Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Interfaith Understanding through highlighting both commonality and difference, and inclusive and confronting texts and interpretations


14.05.2019. Yesterday, a group of visiting students from the Jewish, Emanuel School, sat at the front right hand side of a large room. A group of students from the host school, Granville Boys High, of mixed backgrounds including Muslim, Hindu and other unknown beliefs filed in. They sat down at the back left side of the room, leaving a big gap between them and the visitors. The day unfolded and something magical happened. As one student reflected at the end of the day “this morning we were two distinct groups, by the afternoon there was one big group”.

The desire to be one is strong. But we must take care that in trying to become one, we don’t simply become “color blind”, which means that we minimize difference. If we do, we don’t really embrace others as they are, we just pretend that they are exactly like ourselves(1).

The combination of acknowledging commonality while also recognizing difference was evident tonight at an Iftar dinner I attended. As the sun was setting many of the Muslims gathered to pray. It was also prayer time for me so I rose to pray alongside the Muslim worshipers. Unlike Muslim prayer, Jewish prayer involves minimal bowing. As I stood upright alongside the synchronized rows of men and women bowing in unison, the voice of a very young child called out loudly “why is that man not bowing?” The Muslim Sheikh and I reflected afterwards about how the two faiths worship the one God, but do it in different ways and that this is to be respected and celebrated. 

16.05.2019 I am sitting on a plane, traveling home to Sydney from Melbourne after speaking on a panel at my third Iftar dinner, at Deakin University. Our topic was how people of different backgrounds can get along better and the role that religion plays in this.

I suggested that religious leaders need to take responsibility for how we teach sacred texts. There are two ways we can do this. Either we directly confront “inconvenient texts” and grapple with how they are interpreted or we focus more on texts that have a positive inclusive message. My approach has been mainly the former, while Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ approach is the latter.

Before I switched my phone to flight mode I downloaded Sacks’ essay on minority rights(2). His starting point is the following verse. “If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and are unable to support themselves among you, help them [as well as any(3)] (non-citizen) resident and an alien, so they can continue to live among you”(4). Sacks explains that: “There is, in other words, an obligation to support and sustain a resident alien and that not only does he or she have the right to live in the Holy Land, but they have the right to share in its welfare provisions.” The requirement for equal treatment is also recorded as law(5).

I am thrown by Sacks’ focus on this inclusive verse. I wrote out a list of all the challenging verses in the same reading, but I delete the list. I try to flow with his argument. He cited the example of an affair between the wife of alien soldier in King David’s army and the King.

King David has fallen in love and had an adulterous relationship with Batsheva, wife of a ger toshav, Uriah the Hittite. She becomes pregnant. Uriah meanwhile has been away from home as a soldier in Israel’s army. David, afraid that Uriah will come home, see that his wife is pregnant, realise that she has committed adultery, and come to discover that the king is the guilty party, has Uriah brought home. His pretext is that he wants to know how the battle is going. He then tells Uriah to go home and sleep with his wife before returning, so that he will later assume that he himself is the father of the child”. (6)

David’s plan failed. Uriah chose not to go home out of solidarity with the Israelites. Uriah’s words are recorded in the scripture. Uriah said to David, “The Ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my commander Joab and my lord’s men are camped in the open country. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and make love to my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!” 

Sacks makes the point thatthe fact that Tanakh [the Bible] can tell such a story in which a resident alien is the moral hero, and David, Israel’s greatest king, the wrongdoer or villain, tells us much about the morality of Judaism.”

On reflection, I think there is a need for voices like Sacks to highlight the positive. There is also a need to confront the texts that can be taken to legitimise bigotry, which I will continue to do. While in Melbourne I held some discussions with the Jewish Christian Muslim Association about doing exactly that. It irritates me to no end when I hear non-Muslims focus on apparently difficult Islamic texts. I think it is more useful for people to grapple with their own texts and be honest about what is in them. However it is also important to highlight inclusive texts. It is not an either/or choice. It is a case of “and”. Challenging and inclusive text are worth exploring, just as it is valuable to focus on both similarities and differences(7).

Notes
Rev. Ian Smith in conversation on 16.05.2019.
Rashi
Leviticus 25:35, there are some conditions to this law. See Sacks.
Maimonides, in Yad Hachazaka Hilkhot Melachim 10:12, cited by Sacks. “One should act towards resident aliens with the same respect and loving kindness as one would to a fellow Jew”
2 Samuel 11:6-11 in Sacks
Pedersen, A., Walker, I., & Wise, M. (2005). Talk Does Not Cook Rice: Beyond anti-racism rhetoric to strategies for social action. Australian Psychologist, 40, 20-30.


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