When Abraham discovered that the problem of his countryfolk was disunity and alienation, he began to urge them to unite. Even when he was deported from his homeland he kept calling out his message, and anyone who resonated with the message of unity above all differences was welcome to join him. Maimonides, the great 12th century scholar, describes Abraham’s efforts to spread his message of unity and bequeath it to his descendants—both physical and spiritual—until his tiny entourage had become a nation based on unity and brotherly love: “[Abraham] began to call out to the whole world … wandering from town to town and from kingdom to kingdom until he arrived at the land of Canaan… And since [people in the places where he wandered] gathered around him and asked him about his words, he taught everyone…until he brought them back to the path of truth. Finally, thousands and tens of thousands assembled around him, and they are the people of ‘the house of Abraham.’ He planted this tenet in their hearts, composed books about it, and taught his son, Isaac. And Isaac sat and taught, warned, and informed Jacob, and appointed him a teacher to sit and teach… And Jacob the Patriarch taught all his sons…”[17]
No other nation has been forged in this manner, where people of diverse backgrounds, ethnicities and faiths became a nation based on brotherly love, transcending different origins, beliefs, or any other dissimilarity. They did this because they sensed that this was, as Maimonides put it, “the path of truth.” They felt that alienation and animosity do not lead anywhere good and therefore sought to unite.