From the 1960s through the 1990s,
religion was not seen as terribly newsworthy. It was not front-page, usually relegated to back sections. The only daily papers that had significant coverage
were the Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, the Washington Post,
the St Louis Post-Dispatch and the Los Angeles Times. Everyone else planned
articles around Easter and Christmas. Even when covering religious issues, it
was usually through the filter of politics. E.J. Dionne recalled a frustrated reporter complaining after reviewing a collection of papal addresses, "There's nothing
but religion here" (Washington Post, 12/28/99). But then evangelical Christians
entered American politics and, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Islamic extremism
became a media focus.
The news this week included three big-picture religious issues. The terrible killings of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The arson attack by Jewish extremists on the Church of the Multiplication at Tabgha, on the Sea of Galilee. And the Papal encyclical on environmental ethics. I'd like to share some thoughts about all three and relate them to the Torah portion of Koraẖ, which we read this morning.
Dylann Roof sat for about an hour with congregants at Emanuel AME in a weekly prayer meeting. Then he opened fire, reloaded his weapon five times and said to these innocent men and women, “I have to do it. …You rape our women and you're taking over our country. You have to go.” Friday, it was reported that he almost didn’t do it, because the people were so nice.
As Jews, we know that the actions of those who hate are independent of the behaviour of those attacked. People harbour hate that continues, abates and then flares up, comparable to a cancer cell that suddenly turns on and rages out of control.
Anti-semitism has been called the “oldest hatred”. If, as David Nirenberg of the University of Chicago, contends, anti-Judaism is the woof and warp of western civilisation, then anti-black hatred is embedded into the core of American life. To the shame of American Christianity, this racism was born and bred within it. Yet devout Christians also opposed slavery. In the 18th and 19th centuries, passages from the Bible were used by pro-slavery advocates and abolitionists to support their respective views.
Even though racism has now been rejected by all forms of Christianity, the “original sin” of this hatred infected the social psyche of subsequent generations—including those who are not religious at all. Like cancer, racism and hatred must be controlled, starved, attacked and removed. But it lurks and we must always be on guard.
The Galilean Church of Multiplication marks the place which Christians believe was the site of Jesus’s miracle of transforming two fish and five loaves into enough food for 5,000 people. The church is situated on the northern side of the Kinneret, just under the Mount of Beatitudes (and the centre of the Catholic-Jewish dialogue I participated in last month).
There have been other “price tag” attacks on mosques and churches, but this one was different from previous assaults. The graffiti quotes a passage from Aleynu, calling for the removal of idolatry: “והאלילים כרות יכרתון, may the [false] gods be utterly destroyed.”Alon Goshen-Gottstein comments: “For the first time, Jewish sources are quoted, making the attack explicitly religious. Tabgha marks the launch of religious Jewish terrorism.”
In “Rethinking Christianity", Eugene Korn shows how Judaism changed its perception of Christianity. He points to “four stages in the evolution of Jewish religious thinking about Christianity". Initially, Jewish Christians were regarded as heretics (minim) or apostates. Belief in Jesus and a “new covenant” was considered idolatry, avodah zarah.
In medieval times, Maimonides, who had no real contact with Christians, saw Christianity as spreading an awareness of God to the world, but also defined it as idolatry. However, Rabbi Menahem Meiri, and others who lived within Christian Europe, generally thought that “Christians were not idolaters, but …belief in Christian doctrine [was] illegitimate avodah zarah. By the late Middle Ages and early modernity, most rabbis “did not consider Christianity to be avodah zarah for non-Jews”.
Finally, as Christian toleration of Jews grew from the 17th to the 20th centuries, so did Jewish appreciation of “Christianity as a positive historical and theological phenomenon for non-Jews that helped spread fundamental beliefs of Judaism … and thus advanced the Jewish religious purpose”.
This was a long process. It is not yet completed and it requires constant vigilance. The recent attack is an example of our historic negativity and rejection of Christianity. As modern Jews committed to Torah, we have to determine what kind of Judaism we want to follow and believe.
Religion can be a source of hate and discord. Our task is to lift up the good and to combat the bad. Then religion can be a source for healing, harmony and hope.
For a moment, consider Koraẖ. He appears to have an ideal in his statement, “All the people are holy”. This might be a claim that all the people stood at Sinai and there is no need for Moshe or Aharon to mediate the relationship with God (Rashi). I agree with Yeshayahu Leibowitz that there is a certainty in Koraẖ’s position that is dangerous and is rejected by Moshe and God. When the Torah states, “קדושים תהיו, you shall be holy,” holiness is understood as an aspiration, an ideal, not an already realized state of being. Koraẖ speaks with a false certainty, as if he knows what is truth. Not all who claim to speak in the name of God is actually godly.
To some extent, the encyclical from the Pope is simply the culmination of a shift in thinking that has been in process for many years and goes far beyond the Roman Catholic Church. So why should we, as Jews with our own developed environmental positions care about Pope Francis’ encyclical? Simply this: the Pope is the most significant religious leader in the world. His words will impact everyone’s thinking.
He uses Biblical texts to articulate a theological perspective on environmental ethics, thus bringing religious thought to a broad group of secular thinkers and activists. From Genesis, he speaks of the dignity of human beings and the connection of humanity to the earth. He uses the narrative of Cain and Abel to say that we do have an obligation to be the protector of others and explicitly links the degradation of the environment to the degradation of the poor.
The encyclical refers to the laws of the shemittah/ Sabbatical Year and Yovel/ Jubilee, the protection of species from Deuteronomy, and the mitzvah/ imperative to rest on Shabbat. The encyclical brings religious language to contemporary moral discourse and discussion.
By relating environmental ethics to social ethics and climate change to global poverty, the encyclical identifies a moral crisis. In addition to the disproportionate impact on the poor, the Pope also points to the spiritual challenge of the disconnection to creation by urban, technologically advanced societies. By the way, that is why we plan Kabbalat Shabbat outdoors through the months of June through August.
A fascinating aspect of the encyclical for me was that Pope Francis included two prayers at the end. One was phrased in Christian terms (he is, after all, the Pope!). Another uses language that is not specific to a particular religious tradition. I want to conclude with this prayer, because it reminds us that religion can be a source of healing and hope.
A Prayer for our Earth
All-powerful God, you are present
in the whole universe and in the smallest of your creatures.
You embrace with your tenderness
all that exists.
Pour out upon us the power of your
love, that we may protect life and beauty.
Fill us with peace, that we may
live as brothers and sisters, harming no one.
O God of the poor, help us to
rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth, so precious in your eyes.
Bring healing to our lives, that we
may protect the world and not prey on it, that we may sow beauty, not pollution
and destruction.
Touch the hearts of those who look
only for gain at the expense of the poor and the earth.
Teach us to discover the worth of
each thing, to be filled with awe and contemplation, to recognize that we are
profoundly united with every creature as we journey
towards your infinite light. We thank you for being with us each day.
Encourage us, we pray, in our
struggle for justice, love and peace.
The world and humanity do not change quickly. We harbour hate for generations and eradicating that evil is the work of generations. Pirkei Avot teaches, “The work is great, but you are not free to desist from it.” We must confront the hate that may lie within to construct from our tradition a life of harmony, hope and healing.
http://users.clas.ufl.edu/kenwald/pos4291/spring_00/relig2000.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/slavery_1.shtml
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/religious-jewish-terrorism-tabgah-church-arson/
http://cjcuc.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Chapter-8-Rethinking-Christianity-offprint.pdf
https://books.google.ca/books?id=Kdtd5WQtBNUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false