entitled 'Developing and Promoting Peace Initiatives,' 21 March 2013 at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia.
A Community Spiritual Leader’s Perspective
Jews and Muslims Building Bridges
Rabbi Don Levy
So you’ve
heard a brief biography of my background, and you might be thinking: what’s a retired military officer doing,
speaking to us about developing and promoting peace initiatives? And if such a question is in your
mind right now, you could be entirely ‘forgiven’ for thinking so. This, even though I was a chaplain, and not a
line officer. Chaplains in the US forces,
as in the Australian forces, are unarmed by policy in order to preserve their
Geneva Conventions status as non-combatants.
Even so, it would be disingenuous to claim that their role has no
connection with the mission to win in any conflict.
So if my ‘peacenik’ credentials
are automatically suspect by my past associations, what am I doing in this
panel? In order to qualify as a worker sand
teacher for peace, doesn’t one have to be a conspicuous, and passionate opponent
of any form of military activity?
Knowing that there are a range
of possible answers to the above question, I’ll let the listener decide based
on his or her own sensibilities. I wish
to talk about peace, and about learning to strive for peace, from a far more
personal perspective. In my home country
and here we are truly blessed to have representative forms of government that
make our elected officials accountable to the voters for their actions: in the realm of making peace, as in every
other policy area. Oh, we all complain
about the difficulty of making our respective governments truly accountable. Most of our frustration in this area stems
from the fact that each person’s view is never the only view. There is a certain tyranny in majority rule. But it is superior to every other
tyranny. Or, to put it differently, as
the late Sir Winston Churchill famously observed: It has been said that democracy is the
worst form of government…except for all the others that have been tried.
I therefore wish to focus, when
I think of what I as a religious leader can do to effect peace, on a more
limited realm than that of nations and statecraft. After all, the Hebrew word ‘shalom’ which is
translated as ‘peace’ actually means ‘wholeness.’ It doesn’t mean armistice or treaty. We achieve ‘shalom’ through a feeling of
wholeness that radiates from inside ourselves.
This wholeness, ideally, translates into an attitude toward other human
beings that encompasses ever-enlarging concentric circles of humanity. As our own state of wholeness becomes further
and further fixed, we feel free to share it wider. The wholeness about which I speak, is really
the same as happiness. Happiness can
only be established within the individual, but once the individual achieves it,
it influences how that individual interacts with the world. Happy individuals ultimately translate into a
happier world. Happy individuals do not
spread unhappiness. For example, show me
a prospective suicide bomber…and I’ll show you a patently unhappy
individual. Happy people, in their
condition of wholeness, do not commit atrocities against others. It’s just a fact.
So the key to peace, to me as a
religious leader, teacher, and guide, resides within the individual soul. But I want to talk to you about peace on a
slightly larger scale than that. This
is, after all, an interfaith ‘Peace Education Forum.’ So I want to talk about peace in the context
of regard between individuals that reaches across religious lines.
A moment ago, I asserted that
wholeness, ideally, translates into an attitude toward other human beings that
encompasses ever-enlarging concentric circles of humanity as our own state of
wholeness becomes further and further fixed.
So when we first internalise the need for, and begin the quest for
achieving wholeness, the first beneficiaries will be the ones closest to us. One’s nuclear family. Then one’s extended family and circle of
friends. Then one’s specific community,
such as a religious community if one belongs to one. And then other communities, religious
or other. And so on.
Sometimes, in our efforts at
peacemaking, we will skip intermediate circles and reach instinctively or
deliberately for those within a wider circle.
Specifically, we’ll reach for those whose group identification would
indicate that they are about as far apart as two groups living in the same city
could be. As an example, a Jewish group
and a Muslim group reach out to one another.
The observer would be forgiven for assuming that members of the two
groups had just made such a ‘jump.’
After all, conventional wisdom
holds that if any two groups within our society should have a hard time reaching
out to one another, and developing regard for one another, it would be Jews and
Muslims, correct? The ‘proof’ of this is
the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. This
conflict is commonly seen as proof that there is an essential conflict between
Jews and Muslims. This, despite that
there are also Christian Palestinians and Arabs. It is generally understood that, at the
present time, Islam is by far the most influential religious force among
Palestinian Arabs. Also, in the wider
world, the most vocal voices in protest against the power of the Israeli state vis-à-vis
the Palestinians come from Muslim religious circles, encompassing all Muslims
– not just Arabs. It is therefore
sometimes surprising to casual observers that there is so much effort being expended
in Jewish and Muslim communities to reach out to one another. I’m thinking specifically in the USA, but in
my short residence here in Australia I’ve seen some evidence that it’s
happening here as well if on a smaller scale.
And as an American Rabbi, I am something of a veteran of these
efforts. I would therefore like to focus
my talk on the mutual reaching out of Jewish and Muslim communities toward one
another. What do we learn from such
efforts? About ourselves as well as
about ‘The Other’? And beyond the
Jewish-Muslim equation, what do we learn about peace-making in general?
There was a time when I personally
was a ‘prisoner’ to the perception that I identified above. That there was an essential conflict between
Jews and Muslims. Then, in 1983 to 1984,
I lived for a year in Sinop, Turkey where I came to understand that it was more
perception than fact. I remember
wandering around Sinop and elsewhere in Turkey hoping that I didn’t ‘look’ or
‘sound’ too Jewish since I was in a Muslim country. And then one day, I let my guard down. A teenage girl, the daughter of a Turk in the
town where I was living whom I had befriended, was showing me around the local
archaeological museum. Sinop has a
history as an outpost of Christian influence in Anatolia, and in the museum was
a display of Christian burial steles found in the town. The girl turned to me and asked me about some
symbology found chiselled into the steles.
“Oh, I don’t know anything about that,” I told her without thinking.
“I’m a Jew, not a Christian.”
The girl looked at me
thoughtfully, completed the tour, and then we walked back to her father’s
restaurant. As I sat down to drink tea,
the girl huddled with her father and their two employees on the other side of the
room. After a moment, they came over to
me.
“Don,” the father, whose name
was Nezamettin Güçlü, said. “You are a Jew?”
I supposed that, at that point, there
was no denying it. “Evet,” I said,
meaning ‘yes.’
“Don,” Nezamettin said. “You are
sünnetli?”
I pulled out my pocket
Turkish-English dictionary and feverishly looked up the word ‘sünnetli.’ It means, circumcised.
“Evet,” I said. “I am sünnetli.”
“You don’t eat domuz,” he
said, more a declaration than a question.
I knew that domuz is pork.
“No,” I replied. “I don’t eat domuz.”
“Ibrahim is your father,” he
added.
Ibrahim, Abraham, I thought.
Same guy. “Evet,” I confirmed. “Ibrahim is my father.”
Nezamettin reached out and
embraced me. “We are brothers!” he proclaimed.
And one by one, the other Turkish men in the room who had heard the
exchange, came over to embrace me in a bear hug and proclaim “Biz kardeshler”
– we are brothers.
From the experience, I learned
that there are commonalities that tie us together with those for whom such ties
might be counter-intuitive. It was a
powerful lesson, reinforcing what we Jews are taught in our Mishnah, one of our
cornerstone religious texts. There, in
Tractate Avot 4:1, we are taught: Who
is wise? He that learns from every
one. So we must go through life with
an open mind, seeing what we can learn from each person we encounter.
But back to Jewish-Muslim
relations. Let me tell you two stories
‘from the trenches’ as it were, one of shining success and one of dubious
results.
After I had served eight years
as an Air Force chaplain, I found myself stationed in Ramstein, Germany. For the first time in my career, I was to
serve with a Muslim colleague, an Imam, on the same staff. Hamza Al Mubarak, my colleague, was an
American, from El Paso, Texas and an adult convert to Islam from the
African-American Christianity of his upbringing. Not only did we serve on staff together; we
served in the same work-group, the ‘Interfaith Division’ consisting of Hamza,
myself and our boss – a Greek
Orthodox priest! And we were a very
effective – and cordial – workgroup at that.
But I really got to know my
colleague Hamza well when, sometime after my arrival in Germany, the senior
staff chaplain informed us that the commanding general had given the chaplain’s
office a grant of half a million dollars to build a new facility. And he, the boss, was ‘giving’ the funds to
us, Hamza and me, to build a chapel designed for, and dedicated specifically to
our two congregations.
Hearing the pronouncement, in
retrospect, the only thing that left us speechless was the generosity of the
grant. It didn’t occur to either of us
that Muslims and Jews sharing a building would seem odd. Especially so, when Hamza looked at me with
smiling eyes and said: “The good news is that, from here, to face either
Jerusalem or Mecca you have to face the same way.”
With the knowledge that each of
us needed the building to have the same orientation, we met with the German
architect and began visualising the new facility. Each of us would have a separate sanctuary
for prayer and classes, and the sanctuaries would be a mirror image of one
another – but with different furnishings, each appropriate to its occupants’
faith. And there would be a shared
entrée and meeting room. The architect
became really caught up in the project, visiting both mosques and synagogues in
the region to get a perspective. Between
us we came up with a design for a facility that would be not only functional
but also beautiful. So beautiful, that
the construction cost overran the budgeted amount by a quarter-million
dollars. But the general being caught up
in the excitement of the project covered the overrun! (Leaving me thinking,
perhaps the Messiah has come…)
I’ll never forget when we
inaugurated the new chapel and the first Friday night that we both used
it. It was the Sabbath immediately
preceding Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year festival. And it happened that Ramadan, the Muslim holy
month, would begin on the same day. So
this was the Sabbath where the New Moon that would bring both our important
festivals was announced. Our separate
prayer services ran almost simultaneously that night. And afterward, the two congregations mingled
as they spilled out of their respective spaces.
As the fellowship time went on and the hour became late, I began looking
for my children, to collect them and go home.
I didn’t see them anywhere about, until I happened to look through the
open door into the Muslim chapel and saw them playing with the Imam’s
kids. My colleague had brought a ‘Foosball’
table into their side, and my kids were playing a spirited game with Hamza’s
kids as other children from the two communities looked on.
That image – of the rabbi’s kids
and the imam’s kids playing Foosball – became a powerful metaphor for what we’d
done in creating the sacred space for our two communities to share. The lesson of the shared chapel was this; we
represented two unique groups in American life.
Each was distinct. And yet, there
was far more that we shared in common than that divided us. We were all Americans living in Germany. We were all serving in the uniform of our
country. And as we came to learn, we all
faced the common angst of members of minority groups. Each of us hoped that we could maintain our
unique heritage and identity as a legacy for our children. These were the things that were on our minds
when we mingled on Friday nights – not the differing positions we might
automatically take on, say, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. The latter, while is certainly on the
collective ‘minds’ of our respective religious communities, really had nothing
to do with us as we interacted.
The story swept the European
media; for the next two years, I found myself constantly giving interviews to
newspaper, television and radio reporters brought in by our base’s Public
Affairs Officer. After a few such
interviews, I questioned why the story should be so interesting as to be reported
on repeatedly. “It’s just a chapel building
costing less than a million dollars,” I pointed out. “With the USA involved in
two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, why is this such a big deal?” The Public Affairs Officer, a German civilian
woman, told me: “You don’t understand the local mentality, Rabbi. In my village there are Catholics and
Protestants whose families have not talked to one another for 500 years and
more! To them, as well as to Europeans
generally, the idea of Muslims and Jews being friendly, is incredible.”
So, from this experience with a
small military base chapel in Germany, I learned valuable lessons about the
nature of transcending differences between groups whom one might ‘expect’ to
find dialogue difficult. But then, in
the next phase of my life, I had a reinforcing lesson from a not-so-positive
experience.
After I retired from the US Air
Force, I moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado.
It was there that I had my first job offer, at Temple Beit Torah, a
small congregation there. And I knew the
city well, having been based there as Jewish chaplain to the nearby US Air
Force Academy a few years before retiring.
Once settled in to my new home and position, I was approached by a man
named Arshad Yusoufi. An immigrant from
Pakistan, Mr Yusoufi was one of the acknowledged leaders in the local Islamic
society.
I already knew Yusoufi. Several years earlier when I was working with
the cadets at the Air Force Academy, he was our consultant for religious issues
concerning Muslim cadets. At that time,
we did not have a Muslim chaplain, nor was there anybody local whom we could
hire as a contractor to establish and lead a Muslim religious program for our
Muslim cadets. But Arshad was available
on request to consult on religious accommodation matters, as well as to teach
the chaplains and other staff about Islam.
This was important in those years – 2001 through 2004 – as we in America
were struggling to understand our Muslim neighbours and their unique concerns
in the wake of the September 11th attacks on our country by Al
Qaida. During my tenure at the Air Force
Academy, I had gotten to know Arshad, and found him a person with whom I could
work well in a multi-faith environment.
Now, with my return to Colorado
Springs, I sat down with Arshad and we discussed the possibility of creating
some sort of dialogue between our two communities. We were both keenly aware of the notion that
Jews and Muslims sharing friendship is counter-intuitive to some. If we would succeed, our success would serve
as a powerful statement to the wider community.
Arshad’s proposal was for him to
lecture to my Wednesday night Judaism class, after which he would reciprocate
by inviting me to speak to members of his congregation. He felt that any general interaction between
our communities should start from a basis of mutual knowledge in each about the
other’s faith and way of life. If it
wasn’t the course of action I might have followed as a first choice, I could
see the logic in it. And I could see the
logic in his appearance in my community preceding mine in his. Arshad feared that his community would prove
to be somewhat more insular than mine.
He was not concerned about his reception in my community. But he seemed to have some concern for my
reception in his. He felt that, if he
were well-received amongst the Jews of Temple Beit Torah, it would help him in
paving the way for my successful reciprocal visit to his community. And that would ultimately lead to a fruitful
dialogue between members of our respective communities.
Another aspect that I thought
would ultimately lead to a fruitful dialogue was the idea of keeping the
Israeli-Palestinian dispute out of it.
In our conversation, one of the first things Arshad had said was that
this political football should be left outside the door, and I couldn’t agree
with him more. Since this is a bigger
issue than any of us and our local concerns, what was the point of having it as
a spoiler? Our two communities were
simply not going to agree on it. The
goal was to find common ground, and after my experience in Germany I felt that
the common ground would not be hard to find, iff we could keep the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict off the agenda.
If we did succeed in spurring serious dialogue or
fellowship, then obviously the issue would ultimately be one of discussion
between members of the two groups. But
it would serve no positive purpose to bring it into the dialogue until a degree
of familiarity, and trust, could be achieved.
My students liked the idea of veering temporarily off from the
curriculum we’d been following, for the opportunity to learn more about Islam. I scheduled the sessions – one for a lecture,
and one for questions arising, and answers.
On the night of the lecture, my class was far larger than usual; members
of my community were really interested to hear what Arshad had to say.
The experience was as
challenging, as my previous experience of interacting with Muslims had been
positive. For one thing, if you know
Jews at all, you know that we have a tendency to question authority. Any authority.
We’re simply not ‘Yes Men.’ We
like a good verbal sparring. The very
name ‘Israel’ means ‘he will strive with God.’
But Arshad’s lecture style was very much from an ‘expert’ mindset. Whether this stems from his Islam, or from
the part of the world from which he came, I cannot tell. But the mindset immediately put my Jews on
the defensive.
Then
there was the fact that Arshad was coming from the position of an orthodox
Muslim, and my Jews were definitely not
Orthodox Jews. So the difference between an orthodox
believer and a reformist stood between Arshad and my Jews in addition to the
differences between a Muslim and a Jew.
At some point, when I sensed a building hostility towards my guest
speaker over his positions on the role of women in religion, I felt the need to
point out this difference. That helped
to calm things down a bit, and helped my Jews to see Arshad in the context of
who he was.
But
the worst came the second week, when Arshad was supposed to simply open the
floor to questions. For some reason, he
felt compelled to begin his presentation that night by lecturing my
congregation on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. With a script, and PowerPoint slides and maps
and all. This, after our conversation
that had led to his presentations, where we agreed that it wouldn’t be part of
the agenda.
Members
of my congregation reacted as you would expect Jews to react, given the
background of different positions on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as well as
my observations about how Jews take to being lectured. Arshad left that night feeling more than a
little beaten up. In truth, I felt he
deserved it. And it effectively ended,
at least for the foreseeable future, the idea of creating dialogue between our
two communities. A reciprocal invitation
to me, to speak to the Muslim community was not forthcoming. The whole idea of dialogue dropped, and
before Arshad and I could even imagine trying again, I was a ‘lame duck’ in my
position and not in the position to start anything new.
So
for the unwillingness to leave out of our exchange, an issue over which none of
us has any control to begin with, a potential alliance between two local
communities was averted. If not
permanently, then at least for the foreseeable future. And that was too bad. Our two small congregations, had we succeeded
in talking to one another and getting to know one another, may have succeeded
in creating a mutual peace. But even
more than that, the experience could have taught our respective groups important
lessons about the nature of peace and how it is achieved. And it may have positively influenced the
greater community.
My
purpose here is not to defame the Muslim colleague concerned. None of you have ever met the man, nor will
you probably ever encounter him. And in
reality, I do not absolve myself of responsibility for how the sessions
went. I bring it up only because I
learned from it. And perhaps, you can
learn from this difficult lesson. You
can learn something about educating your respective communities about peace and
the peace-making process.
It
is my firm conviction that each human being can find ample common ground with
each other human being. Did not one God
create all of us in His image? If so,
then we have far more that ties us together than that pulls us apart.
Let me put it another way. Two great Jewish sages were arguing over
which verse is the most important verse in the Torah, in the Jewish Bible. One asserted that it was Leviticus
19:18: You shall love your neighbour
as yourself. The second sage argued
that a more important verse was Genesis 10:1 that declares: These are the generations of the sons of
Noah: Shem, Ham and Yapheth. Children were born to them after the flood.
Now, if you were to agree with
the first sage, and hold that the most important verse in the Torah is You
shall love your neighbour as yourself, you would probably be in the
majority. What could be more basic to
the idea of establishing God’s kingdom on earth, than loving your neighbour as
yourself? And specifically, how does These
are the generations of the sons of Noah measure up to the concept of loving
your neighbour in resonance, grandeur and importance?
Well, first you need to
understand that ‘love your neighbour’ in the language of the Torah means ‘love
your kinsman.’ The Hebrew word re’echa,
here translated ‘your neighbour,’ doesn’t necessarily mean the one who
lives in close proximity. It means ‘your
kinsman,’ or, to put it differently, ‘your fellow Jew.’ Since the Torah was written and addressed
specifically to the children of Israel, this is the meaning the verse has to
have.
But, when Juxtaposed to
Genesis 10:1, another meaning is possible.
These are the generations of the sons of Noah comes to inform us
that, after the Flood, the world was re-populated by one family. And that inevitably means that we are all
blood relatives. Even though we come
from different parts of the world, and we manifest unique racial traits that
make us look somewhat different from one another, and we speak different
languages. So when we combine the two
verses, then and only then does it become clear that for each one of us,
re’echa, your neighbour, really means ‘your fellow human being.’
So
despite having different religious traditions, and different family histories,
and different narratives, we are all related.
As blood relatives. And we
therefore share much in common. More
should unite us, than divide us. If we
cannot see this essential truth, then we are focusing on the wrong things.
So
finding wholeness, a wholeness that we can share with others around us, demands
that we see the essential wholeness in humanity. And the way to recognise that, is to focus on
that which we hold in common. At some
point, it may be necessary to have dialogue on the things upon which we
disagree. But they are best left outside
the door until we can look at the others in the room and see them as our
brothers and sisters. There’s nothing
cynical about this. Great things are
accomplished in stages.
And
the challenges of Jews and Muslims are not really unique. Rather, they are emblematic of the challenge
of making peace with anybody whom we might consider to be ‘The Other.’ The first step is to acknowledge, and
celebrate, our common humanity. Our
common aspirations and fears. Our common
desires. To turn ‘The Other’ into ‘My
Brother.’ But I am most likely, as the
expression goes, ‘preaching to the choir.’
Clearly in this room, what I am saying should resonate deeply. If we conduct our relations with all others
on the basis of acknowledging and celebrating that which we hold in common,
then we will have ‘broken the code’ of living in harmony with one another. My experience, especially my experience in
the arena of Jewish-Muslim dialogue, has taught me that. Thank you, and shalom.
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