FROM “MY FAITH” TO “INTERFAITH”

Address by Rabbi Dow Marmur to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Canada, St Catherine’s, Ontario, June 7, 2006.

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When I asked what I should speak about in the ten minutes allotted to me, I was told, “Tell us about your faith.” But my faith, alas, isn’t sufficiently simple, or simplistic, that ten minutes could do it justice, especially since the very notion of faith is different in Christianity and in Judaism. I’d need more than ten minutes just to elaborate on the contention that the three monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – though they each affirm the same One God, nevertheless their ways to God differ considerably. Their respective concepts of faith aren’t identical and we commit grave errors when we try to judge the faith of the other by the principles of our own beliefs.

In Judaism, for example, faith is the way the biblical Abraham – whom the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard described as a “knight of faith” - experienced it. When Abraham was commanded to bind his son Isaac on the sacrificial altar, he trusted that God, seemingly against all odds, wouldn’t take his son from him. And Isaac, the son, in turn trusted his father when he let himself be bound. Both were vindicated. Whereas Christians may see the account in Genesis as a prefiguration of the Crucifixion that describes the sacrifice of the only son as an act of God’s supreme love, Jews read the story as a supreme example of faith as trust in God who makes survival possible when through an angel God says to Abraham, “Lay not your hand upon the lad.”

Similarly, the biblical Job, in the midst of his misery and argument with God, and despite the urging of his wife and the superficial, perhaps supercilious, comments of his friends, proclaims, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” Job, too, survives to experience better times.

It’s this kind of faith that has sustained us Jews for thousands of years, despite persecution and humiliation. But with the onslaught – and I use the word advisedly – of modernity, the passive trust in God wasn’t enough. In order to manifest its power, some Jews came to interpret the Hebrew bitachon, “trust,” also as “security” and “defense.” That’s how, simply put, modern Zionism was born.

In turn, it’s the quest for security from further persecution which culminated in the Holocaust that led to the creation of the State of Israel. And defense has been the guiding principle of the Jewish State ever since. Many Muslims, judging by the pronouncements of the President of Iran and the leader of Al Qaeda, and alas also Christians, including those of the liberal persuasion, find it irksome to accept the kind of sovereignty for Jews they happily claim for themselves. But this isn’t the time and here’s not the place to elaborate.

Significantly, once Jews felt sufficiently secure and at home in the world, they showed their trust in God by reaching out to adherents of other faiths, now not as a hounded minority seeking the protection of the dominant religion, but as equal partners in the joint endeavor to bring God’s kingdom closer to us all. It’s this new approach to interfaith work that has brought me to you today. I’m humbled and grateful for the opportunity.

Paradoxically, therefore, though I may not be able to say much, and definitely not enough, about my faith, I may be able to say something about interfaith, which, after all, is the framework within which I’ve been invited here today. The way we relate to others has come to say a lot about what we think of ourselves.

It’s worth noting that in our time, when Jews feel less exposed to the forces of persecution and prejudice and live less in the shadow of Christian culture than they once did, their knowledge and appreciation of Christianity is much greater. The differences between our two faiths don’t preclude Jews from trying to learn not only about but also from Christians. Which is another reason why I’m grateful for being in your midst? For one of the beneficial side-effects of interfaith work has been how much the knowledge of the other enriches us all while confirming each of us in our own commitments and beliefs.

It seems that the tree monotheistic traditions have organized themselves along different principles. The force that binds Christian is the Church, which in the course of history has become many Churches. The force that binds Muslims is primarily Land, which is one reason why Westerners, be they Christians or not, are considered to be intruders by many Muslims.

The principle that keeps Judaism together is indeed both Faith and Land but uniquely it’s also People, the people that stood at Sinai and there made a covenant with God. Many Christians, mostly in the past but in some circles also today, believe that the covenant at Sinai has been abrogated and a new one, reflected in the New Testament, has taken its place. This would render Judaism obsolete and that’s how it has been often regarded in Christian history. Jews were not to be exterminated, only humiliated as an illustration of what happens to those who’ve rejected Christ. The world had to wait for an evil secular power, Nazism, to pretend to take this teaching to its logical conclusion and try to render the world Judenrein, “clean of Jews.”

Christians, like all God-fearing people, abhor the Holocaust. In the light of it, many have come to revise their theologies. The notion of the later covenant superseding the older has become unacceptable to many, perhaps most, Christians. Therefore, today we speak of mutual respect and understanding that doesn’t devalue one covenant in favor of another. The idea of more than one covenant with God makes interfaith real in our time.

The stress on people may also help Christians to understand how Jews who refuse to describe themselves as religious, nevertheless see themselves as part of the covenant between God and Israel, celebrating its collective holy days as well as personal life-cycle events. Missionaries who believe that such Jews are open for conversion misread reality.

Professor David Novak of the University of Toronto has formulated useful criteria for interfaith work. I quote:

First, each side must be willing to see the other side in the best possible light from within its own tradition. Second, that vision must not lead to any distortion of what each tradition, itself separately, teaches as the truth. True dialogue requires the adherents of each tradition to find justification for the other tradition from within his or her own tradition. One cannot use understanding of the other as any kind of escape from full commitment to the authority of Judaism for Jews or Christianity for Christians.

It’s in this spirit that I’m speaking to you now: not to engage in apologetics and not to try to defend my stance, but to testify to the power of the covenant that has been transmitted to me through the generations and which I’m now trying to transmit to those who follow me. My aim is to demonstrate, however briefly and inadequately, the force and validity of this covenant and how it inspires me to try to join minds and hearts with those who seek to serve God in their own way. Thank you for the opportunity.

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