The Biblical approach to dialogue was most recently articulated by the Jewish humorist, Joan Rivers, who suggested, cajoled, and commanded, \u201clet\u2019s talk.\u201d\u00a0 Isaiah pleaded, \u201cCome let us reason together,\u201d while Moses tried to convince Korah, the unbeliever to dialogue.<\/p>\n
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We remember that Korah was a virtuoso of religious rhetoric and detail, because he was able to turn a phrase with pious diction, but in the end, his own end, he did not believe.<\/p>\n
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Authentic believers like Moses are not afraid of dialogue, but non-believers with something to hide rarely allow themselves to be exposed to the penetrating review of opponents.\u00a0 King Solomon tells us that there is a time to speak and a time to be silent.<\/p>\n
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When is the time to speak, and when is the time to be silent? When is the time to talk, and when is the time to balk? When is the time for the tongue to do the talking, and when is the time for power to rule the hour?<\/p>\n
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The first well known exponent of Jewish dialogue was Maimonides.\u00a0 He \u201cdialogues\u201d with Aristotle\u2019s theory of knowledge, with whom he disagreed but respected.<\/p>\n
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In the Ashkenazi tradition, we find that R. Moses Isserles, the Polish codifier of Ashkenazi custom, mentions Aristotle in his responsa.\u00a0\u00a0 There does not seem to be any canonical, i.e., Torah or rabbinic, prohibition of interdenominational or interfaith dialogue.\u00a0 Protests that dialogue with dissenters is Jewishly improper, out of order, or forbidden, to be convincing, must be accompanied by rational argument and Talmudic reference.\u00a0 Judaism\u2019s penchant for dialogue requires demonstration<\/strong>, not declaration.\u00a0 <\/strong>To forbid dialogue without demonstration but with declaration alone is an un-Jewish strategy, because it misrepresents Judaism and gives the outsider the impression that we have something to hide.\u00a0 Policy and Halakhah<\/em> may not be confused. Declarations that this or that rabbi, or synod of rabbis, must convince but may not coerce.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Maimonides suggested that Jews have a right to say \u201cThere is no God but Allah and Muhammed is his messenger,\u201d [sic] in order to avoid martyrdom, some ill-informed among our people argued that \u201csince a Christian would rather die than say such a thing, and we cannot be less religious than the Christian, we may not allow a soul to save him [or her] self with such a heretical declaration.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Maimonides\u2019s response [Iggeret ha-Shemad<\/em>] to this claim is that Judaism is determined not by what Christians do, but by what Judaism demands.\u00a0 The claim that \u201cthere is not God but Allah\u201d is a claim that Jews and Moslems share, given the fact that the divine name \u201cAllah\u201d shares the same spelling as \u201cElo\u2019ah, one of the Biblical names for God.\u00a0 [The prohibition of writing such a name applies, by Talmudic statute, to the name written in Hebrew characters, not English letters].\u00a0 We are permitted to lie to save our lives.\u00a0 Therefore it is permissible to make the Islamic confession of faith to save one\u2019s life.\u00a0 A Judaism that defines itself on the basis of Christianity shows greater fidelity to an alien religion than it does to its own testament\/covenant with God.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rabbi Moses Maimonides and Moses Rabbenu were not without their detractors.\u00a0\u00a0 Some today say \u201cwe do not obey Maimonides.\u00a0 He was Sefardic, and we have a different, legitimate, and familiar tradition.\u201d\u00a0 One has a right to disagree with Maimonides if one can demonstrate why one\u2019s own alternatively held position is more logical, appropriate, and authentic.\u00a0 For Maimonides, one follows the view that \u201cleans toward reason.\u201d\u00a0 Nowhere in our canon is the use of reason forbidden. But some great rabbis tell us that we may not rely on reason or common sense.\u00a0 Rather, we should rely on them blindly, uncritically, and without question. The Ashkenazi and Sefardic traditions are legitimate if and when they do not violate Talmudic law.\u00a0 Any claim that is not based on the Jewish canon, but on pure reason, may be weighed, accepted or rejected. But it is assuredly not to be identified with the culture tradition of social inertia.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The current call of Islamic radicals is for respect, after a Danish journalist caricatured the man whom the Moslems call God\u2019s messenger. We are told that it is an act of disrespect, indeed sacrilege to depict Muhammed in such a fashion. It is no secret that when it comes to caricaturing its political enemies, the Great Satan sometimes referred to as \u201cAmerica,\u201d the land of the free, with its free press, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion, and to little Israel, the only democracy in the Islamic region of totalitarianism, Islam takes license. There is no morally right to be accorded those who are politically and religiously wrong.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Once Islam conquered Palestine, in the Middle Ages, it belongs to the dar al Islam,<\/strong> the House of Islam. The same, of course, can be said for Spain, which was first ruled by the \u201cReconstructionist\u201d\u00a0 Islam of the Umayyid\u2019s and later by the \u201cUnifier\u201d Moslems who argued, on the basis of their zealous intuition,\u00a0 that the Prophet\u2019s dispensation for tolerance of Christians and Jews had lapsed.\u00a0 The political position of this Islamic movement is that Israel must die, and propaganda is legitimate warfare. In no Islamic state\u00a0\u00a0 of which I am aware, is there freedom of speech and open discussion. The law of Islam is enforced by the sword, or whatever instrument of technological coercion that is available.\u00a0 So Jews are portrayed in Nazi like pictures, they are accused of poisoning wells, infecting Moslem women with AIDS, and by dint of their presence in the Middle East, the source of all misfortune.\u00a0 If we kill dissenters in our community, how can we allow a vibrant democracy whose population is not excluded from opportunity, and whose press is free to complain about those in power, which outlawed the death penalty for all but Holocaust mass murderers, to say what they will without reprisal?\u00a0 There may be no peace with Israel. The call for peace is not reason, but treason.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A Danish political cartoon depicted Muhammed as a terrorist, with an Islamic turban shaped like a bomb on his head.\u00a0\u00a0 This image was not imagined out of an invisible cloth. This image was birthed by actual political events, real terrorist acts, and a Western revulsion with a totalitarian political system being sold as religion.\u00a0\u00a0 For Islam, there may be no images at all because images may lead to idolatry.\u00a0 But the idolatry of power, where religion is invoked to keep people yoked, is at the core of every idolatry, at least according to the Arabic speaking Jew, Moses Maimonides.\u00a0\u00a0 Western religions are also offensive to totalitarian systems and their rulers, because they respect individual dignity and rights.\u00a0\u00a0 Citizens make the government; citizens are not governmental assets.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jewry has much to learn from this \u201creligious\/political\u201d controversy. The refusal to reason with words leads to uncivility and, occasionally, violence.\u00a0 We must speak to others, who are entitled with the \u201cright to be wrong,\u201d so that the rights of all minorities are protected. Minorities with the right to speak enliven discussion.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Secure people are not afraid of exposure to competing ideas.\u00a0\u00a0 It was the Biblical Pharaoh who did not want to talk to Moses, but Moses, with Divine power in his hands, forced the conversation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n King Solomon, who taught that there is a time for speech and a time for silence, also taught that there is a time for war and a time for peace.\u00a0 The refusal to engage the other with words is ultimately a threat to make war.\u00a0 In contemporary Jewish life, the treating of the \u201cother\u201d with disrespect often leads to vengeful, aggressive encounters.\u00a0 When attacked, people become defensive, and they then feel the license to give offense.\u00a0 People who refuse to compete with words of respect will be condemned to suffer other reprisals, which are significantly more ominous. The signature deportment of the Jewish sage is his or her bringing peace, wholeness, and wholesomeness to the world. May we be worthy of a community of Jews who, in their differences, are at peace, serving as a model for others, as a light to the nations.<\/p>\n\n Authentic believers like Moses are not afraid of dialogue, but non-believers with something to hide rarely allow themselves to be exposed to the penetrating review of opponents. King Solomon tells us that there is a time to speak and a time to be silent.<\/p>\n When is the time to speak, and when is the time to be silent? When is the time to talk, and when is the time to balk? When is the time for the tongue to do the talking, and when is the time for power to rule the hour?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":1464,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,82,95,78,83],"tags":[],"coauthors":[86],"class_list":["post-1463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-denominations","category-halakhah","category-halakhah-modern-judaism","category-modern-judaism","category-philosophy"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1463"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1467,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions\/1467"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1463"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}