Forced Covenant
Read the midrash below, and then look at the following commentaries discussing the nature of this "forced"/"threatened" covenant. Consider the strengths and weaknesses of each explanation, and what they say about the nature of Torah and obligation.
What is the "force" being alluded to here in the different explanations? How do we understand the Jews' willing acceptance of Torah in the times of Achashverosh within these different paradigms?
Think about these sources in conversation with one another. For example, how do the notions of Written Torah vs. Oral Torah fit within Mara Benjamin's framework of agency within boundedness/choosing an idea vs. discovering its reality?
״וַיִּתְיַצְּבוּ בְּתַחְתִּית הָהָר״, אָמַר רַב אַבְדִּימִי בַּר חָמָא בַּר חַסָּא: מְלַמֵּד שֶׁכָּפָה הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא עֲלֵיהֶם אֶת הָהָר כְּגִיגִית, וְאָמַר לָהֶם: אִם אַתֶּם מְקַבְּלִים הַתּוֹרָה מוּטָב, וְאִם לָאו — שָׁם תְּהֵא קְבוּרַתְכֶם. אָמַר רַב אַחָא בַּר יַעֲקֹב: מִכָּאן מוֹדָעָא רַבָּה לְאוֹרָיְיתָא. אָמַר רָבָא: אַף עַל פִּי כֵן הֲדוּר קַבְּלוּהָ בִּימֵי אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ, דִּכְתִיב: ״קִיְּמוּ וְקִבְּלוּ הַיְּהוּדִים״ — קִיְּימוּ מַה שֶּׁקִּיבְּלוּ כְּבָר.
The Gemara cites additional homiletic interpretations on the topic of the revelation at Sinai. The Torah says, “And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet God; and they stood at the lowermost part of the mount” (Exodus 19:17). Rabbi Avdimi bar Ḥama bar Ḥasa said: the Jewish people actually stood beneath the mountain, and the verse teaches that the Holy One, Blessed be He, overturned the mountain above the Jews like a tub, and said to them: If you accept the Torah, excellent, and if not, there will be your burial. Rav Aḥa bar Ya’akov said: From here there is a substantial caveat to the obligation to fulfill the Torah. The Jewish people can claim that they were coerced into accepting the Torah, and it is therefore not binding. Rava said: Even so, they again accepted it willingly in the time of Ahasuerus, as it is written: “The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such as joined themselves unto them” (Esther 9:27), and he taught: The Jews ordained what they had already taken upon themselves through coercion at Sinai.
מודעא רבה - שאם יזמינם לדין למה לא קיימתם מה שקבלתם עליכם יש להם תשובה שקבלוה באונס:
"Large caveat" -- that if they are called to judgment as to why they [the Jews] do not fulfil what they have accepted upon themselves, they are able to respond "Our acceptance was coerced [and therefore null]"
(ד) וְלֹא קִבְּלוּ יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת הַתּוֹרָה עַד שֶׁכָּפָה עֲלֵיהֶם הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא אֶת הָהָר כְּגִיגִית, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: וַיִּתְיַצְּבוּ בְּתַחְתִּית הָהָר (שמות יט, יז). וְאָמַר רַב דִּימִי בַּר חָמָא: אָמַר לָהֶם הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא לְיִשְׂרָאֵל, אִם מְקַבְּלִים אַתֶּם אֶת הַתּוֹרָה, מוּטָב, וְאִם לָאו, שָׁם תְּהֵא קְבוּרַתְכֶם. וְאִם תֹּאמַר, עַל הַתּוֹרָה שֶׁבִּכְתָב כָּפָה עֲלֵיהֶם אֶת הָהָר, וַהֲלֹא מִשָּׁעָה שֶׁאָמַר לָהֶם מְקַבְּלִין אַתֶּם אֶת הַתּוֹרָה, עָנוּ כֻלָּם וְאָמְרוּ נַעֲשֶׂה וְנִשְׁמָע, מִפְּנֵי שֶׁאֵין בָּהּ יְגִיעָה וְצַעַר וְהִיא מְעַט, אֶלָּא אָמַר לָהֶן עַל הַתּוֹרָה שֶׁבְּעַל פֶּה, שֶׁיֵּשׁ בָּהּ דִּקְדּוּקֵי מִצְוֹת קַלּוֹת וַחֲמוּרוֹת, וְהִיא עַזָּה כַמָּוֶת וְקָשָׁה כִשְׁאוֹל קִנְאָתָהּ, לְפִי שֶׁאֵין לוֹמֵד אוֹתָהּ אֶלָּא מִי שֶׁאוֹהֵב הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא בְּכָל לִבּוֹ וּבְכָל נַפְשׁוֹ וּבְכָל מְאֹדוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת ה' אֱלֹקֶיךָ בְּכָל לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל נַפְשְׁךָ וּבְכָל מְאֹדֶךָ (דברים ו, ה).
(4) The Israelites did not accept the Torah until the Holy One, blessed be They, arched the mountain over them like a vessel, as it is said: And they stood beneath the mountain (Exod. 19:17). R. Dimi the son of Hama stated that the Holy One, blessed be They, told Israel: If you accept the Torah, well and good; but if not, your grave will be there. If you should say that They arched the mountain over them because of the Written Law, isn’t it true that as soon as They said to them, “Will you accept the Torah?” they all responded, “We will do and hear,” because the Written Law was brief and required no striving and suffering, but rather They threatened them because of the Oral Law. After all, it contains the detailed explanations of the commandments, both simple and difficult, and it is as severe as death, and as jealous as Sheol. One does not study the Oral Law unless she loves the Holy One, blessed be They, with all her heart, with all her soul, and with all her might, as it is said: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might (Deut. 6:5).
ויתיצבו בתחתית ההר, מלמד שכפה עליהן הר כגיגית. פירוש, שהראה להם כבוד ד' בהקיץ ובהתגלות נפלאה, עד כי ממש בטלה בחירתם הטבעיי ויצאה נשמתם מהשגת כבוד ד', והיו מוכרחים כמלאכים בלא הבדל, וראו כי כל הנבראים תלוי רק בקבלת התורה...
"And they stood at the bottom of the mountain," this teaches you that Hashem overturned the mountain upon them like a barrel. This means, that They showed them the glory of God in revealed and wondrous ways, up to the point where their natural free choice was literally removed, and their souls departed from exposure to the glory of God. They were forced, like angels, without the ability to discern, as they saw with complete clarity that all of creation is dependent on the Torah.
Rabbi Elli Fischer, http://adderabbi.blogspot.com/
The Meshech Chochmah really addresses the entire narrative – the moda’ah, the age of Achashveirosh, the problem of ‘punishment’ during the first Temple period, and the ‘compulsion’ issue. He explains that the compulsion derives from the basic inability of the Israelites at that time to deny God. Having ended centuries of slavery, having been miraculously brought to that point, they were in no position to reject anything that God had to offer. They were overawed and vulnerable. However, that situation continued right up until the end of the First Temple. The existence of prophecy, Jewish monarchy, continuous miracles in the Temple and through prophets, really kept God ‘in their faces’ – i.e., unable to deny Their presence. That situation only begins to change in the times of Achashveirosh. Remember that Megillat Esther is characterized by God’s ‘absence’. At that point, an affirmation of the Covenant with God, the acceptance of the Torah, is strictly voluntary, and it remains so today in the sense that we are not ‘forced’, by any external pressures to adhere to the Torah.
Mara Benjamin, The Obligated Self
*The Israelites, at Sinai, could hardly be said to “accept” Torah. Only later can agency find a place: the “choice” that was in fact coerced is transformed when Israel chooses to affirm its earlier coercion as its desire.48 But this “coercion” of Israel at Sinai, in which the people stand under divine threat, also emphasizes obligation as a name for being always already in, bonded to, and responsive to a world.49 In an essay called “The Temptation of Temptation,” Levinas comments: “The teaching, which the Torah is, cannot come to the human being as a result of a choice. That which must be received in order to make freedom of choice possible cannot have been chosen, unless after the fact. In the beginning was violence. But we may be dealing here with a consent other than the one given after inspection . . . wouldn’t Revelation be precisely a reminder of this consent prior to freedom and non-freedom? . . . The freedom taught by the Jewish text starts in a non-freedom which, far from being slavery or childhood, is a beyond-freedom. “Torah” is not to be understood as the limited, particular bequest given to a limited, particular people, but rather as a stand-in for the sensible substructure of the universe. Torah, like gravity, allows free movement on the planet. Humans are creatures who come to existence in a world of constraint, as constrained beings. We are responsive to others and to a world we did not choose.
This aspect of our existence can be veiled from us; we can be oblivious to the fact of being tied to the world until various experiences open our eyes to it. To live with and be responsible for a newborn, a baby, a toddler, is to suddenly wake up to one’s un-freedom. It means having the concrete experience, dozens of times each day, of being beholden to another. This un-freedom feels at times like slavery (‘avdut) and at times like service (‘avodah). But this condition, so acutely, viscerally, and materially experienced in caring for a young child, reveals a basic, but easily occluded, fact of existence. Maternity lifts, sometimes rips, the veil from our eyes, opening us to recognizing our conditionality.
And yet, as the midrash conveys, we cannot simply submit, if the act of compliance is to retain its ethical force. If we are threatened into submission to this world of obligation, the system is morally and psychologically unsustainable; gravity becomes domination. Agency is crucial to human flourishing, even if it consists only in affirming the conditionality of our existence and thus upholding what we were forced to accept. The midrash insists on human agency as ethically necessary in affirming the conditions of our existence.
We always stand “under the mountain,” positioned only to respond to the conditionality of our being and of the others who constitute our being in the world. Our freedom consists not in casting off all that binds us, but rather in recognizing that our boundedness and our agency are each parts of greater whole.
....
The force of the Law of Another was greater than anything I could have anticipated or to which I could have assented. I had never explicitly agreed to be subject to it, although as an adult who was compos mentis, clearly I had some idea what I was getting into: I had pursued having a child, needed medical intervention for my partner to conceive, and I had eagerly (and anxiously) anticipated motherhood. Nonetheless, I could not agree to the law before I was already subject to it.
...
*The omnipresence of this language of choice makes the arresting force of obligation particularly paradoxical. In a moment of (at least partial) access to birth control, and in a postindustrial social world in which parenthood is a project, to choose parenthood is to choose both subjection and fulfillment. It is to willingly forfeit some element of “autonomy” and “freedom” for the sake of a different kind of fulfillment—one impossible to extricate from social expectation.
...
And contrary to the construction of agency merely in terms of liberal, rational choice, a feminist examination of maternal subjectivity suggests that agency dialectically informs obligation and vice versa.
The theological implications of this pursuit are admittedly startling: if the rabbinic notion of obligation comes into felt experience most viscerally in caring for young children, then God is not an overlord but a vulnerable, dependent being who needs virtually constant attention. This concept inverts the biblical metaphorical economy, in which God is parent, not infant, and the rabbinic sources that speak of God as king and as father, not as subject or son.
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*In “choosing” to rear a child, I assent to an obligation that goes beyond my ability to assent. As Roger Burggraeve puts it, parents “can decide to conceive ‘a’ child, but they can never decide to conceive of ‘this’ child, the real child as it appears
בפרק רבי עקיבא (שבת פח.), "ויתיצבו בתחתית ההר" (שמות יט, יז), אמר רב אבדימי בר חמא בר מחסיא, מלמד שכפה עליהם הר כגיגית, ואמר להם; אם אתם מקבלים את התורה - מוטב, ואם לאו - שם תהא קבורתכם. אמר רב אחא בר יעקב, מכאן מודעה רבה לאוריתא. אמר רבא, אף על פי כ הדר קבלוה בימי אחשורוש, דכתיב (אסתר ט, כז) "קיימו וקבלו", קיימו מה שקבלו כבר, עד כאן.
One can also say that for this he held the mountain over them as a barrel, that Israel would not say, G-d forbid, that there would be an annulment of Kabbalat haTorah, because they of their own volition received the Torah and could thereby have been exempted from it. Thus G-d held the mountain over their heads like a barrel, that they would be forced to receive it. All things that are forced and necessary cannot be removed or annulled. This is proved in the Midrash wrt the verse “and she will be his wife; he cannot send her away all the days of his life.” When the Holy One came to give the Torah on Mount Sinai, he held the mountain over them like a barrel, that they would receive it. And because of this, Israel is the anusato (the raped person) of the Holy One, and about the anusato it is written “and she will be his wife; he cannot send her away all the days of his life.” And this is not true with respect to the seducer [who does not force himself on anyone]. The punishment of the rapist is in accordance with his act, because the rapist forced himself on the virgin and everything that is forced is essential, thus he cannot send her away since he himself forces the marital relations, he cannot ever leave. Therefore, G-d held the mountain over them like a barrel so that the connection would be essential, and every essential connection cannot be abandoned, as in the case of the rapist.
Who Stood Beneath Sinai?
Having read some intriguing (and perhaps disturbing) content examining the nature of the covenant forged at Har Sinai and later renewed, let's examine another issue of revelation: the question of whether women were present.
Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai
Entry into the covenant at Sinai is the root experience of Judaism, the central event that established the Jewish people. Given the importance of this event, there can be no verse in the Torah more disturbing to the feminist than Moses' warning to his people in Exodus 19:15, "Be ready for the third day; do not go near a woman." For here, at the very moment that the Jewish people stands at Sinai ready to receive the covenant--not now the covenant with individual patriarchs but with the people as a whole--at the very moment when Israel stands trembling waiting for God's presence to descend upon the mountain, Moses addresses the community only as men.
(ט) ...בּוֹא וּרְאֵה הֵיאַךְ הַקּוֹל יוֹצֵא, אֵצֶל כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל כָּל אֶחָד וְאֶחָד לְפִי כֹּחוֹ, הַזְּקֵנִים לְפִי כֹּחָן, הַבַּחוּרִים לְפִי כֹּחָן, וְהַקְּטַנִּים לְפִי כֹּחָן, וְהַיּוֹנְקִים לְפִי כֹּחָן, וְהַנָּשִׁים לְפִי כֹּחָן, וְאַף משֶׁה לְפִי כֹּחוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (שמות יט, יט): משֶׁה יְדַבֵּר וְהָאֱלֹקִים יַעֲנֶנּוּ בְקוֹל, בְּקוֹל שֶׁהָיָה יָכוֹל לְסוֹבְלוֹ.
(9) ...Come and see how the voice [of God at Har Sinai] would go out among all of Israel - each and every one according to their strength: the elders according to their strength; the young men according to their strength; the infants according to their strength; the sucklings according to their strength; the women according to their strength; and even Moshe according to his strength, as it is stated (Exodus 19:19), "Moshe would speak and God would answer him with a voice" - with a voice that he could withstand.
Responding to Silence
Here we come to a crucial question. How do we respond to a text's silence on women (or any marginalized Other)'s experiences and narratives? As Plaskow notes, we begin by hearing the silence. But once it's been heard--do we read ourself into the absence? Do we assume we are the silent, unacknowledged, nonetheless present other half? Do we use the text's silence as an opportunity to drash (narratively expand) further on our actions? Or do we take the silence to mean actual silence, actual absence--and if so, what meaning-making opportunities does this nonetheless provide for us?
While considering these questions, I'd invite you to think of them in light of our earlier sources on forced covenant and maternal subjectivity. How could women's presence or absence in these crucial moments relate to the nature of the covenant being forced at the moment of revelation, the imagining of God's threat?
Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai
The need for a feminist Judaism begins with hearing silence. It begins with noting the absence of women's history and experiences as shaping forces in the Jewish tradition. Half of Jews have been women, but men have been defined as normative Jews, while women's voices and experiences are largely invisible in the record of Jewish belief and experience that has come down to us...Confronting this silence raises disturbing questions and stirs the impulse toward far-reaching change. What in the tradition is ours? What can we claim that has not also wounded us? What would have been different had the great silence been filled?
Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai
Speaking about Abraham, telling of the great events at Sinai, we do not look for ourselves in the narratives but assume our presence, peopling the gaps in the text with women's shadowy forms. It is far easier to read ourselves into male stories than to ask how the foundational stories within which we live have been distorted by our absence.
We All Stood Together
By Merle Feld
for Rachel Adler
My brother and I were at Sinai
He kept a journal
of what he saw
of what he heard
of what it all meant to him
I wish I had such a record
of what happened to me there
It seems like every time I want to write
I can’t
I’m always holding a baby
one of my own
or one for a friend
always holding a baby
so my hands are never free
to write things down
And then
As time passes
The particulars
The hard data
The who what when where why
Slip away from me
And all I’m left with is
The feeling
But feelings are just sounds
The vowel barking of a mute
My brother is so sure of what he heard
After all he’s got a record of it
Consonant after consonant after consonant
If we remembered it together
We could recreate holy time
Sparks flying
Midrash of the Ten Commandments, Tamar Biala
This is a story of a young woman who was sitting in synagogue while the Ten Commandments were being read. That day, the Reader was reading so carefully that the young woman felt it was as though she was hearing them for the first time. And she was astonished at what she heard, and her heart became aggrieved.
She asked in her heart, what is the nature of this "Remember the Sabbath day to hallow it" (Ex. 20:8), of which it is said You shall do no work, you and your son and your daughter, your male slave and your slavegirl and your beast and your sojourner who is within your gates. (ibid. 10) – and his wife, what about her, is she not commanded to hallow the Shabbat?
And what is the nature of this "You shall not covet," of which it is said, "You shall not covet your fellow man’s wife, or his male slave, or his slavegirl, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that your fellow man has." (Ibid. 17) – and his wife, what about her, did the Torah not command her too, not to covet that which is her fellow woman’s?
That young woman was pious, and not until that day had she had a single foreign musing or doubt regarding the truth of Torah. At that moment of questioning, her heart was wrapped in fear, beating and beating, until she thought everyone in synagogue could hear its rhythm. The tears that rose in her throat had the taste of the deep, and the taste of the sea that drowned the Egyptians, and she was shaking and aghast, and her soul fled.
The Holy Blessed One gathered up her soul in the palm of Their hand and was looking and smiling at her. They said to her: How long have I waited for you to come and ask me, so that I would explain to you and give you that which has been hidden away with Me for three thousand years! She looked downward and asked: Did the Holy Blessed One not speak with women at Mount Sinai, and not command them the same things They commanded men with thunder and lightning?
The Holy Blessed One lifted up her head and said, when Moshe ascended I commanded him:
"And have them make themselves ready for the third day, for on the third day, God will come down before all the people on Mount Sinai." (Ex. 19:11). Since Moshe distanced himself from women, for he separated from his wife Zipporah, he brought only men near the mountain, as is said, "And Moshe brought the people toward God from the camp." (Ibid. 17)
And at that time, when Moshe heard the commandments, and there were only men around him, he heard "You shall do no work" and said to himself, ‘and who will be punished for doing work, if not the man? And whose are the slaves and slavegirls, chattel and children, whom he can command to do work, or to rest, if not the man?
And so, Moshe wrote them to keep the Sabbath, in the masculine pronoun. And because he was not me’urav ‘im ha-beriyot, engaged with people, beriyot, in the feminine, for he had not been with his wife Zipporah for a long time, he didn’t remember that women, too, have desire, and so he did not include them in that prohibition.
The young woman asked the Holy Blessed One: If so, and Moshe who separated from women couldn’t hear those words which the Holy Blessed One ordained for them, will a sage (Talmid Chakham) who has separated himself be able to hear? The Holy Blessed One’s countenance became grave, and They answered her thus: Any house of study (beit midrash) that has no women - My word will not emerge from there whole.
Esther Broner's Passover Seder
Mother, asks the clever daughter,
who are our mothers?
Who are our ancestors?
What is our history?
Give us our name. Name our genealogy.
Na'aseh V'Nishmah (We Will Do and We Will Learn)
When, and by whom, is this being said? How might this impact our understanding of what went on "bitakhtit hahar" (at the bottom of/under the mountain)? What do these terms represent within the context of obligation and agency?
(ז) וַיִּקַּח֙ סֵ֣פֶר הַבְּרִ֔ית וַיִּקְרָ֖א בְּאָזְנֵ֣י הָעָ֑ם וַיֹּ֣אמְר֔וּ כֹּ֛ל אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּ֥ר ה' נַעֲשֶׂ֥ה וְנִשְׁמָֽע׃
(7) And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the hearing of the people; and they said: ‘All that the Lord hath spoken will we do, and we will learn/hear.’
דָּרַשׁ רַבִּי סִימַאי: בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁהִקְדִּימוּ יִשְׂרָאֵל ״נַעֲשֶׂה״ לְ״נִשְׁמָע״ בָּאוּ שִׁשִּׁים רִיבּוֹא שֶׁל מַלְאֲכֵי הַשָּׁרֵת, לְכׇל אֶחָד וְאֶחָד מִיִּשְׂרָאֵל קָשְׁרוּ לוֹ שְׁנֵי כְתָרִים, אֶחָד כְּנֶגֶד ״נַעֲשֶׂה״ וְאֶחָד כְּנֶגֶד ״נִשְׁמָע״. וְכֵיוָן שֶׁחָטְאוּ יִשְׂרָאֵל, יָרְדוּ מֵאָה וְעֶשְׂרִים רִיבּוֹא מַלְאֲכֵי חַבָּלָה וּפֵירְקוּם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״וַיִּתְנַצְּלוּ בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת עֶדְיָם מֵהַר חוֹרֵב״. אָמַר רַבִּי חָמָא בְּרַבִּי חֲנִינָא: בְּחוֹרֵב טָעֲנוּ, בְּחוֹרֵב פֵּרְקוּ. בְּחוֹרֵב טָעֲנוּ — כְּדַאֲמַרַן, בְּחוֹרֵב פֵּרְקוּ — דִּכְתִיב: ״וַיִּתְנַצְּלוּ בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְגוֹ׳״.
Rabbi Simai taught: When Israel accorded precedence to the declaration “We will do” over the declaration “We will hear,” 600,000 ministering angels came and tied two crowns to each and every member of the Jewish people, one corresponding to “We will do” and one corresponding to “We will hear.” And when the people sinned with the Golden Calf, 1,200,000 angels of destruction descended and removed them from the people, as it is stated in the wake of the sin of the Golden Calf: “And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments from Mount Horeb onward” (Exodus 33:6). Rabbi Ḥama, son of Rabbi Ḥanina, said: At Horeb they put on their ornaments, and at Horeb they removed them. The source for this is: At Horeb they put them on, as we have said; at Horeb they removed them, as it is written: “And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments from Mount Horeb.”
Renewing Our Covenant/Making it Anew
What does it look like to constantly renew and recommit to Torah? How does this both change and affirm the nature of our original covenant? And how does the participation of women in this process change the nature of our torah?
Martin Buber, Tales of Hasidim
The rabbi of Kotzk was asked: “Why is Shavuot called ‘the time the Torah was given’ rather than the time we received the Torah?” He answered: “The giving took place on one day, but the receiving takes place at all times.”
Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai
It is this contradiction feminists must address, not simply "adding" women to a tradition that remains basically unaltered, but transforming Judaism into a religion that women as well as men have a role in shaping.
Eliezer Berkovits, God, Man, and History
Unless God is accessible to me, unless I am able to confront him myself, unless he is concerned about the way I live and behave, however insignificant I may otherwise be, religion is not possible for me. But the confrontation between God and Israel, the Judaism-constituting encounters, occurred many centuries ago. How can they be personalized for me?...The problem of personalizing the public encounter in history is solved within Judaism by viewing God's revelation at Sinai as a continuing address to all the generations of Israel...For the revelation at Sinai to be revelation for me, it must be addressed to me. And so the covenant had to be concluded with all generations...The revelation at Sinai never belongs to the past; it never ceases to be. It is as if the divine Presence, never departing from the mountain, were waiting for each new generation to come to Sinai to encounter it and to receive the word.
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What the Sages said of Israel applies to the entire race: They will not be redeemed unless they return.