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SERMON BY RABBI michael berk
An Argument for Tolerance
January 4, 2008
While we’re experiencing the longest presidential campaign in American history, the truth is the political season is really only beginning to heat up now. And frankly, I love it. I am a political junky, raised in a politically active family for whom the word politics was not a dirty word.
But I am so far sorely distressed by this campaign, and the main reason is the role religion is playing. I am turned off by the contest between candidates to appear more religious than the next candidate and I distrust what I think are insincere utterances of fealty to one religion or another. My concern reached it’s height during one of the Republican debates a month or so ago, when the candidates were all asked if they believed every word in the bible.
What a ridiculous question! Because of my rabbinic training, which has taught me to look carefully at words and understand their meaning, I will admit to you that I don’t even know what the question means. The bible says that a rebellious child is to be executed. Do you believe that? What does it mean to ask do you believe the following words of the Psalmist: "Heed the sound of my cry, my king and God, for I pray to You. " The bible says an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth … do you believe that? The sages of our people NEVER for a moment thought it meant that if you put out my eye I put out your eye. I don’t know if the question means, Do you take the bible literally? – which is truly ridiculous, at least if you’re not talking about taking the Hebrew literally. Each candidate more or less swallowed the lower half of their face trying to answer the question, with one exception. Interestingly, the only one to have an intelligent answer was the one person with a theological training and that’s Mike Huckabee. While his political and religious views are different than mine, he too reflected on how bad the question was.
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What worries me most about the role of religion in the campaign is I fear it is further dividing and polarizing people. After so much work in the area of interfaith and ecumenical dialogue, and at a time when so much more work in that area is needed, religion is being used in a divisive way, which I fear encourages a lack of toleration for those whose beliefs differ from ours.
Tonight I want to make a case for religious tolerance, but I am going to stay away from the biggest theological problem with tolerance, namely, that monotheism is by its nature not really tolerant. That is, monotheism by definition states that there is one God. If I know who that God is and what that God wants, then I’m right and all others are wrong. There can’t be two correct monotheistic faiths. But I’m not going there now.
The simplest argument for toleration I know goes like this: In the Jewish culture, we show respect by putting a hat on our head. In American culture, we show respect by taking off our hat. Which one is correct? Neither, of course.
A bit more seriously, I’d like to look at this week’s Torah portion for another insight into tolerance. To do so, let’s begin by reminding ourselves that when last week’s portion ended, there was a deep sense of anxiety on the part of the Israelites and Moses. Moses has begun his sacred mission to convince Pharaoh to release the Israelites as God demanded. Pharaoh doesn’t care about this Hebrew God or His threats, and not only has refused to let the people go, he has defied God and Moses by making the lives of the Israelites more miserable than before Moses demanded their freedom. This has had a debilitating effect on Moses, and he even cried to God, "O Eternal One, why did You bring harm upon this people? Why did you send me? Ever since I came to pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has dealt worse with this people; and still You have not delivered Your people. "
This is the mood as we begin reading this week. To combat this sad mood, God now makes a dramatic response to Moses’ complaint. Moses had lamented the deterioration in Israel’s situation that followed his petition to Pharaoh, in God’s name. The portion this week begins with another revelation to Moses: "God spoke to Moses and said, ‘I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make myself known to them by My name, Adonai.’ "
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This is a very strange revelation Moses has just received. It’s an odd response to the anxiety Moses has expressed. At one level, it looks as though God has answered by simply introducing a new name for God. Not very comforting. To tell Moses a new name for God right now hardly serves to answer the widespread demoralization running through the Israelite camp. But scholars believe this response serves a different purpose. Precisely because the One who bears that name, God, is in truth quite well-known, and mention of the name, Adonai, evokes such strong emotions, like awe, reverence, honor, and fear, it’s used here to reinforce the authority of what is being said. That is to say, the name Adonai is introduced here very calculatedly – to express the certainty that God will in truth save the Israelites.
To elaborate a bit on this literary insight I should point out that in the ancient Near East, a god’s name expressed that God’s character, or attributers, and the god’s power. So, when god says, "I did not make myself known to [the patriarchs] by My name Adonai, " it means: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not experience the awesome power and might associated with the name Adonai. By using that name now, God is emphasizing that the promises made to them so long ago are about to come to fulfillment. God is bringing the full weight of divine power, as expressed in the name Adonai to bear now to save the Israelites, just as God promised a long time ago. This is how many of our traditional commentators have understood this puzzling verse.
This explanation reminds me of a fundamental principle of Judaism, namely, that God is experienced in many different ways by different people at different times. And this is a reflection of the reality not of many gods, but rather, that our lives change and we are all individuals. I experience God differently than my Christian neighbor or a Muslim in Saudi Arabia. I experience God far differently than my great-grandfather did. Yet, we all worship the same God
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In one of our most well known prayers that we’ve recited already this evening, Avot, we speak of the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. It’s very reasonable to ask of a tradition that does not believe in wasting words, why not just say, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The answer our rabbis give us is that the God of Abraham was not the same as the God of Isaac; and the God of Isaac was not the same as the God of Jacob. Obviously, this is not to be taken literally; our teachers are telling us that each patriarch, and we can assume, matriarch, had an individual relationship with God; each lived in different times, amid different circumstances, and, therefore, had different problems, questions, anxieties, and needs. Each developed his and her own relationship with God.
And that’s the way it is, or ought to be, with us. We each have our separate lives, our own concerns, our unique struggles and problems. I am part of a community which worships together; and I believe I pray to the God who brought forth my people from Egypt a few thousand years ago. This means I am part of a majestic tradition and a noble people which have had an ongoing dialogue with God. Yet, I am also unique and have my own relationship with God, and I need to struggle with it and shape it to meet the needs of my particular life. It’s not always easy, but it does make for a meaningful, personal, and deep connection to the divine.
I remember once a lecture I heard from the world-famous scholar, Rabbi David Hartman. He spoke about how moved he was by a visit to Israel after the Six Day War. He was awed by the power of the little Jewish state, the overwhelming optimism and confidence that pervaded the atmosphere there. A little while after his return it was Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av, the day dedicated to mourning various catastrophes in Jewish history including and beginning with the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem. As the mournful and melancholy chant of Lamentations filled the synagogue with the sad image of a desolate and abandoned Jerusalem– "Alas! Lonely sits the city once great with people! She that was great among nations is become like a widow… " – with everyone sitting on the floor in deep sorrow over the destruction, Hartman could not hold back. He interrupted the chant and said, "I just have to tell you that there are Jews in Jerusalem right now. And they are happy. " And with that, he sat back down as the congregation looked at him, stunned.
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Why did Rabbi Hartman take the unusual action of interrupting a service like that? He couldn’t tolerate mindless traditionalism; he couldn’t handle Jews in North America mourning the destruction of Jerusalem while Jews in Jerusalem were rejoicing in the reunification of the Capitol of the Jewish people. It wasn’t the tradition that bothered him, but without engaging the tradition, without trying to somehow reconcile the mourning mandated by Jewish law with the reality of the present day, the tradition looked ridiculous. Hartman knew that while we inherit a tradition and a God and customs, they are meaningless unless they interact with us. They must be part of us. They must grow as we grow and change and our circumstances change. Words of prayers written be a mid-eastern sage nearly 2,000 years ago are not going to mean much to me unless I really confront them and make them my own, unless I ask how they relate to me, unless I update them to apply to my life. That’s why my God is the same as the God of Abraham, because I have strived to know that God, to worship and serve that God, and to make that God part of my life. Without that interaction, that freedom, that experimentation, the God of Abraham would be something I’d read about in a history book.
To me, the lesson about toleration is this: I may speak the same prayers as my ancestors. I may call God by the same name as my grandparents. But that doesn’t mean that I experience God the same way they did. You and I share the same prayers, yet because our lives are different, we come to our beliefs differently. Our God meets each of us as individuals, who we are, where we are, as we are. We just have to seek the encounter. And I believe this to be true with those who identify with another religion. Our goal is the same, for the goal of every religion is the same: to lead a good life. While we may disagree about the particulars, there is general agreement on what being a good person means, whether you be a Jew, Christian or Muslim. We walk separate paths, we recite different prayers, we call God by different names – but we all seek similar goals. A tolerant society understands, celebrates, and honors that we experience God in our own way, and that by accepting and tolerating others, our society flourishes in ways it otherwise would not be able to.
I would like to conclude with a quote from the moving speech of Dr. Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, to the URJ biennial last month. In her remarks about the historic partnership of the URJ and the Islamic Society of North America after Rabbi Yoffie introduced his initiative, Jews and Muslims in Conversation, she said: "religious difference does not lead to conflict and disorder in society, but religious differences only serve to enrich our collective understanding of the Creator who is beyond the comprehension of any created being. " Ken yehi Ratzon: may this be God’s will.
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