By Rabbi Yerachmiel D. Fried
Dear Rabbi Fried,
In Genesis 21:9, the Lord said for Abraham to “Look at the stars, see if you can count them. As many stars as there are up in the heavens, so many will be the children of your family.” The Lord also promised that Ishmael will have many children and God will make of him a great nation. In conclusion, God promised that both Isaac and Ishmael will be the fathers of great nations. My question is that today there are 12 million Jews who came from Isaac and over 1 billion Muslims whose religion came from Ishmael! What happened? If Isaac inherited the covenant, why is there such a huge difference in the numbers of descendants today? Why are there so many more Muslims than Jews?
Joel B.
Dear Joel,
I don’t think you are asking me to explain the sociological reasons why the Jewish nation is so small in numbers; those reasons abound: persecution, murder of the Jews, assimilation, etc. I, rather, assume you are asking why God would allow those factors to persist if He truly wanted the Jews to be as abundant “as the stars of the sky.”
Truthfully, the Torah itself elucidates this strange fact of history. “Not because you are more numerous than all the peoples did God desire you and choose you, for you are the fewest of all the peoples. Rather, because of God’s love for you and because He observes the oath that He swore to your forefathers did He take you out with a strong hand….” We see that God Himself considers us “the fewest of all the peoples.” Why is this so? How does this fit with “like the stars”?
The commentators explain with the example of the fruit of a tree. The purpose for which the farmer grows the tree is its fruit, but the fruit is very minuscule in comparison to the roots, trunk, branches, leaves and peel, all of which exist for the part the farmer loves most: the succulent fruit. Although the tree is vastly greater than the fruit it produces, in the mind of the farmer it’s about the fruit.
The Jewish people are charged to be a “light unto the nations.” This, in short, means that we are to be the ambassadors of God’s teachings at Sinai, where He revealed the purpose of creation. In that way we, the Jewish people, are like the fruit, while the other nations are like the larger tree.
In other words, the Jews are built upon quality, not quantity.
Mark Twain put it so well: “The Jews constitute but 1% of the human race … the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of … extravagantly out of proportion to his bulk. His contributions to … literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers….” (Harper’s Magazine, 1899)
Although many sociological reasons have been offered as to why this is so, there is a deeper understanding. In order to prophetically receive the tremendous spiritual energy carried by the Torah at Mount Sinai, the Jewish nation was endowed with an expanded soul which could contain all that energy. Hence, that expanded soul excels in other areas of study as well.
The contributions of the Jews to the world, their positive impact, are “as numerous as the stars,” like a nation of hundreds of millions. Despite such small numbers, some 30% of Nobel prizes have been won by Jews. In contrast, the Muslim nation, with over a billion adherents, holds nary a Nobel prize in anything but “peace”(!).
Until, perhaps, the future messianic times, when it will be literal, the meaning of the Jews’ numbering like the stars takes on a different meaning. Consider a star: It looks like a minuscule point of light at night, but we know that as we approach it, it appears to be a massive light and heat source almost beyond comprehension. So, too, with the Jewish people. However much light as we are able to radiate unto the nations, that is simply a tiny point of light compared to how we will shine when the “cover comes off” and our full illumination will shine, beyond our comprehension.
Rabbi Yerachmiel Fried is dean of DATA-Dallas Area Torah Association.