44 | SEPTEMBER 7 • 2023 

I

n the last days of his life, 
Moses renews the covenant 
between God and Israel. 
The entire book of Devarim 
has been an account of the 
covenant — how it came about, 
what its terms and conditions 
are, why it is the 
core of Israel’s 
identity as an am 
kadosh, a holy 
people and so 
on. Now comes 
the moment of 
renewal itself, 
a national 
rededication to the terms of 
its existence as a holy people 
under the sovereignty of God 
Himself.
Moses, however, is careful 
not to limit his words to 
those who are actually 
present. About to die, he 
wants to ensure that no future 
generation can say, “Moses 
made a covenant with our 
ancestors but not with us. We 
didn’t give our consent. We are 
not bound.” To preclude this he 
says these words: “It is not with 
you alone that I am making 
this sworn covenant, but with 

whoever is standing here with 
us today before the Lord our 
God, and with whoever is not 
here with us today.” Deut. 
29:13-14
As the commentators point 
out, the phrase “whoever 
is not here” cannot refer to 
Israelites alive at the time who 
happened to be somewhere 
else. That condition would not 
have been necessary since the 
entire nation was assembled 
there. Moses can only mean 
“generations not yet born.” The 
covenant bound all Jews from 
that day to this. As the Talmud 
says: We are all mushba 
ve-omed meHar Sinai, 
“foresworn from Sinai” (Yoma 
73b, Nedarim 8a). By agreeing 
to be God’s people, subject 
to God’s laws, our ancestors 
obligated us all.
Hence, one of the most 
fundamental facts about 
Judaism. Converts excepted, 
we do not choose to be Jews. 
We are born as Jews. We 
become legal adults, subject to 
the commands and responsible 
for our actions, at the age of 12 
for girls, 13 for boys. But we 

are part of the covenant from 
birth. A bat or bar mitzvah 
is not a “confirmation.” 
It involves no voluntary 
acceptance of Jewish identity. 
That choice took place more 
than 3,000 years ago when 
Moses said, “It is not with 
you alone that I am making 
this sworn covenant, but with 
… whoever is not here with 
us today,” meaning all future 
generations, including us.

OUR COVENANT 
WITH GOD
But how can this be so? Surely, 
a fundamental principle of 
Judaism is that there is no 
obligation without consent. 
How can we be bound by an 
agreement to which we were 
not parties? How can we be 
subject to a covenant on the 
basis of a decision taken long 
ago and far away by our distant 
ancestors?
The Sages, after all, raised 
a similar question about the 
Wilderness generation in 
the days of Moses who were 
actually there and did give 
their assent. The Talmud 

suggests that they were not 
entirely free to say “No.”
“The Holy One, blessed be 
He, suspended the mountain 
over them like a barrel and 
said: If you say ‘Yes,’ all will 
be well, but if you say ‘No,’ 
this will be your burial-place.” 
Shabbat 88b
On this, R. Acha bar Yaakov 
said: “This constitutes a 
fundamental challenge to the 
legitimacy of the covenant.” 
The Talmud replies that even 
though the agreement may 
not have been entirely free at 
the time, Jews asserted their 
consent voluntarily in the days 
of Ahasuerus, as suggested by 
the Book of Esther.
This is not the place to 
discuss this particular passage, 
but the essential point is clear. 
The Sages believed with great 
force that an agreement must 
be made freely in order to be 
binding. Yet we did not agree 
to be Jews. We were, most of 
us, born Jews. We were not 
there in Moses’ day when the 
agreement was made. We did 
not yet exist. How then can we 
be bound by the covenant?
This is not a small question. 
It is the question on which all 
others turn. How can Jewish 
identity be passed on from 
parent to child? If Jewish 
identity were merely racial or 
ethnic, we could understand 
it. We inherit many things 
from our parents — most 
obviously our genes. But 
being Jewish is not a genetic 
condition; it is a set of religious 
obligations. There is a halachic 
principle: zachin le-adam shelo 
be-fanav, “You can confer 
a benefit on someone else 
without their knowledge or 
consent” Ketubot 11a). And 
though it is doubtless a benefit 
to be a Jew, it is also in some 
sense a liability, a restriction on 

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

Why Be Jewish?