Reflections on Interfaith Partnership

This past week, I had an opportunity to sign the following letter alongside other Faith Leaders in Ottawa, organized by our Mayor:

We recognize that there is tremendous pain and grief in our city right now.

While we may not agree on everything, and at times, it may seem like we agree on very little, here in Ottawa we have a commitment that we share with every good person in the world.

We will never tolerate what is going on around the world to be used as a justification for any form of discrimination, violence or hatred in our city.

We request the wonderful residents of our beloved city to join us in calling out all forms of hatred, and to never glorify or take joy in violence. We urge everyone to never allow our ideologies, religious beliefs, or political positions to become a cause for hatred of another human being.

We are all neighbours. We stand with each other and against all forms of hate now and forever.

This letter gave me occasion to think back on my own relationship with interfaith partnership, which I’ve admittedly had more time to think about than participate in as of yet.

My earliest encounter with the concept was in the writings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. In an essay entitled No Religion is an Island (originally his inaugural lecture as Visiting Professor at New York City’s Union Theological Seminary), Heschel wrote that

The religions of the world are no more self-sufficient, no more independent, no more isolated than individuals or nations. Energies, experiences, and ideas that come to life outside the boundaries of a particular religion or all religions continue to challenge and effect every religion.

Horizons are wider, dangers are greater… No religion is an island. We are all involved with one another. Spiritual betrayal on the part of one of us affects the faith of all of us. Views adopted in one community have an impact on other communities. Today religious isolationism is a myth. or all the profound differences in perspective and substance, Judaism is sooner or later affected by the intellectual, moral, and spiritual events within the Christian society, and vice versa.

We fail to realize that while different exponents of faith in the world of religion continue to be wary of the ecumenical movement, there is another ecumenical movement, worldwide in extent and influence: nihilism. We must choose between interfaith and internihilism. Cynicism is not parochial. Should religions insist upon the illusion of complete isolation? Should we refuse to be on speaking terms with one another and hope for each other’s failure? Or should we pray for each other’s health and help with one another in preserving one’s respective legacy, in preserving a common legacy?

This call for dialogue and partnership is based on Heschel’s theological commitment that the religious experience is shared between Jews and non-Jews, even if it is expressed in wildly different ways. Heschel continues,

What divides us? What unites us? We disagree in law and creed, in commitments which lie at the very heart of our religious existence. We say no to one another in some doctrines essential and sacred to us. What unites us? Our being accountable to God, our being objects of God’s concern, precious in His eyes. Our conceptions of what ails us may be different, but the anxiety is the same. The language, the imagination, the concretization of our hopes are different, but the embarrassment is the same, and so is the sigh, the sorrow, and the necessity to obey.

We may disagree about the ways of achieving fear and trembling, but the fear and trembling are the same. The demands are different, but the conscience is the same, and so is arrogance, iniquity. The proclamations are different, the callousness is the same, and so is the challenge we face in many moments of spiritual agony.

Above all, while dogmas and forms of worship are different, God is the same. What unites us? A commitment to the Hebrew Bible as Holy Scripture. Faith in the Creator, the God of Abraham; commitment to many of his commandments, to justice and mercy; a sense of contrition; sensitivity to the sanctity of life and to the involvement of God in history; the conviction that without the holy the good will be defeated; prayer that history may not end before the end of days; and so much more.

There are moments when we all stand together and see our faces in the mirror: the anguish of humanity and its helplessness; the perplexity of the individual and the need of divine guidance; being called to praise and do what is required.

In Rabbi Dr. Shai Held’s words, “Heschel’s project… does not seek to identify correspondences between transcendental, human experience, on the one hand, and the dogmas of theology on the other. His aim is more modest - to point to those aspects of human experience that open human beings to the possibility of receiving divine revelation, and thus to show how revelation is an answer to an ineffable question of which every human being has the capacity to become aware.” Indeed, for Heschel the goal of interreligious dialogue is “neither to flatter nor refute one another, but to help one another” and it is precisely for that reason that he felt that religions could not only dialogue with, but also make demands of each other in good faith. Heschel called on the Church to “ponder seriously the tremendous implications of… the conscious or unconscious de-Judaization of Christianity, affecting the Church’s way of thinking, its inner life as well as its relationship to the past and present reality of Israel - the father and mother of the very being of Christianity.”

This conviction led Heschel to become a prominent figure in the fight for the Catholic Church to adjust their views towards the Jewish people. Edward K. Kaplan puts it well in his biography of Heschel:

Heschel asserted that the strained relationships between Jews and Christians constituted “a divine emergency.” Among the multiple causes of antisemitism, he judged the foremost to be “the slanderous claims that ‘the Jews’ are collectively responsible for the Crucifixion of Jesus, that because of this the Jews were accursed and condemned to suffer dispersion and deprivation throughout the ages. For centuries, anti-semites had invoked this charge to justify the most cruel and inhuman treatment of Jews; it was even advanced to rationalize the fate of six million Jews during the Nazi Holocaust.” The upcoming Ecumenical Council, Heschel averred, should “issue a strong declaration stressing the grave nature of the sin of anti-semitism as incompatible with Catholicism and, in general, with all morality.”

While Kaplan notes that Heschel was perhaps less instrumental than often credited, the Catholic Church did, in fact, adjust its views. Catholics were directed to renounce antisemitism, recognize Judaism as possessing an ongoing revelation with God, and to stop missionizing Jews.

Many, however, would criticize this form of interfaith dialogue since it implicitly gives non-Jews a right to demand changes in Jewish theology in return. At the very least, it significantly opens Jews up to a need to listen when non-Jews imply that Judaism really fits within their theological frameworks as well as Non-Jewish religions may fit within a Heschelian revelatory framework. If we are comfortable with Heschel’s view that Jews and Christians are really having the same fundamental experience, should we also be comfortable with this argument put forward by Catholic Professor Eleanor Stump in her book, Atonement?

There are non-Christian people in other cultures who have never had much or any contact with Christian views. There are those who have considered Christianity and rejected it. There are small children who die before the age of reason and who lack Christian beliefs for that reason. And then there is the problem of Judaism. On traditional Chirstian views, the patriarchs and other heroes of the Hebrew Bible had some theological beliefs about the importance of a Messiah in Israel’s history. But it is hard to suppose that these beliefs included beliefs about the incarnation, passion, and death of Christ. Nonetheless, in biblically based orthodox Christian doctrine, the patriarchs and other notable people of faith in the Hebrew Bible found their way to the love of God, and they are among the saved in heaven…

To begin to resolve the problem generated by Christian exclusivism, it helps to see that what Christ identifies as necessary for salvation is actually not knowledge of a set of propositions that need to be believed. Instead, it is knowledge of a person. Christ says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

But, clearly it is possible to know a person and know that that person exists, but to know that person under only one description and not under other relevant descriptions. One might know the pauper, for example, and not realize that he is the prince in disguise. For that matter, it is possible to be in relation to a person without much propositional knowledge about that person… One [therefore] can have a loving relationship with the person who is Christ, even while one rejects the theology about Christ. Karl Rahner thought that there are anonymous Christians, that is, people who are not self-acknowledged Christians but who are even so within the community of the saved in virtue of having a relationship of love with Christ. Aquinas himself thought that some pagans before the time of Christ may have had implicit faith in Christ in virtue of trusting God to be a rewarder of those who seek him.

… It is Christ that is essential and not belief in theological propositions about Christ. Furthermore, as the second person of the Trinity, Christ is God; and so love of what really is God is also love of Christ. It can therefore be true both that no one comes to the Father but by Christ and that some people who lack propositional beliefs mentioning Christ nonetheless come to the Father by Christ.

Stump, in other words, believes that whenever one experiences as relationship with God, they are really experiencing one with Jesus. She even specifically invokes a poem by Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (author of the Kuzari), writing that “there is no reason for supposing that Halevi had any developed theological beliefs about Christ, but it would take an ideologically hardened person to deny that these lines manifest a knowledge and love of God.” If we accept Heschel’s position that all Christian’s are really experiencing our God when they have religious experiences, one might well respond that we should also accept Stump’s inverted assumption. Dialogue, after all, must go both ways.

It was precisely this fear that led Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik to respond to those like Heschel by writing the following in his essay, Confrontation:

In any [interfaith] confrontation we must insist upon four basic conditions in order to safeguard our individuality and freedom of action.

First, we must state, in unequivocal terms, the following. We are a totally independent faith community. We do not revolve as a satellite in any orbit. Nor are we related to any other faith community as “brethren” even though “separated…”

Second, the logos, the word, in which the multifarious religious experience is expressed does not lend itself to standardization or universalization. The word of faith reflects the intimate, the private, the paradoxically inexpressible cravings of the individual for and his linking up with his maker. It reflects the numinous character and the strangeness of the act of faith of a particular community which is totally incomprehensible to the man of a different faith community…The confrontation should occur not at a theological level, but at a mundane human level. There, all of us speak the universal language of modern man. As a matter of fact, our common interests lie not in the realm of faith, but in that of the secular orders.*

Third, we members of the community of the few should always act with tact and understanding and refrain from suggesting to the community of the many, which is both proud and prudent, changes in its ritual or emendations of its texts. If the genuinely liberal dignitaries of the faith community of the many deem some changes advisable, they will act in accordance with their convictions without any prompting on our part. It is not within our purview to advise of solicit…

Fourth, we certainly have not been authorized by our history, sanctified by the martyrdom of millions, to even hint to another faith community that we are mentally ready to revise historical attitudes, to trade favors pertaining to fundamental matters of faith, and to reconcile “some” differences. Such a suggestion would be nothing but a betrayal of our great tradition and heritage and would, furthermore, produce no practical benefits.

Expanding on these four conditions, Rav Soloveitchik ruled as follows:

In areas of universal concern, we welcome an exchange of ideas and impressions. Communication among the various communities will greatly contribute towards mutual understanding and will enhance and deepen our knowledge of those universal aspects of man which are relevant to all of us.

In the area of faith, religious law, doctrine, and ritual, Jews have throughout the ages been a community guided exclusively by distinctive concerns, ideals, and commitments. Our love of and dedication to God are personal and bespeak an intimate relationship which must not be debated with others whose relationship to God has been molded by different historical events and in different terms. Discussion will in no way enhance of hallow these emotions.

We are, therefore, opposed to any public debate, dialogue or symposium concerning the doctrinal, dogmatic or ritual aspects of our faith vis-a-vis “similar” aspects of another faith community. We believe in and are committed to our Maker in a specific manner and we will not question, defend, offer apologies, analyze or rationalize our faith in dialogues centered about these “private” topics which express our personal relationship to the god of Israel. We assume that members of other faith communities will feel similarly about their individual religious commitment.

We would deem it improper to enter into dialogues on such topics as: Judaic monotheism and the Christian idea of Trinity; the messianic idea in Judaism and Christianity; the Jewish attitude on Jesus; the conception of the covenant in Judaism and Christianity; the Eucharist mass and Jewish prayer service; the Holy Ghost and prophetic inspiration; Isaiah and Christianity; the priest and the rabbi; sacrifice and the Eucharist; the church and the synagogue - their sanctity and metaphysical nature, etc. There cannot be mutual understanding concerning these topics, for Jew and Christian will employ different categories and move within incommensurate frames of reference and evaluation.

When, however, we move from the private world of faith to the public world of humanitarian and cultural endeavors, communication among the various faith communities is desirable and even essential. We are ready to enter into dialogue on such topics as war and peace, poverty, freedom, man’s moral values, the threat of secularism, technology and human values, civil rights, etc, which revolve about religious spiritual aspects of our civilization. Discussion within these areas will, of course, be within the framework of our religious outlooks and terminology.

In his second condition, though, Rav Soloveitchik appended the following footnote:

*The term “secular orders” is used here in accordance with its popular semantics. For the man of faith, this term is a misnomer. God claims the whole, not a part of man, and whatever he established as an order within the scheme of creation is sacred.

Rabbi Dr. Irving (Yitz) Greenberg took this to imply that the Rav was engaging in “Marrano writing” and that “if dialogue was permitted in matters of social concern, then it was permitted in all areas.” In his interpretation, the Rav’s position “released the pressure on Soloveitchik from the ultra-Orthodox/yeshiviah world that was totally opposed to any joint conversation. But in its actual policy implications, Soloveitchik’s statement opened the door to significant areas of joint learning and exchange.”

Greenberg went on to write that Christianity is not only “a true channel of connection between the God of Israel and humanity” but also that “Christianity itself is another one of the particular covenants that God has called into being in order to engage more and more humans in the process of tikun olam,” that “Resurrection and Incarnation were not putative facts to be argued over; they were signals intended for and recognized by the Christian community to bring them closer to God,” and that Jesus ought to be seen by Jews as a “failed Messiah… in the highest ranks of moral heroes, comparable to such Jewish heroes as Abraham, Moses, and Jeremiah” whose work also remains unfinished. He even came to agree with Roy Eckhart’s proposal that “God must repent for having endangered the Jews without providing for their protection” during the Holocaust and that “the only acceptable teshuvah for God would be to recant the divine covenant and thus remove the Jews from the extreme danger they were in… any further projection - by God or humans - of a covenant of demand that included the expectations that Jews must live by a higher standard (or else…) was outrageous and immoral.”

In 2015 a group of liberal Orthodox rabbis (some notable signatories besides Greenberg include Rabbis Marc Angel, David Bigman, Daniel Lendes, Benny Lau, Asher Lopatin, Shlomo Riskin, Daniel Sperber, and more) even responded to the Catholic Church’s shift with a statement affirming that “both Jews and Christians have a common covenantal mission to perfect the world under the sovereignty of the Almighty, so that all humanity will call on His name and abominations will be removed from the earth. We understand the hesitation of both sides to affirm this truth and we call on our communities to overcome these fears in order to establish a relationship of trust and respect.”

While being a cause for many to celebrate, these developments may imply to some that Rav Soloveitchik’s worries about the costs of theological (as opposed to practical) interfaith dialogue were warranted. Rabbi Akiva Weisinger even argued that

[While] Heschel seems to be more forward-thinking and modern in his more positive orientation towards interfaith dialogue, that is only on the surface. When examined critically, Heschel's position is shown to exist within a dated paradigm of the genesis of oppression and the relationships between powerful groups and disempowered groups, one that fails to properly recognize the importance of the autonomous identity of the disempowered. Heschel's position is motivated primarily by the desire to justify Jewish identity in the eyes of the Church, and attempts to do so through the argument that Jews ought to be recognized as human beings due to their similarity with Christians, a position which merely reinforces the notion that Jews are only human beings to the extent they are recognized as such by Christians. R. Soloveitchik, on the other hand, is much more sensitive to the dehumanizing assumptions made by a powerful group about a disempowered group and the way in which the powerful group can set the terms of the debate as to who ought to be recognized as human, in a way that is remarkably ahead of his time. R. Soloveitchik's position is to refuse to yield on the question of the legitimacy of Jewish identity, refuse to construct Jewish identity in terms of Christian identity, and instead demand recognition of the legitimacy of Jewish identity as something wholly different from Christian identity as the starting point for any dialogue. Thus, R. Soloveitchik is able to demand a more complete and more comprehensive tolerance than Heschel is able to, demanding respect for Jews as Jews rather than as similar to Christians.

Rav Soloveitchik’s approach was also adopted by the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, who wrote that there are two different approaches to interfaith interaction:

One is face-to-face, by doing dialogue, sharing our respective beliefs, but it’s a long, slow process, undertaken by rare and special people, and can easily be undone. The other is what I call side by side, which happens when people of different faiths, instead of talking together, do social action together, recognising that whatever our faith we still need food, shelter, safety and security.

In his book The Home We Build Together, Rav Sacks explicitly ‘sides’ with the latter approach:

It is modest, local, and makes no pretension to be an I-Thou encounter. It embodies no high aspiration that one day all the differences between faiths will prove illusory and we will find ourselves in the peace envisioned by Isaiah. It is simply working together across divides to solve the simple, practical problems we all face. It worked in the experiment involving the Eagles and the Rattlers. It almost brought about a peace deal between Jordan and Israel.

Its strength is its ability to touch deep chords of common humanity. For we are cast into this world together. We have souls, we have religions, and they are different. But we also have bodies and they have needs: for food, shelter, clothing, education, access to medical care, protection from the thousand shocks that flesh is heir to, sometimes even the simple fact of company. These are human universals that cut across cultural dividing lines, and they suggest a model for benign coexistence…

Side-by-side relationships should be encouraged in all religious congregations. Faith leaders should urge their communities to reach out to others in the neighbourhood. Religious representatives should take a lead in creating a covenant around the values we share and our collective commitment to the common good. Faith divides; citizenship unites. That is why it is important for faith leaders to spell out the need for shared space where we celebrate our common humanity, not just our theological particularities.

Ultimately, there is a lot to consider when engaging in interfaith activities and cooperation, but I am very glad to be part of a community that so values standing side-by-side with each other, confronting mutual challenges together as human beings living in a shared society. It’s a true privilege and blessing to be able to stand up against evil together and build a better future with so many inspiring leaders.