by Robert Kirchner
In my own way, I am, I suppose, sort of a one-man interfaith dialogue – a state of affairs that has .come about largely through my involvement in a Scriptural Reasoning Group.
Let’s start with the fact
that I am Jewish on my father’s side, though he and my mother were
atheist, and so I was raised without any religious affiliation. I had
a hunger for a spiritual community though, and I explored a range of
religions on my own in my early adulthood, from fundamentalist
Christianity to Wicca. My wife is Mennonite, and from her I absorbed
Sermon-on-the-Mount values of non-violence and radical social
justice. But my earlier experiences left a bad taste in my mouth
regarding (what I thought was) Christianity, so I was not comfortable
with many Christian beliefs, nor with typical Protestant styles of
worship.
About 10 years ago, though,
I found a spiritual home with the Quakers. Quakerism began in 17th
century England as a radical-mystical Christian movement, but the
emphasis has always been on right action and process, not on assent
to a particular creed. Most Quakers nowadays still identify as
Christian, but some do not. And Quakers’ silent worship style is
closer to Zen meditation than to a Protestant church service. We are
united not by our belief, but by our shared experience of God’s
spirit in worship. Here it seemed was a religious tradition that I
could learn and grow from, while still being my authentic self.
But throughout my religious
journey, the Jewish part of me never quite gave up. In spite of my
lack of involvement with it growing up, I have had a lifelong
interest in Judaism, and in Jewish culture and history, mostly
through reading. In university, I took several semesters of modern
Hebrew, and a course in Jewish law. Spiritually, I am a bit like an
adoptee, with a wonderful, solid relationship with my adoptive
parents (the Quakers), but nevertheless feeling a need to connect
with my biological family. At various points in my life I thought
about deepening my connection to the Jewish community, but something
always held me back.
First, the violent, patriarchal
character of God as presented in the Hebrew Bible I found morally
repugnant. In particular, the divinely sanctioned genocide of the
Canaanites described in the Book of Joshua was not the sort of
tradition I wanted to identify with. Second, I was put off by
late-20th-century Judaism’s apparent commitment to political Zionism.
I have no wish to see Israeli Jews ‘thrown into the sea’, but neither
can I support the slow-motion genocide that the State of Israel has
been inflicting on the Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza,
forcing them into open-air ghetto/prisons on near-starvation rations,
mowed down by snipers if they protest. If that’s where modern
Judaism is at, then no thanks, I’ll keep my distance.
In recent years, however, my perception
of Judaism has altered. A growing number of Jews, in the diaspora and
even in Israel itself, are as horrified by Israeli treatment of
Palestinians as I am, and they’re not keeping quiet about it.
Although old-guard Jewish organizations like B’nai B’rith still
try to discredit and silence them, these post-Zionist Jews are no
longer marginal within the Jewish community, particularly among the
younger generation. It no longer seemed enough for me to express my
own post-Zionist views from the sidelines: I felt led to jump into
the fray and actively support other Jews challenging Israeli
government oppression, in solidarity with Palestinians. So I joined
Independent Jewish Voices Canada, an organization that does exactly
that, as well as working for peace and justice generally, as an
expression of Jewish values.
Secondly, although I’d rejected
fundamentalist Christianity decades earlier, I was still seeing the
Hebrew Bible through that lens, not through a Jewish lens, and this
coloured my whole view of what Judaism is. Here’s where Scriptural
Reasoning enters the story. The Edmonton group arose out of the
efforts of one my wife’s Mennonite friends, Donna Entz, working to
build bridges with the Muslim community. And I got dragged along, as
I often do, as willing Quaker flotsam in the Mennonite wake. But
through this group I got to know B, a learned Jewish attender, and
from him I began to understand how Jews study their own sacred
writings. First, there’s careful attention to details of wording in
the Hebrew – details that are often missed in English translations.
Then there’s elucidation of the text through comparison to
thematically related texts elsewhere in the Bible, and commentary on
these texts in the Talmud and collections of midrashim (rabbinic
interpretation). The text is to be understood not just in terms of
the surface meaning (p’shat) of the words, but their possible
symbolic or allegorical meaning (remez), the meaning that emerges
from comparison to other texts (deresh), and possibly
mystical/esoteric meaning as well (sod). Most importantly, there’s
no final definitive interpretation of anything: everything is
perpetually up for debate. This intrigued me, and so with B I began
attending Shabbat morning Torah studies at Edmonton’s Reform
synagogue. And there I got to know the Rabbi – more on her later.
This new encounter with Judaism
triggered further bouts of reading, and I learned that there are
mystical traditions within Judaism that see God, not as the
smite-thirsty character that appears in (p’shat readings of) Torah,
but as immanent in the universe Itself, manifesting Itself in terms
of feminine as well as masculine attributes, such as wisdom, beauty,
compassion, and justice. Indeed, the central Jewish prayer, the Sh’ma
(‘Hear O Israel’) asserts that God is one: that is to say,
there is nothing else, and so everything that is – you, me, the
rocks, the stars – we are all part of God, and God is within and
around us. This is a theology that I as a Quaker can
enthusiastically embrace. As we Quakers like to say, there is ‘that
of God’ in every person – and, I would add, every animal, every
plant, every molecule of animate and inanimate creation.
Additional reading led me to
Finkelstein and Silberman’s (2001) The Bible Unearthed.
The modern archaeological consensus is that the original Israelites
were themselves Canaanites who abandoned the coastal cities upon the
collapse of the Bronze Age Levantine civilizations, resettling in
small egalitarian villages in the unpopulated highlands of Judea and
Samaria. Perhaps their social position in those cities (which had
been under Egyptian military control for much of that era) had been
some of slavery, and this oral memory formed the nucleus of the
Passover narrative. But the bloody conquest of Canaan described in
Joshua through Kings is demonstrably fictional.
Indeed, if my Passover conjecture is correct, then I find the actual
history to be far more inspiring than the myth. A group of ex-slaves
developed a culture with strong valorization of social justice and
deep suspicion of the power of kings (cf. 1 Samuel 8) and their
armies, values that resurface even more emphatically in the Prophets,
in Talmud, and (dare I say it?) in the Gospels. Again, this is a
spiritual heritage that I as a Quaker can enthusiastically embrace.
The Canaanite conquest stories are to be understood, I believe, as a
retrospective lamentation, written around the time of the Kingdom of
Judah’s fall to the Babylonian Empire: if
only we had completely removed these pagan nations, if only we had
finished the job that Joshua started, there would have been no-one to
lead us into temptation, to worship their idols for which we are now
being punished.
So as I said, I began participating in
Torah studies at the Reform synagogue. Then I began attending Friday
evening Shabbat services as well. The Rabbi, I discovered, has a
knack for taking what seems to be a dry Torah passage, or a formulaic
prayer from the liturgy, and drawing layer upon layer of deep meaning
out of it, like magic; I come away surprised and inspired and hungry
to learn more. She accomplishes this regularly: I don’t entirely
understand how she pulls it off. We Quakers have an anti-clerical
bias, but I confess I’m somewhat in awe of this Rabbi’s gifts.
The
term ‘Torah’ refers to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.
Torah is often translated as ‘the Law’, but the Hebrew word
actually means ‘teaching’. Judaism has always insisted that there
is an oral Torah as well as the written Torah. Oral Torah is often
equated with the Mishnah, the nucleus of the Talmud. But in Reform
Judaism, Torah is broader even than that. It is Etz Chayim, the Tree
of Life, and like a living tree, it continues to grow new rings and
put out new branches. Through Quakerism, I had come upon the quaint
old term ‘Gospel Order’, which Quaker
writer Lloyd Lee Wilson defines as ‘the right relationship of every
part of creation, however small, to every other part and to the
creator.’ It speaks of an order inherent in the universe – as
sweeping and inclusive as the notion of Dharma in Hindu and Buddhist
teachings, or the Tao in Chinese traditions – that humans can align
themselves with and cooperate with, if we choose to. I now
understand Torah in this light: Torah is the continually evolving
understanding of this natural order, as given specifically to the
Jewish people. Christians and Muslims have the New Testament and
Kor’an, respectively, as their specific understandings, grafted
onto the Abrahamic rootstock. Other peoples have their own equally
valid understandings and teachings. Hinduism, for example, has the
Vedas and Upanishads, among other sacred writings. Indigenous peoples
have their own ceremonies and unwritten teachings. But all
life-affirming religious traditions, I believe, point toward the same
God-given natural order.
All my life I’ve had a strong
affinity to Judaism and Jewish culture, but my misconceptions had
kept me at arm’s length from the organized religion. Now, thanks to
Scriptural Reasoning, I have discovered a form of Judaism and a
Jewish community that is in accord with my deepest spiritual values.
So I joined Edmonton’s Reform Jewish synagogue. Inwardly, I already
identify as Jewish, but because my mother was not Jewish, nor was I
raised as a Jew, I have to formally convert to Judaism. But I see no
incompatibility between being/becoming Jewish and remaining Quaker. I
spoke to the Rabbi about this and she agreed. (Most rabbis, even
within Reform Judaism, would not, I suspect, be so open-minded, and
so I’m deeply grateful to her for this.) Now I’m taking
conversion classes with the Rabbi, and in a year or so I will be able
to formally convert, with the full support of my Quaker Meeting. I
will be 100% Quaker and 100% Jewish.1
These two faith traditions dialogue away within me. With the Rabbi’s
support, I’m organizing, among other things, a discussion series in
the synagogue about peacemaking in Israel-Palestine. Meanwhile, I
continue to attend Scriptural Reasoning, which started me on this
rich path.
1 To
be clear though, I am not a ‘Messianic Jew.’ While I draw
considerable inspiration from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, I
don’t believe he was the Messiah, or rather, I believe that the
Messiah is within each of us. So-called Messianic Judaism, in my
experience, is just Evangelical Protestantism with a bit of Jewish
packaging.
