Why Stand With the Jewish People?

At the very beginning of the Jewish story, before there was a Jewish people, God made a promise to Abraham that included everyone else:

“And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and through you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:3)

It is a strange promise — that one small family’s fate would become a mirror in which every nation meets its own. And it is perhaps the most empirically testable verse in the Bible.

The pattern of history

Run the experiment across four thousand years. The powers that crushed Israel — where are they? Egypt of the Pharaohs, Assyria, Babylon, imperial Rome, Inquisition Spain (which expelled its Jews in 1492 at the height of its glory and began its long decline soon after), the Thousand-Year Reich that lasted twelve years — the pattern is consistent enough that historians keep being asked to explain it.

Now run it the other way. The lands that sheltered Jews flourished while they did so — and India is one of the most beautiful cases on the books: two thousand years of hosting Jewish communities, not one persecution from its neighbors — and Jews worldwide speak of India with a warmth reserved for almost no other nation. We do not think it is a coincidence that this generation — the first in which India and Israel embrace openly — is the very generation of India’s rise to the world’s front rank. The blessing of Abraham is not a metaphor. It is a standing offer.

Why would God arrange things this way?

Because of what Israel was appointed to do. At Sinai, the Jewish people was made “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). A priest is not better than the people; a priest is on duty — serving the sanctuary on behalf of everyone. Israel’s job description is to carry the knowledge of the One God through history, guard it through every exile, and deliver it, intact, to all humanity — including the Seven Laws that are every nation’s inheritance.

Blessing Israel, then, is not flattery of one ethnic group. It is taking a side in history’s central project. One who strengthens the priests strengthens what the priesthood carries — and the Torah’s promise is that the blessing flows back through them “to all the families of the earth.”

What standing with Israel looks like

For a Noahide in India, partnership with the Jewish people is practical, not sentimental:

• Learn Torah’s universal teaching from its carriers — that is itself the bond. Every class you attend renews the covenant between Noah’s children and Abraham’s.
• Speak up for truth. The Jewish people today faces a flood of slander unlike anything since the darkest eras. A nation of a billion friends, armed with facts and fairness, is a mighty shield. India knows what ancient civilizations under attack feel like.
• Support the work — Torah education for the nations runs on partnership, as it did in the days when the tribe of Zevulun supported the teaching tribe of Yissachar and shared fully in the reward. See Become a Partner.
• Pray for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6) — a request the Psalms address to everyone.

The two-way bridge

Let us say the other half aloud: the Jewish people owes India a debt of gratitude and has treasures to repay it with — and the goal is not that India orbit Israel, but that both stand together around the One. The prophet’s picture of the end is God’s house as “a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7): Israel at its post, the nations in their glory, no one erased, everyone home.

“I will bless those who bless you” has been running for four thousand years. India is exactly the kind of blesser the verse was waiting for.

---

Sources: Genesis 12:3; Exodus 19:6; Isaiah 56:7; Psalm 122:6; Zevulun & Yissachar — Genesis 49:13 with Rashi; Deuteronomy 33:18.