Cross-Currents Interfaith

A new issue of Jewish Action, the OU s glossy quarterly hit the stands last week. A confluence of factors leads to this unabashed plug.
Of course I m biased.

I m on the editorial board. So are a number of other people you will recognize as shuttling back and forth across the Agudah/OU divide. That s the main reason I like it.

It is one of the only Orthodox publications that offers real debate: two or more sides of an issue.
It is a good issue for Cross-Currents contributors. Toby Katz turns what could have been a boring magazine review into n of the values communicated to girls and young women by secular and Torah publications.

Yours truly wrote the about friends and foes in the Christian world. Readers have commented in the past that several CC pieces seemed to go out of their way to be friendly to Christian interests. Some of these readers approved; others did not.

Perhaps at least some in the latter group will understand after reading the article why it is possible today to react to Christians with something other than the animosity and hostility that we displayed and they often deserved for centuries. Some will also understand why expressing thanks and gratitude may also be both the right thing to do as well as an important part of building strategic alliances with a shrinking group of friends in a world that grows more hostile by the hour.
Finally, a request from JA s editor, who wants to do a story called Travel Tales.

Here is her request:
There is something quite shocking about the Rev. Ted Haggard scandal.
But it s not what you might think.

The allegations leveled against Rev. Haggard are obviously salacious, but in today s world, unfortunately, they are not shocking. This wasn t the first nor is it likely the last such scandal involving a religious leader.

Actually, what was really unprecedented was the tone and tenor of the reverend s written apology. In an age when personal responsibility is usually eschewed for blaming others and claiming the mantle of victimhood (often to be followed by entry into some sort of rehab), a statement actually acknowledging mistakes and accepting culpability is nothing short of shocking.
Just how hard should Jews work to build relationships for a rainy day?

A little-known work of the Ralbag may hold a clue to the answer.
Many of us have heard the stories about the ethical response of a Jewish leader to a non-Jew and the dividends it brought years later. We know about the Nodah Bi-Yehudah and the baker s son, and how it saved Prague s Jews from a plot to destroy them; we ve read about R Yaakov Kamenetsky and his instructions to return the extra postage to the postmaster, and how he became mayor years later and saved Jews under Nazi rule.

We have digested many similar stories. Part of their charm is that the response was spontaneous and uncalculated. The Torah figure acted as he did because he was suffused with integrity, not because he anticipated some future gain.

In more recent times, Jewish leaders have sometimes deliberately pursued warm relationships with non-Jews in high places specifically for the purpose of investing in the future. There is nothing ignoble or unethical about this, as the parties on the other side of the relationship are also looking out for their own future benefit. The expectation is symbiotic gain.

Along the way, real friendships are created, because the people who involve themselves in this kind of lobbying are often those who genuinely like other people, no matter how diverse.
Is there precedent for this in Jewish history? We think of Esther parlaying her position into salvation for her people.

Esther, though, had no real choice in the matter. Is bridge-building part of the Jewish political agenda? This author in particular would like to know, since he spends a good chunk of the week warming up to potential friends outside the Jewish community on behalf of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

An incident in the life of the Ralbag may shed some light on the matter.
Back in the old days, America s religious checkerboard came in only two colors Jewish and Christian. This was never true, of course, but we liked to think it was.

The perception left room for an effective throw-away line that made inter-group cooperation possible: We all worship the same G-d, after all. I m not sure if this was ever true, but by now it is not even a useful fiction. Ironically, the presidential aspirations of Mitt Romney are creating doubts about whether there is room for all of us to stand under the same theological umbrella.

As far as I am concerned, the first ones to get pushed out into the rain are the Islamofascists.
Terry Mattingly is one of America s most influential religion writers. He about Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney s Mormonism coming up as an issue in his possible bid for the Republican presidential nod in 2008.

Commenting on Mormon beliefs about gay marriage, Romney had a memorable response. Mormons believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and a woman and a woman.
But the real issue, says Mattingly is not polygamy, but polytheism.

He links to a seen from an evangelical perspective. According to this view, Mormons believe in many gods, each presiding over a different world. Moreover, gods were once human, and became gods through a process called exaltation.

What emerges is that many Protestants see the Mormon conception of G-d as so different from their own, that they do not regard them as monotheistic at all. (Having met quite a few Mormons who are among the loveliest people around, I caution readers against accepting all of this at face value without hearing their response.)
I find this fascinating, for a number of reasons.

First of all, it makes my relationship with Christians much easier. It has never been easy or pleasant to explain to Christian friends why Jews regard the Christian triune understanding of G-d as running clearly afoul of G-d s Oneness, at least according to the standard expected of Jews. (Medieval authorities disputed whether non-Jews were expected to maintain as pure an understanding of monotheism according to the Noachide Code.

) I now have an analogy that hopefully will work. Just as many Christians see Mormon belief in gods who were once human as a hopeless distortion of divinity, Jews see the very possibility of G-d becoming flesh (and therefore less than infinite and limitless) with the same objection. This should help them at least understand our position, which in my experience, few have ever heard.

As if the Pope s remarks were not enough, Sacha Baron Cohen s new movie is poised to precipitate yet another international crisis. Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev plans to bring up Cohen s Borat character, a bumbling Kazakh journalist who hardly brings credit to his countrymen, at a meeting with President Bush.
Cohen is the British comedian who created Ali G, a satirical character who either mocks black street culture, or whites who throng to embrace it.

The academic world hasn t quite figured out which of these is true. This is not surprising. Cohen, who was educated at Cambridge, built his stage personality on acting clueless and stupid, and seems to be several steps ahead of his audience, who can t quite figure him out.

His Throw the Jews Down the Well routine, which really mocks antisemites, seemed so real and authentic that Jew-haters responded with glee to the suggestion. whose parents attend an Orthodox synagogue to drop his immensely popular Ali G persona, because its mockery of others is not consistent with Jewish values, and fans resentment towards other Jews. (Ali G has since migrated to the other side of the Atlantic, and has taken up residence on HBO.

I guess he s our problem now.)
Cohen s new Borat film was recently unwrapped to appreciative audiences at a Toronto film festival. Kazakhs find Borat deeply offensive for completely misrepresenting their country as they see it.

You learn something every day.
Those of us who do daven remember that the first blessing before the Shma praises G-d for creating both light and darkness. Why is this so important?

It might not have been so crucial, were it not for the Zoroastrians, a group that once dominated the Persian Iraqi world that hosted our Talmudic sages. They came up with one of the most elegant even if wrong solutions to the problem of evil. They posited two gods, one responsible for good (symbolized by light and they were fire-worshippers, to boot), the other for evil and darkness.

Our blessing directly challenged this notion, asserting that the One G-d is responsible for all phenomena, whether we see them as good or not so good. Zoroastrians were the most famous of dualists. Everyone knew that.

Everyone but Laurie Goodstein, who somehow credited them with a core belief in one god. I decided to check the ultimate authority, just in case my memory was playing tricks on me. Wikipedia seemed to back Goodstein, crediting Zoroastrians for coming up with the monotheism thing, and for worshipping but a single god, Ahura Mazda.

Stubbornly, I pressed my inquiry forward. I wikied dualism, and sure enough, came up with a claim that the Zoroastrians were exemplars of a two-god system. Who was correct?

Good religion, bad religion. Differentiating between them jumped into prominence in the aftermath of 9/11. Americans who ordinarily gave religion a wide berth suddenly had to contemplate religious warfare on their native soil.

Europeans were used to this; to Americans it was quite new. A litmus test of acceptability quickly sprang into existence. Religion was good if it promoted tolerance, cooperation and respect for other groups.

If it wanted to convert people (especially people close to your shopping mall) by the sword, it was bad.
People who value religion in their lives require much more of religion to make it good. A while back, I came across some Jewish demographers who argued for a paradigm shift in Jewish outreach.

A generation or two ago, young Jews could be connected to the Jewish community through the Holocaust, or through Israel. This was no longer the case. The Holocaust card had been played too often, and was associated with persecution and oppression notions that young Jews didn t want to think about.

Israel s image on campus was so poor, that increasing numbers of students found identifying with it a liability.
Fortunately, they argued, a new strategy suggested itself in reaching under-affiliated, Jews, albeit in a different age cohort. Jews just a few years older and starting families sensed a moral aimlessness around them.

As they thought about the values that they would want to teach their children, they realized that they were coming up short on answers to questions of right and wrong, or moral and ethical questions in an ever-changing world. If Jewish teachers could point the way through Jewish wisdom and tradition, they had a great chance to connect the younger generation with their legacy and their coreligionists.
People who take religion seriously have every expectation that a Deity Who cares about Man will have something to say about the issues that consume people, both major and minor.

Religion, they reason, ought to work. If it cannot address the eternal questions of life, it won t satisfy the quest for significance. Religion should address the ultimate issues, such as the meaning and purpose of life, and the existence of justice in an apparently unjust world.

It also ought to provide insight into the everyday dilemmas that people must agonize over. It should help them in their relationships with spouses, children, parents and friends. It should guide them in relating to their jobs, their free time, their issues of money, satisfaction, and security.

It should help make some sense out of the headlines of the morning paper. Tertullian, Pascal and Kierkegaard may not have obsessed over these issues, but then again there may not have been any need to in their days, when many people thought they had a better handle on these things. The western tendency to question everything and take nothing for granted leaves many people searching for moral footholds while feeling like they are falling down the side of the mountain.

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