The Perspective of Judaism

By: Henry Siegman

Executive Director

American Jewish Congress

 

         Since our interfaith session is taking place on a Sunday morning, I should perhaps alert you at the outset that I do not intend this as an exercise in Sunday morning interfaith sentimentality, a widespread phenomenon in this country in the '40's and '50's. known as the Brotherhood Movement, it was characterized primarily by its theological shallowness and lack of ecumenical seriousness. My remarks are not intended to be provocative, but neither are they falsely irenic.

         There are troubling questions that need to be raised if our quest for peace and justice is to be taken seriously. Raising these questions will perhaps put me at odds with respected colleagues. I console myself with the Talmudic assurance that kinat sofirm tarbeh chocmah (the conflict of scholars increases knowledge).

         Before I touch on the questions that I find so deeply troubling, I will make a few brief theoretical observations regarding the relationship of Judaism to our subject - transnationalism.

         Like Christianity and Islam, Judaism is inherently "transnational", in the narrow but nevertheless fundamental sense that it demands a commitment to a set of beliefs and values that transcend the authority of the State and its political boundaries. It is generally assumed that Judaism is less transnational - if one can put it that way - than Christianity and Islam because of its pronounced particularism, a particularism expressed not only in the concept of Jewish peoplehood - a concept which, after all, Vatican II reclaimed for the Church, and Islam always retained in the notion of the ummah - but by what is called in the Harvard Seminar papers "the territorial principle" - that is to say, the connection of Judaism to a particular geography, the land of Israel. It is in contrast to this "territorialism" that Christianity and Islam have traditionally affirmed their own universalism.

          I suggest to you that in this notion of Judaism as a less-than-transnational brand of religion we have an interesting example of how history can play havoc with theory. For most of their history, both Christianity and Islam lived in states that were at least nominally, and quite often if fact, either Christian or Muslim. Jews, on the other hand, have lived for most of their history in states that were not Jewish. Indeed, for the most part, they lived in states whose hostility to Judaism was so intense as to jeopardize the very existence of the Jewish people and the Jewish faith. Even today, with the creation of the State of Israel, a majority of Jews live in countries that are at least nominally Christian. This is likely to remain the Jewish situation for the foreseeable future.

          What I am suggesting, therefore, is that the historical experience of Judaism, despite its putative particularism, has inclined it towards transnationalism, while the historical experience of Christianity and Islam, despite their putative universalism, has been that of particularism.

          The notion of religious faith demanding a loyalty transcending all other loyalties, including national loyalties, was not shaped solely by the exigencies of Jewish diaspora existence. It was a sensibility made explicit in and nourished by early biblical writings and the exhortation of the prophets of Israel. Thus, the author of Deuteronomy outlines the duties of the king as follows: 

         And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom,  That he shall write him a copy of the Torah in a scroll, out of that which is before the priests the Levites. And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his days of his life; that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them; that his heart be not lifted up above his Brethren, and that he turn not a side from the commandment, to the right hand, or the left... 

         The prophetic writings proclaiming loyalty to God and the commandments of His Torah, and the pursuit of justice and righteousness as taking precedence over loyalty to king and country are too familiar to require elaboration. Indeed, the prophets of Israel proclaimed that God rejects even the cultic practices of Jewish faith if there is no social justice. Thus, in Isaiah 57, the prophet declares:

              Daily they seek me, desiring to know my ways,

              Asking me about righteous ordinances…

              But your fasting is amidst contention and strife…

              Can such be my chosen fast, the day of man's  self-denial?..

              Is that what you call fasting, a day acceptable to the Lord?

              Behold, this is the fast I decree precious

              Loosen the chains of wickedness, undo the bonds of oppression,

              Let the crushed go free, break all yokes of tyranny.

              Share your food with the hungry, take the poor to your house

              Cloth the naked, never turn from your fellow man.

          Furthermore, Israel's territorial principle - its link to the land - was defined in an extraordinary  way. Rather than demanding an absolute loyalty to that land, along the lines of modern nationalism, or of such atavistic notions as "blood and soul", the prophets of Israel developed the peculiar notion that the land itself was imbued with a transcendent intolerance of injustice and, therefore, would "vomit - to use the biblical term - its own people and send them into exile if they violated the Torah's commandments. Thus, Israel's territorial principle paradoxically made for a supreme form of transnationalism, rather than the reverse.

          Let me now from these brief theoretical considerations - much of it, I grant you, in the tradition of religious apologetics - to some of the more practical problems of history. What history suggests is that if faith communities possess resources that are uniquely conductive to world community, in fact, latent, suppressed and neutralized in our respective traditions. It will not do to insist that religions are, by definition, a power of peace in the world, and that divisive conflicts engendered by religious passions are to be blamed on the inability of the believers to live up to the high ideals of their respective faiths. As Wilfred Cantwell Smith said in a paper delivered at the Bellagio Conference,

         We are haunted by an awareness of the devastation that we human beings have wrought in the name of God... at least we  should be stark, although Self-righteousness has also been a besetting sin of the religious person or group and each of us has often written and read a history that justifies our own Community and is blind to the treatment of others.

          Smith goes on to say that the problem is not an aberration from religious ideals. "It is inherent in them, a function of them, central to them, Divisiveness is not a failure of the religious (as we have inherited our traditions), but an ingredient of its  success…for a virtue of our religious faith is that it binds  persons together into partial wholes."

          It would therefore, be hypocritical for religions to offer their unscrutinized resources as the great hope in the quest for transnationalism. There is much soul searching and repentance that must take place before we offer ourselves as models to the world.

          Let me begin by pointing to troubling evidence to support such skepticism from developments in my own religious community. It is a sad but inescapable fact that traditional religious influence has been most pronounced not in those forces in the State of Israel seeking accommodationand compromise, but in the strident nationalism of Gush Emunim - which literally means "the block of the faithful." Their religious zealotry wishes to invest political institutions and geographical boundaries with an absolute religious sanctity that is impervious to the normal  give and take of the political process in secular history.

          If I am distressed by the excesses of some of my co-religionists in Israel, I am appalled by recent expressions of Islamic renaissance - in Libya, Pakistan and Iran. I do not wish to join the debate of whether or not the deposed Shah is to be compared to Hitler. Clearly, he is responsible for much evil and much suffering, even if the comparison to Hitler is entirely inappropriate. But , surely, he is not more evil than Idi Amin of Uganada, who was offered asylum by Kaddafi of the Islamic Republic of Libya. I am not aware that Aytollah Khomeini and the militants who are holding the hostage in the American embassy in Tehran were outraged by Kaddafi's action. Indeed, to this day, they seem entirely untroubled that Islamic hospitality has prevented justice from reaching the butcher of Uganda.

          At the risk of seeming to make self- serving distinctions, I must say that as aggrieved as I am by the intolerance of Gush Imunim, its extremism is redeemed by the criticism leveled against them from within the Jewish community itself, including the religious community. In a communication to the Prime Minister, Uri Saimon, head of a religious peace movement in Israel.(Oz Veshlom), wrote as follows:

         We as Jews comminuted to the Torah and to the observance of its precepts, feel ourselves duty bound to join with those who have called upon you at this critical hour to continue the full moment of the efforts toward peace, and to prevent any Irresponsible action from undermining this pursuit.

        We are commended by the Torah" to seek peace and to pursue it, and we are convinced that commitment to the holiness of the land does not conflict with our aspirations for the Arabs, on the basis of a reasonable compromise.

        Neither those extremist voices raised amongst us, nor those extremist voices raised amongst us, nor those  with little faith in the prospects for peace, represent the views of many who are faithful to the Torah of Israel.

         Yehoshafet Harkabi, a former chief of military intelligence in Israel and more recently an advisor to the Prime Minister, warns in the Jerusalem Post (november 15) that attempts to annex the West Bank will lead to a "profound moral and spiritual crisis."

          In 1970, 350 reserve officers and combat soldiers wrote to Prime Minister begin the following letter:

        We write to you out of the deepest concem.  A government that will prefer the existence of Israel in borders of the greater Israel to its existence in peace in the context of good neighborly relations will arouse in us grave misgivings. A government that will prefer the establishment of settlements across the " green line" to the ending of the historic conflict and to the establishment of system of moral relations will raise questions about the justice of our course. A government policy that will lead to the continued rule over one million Arabs is liable to damage the Jewish democratic character of the state, and would make it difficult for us to identify with the basic direction of the state of Israel.

        We are fully aware of the security requirements of the state of Israel and the difficult that lie on the path to peace. Nonetheless, we know that true security will be achieved only with the advent of peace. The strength of the Israel Defense Forces lies in the identification of its soldiers with the course of the State of Israel.

          Out of this letter grew Israel's Peace Now movement, a powerful moral and religious force in Israel for compromise and conciliation.

          If there are similar correctives to Islamic extremism within the Islamic religious community, I am unaware of them. I am also unaware, for the matter, of any Christians the right to worship publicly in that country, and whose religious leaders disseminate such classic anti-Semitic tracts as the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion".

          In the paper prepared of the Harvard Seminar by Professor Isma'il al Faruqi, one reads that "The Ummah is a world order whose essence is peace and the renunciation of war and conflict. Its cardinal principles are the free movement of ideas(no passports and no visas), and the free movement of ideas(no curtains- may the best argument win), and the free movement of labor." Even the strictest observance of ecumenical etiquette cannot suppress the question, where in the Islamic world do these sublime conditions obtain: in Libya? In Iran? In Saudi Arabian?

          What characterizes the Islamic world order is the precise reverse of the condition described by al Faruqi: relentless war and conflict; rejoicing by the Ayatollah over the sacking of the U.S Embassy in Pakistan and its attendant loss of life; repression of unorthodox ideas; restrictions on the movement of peoples (e.g. Jews  in Syria), etc. Surely, there comes a point when the gap between apologetics and reality is so horrendous as to end meaningful communication.

          The Harvard Seminar addressed the question of the "legitimacy role" of religion. In his summary of the discussion, Msgr. Joseph Gremillion notes correctly that no serious effort was made to define the meaning of that term. As one reads the summary of the proceeding, one gets the uncomfortable feeling that this "legitimacy role" is determined by a faith community's association with and support of certain social, economic and political objectives, which happen to coincide, more or less, with the Third World's agenda. That, it seems to me, is a highly problematic position. Can the legitimacy of religious faith be determined by criteria external to that faith? The most serious criticism of religion in modern times is its propensity to ideology - a propensity that compromises its integrity and credibility. Uncritical acceptance of the Third World's presumption to a superior morality, far from attesting to the "legitimacy role of religion", is an abandonment of that role.

          I readily admit that it is a seemingly narrow Jewish concern that prompts this observation. On September 7, 1979 the heads of state of 89 non-aligned countries, at their meeting in Havana, issued a 130-page statement which declares Zionism a crime against humanity. Forty years after Aushwitz the non-aligned countries of the world have stopped just short - but by very much - of declaring it a crime against humanity to be a Jew. If our religious transnational actors for peace and justice found this declaration absence, or even discomforting, they have shown remarkable restraint.

          Actually, the issue is not all "narrow" or particularistic. For one thing, a universalism that has no tolerance for discreet particularisms can easily be transformed into a demonic force, a lesson we have learned only too well. Furthermore, the declaration is reprehensible not only for what it has to say about Zionism, but because of its pro-totalitarian and anti-democratic character. Indeed, it is an unrelenting and malevolent attack on democratic nations and democratic values. Surely, transnational actors for peace and justice must have something to say about the injustice of totalitarian systems.

          Such subservience to ideology - even Third World ideology - undermines the credibility of religious faith as a unifying force in world affairs. Of course, secular forms of community that are offered as substitutes for religious ones are even more deceptive. As Wilfred Cantwell Smith observed, the only way to transcend the limited loyalties of our fragmented society is through transcendence that is greater and more serious, not one that is less. There are those who maintain that only religious faith is capable of providing such transcendence, of engendering and sustaining that larger vision without which a new world community will never come into being. I no longer know whether they are right. Perhaps sufficient to our task is the conviction that religious faith can be a force, if not the only one, germane to this task. At the very least, those who speak in the name of religion must not make the task more difficult than it is.