Ali Ataie – Islam & Judaism’s Acceptance of Other Faiths & Rabbi Larry Milder
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Peace be upon you.
In
the name of God, compassionate and merciful.
Thank you for having me here. It's a
very
interesting topic.
I'll get right to it because I'm short
on time.
The primary text of Islam is called the
Quran, as you may or may not know.
Muslims believe that it was revealed,
to the final Abrahamic prophet.
That's a prophet with an uppercase
p. His name was Muhammad,
peace be upon him, who lived in the
6th 7th centuries.
The Quran
explicitly mentions,
the Jews and the Christians,
and gives them the epithet,
the honorable epithet of in Arabic, which is
translated as the people of the book.
So initially,
theologians would,
they would interpret the book at Kitab as
being the bible, the people of the
bible. Because the word bible
in Greek means book,
and
the bible in Arabic is called
or the holy book.
Now during the 2nd 3rd centuries,
the Muslim calendar during the Islamic
expansion,
Muslims came to realize that there are a
lot more religions in the world than just
Judaism and Christianity.
So theologians at the time, they actually expanded
the meaning
of the title at the
people of the book,
to any religion
that,
that reveres some sort of sacred text.
So Hindus, Buddhists,
Zoroastrians,
etcetera.
So under the Muslim polity in premodern times,
the religious traditions
these religious traditions were given a protected status,
freedom of worship, and autonomous
rule,
of their own religious courts.
So was there absolutely equal rights amongst all
the religions? No. That was not seen anywhere
in the world at the time,
but what was happening in the Muslim
lands was really unparalleled
at that time throughout the rest of the
world.
And this is why we find,
historical Christian communities in Muslim majority countries
even today.
So,
were there atrocities
committed? Were there people that
were,
oppressive? Yes.
But this idea of, you know, hordes of
Muslim armies coming in and forcing people to
convert,
is pretty much a myth, even the man
who wrote the book, Answering Islam,
is Norman Geismar.
He actually says that, well, the reason why
the North African Christians actually became Muslim so
quickly was because of low taxes
and stress on brotherhood. That's the power of
taxes.
But there's a verse in the Quran, the
second chapter verse 256 that says
15. There's no compulsion in religion.
Right? And this is important. It's interesting because,
pope Benedict 16th, he gave, a a
a talk at Regensburg University in Germany,
September 12th,
interesting day, 2006,
where he quoted this verse, There's no compulsion
to religion. He said, this verse is abrogated.
Right? This verse has been canceled by other
verses in the Quran, which calls for fighting
the infidelity.
Right?
So abrogation in and of itself is a
contentious issue within Quranic sciences.
Probably the most authoritative
scholar on this issue is an Egyptian scholar
named Imam.
You don't have to remember that, but this
is the text that most students will will
know and
study called. Anyway, he says in there that
there are about 19 or 20 or 21
abrogated verses in the Quran, and this verse
is not one of them. I haven't come
across a single scholar in my life that
has said that this verse, there's no compulsion
in religion,
has been abrogated,
because it doesn't make sense to abrogate it.
You can't force someone to believe in something.
Right? I can't force you to believe that
the moon is
made of cheese. Right?
You can say, oh, yeah, I believe, I
believe, but I can't force that in your
heart. So it doesn't make sense that this
verse will be aggregated. There's no
precedent for that, so I don't know what
he's quoting here.
We'll give you examples of
historical Christian communities in the list of majority
of countries. The Coptic Christians in Egypt,
they've been there for 2000 years. Their claim
is that same mark found at their church.
The church of the Assyrians in Iraq,
which is also called, I think they call
it the ancient
Assyrian Church of the East or ancient apostolic
church of the East, their claim is that
Saint Adaius founded their church.
I've lived in Yemen. I've I've been to
monasteries in Yemen. I've met nuns. I've lived
in Yemen,
been to North Africa. I've met Christians there.
In fact, according to Pew, 50 there are
50 Muslim majority countries,
and there are churches in all of them
except for 2,
and that's Saudi Arabia,
and Mauritania.
Saudi Arabia is sort
of weird
and theologically
important piece.
But it's interesting, Saudi Arabia, there are 2,000,000
Christians living in Saudi Arabia. There's no churches
in Saudi Arabia. There are 2,000,000 Christians living
in Saudi Arabia, mostly foreign workers, which is
interesting because per capita, there are more Christians
living in Saudi Arabia than there are Muslims
living in America,
which is interesting.
And then, so there's about 50,000,000
Christians living in the Muslim majority world in
the Middle East. 50,000,000 compared to about 44,000,000
Muslims living in Egypt. There are more Christians
in the Middle East than there are Muslims
in Europe.
Now, if you look at Muslim
Spain or North Africa, this is sometimes called
the golden age of Judaism.
Right? This is when Jewish systematic theology and
philosophy crystallized.
You have these major,
classical Jewish
works being produced in Arabic rather than in
Hebrew, later later translated into Hebrew. I'll just
give you a few of them.
It's called, Emunot Vadorot. This is by Sayyagayu
al Fayyumi,
the great scholar,
in Judaism. Reliefs and opinions. He wrote this
book in Arabic. It's an incredible
book. I've thumbed
through it a little bit.
Very difficult.
There's another one,
which is called.
Duties of the heart wrote this in Arabic.
You have
or called the Khuzari, Rabbi Yehuda Adavi.
Then you have the 2 great works by
Maimonides,
who's called Musa ibn Umaymon,
al Portobi
in Arabic.
His first book is called Kitab al Farahid,
which is in Hebrew,
the book of the commandments.
He wrote this in Arabic.
Then you have the magnum opus, very, very
difficult but incredible,
the guide for the perplexed
also by the Rambam,
my monarchies.
So the world view of the Quran
is one in which other religions are acknowledged
and accepted
and that these other religions will always be
there.
So the goal is not global Islamic *.
Right? The goal is peaceful coexistence,
and the technical legal term for this is
Musa Allah.
Musa Allah.
And if you want to do research on
the charter or sometimes called constitution of Medina,
when the prophet went into Medina, he had
a charter or constitution draft.
So,
you can do a Google search on that
if you want.
However, the Quran does not advocate a type
of perennial philosophy where all religions are seen
as equally true.
According to the, there are correct beliefs and
there are incorrect beliefs.
There is a way of theologizing or speaking
about God that is correct and a way
of theologizing that is incorrect.
Either God incarnates or he doesn't.
Either Jesus is God or he's not. He's
either the Messiah or he isn't.
The Quran goes into
these issues.
The Quran encourages interfaith dialogue. The prophet himself
engaged with dialogue
with some Nestorian Christians who came to Medina,
and he housed them in his mosque for
3 days, and they engaged in interfaith and
dialogue.
So me coming here today is considered what
I would say is sunnah,
the normative practice of the prophet himself.
There was a Catholic,
lady who came to the mosque in San
Ramon, she was quite elderly. She said, I
remember a time when I was not allowed
to go into a mosque.
Prevalent too.
Very interesting. Now hang with this,
when the prophet was living in Medina, he
was the head of state in Medina,
the Muslims were living under constant siege in
the city. God gave the prophet and the
Muslims permission
to physically defend themselves.
So the stance in Mecca for 13 years
was one of assertive non violence,
and in Medina, you have active resistance with
specific rules of engagement.
So the first verse revealed to the prophet
in the Quran chapter 22 verse 39 that
gave him,
permission to physically defend his city. It sounds
like this in Arabic.
It says all of these verbs are in
the passive. It says permission is given to
those who are being fought against to fight
because they have been wronged, and indeed God
is able to give them victory.
So active resistance or martial action
can only be called for by legitimate state
authority,
not by vigilantes,
and is used to defend one's community.
The very next verse says,
Who are these people, the Muslims that are
given permission to defend themselves? They are those
who were expelled from their homes
unjustifiably.
Except that they said, our lord is Allah.
Our lord is the God of Abraham, and
that also entails a belief in the Quran
and in the prophet Muhammad. And then the
Quran says,
if God did not check one people against
another, in other words, if God did not
reveal
a just war theory,
if God did not reveal
rules of engagement
when it comes to active,
resistance,
Then you would have seen many temples,
synagogues,
and churches,
and mosques
destroyed
where the name of God is celebrated.
So the initial impetus for active resistance is
to ensure
religious pluralism
according to the Quran,
to ensure sacred spaces of worship and devotion
for people of various religious traditions.
And I preempted
questions.
This is why ISIS is not Islamic.
It is a plague upon humanity
that the prophet actually
warned us against.
It was a group of early Muslims who
broke off the guidance of the prophet. They
were called the Kharijites.
Right? Or the Khawarij in Arabic.
And today we have neo Kharijites.
You know, people who are violent, exclusivists, people
who are terrorists.
And the prophet said they come in waves
over time,
and it's our duty to oppose them.
So I want you to remember this analogy.
It's a very effective analogy.
Isis is to Islam
as the Ku Klux Klan is to Christianity.
So the question I get all the time
is, why don't Muslims,
like you, your leaders, or someone, why don't
you condemn
ISIS?
Right? If you go to a mosque, you
start talking about ISIS, Muslims start rolling their
eyes. They say, oh, this again? Why don't
you talk about something else?
Right?
So I people ask me this question. I
always say to them, have you ever Googled
Muslim leaders condemn ISIS? And nobody has ever
Googled it.
So I'll just mention a few things here.
Islamic society in North America
or called it's called ISDA. They actually released
something called the code of honor where they
condemn ISIS. This is a huge organization
in North America.
There's something called the covenants initiative.
Doctor John Abdulmoro
is,
spearheading that. This is something that is, known
in North America as well where he condemns
ISIS and he has signatories to that. There's
something called the local letter to Baldadi, the
so called caliph
of ISIS.
There's a 120 signatories
by scholars all around the Muslim world. These
are people who have sway over the hearts
and minds of tens of millions of people
condemning ISIS.
The Council,
on American Islamic Relations, which is called CAIR,
is constantly condemning and repudiating ISIS.
There's something called the Muslim Council of Great
Britain in 2014
that released a statement
condemning ISIS. There's an incredible book written by
an incredible scholar of Damascus.
His name is Sheikh Mohammed al Yaqawi.
He's a descendant of the prophet Mohammed. It's
called Refuting ISIS. He wrote it in Arabic
and then he himself translated it into English.
It's very short. You can probably find it
online quite easily. Refuting ISIS, an ideological refutation
of ISIS.
You have the Muslim Public Affairs Council in
2014 that released a statement condemning ISIS.
You have the Amman message,
where 200 scholars
find a declaration,
Amman, Jordan,
denouncing ISIS. You have a fatwa that was
issued by Al Asghaug University,
the oldest university on the planet, 2014,
that denounced ISIS. The Arab League in 2014
made a statement denouncing ISIS.
In December of 2015, 100,000
Indian scholars and teachers
signed a declaration. 100,000,
denouncing ISIS, and then you have the Marrakesh,
the Morocco declaration
denouncing ISIS,
as well.
So these things are out there, but it's
strange how they don't make it into
MSM or mainstream media as it were.
I'm I know I'm out of time, so
I'm gonna stop at this point.
Hopefully, I answered
the question. I'm looking forward to your your
questions
and conversations later. Thank you for your attention.
We now,
open up the,
floor to questions,
and we do have a microphone
that is gonna go around and, whoever it
is.
Okay. Thank you. So just raise your hand,
and you'll get a microphone.
There's a person right there.
And try to keep your questions short and
on for topic
since we only have an hour for this
event.
Yes, sir.
Oh, the mic's going.
Talk, and I appreciate it.
As a former Catholic, I was condemned to
* if I were to go into a
Protestant church, let alone a loose looking place
of worship.
One of the most,
glorious
experiences in my life was in Southern India
when the Muslims, the
Christians, and the Hindi all had places of
worship and often walked together on the street.
It was
absolutely phenomenal.
And so my question to you would be,
would you ever see that that might happen
here in the United States
where we're all accepted of, you know, accepting
of others? You mentioned to be out and
openly worship.
I I think we I think we have
that here. I think,
I I think
with respect to that, America is the
the top of the list as far as,
acceptance and toleration of religions.
I'll tell you this. I've
outside of elementary school,
I've never experienced
any type of And I used to debate
Christians, by the way. I I used to
be Muslim clematis when I was an undergrad
in high school. You know, you're young, you're
not married, you got all this energy. So
we go on debate, and I've I've had
nothing but positive responses,
and, you know, no one's ever pulled me
and insulted me. You know, kids do these
type of things with their kids. Right? You
don't know what
so
and it's interesting. I have a friend who
lives in Iraq.
He's actually my wife's
teacher's husband. My wife's Arabic teacher's husband,
and I actually When I was in Yemen,
my He was one of my teachers there
as well. Sometimes we talk and he says,
oh, there's a number of soldiers here around
the corner
and, you know, I'm just afraid they're gonna
they're gonna kill all of us.
And then he says to me,
how how are you living in America? You
are you constantly threatened every day by people?
And I said, I've never in my life
been threatened one time.
Time. So as far as that goes, I
think America is actually
a model
of the rest of the world that we
can actually learn from. Obviously, it's not a
perfect society, but what society is perfect. Right?
Yes.
Who has it? Yeah.
And then there's a gentleman here. I skipped
him again. Sorry.
You raised a very
important point about the various,
Muslim organizations that have come out against ISIS.
And my question is why haven't major I
mean, this is big. Why aren't they telling
people
that Muslims
have objected?
I mean, that would they cover so many
take care of so many concerns.
I don't know. You have to ask them.
You we'd have to ask questions like who
actually runs the media.
That's that's those are real questions Right. That
that I think we're being diverted from.
So that's what I would do if I
were to go to research it. Who actually,
are are these people actually
doing things for our best interest? What's actually
happening? Who are these people? We can find
out who these people are.
Yes. If we see any differences
or variations of toleration,
of other faith tradition
between Sunni and Shia?
That's a good question.
Certainly with the invasion of Iraq, this It's
kind of created a
a power factor in Iraq. Now Sunnis and
Shias have been around for 1200 years. And
in Iraq, they've lived in relative
peace.
The major difference between, and somewhat might even
call it a negligible difference, there's really no
difference theologically that's major.
But the difference is in political theory.
Who who,
who should rule the Muslim
or nation as it were. The Shi'a say
it must be a descendant of the prophet.
So I think a lot of these thing
I think there's always been little
pockets
of disputed violence since, you know,
since, you know, the Middle Ages and even
before that. But I think with what's going
on in the news and the world, those
little things are sort of aggrandized and put
forward as and presented as sort of this
global conflict.
You know?
So, you know, there's the I I call
it the
the Santa Claus effect. You know, you have
the, you have the true Santa Claus who
was a 4th century Christian priest who used
to give candy to children, then he died
and he's gone. And you have sort of
mythological
Santa Claus,
flies around at night that was out of
your chimney.
That doesn't really exist, you know. So a
lot of us this idea of, you know,
your next door neighbor should be Al Qaeda.
You know? So even if, you know, even
if he's a nice guy,
you know, that's called.
I think they learn these words that 99.9%
of the Muslims have never heard of.
Right? But, you know, people like Daniel Pipes
for example, he puts it out there and
says, you know, if a Muslim is is
is nice to you and tells you he
doesn't want to kill you, he's lying because
he's sanctioned by God to light evil. That's
prudential concealment. He can do that without dealing
with Omega.
What?
I mean, I did a PhD this month.
I didn't learn about this. I don't know.
Or Heathcote. Oh, yeah. There's something of a
deep dark recesses
of Sharia that, you know, the guy has
gone to your head and says, are you
Muslim? You can say, no.
Sharia.
To save your life.
But this thing is sort of just a
grandad. So this is what all Muslims are
doing.
They believe in us. That's what they're doing
in America.
You know?
So Sunni Shia differences. Sorry. Just one question.
Oh, Rudy? Yes. There's a gentleman back here
who's had his hand up. Okay. Hold
on.
Go
ahead.
Yeah. Okay. I got I noticed you used
the term buzz muzzle majority nations kind
of a fully correct term
to use. But,
I don't think
we held our situation if we
if we try to obscure
what really is going on Sunday.
Because in reality,
the history of Islam has been more than
just Muslim judgment, Muslim rule, Garaz, Al Islam,
and wherever Islam has spread to, you know,
Moscow has a certain extent,
it has sought to establish its own rule
whether it be,
the kind of separatist
movement or even
take over governments of the countries where it
has spread.
So I I wanted
I read Christianity and I had a lot
of had a really bad history of,
separating church and state.
We have more to be learned from the
lesson. I don't know what you just
I really wanna challenge this. I think we
have to be honest, and there's still a
problem with Islam,
the lack of separation of mosque and state,
and really proud of the Middle East,
what you have, you're not majority most majority
nations under Islamic rule.
You know, maybe feel,
you know, think this way,
but are, being afraid to bring that up.
Yeah. So I I would agree with you
to the the pre modern rule.
You have empires vying for land.
I also think that a lot of what's
happening in Muslim Muslim majority countries, again, to
use that, what you call a PC term,
is a direct result of,
colonialism in that area that Muslims haven't
necessarily recovered from.
And then as far as,
under Islamic rule,
you know, there's,
the Quran does not mandate any form of
government. If you can show me a verse
in the Quran that says, thou shalt have
a theocracy.
I'll be glad to agree with you that,
you know, there should be no separation of
mosque and state. But you have Saudi Arabia,
which is a kingdom,
you know, and the early Muslims when when
the caliphate became a kingdom, a lot of
early Muslims,
they they frowned upon that. You have,
you have democratic movements,
in the Muslim majority countries, like Syria in
the 19 forties fifties.
Iran, the president or the prime minister of
Iran was second,
actually was a great admirer of Thomas Jefferson,
but we can't have him. Right?
So he was removed from power by the
CIA,
and the shawl was put in. And the
shawl was quite
cruel, and he would torture Muslims. My own
family members, some of them were were tortured
by him.
And so you have this sort of I
mean, Saddam Hussein is another example. This is
someone who's shaking hands with our defense,
secretary of defense in the 19 eighties.
The CIA trained Al Qaeda
in Afghanistan,
and so did Mi 5.
So you have
American or western interest in that region,
that are
turning that region into absolute chaos,
for different reasons.
But,
you know, you have different forms of government
all over the Middle East.
Yeah. You mentioned
that
Saudi Arabia is kind of an anomaly.
Yeah. In terms of,
can you,
kind
of elucidate
a little more about how to
frame
that. Yeah. It's very interesting. Again, we talk
about sacred law, Sharia. I might people hear
the word Sharia, and they get to start
wanting to hide.
Sharia literally means a path to cold water.
Right?
So Sharia is an indispensable part of a
Muslim's identity.
It's like saying you can be a Jew,
but you can't follow halakala.
Or you can be a Christian, but you
can't follow the Bible. It's like, what are
you talking about? You know, when most Muslims
hear the word sharia, they think prayer and
fasting and life.
Can I eat this because there's jealousy in
it? That's what 99%
Muslims are thinking about. So sharia is very
fast. There isn't one way of doing sharia.
Right? So for example, in Afghanistan,
again, a country that's been under attack for
40 years,
you have places in Afghanistan
where women do not leave their homes.
They're not allowed to leave their homes.
And if you say, what are you what
are people doing that's so oppressive?
The elders of a certain city will say,
this is the shayyakh. Again, that's their interpretation
of it. If you go over to the
border, over the border to Iran,
half the physicians and again, Iran's not perfect.
No country's perfect. Obviously not perfect, but half
the physicians in Iran are women.
70% of college students are women.
And if you say, well, why do you
why is it like this? They say this
is shutting up.
There's a prophet that
the acquisition of knowledge is an obligation upon
every type of Muslim.
Right?
So it's very fast. Now you have Saudi
Arabia, they have their own laws. They say
women can't drive cars.
Okay.
What?
That's their interpretation of the Sharia.
Right? And as far as theologically, their their,
theological
stances are very different than traditional Sunni or
even Shri stances.
So they're very,
Takfiri. They anathematize
Muslims that don't believe exactly as they believe.
And Saudi Arabia is one of our biggest
allies, by the way,
which is interesting.
But anyway, not making not getting too much
into politics.
But,
so theologically, there's sort of an outlier.
You know, this idea that if you don't
believe exactly as we believe, that we don't
consider a Muslim.
Traditional Islam traditional Sunni Islam always recognizes difference
of opinion,
and that
difference of opinion, there's actually a a hadith
statement of the prophet, which is not exactly
authentic, but it's quoted a lot by scholars
as sort of set as sort of being
true in principle
that difference of opinion among scholars is a
mercy from God.
It's not sort of a a fitna or
a cause of strife
amongst people.
So there is no true there is no
true separation of church and state.
I mean, you have
Rick *
wanting to,
you know,
put abortion into law and he's doing that
because he's a Catholic. Now I'm not saying
you shouldn't do that. What I'm saying is
there's a difference between a secular society and
secularism.
The the secularism means, let's banish religion to
the household.
Right? Not even talk about it at all.
Right? But a secular society allows for religious
discourse, you know. I mean, you can go
there and say, abortion is wrong because the
Bible says so. He probably won't get that
law passed,
but he can try.
Right?
And he might convince a few people, so
religion is on the forefront. I mean, everyone
in the in the in congress, almost everyone
believes in God,
So there really is no true separation.
Religion and and and the state are never
truly divorced anywhere you go around.
So I think we also have a problem.
If that's what you wanna do, create a
totally secular society because they're religion, then you're
a wrong country.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Our second speaker today
is Rabbi Larry Milter,
from Congregation
Beth Hemet in Pleasanton.
Okay. That's excellent.
Everybody hear me alright? Yes.
Good afternoon. Thank you,
doctor Ati,
for a brilliant
and
really
educational
thought that I I enjoyed so much.
What a pleasure.
And thank you, Ruth, for the invitation to
speak to religion chat.
That's probably not okay.
I consider it a great honor to be
here, and,
it's really the pleasure of this lecture the
second time that, doctor G and I and
chair of the panel presented to religion chat.
The topic of what does your faith teach
about the acceptance of other religions
is particularly
provocative.
No religion
thinks
that all other religions are equally true,
although I know that some of you would
probably debate even that
But I would maintain that every religion believes
that there is something true about its own
faith, which makes it distinctive
and unlike other religions.
If they don't think that they are necessarily
better, they do nonetheless
disagree
with some teachings of any other religion.
Nor is this something to be embarrassed about.
Religions are ways of looking at the world,
ways of making meaning
out of the raw stuff of human experience.
And humans being social creatures,
we are inclined to make meaning in communities.
We treasure our particular traditions because,
in many ways, they give cosmic
expression
to our sense of belonging.
They ground us.
So for example,
we should for we choose,
the autumn
is the time of transition,
the turning of the year.
We
mark time
Jewishly.
And by doing so,
not only do we make sense of our
personal experience
of the passing of time, we simultaneously
root our lives
in the experience of our people.
When a person dies,
we mourn
Jewishly.
Our rituals
give context to the
unstable moments in our lives when life is
at risk of losing its meaning.
Is that me?
When, when we consider our ethical
obligations,
we do so Jewishly.
We don't give charity, we do tzedakah, justice.
The action means something unique to Judaism,
unlike the meaning of charity, which comes from
Caritas, carry.
We don't do it because we are moved
by feelings of carry, but because we see
justice
as an obligation
even when we don't feel like doing it.
Yes, Judaism is different,
as are other religions from one another.
That doesn't make it better.
Our problem with understanding
the difference between
being different
and being better
is an epistemological
problem
that is a problem with the way we
think about things.
Our culture
is biased
toward universalism.
We think
that which is universal is, by definition,
better than that which is particular. It's all
very Kantian.
Judaism
is an answer to that bias,
and then
it's not the ice cream truck, is it?
Judaism
is really countercultural.
We affirm the
absolute
value of particularism.
My being Jewish is not secondary to my
being human.
It is the way I am human.
My particularism
and my universalism
are not in competition with one another.
I am Jewish with my whole being,
and anything less than that would be an
admission that I consider Judaism
not to have ultimate
significance
in my life.
Our culture really does try to repress
those particularisms
that make life beautiful
and make humanity
so interesting.
You know, you don't get harmony unless we
are singing different notes.
We all love ethnic food. Right? Ethnic food
is whatever we don't cook at home.
So just how do Jews navigate
that path where we say, yay,
Jews,
and at the same time, say with mister
Rogers, won't you be my neighbor?
We do not agree with Christians
over the divinity of Jesus. If we did,
we'd be Christian. We do not would it
be better if I use them again to
help life off? Let's turn this one
off.
I actually have the same problem with my
sanctuary, so if you figure it out, you
Random.
It is it is it is great.
We don't agree with Muslims
that Mohammed received a unique revelation from God,
because if we did, we'd be Muslim.
Not that there are other aren't other points
of difference. Let's face it. Christians don't agree
with one another about Christian teachings, as we
just heard. Muslims don't agree with one another
about Muslim teachings. By the way, we Jews
have the same problem.
I could go on about each religion and
our point of departure, not to mention the
overwhelming commonalities
of our faiths. The key is:
Do we acknowledge
the ultimate
value of the other's particularity?
I may not agree with their beliefs, but
can I see the others children of God
who, just like me,
live lives
that are shaped by their unique,
particular
relationship with God?
What cannot be
logically true,
You think Jesus is God and I don't,
may nonetheless be spiritually
true.
And here I believe I can assert that
Judaism stands precisely
for that kind of embrace of the other.
It is the virtue
of spiritual
ambiguity,
a value that very concrete
religionists
usually do not appreciate.
To be honest, there are Jews who don't
get that either.
But they are certainly a minority
in the Jewish world.
Let me give you three examples from our
tradition:
First,
Amos
Amos the prophet is criticizing the people. That's,
after all, the job of a prophet.
He's criticizing them for their arrogance.
He says to them,
to me, O Israelites,
you are just like the Ethiopians.
True, he says, on behalf of God, I
brought Israel from the land of Egypt, but
also the Philistines from Kathor and the Aramians
from Kir.
In other words, so there. Don't think you're
so special.
I, god, have a relationship
with all these peoples.
Your relationship is special to you, theirs is
special to them. So you are not better,
and by the way, don't go picking on
them either.
This is about as far from ethnocentrism
and chauvinism as you can get. And it
is right there in the earliest
prophet in the Bible.
Let's leap forward about 900 years, and the
rabbis are debating:
who qualifies
for eternal life, you know, who gets a
place in what they call the world to
come?
In other words,
do you have to be one of us
to get in?
And there we find this statement,
quote,
the Righteous of All Peoples
have a share in the world to come.
And that has been the majority view
among Jews for the past 2000 years.
Of course, there is a minority.
You can find the minority viewpoint
at chabad.org.
Finally,
let's consider the Middle Ages,
when Jews were faced with the competing
claims
of Christianity
and Islam.
Now
the Torah is explicit in its condemnation of
idolatry and the worship of other gods.
The question then arose in the Middle Ages
about whether Judaism defined these other religions
as worshiping other gods.
At first, the question was difficult.
Maimonides, who you just heard about,
actually had no trouble seeing that Islam does
not practice
idolatry,
but he wasn't so sure about Christianity.
But this question is no longer in-depth,
and it really couldn't be once emancipation
came to the Jews and the ghetto walls
came down. You know, when we attend one
another's worship services,
Our experience,
not our doctrine, tells us whom we are
worshiping.
A beautiful statement of And
the
leading
sentence
of
the document is,
And the leading sentence of the document is,
quote,
Jews and Christians
worship the same God.
Now this hardly exhausts the questions that might
legitimately
be raised,
but it gives my attempt to place Jewish
attitudes in a broader context
of the way we think about being religious.
Have Jewish attitudes toward other religions
changed over time? Certainly.
But Judaism itself, and other religions as well,
have changed.
We do not cease being authentically Jewish when
we acknowledge
the glory and wisdom of humanity's
many encounters
with the divine.
Our particularity
is our humanity,
and that is why each of our paths
can be ultimately
true.
So let me stop there. I know that
we wanna make sure
we get to do some questions. Yes.
Questions?
Thank you.
Thank you, Rabbi. I got a question for
you.
Adam, do
you believe in
the name of Moses mentioned,
29 times,
Jesus Christ.
There's a whole chapter of area the
Jesus mother. So,
honestly, you as a Jew,
what do you think about Jesus Christ?
In Tanakh, what is most common about Jesus
Christ?
And are you believing even in the
Thank
you.
I think it's a fair question that that
any reasonable person would want to to know.
What do you say about the major
religious
figure of another faith?
Part of it goes back to what do
we mean when we say we believe in.
When Muslims say
they have a belief in Jesus, it's not
the the word does not mean the same
thing. Believe does not mean the same thing
as what Christians do when they say we
believe in Jesus.
Of course, Jesus is important to Islam.
Jesus is not important to Judaism.
That's a hard thing for people to hear,
but
it is
Jesus is no more significant
to the practice of Judaism than Buddha.
That does not mean
that
there is a negative
association,
nor
being historically honest, would I have any reason
not to believe
that Jesus lived,
but as far as I know, he lived
and died as a Jew,
and that's actually all I can say is
as far as I know.
What I can do is respect the teachings
that great
minds of other faiths
have offered us.
Many times we see ourselves in those teachings.
So when I read
the
when I read the text in
the gospels
that cite Jesus'
homilies,
I'm struck by how much
they reflect
Pharisaic
Judaism.
They really bore the same teachings as the
Pharisees.
That doesn't mean there aren't disagreements. Of course,
there's disagreements.
But the style of teaching is the same
style.
The the actual language is sometimes identical language
to what you could find in related teachings.
So
we sense, oh, we're on the same page.
That, does not involve my acknowledgment of Jesus'
divinity in Israel.
And so when I hear some of the
teachings of Muhammad,
I I listen and go, oh, I get
it. I get it. This is like yeah.
This
this whole tradition of,
what we call tzedakan,
the the the
or comparable obligation of puzzles
to to give charity. Why? We're we're talking
about the same thing. We're for that matter,
we actually have the same debate about gelatin,
you know, like, in in
we're talking the same language.
Language, yeah, we're we're we share concepts,
and obviously, there's more in common between all
these three particular religions
than disagreement.
As far as the individuals,
actually, they do not function
in any religious way in Judaism, which is
understandable.
Judaism is earlier.
It it comes first. It's understandable. These are,
are not people who play a role within
our own tradition,
even though they are the seminal figures of
other faiths.
I hope I've done a fair job in
in answering your question.
Other questions?
Yeah.
There. Okay.
Okay. Fine. Thank you. I
I'm a Catholic Christian, and,
when as you know, what we're reading about
Jesus is
It's an interesting question too. Let me go
back to the Bible. Okay?
The notion of,
Mashiach,
Messiah
is,
an idea that emerges
primarily
in the period of the Babylonian
exile.
The term in Hebrew, mashiach, means anointed one,
and it refers to somebody chosen by God
for a particular purpose. In the Bible, it
simply means generally, it means a king.
Sometimes it it means somebody else who's designated,
for a special purpose like the high priest.
In the Bible, it has absolutely no,
supernatural connotation
and no,
there is,
no notion of this being something that
appears at at end of time
or anything of the sort, until you get
to the book of Daniel, which is the
last book of the Hebrew Bible to be
written, and it's written during the Greek period.
But anything before Daniel,
Mashiach simply means leader,
the one God picked. In fact, it doesn't
even have to be a Jew. Cyrus is
called Mashiach.
Why? God picked him to free the Jews
as if that was his primary concern.
Obviously, the Jews were blip on the radar
as far as he's concerned,
but for the Jews, he was everything. Oh,
my gosh. The Messiah has come. Why? They
don't want me to make it supernatural.
Just
thank God you picked him, because now we're
free.
But in the
in the,
exilic period, the prophets developed a notion that
didn't previously exist. They lost their country. They
lost the kingdom.
The Davidic monarchy was over, and they said
someday God will bring us home. Him. Someday
God will will let us go home, and
we'll have our country back. And what's the
symbol of a country? Your own king instead
of being ruled by a foreign king. Then
a messiah,
a
ruler
who is authorized,
really a righteous ruler, a descendant of David
will will be our ruler again. Did they
imagine this would happen
centuries later? No. They imagined it would happen
in the immediate future,
and it did,
more or less. They got to go home,
because the Babylonian exile only lasted approximately 50
years.
They get to go home again. They don't
get their monarchy back.
So there is no Moshe.
Nobody gets you know, the the descendants of
David do not get re appointed to the
throne, and that's the end of the monarchy.
As far as we're concerned,
no messiah.
And
they didn't, like, start saying, oh, it'll happen,
you know,
centuries from now.
That was never a Jewish concept, nor did
they have a notion of the Messiah being
a supernatural figure,
and least of all,
a relative of God's,
any more than the rest of us,
which we all know.
Well,
this is the major departure of Christianity,
of course. And,
it did
there, we we part company
over over that idea.
And,
so I that's basically I I think, you
know, what do we think now?
For
for a very long time, Jews have basically
been non,
unattached to the notion of a personal messiah.
It exists in symbolic language in our prayers.
Symbolically, it's there, except for the reformer movement,
which is the largest movement to Judaism in
the United States, where we don't even have
that language. You take it even that personal
messiah language out of our prayer book. But
what we do retain is the core biblical
concept of someday things will be healed, someday
things will be right. They're broken now,
but we believe in the coming time when
things will be put back together. That's what
our ancestors during the Babylonian exile believe, and
that's what we believe today.
Someday, it can happen soon. The world can
be fixed.
So a good term for that is the
messianic age.
Certainly,
we don't wanna be ruled by a king.
We're beyond that,
and we don't want to go back to
that any more than we want to go
back to sacrifices.
Judaism is an evolving faith. It's not frozen
in time, and where we are right now
is
it's still messianic. We are a messianic faith,
but not in the form of a personal
messiah.