Contents | Chapter: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | 
In one of the great statements of the Mishnah, Ben Bag Bag taught: "Study it [the Torah] again and again, for everything is in it. Contemplate it, grow old and grey in it, and do not stir from it, for you can have no better guide in life than it.2" On this Rabbi Shimon ben Zemach Duran commented: "You will find everything in the Torah, and each time you study you will discover new insights.3" A Jewish question is one we bring to Torah in the belief that it is there, if we listen carefully enough, that an answer is to be found.
One of the great questions of our time, and perhaps the most fateful, is how to avoid what B. S. Lewis and Samuel Huntington have called call "a clash of civilizations". Early in the 1990s they warned that in future, conflict and war is more likely to arise from cultural and religious difference than from contending (secular) ideologies. Given our present and foreseeable situation - in which terrorist groups and rogue states possess weapons of mass destruction, are capable of acting internationally, and are unconstrained by normal raisons d'état - that possibility is real and fraught with danger. How can we reduce that danger? Does Judaism contain a distinctive set of teachings on how to secure peaceful coexistence between civilizations?
My belief is that it does. Throughout its history, Judaism has wrestled with the clash of civilizations. The early books of the Bible are set against the backdrop of the two great civilizations of the ancient world, Mesopotamia and the Egypt of the Pharaohs. At a later stage, Israel found itself surrounded and often threatened by other great empires: Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. After the destruction of the Second Temple, the waning of the Jewish presence in the land of Israel, and the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine, Jews were a dispersed minority in Christian and later Muslim lands.
In the light of Torah and historical experience, Jews reflected deeply on what it is to resist empires and not to seek to build one, to maintain one's identity without the instrumentalities of power, and to seek peace in an unredeemed world. They sought to understand what is particular and what universal in the human situation, and what G-d asks of us by way of recognising both the unity of being and the diverse forms it takes, in nature and culture. That is what makes Judaism a distinctive voice in the conversation of mankind, and one peculiarly germane to our situation in the 21st century.
In the following pages I set out some of the Judaic sources, biblical and rabbinic, bearing on the question of how to coexist with conflicting cultures in an imperfect, not-yet-fully-redeemed world. My aim is not to rehearse the argument of my book on this subject, The Dignity of Difference, but rather as far as possible to let the sources speak for themselves. I have not attempted to cite all the relevant texts. Within the tradition, there are other voices and stances, some quite different in tone and attitude to those I have brought here. Even the texts I quote are not all of equal weight. Some will carry more authority than others. Nor is my interpretation of them the only one possible. The issues addressed in this essay are not ones in which there is a single normative view within Judaism. For the most part, they do not involve matters of halakhah (Jewish law) or of the fundamentals of faith (ikkarei emunah); that is to say, they fall within the parameters of legitimate disagreement4. My aim has been to provide materials for further study, rather than construct an argument.
In the pages that follow we will encounter several principles governing the relationship between Jews and the members of other religious or secular communities, and between Judaism and other systems of belief, religious, philosophical or scientific. The first is the set of rules known as darkhei shalom, "the ways of peace". This is predicated of a situation in which Jews interact with those whose beliefs it regards as fundamentally opposed to their own (i.e. pagan or idolatrous).
The second is the principle epitomized by the sages as "the righteous of the nations of the world have a share in the world to come." This goes further than "the ways of peace" because it recognises the possibility of serving G-d and fulfilling His will outside the specific practices of Judaism.
Jewish law distinguishes between the (particular) covenant between G-d and the children of Israel (brit Sinai), and the universal covenant G-d makes with humanity (brit Noach). The latter is expressed in the seven Noahide laws: the prohibitions against idolatry, blasphemy, murder, theft, illicit sexual relations and undue cruelty to animals ("a limb from a living animal"), together with a positive command to establish a system of justice. Together they constitute the minimum threshold of human civilization under the sovereignty of G-d, and an individual who satisfies them has "a share in the world to come". They are, as it were, the "depth grammar" of the multiple languages in which humanity addresses itself to G-d.
The importance of this idea is that it constitutes a rejection of the view that one religion alone holds the key to salvation (extra ecclesiam non est salus) - a view that has historically been the basis for "holy war", that is, a war designed to spread the one true faith by force. Such an idea is unknown in Judaism5. This is particularly significant when considering the relationship between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Since all three trace their provenance, biologically or metaphorically, to Abraham, the opening chapters of the Torah (from creation to Abraham) represent a shared basis for conversation on this idea.
The third concept is that of chakhmei umot olam, "the sages of the nations of the world." Judaism recognises an independent sphere of chokhmah, "wisdom", which - unlike Torah - is distributed throughout the world, with no culture or civilization having a monopoly of it. The non-Jewish sage (chakham) comes to the knowledge of G-d not through revelation but through philosophy and science (and according to some, the arts and humanities) - the multiple modes through which humanity has come to understand creation as the work of G-d and the human person as the image of G-d. The term chokhmah has a long and complex history in Jewish thought, but its simplest expression is the saying of Ben Zoma: "Who is wise [chakham]? One who learns from everyone."
In addition to these, I have gathered some sources on whether Judaism attaches value to diversity as such, in nature or culture. What are the implications of the fact that the Torah speaks of two different kinds of covenant, one (the Noahide) with all mankind, the others (with the patriarchs and their descendants) with a particular people set in the midst of mankind?
The underlying question for which we here turn to Torah for guidance is: Must monotheism be intolerant? That is what honest and thoughtful people asked after the wars of religion in Europe in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It is what honest and thoughtful people will ask again in the more dangerous global environment of the twenty-first century. The earlier crisis was resolved, essentially, by separating religion from power. What happens, though, when, despite our best endeavours, extremists of various kinds have power - not, perhaps, the power to rule nations, but at least to wreak destruction on a massive scale?
One response, and a necessary one, is to try to remove that power, while at the same time erecting the strongest possible defences against it. Another, not incompatible with the first, is to return to the origins of monotheism itself to see whether intolerance is indeed written into the script. Must truth always be in conflict with peace, and if so must truth take priority over peace? How does the unity of G-d lead us to understand the (cultural, civilizational) diversity of mankind? The sources that follow tell the story of how one people - the world's first monotheists - addressed these questions.
| Contents | Chapter: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | |