The failure of humanity to fulfill God’s plan required a new Divine strategy. And so God appointed Abraham to found a people, through whom, as the Bible puts it, “all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” The Bible then narrowed its focus and became the story of a people, struggling to rise above human nature and become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” God’s redemptive plan for humanity required a people to carry that vision through history. For Judaism, then, peoplehood and faith are inseparable. There is no Judaism without a Jewish people.
