Rejoinder to Drs. Pearl & Ahmed: Part I

March 30th, 2007
Rabbi Gary S. Creditor 

Last Monday night I came to the University of Richmond campus to dine with Dr. Judea Pearl, father of the late Daniel Pearl, along with other representatives of the Jewish community and those representing the Moslem and Christian communities as well. With Dr. Pearl was Dr. Akbar Ahmed. Both of these two distinguished individuals then shared a public conversation, which allowed for questions from the audience. I was intrigued at this opportunity, not only to personally meet this man who had suffered such a tragedy, but to see how a Jew and Moslem could speak together. This is so terribly important in the microcosm of our society, besides the world scene. The Moslem community is growing rapidly in the greater Richmond area, in Virginia and in the United States. The Jewish community must take note and create relationships with them, personally, institutionally and communally. There are issues that we share in common:how our faiths are to be respected by the Christian majority; for us and our children to be able to observe our traditions without hindrance or the imposition of Christianity upon us; in securing kosher and hallal provisions that are properly supervised; how to retain our next generations who are being seduced by the valueless secularism that is promoted as the true America; how to retain our next generation who are the target of Christian missionaries; and to address a social agenda based on common values that we do share between us and with the Christian communities.  For those reasons, and more, I desperately wanted to see how a Jew and Moslem speak, develop their agenda, and genuinely care for each other. They were to be role models for me. In January, I invited Dr. Imad Damaj of the Islamic Center to our synagogue on a Shabbat evening for our conversation. I had never done anything like that before. This would be another example. Imad and I have been speaking with his imam of the Islamic Center for my visit to them. This would help me understand the opportunity before me.

Both Dr. Pearl and Dr. Ahmed were absolutely correct in referring to our times as having "free floating hatred in the world." It was time to "demand sanity in the face of madness." Who can quibble with those words? If one quarter of the global treasury spent on military material was spent to combat disease we could have a healthy humanity. If another quarter was spent on reconfiguring energy usage and curtail waste, we could save our globe from the inundation of the seas that is already resulting from global warming. If another quarter was spent on proper housing not one person in the world would live in huts and hovels. And the last quarter could be spent on education and we could eliminate illiteracy and create an enlightened world. Are we not living in an age of global madness? Who doesn't want 'the bomb?' Who isn't threatening to blow each other up? And if you are the one threatened, then you must build implements to intercept 'the bomb' so it blows up over someone else, as if the fallout will not get you too. Insanity. Lunacy. They were sitting there as grandfathers. Very nice. I am going to be, with God's help a grandfather for the third time this July. I fear that my grandchildren's world will be eradicated by all this madness if it is not stopped. I had hoped that they would have stayed on this theme for the evening, for it is the ultimately compelling theme: people must talk civilly with each other, respectfully to each other, without a knife hidden behind the back, without hidden agendas ready to ambush and destroy. While on Passover the poem Chad Gadya ends with God killing the Angel of Death, in our real world the portent is that the Angel of Death will slay us all, unless we all promise and swear that we will not kill each other.

Again, both doctors struck the correct chord that we must respect each other's differences. Dr. Pearl referred to "the dignity of being different along with the sanctity of being one." Dr. Ahmed referred to the "double narrative" that we have as both Moslems and Jews look to our scriptures, Torah and Quran, and see our descent from Adam and Abraham. Though we tell our sacred stories differently, Ibrahim and Avraham are one and the same. Ishmael and Yishmael, Yitzchak and Itzqak - Muslamim and Yehudim are closer than "kissing cousins." Their dialogue was to be the prologue for ours.

At that point I thought that they would segue into the theme that they had introduced, namely, the issues of identity and hatred that Moslems feel in the western world and the fear that the western world has of Moslems. For that reason the organization "A More Perfect Union" that is located as part of the Virginia Interfaith Council for Public Policy, of which I am privileged to be on the board, had put those posters on buses in Richmond. There is a stereotyping of Moslems as terrorists. At a training session with Imad he showed us a picture and asked for our immediate reaction. Most of us didn't want to say it, but was one of fear, unwarranted and undeserved. I hoped that they would speak about the building of bridges here between our communities. That each of us has to set aside issues that divide us, from which we both derive pain, and talk about our common ground. We as Jews have long experience about being hated. We have created excellent organizations of self-defense. Such great bridges could be built by having mutual self-defense against hatred and the infringement of our civil rights. Here we could be and still can be images and icons of mutual respect, reciprocal consideration and shared concerns. We could and still can show the world how to live in peace; how to live face to face in tranquility; how "love thy neighbor as thyself." We can and must show the world that Jewish and Moslem blood are both holy and neither should be shed.

Unfortunately, however they decide their presentation, to digress and the evening became a course in international politics 1001. It then became the schmoozing of two grandfathers, both afraid of what will happen in a world run amok. They are both very nice gentlemen, and I guess that if we left it up to them, they could have sat back in the easy chairs and figured out how they would solve all our problems and as the fairy tales end "we would live happily ever after." But they don't represent anybody but themselves and the promise of the evening, in my mind, dissipated into a pointless discussion of politics. No one was listening outside of Tyler Hall at the University of Richmond.

I was further upset because if you boiled down all the discussion that did ensue, you might have walked away with the idea that if Israel would just not be so intransigent and allow the Palestinian Arabs – you must say it that way because until 1948 Palestinian also meant the Jews – into Israel, then the world could live in peace. They did not nuance the subject. They did not inform it with historical facts. They didn't even finesse the subject. Dr. Pearl was correct in saying that without negotiation Israel rejects it out of hand, and Dr. Ahmed for the Arab street this is the question that must be solved. The only malady worse than ignorance is naivety. In this I think that both the doctors were naïve.

The time frame of these remarks is too short to follow that subject tonight. It will be Part II of my rejoinder to the doctors, which I will deliver next Friday night.

I wish to bring these remarks to a close with the following:

1. World peace does not rest on whether or not Israel allows Arabs to live in Israel.

2. The Middle East seethes in a resurgent Islam that has to deal with the West, namely Christendom.

3. We Jews and Israel are caught between the two of them.

4. World peace could be furthered if the Moslem world would respect the Jewish historical record.

5. No matter what happens in the Middle East, Jews and Moslems live as Americans here in America

We must learn to know each other.
We must talk with each other.
We must respect each other.
We must be models of mutual understanding to society and the world.
We must never give up hope.

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, the famous Bratslaver Rebbe who name is written all over Israel in increasing syllables, until it spells out his name, proclaimed: "Jews! Don't despair!" As we sit down to Seder to table and talk about Egyptian slavery we celebrate Jewish redemption. The generations of Egypt did not give up hope and yield to despair and neither shall we. We echo Rav Nachman not just to ourselves but to the world: "Don't despair!" May the hand of Ha-ra-cha-man, the All Merciful God, protect us all. May Elijah announce a time of peace for all.

Shabbat Shalom