A lot of map points are referenced below. Several maps are presented at the end, to ease certain reference points.
Parshat Vayera
by Rabbi Billet
Countless times in the chapters of Avraham, God tells him and promises him that his children are to become a great nation. This nation will be clearly identifiable, to bring one example, by their innate need to practice righteousness and justice. God even declares that He knows Avraham will teach his children to conduct themselves in this manner (18:19), which is why He reveals to Avraham His intent to destroy the cities of Sodom, so Avraham can try to defend the wicked inhabitants of those cities.
Over the course of the parshas Noach, Lekh Lekha, Vayera and Chayei Sarah we learn about families, clans, and nations. We learn of where they settle. We learn of certain aspects of their identities. We also see populations move, looking for greener pastures, or better opportunities. In chapter 10, we learned that Yefet’s children settled in areas that look like Europe, including islands, presumably on the Mediterranean. Cham’s children settled mostly in Northern Africa and along the Eastern Mediterranean coast (Canaan – which is defined, east to west, as Sodom to Gaza), while Shem’s children settled around, though primarily east of, the Euphrates.
One of Cham’s descendants, Nimrod, seems to have initiated a move westward in the efforts to create the tower of Bavel. The failure of that enterprise contributed to further expansion westward from the earlier civilization essentially spawning out of Mesopotamia. Terach (a descendant of Shem) started a move westward as well, he settled in Charan, which is eastern Syria. His son, Avraham, continued the journey to Canaan, now at God's direction, where he eventually settled, and was ultimately promised the land by God – an inheritance that would take possession 400 years after his child Yitzchak would be born.
What happens to Avraham’s other children? Yishmael is expelled from the house at Sarah’s behest and his mother turns to her roots, finding a wife for her son from Egypt. (21:21) He settles in the wilderness (how does one “settle” in the wilderness? Presumably he is a nomad) and he is described as being a bow-slinger. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and assume this means he hunts animals. His district is Midbar Paran. The most common identification of Midbar Paran is in the Eastern Sinai, just west of the western border of modern day Israel’s Negev Desert.
At the end of Chayei Sarah, we are told that Avraham married Keturah (who some identify as Hagar, though this is debated), and that she had 6 sons. Whether Avraham was their father or raised her children is a debate. Seforno argues that he raised them, based on the evidence in Divrei HaYamim I 1:28 (Keturah’s children are mentioned there too in 1:32, and the verse doubles down that these are her children in 1:33, seeming to support Seforno’s view). He explains that the verse in Bereshit 25:2 which says “she birthed for him” doesn’t have to mean that he was the father, because the verse in Shmuel II 21:8 references the children that Michal gave birth to for Adriel, when Michal never had any children (see Shmuel II 6:23) but she raised her sister Merav’s children.
The ”Bnei Keturah” (as they are called in 25:4) are given gifts and sent off to live in the east – the most famous is Midian, and the land that is eventually known as Midian is western Saudi Arabia, south of Jordan.
Finally, the very end of Chayei Sarah tells us where the Bnei Yishmael lived – from Chavila until Shur, which is near Egypt (25:18). Midbar Shur is typically identified as being north of Midbar Paran, in the Eastern Sinai desert, northwards. Anyone who claims to be a descendant of Yishmael has a decent historical claim on the Eastern Sinai. Arabs who claim to be descendants of Avraham from Keturah have a decent claim on the lands of Arabia.
Unrelated to these groups of Avraham’s descendants, there is another clan known as the Phillistines (Pelishtim) who play a much more significant role in the books of the prophets. Philistia is along the Mediterranean coast, in the area primarily identified today as the Gaza Strip. Avraham encounters them twice in his experience – in chapters 20 and 21. First he lives in Gerar, which is identified as being between Kadesh and Shur (20:1). Kadesh is likely east of Paran, while Shur is slightly north of Paran, which means that Gerar has to be to the northeast of Shur – aka close to the Gaza Strip. Later on he is in a place called Beer ShAva (which may or not be the same place as Beer ShEva – that is a debated point). This would follow a natural departure of ways, with Avraham returning to the southern most part of the land promised to him, just shy of living in a wilderness. (Beer ShAva is just north of the Negev Desert.) There is no one today who claims ancestry from ancient Philistia. [For a related discussion as to the location and identification of Kadesh, see here]
Going ahead a generation, we will meet Eisav, who will settle in Mt Seir and in the land eventually to be known as Edom. Those areas are north of Midian, to the south and east of the Dead Sea. There are some claims that descendants of Eisav crossed the Mediterranean and ended up in Rome. In either case, no one today identifies as being a descendant of Eisav.
In the history of the world there were People identified by nationhood, and there were lands that were occupied by those Peoples. We can identify where Babylonia was, but the people of Babylonia are gone. We can identify where Persia was, but the people of that empire are gone. We can identify areas controlled by Mamelukes and Byzantines, but no one identifies directly as being from that culture. Similarly, the great empires of Rome and Greece can be pointed to on a map, but there is no remnant of those cultures in identifiable people today. There are likely descendants of Ottomans today, as that empire fell apart a little over 100 years ago. And while there are surely descendants of Nazis today, only the most unabashed are proud of their family history, as most decent people would like that horrible stain to disappear from their heritage.
The people of Israel entered the land of Canaan at God’s instruction, in fulfillment of the promise to Avraham. All the nations who were there at the time are gone. No one in the world can claim Canaanite ancestry. While Israel became two kingdoms – Yisrael and Yehuda – they were still one nation of Bnei Yisrael. Much of the Kingdom of Yisrael was sent into exile and lost, which has led to fascinating theories and research in identifying peoples who seem to have certain Jewish practices, wondering if they are from the lost tribes [the Falasha and the Bene Menasseh, for example]. The Judean section of Israel was partly exiled, and these Israelites became known as Judeans (or Jews), or Yehudim (Yehud or Yehudi). Since the time of the Roman exile, there were always Jews in Israel. Almost seventy years after the destruction of the Temple (in the 130s), the Bar Kokhba rebellion took place. While a center of Jewish life produced the Babylonian Talmud in Babylonia, there were rabbis in Israel producing the Palestinian Talmud (in Hebrew, Talmud Yerushalmi), using the name the Romans had given to the land. Throughout the Talmudic period there were Jews in Israel. Continuing through the Middle Ages, there were as well: Yehuda HaLevi came to Israel around 1140 and found Jews there; Maimonides came to Israel and met Jews in the 1160s; Nachmanides came to Israel and met Jews in the 1260s; there was a significant settlement of Kabbalists in Tzfat in the 1400s-1600s (and beyond). And of course, the ancient dream of “Next Year in Yerushalayim” started to become a significant reality with the return of many Jews starting in the 1880s. From thousands of years of exile somehow there is still a People who claim Avraham as our ancestor.
An authoritative book, written in the 1700s by Hadriani Relandi, "Palaestina ex Monumentis Veteribus Illustrata" claims that there were far more Jews than Arabs in the land when he traveled the land identifying 2500 locations and kept records of how many Jews (always the majority), Christians (a more significant minority), and Arabs (smallest population) were around. Gaza was 1/2 Jewish, 1/2 Christian. Nazareth was completely Christian. Tiberias and Tzfat had only Jews. Jerusalem was 2/3 Jewish, 1/3 Christian, and almost no Muslims. Only Shechem (Nablus) was a Muslim city. It is clear that the larger Arab population that eventually was to be found in the Holy Land emigrated to the land after the 1880s, when the Jews began to rebuild the land and economic opportunities began to present themselves. The book contained 1200 pages and was published in two volumes.
Mark Twain came to the Holy Land in the 1860s and reported that there were not a lot of people in the Holy Land. Surely there were inhabitants, but how long had they been there? What had they built? Why were they there? Where had they come from? Were these nomads who tried settling? Were these people who had come from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Lebanon looking for a different life?
Until 1948, Palestine referred to a land, never to a people. In fact, Palestine never referred to a people (who were simply displaced Arabs) until the founding of the PLO in the 1960s. It is a modern miracle that the wasteland that Twain saw is a country that blooms. It started to turn with the arrival of Jews , a couple of decades after Twain's visit, intent on reviving the land, an effort eventually enhanced by modernity.
As Avraham made peace with his neighbors in chapter 21, there could be peace in the land today. But peace can only work when there is a basic premise of accepting the other’s right to exist. Historically, this has always been difficult for one side.
Tzfat (Safed) was attacked in 1517, 1660, 1838, 1929. There were riots in Hebron in 1929 and throughout the land in 1936-39. All of this pre-dates the modern State of Israel. Many have noted the offers of Statehood that have always been rejected by Arab leaders.
Everyone loves and sympathizes with dead Jews. What they don’t like is a Jew who doesn’t lie down and take it, who will no longer walk like sheep to slaughter. The Jew who fights back is a tough pill for some people in the world to swallow.
Avraham’s mission was to model a life of Tzedakah and Mishpat. Righteousness includes allowing everyone to live in peace. Mishpat means that when people break laws and don’t allow for life to be lived in safety that such crimes need to be addressed, and the perpetrators need to be eradicated. That is what happened to the people of Sodom.
Calling the just court that carries out the law “murderers” is a diversionary tactic to not see crimes for what they are. To state the obvious, those who don’t commit crimes don’t need to answer for them. They are never at the mercy of a court which is carrying out the law, ridding the world of actual murderers.
Moral people are sickened by crimes against humanity, and no decent person wants war. War is sometimes a necessary evil, but the goal of war (when a nation is attacked by an evil enemy) is to end hostilities forever, so there will be no more war. That is justice, the kind that opens the door for a world of righteousness to emerge.
Those who call for ceasefire, using humanitarian claims before the war is won, don't realize that war, by definition, is not humanitarian. Those who start a war are the ones responsible for its outcomes, and the only real way for a war to end is for the bad guys to surrender and to never start up again.
May God help that reality come about so those who truly want to live in peace can do so. The first step (which unbelievably needs to be stated after 75 years) is to accept Israel's existence, and its place as a Jewish State, as a reality. Accept its right be so. Give up hopes of taking it over (to recreate whatever theocracy or terrorist state that no one really wants), and make a commitment to make the best possible life for those who truly suffer - without wanting Jews to suffer.
THEN THERE WILL BE PEACE!
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