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Watch this video to learn more about the Jewish perception of Heaven and Hell!

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Watch this video to learn more about the Jewish perception of Heaven and Hell!

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Does Judaism believe in heaven and hell? | Jewish Wisdom | J-TV

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On Being Podcast, addressing the issue of happiness with the 14th Dalai Lama, Rabbi Sacks, and two other religious leaders.

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On Being Podcast, addressing the issue of happiness with the 14th Dalai Lama, Rabbi Sacks, and two other religious leaders.

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Listen and learn how four religious leaders from different traditions are able to come together to share what their religious say about happiness.

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JONATHAN SACKS: It is true that if you read Jewish history, happiness is not the first word that comes to mind [ laughter]. We do degrees in misery, advanced guilt, and yet somehow or other, we get together and we celebrate.

[ Music: "Seven League Boots" by Zoe Keating]

SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR: There is a very deep nexus between beauty and happiness. And happy is the person who realizes inner beauty.

KATHARINE JEFFERTS SCHORI: Blessing each moment of the day. Blessing the milking of the cow. Blessing the covering of the fire at night. It's that awareness and attending that I think is so significant.

HIS HOLINESS THE 14TH DALAI LAMA: The very purpose of our life is for happiness. The very purpose of our existence is for happiness.

KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet seems to many the very embodiment of happiness - happiness sustained against the odds. And so it was a rare and fascinating opportunity to sit down with him and three other global spiritual leaders and to muse over this subject. The pursuit of happiness is something Americans call a right, but what do we know about happiness as a spiritual practice? What does it have to do with our bodies? What is the resonance between happiness and virtue, happiness and beauty? The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States, the former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, and an eminent Muslim scholar join the Dalai Lama in illuminating these and other questions.

I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being.

[ Music: "Seven League Boots" by Zoe Keating]

MS. TIPPETT: "The Interfaith Summit on Happiness," as it was called, was convened by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University in 2010. It took place before 4,000 people in a basketball arena transformed by flowers and by the festive energy that does seem to follow His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet wherever he goes. The court was decked with black carpet and white chairs. Monks sat on cushions alongside an incandescently lit stage. The Dalai Lama sat next to his translator, Geshe Thupten Jinpa, and conferred with him constantly, as you'll hear. Joining them were Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University, the Most Reverend Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, and Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.

MS. TIPPETT: So I'd like to ask each of you one question and then have us interact. And if you have questions of each other, I'd also welcome that. Your Holiness, as several people have already mentioned, you radiate happiness. You seem to embody happiness and you also have a wonderful sense of humor. And yet, you are familiar with suffering. Your life has unfolded on a canvas that is marked by gravity and the fate of your people and your tradition. So how does your understanding of happiness, your notion of happiness, encompass suffering and the hardness of life and speak to that?

THE DALAI LAMA: Of course, my life not easy. That is clear. I think perhaps - I think firstly when I see some problem, some tragedy, I always look from different angle. And sometimes a tragedy, one aspect tragedy, but that same event may also may have some positive thing. So when I look more holistically, then that event not 100 percent so negative. There are also part of positive.

Now one example, I usually telling people we lost our own country, itself sad, but that brings different and new opportunity; there's immense benefit. Sort of like that there's one thing. Second, when we face some sort of sad thing, if you look very closely and it looks unbearable, look from distance. There's not that much that's unbearable.

Then another thing, as one Buddhist master - eighth century - mentioned, when we face some problem, think or analyze the problem, situation. If the situation can overcome eventually, then no need worry. Make effort. So these things I usually do. And also, if a friend spend I think one week together, then you may notice a certain period my sadness [ laughs] or with my anger some time also due to some irritation. That also as a human being is impossible. But overall, OK. [ laughter]

MS. TIPPETT: And I think it can be very interesting for this next hour or so if we not only honor and enjoy the echoes of similarity, but also the differences. So I wonder - and I pose this to you, Rabbi Sacks, it seems to me that the Hebrew Bible, let's say the Psalms, really wallow in sadness and suffering and anger as a way through those human experiences. So I wonder how do you respond to this idea and how might you see it differently or what might you add to that approach to sadness? And, Rabbi Sacks, I know that you have just finished sitting shiva at the death of your mother. So you've been in a period of grief and mourning, which is very much lived and embodied.

RABBI SACKS: Yeah. It is true that if you read the Jewish literature and you read Jewish history, happiness is not the first word that comes to mind [ laughter]. We do degrees in misery, post-graduate angst, and advanced guilt, and we do all this stuff, you know. And yet somehow or other when all of that is at an end, we get together and we celebrate. And where I love what His Holiness has just said, how he himself has lived a story that I resonate with, the story of suffering and exile, and yet he has come through it still smiling. And that to me is how I have always defined my faith as a Jew.

The definition of a Jew, Israel is at it says in Genesis 34, one who struggles, wrestles, with God and with humanity and prevails. And Jacob says something very profound to the angel. He says, "I will not let you go until you bless me." And that is how I feel about suffering. When something bad happens, I will not let go of that bad thing until I have discovered the blessing that lies within it.

When my late father died - now I'm in mourning for my late mother - that sense of grief and bereavement suddenly taught me that so many things that I thought were important, externals, etc., all of that is irrelevant. You lose a parent, you suddenly realize what a slender thing life is, how easily you can lose those you love. Then out of that comes a new simplicity and that is why sometimes all the pain and the tears lift you to a much higher and deeper joy when you say to the bad times, "I will not let you go until you bless me." Thank you.

MS. TIPPETT: To that word "blessing" and "blessed," Bishop Jefferts Schori, you talk about the many words in Christian tradition, in biblical Greek, that add up to happiness, and blessing is one of those. And yet I think - yes. So, Rabbi Sacks, you've also written about the Oy Vey theory of Jewishness [ laughs]. And I think there's been a temptation in Christianity - not a temptation, a tendency, to think about happiness that will only be complete after this life, right? In the pure unmediated presence of God. Talk to me about how you work with that tendency and how you see that evolving in the imagination of Christians now.

BISHOP SCHORI: There's this ongoing tension between seeing happiness as joining with God, as communion with God, that's only possible in the afterlife, and the insistence that human beings are created to be happy, that happiness is possible in this life. There's the particular piece of Christianity that insists that sometimes suffering is a route to happiness for the larger community. That kind of suffering may not be chosen, but it contains blessing within it. The sense that our goal is this fully restored creation at right relationship with all that is and sometimes the journey there requires us to enter into suffering and to demand, to insist, that there is blessing in the midst of that, wrestling with the angel. It must be there. You have created us to be happy, you have created us to be good, now show us. Show us the way through this. Show us the possibility for which all that is is created.

MS. TIPPETT: Professor Nasr, it seems to me that a distinctive word that Islam brings to this discussion of happiness, happiness and virtue, is the notion of beauty. You've written a great deal about that, and I'd love for you to say a little bit more about the link you understand between beauty and virtue and happiness.

DR. NASR: First of all, in the Arabic language, the word for beauty and virtue is the same, and goodness, all three. The root which is also the root of my own name, my name is Hossein, now made famous thanks to your president - your president, everybody knows it. The root "hsn" in arabic, means these three things: beauty, virtue and goodness. In the Islam - Muslim mind, they're not separated from each other. In the deepest sense, goodness - in the ordinary sense, these were external actions. In a deeper sense, virtue is within us. Beauty can deal also with external forms and it can deal with beauty of the soul, beauty of the spirit, within us. But beauty in a sense is more interiorizing. Beauty is what draws us directly to the Divine, to the Divine reality. It's presumptuous to talk in front of His Holiness about Buddhist sayings, but the Buddha says that the beauty of my image saves. So the beauty of celestial beauty that is the center of the sacred art of various traditions is salvific. It's a way of salvation. And ugliness, which is the opposite of beauty, in Arabic, also means evil. The ugly is the evil. One of the signs we live in an evil world is the ugly ambiance we've created for ourselves.

And look at the remarkable predominance of beauty in nature. Take us human beings out and look at nature. Remarkable predominance of beauty, from the fish that swim under the sea in coral reefs that we're now destroying so rapidly in the Gulf of Mexico to the great mountains whose snows are melting, thanks to the fact that we're driving too many cars. I think what is happening is proof precisely of the error of our worldview. When we look at nature, look how beautiful it is. Now, Islam looks upon this call - the beauty, as not being something accidental. To be virtuous is to be beautiful. To be good is to be beautiful. And that is why wherever Islam went, it created a civilization based on beauty. Look at Islamic art, the carpets, the tile - and that again is one of the great tragedies that we have now some of the ugliest cities in the world - of the Islamic world. The great contrast. Even a city like Isfahan and it's modernized part of Karachi or Cairo. They're all part of the same civilization. But the spiritual aspect of beauty has not disappeared with the ugliness of urban sprawl. It is central to Islamic spirituality and Islamic spirituality sees even morality in terms of spiritual beauty. We're created in beauty. We're drawn to beauty and our soul is drawn to beauty. So, yes, there's a very deep nexus between beauty and happiness, and happy is the person who realizes inner beauty.

MS. TIPPETT: I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Today with a public conversation between the Dalai Lama, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, and Muslim scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

MS. TIPPETT: I've noticed in some of what you've all written in preparation for this conference - the monotheists among us here on the panel - that there is a lot of attention to defining happiness and to the many words that are used in our different traditions and in our languages, in our traditions' original language. It makes me think that, in this culture in particular, if we are going to take happiness seriously in a whole new way as I think many of us want to, we do have to wrestle a bit with that word. That also leads me to wonder if American culture has somehow been fundamentally led astray from the outset by defining happiness as a right. Your Holiness, I wonder how you react to happiness being defined as a right?

THE DALAI LAMA: Well, it does with a right.

MS. TIPPETT: Sorry? You do.

THE DALAI LAMA: We're right.

MS. TIPPETT: Right? You do [ laughs].

THE DALAI LAMA: I always believe and also share with the people, the very purpose of our life is for happiness. Those nonbeliever also they felt that religion - religious faith is a - brings a lot of sort of complication. So without that, they feel the easier to achieve happy life. So I think the very purpose of our existence is for happiness. So that mentioned, your Constitution. And then also is equally their right. You see, happiness not come from sky, but we must make a happy life. So we have a responsibility. The government cannot provide happiness. Happiness must create within ourselves and our family. So ultimately, our own responsibility, isn't it?

BISHOP SCHORI: Happiness, is not a right, but a duty, and a duty not just to one's self, but to the whole community, to the whole of creation. When we see it primarily as a right, it is so individually focused that at least many Americans lose the perspective of the larger whole. Right to pursue happiness on behalf of society, on behalf of all creation.

MS. TIPPETT: Rabbi Sacks?

RABBI SACKS: I'd like just to reflect on one other word, which is "pursuit." Finding happiness doesn't necessarily follow from pursuing it. Sometimes the deepest happiness comes when you're least expecting it. And there is a wonderful story about an 18th-century rabbi, Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, who is looking at people rushing to and fro in the town square. And he wonders why they're all running so frenetically. He stops one and he says, "Why are you running?" And the man says, "I'm running to make a living." And the rabbi says to him, "How come you're so sure that the living is in front of you and you have to run to catch it up? Maybe it's behind you and you got to stop and let it catch up with you." Now which bits of contemporary culture do we stop and let our blessings catch up with us? Now that is called the Sabbath, which we all share.

The Sabbath is when we celebrate the things that are important, but not urgent. And I remember once taking, you know, an atheist - I think an atheist who's the premier child care specialist in Britain to see a little Jewish primary school and some of the stuff they do there. And she saw on Friday, you know, the little children preparing for the Sabbath, the little five-year-old mother and father blessing the five-year-old children and welcoming the five-year-old guests. She's fascinated by this Sabbath, which she has never experienced. And she asked one five-year-old boy, "What do you like most about the Sabbath?" and he says - or "What don't you like?" And the five-year-old boy, being an Orthodox child, says, "You can't watch television. It's terrible." [ laughter] And then she said, "What do you like about the Sabbath?" and he said, "It's the only time daddy doesn't have to rush away." Sometimes we don't need to pursue happiness. We just need to pause and let it catch up with us.

MS. TIPPETT: And I think that gets at precisely why the practice of meditation, the teachings of Buddhism and the teachings of His Holiness in particular, have been so magnetic for so many people in the West as they have discovered this. There is at the heart of Buddhist teaching a notion about happiness, finding calmness in the mind, is part of it, which is something you just pointed at. And I'd like to draw out the three of you about corollaries in your traditions - obviously Sabbath is one - for generating calmness of the mind.

DR. NASR: Of course, in Islamic tradition, the five daily prayers themselves. You pull yourself out of the flow of time in a space that is sacralized, and ablution itself in a sense washes the soul as well as the body. And for a few minutes, even if your mind is running like that, you have to force yourself to pull yourself out of that context. Of course, only the saints succeed completely. But nevertheless, the exercise has a tremendous effect upon our having at least certain punctuations put upon this sentence of our life every day that goes faster and faster.

And secondly, of course, the month of Ramadan, the month of fasting, in which during the whole month, the tempo of even big cities slows down. Around 6:15 or 6:20 when the sun sets, you go to such a big city as Cairo or Karachi where the streets are cluttered, you can't drive. All the streets are empty. Everything slows down. And this power of Ramadan has been able to preserve despite everything.

I think - of course, you have, for example, you used to have Lent and you have, of course, Yom Kippur, the holy days of Judaism, where we share that. But in Islam, you have a whole month of fasting, which changes the whole tempo of life and the daily prayers. They're very, very centered. They're like Buddhist meditations in Islamic form by coming in a punctuated manner throughout the day. And, of course, some people then have more extended prayers. We have our own form of meditation, invocation, contemplation, but that's only for people who are spiritually very active, you might say, like, let's say monks in Tibet. But for the ordinary Muslims, those other practices are ubiquitous. They run throughout all of society.

RABBI SACKS: Obviously, in Judaism, as in all the religious traditions, there are elite forms of meditation. But what really interests me, as interests you, is just the simple basic act of prayer. And prayer for me, daily prayer - three times daily. We're not quite up to five times daily [ laughter] - but we're impressed. Three things happen when I pray. The first thing is thanks. You know, the first prayer we pray, "Thank you, God, for giving me back my life." The second thing is confession. You feel the ability to acknowledge your mistakes, then you grow, you learn by this. So that is the second thing. And the third thing is simply the basic experience of prayer altogether, standing in the presence of a deeper form of being, knowing that this universe is not indifferent to my existence, deaf to my prayers, blind to my hopes. And when I feel in that presence of the being at the heart of being, then we experience the greatest line of all in the life of faith from Psalm 23, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me." We can face the future without fear if we know we do not face it alone.

MS. TIPPETT: Bishop Schori?

BISHOP SCHORI: We share many of the same forms of prayer - prayer as awareness and attending. Christians, it may happen in other traditions as well, sometimes pray with images, sometimes pray without images, a kind of emptying prayer. I think the part that is perhaps most attractive to new learners is about understanding all of existence as prayer. The Celts were very effective at blessing each moment of the day, blessing the milking of the cow, blessing the covering of the fire at night. Brother Lawrence blessed the washing of dishes. Runners begin to understand the blessing that comes with putting your body to work and emptying the mind. There are practices that each of us participates in that are about simple awareness of God's presence in every breath, in every moment, in every encounter, in every challenge. It's that awareness and attending that is, I think, so significant.

DR. NASR: I agree with you completely, and they are also very much emphasized in Islamism and Judaism priesthood and is divided among all human beings and each person stands directly before God. But perhaps there is one thing that the rabbi doesn't know and, as one doesn't know, I should mention the Muslims owe a great deal to Moses. You say you pray three times a day, we pray five times a day. We believe that, when the prophet ascended from Jerusalem to heaven, God taught him the daily prayers that we perform. And when he was coming down, Moses met him and said, "How many units of prayer did God order you to tell to your followers?" He said, "51." He said, "They'll never do it. Believe me, I have a thousand years experience. Go back and bargain with God." [ laughs] "Go back and bargain with God." So the prophet went and bargained and it came down to 17 units. Thank you very much. Otherwise, we're going to have to do 51. So Muslims are always thanking Moses for that. [ laughs]

MS. TIPPETT: You can listen again, and share and watch this entire two-hour conversation at onbeing.org.

[ Music: "Glitch Perfect" by Andy McNeill]

MS. TIPPETT: Coming up, more of the "Summit on Happiness," with the Dalai Lama and other religious leaders. We explore their somewhat different takes on where the body comes into spiritual life.

I'm Krista Tippett. On Being continues in a moment.

[ Music: "Glitch Perfect" by Andy McNeill]

MS. TIPPETT: I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Today: a conversation about the meaning of happiness, with His Holiness The Dalai Lama of Tibet and three other global spiritual leaders: Muslim scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church, and Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth.

Emory University convened this gathering. It unfolded before an audience of 4,000 people in an athletic complex that was transformed by light and by flowers in the maroons and golds of the Dalai Lama's robes.

MS. TIPPETT: Where does the body come into all of this? Where does the body come into happiness? It can sound like we're having a discussion about happiness that's very cerebral, very mental. You, for example, Bishop Schori, have spoken about running as body meditation. Let's talk a little bit about our physical selves in this condition of happiness.

BISHOP SCHORI: There are two essential pieces to that. One is the ancient ascetical tradition that trains the body so that the mind can in some sense do its work more effectively, the mind and the heart and the soul. And the other is this sense that I will speak of in my own tradition as incarnation. Our bodies are a blessing. They are evidence of God's love for what is created. The sense of happiness of the whole creation, Shalom, the reign of God, is about bodily needs satisfied. People have enough to eat, they have shelter, they have meaningful work, they live in peace, they can watch their children grow up and the elders can wander in the street. It's both. It's both understanding bodies as tools for working toward happiness, for working toward justice and peace and that justice and peace and embodied blessing needs to be available to the whole community.

RABBI SACKS: Well, obviously, Judaism has a certain approach to the physical dimension of the spiritual life. It's called food. [ laughs] In fact, somebody once said, you know, if you want a crash course in understanding all the Jewish festivals, they can all be summed up in three sentences: They tried to kill us. We survived. Let's eat. [ laughter] But I think that is part of our faith that God is to be found down here in this world that God created and seven times pronounced good. And I find one of the most striking sentences in Judaism - it is in the Jerusalem Talmud - is the statement of Rav that in the world to come, a person will have to give an account of every legitimate pleasure he or she deprived themselves of in this life, because God gave us this world to enjoy.

I must say that quite apart - and I mean, absolutely, Judaism has taken - I think we share this, but Judaism has said there are three approaches to physical pleasure. Number one is hedonism, the worship of pleasure. The number two is asceticism, the denial of pleasure. And number three is the biblical way: the sanctification of pleasure. And that, I think, is important and very profound. And I must say that, you know, sometimes the best kind of interfaith gatherance - I mean, theology is extremely wonderful. It's very cognitive. That is a very polite English way of saying boring. [ laughter] And sometimes the best form of interfaith is you just sit together, you eat together, you drink together, you share one another's songs. You listen to one another's stories and just enjoy the pleasures of this world with people of another faith. That is beautiful.

I would add just one other thing. If there is one thing I find beautiful beyond measures - it's there in my own tradition in what we call hachnasat orchim, hospitality, very real element of Christianity and Islam and Buddhism - it's a super element in Sikhism, what's called langar. You know, it's not just my physical pleasures. It's giving physical pleasure to those who have all too little. And one very great Hasidic teacher once said, "Somebody else's material needs are my spiritual duties." And that, I think, is where we join in sharing our pleasures with others

DR. NASR: The body, in a sense, is like a double-edged sword. There is no religion without asceticism. That's impossible. However, to deny the reality of the body sanctified - what you call sanctification - is also a very great error. And as great tradition as Buddhism, which began by emphasizing [unintelligible] sacred body of the Buddha and we have that in another form in Islam. We have that in all Abrahamic religions, the fact that we believe in the resurrection of the body and not only of the soul, which Islam shares with Christianity and Talmudic Judaism. The question of the denial of the sickness of the body, which also has to do with sacred acts of sexuality and the relation that we have with the world of nature and the denial of the sacred aspect of nature they all go together, cluster together.

And to realize that our body is also has a sanctified aspect that is a projection of, in a sense, a subtle body, the spiritual body on this plane and especially physical beauty reflects sometimes that very, very deep beauty is not skin deep necessarily, and that spiritual beauty is always reflected in the physical. We grow it when we're born. As a young man and woman, we might be beautiful, but nothing for that, that God has done that. When we're old, if we're still beautiful, it's the reflection of our actions in this world. A person who grows old beautifully, there's something inward that has been transformed. So the body is very, very precious. The care for it, the understanding of its significance and a deeper level of spiritual significance which [unintelligible] in the universe and we also have it Islam is, I think, a very, very significant revival of religious teaching that has to take place in all the religions today.

MS. TIPPETT: Your Holiness, I wonder how you think about the body. Where does the body come in to your imagination about spiritual happiness?

THE DALAI LAMA: Without a body then no longer brain [ laughter].

MS. TIPPETT: Right.

THE DALAI LAMA: That difficult to think. [ laughter] So from the Buddhist viewpoint, of course, there is a tradition which is based on law of causality. This is in thinking, analyzing is the most important. For that, human brain is really very smart. The other animals, they also, from the Buddhist viewpoint, they also have the feeling. Yet they have no such wonderful sort of brain. So therefore, we believe, we consider this body is something very precious.

GESHEN THUPTEN JINPA: For example, there are Buddhist practices that involve one's relationship with an attitude towards one's body, one's material resources, and also one's collection of virtues and in the connection to all of these one needs - you know, there are different stages of practice that involve, first of all, kind of letting go and then the second stage ...

THE DALAI LAMA: ... under different circumstances ...

GESHEN THUPTEN JINPA: ... under certain circumstances, we have to ...

THE DALAI LAMA: ... the circumstances are such, you see, give your body, your organ, something really benefit, then give. Other circumstances, you must protect.

GESHEN THUPTEN JINPA: Protect. So there's a kind of a guarding and protecting and nurturing of the body and then also a perfection of those resources in body and then increasing and enhancing the capacity. So there's a complex relationship, you know, with body resources and one's virtues.

THE DALAI LAMA: And also, I already mentioned in the beginning, two different kinds of satisfaction. One satisfaction, of course, of comfortable shelter, sufficient food, and also sufficient sleep provides certain degree of satisfaction. That also we have to acquire. Nothing wrong. And comfort will sustain your body fit, then your mind, mental function, become more effective. Physically, too much tire and then mental function also difficult. So in a way, there's some happiness, certain degree of happiness or satisfaction related with sensory types of body. And a level of happiness or satisfaction is a mental state. Between these two, mental state is more important.

I think, obviously, mentally happy even as you see some purpose, even your physical sort of difficulties now Ramadan is in daytime, whole day fasting. You may feel a little hungry or some sort of even tiredness, but mentally you voluntarily take that, that hardship, so that gives you satisfaction mentally. So mental satisfaction can subdue physical difficulties. Other hand, mental unhappiness, mental sort of pain, cannot subdue by physical comfort. So mental state is more superior, more important.

MS. TIPPETT: I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Today with a public conversation between the Dalai Lama, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, and Muslim scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

MS. TIPPETT: Your Holiness, compassion is obviously central to what you teach and also to your understanding of a happy life. You have written and spoken a great deal about practicing compassion towards enemies, towards those who hate you. This is a moment in American political life and cultural life where there's a great deal of hatred and lack of compassion of enemies, and I wonder, just to bring this discussion to another level, to a social level, what advice you might offer to this moment in our collective life?

THE DALAI LAMA: Jesus Christ ...

GESHEN THUPTEN JINPA: For example, in the Gospel, you know, in the Gospel you find the commandment that, if some hit you on your right cheek, then turn the other cheek.

THE DALAI LAMA: So there's this sort of same idea, practice of patience and practice of tolerance.

BISHOP SCHORI: Yes, but also subverting, subverting the violence, using the violence, in some sense, the energy of the anger to change the situation.

MS. TIPPETT: But what does that mean in practical terms? How would that look?

THE DALAI LAMA: That also similar, that also similar. Now here you see we have to go some more deeper level. The real demarcation of violence and nonviolence is not on the level of physical action, but mental action. Certain sort of physical action, wrongful action, are motivated by sense of concern of well-being of other. In order to stop their wrong doing, if they carry wrongdoing, ultimately they will suffer. So [unintelligible] that and purely the sense of concern of their long-term well-being, use some harsh method and forcefully stop their wrong doing. It's nonviolence.

BISHOP SCHORI: Hitting on one cheek in the ancient world, the superior would hit with the back of the hand. And if you turned your head, he would have to use the other hand and look you in the face. So suddenly the dynamic has changed. He would have to see you. He can't simply hit an inferior.

RABBI SACKS: There's a line to me - in the 23rd chapter of Deuteronomy - so unexpected. And I want - I think we all have to hear it. Here it is: Moses is talking about the experience of the Israelites in Egypt. We read about it in the Book of Exodus, an age of oppression, of slavery, of almost genocide, attempted genocide. And eventually the Israelites leave. They go through the desert, and as they're about to cross the Jordan and enter the land, Moses says these words: "Do not hate an Egyptian for you are a stranger in his land." Now that language is very odd. You're a stranger in his land sounds as if the Egyptians gave them hospitality, as if they put up the Israelites in the Cairo Hilton [ laughter], and it wasn't like that.

So what is Moses saying, "Do not hate an Egyptian for you are strangers in your land"? He is telling the Israelites that you have left the physical Egypt. Now you must leave the mental experience of Egypt. You have to let go of hate, because if you do not let go of hate, you will never be free. If the Israelites had continued to hate their enemies, Moses would have taken the Israelites out of Egypt, but he would not have taken Egypt out of the Israelites. They would be slaves to their past, slaves to their feeling of pain and injustice and grievance. This is the line he taught them and the line we have to repeat day after day in this difficult and dangerous 21st century. You have to let go of hate if you want to be free.

THE DALAI LAMA: One of my Muslim friend explained to me one interpretation of Jihad, not only sort of attack on other, but real meaning is combative attack your own wrongdoing or negativities.

DR. NASR: The greater Jihad, the bigger Jihad, is to combat your own negative forces within you. Yes, yes.

THE DALAI LAMA: So in that sense, the whole Buddhist practice is but practice of Jihad. [ laughter]

DR. NASR: Exactly, absolutely.

MS. TIPPETT: A great conclusion for us, an interfaith summit. [ laughter] Yes. Professor Nasr, you've written that one of the Arabic words most commonly used for happiness literally means expanded. This follows very much on what His Holiness just said. Rabbi Sacks has written that, in the 21st century, all religious people must feel themselves enlarged rather than threatened by the presence of religious others. I personally feel that this discussion has been a wonderful demonstration of that. Of course, again, it is such an honor to be here with His Holiness and with all of you and I want to thank you so much and thank you all for coming, and this concludes our conversation.

[ Music: "Dreamscape" by Tuatara]

MS. TIPPETT: His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, who was born Tenzin Gyatso, is the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks is the former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth. He is now the Ingeborg and Ira Rennert Global Distinguished Professor of Judaic Thought at New York University and the Kressel and Ephrat Family University Professor of Jewish Thought at Yeshiva University. He has also been appointed as Professor of Law, Ethics and the Bible at King's College London.The Most Reverend Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori is the 26th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church.

And Seyyed Hossein Nasr is University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

[ Music: "Dreamscape" by Tuatara]

MS. TIPPETT: On our website you can listen again and share this episode. You can also watch the entire two-hour live event. That's at onbeing.org. There you'll also find our blog, which includes among other riches a weekly column by the Quaker elder and educator, Parker Palmer. Each week is a vignette on themes of our lives: from gratitude, deep darkness, and anger, to living an undivided life. He often ends with a poem to send you into the day. Look for Parker Palmer's column every Wednesday on our blog, at onbeing.org.

[ Music: "Knee-Deep In The North Sea" by Portico Quartet]

On Being is Trent Gilliss, Chris Heagle, Lily Percy, Mariah Helgeson, Chris Jones, David Schimke, and Bekah Johnson.

Special thanks this week to John Witte, April Bogle, and Frank Alexander of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University in Atlanta.

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His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Jonathan Sacks, Katharine Jefferts Schori, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr - Pursuing Happiness -

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The XIV Dalai Lama seems to many to embody happiness - happiness against the odds, a virtue that is acquired and practiced. Before a live audience in Atlanta, Georgia, Krista had a rare opportunity to mull over the meaning of happiness.

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On Being Podcast: "The Dignity of Difference" with Jonathan Sacks

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On Being Podcast: "The Dignity of Difference" with Jonathan Sacks

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Listen to this podcast and hear a Rabbi's perspective on why "we must love one another or die."

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RABBI LORD JONATHAN SACKS: I think God is setting us a big challenge, a really big challenge. We are living so close to difference with such powers of destruction that he's really giving us very little choice. You know, to quote that great line from W.H. Auden, "We must love one another or die." And that is, I think, where we're at at the beginning of the 21st century. And since we really can love one another, I have a great deal of hope.

MS. KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks is the former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and one of the world's deep thinkers on religion in our age. He's just released a new book, Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence, already a bestseller in the U.K. In an intimate conversation in 2010 he spoke with me about how Jewish and other religious ideas can inform modern challenges. Rabbi Sacks says that the faithful can and must cultivate their own deepest truths - while finding God in the face of the stranger and the religious other.

I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being.

[ music: "Seven League Boots" by Zoe Keating]

MS. TIPPETT: The Office of the Chief Rabbi was a creation of Victorian-era Britain - intended as a kind of imperial Jewish counterpart to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Jonathan Sacks served as Chief Rabbi for 22 years, stepping down from the role in 2013. He now divides his time between King's College London and New York University and Yeshiva University in the United States.

MS. TIPPETT: You know, I start in this place with everyone I interview, whoever they are. If they're a quantum physicist or a theologian. And I just wanted to hear something about the particular spiritual background of your childhood. Did you have a devout Jewish upbringing?

RABBI SACKS: I was the oldest of four boys. My father, who had come to Britain as a refugee from Poland at the age of six, had to leave school at the age of 14, so he never had an education - not Jewish or secular. My mother had to leave school at the age of 16. So my parents didn't know that much. What they did have was a great love for Judaism. And, you know, I tend to think that's the greatest gift you can give a child. Wordsworth said it beautifully. "What we love, others will love, and we will show them how."

MS. TIPPETT: So did you surprise yourself - did you surprise your family by becoming a rabbi yourself?

RABBI SACKS: It was a surprise to all of us. I had absolutely no intention of becoming a rabbi. I went to university to study economics and then philosophy, but in my first year the Six Day War happened. Now, we don't know - we can't understand in retrospect quite how tense that was - the buildup to it was. And we, born after the Holocaust, felt - I think all Jews around the world felt - there was a real possibility, God forbid, of a second Holocaust. Then, of course, the war happened with this astonishing speed. And there was a sense of exhilaration. But, you know, I had been really shaken up by this, and I sort of began, very slowly and over the years, to delve more and more deeply into the question of what it was to be a Jew - not intending to be a rabbi, but just to get deeper to the roots of this faith and this 4,000-year-old tradition.

MS. TIPPETT: Mm-hmm, and that eventually led you to the vocation.

RABBI SACKS: Yeah. I did also meet some quite great rabbis, sadly no longer alive, in particular Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who was one of the great, great leaders of modern times. And he was the one who actually told me to become a rabbi. And I respected him as a man of global vision, so I did it.

MS. TIPPETT: And I wonder if, when you became Chief Rabbi in 1991, if it would have surprised you that, at this point, ten years into the 21st century, even just a few years into the 21st century, religion had risen so utterly to the surface of global life.

RABBI SACKS: No, actually. In 1990, the BBC asked me to give the Reith Lectures. They're given once a year. There are six lectures on radio, first given by Bertrand Russell in 1948. I was only the second religious leader to give them, and I called them "The Persistence of Faith." It was probably the first response to Francis Fukuyama's vision of the end of history. You know, the Berlin Wall had fallen, Soviet Union had collapsed, end of Cold War. Everyone was seeing what he foresaw as the, you know, seamless spread of liberal democracy over the world.

And I said no, actually. I think you're going to see faith return and return in a way that will cause some problems because the most powerful faith in the modern world will be the faith most powerfully opposed to the modern world. So that was in 1990, the year before I became Chief Rabbi. Nothing that's happened since has surprised me, though it has saddened me. Religion is a great power, and anything that powerful can be a force for good or, God forbid, for evil. But it's certainly fraught and dangerous and needs great wisdom and great - if I can use this word - gentleness.

MS. TIPPETT: And so I'd like to draw you out on how Jewish experience and Jewish tradition - you know, what resources and vocabulary that might bring to this global moment, which is not merely uncertain, but certainly marked by change, which is stressful for human beings. One of the ways you've talked about that, not uncontroversially, is about the approach you see deep within Jewish tradition to difference.

RABBI SACKS: Yeah. It seems to me that one of the things we most fear is the stranger. And at most times in human history, most people have lived among people who are mostly pretty much the same as themselves. Today - certainly in Europe and perhaps even in America - walk down the average main street and you will encounter in ten minutes more anthropological diversity than an 18th-century traveler would have encountered in a lifetime.

So you really have this huge problem of diversity. And you then go back and read the Bible and something hits you, which is, we're very familiar with the two great commands of love: Love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might; love your neighbor as yourself. But the one command reiterated more than any other in the mosaic box - 36 times, said the rabbis - is love the stranger. For you were once strangers in the land of Egypt. Or, to put it in a contemporary way, love the stranger because, to him, you're a stranger. This sense that we are enlarged by the people who are different from us - we are not threatened by them - that needs cultivating, can be cultivated, and would lead us to see the 21st century as full of blessing, not full of fear.

MS. TIPPETT: One thing that I'm struck by in conversations I have with scientists - with neuroscientists, with clinical psychologists - first of all, is how science is now able to demonstrate biologically that it is when we are able to see the other, to see the welfare of the other, as somehow linked to our own, that we're able to rise to these moral ideals. And in that context, do you have an experience of - in your conversations and in your work and presence as Chief Rabbi these years - of a new conversation starting where you can, in fact, offer these virtues to the 21st century in a new way?

RABBI SACKS: Oh, sure. I mean, you take - you know, I'm really not very good at sort of operating machines, so I fall back on that old aphorism, "When all else fails, read the instructions."

MS. TIPPETT: Right. [ laughs]

RABBI SACKS: And here we are reading those instructions afresh through the eyes of quantitative and experimental science and discovering what the great traditions of wisdom were saying three or 4,000 years ago. We now know that it is doing good to others, a network of strong and supportive relationships, and a sense that one's life is worthwhile, are the three greatest determinants of happiness. And, you know, somehow or other, against our will sometimes, we are being thrust back to these ancient and very noble and beautiful truths. And that we can now do so in a fellowship - awkward, perhaps, and embarrassed - between religious leaders and scientists and social scientists.

MS. TIPPETT: Mm-hmm. And different kinds of religious leaders, right, across traditions, as well?

RABBI SACKS: Totally. I mean, the thing that really, for me, changed my life, it was standing at ground zero, a couple of months afterwards. In January - well, it was January 2002 - together with the Archbishop of Canterbury and religious leaders throughout the world. And we were looking at this wreckage, this sheer harm that hate can do. And yet, at the same time, here we all were in friendship, fellowship, and shared prayer. And I just saw how clearly that is - those are the terms of the equation. Do we go that way, or we go this?

[ music: "Abidan" by John Zorn]

MS. TIPPETT: I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Today with Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain. He's best known globally for the ideas he began to articulate in his 2002 book, The Dignity of Difference.

[ music: "Abidan" by John Zorn]

MS. TIPPETT: So I'd like to talk about the ideas that you brought forward in The Dignity of Difference, and I think have continued to develop ever since. I remember a very intelligent, excellent American journalist commentator after September 11, 2001. He made a statement that what those events demonstrated was that, in order for the three monotheistic religions, in particular, to survive and be constructive members of society in the 21st century, they would have to relinquish their exclusive truth claims. I think that sounded like it made a lot of sense to many people. The case you make in The Dignity of Difference is also aimed towards the traditions being constructive parts of the 21st century, but you take that in a different direction. So let's talk about how it is possible, in your imagination, to retain the essence, the truth claims, of Judaism, and also, as you say, honor the dignity of difference, understand oneself to be enlarged rather than threatened by religious others.

RABBI SACKS: I use metaphors. You know, each one may be helpful to some and not to others. One way is just to think, for instance, of biodiversity. The extraordinary thing we now know, thanks to Crick and Watson's discovery of DNA and the decoding of the human and other genomes, is that all life, everything - all the three million species of life and plant life - all have the same source. We all come from a single source. Everything that lives has its genetic code written in the same alphabet. Unity creates diversity. So don't think of one God, one truth, one way. Think of one God creating this extraordinary number of ways, the 6,800 languages that are actually spoken. Don't think there's only one language within which we can speak to God.

MS. TIPPETT: So, you know, one thing I've actually just recently discussed with an Evangelical Christian leader on my show is the fact that the word that has come forward in American political life, that came forward after the 1960s, was this notion of tolerance, which I don't think goes nearly far enough for religious people. I mean, you really raised the stakes in what we're talking about here. Echoing what you just said to me, you've asked in The Dignity of Difference, "Can we hear the voice of God in a language, a sensibility, a culture not our own? Can we see the presence of God in the face of a stranger?"

RABBI SACKS: Yeah. Well, let's not try to describe this as 21st-century radical theology. It always helps if we can locate it in sacred texts. So for me, here is a moment where the hero of the Book of Exodus is a young man called Moses and the villain of the Book of Exodus is somebody called Pharaoh. But it's Pharaoh's daughter who, at great risk to herself, saves the life of this young baby who she knows immediately is a Hebrew baby, that she says so, and she knows her father has decreed that every male Hebrew child shall be killed. So at great risk to herself, she takes this child into her home and brings it up. So now we have the daughter of the biggest villain of the book who is responsible for the saving of the life of the hero. Now if that doesn't challenge our paradigms, I don't know what does.

You can find God in the other side, and that is something the Bible is doing quite a lot. After all, there's only one perfect individual - well, perhaps two, if you like - in the whole Bible and neither of them is Jewish. One is called Noah and one is called Job and neither is Jewish. Noah comes before Judaism. Job is what I call every man. Then you look at all the prophets of ancient Israel, and they spent a lifetime preaching to the Israelites, and nobody listened. God sends one prophet, Jonah, to non-Jews, the people in Nineveh, the capital of Israel's traditional enemy, the Assyrians. Here, all he does is say five Hebrew words, one English sentence: "In 40 days, Nineveh will be destroyed." And they all repent. So it turns out that non-Jews are better at listening to Jewish prophets than Jews are.

MS. TIPPETT: [ laughs] Right. So there is this paradox, this very interesting recurring threat of otherness and ...

RABBI SACKS: The Bible is saying to us the whole time, don't think that God is as simple as you are. He's in places you would never expect him to be. And, you know, we lose a bit of that in English translation. Because, when Moses, at the burning bush, says to God, "Who are you?" God says to him three words: " Hayah asher hayah." And those words are mistranslated in English as "I am that which I am." But in Hebrew, it means "I will be who or how or where I will be," meaning, don't think you can predict me. I am a God who is going to surprise you. And one of the ways God surprises us is by letting a Jew or a Christian discover the trace of God's presence in a Buddhist monk or a Sikh tradition of hospitality or the graciousness of Hindu life. You know, don't think we can confine God into our categories. God is bigger than religion.

MS. TIPPETT: And at the same time - and I think you would say it as an "and" rather than a "but" - there is also a special relationship that is evident in those texts and a covenant that is particular to the Jewish people. And even as you honor the dignity of difference, you are upholding the dignity of that particularity. So talk to me about how, theologically, how you bring those things together, how they're not a contradiction.

RABBI SACKS: By being what only I can be. I give humanity what only I can give. It is my uniqueness that allows me to contribute something unique to the universal heritage of humankind. And I sum it up - the Jewish imperative - very simply. And it has been like this since the days of Abraham. To be true to your faith and a blessing to others regardless of their faith.

MS. TIPPETT: I thought about Heschel when I was reading you, his idea of mystery as something that, in fact, at the depths even of orthodoxy, is something that religious people have in common. There is a bit of mystery to that, right, in what you're saying.

RABBI SACKS: There is a margin of mystery. There's something there beyond what our categories can comprehend. And it is in that margin of mystery that we have to place the relationship of the other with God. I understand my relationship to my late parents, but I can't ever really understand my brother's relationship. Each relationship is so private. And our relationship with God is private, but it doesn't mean to say he doesn't have relationship with other people, other languages, other traditions. And we will never understand that.

MS. TIPPETT: Now, I know that there - that what you're saying has been difficult for some of your fellow Jews in Britain, that The Dignity of Difference was controversial.

RABBI SACKS: What is the point of being a religious leader if you don't say something that's difficult for the people who follow you? You know, you've got to challenge them and be challenged by them. You have to listen when they say, "Chief Rabbi, you're going too far or too fast for us to follow." And then you say, "OK, we'll slow it down, but I want you to come with me." I will not allow myself to be a lone voice within Judaism.

[ music: "Civil Dawn" by Duo W]

MS. TIPPETT: Watch my entire conversation with Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on our website, onbeing.org. One on one, he spoke softly - with an intimate tone that requires you to lean in. Then, two days later, I moderated a panel discussion on happiness with him, the Dalai Lama, and others. On stage, Rabbi Sacks was a charming storyteller who captivated a room of 4,000. See for yourself. Watch both videos on our website, onbeing.org.

[ music: "Civil Dawn" by Duo W]

MS. TIPPETT: Coming up, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on the endurance of rituals; and why building a shack and living in it for a week is actually a perfect religious practice for the 21st century.

I'm Krista Tippett. On Being continues in a moment.

[ music: "Civil Dawn" by Duo W]

MS. TIPPETT: I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Today, with Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. For 22 years, until 2013, he was the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain. That office was created in imperial Britain as a kind of Jewish analog to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Rabbi Sacks' tenure spanned the turn of a century, globalization, and the resurgence of religious fundamentalisms. He's just released a new book, Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence, which is already a bestseller in the U.K. His 2002 book, The Dignity of Difference, met criticism from some British rabbis - that his ideas about religious pluralism might be heretical.

MS. TIPPETT: Your theology has been so embraced and welcomed by other religious leaders and more controversial in your own tradition, and yet I think that's a very common irony of the 21st century alongside all of these other things we're saying. There's this sense in which, on some levels, interfaith encounter is easier than...

RABBI SACKS: Yeah, of course.

MS. TIPPETT: ...you know, that a lot of the most bitter divisions are within denominations, right? What do you think about - what's that phenomenon? How does that go together ...

RABBI SACKS: That goes because only most intense arguments are in the family. You know that, and you know why it is: because if you have an argument with a stranger, the stranger can walk and therefore they never really get to that level of intensity if you don't want the stranger to walk. But within the family, you can have the worst possible row with your brother or sister and, tomorrow, and the day after, they'll still be your brother and sister. So you can have a really bad row without really threatening the relationship. And I assume that the human propensity to have arguments always fills the available space, so you have more space for it with those close to you. And, yes, within the Jewish community, those arguments between Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or secular Jews have an unusual intensity. So here is the way we resolve these arguments eventually in Anglo-Jewry. I think they will probably work - or they certainly would work for Jews anywhere in the world, if people were minded to.

And what I say is this: On all matters that affect us as Jews, regardless of our religious differences, we will work together regardless of our religious differences. On all matters that touch on our religious differences, we will agree to differ, but with respect. So we will work together on interfaith, fighting anti-Semitism, on Israel, on welfare, Holocaust memorial, and so on. We work together across the denominations, and there are certain things on which we recognize that we cannot work together. But it is those areas where we do work together that allow us to build up a real personal friendship.

MS. TIPPETT: I mean, you've compared the beginning of the 21st century to the beginning of the 17th century in Europe in terms of religion, but I also think this is one of these remarkable moments where it's not just religious change. It's change, right?

RABBI SACKS: And science challenging religions.

MS. TIPPETT: We are redefining institutions, the definition of what it means to be human. So a lot of the most difficult rifts within U.S. religious traditions have to do with moral issues. And you've written some very interesting things about that. You've said that the 20th century saw the collapse of moral language. So, in fact, even as we are forced to take up these very difficult intimate conversations, I think that's an interesting observation. We don't have as rich and complex a vocabulary as we need. Say some more about that.

RABBI SACKS: Well, you know, there were always these attempts to find a scientific basis for morality, and they gave rise to all sorts of theories like Kant's idea that it's moral if you are willing to prescribe for everyone what you prescribe for yourself. And there were a lot of these quasi-scientific or logical systems. They finally said there can't really be any moral truth out there or any single moral truth, and that is when we move to moral relativism. Now moral relativism seems to be the most tolerant form of morality - you do what you want to do and I will do what I want to do. However, it actually leads to enormous intolerance because if there is no objective standard of morality, how am I going to show I'm right? And when that happens, it is the loudest, angriest, rudest voice that wins.

MS. TIPPETT: And does that come back to this complicated notion of this dance between what is particular and what is universal? You said that the Bible argues that universalism is the first step, not the last step in the growth of moral imagination. But I think you're also saying that the most vibrant contribution to plurality, to civil society, in fact, is having a vital, strong, particular identity. Of course, it depends on how it's expressed, but that that, in fact, is the best hope for the sake of what is universal.

RABBI SACKS: I mean, listen, I can't say honestly at my extreme age that I am seriously into rap music. But there's a Jewish Hassidic rap singer called Matisyahu. You've come across him?

MS. TIPPETT: I have not. [ laughs]

RABBI SACKS: He is a very orthodox Jew with a big hat and his fringes hanging out, and he's got millions of young fans, most of whom aren't Jewish. Now, you can't get more particularistically Jewish than Matisyahu. He's so Jewish, and everyone can relate to him, Jewish or non-Jewish, because, you know what? That's a distinctive voice. And I think that's, for instance, why people relate to the Dalai Lama. Because he's different from us. You know, when you really reach the very depth of particularity, that is where all of us can relate to him or her. And that's the big paradox.

MS. TIPPETT: And it's a gift, it's a gift.

RABBI SACKS: It's a gift. And I don't know why it is. But, you know, it's just - and Isaiah comes along and he delivers his prophecies and they're so particular to that faith, that place, that time. And yet, I call Isaiah the poet laureate of hope, and at the height of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, at the very height of it, there he is quoting, verbatim, two lines from Isaiah, Chapter 40, the King James translation. I can't remember it - I don't know it so well in English - but, you know, I have a dream that one day every valley will be yada, yada, and every mountain, and all flesh will see it together.

I doubt whether Isaiah, 27 centuries ago in the Middle East, could envisage that one day black civil rights activists would be moved by his words. But it's the particularity of Isaiah that spoke to Martin Luther King. That's how we are as a people, you know? I don't know why it is, how it is, but it's the authentic, the unique, the different that makes us feel enriched when we encounter it. And it's this bland, plastic, synthetic, universal can't-tell-one-brand-of-coffee-from-another-brand-of-coffee that makes life flat, uninteresting, and essentially uncreative.

MS. TIPPETT: So, I wonder, is this one reason that so much of religious revival tends to happen at the conservative end of the spectrum, at the orthodox end of the spectrum?

RABBI SACKS: Yeah.

MS. TIPPETT: Because that's where these particularities are cultivated?

RABBI SACKS: That is where the flame burns at its most intense.

MS. TIPPETT: So talk to me about, as an Orthodox Jew, as Chief Rabbi - talk to me about some particularities, some specific virtues, teachings - I mean, you've been getting at some of this - that you honor and that are at the heart of our faith, that you think are particularly important and relevant to offering out to our common life in the 21st century.

RABBI SACKS: The two very famous Jewish festivals, Passover and Tabernacles, it seems to me people can really relate to those. Passover, where we meet as families. This is a very important service that takes place not in the synagogue, but at home. And we tell the story of how our ancestors were slaves, but we don't just tell the story. We reenact it. We eat the bread of affliction. We taste the bitter herbs of slavery. We drink four cups of the wine of freedom. And we hand that story on to our children and that is a universal. That speaks to anyone who knows what it is to be a slave, or who needs to know what it feels like to be a slave so that they can be active in fighting the cause of people who are oppressed.

MS. TIPPETT: And that is another example of a story that in fact has been ...

RABBI SACKS: It's had a particular impact on American history, but it also inspired liberation theologians in South America. And, to some extent, Nelson Mandela is echoing the phrase when he calls his autobiography The Long Walk to Freedom. I mean, you know, that's - and Tabernacles to me is such a festival for the 21st century.

MS. TIPPETT: OK, and that won't be as familiar to many people, so say some more.

RABBI SACKS: So that is when we recall the 40-year journey through the wilderness when the Israelites had no homes. They were just essentially like Bedouin. They were living in tents or shacks. So, for seven days, we leave the comfort of home. We build a shack with only leaves for a roof, so we're exposed to the heat by day and the cold by night, and we just understand for seven days what it is to be homeless. Now how many of us in the West know what it feels like to be homeless? But we need to feel what it's like to be homeless because there are a billion people on the face of this planet who are pretty near as it gets to being homeless.

So, I think those speak with enormous power. And you see why - because they're not abstract ideas that you can deliver in a lecture and expect everyone to understand. They are as concrete and specific as you get. And I think every religion has specifics like that, rituals, narratives. One interfaith occasion we did years and years and years ago with African bishops, Orthodox rabbis and African bishops - and we did a lot of interfaith theology and we talked about all this stuff we had in common, and it was wonderful and very boring. And I was thinking, let's break through. So in the end, at the last night, I said let's just sit 'round the table and have some food and drink, and we are going to teach you our songs and our stories, and you are going to teach us your songs and your stories. And we went on until three or four in the morning, and I think we could have made world peace then and there.

MS. TIPPETT: [ laughs] You didn't tape that, did you?

RABBI SACKS: I wish I had.

MS. TIPPETT: I do too.

RABBI SACKS: It was many years ago.

MS. TIPPETT: Because we would put it on the radio. I remember having a conversation with a scholar who's at the University of Southern California, and we talked about television. There's kind of a renaissance of intelligent television in the United States right now, and she talked about how this is fulfilling this basic human need we have for stories. But she also talked about the Passover story as an example of this incredibly low-tech story, but that its power - that the proof is in the fact that it has survived and flourished.

RABBI SACKS: And it receives a different meaning in every generation. And so do thick rituals. For instance, in the days of Moses, the Sabbath was a way of giving liberty to slaves. But now think of what you and I are slaves to.

MS. TIPPETT: Liberty from iPhones.

RABBI SACKS: iPhones or Blackberries. I don't wish to be critical to any particular manufacturer here.

MS. TIPPETT: Email.

RABBI SACKS: For 25 hours, you cannot get an email. Is that not liberty?

MS. TIPPETT: It's humanizing.

RABBI SACKS: Yeah. It's just giving you space for the things that are important, but not urgent. So any real religious ritual that is not just an abstract idea will receive new meanings with every passing age.

[ music: "Karaim" by John Zorn]

MS. TIPPETT: I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Today, with Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.

[ music: "Karaim" by John Zorn]

MS. TIPPETT: You've made a statement. I think it's audacious: "The greatest single antidote to violence is conversation, speaking our fears, listening to the fears of others, and in that sharing of vulnerabilities, discovering a genesis of hope." Now as someone who conducts conversation for a living, I love that statement. I wonder how you know that to be true - that the antidote to violence is conversation.

RABBI SACKS: Well, we have in Judaism - your listeners may find this hard to understand, especially in a religion where I'm promoting marriage and the family - we have a problem in Jewish religious divorce. For reasons we needn't go into, a husband can withhold a divorce from a wife so that they may be civilly divorced and living apart, but the wife is unable to remarry. And she's really a living widow. We call her a chained woman, and I have to resolve those things. In the end, the way we resolve them, the really hard cases, is actually just by listening. And that listening gives each of the two parties the feeling that they are heard, and once they're heard, they can then begin to speak what they really feel. And then they can begin to realize that there are things they still care about in common, not perhaps enough to save their marriage, but certainly enough to remove the animosity from their divorce. It's extraordinary how a simple act of sitting around a table and speaking and listening can actually solve cases that prove insoluble both by the civil and the religious courts. Likewise, in a real conflict sense, I've sat and talked to people who used to be Hamas terrorists...

MS. TIPPETT: Really?

RABBI SACKS: ...and have become peace activists just because they saw how much of a dead end they were getting themselves into. I just see so much effort at peacemaking taking place at the very elite levels where egos can be rather larger than they need be, and nobody really is willing to lose for the sake of long-term winning for both of us. Sometimes I think, what would happen if we generated real conversations at the grassroots level between the people whose lives are really affected? One of the most powerful groups for peace in the Middle East is a group of Israeli parents and Palestinian parents who've lost children.

MS. TIPPETT: Right. Yeah, we've had a show about them, the Bereaved Families Forum. Right, so that's that level of civil society where there's a different conversation taking place that is transformative. It doesn't yet transform that elite level.

RABBI SACKS: We have not yet found a way of meshing the political society with the civil society, and that's a big challenge. It's doable, but you are bringing two very different cultures together, one that is used to solving problems through power, and one that knows that power is the worst possible thing you can bring to bear. So how you bring those two cultures together, I don't know, but you will have to in the long run if you want to make peace.

MS. TIPPETT: Right. It's not going to remain optional. I mean, there are all kinds of examples we can think of. It's true in American political life. This brought to mind a really striking exchange I was present at. Bill Clinton - President Clinton had something called the Clinton Global Initiative. He had convened a gathering there. Shimon Peres was present, Ehud Barak was present, I believe. He wasn't on the panel. Abbas is prime minister. And the crown prince of Bahrain. But Shimon Peres said something - he's in his 80s now - that was so striking to me. The premise of this conversation was, a peace agreement has been reached; what happens the day after? But Shimon Peres - who apparently spends a lot of time with his grandchildren asking them to tell him how they see the world - said, "If we can reach this agreement, the young people are already connected. The younger they are, the more connected they are." I mean, that is also, ultimately - I mean, the tool for that is technology, but it is about conversation, right?

RABBI SACKS: It is about conversation and I think he was absolutely right. The real conflicts arise when our minds are focused on the past. We bring to bear a sense of grievance, injustice, victimhood, and we are then held captive by the past. If we could get Israelis and Palestinians to think simply of what would be best for their grandchildren, we would move into a new frame of thinking.

MS. TIPPETT: And yet I think what's so powerful about the Bereaved Families Forum is that you don't get to that vision for the future without - without putting that grief on the table. And it is that power of listening and of speaking one's truth and of one's experience being known.

RABBI SACKS: That grief has to be heard. It has to be heard by the other side. One of the most powerful rituals, astonishingly powerful, is in the Passover service when we read the Ten Plagues, and it's our custom.

MS. TIPPETT: The Ten Plagues?

RABBI SACKS: The Ten Plagues that hit Egypt and we recite them...

MS. TIPPETT: That's a hard story for modern people.

RABBI SACKS: ...blood, frogs, et cetera, and with each one, we shed, we spill, a drop of wine. We shed a tear.

MS. TIPPETT: Right.

RABBI SACKS: We shed a tear because, for a moment, we allow ourselves to think of the victims of our victories, the pain of the other side, who were enslaving us, but they were still human and they were still suffering. It's when you can feel your opponent's pain that you're beginning the path that leads to reconciliation.

[ music: "The Catch" by Gustavo Santaolalla]

MS. TIPPETT: I think that this institution, this office that you hold, the Chief Rabbi, is probably a new idea to many Americans. It's an unusual institution which started, as I understand it, in 19th-century Victorian Britain. How has this experience, and how have other experiences in this office, how have they changed you and your theology?

RABBI SACKS: You know, it's actually made me relax. [ laughs]

MS. TIPPETT: Really? [ laughs]

RABBI SACKS: I suddenly realized that there are, in real public office, moments of stress that are so great that they kind of strip away all the surfaces and you get to bedrock of character. And then you suddenly realize that it's not about you and it's not about popularity. It's about them, and it's about God, and it's about - your job is just to make it safe for people to experiment, to love, to forgive, to pray, to give. I think that's something you have to go through a lot of battering to achieve. You know, no pain, no gain, I think is a Jewish sentiment just as it is a Christian one. And I think you go through those years of challenge and trial and then you realize that the highest form of leadership is empowering others to lead.

MS. TIPPETT: There's a line of yours - I don't know if it's true to say that it's a famous line, but it feels kind of famous to me and it might also please you, I think, that I first heard it quoted by a young Muslim interfaith leader. That when you compared the beginning of the 21st century in terms of religious dynamics to Europe at the beginning of the 17th century - and this was in The Dignity of Difference - and you said, "But religion is not what the enlightenment thought it would become - mute, marginal, and mild. It is fire and, like fire, it warms, but it also burns and we are the guardians of the flame." I think you've just described to me part of your function as a guardian of the flame. But I wonder also, in closing, if you would talk to me about what you see when you look at the world in terms of seeds of a deeper moral and spiritual imagination emanating from your tradition and other traditions. Where are you finding hope?

RABBI SACKS: I think God is setting us a big challenge, a really big challenge. We are living so close to difference with such powers of destruction that he's really giving us very little choice. You know, to quote that great line from W.H. Auden, "We must love one another or die." And that is, I think, where we're at at the beginning of the 21st century. And since we really can love one another, I have a great deal of hope.

You know, here it is, a glorious world where we have mastered all the mysteries or as many - more than we ever thought we would of nature, but we have not yet conquered the mystery within ourselves. And that is the challenge God is setting us, and I believe that you can begin to see religious leaders coming together in a way they never did before with an openness to one another they never had before, and somehow or other, the bigger the challenge, the greater we grow. So I am full of hope as we face the greatest challenge humanity ever has.

MS. TIPPETT: Well, Rabbi Sacks, thank you so much for sitting down with me.

RABBI SACKS: Thank you.

[ music: "Holy Holy Holy Word" by Jasmina Maschina]

MS. TIPPETT: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks retired as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth after 22 years in 2013. He is now the Ingeborg and Ira Rennert Global Distinguished Professor of Judaic Thought at New York University, and the Kressel and Ephrat Family University Professor of Jewish Thought at Yeshiva University. He is also Professor of Law, Ethics, and the Bible at King's College London. His books include The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning, The Dignity of Difference, and his latest, Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence.

[ music: "Holy Holy Holy Word" by Jasmina Maschina]

On another note close to home, we are watching the phenomenon of public violence involving guns and wondering how On Being as a media project might additively contribute to public reflection on the complex array of human issues involved. We want to take this up with our Civil Conversations Project in the year ahead. And we wonder who you're reading, listening to - where you're finding insight and guidance. Reach out to us at facebook.com/onbeing and on Twitter, @beingtweets.

[ music: "Shalom/Saalam" by Matisyahu]

MS. TIPPETT: On Being is Trent Gilliss, Chris Heagle, Lily Percy, Mariah Helgeson, Michelle Keeley, Maia Tarrell, Annie Parsons, Tony Birleffi, Marie Sambilay, Tracy Ayers, and Hannah Rehak.

Special thanks this week to April Bogle and the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University where I interviewed Rabbi Sacks.

Our major funding partners are: the Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide at fordfoundation.org.

The Fetzer Institute, fostering awareness of the power of love and forgiveness to transform our world. Find them at fetzer.org.

Kalliopeia Foundation, contributing to organizations that weave reverence, reciprocity, and resilience into the fabric of modern life.

The Henry Luce Foundation, in support of a new initiative: Public Theology Reimagined.

And the Osprey Foundation, a catalyst for empowered, healthy, and fulfilled lives.

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Jonathan Sacks - The Dignity of Difference -

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Jonathan Sacks is the former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and one of the world's deep thinkers on religion in our age. He says that the faithful can and must cultivate their own deepest truths - while finding God in the face of the stranger.

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On Being Podcast - Addressing Jewish Orthodoxy from the Perspective of Joy Ladin, a Transgender woman

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On Being Podcast - Addressing Jewish Orthodoxy from the Perspective of Joy Ladin, a Transgender woman

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Joy Ladin is Gottesman Professor of English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University in New York. Her memoir is called Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders. She’s also the author of seven collections of poetry, and is currently the recipient of an NEA fellowship to write I am What I Will Be: Reading God and the Torah from a Transgender Perspective.

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is Gottesman Professor of English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University in New York. Her memoir is called Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders. She's also the author of seven collections of poetry, and is currently the recipient of an NEA fellowship to write I am What I Will Be: Reading God and the Torah from a Transgender Perspective.

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Joy Ladin - Transgender Amid Orthodoxy: I Am Who I Will Be

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
is Gottesman Professor of English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University in New York. Her memoir is called Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders. She's also the author of seven collections of poetry, and is currently the recipient of an NEA fellowship to write I am What I Will Be: Reading God and the Torah from a Transgender Perspective.

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A Cappella Group, The Maccabeats, sing renditions of popular songs and add their own Jewish flair. Click on the links in blue to learn about the importance of Home and identity, Shabbat, and what a Good Life could look like for a Jewish person.

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On Being Podcast: Rabbi Kushner on Kabbalah

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On Being Podcast: Rabbi Kushner on Kabbalah

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Kabbalah is the tradition of Jewish Mysticism: Listen to learn more about this beautiful tradition!

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RABBI LAWRENCE KUSHNER: I think what our generation seems to be living through is the realization that rationalism is only part of the answer. I think I'm not the first one to notice this - that Auschwitz and Hiroshima were perfectly rational decisions and behaviors. So there's this sense that religion has to be more than rationalism. And mysticism offers this, sort of like in the corner, "Psst, hey, kid. How would you like a direct experience of the divine? Would that help your religious life?" And a lot of people discover that they're mystics after all when they're given that offer.

[ music: "Seven League Boots" by Zoe Keating]

MS. KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: "This," Rabbi Lawrence Kushner has written, "is a definition of a mystic: A mystic is anyone who has the gnawing suspicion that the apparent discord, brokenness, contradictions, and discontinuities that assault us every day might conceal a hidden unity."

Kushner is a long-time student and articulator of the mysteries and messages of the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah. He was influenced, like every modern student of Kabbalah, by a Jewish historian named Gershom Scholem, who was born in 1897 and died in 1982, and literally resurrected this tradition from obscurity.

I spoke with Rabbi Kushner in 2014 in honor of Gershom Scholem's legacy, and it's in the spirit of Kabbalah - which wraps teachings in teachings, wisdom in wisdom, life within life - that we get to know Scholem through the living ideas of this rabbi in his lineage.

I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being.

MS. TIPPETT: Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is a scholar-in-residence at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. And he's written many books that touch on themes of Kabbalah, including a novel, Kabbalah: A Love Story.

Gershom Scholem suggested that the Zohar, the Kabbalah's core text, was itself a mystical novel. He demonstrated that the Zohar was not written, as had previously been assumed, by a second-century Galilean sage, but by the 13th-century Castilian Kabbalist Moshe de Leon. Still, it entered the spiritual bloodstream of Judaism - with new ways of understanding and describing the inner structure of reality, a feminine side of God, and the cosmic significance of each ritual and ethical deed. According to Kabbalah, all being is rooted in the Ein Sof, the Holy Oneness of Creation.

MS. TIPPETT: So when did Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism enter your imagination? And how did that happen?

RABBI KUSHNER: Well, it wasn't until I was in the last couple of years of my rabbinic school education - it's a five-year graduate program - that I began to realize that most of the ideas that I was fascinated by had something to do with mystical characters. And the ideas that they talked about - I finally went to my professor at the time, Jacob Petachovski. His memory is a blessing. And said something like, in his office I said, "Jacob, what's this about mysticism?" And he sort of sat back in his chair and said, "Oh, I see you've discovered something." And we talked a little bit, and he pulled off the shelf a book by Gershom Scholem, probably his magnum opus. It's called Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. And he gave it to me, and I ran home and tried to read it. And at about ten o'clock, I fell asleep, because it's really tough, serious, heavy Jewish history. But it's extraordinary. And what Scholem did in that book was that he brought the Jewish mystical tradition to the English-reading public.

MS. TIPPETT: I want to ask you about some language you use. There's so many ways to describe what Kabbalah is, what this tradition is, but this is one way you did it. Somewhere you said, "It is a system of theosophy - "attains maturity as a system of theosophy, claiming to explain the influence of human action on the inner life of God." That's a very intriguing statement. "The influence of human action on the inner life of God." Can you ...

RABBI KUSHNER: It's delicious, isn't it?

MS. TIPPETT: Yes. Say some more about what that means.

RABBI KUSHNER: Well, Scholem again - it's very difficult to separate out Scholem from Kabbalah, but Scholem comes along and says that the Torah itself claims to be a document describing the inner life of God. And through studying the Torah, one therefore not only learns about how to act, or how to look at the universe, but one realizes that - you realize immediately that you are reading about the ultimate nature of being, and therefore the DNA of creation, or the warp and woof of the way the world works. And that effectively becomes the inner life of God.

MS. TIPPETT: Right. I need to back up a little bit because everybody is not in this. So, Ein Sof is - and, again, this is your language - "the font, the source, the matrix, the motherlode of being." The original light, right? That original spark, that cosmic seed. "A point of light containing everything yet to come." And then here is this wonderful way you describe it. You say, " Ein Sof is to being what electricity is to the letters and words on a video computer monitor." Explain that.

RABBI KUSHNER: I think the best way to understand it, Krista, is to remind you of two Hebrew words that are in kabbalistic language much more important than their normal definitions. The first word is yaish. And it's sort of untranslated. If you held my feet to the fire I'd say it translated as "is-ness." "Being-ness." And yaish refers to virtually everything in creation. Anything that has a beginning or an end, that has the spatial coordinates, that has a definition, that is bordered by other things. And it's not just material reality. Love has a beginning, it has an end. Beauty can have a definition. And it's not bad. It's not something to be renounced. Anybody who has tried to live in the world knows that it is the world of yaish. You and I are yaish. Our microphones are yaish. The room, the city of San Francisco is yaish. Everything is yaish. Yaish is not bad. It's only bad if you think that's all there is.

Turns out there is only one thing that's not yaish. It has no beginning, it has no end, it's not bordered by anything, it has no definition, it has no spatial coordinates. You probably can't say as much about it as I'm about to try to say. It is the opposite of yaish. It is called Ein Sof- "without end." Literally, it means "nothing," but with a capital "n." Because if I said it was something - you've got to stay with the logic here - if I said "something," then you will say, "Well, it's next to another thing." And the Kabbalists, being serious about logic, also, they are very logical - no, the only way we can talk about this non- yaish thing is to call it no thing, or nothing. And that becomes Ein Sof, and that has something to do with God, the source of everything of yaish.

Everything in the world is made of Ein Sof. Everything in the world is a wave of which the Ein Sof, or God, is the ocean. And our knowledge of the ocean is largely based on the way it manifests itself in the waves - that is, the yaish. So my closest I can come to learning about Ein Sof and God is by talking to you, or looking at a tree, or planting one.

MS. TIPPETT: Right. But this understanding of God also defies the containers that religion generally puts God in, or maybe just that our minds put God in, because they are what they are. Because it - this "nothing" with a capital "n" is also everything, right? And this ...

RABBI KUSHNER: And more.

MS. TIPPETT: Right. And more. So it is God in this conception. I'm using the words I can and I want you to correct me and elaborate, but it is also not a thing, but in everything, and is everything, in this mystical understanding.

RABBI KUSHNER: Let me try it this way. There are two ways to understand our relationship with God. I'm going to say right up front that they are both just metaphors. Relax. Just metaphors. The first one - picture a big circle, and the big circle represents God. And then picture below it a very tiny, little circle. And that represents you in the world. And because the big circle is above the little circle, it's naturally hierarchical, and, therefore, it's generically masculine and welcome to Western religion. All of Western religions have this thing. "God's up there, and we are down here, and we talk to God, and God tells us what to do, blah, blah, blah."

MS. TIPPETT: You didn't mention the beard on that circle.

RABBI KUSHNER: Right, but it's not far. There was a cartoon recently in The New Yorker. It shows two angels and the big guy talking without a beard. And one says to the other, "I just can't take him seriously without the beard anymore." [ laughs]

MS. TIPPETT: [ laughs] OK, so that's the one. We all know that picture.

RABBI KUSHNER: OK. That's the one we all know, and you and all of our listeners could easily talk at length about that. Now I'm going to give you another metaphor. Just another metaphor. Relax. Same big circle that represents God, but the only difference is that the little circle that represents you and me is inside the big circle. And that is a more Eastern - it strikes us as a more Eastern model, but it's - as Scholem demonstrated - it's widely available in Western religious tradition, as well. And the goal in that model is not to pray to God or have God tell you what to do, but to realize that you have been, all along, contrary to all of your illusions, a dimension of the divine. And in moments of heightened spiritual awareness, the boundary line, which is the little circle defining you inside the big circle, momentarily is erased, momentarily is blurred, and it's no longer clear where you end and God begins.

[ music: "Jardin" by Gustavo Santaolalla]

MS. TIPPETT: I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Today, with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, exploring the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah.

MS. TIPPETT: I actually want to quote you at yourself again, because this is so wonderful. "This is a definition of a mystic: A mystic is anyone who has the gnawing suspicion that the apparent discord, brokenness, contradictions, and discontinuities that assault us every day might conceal a hidden unity."

RABBI KUSHNER: Yeah, I like that a lot. [ laughs] It's the closest I've come to nailing it down.

MS. TIPPETT: Yeah. So, it's wonderful to ponder, and we don't have the luxury here of just being quiet and pondering it. But maybe people who are listening on the podcast can push pause. But it also raises these very mysterious questions, right? That conception.

RABBI KUSHNER: I think that, for me, the starting point for trying to make sense out of these very slippery ideas - William James in his masterful - not Jewish - "On Mysticism" identifies the four characteristics of a mystical experience.

The first - let's see if I can remember all four. The first is that they're transient. These mystical moments. They come and go according to their own timetables and for their own reasons. You have a mystical experience, there's nothing you can do to guarantee a mystical experience, and anybody who says he can guarantee one for you is a quack. The second characteristic James identified is that you're passive. You don't have the experience, it has you. All of a sudden, whoa, what was that? Something has changed. The third is that the experience is noetic. That means that there is intellectual content to it, but, unfortunately, that leads us to the fourth. It is ineffable. You can't put it into words.

I want to add just one more thing before we go on. The kind of mystical experiences that I'm talking about are not where the roof flies off the building, revealing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus and light streams out of your facial apertures and you get a new name. I hope that would happen for you, and for me, it hasn't yet. I'm 70. The odds are against it. What I would rather talk about is - I would call them "quickie, everyday, garden-variety moments," in which nothing big happens and that, if you weren't looking for it, you might have just thought it was something you ate, or drank, or smoked. What was that? And then you go on. But I am increasingly convinced that mystical seekers are able to have that moment where they lose themselves in the divine, all the unio mystical experience, several times a day. Fleeting. Casual.

MS. TIPPETT: It's interesting, the timing of this interview with you, because just yesterday I was invited to be on one of the major talk shows in New York City, Brian Lehrer. And he chose as his topic, actually, religious experience. And it very quickly got into mystical experience, and the experience people have of God, which is, actually, really, not even a sentence that's spoken much on public radio or in our other intellectually ...

RABBI KUSHNER: And you don't get invited to dinner parties if you start talking that way.

MS. TIPPETT: No, you don't. But what I'm going to tell you, and what will not surprise you at all - he offered for his listeners - this is on WNYC in New York - to share experiences they've had. And of course the phone lines completely just filled up. And the few people who are able to come on, they talked about this "garden-variety experience" that was completely transformative, very brief, and very, let's say, organic. And each of them actually described very much this definition that you gave about - the separation fell away. The sense of separation fell away. And it was this knowledge, this experience of a vividness and a unity. And even as I describe - as I tell about it, it sounds suspect in a way that it didn't when they were describing the moment.

RABBI KUSHNER: It's a handful of smoke. Yeah, it's real hard to talk about. But it's the most important thing to talk about. My suspicion is, and I don't know who - I think it may have been Moshe Idel, one of Scholem's best students, I'm not sure of this - said that "whatever it is that makes religion religion, mysticism has more of it." It seems to be freeze-dried, it seems to be intensified, focused. It's the name of the game. It's the very center of what we are talking about. Because, to be sure, mysticism is intensely personal, and that's what it always winds up doing for people.

MS. TIPPETT: But, again, back to religious terms, to say that God is not just in everything, but God is everything, and that occasionally human beings apprehend that - it also makes God much more messy. Gershom Scholem said, "The price of God's purity is the loss of his living reality." But it does also cast aspersions on God's purity. You've said it raises these questions. If God all there is, then why did God make the world? And if God made the world, how did God do it? And here's the hard one: if God is perfect, but the world is not, then what went wrong?

RABBI KUSHNER: Well, so many of those classic questions and conundra come from trying to make lived-experience sense out of "God is out there and we are down here." And most people crash and burn on that. I guess that's why I became a mystic. If you think about the other circle, and we are within the divine, it poses, obviously, different problems. We solve some, and it makes new problems. But the minute you say it's all God, then you're stuck with stuff you don't usually want to say is God, like pimples, and dirt, and what the dog left on the sidewalk, and Adolph Hitler. My question would be, if you say, no, that's not God, then I'm going to say to you, well, who made it, then? You mean there's somebody else out there making just some junk and throwing it into the mix? You don't have that option.

MS. TIPPETT: So what is the mystic's, the Kabbalist's response or reflection on the dirt, or Adolph Hitler? What are the questions that this tradition asks?

RABBI KUSHNER: Well, any attempt to just explain those things quickly is going to be a disaster, obviously.

MS. TIPPETT: Yeah, but it's not the "Where was God?" question. That's the separation question. That's the "God is up there and we're down here."

RABBI KUSHNER: Just because it's God doesn't mean that you're not obligated to go on doing the best you can with the brain God gave you. And so that doesn't mean, therefore, that you should roll over and play dead, or ignore dirt or filth or terrible things in the world. You're still obligated to do what you've got to do.

But you have to understand that if there's evil in me, I can try to banish it and push it away. But I won't succeed, because it's part of me. What I need to do is to find something holy even in it, and thereby try to redeem it and free me from it. And I can do the same thing with the world. I'm not creative or spiritually anywhere near big enough to be able to handle it, but I think I have - this is the right way to go. Well, therefore, everything in the world that I don't like is there. I don't deny its existence, especially if I say it's a manifestation of God. It raises a challenge for me, though. What can I do to redeem even this? This terrible thing, or whatever it is. What is holy in it? And I will keep working at it, and that is how I can free myself from it.

[ music: "Sun Will Set" by Zoe Keating]

MS. TIPPETT: You can listen again and share this conversation with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner through our website. And this conversation is part of a larger exploration of the living legacy of the great 20th-century historian of Jewish and other mystical traditions, Gershom Scholem. Learn more at onbeing.org.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner says that the Jewish moral commandment, tikkun olam, is not so accurately translated "repair the world" as "repair the cosmos." Here is the most memorable way the Kabbalistic connection between Ein Sof and human moral action has been told to me across the years - by the physician Rachel Naomi Remen, as her grandfather told it to her:

RACHEL NAOMI REMEN: In the beginning, there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life. And then, in the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand, thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light. And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident, and the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke. And the wholeness of the world, the light of the world was scattered into a thousand, thousand fragments of light, and they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day.

Now, according to my grandfather, the whole human race is a response to this accident. We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people, to lift it up and make it visible once again and thereby to restore the innate wholeness of the world. It's a very important story for our times. And this task is called tikkun olam in Hebrew. It's the restoration of the world. And this is, of course, a collective task. It involves all people who have ever been born, all people presently alive, all people yet to be born. We are all healers of the world.

And that story opens a sense of possibility. It's not about healing the world by making a huge difference. It's about healing the world that touches you, that's around you.

[ music: "Sun Will Set" by Zoe Keating]

MS. TIPPETT: Rachel Naomi Remen. I'm Krista Tippett. More conversation with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner when On Being continues in a moment.

[ music: "Jardin" by Gustavo Santaolalla]

MS. TIPPETT: I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Today, a conversation with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner about the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah.

We're exploring his wisdom as part of the living legacy of the 20th-century historian Gershom Scholem, who resurrected Kabbalah for modern scholarship and spiritual renewal. As Rabbi Kushner says, Judaism had largely torn the pages of Kabbalah out of its history books in its response to the Enlightenment.

MS. TIPPETT: There's something intriguing to me in - we're having this conversation here in the 21st century, and in an interesting way, kind of coming out of the 20th century and all its great plans and ideals and rationalism, there's a new curiosity and hunger, and I think especially in new generations, there's this sense that things are more complicated - differently complicated than we made them.

RABBI KUSHNER: Well, it's - enter Gershom Scholem. It's so important for people to realize that for virtually all of the 19th and the first half, two thirds of the 20th century, mysticism was widely considered to be nothing more than folk magic and superstition unbefitting an enlightened 20th-century thinker. And it all grew from the prevailing intellectual attitude in Germany in the 19th century. It goes under the name of Wissenschaft des Judentums.

MS. TIPPETT: Right. The science of Judaism.

RABBI KUSHNER: Scientific study of Judaism. It had to be rational and these guys went into apoplectic shock when they found out what mystics thought and what they did. And the result was that they simply, as I mentioned before, tore all the pages of Kabbalah out of the history books, and didn't even allow anybody to pay attention to it. When Saul Lieberman, the great scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary, was asked to introduce Gershom Scholem once... Oh, I need to give you a Hebrew word to get the joke. The Hebrew word shtus. It means folly, nonsense, insanity, madness, idolatry, stupidity. Shtuss. It's junk.

So, Lieberman introduced Scholem the following way. " Shtuss is shtuss, but the academic study of shtus is scholarship." And then he sat down. That's what Scholem was up against. That the reigning intellectual community thought it was all just so much shtuss. So much nonsense, silliness. Who would care about it at all, except some historian like Scholem trying to figure this stuff out?

MS. TIPPETT: And there's even an echo with the emergence of Kabbalah in the 13th century, right? There was that rational Jewish philosophy of the Middle Ages that this Jewish mysticism kind of arose as a response to - I don't know if that's right, as a response to.

RABBI KUSHNER: Well, I think historically, Krista - and a lot of this is in Scholem, although some of it is just me trying to figure out a way to make things make sense - we have - in world history, there's a sense that when religion becomes too formal, too rigid, too structured, too logical, the only way to bust it open and get something decent going instead, is for mysticism to reappear. Because whatever religion you're talking about, on whatever scale you're talking about, the minute mysticism becomes permissible, acceptable, possible, it's an immediate threat to organized religious structures. Because what mysticism does is it gives everybody direct, unmediated personal access to God. And then they say to whoever's running the local religious community, I don't need you. I've got God directly. So it winds up being an explosion of chaos. Scholem used the word "anarchy," that mysticism creates an anarchic situation, and it's healthy and it's part of growing.

MS. TIPPETT: Right. This idea of mysticism as a resource for change and development within religion. And just to take this outside Judaism - and I think it's very interesting that Scholem did. He really was fascinated and took seriously mysticism as a human experience, right? He was rooted in Jewish mysticism, but he saw the parallels in other traditions. And so, right now, within Christianity, the fastest growing face of Christianity is Pentecostalism, which - one sociologist I've spoken with gave this, I think, a wonderful name - Pentecostals are "main-street mystics." And it is kind of turning Christianity inside-out in very interesting ways.

RABBI KUSHNER: Well, I know it's messing up Judaism. I don't know enough about contemporary Christianity.

MS. TIPPETT: [ laughs] Well, say some more about what it's doing with Judaism. And you mean the rise in mystical curiosity, openness, to this? Or what do you mean by that?

RABBI KUSHNER: Well, let's identify - there are three kinds of Kabbalah, at least. Maybe a couple more, too. But one kind of Kabbalah is called Kabbalah musari, and it is ethical Kabbalah. For some reason - and no scholar to my knowledge has really done the work on this - but after the appearance of the Zohar, 12th, 13th century, virtually every manual of ethical discipline written within Judaism, was written by a practicing Kabbalist. That, to me, is an extraordinary statement, especially since mysticism gets such bad press. "Oh, they're anarchists. You can't trust them to do good things."

MS. TIPPETT: Yeah, or "It's purely spiritual," right? As opposed to being ...

RABBI KUSHNER: Beam me up, Scotty, float away. Yeah. I think when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. You don't have an experience that is unitive in which you feel yourself dissolved into the divine all, and emerge from that wanting to rip somebody off. Your immediate desire is to show them how to get there with you. And so forth. The second kind of Kabbalah is called Kabbalah ma'asit. Or what in Jewish history is called "practical Kabbalah." If Krista has an experience of the divine, she now presumably, in some dim sense, also has an insight into the inner workings of creation and how everything functions together. And it might be tempting for her - not you, I'm just making this up, of course - might be tempting for her to use this new knowledge as a way of, well, maybe figuring out which stock to buy, or which stock to sell, or how real estate is going to go, or maybe to help Timmy who's sick in the hospital get better.

MS. TIPPETT: So kind of as magic. Mysticism as magic.

RABBI KUSHNER: Yeah. And that's why there's a whole lot of people who think that's all Kabbalah is, and it's superstition and hocus pocus and all. And the third kind of Kabbalah, which is mainly what Scholem talks about, and which most students of Kabbalah of these times, like myself, is called Kabbalah iyunit, or "theoretical Kabbalah." And that's pretty much what we've been talking about. Kabbalah is a way to do Judaism. It's Judaism on steroids. You can't do another religion and do Kabbalah at the same time, because Kabbalah only makes sense as a system for making sense out of - a heightened sense out of classical Judaism.

MS. TIPPETT: I guess I'm interested in your perspective on - we also live in one of these ages where we're kind of hung over from rationalism and secularism, but not with a lot of the same entry points that other generations had into religion. And I want to ask this question in a positive way, but what do you experience this mysticism and this mystical tradition to offer to 21st-century people?

RABBI KUSHNER: Oy. "To offer." What an annoying question.

MS. TIPPETT: Well, do you know what I - I understand why it's annoying.

RABBI KUSHNER: No, I hear you.

MS. TIPPETT: What is it that's - that's not the right word, either.

RABBI KUSHNER: Well, OK.

MS. TIPPETT: What is it that's attractive - that's not a good word, either.

RABBI KUSHNER: Well, the old saw is that, for our purposes, we would say old-time religion wants to know what God wants us to do, whereas a mystical variety of the same spiritual tradition would say, no, I want to know what God knows. I want to see the world through God's eyes. I want to lose myself in the divine all. That's how I want to experience God. That's how I want to make sense out of religion. And, your question in that sense, what's so annoying is it's just very, very perceptive. I mean, old-time religion - God's up there, we're down here, God says this, we pray to God for that - just doesn't seem to cut it for most of the people I talk to. Most of the people that were seriously into religion are seriously interested in experiencing the divine. The language is important. One could argue that what we're witnessing is the pendulum shift from the extreme, sometimes destructive rationalism of the past couple of centuries and returning to a more balanced view of religious life. And mysticism is the way home.

[ music: "Only the Winds" by Olafur Arnalds]

MS. TIPPETT: I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Today, with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, exploring the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah.

MS. TIPPETT: We don't have much time left, but I want to just talk a little bit about some of the other really intriguing aspects of Kabbalah and Jewish mystical tradition. This notion that creation - this is not just mystical, but I think Kabbalah really emphasizes it - that creation is not something that happened once but is an ongoing act - that "creation is now," I think is how you said it once.

RABBI KUSHNER: Yeah, it's the doctrine of a continuous creation. God can't remember anything. It doesn't mean that God's above a certain age. Just means God can't remember anything. And God has no hopes for the future, because - I love this - there is no such thing as time for God. God experiences the past, the present, and the future as one present, continuous reality. And so that means that, for us, the world's coming into being is, as we said before, continuous. And we come close to God when we are willing to experience the world in the same way, that it's always possible, and that the divine is always present, and it's only the silly illusion that I'm in business for myself which becomes, in translation, that I made the world, that I'm God, God makes the world, and God's making it right now. And to really understand the implications of that statement is to have a mystical experience.

MS. TIPPETT: And the world that we live in now is this brew of curiosity, I think an openness to mystery. And therefore, also to the mystical aspect of our traditions, that kind of cosmic curiosity, alongside very well publicized fundamentalist and literalistic readings of religious tradition. Gershom Scholem did not live to see these particular dynamics. I wonder how you think about what the heart of this mystical tradition - I don't want to use the word "offer" again - "has to offer to the world." I won't use that word. How does it speak to this world? And, of course, behind all of that, behind a lot of the fundamentalism and the literalism is a lot of anxiety and fear that is, in fact, reality-based, because there's a lot to be anxious and fearful about.

RABBI KUSHNER: Well, I think what our generation seems to be living through is the realization that rationalism is only part of the answer. That rationalism can only get you so far. There was a time when people thought it was the answer, and it could get you there. And it's clear that it won't get you there. And as a matter of fact - I think I'm not the first one to notice this - that Auschwitz and Hiroshima were perfectly rational decisions and behaviors. So there's this sense that religion has to be more than rationalism. And mysticism offers this, sort of like in the corner, "Psst, hey, kid. How would you like a direct experience of the divine? Would that help your religious life?" And a lot of people discover that they're mystics after all when they're given that offer.

RABBI KUSHNER: Can I tell one more story that reminds me ...

MS. TIPPETT: Yeah, sure.

RABBI KUSHNER: I was leading a tour of the sanctuary, of the prayer hall, with the children in the congregation's preschool. And then I figured, as a piece de resistance, I'd have them come onto the bima, or the little prayer stage up in front of the room, where there was an ark where we kept the scroll of the Torah. It was accessible via a big floor-to-ceiling curtain. And I got them up on the stage, and I was about to call them - "Open the ark," but I saw the teacher at the back tapping her wristwatch, which, as you may know, is an old Talmudic gesture, which means "Your time is about up, bucko." So, I said, "I tell you what, boys and girls. We'll come back when we get together again in a couple of weeks. We'll come back here and I'm going to open that curtain there and show you what's behind it. It's very special." And so they all say, "Shalom, Rabbi," and like little ducklings, follow the teacher back to the class.

Well, the next day, the teacher shows up at my office with the following story. Apparently the preceding day's hastily-concluded lesson has occasioned a fierce debate among the little people as to what is behind the curtain. They didn't know. [ laughs] And the following four answers are given, which is I think pretty interesting. One kid, obviously destined to become a professor of nihilistic philosophy at a great university, opined that behind that curtain was absolutely nothing. Another kid, less imaginative, thought it had a Jewish holy thing in there. A third kid, obviously a devotee of American game show television subculture, guessed that behind that curtain was a brand new car. And the fourth kid - and that's what brings us back to Gershom Scholem and Kabbalah - said, "No, you're all wrong. Next week when that rabbi man comes and opens that curtain, behind it, there would be a giant mirror." From a four-year-old. Somehow, that little soul knew that through looking at the words of sacred scripture, he would encounter himself in a new and a heightened and revealing way.

MS. TIPPETT: Hmm. That's lovely. I think that - I think those are your last words, but unless - was there anything - there's so much we didn't get to, but is there anything that just must be said to add to this?

RABBI KUSHNER: Well there's - there is one other story, if you want me...

MS. TIPPETT: Yeah.

RABBI KUSHNER: ...if you have - OK. And it is, actually, the one thing that we didn't touch on, which is a very important of Scholem's teaching. As we mentioned before, Judaism and Islam and Christianity are revealed traditions. So, therefore, what happened for all of them at Mt. Sinai is of ultimate importance. Did God talk to Moses? If he did, what did it sound like? Could we have picked it up on a tape recorder? In other words, what is the divine status of those allegedly holy words we find in sacred text?

And with Scholem, who - I found in his book, it was On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism - I must have read it 50 years ago, it changed my life - and I subsequently found out it did for most of my colleagues and friends who had read it, also. It turns out that there is a mystical tradition that says that God really didn't give the whole five books of Moses. God didn't really give all ten utterances. There's another tradition that said that God gave just the first two. "I'm the Lord, your God. Don't have any other gods." Well, there's a guy that Scholem found, a Hassid named Mendel Torum of Rimenov. He says, "No, God didn't even give the first utterance at Sinai, 'I'm the Lord your God.' God didn't even give the first word, anokhí, which is first person pronoun singular "I." All God gave was the first letter of the first word, which is the Hebrew letter aleph, which most people who know a little bit of Hebrew will quickly say is soundless, but Scholem points out that's not quite correct. Scholem points out, as a matter of fact, that the sound of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which coincidentally has the numerical equivalent of one, is actually the noise that your larynx makes as it clicks into gear. It's a teeny, little, barely audible click. And that's what God gave at Mt. Sinai.

And Scholem comments upon that at great length, of course. He says that Mendel Torum of Rimenov's clever teaching makes the revelation a mystical one, says that what happened at Mt. Sinai was barely audible and had no particular sound, and it therefore became the job of, in this case, Moses, the prophet, or of anyone else, to give human content to that otherwise unpronounceable sound. The Zohar says that the aleph is a seed in which is enwrapped the entire Torah. And what it means to be a religious person, is to spend your life unpacking that seed.

MS. TIPPETT: Hmm. Yeah. I am aware of that, and it's just so huge that I didn't know if we could do it any kind of justice, but I think your story did open it up.

RABBI KUSHNER: Well, thank you.

MS. TIPPETT: I just also have to say that I feel like there's so much resonance with things we're learning now that feel unconnected. The emphasis on naming, and letters, and even the Golem traditions of using letters that gives life, and then we're working with DNA, which is about letters. [ laughs] Even the one, the aleph, and the one, the - not the Ein Sof, but the - say it again. Sephirot? It's numbers ...

RABBI KUSHNER: Sephirot.

MS. TIPPETT: Sephirot, "infrastructure of reality." I feel like there are so many echoes with this mystical tradition, and these cutting-edge things we're learning on our, in fact, our frontiers of rationalism.

RABBI KUSHNER: Talking with you convinces me even more that Scholem was extraordinarily important. Because he brought this stuff to light. He read this stuff. He read it in manuscripts that weren't accessible to anybody and they were written often in dialects and styles of the language that few people could read or understood. And he left it to us an inheritance. And it seems - from the questions that you're asking of me, too - seems to be a way that we have of finding our way home again.

The epigraph that I chose for my novel, Kabbalah: A Love Story, is from Scholem. He says: "In none of their systems did the Kabbalists fail to stress the interrelation of all worlds and levels of being. Everything is connected with everything else. And this interpenetration of all things is governed by exact, though unfathomable laws." We have the gnawing suspicion in our generation now, Krista, that everything is connected. And every now and then, we are given a glimpse, a tickle, a whisper, that maybe it, indeed, is. And that's what religious people seem to be most interested in appropriately doing, which is finding more and more connections so that it's impossible to do anything independent of something else.

[ music: "Special N" by Mogwai]

MS. TIPPETT: Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is a scholar-in-residence at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. His many books include God Was In This Place & I, i Did Not Know, Kabbalah: A Love Story, and I'm God, You're Not.

You can listen again and share this show at onbeing.org. And there you'll find our complete remembrance of the legacy of Gershom Scholem - including an interview with Zvi Leshem, the director of the Gershom Scholem Library at the National Library of Israel. The collection houses over 25,000 books, many of them rare Kabbalistic texts rescued by Scholem. Here's his voice:

GERSHOM SCHOLEM: When I started to study Kabbalistic texts, this was a rather curious and, to most people, an enigmatic undertaking. I was attracted, you know, some of you being psychologists, nobody knows what is going on in the hidden recesses of a man's mind. Somehow, having studied Judaism, I thought, "There must be something more."

[ music: "Quatuor (Extrait de "Inanna")" by Armand Amar]

MS. TIPPETT: We've also posted some archival audio of Scholem from a conference he attended in 1975, alongside a recommended list for further reading by both Gershom Scholem and Rabbi Lawrence Kushner. Again, find all of that at onbeing.org.

On Being is Trent Gilliss, Chris Heagle, Lily Percy, Mariah Helgeson, Maia Tarrell, Annie Parsons, Marie Sambilay, Tess Montgomery, Aseel Zahran, Bethanie Kloecker, and Selena Carlson.

Our major funding partners are:

The Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide at fordfoundation.org.

The Fetzer Institute, fostering awareness of the power of love and forgiveness to transform our world. Find them at fetzer.org.

Kalliopeia Foundation, contributing to organizations that weave reverence, reciprocity, and resilience into the fabric of modern life.

The Henry Luce Foundation, in support of Public Theology Reimagined.

And the Osprey Foundation, a catalyst for empowered, healthy, and fulfilled lives.

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Lawrence Kushner - Kabbalah and the Inner Life of God -

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RABBI LAWRENCE KUSHNER: I think what our generation seems to be living through is the realization that rationalism is only part of the answer. I think I'm not the first one to notice this - that Auschwitz and Hiroshima were perfectly rational decisions and behaviors.

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Dave Isay talks about the importance of listening to the stories of those we love.

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Dave Isay talks about the importance of listening to the stories of those we love.

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Learn how powerful listening to stories can be - both for the people sharing and for the people listening.

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Dave Isay: Everyone around you has a story the world needs to hear

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Dave Isay opened the first StoryCorps booth in New York's Grand Central Terminal in 2003 with the intention of creating a quiet place where a person could honor someone who mattered to them by listening to their story. Since then, StoryCorps has evolved into the single largest collection of human voices ever recorded.

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Traditional folktale - the Jewish version

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"Historians have long debated the (re)birth of Judaism in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple cult by the Romans in 70 CE. What replaced that sacrificial cult was at once something new–indebted to the very culture of the Roman overlords–even as it also sought to preserve what little it could of the old Israelite religion."

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- Touched by Auschwitz (2015): currently can be found on Netflix
- Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (book) and The Diary of Anne Frank (play)

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To explore Jewish creativity further, click on the links in orange below:

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To explore Jewish creativity further, click on the links in orange below:

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- Marc Chagall, Jewish artist
- 10 Iconic Jewish-American artists
- Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, author, and activist
- Famous books by Jewish authors

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A quick, informative, succinct, and helpful video explaining the basics of Judaism!

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http://JewishHistory.org Rabbi Berel Wein teaches about the core beliefs and frameworks of Judaism, and what makes it different from other religions.

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The importance of storytelling and listening

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The importance of storytelling and listening

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The Tension of Faith: Why I Appreciate Christians Who Believe I’m Going to Hell

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The Tension of Faith: Why I Appreciate Christians Who Believe I’m Going to Hell

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“What I believe isn’t the same as what I want.”
This is a compelling article about the struggle to remain true to one's faith, even when there are beliefs belonging to the system that makes one uncomfortable.

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He didn't want this conversation, and he hadn't started it.
Neil and I had been friends and college classmates for about a year. He was a religious Christian, and I a secular Jew, but he never preached to me. Out of nowhere, I asked him whether he thought I was going to hell, and he demurred, saying it wasn't up to him. But I couldn't accept that dodge. I pressed and prodded until he had to admit that, yes, if his theology was correct, and I didn't believe in Jesus, and maintained that non-belief until death, then I was, tragically, hell-bound.
Since then, I'd been grilling him for hours, even more doggedly than before. Surely he would see how cruel his belief was. Surely he'd never stopped to think about his good friend burning in eternal fire, and if he only would consider that, surely he'd stop believing something so monstrous.
He told me, "If I get to heaven, and find out I'm wrong, and see all my Jewish and atheist friends there... I will cry tears of joy. I will shout, 'Thank you God!' I will be... so happy."
Then, he paused:

"What I believe isn't the same as what I want."

I didn't know what to say. Neil's sympathy - his genuine love - didn't fit into the only story I knew how to tell about people who believed in hell: that they were judgmental and hateful. It had never occurred to me that someone could believe something other than what he wanted.

It has been ten years since my late-night talk with Neil, but I've been thinking about it since reading an article from Politico. It suggests that the former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's donation to a Republican congressman's primary challenger may have been motivated by the congressman's remark a few years ago that Cantor, who is Jewish, will not be saved.

In college, I would have been just as put off by the remark as Cantor's allies were. Today, it doesn't bother me at all. I have real respect for Christians who will say this in public despite the unpopularity of such beliefs.
What has changed in the interim? I found religion. And no, not Christianity; my appreciation for believers in exclusive Christian salvation stems from the choice I made, after college, to embrace traditional Judaism.
I derive great joy from the all-encompassing framework of Judaism: the thrill of locating my life in a glorious arc of history; the art and discipline of adhering to the law; and the awesome privilege of living as one commanded, as one called to sacred deeds by the source of all that is sacred. Yet, though nearly all of Judaism is beautiful in my eyes, there are some elements of my religion that trouble me deeply.
An example: every man, woman and child of the nation of Amalek had to be killed - even the infants. To be clear, this commandment applied only in antiquity, and never applies today, but even in distant history, a commandment of genocide is appalling. Another: children born of incest or adultery, who have done nothing wrong themselves, are classified as forever, forbidden to marry anyone except other mamzerim. And so also will be their children, for all generations to come.
I have come to accept, and even to embrace, many elements of Judaism that I abhorred in my secular days. Many of these were never really problematic; I had only misunderstood texts which deeper, more patient, investigation clarified. But to problems such as the two above I have heard no answer, no context, no explanation that comes close to being satisfactory. My conscience stands in unwavering opposition.
My secular self - he of the late-night talk with Neil - would never countenance belief in a system that includes concepts at odds with my conscience. It is unjust, he would thunder, and it must not stand. You may change the system, or you may reject it, but embrace such a system? Never.

Rejecting the system means rejecting all the meaning and beauty, the purpose and the call. Change the system, then? The problem, I have come to see, is that if I change the system to match my taste, I annihilate one of the most valuable elements of religion. Religion at its best sounds a voice that commands, a voice that will not be silenced. Religion's finest moments in history have starred zealots who refused to bow to common sense - whether the common sense of Seleucid imperialism, or the common sense of American slavery. Religion must be uncomfortable and unusual, or it will be tautological. It must be authoritative and binding, or it will be a sham.

To put it another way: if I can decide to change the law of the mamzer because I don't like it, how shall I answer my fellow Jew who decides to change the laws of giving charity? Beautifully demanding laws they are, but utterly useless if any Jew can suddenly change them because he's just read Ayn Rand and decided hand-outs are immoral. No. Cries Deuteronomy 15:11:

"You shall open your hand to your brother, to your poor, and to your needy in your land."

Yes, I could change the system. I could join one of the liberal denominations that have conveniently done away with the law of the mamzer, but only if I'm willing to let Deuteronomy 15:11, and every other sacred commandment, be similarly defanged.
Conflict between personal conscience and divine revelation is not a new problem of modernity. This dynamic is central to the paradigm of faith presented in Genesis 22, the Aqeidah (Binding) of Isaac. Being commanded to slaughter a son would be torture for any parent, but for Abraham especially it is the ultimate nightmare. Abraham is a paragon of love; in earlier chapters we have seen him eagerly welcome strangers into his tent, fight a war to rescue his captured kinsman, and plead with God to save Sodom and Gomorrah. We have also seen him greatly distressed at the prospect of sending away his older son, Ishmael. Now God commands him to lose Isaac, as well; and not only to lose him, but to see him die; and not only to see him die, but to personally cut his throat, and offer him as a sacrifice.
A sacrifice indeed! No act imaginable could better represent the opposite of Abraham's wishes, his temperament, and yes, his conscience, than this. Every cell in his body must have cried out in horror. Yet Abraham passed the test. He lifted the knife to kill his own child, and only at the last moment did an angel's voice stop him. Abraham passed the test by overcoming every ounce of his own will, to put God's will above his own. Ever since, Jews have remembered the Aqeidah as the ultimate act of faith.
Thankfully, few of us will ever face so extreme a test - and a good thing, too. I cannot say that in a similar situation I would have Abraham's strength of faith. But for many believers of many faiths, adherence to religious mandates can present less extreme, but still uncomfortable, situations which may be seen as Aqeidot in miniature.

For me, it is something of a trial to study those few Torah laws that I find terribly unfair. Perhaps for Neil, and other kind-hearted traditional Christians, conversations like ours ten years ago are a mini- Aqeidah. Will you honestly profess the faith to which you have committed your life, when you know that professing your faith in this context means deeply hurting your friend's feelings?

When an Aqeidah occurs, the temptation arises to find some way out of the tension. Nonbelievers simply reject the existence of divine revelation. Others, such as followers of liberal religious movements, may accept that God is speaking, but empower themselves to modify or ignore parts of the divine message. Not even traditionalists, however, are immune from this temptation; some particularly eager believers accept the revelation and deny instead that they ever felt the slightest conflict. They vigilantly squash all interfering sympathy for their son Isaac. They build the altar with a cheerful smile, and whistle while they tie him down.
Aside from being cold, this third attempted resolution is just as theologically unsound as the former two. Removing the conflict that makes the sacrifice selfless, this approach transforms the heroic into the pedestrian. The Aqeidah is not a story of Abraham annihilating his heart and conscience. On the contrary, it is a story of a man of extraordinary love and strong conscience who nonetheless declines to put ultimate faith in himself, choosing instead the humility of yielding to a transcendent revelation. That model can only be followed by believers who are humble and kind, and open to acknowledging feelings of immense opposition to the divine call even as they prepare themselves to follow it. The believer in the model of Abraham is the believer who does not flee from discomfort, or even from torment.
I don't believe I'm going to hell any more than I did ten years ago. But my attitude toward those who do so believe has been forever changed by a journey into my own tradition.
I now see in traditionalist Christians a kind of kindred spirit, however starkly our theologies assuredly diverge. Like me, they carry an ancient teaching, which they dare not presume to rewrite in their own image. Like the Maccabees and Christian abolitionists, they proclaim this teaching without bending to public opinion. And, like Neil, they model the humility to acknowledge that their sense of justice and the Ultimate Justice may not always align.

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The Tension of Faith: Why I Appreciate Christians Who Believe I'm Going to Hell

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A secular Jewish man takes umbrage when his close Christian friend says he believes he will go to hell. After he returns to his religious tradition, he says, he understands these inner and outer tensions as essential to faith - even if they disagree with his personal wishes.

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How Should Jewish People relate to other religions?

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How Should Jewish People relate to other religions?

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What does it mean to be a stranger and resident?

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Parashat Chayei Sarah (23:1-25:18)
Bu Rabbi Daniel L. Lehmann

Toward the beginning of this week's Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, Abraham describes himself to those with whom he lives with the phrase, " ger v'toshav anochi imachem, I am a stranger and a resident among you" (Gen. 23:4). Various Jewish commentators have interpreted this self-description as much more than just a statement about Abraham's relationship to his immediate neighbors in the context of purchasing a burial plot for his dearly departed wife, Sarah. Rather, from their perspective, this phrase becomes a more general claim about Jewish religious identity in relationship to broader, universal concerns.

One example of this approach can be seen in Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik's interpretation of this passage:

Our approach to the outside world has always been of an ambivalent character. We cooperate with members of other faiths in fields of human endeavor but, simultaneously, we seek to preserve our distinct integrity which inevitably involves aspects of separateness. This is a paradoxical situation. Yet, paraphrasing the words of our first ancestor, Abraham, we are very much residents in general human society while, at the same time, strangers and outsiders in our persistent endeavor to preserve historic religious identity. ( Reflections of the Rav: Lessons in Jewish Thought Adapted from the Lectures of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik by Abraham R. Besdin)

For Soloveitchik, Abraham's self-description as both alien and resident presents a paradox that should serve as a guide to the way Jews interact with other religious people and traditions. Famously, Soloveitchik posited that Jews should collaborate with other religions in "secular matters of mutual concern," but steer clear of theological discussions.

I would suggest that we interpret this phrase not as a paradox, but as a dialectic. In our relationship with other religious people, texts and communities, we need to develop the capacity to live as strangers on the foreign soil of others' religious traditions, theological concepts, and ritual practices. There is a way of being a guest, a visitor, which demands humility, curiosity and generosity of spirit. We can learn the ethical and religious posture of being a stranger who is eager to learn from others-discovering commonalities while recognizing and respecting the boundaries that define the deep differences between religious world views, histories and experiences. But we can learn to move dialectically between the experiences of being a stranger and being a host to others who want to explore our religious landscape. We have our own religious space, and we can be hospitable to those who seek to learn from religious understandings that differ widely from their own.

In my experience over several decades, inter-religious learning, designed and implemented thoughtfully, can afford us the opportunity to gain the skills necessary to successfully navigate this dialectic. In fact, serious inter-religious conversations that plumb the depths of theological commitments can preserve and deepen particular religious identity while expanding our knowledge and appreciation of other religious modes of being. Oscillation between living as a stranger and as a resident or citizen is not only possible or useful for inter-religions relations, it can form the basis of a more complex and nuanced religious existence.

Beyond the inter-religious and theological implications of this phrase, recent events in this country have highlighted the extent to which many people in our society feel the tension between experiences of empowered citizenship-rooted in our conception of equal rights-and alienation-caused by hate and hostility expressed by others with whom we share an increasingly weakened national bond. The march and subsequent violence in Charlottesville underscores the fact that Jews, blacks, and other minorities, who have full and equal rights as American citizens, are perceived as strangers and aliens by some white, nationalists who themselves feel alienated by changes in American culture. Labelled as strangers or aliens, we become a threat to the preservation of their control and dominance.

Even on elite university campuses, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, and racist verbal and physical attacks that have taken place in recent months remind us that the intellectual havens of our society are not immune from the pathology that can emerge from an unhealthy understanding of the stranger-resident dialectic. I never imagined that my own children would encounter as part of their college experience the intense feeling of being a stranger in the eyes of some fellow students with whom they share a common citizenship in the university community. I am proud that they have felt the need to stand up not only for their rightful place, but for the rights of others from different religious and racial backgrounds who are made to feel like aliens rather than equal members of the community.

We can draw strength and courage from our experiences of being both a stranger and a resident to protect the rights of all of those with whom we share a common bond of humanity. If we manage to hold the difficult dialectic of being both a stranger and a resident, emulating Abraham who knew himself to be both, ger v'toshav , we can work to foster an environment where religious, racial and cultural differences invite us to learn from and appreciate the unique insights and perspectives that our diverse world offers us.
Rabbi Daniel L. Lehmann is President of Hebrew College in Newton Centre, MA.
Interested in a possible career in the rabbinate? Read Rabbi Dan Judson's article " Jewish Lessons on Meaningful Work." Rabbi Judson teaches history, oversees the professional development program, and serves as the placement director for the Hebrew College Rabbinical School. He has a PhD in Jewish history from Brandeis University.

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Parashat Chayei Sarah (23:1-25:18) Bu Rabbi Daniel L. Lehmann Toward the beginning of this week's Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, Abraham describes himself to those with whom he lives with the phrase, "ger v'toshav anochi imachem, I am a stranger and a resident among you" (Gen. 23:4).

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In this section (and the two sections following) there are arrows linking certain articles together: Follow the arrows for a suggested order of reading.

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A fun journey through Jewish musical styles from over the years!

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Y-Studs A Cappella proudly presents, the Evolution of Jewish Music!

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Jewish Spirituality Versus Jewish Ritual

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Jewish Spirituality Versus Jewish Ritual

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First, a definition of Kabbalah.
Second, this article asks if one can embrace Kabbalah while maintaining Jewish Ritual.

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Tackle everything from community organization to a vision for society to gender and sexuality.

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Discover the particularities of Judaism: how is Jewish worship unique?

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Discover the origins of Judaism from Beginnings, Influences, Founders, and more!

Read about early developments, divisions, sects, and more!

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An in-depth description of Jewish Beliefs

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An in-depth description of Jewish Beliefs

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Find information about Sacred Narratives, the Purpose of Existence, the Afterlife and Salvation, and more! (Link)

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For both those who do not come from an Abrahamic faith and for those who would like a refresher!

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Judaism Origins, Judaism History, Judaism Beliefs

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Judaism is a religious tradition whose origins date back nearly four thousand years in the region of Canaan.

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I wrote this sermon for a class and I did not realize at first that this sermon would be hurtful to the Jewish population.
A critique I received that was very helpful: "This sermon is exclusive to Jewish persons who regard circumcision highly as a part of the covenant."

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from Inscriptions, 16: "The lamps are burning in the synagogue"

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from Inscriptions, 16: "The lamps are burning in the synagogue"

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A Poem by Charles Reznikoff:
"Let us begin then humbly. Not by asking:

Who is This you pray to? Name Him;

define Him. For the answer is:

we do not name Him."

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I Wasn’t One of the Six Million: And What Is My Life Span? Open Closed Open

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I Wasn’t One of the Six Million: And What Is My Life Span? Open Closed Open

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A Poem by Yehudi Amichai, one of Israel's finest poets. He said that all poetry was political: “This is because real poems deal with a human response to reality, and politics is part of reality, history in the making.” Read a short biography here.

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The Misunderstood Jew by Amy-Jill Levine

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The Misunderstood Jew by Amy-Jill Levine

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"Levine challenges both Jews and Christians to move past their mutual misconceptions without ceding what is essential to both." The link below is a review of Levine's book.

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Amy-Jill Levine recalls twice being approached by "nice, silver-haired Protestant women" who had never met a Jewish person. They wanted to know where she had had her horns removed.

"They were both surprised and relieved to know that Jews don't have horns," Levine said.

As a Jewish expert on Jesus and the New Testament, the Vanderbilt professor has also experienced a neo-Nazi interrupting her lecture to protest the decidedly non-radical concept that Jesus was Jewish. Another time a student from Kenya was standoffish; it turned out that in the student's native language the word "Jew" meant "someone who deceives or betrays."

In her new book The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, Levine painstakingly illustrates the wasted effort that has gone into obscuring, distorting, explaining away or ignoring the simple fact that Jesus was a practicing Jew.

"Jesus of Nazareth dressed like a Jew, prayed like a Jew (and most likely in Aramaic), instructed other Jews on how best to live according to the commandments given by God to Moses, taught like a Jew, argued like a Jew with other Jews, and died like thousands of other Jews on a Roman cross," Levine writes in The Misunderstood Jew.

The book, released in November by HarperSanFrancisco, has drawn positive reviews for her arguments that denial of Jesus' Jewish heritage fuels anti-Semitism on one hand, and on the other robs Jews from fully enjoying the richness of Judaism.

"This is precisely the book we have long needed, abundant in scholarship and leavened by gentle humor," said Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People. David Gibson, author of The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World, calls The Misunderstood Jew "an indispensable guidebook to future Jewish Christian dialogue."

"Levine challenges both Jews and Christians to move past their mutual misconceptions without ceding what is essential to both," Gibson said.

Citing Texas songwriter Kinky Friedman's "They Ain't Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore," Levine argues that some Christian theologians have set up Judaism as a straw-man foil, the opposing force that Jesus overturned.

"Christians find in Jesus the answer to whatever ails the body politic, whether it is war, ethnocentrism, an institutional religion intertwined with the state, or misogyny," Levine writes. "In order for Jesus to serve this liberationist role, he has to have something concrete to oppose. The bad 'system' then becomes, in the scholarship and in the pulpit, first-century Judaism."
This convenient prop is not only inaccurate, but has led to anti-Semitism both accidental and sinister.

Among many examples, Levine points out commonly accepted theories that women were freed from oppressive Jewish society by Jesus, that Jesus cut through a too legalistic Jewish tradition that was onerous for followers, and that the "God of love" of the New Testament is different from the "God of wrath" in the Old Testament.

In each case, Levine, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies and first director of the Carpenter program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality, shoots down the premise.

"The New Testament records numerous rights that Jewish women had in the first century: home ownership, patronage positions, access to their own funds, the right to worship in synagogues and in the Temple, freedom of travel, and so forth," Levine writes. "Women did not join Jesus because 'Judaism' treated them poorly; nor did they stop being Jews, any more than Jesus himself, once they joined."

Levine points out that average Jews had no sense of their religious law as burdensome. Dietary restrictions are no tougher than the modern vegetarian faces, nor were pork products common in either Galilee or Judea, so there was little temptation to stray from the law. Tithing practices are similar in the Jewish and Christian traditions, and Americans manage to abide by many more United States laws than can be found in the Talmud.

The "God of wrath" versus the "God of love" is another invention that needlessly divides, Levine said. Both testaments display divine love and divine anger.

"As different as they are, church and synagogue have the same goals, the same destination, whether called olam habah, the kingdom of heaven, or the messianic age," Levine writes. "The two cars pull into the same station, and they have the same stationmaster there to welcome them."

Among 26 prescriptions for Christians and Jews to fruitfully move forward, one stands out: "Practice holy envy," Levine advises, citing the work of Krister Stendahl. "Look at the other tradition with generosity and seek to seek the good."

Media contact: Jim Patterson, jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu
(615) 322-NEWS

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A prescription for Jewish-Christian relations; "The Misunderstood Jew" is Amy Jill Levine's new book

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Amy-Jill Levine recalls twice being approached by "nice, silver-haired Protestant women" who had never met a Jewish person. They wanted to know where she had had her horns removed. "They were both surprised and relieved to know that Jews don't have horns," Levine said.

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"The classic and essential guide for the educated, skeptical, and searching Jew, or for the non-Jew who wants to understand the meaning of Judaism."

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A Brief Description of the Relationship of Jewish people to Christianity

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A Brief Description of the Relationship of Jewish people to Christianity

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Check this link for a quick overview!

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Encyclopedia of Jewish and Israeli history, politics and culture, with biographies, statistics, articles and documents on topics from anti-Semitism to Zionism.

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A Change in the Tide of Christian-Jewish relations

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A Change in the Tide of Christian-Jewish relations

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The Nostra Aetate is a declaration presented by the Pope that addresses the relation of Christians to non-Christians. This document clearly states that the Jewish people are the chosen people and have not been neglected or rejected. The links from 1974 and 1982 are further discussions that address practical issues rising from the first declaration.

Nostra Aetate (1965)

Nostra Aetate (1974)

Nostra Aetate (1982)

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Germany, the home of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, was also the home of the Holocaust. It was hard for Christians to reconcile this reality with their "self-image as paragons of virtue. They imagined their God to be a God of love, their Christian ethic a model of human morality."

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The Holocaust: Were Christians Complicit?

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The Holocaust: Were Christians Complicit?

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We must continue to retell the story of the Holocaust, and be reminded how the Holocaust came to be: "Germany was a highly educated, highly cultivated, Christian nation. Yet Germans were also the ones who perpetrated the Holocaust. It is a sobering thought."

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A challenging Jewish author whose written works will certainly add to your understanding of Judaism:

God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion

The Sabbath - "the Sabbaths are our great cathedrals."

I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology

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"The Pseudo-Clementine writings are one of the most intriguing and valuable sources for early Jewish Christianity. They offer a second- or third-century polemic against the form of Christianity that eventually won out, the Gentile-majority, law-free Christianity that took Paul as its champion."

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A beautifully written book on the ethics of responsibility. This book presents Jewish ideals: some are particular to Judaism, providing a way to appreciate Judaism from outside of it; others overlap with other religions and provide common ground to work together in and for a broken world.

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If you would like to continue to learn, here are a set of resources!

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A Brief Guide to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

- Jewish Claims to the land: biblical promise, historical site of Israel, and the need for a haven from European antisemitism.

- Palestinian Claims to the land: continuous residence for hundreds of years and the fact that they are the demographic majority.

- Began with the rise of Zionism in 1887, which was based on the reality of the Jewish diaspora.
- The issue was exacerbated by the involvement of foreign powers. A full guide to the conflict can be found here.

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A Perspective on the future of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

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A Perspective on the future of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

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This article covers the oppression of Palestinians, the "Ecumenical Deal" wherein Christians feel they must support Jewish people no matter what, the call for Christians to engage this issue, the uncertainty of the future of Jewish-Christian relations as a result of engaging the issue, the Jewish side of the issue, and a call to listen to all sides while giving the oppressed a chance at freedom.

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Well, you can't say you haven't been told.

The Christian community in Occupied Palestine has just called time on 70 years of world-wide Christian/Jewish collusion in their oppression and slow demise. In an open letter to the World Council of Churches, they're demanding a different course of action from their Christian sisters and brothers because, they write, the situation is now "beyond urgent".

The exasperation of the National Coalition of Christian Organizations in Palestine is understandable. The Church around the world has failed them.

They've seen year after year of Holy Land reports, theological reflections, pilgrimages, conference debates, and the occasional divestment commitment. But all this softly, softly solidarity has failed to improve their condition, let alone win their liberation.

Yes, there've been plenty of carefully worded and balanced calls for "justice" and "security" for Christians, Jews and Muslims. But no calling out of who has the power, who uses it to oppress, who allows it to continue, who excuses it, who remains silent.

Nor has there been much willingness to incur a collective cost to any Palestinian solidarity, either financially or reputationally from the leadership of Church denominations.

The Ecumenical Deal

Much of this comes down to what the Jewish theologian Marc Ellis long ago described as 'the ecumenical deal'. It amounts to this: the unwillingness within formal Christian Jewish encounters to question Jewish support for Israel for fear of unpicking decades of interfaith reconciliation following the Holocaust.

Ellis, writing for the journal of Americans for Middle East Understanding back in February 1992 summed up how this has become an obstacle to justice:

"The foundation of the dialogue rests on Christian repentance for anti-Jewishness and acceptance of Israel as central for Jewish identity. Those involved in the dialogue know that it has essentially turned into what one might call the ecumenical deal: eternal repentance for Christian anti-Jewishness unencumbered by any substantive criticism of Israel. Substantive criticism of Israel means, at least from the Jewish side, the reemergence of Christian anti-Jewishness."

The outcome of the ecumenical deal, Ellis went on to say, is that debate about the oppression of the Palestinian people by Israeli Jews, and its support by "commission or omission" by Jewish and Christian communities around the world is left unchallenged.

Despair

25 years of failed peace process, a wave of Palestinian terrorism at the turn of the century, three major Israeli assaults on Gaza and a Jewish Settler population of now more than half a million has done little to shift the interfaith dynamics that Ellis described a quarter of a century ago.

So it's hardly surprising to see Christians in Palestine despairing of the endless "hiding behind the cover of political neutrality" and the unwillingness of Church leaders "to offend their religious dialogue partners." In Palestine they learnt long ago that liberation doesn't come cheap. What's required from us they say is "costly solidarity" not "shallow diplomacy".

And in practice that means:

"That you revisit and challenge your religious dialogue partners, and that you are willing to even withdraw from the partnership if needed"

So brace yourselves. Jewish-Christian dialogue is about to go through the wringer. And not before time.

The cost of Christian solidarity

To reset the Christian interfaith relationship with the Jewish Community will take boldness and courage on the part of Church leaders, local ministers and their congregants. It will take them far from their ecumenical comfort zone.

Long standing relationships with Jewish neighbours and clerical colleagues will deteriorate long before they can be rebuilt with new foundations.
But costly solidarity requires no less.

It means refusing to allow your local Jewish communal leadership to set the boundaries of permissible debate on Israel.

It means listening to the Christian voice under occupation before the Jewish voice living comfortably, with full equal rights, many thousands of miles from that same occupation.

It means refusing invitations to Balfour 'celebrations' this November.

It means you, not them, deciding what forms of protest are appropriate and fair.

It means you choosing to invest your funds in ethics not in companies profiting from Occupation.

It means your next pilgrimage to the Holy Land may be turned back at Ben Gurion airport.

It means you WILL be branded Israel haters.

You WILL be branded antisemitic.

And when that happens you should refuse to be bullied (because that's what it is).

You must call the Jewish officials to your office. Ask them to clarify their position. Seek legal opinion. Demand an apology.

Insist that those that accuse you of 'unfairness' and 'lack of balance' make clear their own position.

What's their view on the legality of the Occupation and Settlements? Do they recognise the inequality of political, civil and human rights in Israel itself and the Occupied territories? Can they confirm their commitment to freedom of speech in a democracy?

And do all of this publicly.

This is what costly solidarity will look like until things change.

Because silence and collusion on a great injustice of our time cannot be the basis of healthy interfaith dialogue.

But what about the Jewish side?

We still don't have an accepted Jewish vocabulary or conceptual thinking that will enable us to recognise our complicity in Palestinian suffering. That makes the idea of Palestinian solidarity almost impossible for most Jews to contemplate let alone sign up to.

We're still stuck in a mindset of powerlessness and victimhood that no longer holds true. The dilemma for Jews is that questioning the State of Israel within our Jewish communities risks unraveling the collective sense of who we are and what being Jewish means in the 21st century.

The recalibration on Israel required from Jewish communities around the world is now just as profound as the soul searching that took place within Christianity after the Holocaust. Just as Christians had to look Jews in the eye and ask for forgiveness so that Christianity could move forward, the same will be true between Jews and Palestinians. Again, this is ground well covered in the writings of Marc Ellis.

The future for Jews and Judaism itself is now entirely bound up with our relationship to the Palestinian people. However, we are still a very long way from being ready to confront this truth.

Costly Christian solidarity with the Palestinian people has the potential to speed up a change in Jewish attitudes. But it requires turning the tables over in the temples of ecumenical deal making.

I'm not underestimating how difficult this will be. The Jewish response to costly Christian solidarity with the Palestinians will be hostile and intolerant, at least to start with. The current Jewish leadership of our communities around the world is conditioned to react like this. They have no other language or thinking available to them.

But changing the language of interfaith dialogue is what needs to happen, and the sooner the better. Shallow diplomacy has had its day.

A new basis for Jewish/Christian understanding

So what should the new dialogue look like? How do we keep the good progress made over the last 70 years but throw out the politics of a silent collusion of injustice ?

Perhaps a celebration of our creation mythology that makes clear that all humanity is equal in God's eyes.

Maybe a common commitment to building communities where all faith traditions are respected and honoured.

How about a shared understanding that national chauvinism will always undermine building the Just and Righteous society that Jews and Christians pray for each day.

Or how about a firm belief that solidarity with the oppressed comes with a cost that's always worth paying.

Otherwise, what exactly are we all being faithful to?

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Brace Yourselves for Costly Palestinian Solidarity

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Well, you can't say you haven't been told. The Christian community in Occupied Palestine has just called time on 70 years of world-wide Christian/Jewish collusion in their oppression and slow demise. In an open letter to the World Council of Churches, they're demanding a different course of action from their Christian sisters and brothers because, ...

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An Open Letter to World Council of Churches regarding the occupation of Palestine

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An Open Letter to World Council of Churches regarding the occupation of Palestine

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"The Christian community in Occupied Palestine has just called time on 70 years of world-wide Christian/Jewish collusion in their oppression and slow demise. In [this letter], they’re demanding a different course of action from their Christian sisters and brothers because, they write, the situation is now 'beyond urgent'." (Link)
Photo below by Iryna Farria.

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This declaration marks the beginning of what is now known as the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Notice that it suggests that there shall be no prejudice or lack of rights for those in that area who are not Jewish. (Link)

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A Discussion on the  Balfour Declaration: a response to its 100th anniversary on November 2, 2017 and the celebrations that ensued

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A Discussion on the  Balfour Declaration: a response to its 100th anniversary on November 2, 2017 and the celebrations that ensued

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“The single most important challenge facing Jews and Judaism itself in the 21st century is our relationship with the Palestinian people."

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Greetings from East Jerusalem in Israeli occupied Palestine.

Tomorrow (2 November) is the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. Around the world there is limited interest in this anniversary. Even in Israel it's not much of a news story. Prime Minister Netanyahu can afford to be in London with Theresa May and Boris Johnson celebrating Balfour at a private dinner party.

But here in the Occupied Palestinian Territories it's different. Here Balfour matters. It's on the streets, it's in the air. Here it's understood that Balfour's sixty-seven words of incompatible imperial pledges locked together the fate of two peoples, but with vastly differing outcomes for each. Balfour made a promise, that promise led to the creation of the State of Israel, and that State led to the displacement and dispossession of the Palestinian people.

What's clear to see when you're 'on the ground', is that Balfour isn't history - it's current affairs. It's the checkpoints; it's the Settlements expanding before your eyes; it's the Israeli artist living on the Gaza border who says she wants peace but really wants only peace and quiet; it's our Jerusalem Arab taxi driver, who explains why his Bethlehem born wife, a qualified engineer, can't get work because she's denied the same citizenship rights as her husband. This week, the consequences of Balfour remain present and un-corrected.

Thursday's anniversary will come and go and nothing will have changed. On Friday we will begin the second hundred years of Balfour, not knowing when or how, or if, it will ever end. The children of Palestine will become adults and Balfour will still be here.

The Just Walk to Jerusalem

I've come to Israel/Palestine to join the final stages of Amos Trust's 'Just Walk to Jerusalem' a 2,000 mile act of political and spiritual penance for the consequences of Balfour and an act of solidarity with those living those consequences today.

Nine walkers have completed the entire route starting out from London in June. The oldest is 67, the youngest is 18. They've crossed a continent to be here and have the blisters to prove it. For these final days, their numbers have been swelled by further Amos pilgrims, and the focus has shifted from covering ground to building and renewing relationships. We're here to walk and to stand alongside our Christian, Jewish and Muslim partner organisations, we are listening to their stories and learning from their experiences.

Since Theresa May repeated her comments about "celebrating Balfour with pride" in the House of Commons last week, the local Palestinian and the regional Arab media have fallen in love the Amos 'justice pilgrims'. Camera crews and reporters have been following their every step. It's not difficult to explain why. For the Palestinians, the idea of a Balfour "celebration" is not only absurd, it's a callous denial of their history and their daily lives.

We know we cannot turn back the clock to a time before Balfour. Whatever the second Balfour century looks like it will include Jews and Arabs living on the land. The question is: will they live as equals and in peace or will they live, as they do today, as oppressed and oppressor? The slogan for the Just Walk has been 'Change the Record'; change the record of injustice, end the soundtrack to oppression. Our call is simple, but frustratingly it is also highly contentious: Equal rights for all who call the Holy Land home. Is that a dream? Naive? Impossible? Foolish? Or is it the only possible response to what we are seeing?

A different pilgrimage

While the Amos Trust Walkers have crossed ten countries on foot I've been travelling by train across England on a different kind of pilgrimage, attempting another kind of response for the second Balfour century.

Since November last year I've been speaking to groups about Jewish dissent on Zionism and in particular towards the Balfour Declaration in 1917. I've talked about the alternative Jewish thinking of a 100 years ago in the belief that it can point us in a new direction for today and tomorrow.

I've travelled to London, Bath, Cambridge, Leeds, Sheffield, Cheltenham, Manchester, Harrogate, Solihull, Warwick, and Kettering. This is not my job, nobody pays me, I have no book to sell. The speaking invitations are unsolicited and largely result from people reading my blog posts over the last six years. Some groups are secular, some religious, some mixed. I've spoken to Anglicans, Methodists and Quakers, to Palestine Solidarity Campaign groups, Green Party members and socialists of every variety. I imagine there have been a few Conservative voters in the room too on occasion.

No invitation has come from a formal Jewish body of any description, which says much about the parameters of acceptable discussion on Israel in 2017. In fact, I have it on good authority that our Jewish leadership has been actively lobbying in private against me, accusing me of "hate speech" and advising that I should not be invited to speak. This makes me both laugh and cry. It also gives me hope. If the Jewish establishment thinks Robert Cohen is the problem, it has already lost the plot.

In all of my travels I'm yet to come across anyone remotely antisemitic (including me!). Instead, I meet caring, concerned, committed individuals, passionate about human rights, and delighted to discover that Jews may be monotheistic but they are far from monolithic when in comes to Israel. There is one key message I try to put across:

"The single most important challenge facing Jews and Judaism itself in the 21st century is our relationship with the Palestinian people. Every other concern pales into insignificance. And right now, and for some considerable time, we have been making a terrible hash of that relationship."

Occasionally, Jews come to hear me. Since it was Jews I set out to write for six years ago I'm always grateful when they turn up. One told me how "Jewish" my talk was, by which she meant not only my content but my delivery and my humour. It was the best compliment I've had all year.

Where I have met young Jews, I've learnt that there is a strong desire for an honest, open conversation about Israel and the damage its actions are doing to the Jewish community in Britain. Just as is happening in the United States, a new generation has had enough of the denial, the spin and the indoctrination from their rabbis, teachers, youth movements and unelected community leaders.

My pilgrimage has taught me that by travelling and talking it may be possible to expand the Jewish narrative and allow back into the room alternative voices from the Jewish past and the Jewish present. Is that a dream? Naive? Impossible? Foolish? Or is it, like the 'Just Walk to Jerusalem', the only possible response?

The new Balfour Declaration

So tomorrow we end one century and begin the next.

In the morning the Amos Trust pilgrims will stand and walk alongside our friends and partners in Jerusalem and Ramallah. In Jerusalem we will pay a visit to the offices of the British Consulate-General and hand to the officials our new Balfour Declaration. It's a re-working of the original sixty-seven words and is intended for Britain's current Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson. I've been road-testing this 'Boris Declaration' during my talks across England. If Her Majesty's Government find it impossible to apologise for the past, perhaps at least it can consider an alternative diplomacy for the future:

The 'Boris Declaration'

"Her Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine/Israel of a safe and secure home for all who live there. The nations of the world should use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this objective, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil, political and religious rights of Palestinians or Jews living in Palestine/Israel or any other country."

Don't we at least owe this new Balfour Declaration to the children of Palestine? Is that a dream? Naive? Impossible? Foolish? Or is it the only possible response?

Nothing tells me that the future looks better than the past. Nothing tells me that a second Balfour century will not end with more celebrations. When hope is so difficult to find there is only one thing left. We can choose where to walk and who to walk alongside. Each day of the Just Walk to Jerusalem has begun with Words of Hope which end with this thought:

Ambulando Solvitur - It will be solved by walking.

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For the children of Palestine the second Balfour century has already begun

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Greetings from East Jerusalem in Israeli occupied Palestine. Tomorrow (2 November) is the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. Around the world there is limited interest in this anniversary. Even in Israel it's not much of a news story. Prime Minister Netanyahu can afford to be in London with Theresa May and Boris Johnson celebrating Balfour ...

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I had the privilege to see Noa Baum and Arif Choudhury perform In the Heart of the Other: Stories from a Muslim and a Jew in September. The articles found in the link below explain the storytelling event I attended, Noa's book that reminds its reader about the importance of entering into the world of the other, and a preview of two stories that Arif and Noa told the audience. (Link)

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Watch a brief performance from the story that inspired "A Land Twice Promised"

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Watch a brief performance from the story that inspired "A Land Twice Promised"

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"An exquisitely performed piece. It puts a human face on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and helps audience members get beyond newspaper headlines and the blame game." (Link)

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Noa Baum, a Jewish and Israeli author and storyteller, discusses her relationship with a Palestinian woman she met in America in her artist statement for the book: A Land Twice Promised.

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If you are a Christian who is seeking to learn about Judaism, it can be tempting to assume you know what Judaism is all about. This article by Rabbi Monica Gomery provides an excellent reminder to start at the beginning.

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Parshat Lech Lecha (Genesis: 12:1-17:27)

The day after I became a rabbi, I taught a room full of men how to sing the alef-bet.

The men in the Jewish Spirituality Group at the Essex County Jail, where I served last year as the Jewish chaplain, had requested I teach them some Hebrew. And so, on Sunday I was ordained, draped in a tallis and called rabbi for the first time in front of hundreds of people, and on Monday I wrote the letters up on the board and we sang the familiar song in call-and-response. Alef bet vet... alef bet vet. Gimmel daled hey... gimmel daled hey. We sang the alef-bet over and over, and then my students trained their eyes to read right to left, first the letter, then the vowel beneath and then across to the next letter. Just as I was starting to wonder whether this activity was boring or altogether foolish, one of the men exclaimed, "This is so fun! Why weren't you teaching us to do this all along?" Hearing his comment, I realized that learning the alef-bet couldn't possibly be boring-that there is something vital about being at the beginning of the learning process, deeply focused and curious, when anything is possible.

Leaving the prison to walk back to my car through the parking lot, I considered the irony of the previous twenty-four hours. After all my years of sitting in the beit midrash, learning to navigate a labyrinthine daf of Talmud and the various modes of nusach for different times of day or year, after sitting with complex texts ranging Biblical, Rabbinic, Classical, Modern and Postmodern eras of Jewish theology, after grappling with gender and queer studies as they applied to the Jewish canon, after learning to officiate funerals, baby namings, and weddings, after all of this training, I found myself in the front of a classroom singing Vav zayin chet tet... yud kaf chaf, feeling the magic of the Hebrew letters float through the years, back to me.

Mainstream culture has recently adopted the idea of "beginner's mind" from Zen Buddhism: an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions, even at advanced levels of study. This concept elevates the qualities of someone embarking anew on a path of learning, inverting the expected hierarchy that a person with more knowledge of a subject is a better student of it. A paper published in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in 2015 by Loyola University Professor Victor Ottati reports that "self-perceptions of expertise increase close-minded cognition." It's a bit threatening to think about - that a symptom of being an expert might be a mind too closed to think at a high level.

In the first verse of this week's parsha, God tells Avram to set out, commanding: "Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you." (Genesis 12:1) The instruction is clear: In order to serve me, God seems to say, start again from scratch. Avram's journey is quintessentially the Hero's Journey: he must leave his roots, his kin, and the known world around him, to set out for something mysterious and new.

Joseph Campbell famously coined the notion of the "Hero's Journey," a pattern of narrative found in literature, psychology, and mythology. An archetype known as the Hero leaves home, undergoes transformative encounters and trials, and later returns deeply changed, carrying some kind of physical or metaphysical treasure. Similarly, the tarot deck begins with a card titled "The Fool," who, as the protagonist of a great journey, travels through various archetypes of human experience and ends the cycle as "The World," an evolved and integrated self.

The parsha tells us "Avram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran." (Genesis 12:4) This is not the story of an eighteen-year-old leaving home to attend college and live alone for the first time. Rather, Avram is like the learners who show up to the bet midrash of SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva, where I teach. In many cases, these learners have never cracked open a Talmud or read a text in Aramaic, though they have been masters in their fields or parents of now-adult children for decades. Avram is like the newly engaged activist who has voted in numerous elections but had not called her elected officials or participated in mass demonstrations before this year and now finds herself driven to act. And Avram is like the men of the Jewish Spirituality Group at the Essex County Jail, who after lifetimes of survival, resilience, mistakes, recovery and struggle, willingly and eagerly sang the alef-bet song and entered into that enlivening state of beginner's mind. And maybe Avram was me that day after ordination, after six long years of study, going back to the basics of lamed mem nun... samech ayin pey fey.

My mentor Rabbi Benay Lappe asserts that the goal of every religion is to cultivate a certain type of person, and that by studying their texts, we discern the type of person each religious system seeks to create. Avram is referred to in this parsha as HaIvri, which we could translate as "the Hebrew." Ivri comes from the word la'avor, to cross over. Perhaps Avram models for us what it means to be a crossing-over-person, a Hebrew - one who can repeatedly enter the realm of the unknown, to embrace the world through fresh thinking, an open heart, and the humility of a beginner. And indeed, last week's parsha ends with reference to Avram's earlier family sojourn, reminding us that an ivri is someone who journeys multiple times within a life, flexibly able to return to beginner's mind not once, but over and over as the world calls him to attention.

We are all the fool right now. In this whirlwind of political crises, amidst climate disasters and heedless disaster relief, heightened white supremacist activity, religious persecution and gender-based violence, we are all ivrim, crossers-over. When the world changes, the Torah tells us to set out as beginners. When we finish reading from the scroll, we wind it back and start from the top. Though we shouldn't abandon our hard-won lessons and wisdom, Avram's story reminds us to allow for surprise and curiosity.

May we be brave enough to humble ourselves before the mystery of learning, and may we all be transformed, from the beginning, again.

Rabbi Mónica Gomery is a lover of questions, community, language and song. She was honored to receive ordination from the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in 2017 and is the new Associate Director of SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva, where she builds queer Jewish community and teaches Talmud. She is also a founder and co-organizer of Let My People Sing! transformative Jewish singing retreats.

Learn more about the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College on November 6 at Ta Sh'ma (Come & hear),a Fall Open House & Day of Learning for prospective rabbinical, rav-hazzan and cantorial students.

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By Rabbi Mónica Gomery Parshat Lech Lecha (Genesis: 12:1-17:27) The day after I became a rabbi, I taught a room full of men how to sing the alef-bet. The men in the Jewish Spirituality Group at the Essex County Jail, where I served last year as the Jewish chaplain, had requested I teach them some Hebrew.

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"My mentor Rabbi Benay Lappe asserts that the goal of every religion is to cultivate a certain type of person, and that by studying their texts, we discern the type of person each religious system seeks to create."

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Common Assumptions that Christians have (had) towards Judaism

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Common Assumptions that Christians have (had) towards Judaism

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Click on the points below to read more information:

Judaism is harsh and Christianity is loving

Jesus opposed the law, the Jewish people called for Jesus' crucifixion, and Pilate was honorable in his interactions with Jesus and the Jewish people.

People are inherently sinful, thanks to the sin of Adam.

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Written by a Jewish rabbi and a Mormon Bishop, this article is more about politics than Judaism. It does, however, provide a helpful look into what we in America can do to come together despite differences in traditions, values, and cultures.

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For many in this country the 2016 election was a cause for sorrow and consternation. For others, it has been a moment to exalt and rejoice. The chasm between supporters of the two candidates seems as large as the nation itself. It is as though there were two distinct and irreconcilable Americas uncovered on November 8.

We write together although we represent very different parts of the American polity. One of us is a Mormon bishop, living in red-state Utah, who until the President-elect was nominated counted himself a life-long Republican. The other is a Jewish rabbi, living in true-blue New York City, and a life-long Democrat. Yet what unites us is so much greater than the divisions implied by those descriptors.

As religious leaders who embrace the freedoms that America affords us, we both are disturbed by the rancor and rhetoric of the election campaign. Secretary Clinton had been famous for the listening-tour she undertook when she ran for senator. In this campaign, however, she ignored a significant segment of the population, many of them former Democrats, and dismissed them as a "basket of deplorables." This was an insult to many Americans and was not easily forgiven. President-elect Trump, for his part, ran a campaign that countenanced xenophobia, misogyny, racism, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism. It deployed a barrage of hateful rhetoric and condoned white supremacist memes. We pray that such language is behind us now and that both sides repent of their political sins.

This elevation of party and partisanship failed America. We cannot afford to be divided in this fashion. We cannot continue to be red America versus blue America. Only as a United States of America can we find a way forward, together. The great religious principal that should guide us is to "love our neighbor as ourselves." So we must stand against any attempt to marginalize Muslims or any other religious minority.

As a Jew and a Mormon, we know only too well the horrible consequences of such demonization of the religious other. We must remember that there were Muslims in this land even before we became a country. We must remember the indigenous religions of this country: those of the native Americans and that of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all share the notion that we stem from common ancestors: Adam and Eve. We are one great family of American citizens, no matter what religion, what God we worship, or how we worship.

As we think of our common ancestry, virtually all of us, no matter whom we voted for, can relate to the ideal that we are a "nation of immigrants." Whether ourselves, our parents, our grand-parents or perhaps further back in history almost all of us have immigrant pasts. This country was made great by the labor and imaginations of immigrants. We must embrace the immigrant, most especially the refugee population, whether we want to keep stronger together or make America great again.

We literally are sickened by the poor state of healthcare and the crisis of gun violence. We call for a continued reform of our insurance practices so that even more Americans can have access to healthcare. We call for a renovation of our medical practices, putting patient care and financial efficiency before profits. And we call for a sensible gun regulation policy that respects the Second Amendment of our constitution while ending the scourge of gun violence.

We share common hopes for our nation, and for our children and grandchildren. We invite everyone to work for one America. There is a way forward. It is not the path of partisan politics. Nor can it be the path of winner takes all. Rather, it is the straight path which begins with personal righteousness, justice, and equity. The biblical precept of love serves as a good touchstone to judge our actions. If we could but do for our neighbors as we wish for ourselves, we can be "one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all."
This essay was originally published in TIME magazine and is reprinted here with permission of the authors.

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For many in this country the 2016 election was a cause for sorrow and consternation. For others, it has been a moment to exalt and rejoice. The chasm between supporters of the two candidates seems as large as the nation itself. It is as though there were two distinct and irreconcilable Americas uncovered on November 8.

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Below you will find various songs that relate to Jewish Holidays! Some songs are liturgical songs, while others are fun explanations of certain holidays!

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While there are a plethora of Jewish Holidays, the four main holidays that Jewish people expect the rest of the world to know about are Rosh Hashanah, Passover,  Hanukah/Chanukkah, and Yom Kippur

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basic information introduction jewish holidays judaism judaica jewfaq judaism 101 judaic jewfaq jewish jew

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Judaism 101: A Gentile's Guide to the Jewish Holidays

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Provides a basic, minimal awareness of the holidays most commonly observed by American Jews and the accommodations that Jews may require for these holidays.

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Consider the Jewish people in your preaching

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Consider the Jewish people in your preaching

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Check it out to learn the ways you can improve your preaching!

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Teenage Strains in the Gospels (Matthew 23)

Are You a Pharisee?

The Top Ten Dangers In Preaching on Jews and Judaism

Effective preaching is difficult. Not only must pastors know the scriptures, the ecclesial tradition, and current theology, they must also speak so as to address the real issues in the lives of their listeners. Understandably preachers do not welcome additional responsibilities. Yet the 1974 Vatican guidelines for implementing Nostra Aetate (the declaration of the Second Vatican Council on the relationship between the Catholic Church and non-Christian religions) warn preachers not to distort biblical passages by placing the Jewish people in an unfavorable light.

Busy pastors shake their heads in frustration. Avoiding a false presentation of Judaism in preaching is no small task. Not only has the Christian preaching tradition been molded upon a paradigm which promotes Jesus at the expense of Judaism, but the gospels themselves include tendencies which can reinforce this negative stereotype. Moreover the achievements of biblical scholars, who have worked diligently to form a new and more accurate paradigm, are still largely absent from the commentaries and preaching resources upon which pastors and catechists depend. As a result, often by default, Judaism is routinely denigrated when Jesus is preached.

What can be done to improve this situation? Minimally preachers should be warned where the pitfalls lie. Therefore, with apologies to David Letterman, I have outlined the Top 10 dangers of the traditional paradigm which threaten Christian preaching on Jews and Judaism. The statements are ranked in ascending order of frequency and harm. Each, as stated, is to be read as false according to current theology and historical research.

#10. Jews were united in their opposition to Jesus.

The Judaism of which Jesus was a part was a vibrant and diverse community. It was comprised of various groups, including Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes. Each of these groups had their own interpretation of the law and to some extent disagreed with others. It is likely that some groups opposed parts of Jesus' teaching. It is also likely that other groups shared much in common with him. The gospels tend to generalize all Jewish groups into a single movement in an attempt to emphasize the distinctiveness of Jesus. Preachers should be careful not to promote this generalization, lest it appear that the teachings of Jesus are somehow antithetical to a united Judaism.

#9. The Jewish leadership orchestrated Jesus' death.

Thankfully most Christians now understand that the Jewish people today cannot be held responsible for Jesus' death. Yet it is also important to recognize that the Jewish leaders of Jesus' day were not the primary agents of his execution. Crucifixion was a Roman form of punishment. Therefore the Romans were the responsible agents. Moreover, the diversity of Judaism (see #10 above) precluded any one Jewish group from having authority over the rest of Judaism and acting on its behalf. It is likely that some of Jewish temple authorities co-operated with the Romans and handed Jesus over to Pilate. However, most Jews and their leaders played no role in Jesus' death.

#8. Jesus' opponents were hypocrites.

It was a common rhetorical device in the ancient world to vilify one's opponent in the course of debate. To call someone a "hypocrite," "blind fool," "viper," "murderer," or "child of hell" did not necessarily indicate the person's moral character. Such epithets were often used merely to tag another as an opponent. Remember that when Peter disagrees with Jesus over the cross, Jesus calls him "Satan" (Mark 8:33). When the gospel writers apply these descriptions to Jesus' opponents, they are indicating a disagreement. Preachers should dispel the impression that those so labeled were duplicitous, corrupt, ignorant, or evil.

#7. The Pharisees were opposed to love and mercy.

The presentation of the Pharisees in the gospels is misleading. Because the Pharisees are frequently in debate with Jesus and tagged as his opponents (see #8 above), it can appear that their teaching was radically opposed to his. Historically, however, Jesus was closer to the Pharisees than most other Jewish groups. He shared with them a belief in the resurrection of the dead, seeing God as a loving Father, and the centrality of love of God and neighbor. The Pharisees were reformers in Judaism. They sought to make the practice of charity as important as worship in the temple. Preachers should avoid describing the Pharisees as "hard-hearted legalists." In fact they employed a flexible interpretation of the law to promote the practice of love and mercy. Jesus did as well. But in this approach, Jesus' teaching is similar to rather than divergent from that of the Pharisees.

#6. Jesus alone cared for sinners and the marginalized.

Jesus certainly preached the forgiveness and mercy of God to sinners and the marginalized. However, because the gospels so often show Jesus in debate with other Jews, the traditional paradigm falsely concludes that Jesus' opponents were against such mercy and forgiveness. There is no historical foundation for this assumption. All Jews had access to God's forgiveness through the sacrifices in the temple. The Hebrew Scriptures amply testify to a God who rejoices when a sinner repents and who is the protector of the marginalized. Jesus may have disagreed with his opponents over the means to attain God's forgiveness. But preachers should resist giving the impression that Jesus' opponents, and thereby Judaism itself, somehow rejected those who sinned, shunned the marginalized, or denied the mercy and forgiveness of God.

#5. Jews scrupulously followed the law so as to earn God's favor.

This misunderstanding flows from a particular interpretation of the letters of Paul. Paul has been traditionally read as rejecting the Jewish law because it was contrary to grace. Modern research has successfully overturned this understanding, insisting that Paul and other Jews of his time recognized the law was not a way to earn God's love but a means to respond to it. Preachers should resist the temptation to read the traditional understanding of Paul into the debates between Jesus and his opponents. For Jews, following the law was not scrupulosity or empty legalism. It was an honest attempt to conform one's life to the free gift of God's covenant.

#4. Jesus opposed the Jewish law.

Because Jesus is often shown in debate with other Jews about the law, it can be falsely concluded that Jesus was arguing against the law. As a Jew of his time, Jesus accepted the importance of the Jewish law as a means to respond to God's love (see #5 above). Although later Christians revised the observance of the Sabbath and eliminated Jewish food requirements, it is likely that Jesus accepted and followed both. He most likely disagreed with other Jews about how the law should be applied, but such a debate was common among all Jews and demonstrated the importance of the law rather than a disregard of it. Preachers should avoid characterizing Jesus as an "anti-legalist" or suggesting that his mission was to free people from "the burden of the law." Jesus was a legalist in the best sense. As a faithful Jew he interpreted the law in light of his own understanding of God's kingdom.

#3. Jesus' teaching was unique.

There were certainly aspects of Jesus' teaching which were distinctive to him. But to characterize Jesus' message as a stark contrast to the positions of other Jewish teachers of his day cannot be supported historically. Practically every saying of Jesus can be associated with a parallel saying from either the Hebrew Scriptures or rabbinic sources. Jesus, of course, is unique for Christians because they accept him as the Messiah of God. Preachers, however, should be careful not to extend this uniqueness to the content of his teaching. His gospel is easily situated into the context of first century Judaism. Jesus shared with other Jews the belief in a loving and merciful God, the forgiveness of sinners, the care of the poor, the love of God and neighbor. When this common teaching is presented as unique to Jesus, Judaism is falsely characterized as the antithesis of the very gifts it has bestowed on Christianity.

#2. Jesus was crucified because of his teaching.

There remains a persistent temptation in preaching to connect the uniqueness of Jesus' teaching with the motivation for his death. When it is falsely asserted that Jesus alone preached love and forgiveness to sinners and the marginalized and that Judaism was opposed to such teaching, the error can be compounded by asserting further that Jesus' message was so radical and offensive to other Jews that it moved them to seek his crucifixion. Jesus emerges from this conflation as the victim of the "entrenched Jewish establishment" which was motivated by anger and jealously to kill him.

There were clearly Jews who disagreed with some aspects of Jesus' teaching. Jews, however, did not kill one another over such disputes. Jesus was executed not because he offended Jews but because his actions threatened the interests of imperial Rome. His action of overturning the moneychangers' tables in the temple raised the concern of Pilate that Jesus was a troublemaker who could incite a riot during Passover time. With the co-operation of a small number of temple authorities, Pilate would have moved quickly to crucify Jesus. Preachers should resist identifying the content of Jesus' gospel as the reason for his death. In a true sense Jesus did die for the gospel. He went to the cross believing in the loving God who was his Father. But his belief was not foreign or offensive to Judaism but rather the gift Jesus received from his Jewish heritage.

#1. Christianity has replaced Judaism.

For centuries preachers and catechists taught that the death and resurrection of Christ eliminated Judaism as a viable way to God and that Christianity had taken its place. This tradition stands in marked contrast to the teaching of Paul who clearly states that the gifts and call of God to the Jewish people are "irrevocable" (Rom. 11:29). Since Nostra Aetate numerous church documents and papal pronouncements have built upon Paul's assertion. Today Catholic teaching asserts that God's covenant with the Jewish people is still in effect and that Christianity and Judaism are linked together at the very level of their identity.

The danger of overlooking this dramatic development in Church teaching has given it the highest ranking in our Top 10, because it carries the deepest implications for Christian theology and pastoral practice. Though false, the traditional paradigm of replacement or "supersession" does have the advantage of simplicity: one faith displaces the other. The new paradigm is more complex: two living faith communities, each in true relationship with God. Clearly more theological reflection is needed to draw out the implications of this new understanding and its ramifications concerning role of Christ and the scope of salvation. Nevertheless, preachers should avoid statements which imply that Jews have been rejected or abandoned by God. Contemporary Jews continue to live according to their own covenant, maintaining an ongoing relationship with the same God whom Christians worship.

These then are the Top 10 dangers in preaching on Jews and Judaism. Extensive material is available to substantiate the claims made in each category. But, as a pastor myself, I realize how difficult it is to find time for such background research. Therefore, these blunt statements are offered as a limited guide to the dangers that Christian preachers should avoid. If you find any of these harmful impressions in your preaching, please stop repeating them. We who believe in Jesus Christ have an obligation to speak the truth regarding the Jewish people and their covenant with God. To do otherwise is contrary to the gospel we proclaim.

Making Peace with the "Enemies" of Jesus:

Assessing the Opposition to Jesus in the Christian Gospels

[This is a written version of the 7th Annual Driscoll Lecture in Jewish-Catholic Studies, given at Iona College 28 March 2006.]

The presentation of Jewish religious leaders within the Christian gospels is a significant problem for Jewish-Christian relations. By and large the presentation is negative. So much so that it would be fair to say that the Jewish leaders emerge from the gospels as the enemies of Jesus. The gospels set Jesus against a united block of Jewish authorities who constantly attack him, often with malice and manipulation. Therefore, readers of the gospels must direct their sympathies either to an enlightened, noble, and fair-minded Jesus or to a group of narrow, duplicitous, and biased opponents.

This essay will attempt to assess the historical accuracy of the presentation of the Jewish leadership in the gospels. It will do so in a limited way, examining the treatment of the Pharisees in two passages of Matthew's gospel. Despite this narrow focus, if it can be established that Jesus' relationship with the Pharisees was more positive than Matthew's presentation, it may begin to make "peace" with the so-called "enemies" of Jesus.

An Initial Paradox

A seeming contradiction exists between official Catholic directives on how the Pharisees of Jesus' day are to be understood and the scriptures themselves. Consider the following statement from the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with Jews:

An exclusively negative picture of the Pharisees is likely to be inaccurate and unjust . . . If in the Gospel and elsewhere in the New Testament there are all sorts of unfavorable references to the Pharisees, they should be seen against the background of a complex and diversified movement . . . . if Jesus shows himself severe towards the Pharisees, it is because he is closer to them than to other contemporary Jewish groups. ( Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church, June 24, 1985.)

The Vatican commission encourages interpreters to adopt a fair-minded and favorable approach to the Pharisees, to situate them within the reality of first century Judaism, and to appreciate their closeness to the teaching of Jesus. So far, so good. But this simple encouragement becomes problematic when it is placed against the following two passages from the Gospel of Matthew:

He left that place and entered their synagogue; a man was there with a withered hand, and they [the Pharisees] asked him, "Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath?" so that they might accuse him. He said to them, "Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath." Then he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and it was restored, as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him. (Matthew 12:9-14.)

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel! (Matthew 23:23-24.)

The Pharisees emerge from these two scriptural passages in a negative light. They try to entrap Jesus. They seek to kill him. They are hypocrites and blind guides. They ignore justice, mercy, and faith. Such scriptural passages have generated a common and pejorative view of the Pharisees which may be summarized as follows: The Pharisees were hypocritical legalists who demanded a scrupulous practice of the law in place of mercy and love. They viciously attacked Jesus and promoted his crucifixion.

Official Church directives ask Catholics to reject this negative view. But how can one square such directives with what the biblical texts seem to say? This essay will attempt to construct a revised view of the Pharisees which reflects the positive admonitions of Church teaching and at the same time is responsible to the scriptural witness. It will proceed in three sections: 1) The Nature of the Christian Gospels; 2) The Pharisees of the First Century CE; 3) Three Historical Statements Concerning the Pharisees.

The Nature of the Christian Gospels*

No responsible interpretation of the Christian gospels can be made without appreciating their literary form. The work of analyzing this aspect of the gospels is extensive. Here it will be briefly summarized in three theses.

The Gospels Are Not Primarily Historical Accounts

Modern biblical scholarship is in agreement that as the evangelists sat down to write the gospels, they did not write as modern historians. Their aim was not simply to report what happened in the ministry and death of Jesus. Their primary purpose was to move their readers to faith-to lead them to the belief that Jesus was the Messiah, the one whom God had sent into the world. There is historical information in the gospels. But the evangelists felt free to adapt the material which was passed down to them. They reshaped it, adding some things, leaving other things out, emphasizing one thing over another, and rearranging the order of events. They felt the freedom to make such changes because the gospels are not modern scientific histories. They are creative works of evangelism which strive to build up the faith of their readers.

This insight into the literary form of the gospels allows us to assess more clearly the relationship between the gospel narratives and the historical accuracy of the material they contain. Every literary genre has its own relationship with historical accuracy. Different kinds of writing are held to different standards of historical exactitude. A person reading a modern biography of Abraham Lincoln expects everything in that biography to be historically accurate. The biographer is not free to make up scenes or present his or her surmises as fact. However, a person reading an historical novel based upon the life of Lincoln understands that the writer has more flexibility. The author need not limit every scene, every character, and every quotation only to what historically occurred.

From a literary perspective, the gospels are closer to historical novels than modern biographies. They contain historical information but not every aspect of their narration is historically accurate. Therefore, the gospels in our Bibles are not primarily historical accounts. The ramifications of this understanding lead to the second thesis.

The Non-historical Aspects of the Gospels Do Not Undermine Their Authority for Christians

Believing Christians hold that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. They believe that God's truth is communicated to them through the biblical text. Yet the means of that communication is mediated through the literary form of the text in question. If the gospels were modern biographies, they would attempt to make truth and historicity correspond precisely. But the gospels are not such biographies. Therefore the truth of the gospels is not limited to statements which are historically exact. The creative reshaping of the gospel materials by the evangelists is able to express truths which are inspired and authoritative, even if they are not historically accurate. The only time truth and history must perfectly match is in literary works which promise to honor this identity. The gospels are not that kind of literature. The truth which is proclaimed by the gospels remains authoritative for Christians apart from its historical accuracy.

Although the claims of the gospels remain authoritative for believers, the literary nature of the gospels leaves the issue of historical accuracy an open question which must be evaluated issue by issue. This leads to the third thesis.

The Historical Aspects of the Gospels Must Be Specifically Established

Because the gospels are a mixture of historical data and artistic editing it must be determined which parts of the gospels are historical and which are not. To illustrate this point, consider the following theoretical example. We want to write an accurate historical account of the life of Abraham Lincoln. But somehow every document concerning him-every book, every letter, every source-has been destroyed. There is one exception. A single historical novel on the life of Lincoln has been preserved. Now we know that a great deal of historical information is included within that novel. But we cannot automatically accept every scene, every character, and every quotation as historically reliable. We must make judgments in each case whether this scene or this character has the ring of historicity or whether they are present because of the imagination and artistry of the historical novelist.

One way to make such judgments is to learn as much as we can about the culture, politics, and beliefs in the period in which the events occurred. In our theoretical case, we would try to learn as much as we could about politics in the city of Washington during and after the Civil War. If our historical novel tells us that Lincoln was shot and killed while watching a play, Our American Cousin, at the Ford's Theater, we would question the historical likelihood of such an event. On one hand, being shot in the theater is an unusual way to die. Perhaps our novelist is creating this scene for dramatic effect. On the other hand, it would not be likely that the novelist would change something as fundamental as the manner of Lincoln's death.

To decide between the two alternatives we would diligently search for any piece of information outside the novel which could help us. Was there a Ford's theater in Washington? Do we know of any presidents who attended plays there? Did it ever produce Our American Cousin? The discovery of such outside information would assist in judging which parts of the novel were likely to be historical and which parts were the creative expression of the novelist. Moreover, if we were to discover within the novel characteristics and attitudes which were inconsistent with the characteristics and attitudes which were common during the Civil War Period in Washington, such inconsistencies might indicate the creative shaping of the author rather than an accurate reflection of the historical period in which the events took place.

Employing such an array of strategies is necessary for anyone who would wish to determine the historical reliability of a literary work which does not espouse historical accuracy as its primary purpose. The historicity of elements of the narrative can be assessed in light of material which is available from outside the text.

The availability of such outside information can help resolve the paradox with which this essay began. When the portrait of the Pharisees in the gospel of Matthew is compared with the historical information concerning the Pharisees, it leads to a high likelihood that Matthew's characterization of the Pharisees is both non-historical and dangerous.

The Pharisees in the First Century C. E.

Information concerning the Pharisees in the first century is limited. We have no writings of the Pharisees. There are, however, two sources outside of the gospels which shed light upon them: the rabbinic writings and the writings of Josephus. Combing through this material, a majority-if not unanimity-of scholars have concluded that the Pharisees are best identified as a reform movement in Judaism. The Pharisees desired to make the practice of Judaism more personal and more active in the religious life of the ordinary Jew. They accepted the temple and the temple cult, but they insisted that Judaism was not simply about cultic practice. Genuine worship must include personal responsibility motivated by the love of God and neighbor. Of course, this perspective was not new to Judaism. It can be found throughout the Jewish scriptures, particularly in the prophets. It was, however, the restating of this traditional perspective which characterized the Pharisees' attempt to renew Judaism.

The Pharisees were not priests. But just as the priests had codified the cultic laws of the Temple, the Pharisees interpreted biblical laws in order to promote love, loyalty, and human compassion as the inescapable responsibilities of every Jew. In doing this they were served by their interpretation of the law. Unlike the Sadducees who held to a strict interpretation of the written text, the Pharisees believed there was an oral law which went beyond the written letter of the law. They promoted some actions of love and mercy which were not explicitly mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. These actions were hospitality to travelers, visiting the sick of all religious groups, dowering the indigent bride, giving charity anonymously, burying the dead, and promoting peace in the midst of hostility. These teachings were formulated into commands of the oral law. Following such commands was seen to constitute true worship.

Jesus expresses a similar viewpoint in the Sermon on the Mount: "So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift" (Matthew 5:3-24). This teaching of Jesus has a Pharisaic ring. In fact, Jesus may have developed his own teaching on this matter in light of the teaching of the Pharisees. Jesus (like many Jews of his time) espoused ideas which probably came from Pharisees: the resurrection of the body; piety as prayer, almsgiving, and fasting; calling God as Father; and priority of love of God and neighbor. Christians who are unaware of Pharisaic teaching and practice tend to see these teachings as unique to Jesus. It is more historically probable to view them as a Pharisaic influence upon Jesus. It is for this reason that the Vatican Commission can claim that Jesus was closer to the Pharisees than to other contemporary Jewish groups.

When historical information from outside of the gospels is evaluated, the Pharisees emerge in a positive light. This increases the possibility that the negative evaluations of the Pharisees in the gospels are a result of the perspective of the evangelists rather than an accurate reflection of the Pharisees in the time of Jesus. In order to test this possibility, three statements concerning the Pharisees will now be examined. All three have a high level of historical reliability.

(1) The Pharisees Were Legalists (So Was Jesus)

Both Jesus and the Pharisees were legalists. Christians tend to see "legalist" as a negative term. They therefore assume that Jesus could not be a legalist. Yet such a position is historically improbable. Jews of the first century did not view being a legalist negatively. Knowing the law and following the law expressed one's participation in the covenant. Jews saw God's choice of Israel as a free gift and following the law as a response to that gift. Determining what the law demanded and following it was an honor. Throughout history Christians have tended to characterize such attitudes towards the law as "nitpicking," "earning salvation," or "scrupulosity." Such characterizations are prejudiced and inaccurate. To argue over the meaning and application of the law was an essential aspect of Jewish faith. It was an accepted part of the teaching and practice of both the Pharisees and Jesus.

With this appreciation of the law in mind, let us return to the passage of the curing of the man with the withered hand in Matthew 12:9-14. In this passage both the Pharisees and Jesus engage in a responsible debate over the law. Both the issue and the situation of the debate must be appreciated, if the passage is to be interpreted fairly. The issue is the Sabbath and what kind of work is permitted on the Sabbath. The Sabbath was a sign of Jewish identity. It was not an incidental matter. Observing the Sabbath was a way every Jew could testify to his or her belief in God's love and the covenant which bound God and Israel together. In no part of this gospel passage does Jesus reject or diminish the Sabbath. There is every reason to believe that the historical Jesus accepted the Sabbath and followed it. In this passage Jesus and the Pharisees are not debating over whether to honor the Sabbath but in what circumstances might another duty override the command of Sabbath rest.

The Pharisees pose the opening question: "Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?" As stated, every Jew would answer, "of course!" Every Jew would admit that a cure could be performed on the Sabbath, if the problem was sufficiently serious. If a person was in danger of death or afflicted with a serious immediate need, Jews would acknowledge that a cure would be permissible despite the command of Sabbath rest. Since such a position was so universal, the Pharisees' opening question must be read more narrowly. They are not asking whether it is permissible to cure on the Sabbath, but whether it is permissible to cure this man on the Sabbath. They are arguing a specific case of the law: can this man with the withered hand be cured today?

What then are the specific conditions of this case? Presumably this man's hand had been withered for years. Such a longstanding disability would lessen the urgency of the case. The Pharisees argue that it would be better to wait until tomorrow to heal the man. By taking this approach it would be possible to both heal the man and honor the Sabbath.

It is important to note how Christians reading this passage often miss the Pharisees' position entirely. Because the gospels frequently set the Pharisees in direct opposition to Jesus, Christians suppose that the positions of Jesus and the Pharisees are diametrically opposed. Therefore, when the Pharisees ask "Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?" Christians conclude that the Pharisaic position is that you can never cure anyone on the Sabbath. Because Christians do not understand the scope of the question, they presume that Pharisees would let people suffer and die rather than break the Sabbath. Under this presumption the Pharisees become group of hard-headed and inhuman extremists. The Pharisees' position, however, is that it is better to wait until tomorrow since there is no immediate need.

The same misunderstanding is often applied to Jesus' concluding statement in verse 12: "So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." Every Jew would agree with Jesus' conclusion, including the Pharisees who are debating with him. They would respond, "Of course it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. What we are discussing is what good can wait until tomorrow and what good should be done today."

Jesus believes that the man should be cured today. But notice how he arrives at his position. He is a legalist. He argues the law. He proposes a legal test case. What should be done if a sheep were to fall into a pit on Sabbath? This was a common case in Jewish legal discussion. The Essenes in the Damascus Scroll (11:13-14) held that only a threat to human life could justify work on Sabbath. Therefore, an animal could not be rescued on the Sabbath. The Pharisees held a more lenient interpretation. They were attuned to poor farmers whose entire livelihood could rest on one sheep. Therefore, they argued that the potential loss of that sheep was too great to risk and it was permissible to rescue the animal even on a Sabbath. Jesus knows the Pharisaic position. He refers to it in verse 11: "will you not lay hold of it and lift it out?" (It goes without saying that the Pharisees would allow a human person to be lifted out as well.) Jesus is using the interpretation which he shares with Pharisees to push the envelope further. He is arguing that if he and the Pharisees allow an animal to be pulled out of a pit, why not also allow this man's withered hand to be healed today. The Pharisees would respond by arguing that being caught in a pit is dangerous to life, whereas waiting until tomorrow to heal a withered hand is not.

Jesus clearly disagrees with the Pharisees over the healing of this particular man on the Sabbath. But he is not disagreeing over the value of the Sabbath, whether cures are possible on Sabbath, whether good can be done on the Sabbath, or whether one can pull animal or human out of the pit on the Sabbath. He is disagreeing over whether in honor of the Sabbath the man with the shriveled hand should wait until tomorrow to be healed. Jesus says, "no." The Pharisees say, "yes." We might side with Jesus, but the Pharisees' position is not heartless or nitpicking. The Pharisees are attempting to balance two values: the curing of a man in need and the honor of the Sabbath. Both the positions of Jesus and of the Pharisees are credible and reasonable. They are both valid legalistic opinions on how to interpret the law.

(2) The Pharisees Were Not Hypocrites

There is no reason to believe that historically the Pharisees were more hypocritical than any other religious group of the first century. How then can the frequent use of the term "hypocrite" and other slurs such as "blind guides" which are prevalent in such scriptural passages as Matthew 23:23-24 be understood?

In assessing such charges, one must appreciate that vilifying an opponent was a common rhetorical technique in the ancient world. In the first century, debate was not polite. Polemically attacking your opponents and accusing them of various moral deficiencies was a widely accepted as a rhetorical practice. Among Roman writers the technique was called vituperatio. It consisted in many strategies of denigrating your opponent.

Plutarch was one of the most urbane of ancient philosophers, yet this did not stop him from slurring his opponents. When an Epicuran named Colotes attacks Plutarch's teachers as "buffoons, charlatans, assassins, prostitutes, and nincompoops," Plutarch responds by calling Epicurans "prostitutes who were characterized by irreligion, sensuality, and indifference" ( Moralia, 1129b). The Hellenistic Jew, Philo, calls the Gentiles of Alexandria "promiscuous and unstable rabble-more brutal and savage than fierce wild beasts" ( Embassy to Gaius, 18:120; 19:131). The writings of the Essenes teem with vituperatio. They call those outside their community "sons of the pit who live in a spirit of falsehood and are ruled by an angel of darkness. They belong to the lot of Satan and God has vengeance planned for them" ( 1QS, 3:19-21; 5:2, 10).

Some comments of Pharisaic teachers come down to us in the Talmud. We know that there was competition between two Pharisaic schools: Hillel and Shammai. When a follower of Hillel, Dosa Ben Harkinas, hears that his brother Jonathan has sided with the House of Shammai in a case involving levirate marriage, he calls his brother "first born of Satan" ( Yevanot 16A). Strong rhetoric of this type is also present within the Jesus movement. When Peter disagrees with Jesus' teaching that he must suffer, Jesus responds, "Get behind me, you Satan!" (Mark 8:33). Disagreements in the ancient world were routinely expressed in the most brutal language.

In light of this rhetorical practice, vilifying language in the gospels or anywhere in ancient literature cannot be presumed to render an accurate description of the moral status of the persons addressed. It is often rhetoric. To call someone a hypocrite, a prostitute, a scoundrel, or any other slanderous title, was often only a convenient way to identify that person as an opponent who disagreed with the position of the writer. Such slander need not be affected by facts. A particular Pharisee might be a good and insightful person. But if he disagreed with the author's position, he might well be tagged a blind fool.

At the time of the writing of the gospel, Matthew's community was in a struggle with the Pharisees over the heritage of Judaism. Matthew clearly believed that God had sent Jesus as the Messiah. The Pharisees did not accept this belief. Matthew's slander towards the Pharisees is therefore most likely a means to express a disagreement which existed between them after the destruction of the temple. It does not describe a disagreement between the Pharisees and Jesus during his ministry. Wherever we place its origins, the purpose of such slander in Matthew is to tag the Pharisees as his opponents. It should not be taken as an accurate description of the Pharisees' moral character.

The most striking example of rhetorical slander can be found in the Didache, a second century Christian work: "Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites who fast on Mondays and Thursdays; rather you should fast on Wednesday and Friday" (8:1). It is difficult to see the moral superiority of Friday over Thursday. In this text being a hypocrite simply means fasting "like them" rather than "like us." When the practice of vituperatio is appreciated, it is likely that the slanderous claims of the gospels concerning the Pharisees do not indicate that they were more hypocritical than any other religious group of the first century.

(3) The Pharisees Were Not Involved in Jesus' Death.

The historical circumstances of Jesus' death require an entire essay in themselves. But the main points of the situation may be briefly summarized. Crucifixion was a Roman form of execution. Therefore, the Romans were clearly the primary agents. It is likely that some of the Jewish leadership cooperated with the Romans in Jesus' crucifixion. The most likely agents were the temple authorities. Even though certain offenses were punishable by death under Jewish law, the authority to execute the offender was reserved to the Roman procurator who at the time of Jesus was Pontius Pilate. It is possible that the Pilate permitted Jewish authorities to execute offenders for certain religious violations. But the case of Jesus did not involve such a violation and so his death would fall under Pilate's direct control. The temple authorities would be limited to only an auxiliary role.

Yet Matthew 12:14 claims that the Pharisees went out and conspired against Jesus to destroy him. Is such a statement historically reliable? Two tendencies in the gospels indicate that this charge is a non-historical claim added by the evangelist. One tendency in all the gospels is to reduce Roman responsibility for Jesus' death and to place it in Jewish hands. Another tendency on the part of the gospel writers is to routinely lump various Jewish groups together. Thus the gospels give the appearance that all Jewish groups were plotting against Jesus. Yet despite both these tendencies, there is no mention of the Pharisees in the gospel passion accounts. In the actual description of Jesus' death, the Pharisees are noticeably absent.

This absence is a strong indication that despite the tendency to associate all Jews in Jesus' death, the Pharisees played no role in Jesus' crucifixion. Historically a limited number of Jewish temple authorities probably cooperated with Pilate in Jesus' crucifixion. That cooperation by a few was read back by the gospel writers into Jesus' ministry and generically applied to all Jewish groups. The Pharisees are thus charged with trying to kill Jesus because they are a Jewish group. It is guilt by association. Their role in Jesus' death is not historical.

A Revised View of the Pharisees

If we summarize our discussion, the following revised view of the Pharisees can be proposed. The Pharisees were a highly respected reform group in Judaism advocating a flexible interpretation of the law in service of love and mercy. As a group they were neither scrupulous nor hypocritical. Their teaching was very close to that of Jesus. They played no part in Jesus' crucifixion.

This revised view can help resolve the paradox with which we began this essay and allow us to read the Christian gospels aware of the inaccurate and unjust understandings which can be derived from them. Yet advancing this revised view is no simple task.

Despite the work of many scholars over the last few decades, the traditional view of the Pharisees is remarkably persistent. To be a Pharisee for most Christians today still means to be a hypocritical legalist or a blind fool. One can always claim that adequate efforts of adult education are the reason that such misunderstandings persist. But I believe the issue lies much deeper. The traditional Christian view of the Pharisees remains attractive to many Christians for homiletic and educational purposes.

When the traditional Christian view of the Pharisees is connected with similar views of other Jewish groups, all Jews appear united against Jesus. This leads to a characterization of Judaism as a superficial, self-serving, and misguided religion. Once this false picture of malice and hypocrisy is accepted, Jesus can be easily presented as the light of the world, shining against the darkness of Judaism and its leaders. As a believing Christian, I fully hold that Jesus is the light of the world. But I do not believe that my faith requires me to negate the light and truth which was present in Jesus' culture, Jesus' opponents, or Jesus' Jewish faith.

In order to believe that Jesus is good, we do not have to believe that Judaism is evil. In order to believe Jesus' gospel was one of love, freedom, and grace, we do not need to claim that the law was about judgment, scrupulosity, and meriting salvation. In order to believe that Jesus died for our sins, Christians do not need to believe that Jesus was crucified because his message was so different and so opposed to the message of the Pharisees that they could not wait to kill him.

Preachers and catechists might find that such a stark contrast helps them emphasize the importance of Jesus. But I insist it does so at a great cost. To make this false contrast may be dramatic, but it is also historically indefensible and morally unjust. We must work against it.

What can we do? We can educate ourselves and share what we learn with others. Christians must come to believe that a Jesus who is thoroughly Jewish and understood in continuity with the Jewish tradition is no less our Messiah. We must teach that Jesus not only argued with other Jews but he also shared many central ideas with them. We must be careful when we read the gospel debates between Jesus and his opponents to understand that they are most often a debate within Judaism rather than against it. We must not understand slander in the gospels literally but rather see it as a part of the rhetoric of the time. Christians can and should see Jesus as dying for the gospel but understand that Jesus' gospel was not opposed to Judaism but in continuity with it. Jesus taught a loving and merciful God because as a Jew he was taught that God was loving and merciful. He died believing in that God, but his death was not the result of the envy or opposition of fellow Jews who did not believe in such a God. He was put to death because he disturbed the interests of imperial Rome.

Christian homilists and teachers must insist that Christianity is truer and stronger when it admits its continuity with Judaism rather than falsifying Jewish beliefs in the misguided attempt to make a more dramatic point. Promoting a revised view of the Pharisees can be an important corrective in establishing such a continuity.

The Pharisees and most Jews of the first century were not the enemies of Jesus. They were the ancestors of Jews today who we Christians claim as our brothers and sisters. It is with these elder brothers and sisters that we Christians must find a way to stand in our broken and despairing world and together proclaim our shared inheritance: the love and mercy of the God of Israel.

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** The argument and examples of this section have been previously published in George M. Smiga, "Separating the True from the Historical: A Catholic Approach to the Passion Narratives," in Pondering the Passion: What's at Stake for Christians and Jews? Ed. Philip A. Cunningham, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, pp. 56-58.

When Local Preaching Becomes Universal:

Protecting the Gospels from Anti-Judaism

[This article appeared in Chicago Studies, Vol 50, n. 3, 2011, pp. 315-29.]

Gospel Preaching for Local Communities

No author of the New Testament ever envisioned writing for the Bible. The four gospels which now stand in the Christian canon were originally created for local faith communities. The narrow and specific nature of these writings was determined by the shape of the early Christian movement itself. After the resurrection of Jesus early missionaries set out to preach the Good News throughout the Mediterranean basin. The effort was not organized nor did it benefit from a unified message. Prior to creeds, councils, catechisms, the canon, and established church structures, the small groups of believers in Jesus understood the meaning of the gospel in different ways, greatly shaped by the teaching and perspectives of the particular apostle who first announced the message to them. One has only to read the letters of Paul to recognize the range of debate and disagreement over the significance of Jesus and the practices by which believers should follow him. There was in consequence a wide variety of messianic sects who understood and believed in Christ according to their particular circumstances. Luke Timothy Johnston provides a cogent description of this phenomenon:

The messianic sect was diverse from the beginning. . . . Christianity was quite literally a new invention every place it appeared. The mission was not centrally controlled with respect either to structure or to ideology. . . . There was no long period of stability during which self-definition could be consolidated. The messianists made it up as they went along. For at least the first fifty years of its existence, there was no one thing that could be called "Christianity" as a standard by which to measure deviance. There was rather a loose network of assemblies on the fringe of synagogues and in lecture halls down the street, whose boundaries of self-definition were vigorously debated. ¹

These assemblies were small by modern standards, often consisting of less than one hundred members gathering in a home or meeting hall within a much larger urban setting. In time, some of these local communities composed accounts of Jesus' life and ministry in the form which has come to be called "gospel." The purpose of such gospels was not simply to record the data of Jesus' ministry, death , and resurrection but to preach the meaning of those events in light of the history and issues of the local church. There was in this sense a "homiletic" aspect to the gospels. The story of Jesus was told so as to connect with the lives and struggles of the community for which it is written. As in any homily, the original recipients of the gospel could easily identify which part of the narration was addressing their own story. Details of their history and themes which addressed their own experience would be immediately apparent. Ways of expression and verbal cues would be easily identified. Indeed the inclusion of such local issues and cues within the gospel would make its message particularly relevant and effective.

As the Christian movement spread, gospels written for specific local circumstances were shared with those outside of their original communities. Over a period of decades and indeed centuries, four of these writings were accepted by most Christians and included in the biblical canon. The process by which such acceptance was accomplished is notoriously difficult to establish. But what can be said with confidence is that local gospels were given a universal authority for a larger and later church. This historical development has long been acknowledged. However, the hermeneutical ramifications of such a process are often overlooked.

When a local gospel was read by those outside its community, the homiletic shaping of its story was more difficult to recognize. The horizon between the story of Jesus and the story of the local community which composed the gospel became blurred. As the gospels were read in new contexts, the original setting which a particular gospel presumed was no longer apparent. Verbal expressions which had a specific local meaning and allusions which engaged the original readers either disappeared into the text or were left illusively hanging without clear significance. As later readers struggled to understand such aspects of the text, they often settled on meanings which made sense to them in their own contexts. Thus expressions and issues which once addressed a specific local community were reinterpreted in ways which suited a wider readership whose composition and perspectives were frequently much different from the community for which the gospel was composed. When local gospels were adopted as part of a universal canon, this process of shifting contexts enlarged and occasionally redirected the meaning of the original texts.

Such a process has direct relevance to the manner in which Jews and Judaism are presented in the gospels. Historically the shifting contexts of interpretation not only moved from the local to the universal but also from a Jewish to a Gentile church. Although the gospels were written for communities closely tied to the Jewish heritage, most Jews did not join the Christian movement. By the end of the first century, followers of Jesus were predominately Gentile. This shift in population placed largely Jewish documents in the hands of Gentiles who read them from a new perspective. That perspective was not only divorced from the local debates over Jewish characters and issues which shaped the composition of the gospels. It was also less knowledgeable of the Jewish context and prone to interpret it in a negative manner.

Today there is a growing desire among Christians to understand the presentation of Jews and Judaism within their gospels fairly. Church directives encourage modern interpreters to preach and teach the scriptures in ways which do not distort their meaning, especially when they seem to present the Jewish people in an unfavorable light. ² Nevertheless it is often difficult to discover how aspects of the gospels which have for so long seemed to denigrate Jews and Judaism can be read in new ways.

It is the purpose of this article to remind preachers and catechists that the gospels in our canon have passed through several shifts in context which have radically influenced the manner in which we read them. By appreciating the issues which occasioned the original authors to compose the gospels for their local communities, modern interpreters will often discover a more positive context in which to understand the presentation of Jews and Judaism in the gospels. Such a context can serve as a hermeneutical tool to avoid understandings which are derogatory and misleading. The Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of John will be used to provide two examples of how shifting contexts have scarred the history of biblical interpretation. These two examples will also demonstrate how local preaching, when it is universalized, can produce devastating effects.

The Gospel of Matthew: A Struggle Between Jews About Judaism

One of the most negative passages towards Jews in the New testament is Matthew 23. In this chapter Jesus attacks the Pharisees, calling them hypocrites, blind fools, murderers, serpents, and children of hell. Since Jews today honor the Pharisees as those who ground their tradition (much as Christians honor the apostles), the insults of this chapter seem to smear the very foundations of Judaism. How should Christians interpret this problematic passage? Does Matthew's gospel require them to accept these slurs as they stand within the text? Appreciating how this passage originated as local preaching can lessen its overwhelming polemic.

No gospel comes to us with a description of its local community attached. It is, however, possible to reconstruct the nature of the local church and the issues which engaged it from indications within the gospel itself. This effort is facilitated in the case of Matthew by the scholarly consensus that Matthew used the Gospel of Mark as a source. Thus even small editorial changes which Matthew made in his source can be taken as significant indicators of his concerns.

Employing such tools, one is able to conclude that Matthew's church was a "Christian-Jewish" community. ³ The order of the adjectives is important. Matthew was writing for a small sect of Jews living in an urban center such as Antioch. Although this group was united in the conviction that Jesus was the Messiah, it still saw itself as Jewish. Matthew's church, for example, still honored the Jewish Sabbath and followed the Jewish dietary requirements. Changes in Matthew's editing of Mark substantiate these claims.

Chapter 13 of Mark's gospel is often called "the little apocalypse," because it describes what will happen at the end of time. As in most apocalyptic writing, upheaval and distress are seen to characterize the end of the age. Mark worries about the difficulties which pregnant and nursing mothers will face in the turmoil of the last days. He prays that their flight will not occur during winter (Mark 13:17-18). When Matthew copies this verse of Mark, he recognizes another time when he hopes that flight can be avoided. After Mark's concern about winter, he adds a concern about the Sabbath (Matt 24:20). Matthew prays that flight will not be required on a Sabbath because his community still honors the Sabbath rest.

Matthew also reveals the Jewish nature of his community in regards to dietary concerns. Mark uses a debate between Jesus and the Pharisees to ratify his own community's freedom from Jewish food restrictions. In the midst of Jesus' teaching to his disciples, Mark adds the editorial comment, "Thus he declared all foods clean" (Mark 7:19). When Matthew copies this passage for his gospel, he omits Mark's assertion (Matt 15:17-18). The most probable explanation for this omission is that Matthew's community still observes Jewish dietary requirements. ⁴

Both Sabbath rest and dietary concerns indicate that Matthew's church saw itself as a sect of Judaism. When Matthew's self-designation is accepted, it becomes clear that the attacks against the Pharisees which characterize this gospel are part of a intra-Jewish debate. After the destruction of the temple in 70 C.E. a variety of Jewish groups attempted to chart the future course of Judaism. The Pharisees were one such group; Matthew's community was another. Matthew disagreed with the Pharisaic agenda for the future, because it did not include the role and teaching of Jesus which was core to Matthew's faith. ⁵ As Matthew composed the story of Jesus for his local community, his frequent and negative references to the Pharisees were intended to emphasize the disagreement between them and his community over the future of Judaism.

Matthew took words and deeds of Jesus which came down to him from the first third of the century and preached them in manner which connected them to the issues relevant to his own church in the last third of the century. For his local community the significance of Jesus' ministry, death, and resurrection was heightened because they heard it related to their own circumstances. Each time the Pharisees were mentioned in their gospel, the community of Matthew would recognize a reference to the Pharisees of their own time. They would be affirmed in their mission to chart the future of their Jewish faith around the person of Jesus and remember how the Pharisees advocated a different mission. The disagreement was not minor, because for Matthew's community the Pharisees were part of their own religious tradition. As in all family disputes, the intensity of disagreement was great.

Matthew used all of chapter 23 to vent his side of the intra-Jewish debate with the Pharisees. He employed common rhetorical devises of his day to shape the attack. Disagreement with an opponent was not a polite exercise in the ancient world. Slander was acceptable and often exercised to attack an adversary. Greeks, Romans, and Jews all found it advisable to slur someone with whom they disagreed. There is a rhetorical term to describe this technique: vituperatio. Polemically attacking someone with charges of moral deficiency served the social function of identifying "the other" so as to reaffirm one's own position. ⁶ Jesus himself is shown to use this technique in Mark's gospel. When he wishes to inform Peter that his objection to the cross is wrong, Jesus does not say, "Peter, I beg to differ with you." He attacks: "Get behind me, Satan!" (Mark 8:33). Peter is told he is wrong by being called a child of hell.

Vituperatio would be recognized for what it was within the local preaching of Matthew's gospel. Matthew's community would understand that calling the Pharisees hypocrites, murderers, and children of hell did not necessarily mean they were bad people. It meant that the Pharisees were people with whom they disagreed. Chapter 23 of Matthew is an effort within Mathew's local preaching to assert the difference between two forms of Judaism, that of the Pharisees and that of Matthew's church. By using slurs in this section Matthew is telling his local community, "Our way is the future of Judaism. The way of the Pharisees is not."

Matthew's gospel was local preaching. However, as has been discussed, when a local document is read in a new context, the significance of the narration often shifts. The characters and issues which had the most immediate relevance to Matthew's circumstances were the precise characteristics which Matthew felt the least need to specify. The debate of his community with the Pharisees would be immediately recognized. Therefore there was little need to elaborate its contours within the text. When subsequent readers attempted to understand the gospel, it was in this precise area that context was most lacking. In such a vacuum new interpretations were required.

Each time the gospel of Matthew moved into a new setting, the unexpressed original context for Matthew's local preaching demanded a new understanding. That understanding was regularly shaped by the circumstances in which the gospel was being read. To Matthew's local church, it would be easy to recognize that chapter 23 was addressing their dispute with another Jewish group over the future of Judaism. As the gospel moved into new contexts, however, at least three distinct shifts in interpretation can be indentified which altered the understanding of the Pharisees.

(1) When Matthew's Gospel began to be read by those outside its community, the aspects of the text which were relevant to Matthew's local setting became more difficult to identify. It became easy to conclude that the Pharisees of the gospel were not a Jewish group with whom Matthew's community disagreed but one with whom Jesus disagreed. Thus a dispute from the last third of the first century began to be read as a conflict of Jesus' ministry.

(2) As the Christian movement became more and more Gentile, those who read the gospel would begin to see Judaism as a different religious tradition. They would still identify with Jesus, claiming him as "their own." But the Pharisees who Jesus attacks within the text would soon be seen as representatives of a different religion. Thus a intra-Jewish debate of Matthew's community would be read more and more as an attack upon Judaism itself.

(3) As the gospel was read by those who were unfamiliar with the rhetorical technique of vituperatio, Jesus' perceived opposition to the Pharisees would seem grounded in moral corruption. Jesus would then be understood as attacking a bankrupt religious tradition.

Unfortunately most Christians who read Matthew 23 today will understand it through the lens of these three shifts. Unaware of the local preaching which shaped the gospel, they will assume that the historical Jesus was attacking the Pharisees because they were the representatives of a morally deficient Judaism. In this reading the position of the Pharisees and of Judaism is falsified, and Jesus is seen as rejecting his own tradition.

The Gospel of John: Judgment Against Local Rejection

Similar shifts in context and understanding occurred as the Gospel of John moved from a local document to a part of the Christian `canon. Standing apart from the three Synoptic gospels, John is marked by a high Christology and a thorough-going dualism. The reader is faced with a choice for or against Jesus which will result in either salvation or condemnation. Those who accept the Johannine understanding of Jesus will find light, truth, freedom, and life. Those who reject that understanding will find themselves in darkness, falsehood, slavery, and death. There is no gray area between these two options. It is either-or, life or death.

The most problematic aspect of John's gospel regarding the presentation of Jews and Judaism centers on a specific Greek expression: hoi Ioudaioi. Although some would argue for another translation, the phrase is most commonly rendered as "the Jews." The Gospel of John has a special affinity for this expression. It occurs 87 times in the four gospels, but of these occurrences 71 are in John. Sometimes hoi Ioudaioi is used in a neutral sense without any negative connotation, as in "a festival of the Jews" (John 5:1). But often hoi Ioudaioi is associated with the negative side of John's dualism (31 times). In these cases those to whom the term refers are unbelievers, false, slaves, in darkness, and doomed to death. ⁷ The judgment against and rejection of "the Jews" in John's gospel is devastating. Consider these words of Jesus as he debates with hoi Ioudaioi:

If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here. I did not come on my own, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word. You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. (John 8:42-45)

Who are those who the gospel identifies as "the Jews"? Which people are to be included in this polemical category and thus receive the full force of the negative side of John's dualism? Fortunately a careful reading of the gospel itself removes the possibility that "the Jews" is meant to refer to all Jews. Understanding hoi Ioudaioi in a universal sense renders many passages of the gospel contradictory. Jesus' resurrection appearance to the disciples can be used as an illustration.

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.' After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. (John 20:19-20)

If the doors of the house where the disciples were gathered were locked to keep "the Jews" out, who were they locking in? All the disciples (and indeed Jesus himself) were Jewish. In this passage if hoi Ioudaioi is understood to refer to all Jews, the narration does not make sense.

Once it is determined that hoi Ioudaioi cannot be read universally, it is clear that some subset of Jews is intended as the referent. But this insight does not resolve the dilemma. When the interpreter examines the narrative context to determine what subset of Jews is intended, no one character or group within the gospel can be identified consistently. Sometimes hoi Ioudaioi appears to refer to the Pharisees (9:18), sometimes to the temple authorities (18:12), still other times to the crowd (6:41). The negative evaluation of these subgroups is constant even as the specific identities of the groups change. What explanation can be provided for John's proclivity to use a universal term like "the Jews" to name a variety of negative subsets of Jews within his gospel? The perspective of local preaching can assist in resolving this conundrum.

The research of Raymond E. Brown has convincingly established that the history of the Johannine community has been included within the narrative of the gospel. Key events of the community's history were woven by the evangelist into the gospel, augmenting the manner in which the story of Jesus was told. ⁸ As in the case of Matthew's gospel, the Gospel of John was written for a local community, and the issues and convictions of the community influenced the narration. A key passage in this respect is the story of the man born blind (John 9:1-41). In the midst of John's lengthy dialogue over the meaning of the man's healing, the parents of the blind man are questioned by the authorities. They refuse to answer the questions posed to them, and the evangelist tells us why:

His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, 'He is of age; ask him.' (John 9:22-23)

There is no evidence that followers of Jesus were being expelled from synagogues during his historical ministry. Scholars thereby conclude that in this passage we have a specific memory from the history of the Johannine community. Towards the end of the first century the community of John seems to have been expelled from its neighborhood synagogue because of its faith in Jesus. In its gospel the community's expulsion was presented as part of the ministry of Jesus for purposes of local preaching. Members of John's community wore their expulsion as a badge of honor. They also carried an animosity towards the particular Jews who expelled them. This animosity seems to have moved the evangelist to use "the Jews" as the tag which would bear the full force of rejection within the gospel. It was because the expulsion was so strongly etched into the community's memory that "the Jews" could be used to identify so many different subgroups who were hostile to Jesus within the gospel's narrative.

Also, it is precisely because John was a local document that a universal term such as "the Jews" could be used to carry a much narrower referent. The members of John's community knew to which Jews hoi Ioudaioi referred. "The Jews" did not mean all Jews. For indeed Jesus and members of John's community were Jewish. "The Jews" meant those particular Jews who expelled us from our neighborhood synagogue. Because John was a local document greater specificity on the identity of "the Jews" was not necessary.

When I was growing up, an elderly couple from Russia lived in the house across the street. They did not mix with the other members of our neighborhood. Their shrubbery was overgrown, and their yard was surrounded by a high fence. They seldom left their house. But all the children in our neighborhood knew one thing for sure. If a ball, a kite, or a balloon ever fell into their yard, we would never see it again. No amount of knocking or pleading would make a difference. Our property was simply lost. Over the years, when something went missing in our neighborhood, someone would invariably say, "Maybe the Russians took it." Everyone knew to whom "the Russians" referred. No one thought for a moment that some covert military force had flown in from Moscow. Everyone in our local community knew that "the Russians" meant "those particular Russians who lived in the house across the street."

In a similar way when the Gospel of John used "the Jews" as a negative term, the Johannine community knew that "the Jews" referred to "those Jews who had expelled us from the synagogue and who are for us the premier example of hostility, darkness, and unbelief." Using this term as the way to tag those in the gospel who opposed Jesus and refused to believe in him made the gospel particularly effective as local preaching.

Of course the Gospel of John did not remain a local document. It was read by others and eventually took its place in the New Testament. Because the significance of "the Jews" was immediately apparent to its original audience, the evangelist had no need to specify to whom "the Jews" referred within the gospel itself. As this local gospel took on universal significance, the meaning of hoi Ioudaioi quickly became obscure and new understandings had to be provided. To John's community "the Jews" were easily understood as those Jews down the street who expelled us from the synagogue. As the gospel began its journey towards the canon, two new contexts shifted the meaning of "the Jews" into a different and wider significance.

(1) Once the gospel began to be read by those outside of the Johannine community, the specific identity of "the Jews" which was so effective in local preaching became more difficult to recognize. When the local reference was lost, the animosity and opposition of "the Jews" began to be seen as occurring during the ministry of Jesus. Thus a local animosity of the community of John was transferred to a setting sixty years prior. "The Jews" became a group within Jesus' lifetime who opposed his mission and sought his death.

(2) As the Christian movement became more Gentile, Jewish groups began to be seen as foreign. Once this shift occurred, the universal scope which "the Jews" inherently carries began to be read quite literally. All Jews were seen as those who attacked Jesus and plotted to bring him to the cross.

Most Christians today will understand "the Jews" of John's gospel through the lens of the two shifts that have been just been described. They read the gospel as presenting a Jesus opposed by the Jewish people as a whole who refuse his message and seek to destroy him. Of course, the animosity which surrounds John's use of "the Jews" is not the most admirable aspect of the gospel. Yet it is significant that originally that animosity was not directed to all Jews but only to those local Jews who rejected the Johannine community.

Local Preaching as a Facilitator for Present Meaning

The canon of the Christian scriptures is fixed. Yet the meaning of the works of the New Testament continues to grow. The canon continues to yield new insights as new questions are posed to it and believers continue to grapple with its assertions in light of the needs of the Church. The contemporary concern to understand the scriptures in a manner which is fair and does not demean Jews and Judaism is both valid and necessary. Christians have every reason to approach works such as the canonical gospels seeking ways to forestall possible anti-Judaism even as they proclaim the victory of Jesus' resurrection.

Appreciating the nature of the gospels as local preaching can serve as an effective tool in this endeavor. Although the meaning of any text cannot be frozen into any one time or context, the intention of the original author-to the extent it can be determined-is still a voice to be heard. The original context of a gospel cannot dictate all the subsequent meanings of the text. But it can call modern interpreters to compare their understanding against the setting in which the text was formed. Such a comparison will frequently reveal that the local preaching of the gospels espoused views on Jews and Judaism which were more positive than those adopted by later interpreters.

The two examples of Matthew 23 and John's use of "the Jews" have been offered to explore the effectiveness of this approach. It is, of course, a romantic notion to believe that centuries of anti-Jewish interpretation can be erased by appealing to what the local preaching of the gospels originally intended. Nevertheless, realizing the local nature of the gospels not only reveals how later and more negative interpretations developed. It also provides necessary leverage for Christians today to create new understandings which repudiate false and derogatory perspectives. The denigration of Jews and Judaism all too often appears to be derived from our scriptures. Asserting that such negative evaluations were not the intention of the evangelists opens the possibility of re-reading the sacred text in ways which do not depreciate the faith tradition upon which its message stands.

____________________________

1. Luke Timothy Johnston, "The New Testament's Anti-Jewish Slander and the Conventions of Ancient Polemic," Journal of Biblical Literature (Fall 1989) pp. 419-441, p. 425.

2. Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with Jews, "Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate (n.4)," 1974, II.

3. Anthony J. Saldarini, Matthew's Christian-Jewish Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

4. For a fuller treatment of this passage: George M. Smiga, Pain and Polemic: Anti-Judaism in the Gospels (New York: Paulist Press, 1992) pp. 56-57.

5. Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1991) pp. 10-16.

6. Sean Freyne, "Vilifying the Other and Defining the Self: Matthew's and John's Anti-Jewish Polemic in Focus," in " To See Ourselves as Others See Us"-Christians, Jews, "Others" in Late Antiquity, Ed. Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs (Chico, Califorina: Scholars Press, 1985) pp. 117-43, esp. pp. 118-19.

7. George M. Smiga, The Gospel of John Set Free: Preaching Without Anti-Judaism (New York: Paulist Press, 2008) pp. 16-21.

8. Raymond E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist Press, 1979).

Teenage Strains in the Gospels (Matthew 23)

Any parent who has attempted to guide a teenage son or daughter through the years of adolescence knows that some days can be ugly. Conversations about curfew or driving rights can quickly become loud and disrespectful. Some of the emotion and volume can be traced to racing hormones. However, a great deal of the stubbornness and violence of this period flows from the need of teenagers to establish their own identity. Seeking the proper kind of independence from their parents, adolescents often overreact and speak so as to push their parents away.

A similar kind of teenage emotion and disrespect can be discovered in our gospels. All four gospels were written in what could be seen as a period of adolescence for the early Christian communities. Needing to establish their own identities apart from that of their parent religion, Judaism, these early Christian groups often struck out in ways which were unfair and violent.

A clear example of this tendency can be found in Chapter 23 of Matthew's Gospel. The Gospel of Matthew was written by a young Christian community which was in a struggle to define itself apart from the Pharisees and their teaching. Matthew 23 colors all Pharisees with the same negative brushstroke. If we were to accept Matthew's evaluation of them, they would all be hypocrites who live only to receive honor and privileges and have no concern for the burdens they place on others. Such a presentation of the Pharisees is unmerited. It results from the "growing pains" of the early church. But once these exaggerated evaluations of the Pharisees were accepted as part of the Bible, they denigrated the position of the Pharisees in common thought.

The English word, "pharisaical," is an example of this tendency. It is defined in our dictionaries as "marked by hypocritical censorious self-righteousness." To equate being a Pharisee with hypocrisy can only be explained through an uncritical acceptance of the negative portrayals of the Pharisees in the gospels. This adjective is offensive to anyone who desires unbiased representation of history. The Catholic Church has taken steps to alert those who read the Bible to this bias. In 1985 the Vatican issued Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church. These notes recognize that many references hostile or less than favorable to Jews such as the Pharisees have their historic context long after the time of Jesus in the conflicts between the nascent church and the Jewish community (#21a).

In the ancient world, disagreements were not polite. The effort to tear down one's opponent in speech was so common in the ancient world that it had a specific name. Greek and Roman authors called such tactics vituperatio. In such an approach negative charges were leveled against some one who was outside of one's own group. In this way their group's importance was lessened and the attacker's group was enhanced. Such charges should not be read as accurate descriptions of the opponent who was being attacked.

A popular strategy in vituperatio was to call someone a "hypocrite." In chapter 23 of his gospel, Matthew levels this charge against the Pharisees six times. As normally understood hypocrisy describes a lack of correspondence between what is said and what is actually done. However, in many places where Matthew calls the Pharisees hypocrites the charge does not fit the context. This suggests that Matthew is calling the Pharisees hypocrites not because their actions warrant that charge, but simply because it is a good way to tag them as his opponents. The practice of vituperatio is worth remembering as we read the gospels. Many members of Jewish groups may be characterized as "hypocrites" or "blind guides" not because they were phony or poor teachers, but simply because they believed things which were different from the beliefs of the early Christian communities. A peculiar saying in an early Christian writing called the Didache supports this point: "Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, who fast on Mondays and Thursdays; rather you should fast on Wednesdays and Fridays." In this text what makes a person a hypocrite is not how or why they fast, but simply because they do so on a different day than Christians do.

If we accept the excessively negative descriptions of the Pharisees as accurate, they will lead us to an incorrect and prejudicial understanding of these important Jewish leaders. The Pharisees were a religious group who were well respected as holy and sincere teachers of the law. They desired to make the practice of Judaism a part of the ordinary lives of people. To believe what Matthew says about them in chapter 23 would be similar to believing what your teenage son or daughter might say to his or her friends when they ask about you as a parent. If the question was posed after a normal family argument, your teenager's description of you could well be exaggerated and unfair.

Are You a Pharisee?

Most Christians draw their understanding of the Pharisees from the New Testament. This is unfortunate, because many of the communities which shaped the New Testament were involved in serious debate with the Pharisees over the direction of Judaism. Therefore, the picture of the Pharisees in our scriptures is often slanted against them.

A careful reading of other historical sources reveals a more positive understanding of the Pharisees. They were one of several Jewish groups of the first century C.E. Their aim was to extend the holiness and worship of the temple into the everyday life. Their interpretation of the law was more flexible than other Jewish groups because they believed that an oral legal tradition held authority along with the written scriptures. They encouraged an approach to God as a loving Father and cherished a hope for the resurrection of the dead. In light of this information, it seems that Jesus' own teaching was influenced by the Pharisees.

The Catholic bishops of the Second Vatican Council attempted to correct the inaccurate presentations of the Pharisees and took great steps to improve the relationship between Catholics and Jews. This relationship was addressed chiefly in The Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions. The writing of this declaration was complex and a genuine learning process for the council participants. Many bishops from Europe and the United States were keenly aware of the manner in which Christian distortions of Jews and Judaism had contributed to the growth of Nazism and the horror of the holocaust. Bishops coming from parts of the world where Jews were few contributed perspectives concerning the other great religions such as Islam and Hinduism. What resulted from this international mix was a document with a world-wide perspective which related the church to a variety of religious traditions in a positive way. The document was not, however, without opposition. A conservative minority expressed fear that such a positive view of other religions would weaken the majesty of the Catholic Church and lead to indifference and the lessening of missionary activity. There was even an effort in October of 1964 to derail the document.

The declaration was, however, finally passed. It calls the Church to alter the false perceptions of the past. Section #4 of the text insists that the Jewish people remain most dear to God because of their ancestors. It not only repudiates the charge that the Jews are responsible for Jesus' death but also decries any displays of anti-Semitism at any time and from any source. In 1985 the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with Jews issued a series of Notes that were intended to implement the ideals of the Declaration from Vatican II. The Vatican Commission stated that an exclusively negative picture of the Pharisees is likely to be inaccurate and unjust. They also asserted that if Jesus shows severity in some of his debates with the Pharisees in the gospels, it is because he is closer to them than to other contemporary Jewish groups.

Correcting a false presentation of the Pharisees is a key component of the Church's effort to establish an accurate understanding of Judaism and recognize the family ties between Christians and Jews. After the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 C.E., the direction of Judaism was guided by the Rabbis who were successors of the Pharisees. Thus all modern expressions of Judaism descend from the Pharisees. Jews today would hold the Pharisees in respect, much as Christians respect the apostles. It is, then, a serious insult to Jews when Christians perpetuate a false and derogatory understanding of the Pharisees. Seeing them as legalists, hypocrites, and enemies of Jesus not only ignores our best historical information, it also minimizes the positive influences the Pharisees have contributed to the Christian tradition.

Are you a Pharisee? Since the group no longer exists, it is impossible to be a Pharisee. But if you believe in the resurrection of the dead and in a loving God whose will for us has been revealed in both written an oral form and shows us how to live our faith in everyday life, you are standing in the faith of the Pharisees.

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