One of the most popular antisemitic tropes is that Jews operate a conspiracy to control the world.
This is, of course, stuff-and-nonsense. Jews who are true to the Torah are only engaged in a conspiracy to influence the world. Totally different.
Those conspiracy nuts sure look silly, don’t they?
It is not even that much of a secret. As I study the Torah more carefully, I realize that Torah ideas are not even limited to mankind. Throughout the text, there are references to elevating the physical plane toward the heavens, toward uniting the once-split waters, to bringing light to darkness. The Torah seems to be telling us that we are supposed to have a truly global impact – even beyond humanity!
An early glimpse of this is found when G-d first talks to Avram. He says:
And all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you.
The peculiarities are that G-d does not say: “All men [mankind] shall bless themselves by you.” Instead, there is a reference to “families”, and “earth” (adamah).
Why does this matter? Well, for starters, the word “families” usually refers to people. But that is not how it is first found in the text! Instead, the Torah anthropomorphizes animals when He describes the animals leaving Noah’s Ark:
Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that stirs on earth came out of the ark by families. (G. 8:19)
Put them together: if all the “families” will bless themselves by Avram’s legacy, and the word for “families” is first used to describe all living – yet non-human – things, then the text is telling us that every living thing in the world is meant to be elevated through the descendants of Avram!
How can we make sense of this? Can man really improve every living animal in nature?
I think we can suggest that it might be possible. In general, bringing more order to a chaotic world reduces the sheer terror of life in the wild. I think that raising animals for food and offerings maximizes life on the earth, and gives those animals a more defined purpose, as well as quick painless deaths.
The Torah also has numerous commandments for treating animals in gentle and humane ways: prohibiting abuse and gratuitously causing pain. In all, a civilized mankind (as opposed to one that celebrates nasty and brutal nature) both maximizes the quantity of life among the fauna of the world (think of the millions of animals that would not exist if we did not grow them for food), as well as the quality of a tamed world in which Might does not Make Right. Vegetarians may hate it. But if we truly care about maximizing life, then civilized societies should rate highly.
The second part is the use of “earth” (adamah). Why use this word? On the one hand, it supports the idea that we are to raise up all of the animals (since animals are physical creatures on the earth). The first time the word Adamah is found in the Torah, it refers to animals:
God made wild beasts of every kind and cattle of every kind, and all kinds of creeping things of the earth. (G. 1:25)
Conspicuously, though, it is the same word used in connection with our own involvement with the land. Specifically, the Torah links ALL growth of plants to the existence of mankind!
When no shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because G-d had not sent rain upon the earth and there were no human beings to till the soil (G. 2:5)
And mankind’s involvement with the land is mentioned again with the curse after eating the fruit:
Cursed be the earth/adamah because of you; By hard labor shall you eat of it all the days of your life: (G. 3:17)
OK. Tie this back into the opening question: why use blessing the earth as part of Avram’s blessing? Perhaps because Avram is meant to be the first to undo the curse of the land?! Is he some kind of antidote to the expulsion from Eden? It certainly seems that way.
If we zoom out, we can see the beginning of the Torah more clearly:
1: Adam and Chava and Eden are created. This fails, because man does not accept the terms.
2: Noah survives the Flood, in a world restarted. This, too, does not lead to enduring success, also because mankind, left to our own devices, do not seek holy relationships.
3: Avram is the third and final restart. It is through him, the first to seek a connection with G-d on an ongoing basis, that all plants and animals and people can be elevated, can be blessed to find ways to connect with the Creator in holy ways. And in growing in this way, Avram is meant to undo the damage caused by his predecessors.
When we compare Western Civilization (built on Abrahamic beliefs), to any of the societies that were built on primitive pagan faiths, we see that Avraham led to the elevation of the entire world. The goal of Avraham’s descendants is to continue that growth and progress globally.
Whether or not Torah Judaism constitutes a conspiracy remains open to debate. I like to get ahead of the accusation by owning up to it in advance. It is all there in the text!