“To Cartoon or Not to Cartoon?” Is Not the Question: “How Does One See the Other?” Is The Question

"To Cartoon or Not to Cartoon?" Is Not the Question: "How Does One See the Other?" Is The Question
Rabbi Gary S. Creditor 
February 11th, 2006 

I began writing these remarks on Wednesday morning with the hope that no significant events would occur between then and now. From the very first moment that the cartoons were published in the Danish press I knew that it would be important to formulate some vision, reaction, and statement about a very complex subject that has great implications. We have witnessed these past days the crystallization of dynamics that have always been present in the Arab – Moslem world, particularly aimed at us. For the most part, we have been oblivious. Now they are playing out on the intertwined international scene. I feel that it is obligatory for us to pay close attention, understand the pieces of the puzzle, and articulate a response. I entitle these remarks "To Cartoon or Not to Cartoon?" Is Not the Question: "How Does One See the Other?" Is The Question. That question needs to be answered. The answer will determine the future of international harmony and peace, for us, for Israel and for the world.  

I.   Where to begin? The second of the Ten Commandments completely forbids making any depiction of God. Judaism was the first religion to base itself on the incorporeality of God. The essence of idolatry is to portray the incomparableness and transcendence of the divine in concrete, especially human, form. I am specific to say that this is a Jewish gift to Islam. Christianity followed an entirely different path. The intertwining of Jesus with the divine, his depiction and those of angels and saints completely separated Judaism and Christianity. Ironically, it left Islam in harmony with us. God is absent in Jewish iconography. To do so is Chillul HaShem, the desecration of God's Name. However, the depiction of human beings is not forbidden. In the Greco-Roman period human images are found on Jewish coins and even in the mosaic floors of synagogues. By Jewish standards, depicting the matriarchs and patriarchs, Moses, Aaron and David poses no problem. They are humans and not God.  

II.   That being said: *How would I feel seeing core Jewish icons – Torah - portrayed in an insulting manner? If anyone is interested I have a folder of current virulent and despicable depictions of Jews – of you and me, Judaism, and Israel in the Arab/Moslem media for you to peruse. It has been going on for decades. *How did I feel when I saw pictures of Nazis walking the streets of Skokie, Illinois? *How did I feel when Deborah Lipstadt had to defend us in court against a person who denied that the Holocaust ever happened? Angry. Mad. In my heart – and only my heart – I wanted to knock him/them off his/their feet. I wanted to yell at them and shake them until they changed their mind. And yet, we have not and do not react with violence and murder? Why not?    

III.   Our Judaism is the origin of values that are the core of western civilization – the individuality of the human being, the holiness of each person, and the expansive vision that with different theologies and rituals, we all differently worship the One God. From our holy documents and theology, particularly of the experience of Egypt comes the teaching to respect the stranger. Namely, there is another one who is not us, to whom we extend respect in their differentness. This is the cornerstone of our freedoms seen through the prism of democracy and western civilization. We are free to express ourselves and, avoiding slander and libel, free to say whatever we want about anyone else. There are societal parameters, within which we operate, no matter how wide. It might not be politic. It might not be polite. But we can say it. After all, I have been told that I am going to burn in hell since I am a Jew. That wasn't very nice, but they can say it to my face and did. I can and did disagree, vehemently – but not violently. Western civilization, democracy, has this strange but effective integration of the right to print and say whatever we want with the sense of respect of the other. We might be able to say anything we want, but we don't, or we temper it as part of our civility. And when it does happen, we have options: sue in court; protest marches; debates; counter publications; letters to the editor; get elected to public office and change things; and, work for new laws. In our world, we don't riot in the streets over every slight imaginable. We don't call for the murder of those who said or wrote it. We don't burn their embassies and businesses every time we don't like a political statement or cartoon. We as Jews have had ample provocation in this country with Ford and his Dearborn newspaper and the Nazi Bund, and Catholic publications of earlier vintage. We have not ransacked Arab consulates after they have published their cartoons depicting us as murders and Nazis, as agents of the devil, accused of using children's blood in Jewish ritual, calling us sons of pigs and monkeys. We have not used violence or the threat of violence. We have not used murder or the threat of murder. We utilize legal means of public redress of grievances. We enter into dialogueand employ reason to persuade others to have a temperate view of society. And we take cartoons with which we disagree with inner fortitude and strength, self-respect and grace, without going insane. That is our world!  

IV.   This vision of the rights of the "other" is foreign and alien to the Arab/Moslem world. Sweeping across Africa to Indonesia, religious minorities are subordinated, suppressed and subjugated. This innocuous series of bad cartoons has made plain the great divide between civilizations that really only Israel understood because it inhabits that part of the world. To Islam we are infidels because there is only one incontestable truth and only one true path, that of Islam.All else is either tolerated or eventually conquered. There is no sense of balance and perspective of 'the other.'Dennis Prager wrote the following in his February 7 th Town hall column: As it happens, I have sympathy with the notion that newspapers and others need to be sensitive to religious, including Muslim, sensibilities. However, when Muslim governments and religious spokesmen attack the West for its insensitivity to Muslims, and its anti-Muslim prejudice, one has entered the Twilight Zone. Because nowhere in the world is there anything near the religious bigotry and sheer hatred of other religions that exists in the Muslim world. Christians nearly everywhere in the Arab and Muslim worlds are usually second-class citizens at best and terribly treated at worst. The Taliban Islamic regime in Afghanistan blew up the unique Buddhist sculptures in their country because they didn't want even a trace of anon-monotheistic faith to survive in an Islamic country. About a million non-Arab and non-Muslim men, women and children have been slaughtered by the Islamic regime in Sudan. Nigerian Christians are periodically murdered by Islamic mobs. And regarding Jews, Andrew Sullivan writes in this week's Time: "The Arab media run cartoons depicting Jews and their symbols of the Jewish faith with imagery indistinguishable from that used in the Third Reich." This unfortunate episode, done by Danish journalists just to push limits and without an inherent agenda, must be a clarion wake-up call to the West. The world has survived despite being cloaked in blindness and self-serving interests. Our oil dependence and business dealings hold us hostage. Yet it doesn't change the historical record now so clearly revealed for all to see, that there are two diametrically opposed world views, two extremely divergent societal operating systems. Israel will testify that this is a hot and not cold war. We must make no mistake and not compromise by word or deed the values that stand at the heart of democracy and western civilization.

It is a world:

• that recognizes and has learned to tolerate the other, even if you disagree;
• that extends equal rights and equal protection under the law;
• that abjures violence to get your way; where the pen is mightier than the sword;
• where Moslem, Christian and Jew must be equally respected and can equally worship Allah, Jesus and Adonay, and "none can make them afraid."

This is our world, and its defense bespeaks our essence and our destiny.

V. Personally, because of my sensitivity, civility and respect of others I would not have penned nor published these cartoons. They are poor art and done in bad taste and poor judgment. But I don't give up my right to do so.  I just wouldn't have exercised it.I just don't see any need to offend others purposefully, but I have the freedom to do it. We must see the world for what it is and engage in that struggle to sustain our world view and our core values which are under attack for all to see. We must also address the quid pro quo that America and Israel and the West are not fair game for their fanatical diatribes that demean and debase us and seeks to undermine our existence. They cannot have it both ways that we are fair game and they are inviolate.            

Are there Arab leaders of good will?            
Are there Moslem leaders who will enunciate honest and true respect for others, and not as a subterfuge while planning evil?             
Are there those in their world who will engage us in discussion and even debate without violence or its threat? Will not hold that as a club over our heads?   
How the Arab – Moslem world view us, Europeans, Americans, Jews, the other, will determine the future for them, for us, for the world.

May they see their way to a world of Salaam, Shalom, of peace. May they close their speeches as I close this one:Shabbat Shalom.