Sermon: Behar: Can Intolerance be Tolerated

Written by Writings & Sermons by others — 10 June 2012

I am a very happy and settled Rabbi at Alyth, about to enter my sixth year of service to the congregation, but there was one Rabbinic job advert in the Jewish Chronicle this year which was for a little while rather tempting – if only for the mischief that I could cause by applying.  This was the advertisement for a Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, to take the place of Lord Jonathan Sacks.

Now I am not suggesting that I could perform such a role with any distinction at all but there was something missing from the advert which gave me an opening.  Nowhere in the advert did it specify that the applicant needed to be an Orthodox Rabbi.   It would have been fun to see what would have happened if I, a Progressive Rabbi by upbringing and a Reform Rabbi by conviction, sent in an application.  Now of course I didn’t but I should have been warned of even contemplating it by what happened to the Chief Rabbi of Lemberg, now called Lvov in Poland, a city with a huge Jewish population in the nineteenth and early twentieth century of more than 150,000 Jews served by 97 synagogues.

Rabbi Avraham Kohn was appointed Chief Rabbi of Lemberg in 1844.    He was an enlightened intellectual who had studied at the University of Prague and had been ordained into the fast growing Reform rabbinate.  He was also an excellent community organiser and rapidly in his new post served the Jews of Lemberg well by establishing a secondary school where secular subjects were taught to a high standard alongside Judaism, established a major Reform Synagogue in the city, and successfully campaigned for the removal of an unjust tax imposed by the city on Shabbat candles and Kosher meat.

Somebody did not like what he was doing.  On September 6, 1848, Abraham Ber Pilpel entered the kitchen of Rabbi Abraham Kohn and his family and poured arsenic in the soup that was being prepared for their dinner. Within hours, the forty one year old rabbi and his infant daughter were dead.  It was never absolutely clear who had hired Abraham Ber Pilpel to murder the Reforming Chief Rabbi of Lemberg – but there were many whispers that the people behind the plot were Lemberg’s Orthodox leaders who were known to have creamed off much of the Shabbat Candle and Kosher meat tax.  Perhaps he had been hired by people who just objected to Rabbi Kohn’s Jewish reforms. We will never know.

Rabbi Kohn became Judaism’s first and hopefully last martyr to toleration.  At the European Union for Progressive Judaism Conference a few weeks ago in Amsterdam, Rabbi Walter Homolka, Dean of the German Reform Rabbinic College, The Abraham Geiger Colleg spoke about how toleration for the religious principles of others is deeply embedded within Judaism, helping all Jews but the fundamentalist to be partners with God in the repair of the world.

In 21st Century society there is no such person as a stranger.  Where Jews live today the stranger is your neighbour, and as the central verse of the Torah says “you must love your neighbour as yourself”.   When you leave this Synagogue after Kiddush and walk just down Alyth Gardens you are bound to encounter people whose family origins span three perhaps four continents, whose religious traditions include Hinduism, Chrisitianity and Islam as well as several varieties of Judaism.  As well as in the Diaspora communities where Jews live, this is increasingly the case in Israel.  The material success of our Jewish state means that not only is it home to more than a million Muslim and Christian Arabs but also to many thousands of non-Jewish economic and refugee migrants from Asia and Africa.  The film that we showed here at Alyth on Yom Ha’Atzmaut, documenting how the children of Israel’s foreign workers are becoming young Israelis was called “Strangers no More” for a good reason.

Judaism is hardwired for toleration.  We do not see ourselves as the sole possessors of absolute truth.  We understand that for a Christian, and Hindu or a Muslim their truth is their way to God.  So by the way in his heart of hearts did Chief Rabbi Sacks in his book “The Dignity of Difference” until the more fundamentalist Dayanim, who can’t accept the relativisation of truth, ensured he republished the book without the tolerant sections.

Moses Mendlesohn,  the eighteenth century German Jewish philosopher who was one of the strongest advocates for Judaism’s engagement with the enlightenment, put this elegantly in 1769:  “All our rabbis teach unanimously that the written and oral laws in which our revealed religion consists are binding only on our nation. Moses commanded the law for us, it is a legacy of the community of Jacob. All the other peoples of the earth, we believe, have been instructed by God to observe the law of nature and the religion of the patriarchs [Mendelssohn notes: “The seven main commandments of the Noachides”]. Those who direct their way of life in accordance with this religion of nature and reason are called by other nations virtuous men, and these are children of the eternal blessedness.”

The Noachide Laws are an early Rabbinic interpretation of the end of the story of Noah which says that as long as a person observes seven basic principles of decency and humanity, such as not killing, having a system of justice and not being excessively cruel to animals, then whatever their religious tradition or beliefs they are just as much to be considered righteous and entitled to a place in the World to come as any good Jew.

When you walk into the front door of JCoSS, the first pluralist and therefore tolerant by charter Jewish secondary school, attended by many children of Alyth, high up on the wall are these words from the Talmud [Eiruvin 13b]  – Eilu v Eilu Divrei Elohim Chayyim – both these are these are the words of the Living God.   You will find out how this is put into practice here at our Synagogue on May 22nd when JCoSS Deputy Head Patrick Moriarty will debate with pioneer teachers Peter Hyman and Bev Vincent what the components should be today of a 21st century education.

The context of Eilu v Eilu is this:  “R. Abba stated in the name ofSamuel: For three years there was a dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, the former asserting, ‛The Halachah is in agreement with our views’ and the latter contending, ‛The halachah is in agreement wit hour views.’ Then a bat kol issued announcing, ‛[The utterances of] both are the words of the living God, but the halachah is in agreement with the rulings of Beit Hillel.’  Since, however, ‘both are the word of the living God’ what was it that entitled Beit Hillel ‛to have the halachah fixed in agreement with their rulings?’ Because they were kindly and modest, they studied their own rulings and those of Beit Shammai, and were even so [humble] as to mention the actions of Beit Shammai before their own.”

Feel the ancientness of that text – in first Century Judaism truth was not absolute but rather there are multiple truths and one does not need to squash out the truths of others for your truth to be real.

The way it works is this – all Jews learn authoritatively and authentically from the same texts.  As we will learn at our Tikkun Leyl Shavuot this year we all stood at Sinai together to hear the foundation text – this Torah.  But where we go from there, how we interpret what Torah means for us today here and now diverges and is meant to diverge – for these and these are the words of the Living God.

It means for a Reform Jew you do find truth – for us, for example, the truth that men and women are to be equal in Jewish religious duties and observances.   For us the truth that we are to find our own way of resting and observing God’s gift of Shabbat meaningful to our day.    For an Orthodox Jew you find your truth – that men and women should observe separate religious observances, that there is a precise system of what it means to rest on Shabbat.  Both are an authentic Jewish way to God.  The only thing that isn’t is the Jew, or the Christian or the Muslim or the Hindu who says “only my way is the truth – the rest of you are wrong and not to be tolerated.”

It is tempting in an uncertain, rapidly changing world, where we seven billion have to share limited space and resources, where the stranger is our neighbour, to seek the certainty that an authority figure can give us.  Fundamentalism in its many religious guises dangerously answers this search.  It helps people to feel that they are strong in what they think and do.

Really though fundamentalism it is a weakness that takes you further and further from God – making one single image of the God who is all and everywhere.   At the root of an authentic search for God is the ability to see truth in all of its multicoloured, multivalent and diverse glory.  Then find your path, joining with others, whilst respecting those who choose differently.    I wouldn’t have made a good Orthodox Chief Rabbi!