Multiculturalism in Tanach

 Warning: This post is at least a little political, so if that's not your thing, feel free to not read. :)

As mixed Jewish and Arab cities in Israel continue burning, many people, myself among them, have been thinking about the myth of multiculturalism. A concept pushed by the West, that all cultures can coexist peacefully. I say myth, because I think the last week or so bear evidence that this claim is not true.

This eventually led me to wonder what the Tanach says about multiculturalism. Of course, the Torah already tells us "You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, or of the land of Canaan to which I am taking you; nor shall you follow their laws" (Vayikra 18:3). From this verse and surrounding ones we have the halachot of "chukot hagoyim" and "darkei ha'emori"; i.e. t not follow the practices of the non-Jews.

But say we don't follow their ways and merely allow them to coexist with us, or say we don't follow the paganistic aspects of their ways but follow legit aspects of their ways. What does the Tanach tell us about that?

The first place may find some sort of relevancy to the subject is the Israeli government in the time of King David. Among his men may be found Hittites, Moabites, Ammonites, Hagraites and more. In some cases, it is possible to say that these were merely converts to Judaism that became faithful civil servants of the crown. Ben Tzion Luria in "Shaul and Binyamin" (see my review post here) suggested, for example, that Tzelek the Ammonite was a Jew from K'far Ha'amonah (Yehoshua 18:24). Okay, that works. But what about Yitmah the Moabite? Not sure how to get around that one. On the p'shat level, it appears that David was attempting to construct a coalition of Semitic nations.

A similar thing can be found in the time of King Shlomo, who took the concept to greater heights. It is through these new heights that we may infer the vast differences between what David did and what Shlomo did. We are told that Shlomo built for all of his wives separate palaces. Ding! Separate palaces allows each wife to create a cultural center of her respective cultural, right here in the land of Israel. No wonder they never properly integrated into Jewish culture and even managed to turn Shlomo! While King David, on the other hand, seems to have drawn a line: The culture of Israel is the culture of Israel. you want in? Know that you are subordinate to our culture. David had at least one not-Jewish-from-birth wife, the mother of Tamar and Avshalom. There's no indication that she didn't live with David, along with the rest of his wives.

 The third significant occurrence is probably Izevel, wife of Achav. Izevel was a Sidonian princess. There's a disagreement between commentators on whether or not she was the actual mother of Achav's children or if there was another, unnamed, wife. Indeed, it's difficult imagining the king of Israel being married to such an evil idolatrous person, however, per some commentators, she was the mother, therefore, she must have converted. But that's not the main point right now. The main point is that thanks to her, the worship of Baal in Israel reached new heights of legitimacy. Hundreds of Baalite priests served at the pleasure of the Queen, in Israel! Clearly, Izevel was given too much leeway in terms of her cultural background.

The next occurrence may be from the time of Zerubavel and the early days of Shivat Tzion, in the first few chapters of Ezra:

"When the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the LORD God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the chiefs of the clans and said to them, “Let us build with you, since we too worship your God, having offered sacrifices to Him since the time of King Esarhaddon of Assyria, who brought us here.” Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the chiefs of the clans of Israel answered them, “It is not for you and us to build a House to our God, but we alone will build it to the LORD God of Israel, in accord with the charge that the king, King Cyrus of Persia, laid upon us.”" (Ezra 4:1-3)

These adversaries were the Samaritans. The common interpretation of Zerubavel and the other leaders' reaction is that they told them: "You people aren't real Jews ("Lion Converts" as the Talmud refers to them, given that they converted out of fear of being killed by Samarian lions), so you have no place worshiping with us."

However, Avraham Korman in his book "Denominations and Cults in Judaism" interpreted these verses to mean that the Samaritans wished to remain a separate nation of Jews - just as there different Christian nations - British, French, German, etc - united in religion but separated in land, culture and ethnicity - so too the Samaritans wished to be a separate Jewish nation - but to keep the Jewish religion, just like the Judeans. The Jewish leaders told them: "No way, Jose, the Jewish people are one. Either you fully join us - there is no "you and us" - there's only "us" - wither become a part of "us" - or go home and stay away from us."

That's an interesting interpretation, because it shows not only the importance of the unity of the Jewish people, but also that there isn't room in Judaism for multiculturalism. Of course, the multiculturalism here is separate from the differences between different Jewish congregations. There are some factors that are common to all of the congregations. Declaring yourself as a separate ethnic entity is not one of those factors.

The final example is the situation with the intermarriage in the time of Ezra and Nechemiah. This is an issue that had to be dealt with several times during Ezra and Nechemiah's time, and was never completely resolved. In a sense, it served as a lead-off to what happened in the time of the Greeks. That the Jews weren't able to completely isolate themselves from one foreign culture allowed various subsequent cultures to influence them.

The gist of all of these cases shows that foreign culture has a place in Israel only if - and it's a big if - it knows it's place as subordinate to the central culture of the Jewish people. And in any case, it's preferable to not play with fire.