Donniel Hartman, "Who Are the Jews—And Who Can We Become?" (Jewish Publication Society, 2023)

August 7, 2026

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“A Jew, even though they have sinned, is still a Jew.” Rabbi Donniel Hartman opens his argument with this ancient rabbinic principle, which he treats not as a theological curiosity but as the key to understanding Jewish identity itself. In his book Who Are the Jews—And Who Can We Become?, Hartman argues that the Jewish people have always been held together by two distinct covenants, and that the tension between them is the engine of Jewish life. The first, which he calls the Genesis covenant, is a covenant of being: you are a Jew by birth or by belonging, and nothing you do can undo that. The second, the Exodus covenant, is a covenant of becoming: it demands moral and spiritual excellence, expressed through commandments, ethics, and the constant striving not to be mediocre. Hartman’s central claim is that the Jewish people today have lost sight of the Genesis covenant, and that recovering it is essential for navigating the real crises facing Jewish communities—from intermarriage to the political divides exposed by the war in Gaza.

The Genesis Covenant: Belonging Before Belief

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What you'll learn

1 (01:57) **Guest Introduction: Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman** - Hartman introduces himself as a teacher whose mission is to help the Jewish people think about what being Jewish means and how to elevate moral and spiritual life, working from the Shalom Hartman Institute.
2 (03:06) **The Book's Central Question: "Who Are the Jews?"** - Hartman explains that the book is not about denominational debates over conversion or who is a "good Jew," but about telling a story of the Jewish people as a whole.
3 (04:42) **Denominations as Rooms in a House** - Hartman uses the metaphor of a family home: denominations are individual rooms, but the Jewish people are the entire house.
4 (07:10) **The Two Covenants: Genesis and Exodus** - Hartman introduces the book's foundational framework: a Genesis covenant (covenant of being) and an Exodus covenant (covenant of becoming).
5 (08:38) **The Genesis Covenant: A Covenant of Being** - Hartman explains that before the Torah covenant, there is a Genesis covenant where Abraham earns God's promise through a leap of faith, creating a people.
6 (13:55) **The "Wicked Child" and the Essence of Heresy** - Hartman uses the Passover Haggadah's "wicked child" to show that heresy in Judaism is not about lack of faith in God, but about separating oneself from the community.
7 (15:22) **The "Jewish Nod" and Unconditional Belonging** - Hartman illustrates the Genesis covenant with the experience of the "Jewish nod" between strangers in an airport, a silent recognition of shared peoplehood.

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Show Notes

In this episode of the New Books Network, I speak with Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman about his book Who Are the Jews and Who Can We Become? (Jewish Publication Society, 2023), the 2023 National Jewish Book Award Finalist in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience. Hartman is president of the Shalom Hartman Institute and holds the Kaufman Family Chair in Jewish Philosophy. His work has consistently addressed what constitutes Jewish peoplehood across a landscape of internal difference.

Hartman's central argument distinguishes between the Genesis covenant and the Exodus covenant. The Genesis covenant is a covenant of belonging: membership in the Jewish people that obtains by birth or by formal entry into the community, independent of belief or practice. The Exodus covenant, by contrast, is a covenant of aspiration, calling the people toward holiness, ethical development, and spiritual growth. Where the first establishes identity, the second establishes obligation.

In our discussion, Hartman emphasized that the Genesis covenant requires each community, and each individual, to relinquish the presumption of controlling a singular, authoritative account of the Jewish story. Read together, the two covenants do not divide the Jewish people into separate camps so much as describe the full shape of Jewish belonging: one covenant that secures the people as a people, and a second that gives that peoplehood its ongoing direction and purpose. Jewishness, on this account, transcends denominational boundaries—Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, secular, and otherwise—even as each tradition supplies its own particular mode of enacting the Exodus covenant's demand for growth.

Hartman situated this framework within a longer pattern in Jewish intellectual history: the recurring effort to locate an essential core beneath the full body of commandments, exemplified by Hillel's reduction of the Torah to a single ethical principle. This tendency toward distillation, he argued, helps explain how communities as historically and culturally distinct as Yemenite, Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and secular Israeli Jews continue to recognize one another as belonging to a single people, notwithstanding significant divergence in practice. Shared calendar and shared collective memory, in his formulation, do more to sustain peoplehood than uniformity of observance.

The conversation turned to the relationship between Jewish identity and the State of Israel. Hartman located Zionism itself within the Genesis covenant: attachment to the Jewish people's return to and sovereignty in the land of Israel is, on his account, a constitutive part of Jewish family and belonging, not a separate or optional commitment layered on top of it.

Hartman further addressed the changing status of intermarriage, noting a shift from its historical treatment as a violation of the Ge