,’ i.e. ‘removed from his native land, amongst strangers.’ G-d’s promise in respect of the Land had not yet been fulfilled. It is on this sense that Jews regard Abraham not only as the primary Jew but the primary homeless Jew – and why this has been the default position of the Jew for the last 4,000 years of Jewish history.