The Torah reading in synagogues throughout the world on Rosh HaShanah focuses on Genesis 22, the almost sacrifice of Abraham’s son. The Jewish New Year Day (5785) begins this year on the evening of October 2 and ends before sunset on October 3 for Reform Jews; and on October 4 for Conservative and Orthodox Jews.

Rosh HaShanah ushers in a ten day period of seeking self-improvement by doing a self-judgement review of our deeds in the past year; and then making specific commitments to doing better in the new year. So why is the Torah reading about Abraham’s being tested by his God always read on Rosh HaShanah?

The Qur'an states, “You have an excellent example to follow in Abraham.” (60:4) and “Follow the way of Abraham as people of pure faith.” (3:95) What makes Prophet Abraham an excellent example of pure faith according to three different religion’s Sacred Scriptures is that all three  scriptures proclaim Abraham to be the one “whom God chose to be His friend”: the Arabic Qur'an 4:125, the Hebrew Bible Isaiah 41:8; and the Greek New Testament James [the brother of Jesus] 2:23.

Abraham, “whom God chose to be His friend”, is as far as we know, also the only prophet to have two sons who were also prophets. And these two sons of Abraham, Prophet Ishmael and Prophet Isaac, are the only two Prophets who each had a descendant many many centuries later, who proclaimed a sacred scripture that has become the bases for the two largest religions in the whole world.

Prophet Abraham was the first person to be called a “Hebrew” in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 14:13). The term Hebrew probably comes from the verb to go over a boundary, like the Euphrates or Jordan river, or to be a migrant. Ten generations later the Philistines in Canaan used the term “Hebrews” to refer to the 12 tribes of Israel: “The Philistine commanders asked, "What about these Hebrews?" (1 Samuel 29:3); and Prophet Jonah identified himself to non-Jewish sailers as “a Hebrew” (Jonah 1:9).

Prophet Abraham was the first Muslim Hebrew as Qur’an 3:67 states: “He (Abraham) was not Yahuudiyyan, "a Jew", nor Nasraaniyyan, "a Christian", but rather a Haniifan."i.e. “a monotheistic Hebrew believer submitting (Islam) to the one imageless God who created all space and time; and who made Prophet Abraham's descendants through Prophets Isaac and Jacob (Israel), into a great multitude of monotheists called the People of Israel-Banu Israel.

One of the best known verses in the Qur'an is the declaration that, “Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian; he was faithful, a Muslim. He was not one of the Mushrikeen (polytheists).” (3:67) 

The Qur'an supports this statement by pointing out that that Abraham lived long before the Torah was brought to the Jewish People by Moses, “O people of the Book, why do you argue with us about Abraham? The Torah and the Gospel were revealed long after (Abraham lived).  (3:65)

The Jewish religion is indeed the product of the covenant God made with the Jewish People at Mount Sinai, when God held the mountain above the children of Israel, and they agreed to submit (Islam) to God/s Torah's commandments and instructions. Al-Baqarah 2:63 This is the theological bases of Jewish religious belief and Jewish Sharia.

However, the Torah also teaches, and Jews also believe, that the Jewish People/ the children of Israel, are not only the biological descendants of Prophet Jacob, whose name was changed by God from Jacob to Israel, but Jews are also the descendants of Jacob's grandfather Abraham, who was the first Hebrew Jew.

Of course, Abraham had other children, and the other descendants of Abraham are not Jews, because they are not the children of Israel/Jacob and they did not enter into the covenant with God at Mount Sinai.

Over the past 35 centuries many descendants of the original children of Israel dropped out of the Jewish People through assimilation and conversion to other religions, and many non-Jews entered into the Jewish people through marriage and conversion to Judaism. Most of those who convert to Judaism also marry into the Jewish people. Thus for their descendants; being Jewish is both a religious status as well as a ethnic status.

The majority of occurrences of the word “Hebrew” are in the books of Exodus and Samuel, where it appears in the disparaging words of those Egyptians and Philistines, who despise Jewish immigrants. The term Yehudi, in the singular, is rare in the Bible. The word appears eight times in the book of Esther, but only twice more elsewhere, in Jeremiah 34:9 and Zechariah 8:23. While the plural version of this term is more common, appearing 65 times in the Bible, 44 of these appearances are in the book of Esther. So Jew is clearly a name that developed in the diaspora.

Banu Israel is the best name for Jews because it was the name given to Jacob by God himself and it has been use for over 3,000 years.

Recent studies of the DNA of Jewish and non-Jewish individuals who live in the same area, in both Europe and the Middle East, have provided scientific evidence of both an overlapping common Jewish gene pool that differs from the non-Jewish local majority, as well as evidence of large scale non-Jewish conversion into the Jewish People. Rashi notes earlier rabbinic commentary as identifying one of the two servants of Abraham as Ishmael.

The Prophet Isaiah said: “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he [Abraham] was only one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him. (Isaiah 51:1-2) and the Qur’an states: “You have an excellent example to follow in Abraham.” (60:4) and “Follow the way of Abraham as people of pure faith.” (3:95)

Prophet Isaiah also said: But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, are the offspring of Abraham, my friend;”  (Isaiah 41:8) So the biological offspring of Prophet Abraham (the Banu Israel) became the first ongoing monotheistic community when God rescued them from Egyptian oppression; and made an ongoing covenant with them at Mount Sinai. Prophet Abraham was not born a Jew, but his descendants from his grandson Jacob/Israel became the Banu Israel—Jewish People.

Amazingly both the Gospels and the Qur’an assert that their prophet’s name and role can be found in the the holy book of the Jewish People, who are both the direct physical and spiritual descendants of Prophet Abraham.

In the thousands of years between Prophet Adam and Prophet Abraham, not one of God’s prophets succeeded in establishing a long term on going monotheistic community or nation. Even with all of God’s signs; polytheism remained the norm. Instead of seeing God’s signs of the One and Only God, the descendants of every hanif person or group reverted to polytheism and idolatry.

“And of His signs is that He created you from dust; then, suddenly you were human beings dispersing [worldwide]. And of His signs is that He created for you from yourselves mates that you may find tranquility in them; and He placed between you affection and mercy. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought. And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth; and the diversity of your languages and your colors. Indeed in that are signs for those of knowledge.” (Qur’an 30:20-22)

Although monotheism seems so logical to people today, it is clear that for most of human history monotheism has been short lived. “So direct your face toward the religion, inclining to truth. [Adhere to] the fitrah of Allah upon which He has created [all] people. No change should there be in Allah’s creation. That is the correct religion, but most of the people do not know [the importance of] turning in repentance to Him, and fear Him and establish prayer; and do not be of those who associate others with Allah” (30:30-31)

Prophet Abraham was different from the other prophets because he was the one prophet to be both described as a nation/community [Ummah] and also as a prophet “whom God chose to be His friend”: “And who is better in religion than one who submits himself to Allah while being a doer of good; and follows the religion of Abraham, inclining toward truth? And Allah took Abraham as an intimate friend.” (Qur’an 4:125)

So Abraham was both the physical pro-generator of the Banu Israel; and the spiritual pro-generator of the three sacred scriptures that identify Prophet Abraham as the one “whom God chose to be His friend”: Qur'an 4:125, the Hebrew Bible Isaiah 41:8; and the New Testament James 2:23: and “Abraham was a nation [Ummah]; dutiful to God, a monotheist [hanif], not one of the polytheists.” (Qur’an 16:120)

Anas bin Malik reported that a person came to Allah's Messenger and said: O, the best of creation; and Allah's Messenger replied: That is Ibrahim. [Muslim, Book #30, Hadith #5841]

These unique roles of Prophet Abraham succeeded in making his physical descendants the longest lasting on going monotheistic community in history; but at the same time limited the Jewish religion to people who wanted to join the Jewish People and its culture. This is why Judaism has not had Jewish missionaries to spread Judaism internationally and why Jews are the smallest of the world’s major religions.

Buddhists, Christians and Muslims each grew from a few thousand people into the many tens of millions who live in the world today, while Jews and Zoroastrians did not. The number of Jews, even before the Holocaust, was only three times the number of Jews in the first century, and the number of Zoroastrians (called Parsees in India) in the 20th century was much smaller than it was in the first century.

Jews usually explain their steadily decreasing percentage of the world's total population in terms of a long history of persecution, forced apostasy and physical slaughter. All that is true but there is another important factor that is almost always overlooked. While Buddhism, Christianity and Islam are missionary religions; Judaism and Zoroastrianism are definitely not.

The spread of Buddhism from India into China and southeast Asia; the spread of Christianity throughout Europe and the Americas; and the spread of Islam from Morocco to Indonesia were all the result of missionary activities. These activities still continue. Half of all Koreans have become Christians in the last half century because of Protestant missionaries. In less than 200 years, Mormon missionary activities produced a Mormon population equal in size to a Jewish population that was born more than 3.000 years earlier.

Paul influenced his trinitarian followers to denationalize Judaism and universalize the Son of God’s vicarious atonement. However, by making belief in a trinitarian God the bases for everyone’s salvation Paul openly rejected Judaism’s tribal religious pluralism and the Messianic vision of Prophet Micah:

“Many nations will come and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us His ways, so that we may walk in His paths. For Torah will go forth from Zion and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. Then God will judge between many peoples and decide disputes for strong nations far and wide. Then they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation  will no longer take up the sword against nation, nor will they train for war. And each man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, with no one to frighten him. For the mouth of the LORD of Hosts has spoken. For all the peoples walk each in the name of its god; and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.” (4:2-5)

The Talmud (Megillah 14a) states: “Forty-eight male prophets and seven female prophets prophesied to the Jewish people, and they neither subtracted from nor added to [the commandments] written in the Torah, except for [Prophetess] Esther who added the Mitsvah [duty of reading] the Book of Esther.” on the Jewish holiday of Purim..

When Prophet Muhammad came a thousand years after Prophet Esther to proclaim the Qur’an’s religious toleration of minorities (Qur’an 5:48) Judaism was released from Christian oppression just as the sons of Abraham were released from their own test.