The Twelve Tribes of Israel (Hebrew: שִׁבְטֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל, romanized: Šīḇṭēy Yīsrāʾēl, lit. 'Tribes of Israel') are, according to Hebrew scriptures, the descendants of the biblical patriarchJacob (also known as Israel), who collectively form the Israelite nation. The tribes were through his twelve sons through his wives, Leah and Rachel, and his concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah. In modern scholarship, there is skepticism as to whether there ever were twelve Israelite tribes, with the use of the number 12 thought more likely to signify a symbolic tradition as part of a national founding myth, although some scholars disagree with this view.
Biblical narrative
Genealogy
Jacob, later called Israel, was the second-born son of Isaac and Rebecca, the younger twin brother of Esau, and the grandson of Abraham and Sarah. According to biblical texts, he was chosen by God to be the patriarch of the Israelite nation. From what is known of Jacob, he had two wives, sisters Leah and Rachel, and two concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah,
by whom he had thirteen children. The twelve sons form the basis for
the twelve tribes of Israel, listed in the order from oldest to
youngest: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher,
Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. Jacob was known to display
favoritism among his children, particularly for Joseph and Benjamin, the
sons of his favorite wife, Rachel, and so the tribes themselves were
not treated equally in a divine sense. Joseph, despite being the
second-youngest son, received double the inheritance of his brothers,
treated as if he were the firstborn son instead of Reuben, and so his
tribe was later split into two tribes, named after his sons, Ephraim and
Manasseh.
Sons and tribes
Parentage of Jacob's twelve sons, per Genesis 35
The Israelites were the descendants of twelve sons of the biblical patriarchJacob. Jacob also had at least one daughter, Dinah, whose descendants were not recognized as a tribe. The sons of Jacob were born in Padan-aram from different mothers, as follows:
Jacob elevated the descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh (the two sons of Joseph and his Egyptian wife Asenath) to the status of full tribes in their own right due to Joseph receiving a double portion after Reuben lost his birth right because of his transgression with Bilhah.
In the biblical narrative the period from the conquest of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua until the formation of the United Kingdom of Israel passed with the tribes forming a loose confederation, described in the Book of Judges. Modern scholarship has called into question the beginning, middle, and end of this picture and the account of the conquest under Joshua has largely been abandoned. The Bible's depiction of the 'period of the Judges' is widely considered doubtful. The extent to which a united Kingdom of Israel ever existed is also a matter of ongoing dispute.
Living in exile in the sixth century BCE, the prophet Ezekiel has a vision for the restoration of Israel, of a future in which the twelve tribes of Israel are living in their land again.
Joshua's allotment of land to the Israelite tribes according to Joshua 13–19
According to Joshua 13–19, the Land of Israel
was divided into twelve sections corresponding to the twelve tribes of
Israel. However, the tribes receiving land differed from the biblical
tribes. The Tribe of Levi had no land appropriation but had six Cities of Refuge under their administration as well as the Temple in Jerusalem. There was no land allotment for the Tribe of Joseph, but Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, received their father's land portion.
The Tribe of Reuben: Reuben was a member of the Northern Kingdom of Israel until the kingdom was conquered by Assyria. According to 1 Chronicles 5:26, Tiglath-Pileser III
of Assyria (ruled 745–727 BC) deported the Reubenites, Gadites, and the
half-tribe of Manasseh to "Halah, Habor, Hara, and the Gozan River."
According to the Moabite Mesha Stele
(ca. 840 BCE) the Moabites reclaimed many territories in the second
part of the 9th century BCE (only recently conquered by Omri and Ahab
according to the Stele). The stele does mention fighting against the
tribe of Gad but not the tribe of Reuben, even though taking Nebo and
Jahaz which were in the centre in their designated homeland. This would
suggest that the tribe of Reuben at this time was no longer recognizable
as a separate force in this area. Even if still present at the outbreak
of this war, the outcome of this war would have left them without a
territory of their own, just like the tribes of Simeon and Levi. This
is, according to Richard Elliot Friedman in Who Wrote the Bible?,
the reason why these three tribes are passed over in favour of Judah in
the J-version of Jacob's deathbed blessing (composed in Judah before
the fall of Israel).
The Tribe of Ephraim: As part of the Kingdom of Israel, the territory of Ephraim was conquered by the Assyrians, and the tribe exiled; the manner of their exile led to their further history being lost. However, several modern day groups claim descent, with varying levels of academic and rabbinical support. The Samaritans claim that some of their adherents are descended from this tribe, and many Persian Jews claim to be descendants of Ephraim. Further afield, in India the Telugu Jews claim descent from Ephraim, and call themselves Bene Ephraim, relating similar traditions to those of the Mizo Jews, whom the modern state of Israel regards as descendants of Manasseh.
The Tribe of Issachar: R' David Kimchi (ReDaK) to I Chronicles 9:1
expounds that there remained from the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh,
Issachar and Zebulun in the territory of Judah after the exile of the
ten tribes. This remnant returned with the tribe of Judah after the
Babylonian Exile.
The Tribe of Judah: returned to their original land along with what
remained from the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun
that had not been exiled elsewhere, after the Babylonian Exile.
The Tribe of Zebulun: As part of the Kingdom of Israel, the territory of Zebulun was conquered by the Assyrians, and the tribe exiled; the manner of their exile led to their further history being lost. Israeli Knesset member Ayoob Kara speculated that the Druze
are descended from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, probably Zevulun.
Kara stated that the Druze share many of the same beliefs as Jews, and
that he has genetic evidence to prove that the Druze were descended from
Jews.
The Tribe of Manasseh: Part of the Kingdom of Israel, the territory of Manasseh was conquered by the Assyrians, and the tribe exiled; the manner of their exile led to their further history being lost. However, several modern day groups claim descent, with varying levels of academic and rabbinical support. Both the Bnei Menashe (the Mizo Jews, whom the modern state of Israel regards as descendants of Manasseh) and the Samaritans claim that some of their adherents are descended from this tribe.
The Tribe of Benjamin apparently became part of the Tribe of Judah.
The Quran (7th century CE) states that the people of Moses were split into twelve tribes. Surah 7 (Al-A'raf) verse 160 says:
"We split them up into twelve tribal communities, and We revealed to Moses,
when his people asked him for water, [saying], ‘Strike the rock with
your cane,’ whereat twelve fountains gushed forth from it. Every tribe
came to know its drinking-place. And We shaded them with clouds, and We
sent down to them manna and quails: ‘Eat of the good things We have
provided you.’ And they did not wrong Us, but they used to wrong [only]
themselves."
For
thousands of years, Christians and Jews have accepted the history of
the twelve tribes as fact. Since the 19th century, however, historical criticism
has examined the veracity of the historical account; whether the twelve
tribes ever existed as they are described, the historicity of the
eponymous ancestors, and even whether the earliest version of this
tradition assumes the existence of twelve tribes.
Biblical lists of tribes, not all of which number 12, include the following:
The Blessing of Jacob (Genesis 49)
directly mentions Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan,
Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Joseph, and Benjamin and especially extolls Joseph
over his brothers.
Blessing of Moses (Deuteronomy 33) mentions Benjamin, Joseph, Zebulun, Issachar, Gad, Dan, Naphtali, Asher, Reuben, Levi, and Judah, omitting Simeon.
Judges 1
describes the conquest of Canaan; Benjamin and Simeon are mentioned in
the section about Judah's exploits, and are listed alongside the
Calebites and the Kenites, two Judahite clans.[citation needed] Joseph, Ephraim, Manasseh, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali and Dan are mentioned, but Issachar, Reuben, Levi and Gad are not.
the Song of Deborah (Judges 5:2–31),
widely acknowledged as one of the oldest passages in the Bible,
mentions eight of the tribes: Ephraim, Benjamin, Zebulun, Issachar,
Reuben, Dan, Asher, and Naphtali. The people of the Gilead region, and Machir, a subsection of Manasseh, are also mentioned. The other five tribes (Simeon, Levi, Judah, Gad, and Joseph) are not mentioned.
The Rechabites and the Jerahmeelites are also presented as Israelite tribes elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, but never feature in any list of tribes of Israel.
Theories of origin
Scholars such as Max Weber (in Ancient Judaism)
and Ronald M. Glassman (2017) concluded that there never was a fixed
number of tribes. Instead, the idea that there were always twelve tribes
should be regarded as part of the Israelite national founding myth: the number 12 was not a real number, but an ideal number, which had symbolic significance in Near Eastern cultures with duodecimal counting systems, from which, among other things, the modern 12-hour clock is derived.
Translator Paul Davidson argued: "The stories of Jacob and his children, then, are not accounts of historical Bronze Age people. Rather, they tell us how much later Jews and Israelites
understood themselves, their origins, and their relationship to the
land, within the context of folktales that had evolved over time." He
goes on to argue that most of the tribal names are "not personal names,
but the names of ethnic groups, geographical regions, and local deities.
E.g. Benjamin, meaning "son of the south" (the location of its territory relative to Samaria), or Asher, a Phoenician territory whose name may be an allusion to the goddess Asherah."
Historian Immanuel Lew] in Commentary
mentions "the Biblical habit of representing clans as persons. In the
Bible, the twelve tribes of Israel are sons of a man called Jacob or Israel, as Edom or Esau is the brother of Jacob, and Ishmael and Isaac are the sons of Abraham. Elam and Ashur, names of two ancient nations, are sons of a man called Shem. Sidon, a Phoenician town, is the first-born of Canaan; the lands of Egypt and Abyssinia are the sons of Ham.
This kind of mythological geography is widely known among all ancient
peoples. Archaeology has found that many of these personal names of
ancestors originally were the names of clans, tribes, localities, or
nations. […] if the names of the twelve tribes of Israel are those of
mythological ancestors and not of historical persons, then many stories
of the patriarchal and Mosaic
age lose their historic validity. They may indeed partly reflect dim
reminiscences of the Hebrews' tribal past, but in their specific detail
they are fiction."
Norman Gottwald argued that the division into twelve tribes originated as an administrative scheme under King David.
Recent studies of genetic markers within Jewish populations strongly suggest that modern Ashkenazi Levites (Jewish males who claim patrilineal descent from the Tribe of Levi) are descendants of a single Levite ancestor who came to Europe from the Middle East roughly 1,750 years ago.
The growth of this specific lineage aligns with the expansion patterns
seen in other founding groups of Ashkenazi Jews. This means that a
relatively small number of original ancestors have had a large impact on
the genetic makeup of today's Ashkenazi population.
The Valley of Elah, near AdullamA verdant hill near Moshav TzafririmSunrise over the Elah Valley
The Land of Israel (Hebrew: אֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל, Modern: ʾEreṣ Yīsraʾel, Tiberian: ʾEreṣ Yīsrāʾēl) is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine. The definitions of the limits of this territory vary between passages in the Hebrew Bible,
with specific mentions in Genesis 15, Exodus 23, Numbers 34 and Ezekiel
47. Nine times elsewhere in the Bible, the settled land is referred as "from Dan to Beersheba",
and three times it is referred as "from the entrance of Hamath unto the
brook of Egypt" (1 Kings 8:65, 1 Chronicles 13:5 and 2 Chronicles 7:8).
Jewish religious belief defines the land as where Jewish religious law prevailed and excludes territory where it was not applied. It holds that the area is a God-given inheritance of the Jewish people based on the Torah, particularly the books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, as well as Joshua and the later Prophets. According to the Book of Genesis, the land was first promised by God to Abram's descendants; the text is explicit that this is a covenant between God and Abram for his descendants. Abram's name was later changed to Abraham, with the promise refined to pass through his son Isaac and to the Israelites, descendants of Jacob, Abraham's grandson. This belief is not shared by most adherents of replacement theology (or supersessionism), who hold the view that the Old Testament prophecies were superseded by the coming of Jesus, a view often repudiated by Christian Zionists as a theological error. Evangelical Zionists variously claim that Israel has title to the land by divine right, or by a theological, historical and moral grounding of attachment to the land unique to Jews (James Parkes). The idea that ancient religious texts can be warrant or divine right for a modern claim has often been challenged, and Israeli courts have rejected land claims based on religious motivations.
During the League of Nations mandate period (1920–1948) the term "Eretz Yisrael" or the "Land of Israel" was part of the official Hebrew name of Mandatory Palestine. Official Hebrew documents used the Hebrew transliteration of the word "Palestine" פלשתינה (Palestina) followed always by the two initial letters of "Eretz Yisrael", א״י Aleph-Yod.
1916 map of the Fertile Crescent by James Henry Breasted. The names used for the land are "Canaan" "Judah" "Palestine" and "Israel"Map of Eretz Israel in 1695 Amsterdam Haggada by Abraham Bar-Jacob.
The term "Land of Israel" is a direct translation of the Hebrew phrase ארץ ישראל (Eretz Yisrael), which occasionally occurs in the Bible, and is first mentioned in the Tanakh in 1 Samuel 13:19, following the Exodus, when the Israelite tribes were already in the Land of Canaan. The words are used sparsely in the Bible: King David is ordered to gather 'strangers to the land of Israel' (hag-gêrîm 'ăšer, bə'ereṣ yiśrā'êl) for building purposes (1 Chronicles 22:2), and the same phrasing is used in reference to King Solomon's census of all of the 'strangers in the Land of Israel' (2 Chronicles 2:17). Ezekiel, though generally preferring the phrase 'soil of Israel' ('admat yiśrā'êl), employs eretz Israel twice, respectively at Ezekiel 40:2 and Ezekiel 47:18.
According to Martin Noth,
the term is not an "authentic and original name for this land", but
instead serves as "a somewhat flexible description of the area which the
Israelite tribes had their settlements". According to Anita Shapira,
the term "Eretz Yisrael" was a holy term, vague as far as the exact
boundaries of the territories are concerned but clearly defining
ownership. The sanctity of the land (kedushat ha-aretz) developed rich associations in rabbinical thought,
where it assumes a highly symbolic and mythological status infused with
promise, though always connected to a geographical location. Nur Masalha
argues that the biblical boundaries are "entirely fictitious", and bore
simply religious connotations in Diaspora Judaism, with the term only
coming into ascendency with the rise of Zionism.
The Hebrew Bible provides three specific sets of borders for the "Promised Land",
each with a different purpose. Neither of the terms "Promised Land"
(Ha'Aretz HaMuvtahat) or "Land of Israel" are used in these passages: Genesis 15:13–21, Genesis 17:8 and Ezekiel 47:13–20 use the term "the land" (ha'aretz), as does Deuteronomy 1:8 in which it is promised explicitly to "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob... and to their descendants after them," whilst Numbers 34:1–15 describes the "Land of Canaan" (Eretz Kna'an) which is allocated to nine and half of the twelve Israelite tribes after the Exodus. The expression "Land of Israel" is first used in a later book, 1 Samuel 13:19. It is defined in detail in the exilic Book of Ezekiel as a land where both the twelve tribes and the "strangers in (their) midst", can claim inheritance. The name "Israel" first appears in the Hebrew Bible as the name given by God to the patriarchJacob (Genesis 32:28). Deriving from the name "Israel", other designations that came to be associated with the Jewish people have included the "Children of Israel" or "Israelite".
The term 'Land of Israel' (γῆ Ἰσραήλ) occurs in one episode in the New Testament (Matthew 2:20–21), where, according to Shlomo Sand, it bears the unusual sense of 'the area surrounding Jerusalem'. The section in which it appears was written as a parallel to the earlier Book of Exodus.
Interpretations of the borders of the Promised Land, based on scriptural verses
Genesis 15
Genesis 15:18–21 describes what are known as "Borders of the Land" (Gevulot Ha-aretz), which in Jewish tradition defines the extent of the land promised to the descendants of Abraham, through his son Isaac and grandson Jacob. The passage describes the area as the land of the ten named ancient peoples then living there.
More precise geographical borders are given in Exodus 23:31, which describes borders as marked by the Red Sea (see debate below), the "Sea of the Philistines" i.e., the Mediterranean, and the "River", the Euphrates), the traditional furthest extent of the Kingdom of David.
Genesis gives the border with Egypt as Nahar Mitzrayim – nahar in Hebrew denotes a river or stream, as opposed to a wadi.
Exodus 23
A slightly more detailed definition is given in Exodus 23:31,
which describes the borders as "from the sea of reeds (Red Sea) to the
Sea of the Philistines (Mediterranean sea) and from the desert to the Euphrates River", though the Hebrew text of the Bible uses the name, "the River", to refer to the Euphrates.
Only the "Red Sea" (Exodus 23:31) and the Euphrates
are mentioned to define the southern and eastern borders of the full
land promised to the Israelites. The "Red Sea" corresponding to Hebrew Yam Suf was understood in ancient times to be the Erythraean Sea, as reflected in the Septuagint
translation. Although the English name "Red Sea" is derived from this
name ("Erythraean" derives from the Greek for red), the term denoted all
the waters surrounding Arabia—including the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf,
not merely the sea lying to the west of Arabia bearing this name in
modern English. Thus, the entire Arabian peninsula lies within the
borders described. Modern maps depicting the region take a reticent view
and often leave the southern and eastern borders vaguely defined. The
borders of the land to be conquered given in Numbers have a precisely
defined eastern border which included the Arabah and Jordan.
Numbers 34:1–15 describes the land allocated to the Israelite tribes after the Exodus. The tribes of Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh received land east of the Jordan as explained in Numbers 34:14–15. Numbers 34:1–13
provides a detailed description of the borders of the land to be
conquered west of the Jordan for the remaining tribes. The region is
called "the Land of Canaan" (Eretz Kna'an) in Numbers 34:2
and the borders are known in Jewish tradition as the "borders for those
coming out of Egypt". These borders are again mentioned in Deuteronomy 1:6–8, 11:24 and Joshua 1:4.
According to the Hebrew Bible, Canaan was the son of Ham who with his descendants had seized the land from the descendants of Shem according to the Book of Jubilees. Jewish tradition thus refers to the region as Canaan during the period between the Flood and the Israelite settlement. Eliezer Schweid sees Canaan as a geographical name, and Israel the spiritual name of the land. He writes: The
uniqueness of the Land of Israel is thus "geo-theological" and not
merely climatic. This is the land which faces the entrance of the
spiritual world, that sphere of existence that lies beyond the physical
world known to us through our senses. This is the key to the land's
unique status with regard to prophecy and prayer, and also with regard
to the commandments. Thus, the renaming of this landmarks a change in religious status, the origin of the Holy Land concept. Numbers 34:1–13
uses the term Canaan strictly for the land west of the Jordan, but Land
of Israel is used in Jewish tradition to denote the entire land of the
Israelites. The English expression "Promised Land" can denote either the land promised to Abraham in Genesis or the land of Canaan, although the latter meaning is more common.
The border with Egypt is given as the Nachal Mitzrayim (Brook of Egypt) in Numbers, as well as in Deuteronomy and Ezekiel. Jewish tradition (as expressed in the commentaries of Rashi and Yehuda Halevi, as well as the Aramaic Targums) understand this as referring to the Nile; more precisely the Pelusian branch of the Nile Delta according to Halevi—a view supported by Egyptian and Assyrian texts. Saadia Gaon identified it as the "Wadi of El-Arish", referring to the biblical Sukkot near Faiyum. Kaftor Vaferech
placed it in the same region, which approximates the location of the
former Pelusian branch of the Nile. 19th century Bible commentaries
understood the identification as a reference to the Wadi of the coastal locality called El-Arish.
Easton's, however, notes a local tradition that the course of the river
had changed and there was once a branch of the Nile where today there
is a wadi. Biblical minimalists have suggested that the Besor is intended.
Deuteronomy 19
Deuteronomy 19:8
indicates a certain fluidity of the borders of the promised land when
it refers to the possibility that God would "enlarge your borders." This
expansion of territory means that Israel would receive "all the land he
promised to give to your fathers", which implies that the settlement
actually fell short of what was promised. According to Jacob Milgrom, Deuteronomy refers to a more utopian map of the promised land, whose eastern border is the wilderness rather than the Jordan.
Paul R. Williamson notes that a "close examination of the
relevant promissory texts" supports a "wider interpretation of the
promised land" in which it is not "restricted absolutely to one
geographical locale". He argues that "the map of the promised land was
never seen permanently fixed, but was subject to at least some degree of
expansion and redefinition."
2 Samuel 24
On David's instructions, Joab undertakes a census of Israel and Judah, travelling in an anti-clockwise direction from Gad to Gilead to Dan, then west to Sidon and Tyre, south to the cities of the Hivites and the Canaanites, to southern Judah and then returning to Jerusalem. Biblical commentator Alexander Kirkpatrick
notes that the cities of Tyre and Sidon were "never occupied by the
Israelites, and we must suppose either that the region traversed by the
enumerators is defined as reaching up to though not including [them], or
that these cities were actually visited in order to take a census of
Israelites resident in them."
Ezekiel 47
Ezekiel 47:13–20 provides a definition of borders of land in which the twelve tribes of Israel
will live during the final redemption, at the end of days. The borders
of the land described by the text in Ezekiel include the northern border
of modern Lebanon, eastwards (the way of Hethlon) to Zedad and Hazar-enan in modern Syria; south by southwest to the area of Busra on the Syrian border (area of Hauran in Ezekiel); follows the Jordan River between the West Bank and the land of Gilead to Tamar (Ein Gedi) on the western shore of the Dead Sea; From Tamar to Meribah Kadesh (Kadesh Barnea), then along the Brook of Egypt
(see debate below) to the Mediterranean Sea. The territory defined by
these borders is divided into twelve strips, one for each of the twelve
tribes.
Hence, Numbers 34 and Ezekiel 47 define different but similar borders which include the whole of contemporary Lebanon, both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and Israel, except for the South Negev and Eilat. Small parts of Syria are also included.
The common biblical phrase used to refer to the territories actually
settled by the Israelites (as opposed to military conquests) is "from Dan to Beersheba" (or its variant "from Beersheba to Dan"), which occurs many times in the Bible.
Division of tribes
The 12 tribes of Israel are divided in 1 Kings 11. In the chapter, King Solomon's sins lead to Israelites forfeiting 10 of the 12 tribes:
30 and Ahijah took hold of the new cloak he was wearing and tore it into twelve pieces. 31 Then he said to Jeroboam,
"Take ten pieces for yourself, for this is what the Lord, the God of
Israel, says: 'See, I am going to tear the kingdom out of Solomon's hand
and give you ten tribes. 32 But for the sake of my servant David
and the city of Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of
Israel, he will have one tribe. 33 I will do this because they have forsaken me and worshiped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Molek
the god of the Ammonites, and have not walked in obedience to me, nor
done what is right in my eyes, nor kept my decrees and laws as David,
Solomon's father, did.34 "'But I will not take the whole kingdom
out of Solomon's hand; I have made him ruler all the days of his life
for the sake of David my servant, whom I chose and who obeyed my
commands and decrees. 35 I will take the kingdom from his son's hands and give you ten tribes. 36
I will give one tribe to his son so that David my servant may always
have a lamp before me in Jerusalem, the city where I chose to put my
Name.
According to Jewish religious law (halakha), some laws only apply to Jews living in the Land of Israel and some areas in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria (which are thought to be part of biblical Israel). These include agricultural laws such as the Shmita (Sabbatical year); tithing laws such as the Maaser Rishon (Levite Tithe), Maaser sheni, and Maaser ani (poor tithe); charitable practices during farming, such as pe'ah; and laws regarding taxation. One popular source lists 26 of the 613 mitzvot as contingent upon the Land of Israel. According to Menachem Lorberbaum,
the consecrated borders of the Land of Israel understood by returning
exiles differed from both the biblical and pre-exilic borders.
Many of the religious laws which applied in ancient times are
applied in the modern State of Israel; others have not been revived,
since the State of Israel does not adhere to traditional Jewish law. However, certain parts of the current territory of the State of Israel, such as the Arabah,
are considered by some religious authorities to be outside the Land of
Israel for purposes of Jewish law. According to these authorities, the
religious laws do not apply there.
According to some Jewish religious authorities,
every Jew has an obligation to dwell in the Land of Israel and may not
leave except for specifically permitted reasons (e.g., to get married).
There are also many laws dealing with how to treat the land. The
laws apply to all Jews, and the giving of the land itself in the
covenant, applies to all Jews, including converts.
Inheritance of the promise
Traditional religious Jewish interpretation, and that of most
Christian commentators, define Abraham's descendants only as Abraham's
seed through his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob. Johann Friedrich Karl Keil is less clear, as he states that the covenant is through Isaac, but also notes that Ishmael's descendants, generally the Arabs, have held much of that land through time.
Modern Jewish debates on the Land of Israel
The Land of Israel concept has been evoked by the founders of the State of Israel. It often surfaces in political debates on the status of the West Bank, which is referred to in official Israeli discourse as Judea and Samaria, from the names of the two historical Israelite and Judean kingdoms.
These debates frequently invoke religious principles, despite the
little weight these principles typically carry in Israeli secular
politics.
Ideas about the need for Jewish control of the land of Israel have been propounded by figures such as Yitzhak Ginsburg, who has written about the historical entitlement that Jews have to the whole Land of Israel.
Ginsburgh's ideas about the need for Jewish control over the land has
some popularity within contemporary West Bank settlements. However, there are also strong backlashes from the Jewish community regarding these ideas.
The Satmar
Hasidic community in particular denounces any geographic or political
establishment of Israel, deeming this establishment as directly
interfering with God's plan for Jewish redemption. Joel Teitelbaum
was a foremost figure in this denouncement, calling the Land and State
of Israel a vehicle for idol worship, as well as a smokescreen for
Satan's workings.
Christian beliefs
Inheritance of the promise
During the early 5th century, Saint Augustine of Hippo argued in his City of God that the earthly or "carnal" kingdom of Israel achieved its peak during the reigns of David and his son Solomon.
He goes on to say however, that this possession was conditional:
"...the Hebrew nation should remain in the same land by the succession
of posterity in an unshaken state even to the end of this mortal age, if
it obeyed the laws of the Lord its God."
He goes on to say that the failure of the Hebrew nation to adhere to this condition resulted in its revocation and the making of a second covenant and cites Jeremiah 31:31–32:
"Behold, the days come, says the Lord, that I will make for the house
of Israel, and for the house of Judah, a new testament: not according to
the testament that I settled for their fathers in the day when I laid
hold of their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they
continued not in my testament, and I regarded them not, says the Lord."
Augustine concludes that this other promise, revealed in the New
Testament, was about to be fulfilled through the incarnation of Christ:
"I will give my laws in their mind, and will write them upon their
hearts, and I will see to them; and I will be to them a God, and they
shall be to me a people". Notwithstanding this doctrine stated by
Augustine and also by the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Romans (Ch. 11), the phenomenon of Christian Zionism is widely noted today, especially among evangelical Protestants. Other Protestant groups and churches reject Christian Zionism on various grounds.
History
Jewish religious tradition does not distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial, or ethnic identities.
Nonetheless, during two millennia of exile and with a continuous yet
small Jewish presence in the land, a strong sense of bondedness exists
throughout this tradition, expressed in terms of people-hood; from the
very beginning, this concept was identified with that ancestral biblical
land or, to use the traditional religious and modern Hebrew term, Eretz Yisrael.
Religiously and culturally the area was seen broadly as a land of
destiny, and always with hope for some form of redemption and return. It
was later seen as a national home and refuge, intimately related to
that traditional sense of people-hood, and meant to show continuity that
this land was always seen as central to Jewish life, in theory if not
in practice.
Having already used another religious term of great importance, Zion (Jerusalem), to coin the name of their movement, being associated with the return to Zion. The term was considered appropriate for the secular Jewish political movement of Zionism
to adopt at the turn of the 20th century; it was used to refer to their
proposed national homeland in the area then controlled by the Ottoman Empire. As originally stated, "The aim of Zionism is to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by law."
The Biblical concept of Eretz Israel, and its re-establishment as a state in the modern era, was a basic tenet of the original Zionist
program. This program however, saw little success until the British
commitment to "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the
Jewish people" in the Balfour Declaration. Chaim Weizmann, as leader of the Zionist delegation, at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference
presented a Zionist Statement on 3 February. Among other things, he
presented a plan for development together with a map of the proposed
homeland. The statement noted the Jewish historical connection with "Palestine".
It also declared the Zionists' proposed borders and resources
"essential for the necessary economic foundation of the country"
including "the control of its rivers and their headwaters". These
borders included present day Israel and the occupied territories, western Jordan, southwestern Syria and southern Lebanon "in the vicinity south of Sidon".
In 1920, the Jewish members of the first High Commissioner's advisory council objected to the Hebrew transliteration of the word "Palestine" פלשתינה (Palestina) on the ground that the traditional name was ארץ ישראל (Eretz Yisrael),
but the Arab members would not agree to this designation, which in
their view, had political significance. The High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, himself a Zionist, decided that the Hebrew transliteration should be used, followed always by the two initial letters of "Eretz Yisrael," א״י Aleph-Yod:
He was aware that there was no other name in the Hebrew
language for this land except 'Eretz-Israel'. At the same time he
thought that if 'Eretz-Israel' only were used, it might not be regarded
by the outside world as a correct rendering of the word 'Palestine', and
in the case of passports or certificates of nationality, it might
perhaps give rise to difficulties, so it was decided to print
'Palestine' in Hebrew letters and to add after it the letters 'Aleph'
'Yod', which constitute a recognised abbreviation of the Hebrew name.
His Excellency still thought that this was a good compromise. Dr. Salem
wanted to omit 'Aleph' 'Yod' and Mr. Yellin wanted to omit 'Palestine'.
The right solution would be to retain both." —Minutes of the meeting on November 9, 1920.
The compromise was later noted as among Arab grievances before the League's Permanent Mandate Commission. During the Mandate, the name Eretz Yisrael (abbreviated א״י Aleph-Yod), was part of the official name for the territory, when written in Hebrew.
These official names for Palestine were minted on the Mandate coins and
early stamps (pictured) in English, Hebrew "(פלשתינה (א״י" (Palestina E"Y)
and Arabic ("فلسطين"). Consequently, in 20th-century political usage,
the term "Land of Israel" usually denotes only those parts of the land
which came under the British mandate.
On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181(II))
recommending "to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for
Palestine, and to all other Members of the United Nations the adoption
and implementation, with regard to the future government of Palestine,
of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union." The Resolution contained a
plan to partition Palestine into "Independent Arab and Jewish States
and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem."
Israeli period
On 14 May 1948, the day the British Mandate over Palestine expired, the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum, and approved a proclamation, in which it declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel."
When Israel was founded in 1948, the majority Israeli Labor Party leadership, which governed for three decades after independence, accepted the partition of Mandatory Palestine
into independent Jewish and Arab states as a pragmatic solution to the
political and demographic issues of the territory, with the description
"Land of Israel" applying to the territory of the State of Israel within the Green Line. The then opposition revisionists, who evolved into today's Likud party, however, regarded the rightful Land of Israel as Eretz Yisrael Ha-Shlema (literally, the whole Land of Israel), which came to be referred to as Greater Israel. Joel Greenberg, writing in The New York Times, relates subsequent events this way:
The seed was sown in 1977, when Menachem Begin
of Likud brought his party to power for the first time in a stunning
election victory over Labor. A decade before, in the 1967 war, Israeli
troops had in effect undone the partition accepted in 1948 by
overrunning the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Ever since, Mr. Begin had
preached undying loyalty to what he called Judea and Samaria (the West
Bank lands) and promoted Jewish settlement there. But he did not annex
the West Bank and Gaza to Israel after he took office, reflecting a
recognition that absorbing the Palestinians could turn Israel it into a
binational state instead of a Jewish one.
Following the Six-Day War in 1967, the 1977 elections and the Oslo Accords,
the term Eretz Israel became increasingly associated with right-wing
expansionist groups who sought to conform the borders of the State of
Israel with the biblical Eretz Yisrael.
As of 2022, according to the Israeli demographer Arnon Soffer,
Palestinians constitute the majority of the population of Eretz Israel,
51.16% as opposed to Jews who, depending on definitions, make up
between 46-47%.
Modern usage
Usage in Israeli politics
Early government usage of the term, following Israel's establishment,
continued the historical link and possible Zionist intentions. In
1951–2 David Ben-Gurion
wrote "Only now, after seventy years of pioneer striving, have we
reached the beginning of independence in a part of our small country."
Soon afterwards he wrote "It has already been said that when the State
was established it held only six percent of the Jewish people remaining
alive after the Nazi cataclysm. It must now be said that it has been
established in only a portion of the Land of Israel. Even those who are
dubious as to the restoration of the historical frontiers, as fixed and
crystallised and given from the beginning of time, will hardly deny the
anomaly of the boundaries of the new State."
The 1955 Israeli government year-book said, "It is called the 'State of
Israel' because it is part of the Land of Israel and not merely a
Jewish State. The creation of the new State by no means derogates from
the scope of historical Eretz Israel".
Herut and Gush Emunim
were among the first Israeli political parties basing their land
policies on the Biblical narrative discussed above. They attracted
attention following the capture of additional territory in the 1967 Six-Day War.
They argue that the West Bank should be annexed permanently to Israel
for both ideological and religious reasons. This position is in conflict
with the basic "land for peace" settlement formula included in UN242. The Likud party, in the platform it maintained until prior to the 2013 elections, had proclaimed its support for maintaining Jewish settlement communities in the West Bank and Gaza, as the territory is considered part of the historical land of Israel. In her 2009 bid for Prime Minister, Kadima leader Tzipi Livni
used the expression, noting, "we need to give up parts of the Land of
Israel", in exchange for peace with the Palestinians and to maintain
Israel as a Jewish state; this drew a clear distinction with the
position of her Likud rival and winner, Benjamin Netanyahu. However, soon after winning the 2009 elections, Netanyahu delivered an address[66] at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University that was broadcast live in Israel and across parts of the Arab world, on the topic of the Middle East peace process. He endorsed for the first time the notion of a Palestinian state
alongside Israel, while asserting the right to a sovereign state in
Israel arises from the land being "the homeland of the Jewish people".
The Israel–Jordan Treaty of Peace,
signed in 1993, led to the establishment of an agreed border between
the two nations, and subsequently the state of Israel has no territorial
claims in the parts of the historic Land of Israel lying east of the
Jordan river.
Yom HaAliyah (Aliyah Day, Hebrew: יום העלייה) is an Israeli national holiday celebrated annually on the tenth of the Hebrew month of Nisan to commemorate the Israelites crossing the Jordan River into the Land of Israel while carrying the Ark of the Covenant.
Palestinian viewpoints
According to Palestinian historian Nur Masalha, Eretz Israel
was a religious concept which was turned by Zionists into a political
doctrine in order to emphasize an exclusive Jewish right of possession
regardless of the Arab presence.
Masalha wrote that the Zionist movement has not given up on an
expansive definition of the territory, including Jordan and more, even
though political pragmatism has engendered a focus on the region west of
the Jordan River.
There were several proposals for a Jewish state in the course of Jewish history between the destruction of ancient Israel and the founding of the modern State of Israel.
While some of those have come into existence, others were never
implemented. The Jewish national homeland usually refers to the State of
Israel or the Land of Israel, depending on political and religious beliefs. Jews and their supporters, as well as their detractors and anti-Semites have put forth plans for Jewish states.
1844 Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews by M.M.Noah, page 1. The page 2 shows the map of the Land of Israel
In 1820, in a precursor to modern Zionism, Mordecai Manuel Noah tried to found a Jewish homeland at Grand Island in the Niagara River, to be called "Ararat" after Mount Ararat, the Biblical resting place of Noah's Ark.
He erected a monument at the island which read "Ararat, a City of
Refuge for the Jews, founded by Mordecai M. Noah in the Month of Tishri,
5586 (September, 1825) and in the Fiftieth Year of American
Independence." In his Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews,
Noah proclaimed his faith that the Jews would return and rebuild their
ancient homeland. Noah called on America to take the lead in this
endeavor. Some have speculated whether Noah's utopian ideas may have influenced Joseph Smith, who founded the Latter Day Saint movement in Upstate New York a few years later.
The idea was brought to the World Zionist Organization's Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903 in Basel.
There, a fierce debate ensued. The African land was described as an
"ante-chamber to the Holy Land", but other groups felt that accepting
the offer would make it more difficult to establish a Jewish state in Palestine in Ottoman Syria, particularly the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem.
Before the vote on the matter, the Russian delegation stormed out in
opposition. In the end, the motion to consider the plan passed by 295
to 177 votes.
The next year, a three-man delegation was sent to inspect the
plateau. Its high elevation gave it a temperate climate, making it
suitable for European settlement. However, the observers found a
dangerous land filled with lions and other creatures. Moreover, it was
populated by a large number of Maasai people, who did not seem at all amenable to an influx of people coming from Europe.
After receiving this report, Congress decided in 1905 to politely
decline the British offer. Some Jews, who viewed this as a mistake,
formed the Jewish Territorial Organization with the aim of establishing a Jewish state anywhere.
On March 28, 1928, the Presidium of the General Executive Committee of the USSR passed the decree "On the attaching for Komzet
of free territory near the Amur River in the Far East for settlement of
the working Jews." The decree meant that there was "a possibility of
establishment of a Jewish administrative territorial unit on the
territory of the named region".
On August 20, 1930, the General Executive Committee of the Russian Soviet Republic (RSFSR) accepted the decree "On formation of the Birobidzhan
national region in the structure of the Far Eastern Territory". The
State Planning Committee considered the Birobidzhan national region as a
separate economic unit. In 1932, the first scheduled figures of the
region development were considered and authorized.
On May 7, 1934, the Presidium accepted the decree on its
transformation in the Jewish Autonomous Region within the Russian
Republic. In 1938, with formation of the Khabarovsk Territory, the
Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR) was included in its structure.
According to Joseph Stalin's national policy, each of the national groups that formed the Soviet Union would receive a territory in which to pursue cultural autonomy in a socialist framework. In that sense, it was also a response to two supposed threats to the Soviet state: Judaism, which ran counter to official state policy of atheism; and Zionism, the creation of the modern State of Israel, which countered Soviet views of nationalism. Yiddish, rather than Hebrew,
would be the national language, and a new socialist literature and arts
would replace religion as the primary expression of culture.
Initially, there had been proposals to create a Jewish Soviet Republic in Crimea or in part of Ukraine, however these were rejected because of fears of antagonizing non-Jews in those regions.
Another important goal of the Birobidzhan project was to increase
settlement in the remote Soviet Far East, especially along the
vulnerable border with China. In 1928, there was virtually no settlement in the area, while Jews had deep roots in the western half of the Soviet Union, in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia proper.
The geography and climate of Birobidzhan were harsh, the landscape largely swampland, and any new settlers would have to build their lives from scratch. Some have even claimed that Stalin was also motivated by anti-Semitism in selecting Birobidzhan; that he wanted to keep the Jews as far away from the centers of power as possible.
The Birobidzhan experiment ground to a halt in the mid-1930s,
during Stalin's first campaign of purges. Jewish leaders were arrested
and executed, and Yiddish schools were shut down. Shortly after this, World War II brought to an abrupt end concerted efforts to bring Jews east.
There was a slight revival in the Birobidzhan idea after the war as a potential home for Jewish refugees.
During that time, the Jewish population of the region peaked at almost
one-third of the total. But efforts in this direction ended, with the doctors' plot,
the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state, and Stalin's second wave
of purges shortly before his death. Again the Jewish leadership was
arrested and efforts were made to stamp out Yiddish culture—even the Judaica
collection in the local library was burned. In the ensuing years, the
idea of an autonomous Jewish region in the Soviet Union was all but
forgotten.
Some scholars, such as Louis Rapoport, Jonathan Brent and
Vladimir Naumov, assert that Stalin had devised a plan to deport all of
the Jews of the Soviet Union to Birobidzhan much as he had internally
deported other national minorities such as the Crimean Tatars and Volga Germans,
forcing them to move thousands of miles from their homes. The doctors'
plot may have been the first element of this plan. If so, the plan was
aborted by Stalin's death on March 5, 1953.
Despite the little evidence to suggest that the Japanese had ever contemplated a Jewish state or a Jewish autonomous region, Rabbi Marvin Tokayer and Mary Swartz published a book called The Fugu Plan in 1979. In this partly fictionalized book, Tokayer & Swartz gave the name the Fugu Plan or Fugu Plot (河豚計画, Fugu keikaku) to memoranda written in the 1930s Imperial Japan proposing settling Jewish refugees escaping Nazi-occupied
Europe in Japanese territories. Tokayer and Swartz claim that the plan,
which was viewed by its proponents as risky but potentially rewarding
for Japan, was named after the Japanese word for puffer-fish, a delicacy
that can be fatally poisonous if incorrectly prepared.
Tokayer and Swartz base their claim on statements made by Captain Koreshige Inuzuka.
They alleged that such a plan was first discussed in 1934 and then
solidified in 1938, supported by notables such as Inuzuka, Ishiguro
Shiro and Norihiro Yasue; however, the signing of the Tripartite Pact in 1941 and other events prevented its full implementation. The memorandums were not called The Fugu Plan.
Ben-Ami Shillony, a professor at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem, confirms that the statements upon which Tokayer and
Swartz based their claim were taken out of context and that the
translation with which they worked was flawed. Shillony's view is
further supported by Kiyoko Inuzuka.
In 'The Jews and the Japanese: The Successful Outsiders', he questioned
whether the Japanese ever contemplated establishing a Jewish state or a
Jewish autonomous region.
The Madagascar plan was a suggested policy of the Third Reich government of Nazi Germany to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar.
The evacuation of European Jewry to the island of Madagascar was not a new concept. Henry Hamilton Beamish, Arnold Leese, Lord Moyne, German scholar Paul de Lagarde and the British, French, and Polish governments had all contemplated the idea. Nazi Germany seized upon it, and in May 1940, in his Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East, Heinrich Himmler
declared: "I hope that the concept of Jews will be completely
extinguished through the possibility of a large emigration of all Jews
to Africa or some other colony."
Although some discussion of this plan had been brought forward from 1938 by other well-known Nazi ideologues, such as Julius Streicher, Hermann Göring, and Joachim von Ribbentrop,
it was not until June 1940 that the plan was actually set in motion.
As victory in France was imminent, it was clear that all French colonies
would soon come under German control, and the Madagascar Plan could be
realized. It was also felt that a potential peace treaty with Great
Britain would put the British navy at Germany's disposal for use in the
evacuation.
Jewish self-governing territory within Italian East Africa
The Italian government during the Fascist
period proposed offering to resolve the "Jewish problem" in Europe and
in Palestine by resettling Jews into a Jewish self-governing territory
within the northwest territory of Italian East Africa that would place them among the Beta Israel
Jewish community already living in Italian East Africa. Jews from
Europe and Palestine would be resettled to the north-west Ethiopian
districts of Gojjam and Begemder, along with the Beta Israel community..The proposed Jewish self-governing territory was to be within the Italian Empire.
The Fascist regime at the time showed racialist attitudes towards the
Beta Israel Jews of Ethiopia since they are racially black and the
Fascist regime deemed whites to be superior to blacks; and racial laws
enacted in Italy also applied to the Beta Israel Jews in Italian East
Africa that forbade intimate relationships between blacks and whites.
Mussolini's plan was never implemented.
Other attempts of Jewish self-governance throughout history
The list below contains both historical moments of Jewish self-governance as well as other proposals for Jewish self-governance.
Ancient times
Adiabene – an ancient kingdom in Mesopotamia with its capital at Arbil was ruled by Jewish converts during the first century.
Mahoza – During the beginning of the sixth century Mar-Zutra II formed a politically independent state where he ruled from Mahoza, today in central Iraq, for about 7 years.
In 1902, Zionist Max Bodenheimer proposed the idea of the League of East European States, which would entail the establishment of a buffer state (Pufferstaat) within the Jewish Pale of Settlement of Russia, composed of the former Polish provinces annexed by Russia.
In the early 20th century Cyprus and El Arish on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and its environs were proposed as a site for Jewish settlement by Herzl.
Several proposals for a Jewish "republic" under Arab or Transjordanian suzerainty were put forward by the Hashemite kings of Hejaz and emirs of Transjordan; the closest these proposals came to fruition was the Faisal–Weizmann Agreement, which proved to be impossible to implement subsequent to the division of the Levant into League of Nations Mandates.
British Guiana – in March 1940, British Guiana (now Guyana)
was proposed as a Jewish homeland. However, the British Government
decided that "the problem is at present too problematical to admit of
the adoption of a definite policy and must be left for the decision of
some future Government in years to come".
Following
the creation of the State of Israel, the goal of establishing a Jewish
state was achieved. However, since then, there have been some proposals
for a second Jewish state, in addition to Israel:
State of Judea – many Israeli settlers in the West Bank
have mulled declaring independence as the State of Judea should Israel
ever withdraw from the West Bank. In January 1989, several hundred
activists met and announced their intention to create such a state in
the event of Israeli withdrawal.
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