Regenerate While Avraham did not suspend a mountain over the heads of those he brought over to his pre-Torah brand of Judaism, his charisma was just as compelling. And compulsion even of this variety remains compulsion. In this respect Avraham and his early descendants had gotten it wrong, at least for the long term. For in an ultimate sense, Falk and Locke understood that which the sages indicated long before them; that religion compelled is, in many respects, no religion at all.[4]
[1] That is, at least, how the passage is understood by Meiri. A similar understanding is found in Ben Yehoyada and is implied by Rashi on Ein Ya’akov. See also R. S. R. S. Hirsch on Shemot 34:9, who seems to subscribe to this thesis as well.
[2] Though Locke allows for the exceptionalism of ancient Israel, this really doesn’t touch on his vision of coerced religion’s actual value.
[3] This is in fact the suggestion largely made by Prof. Yehuda Gellman in his recent God’s Kindness Has Overwhelmed Us (Boston: Academic Press, 2013).
[4] These thoughts work well with an exact reading of a line in Beitza that even Pnei Yehoshua has difficulty explaining. The Talmud claims that the “religion” (dat) of Israel was like fire and had the Torah not been given to them, there is no nation that would have withstood them: The religion of fire that the Jews had before receiving the Torah was the pre-Torah charismatic Judaism of Avraham. Though many withstood the coercion of the Church and of Islam, no one could have been truly free in the face of such a charismatic Judaism. God had to put reins upon the Jews by giving them a Torah that stopped the charisma in its tracks and made them inspire by example and not by compelling proselytization.