Inter-Religious Understanding

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, October 21, 2006

When I was a young child growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it was not uncommon for more Orthodox Jews, particularly those born in Europe, to cross the street when it came time to walk in front of a Church. Similarly, at that time, strict Catholics did not feel that they had the permission to attend services at a Protestant church let alone a Jewish synagogue.

A lot has changed since the early 1960’s. One aspect of that change is that we now tend to live, not in homogeneous ethnic enclaves, the Jewish or Italian or Irish neighborhoods of the east Coast cities, but in mixed communities, in more distant suburbs or in new communities in the West and the South.

There has also been important theological change beginning with the Catholic Church’s revolution in inter-religious understanding in Vatican II in 1965, followed by change in the Protestant denominations as well. Soon there was inter-religious dialogue on every level, from the Pope’s visit to a synagogue, to the living room dialogues organized in many communities by the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

In his D’var Torah this morning, Jason talked about sharing holidays with friends and neighbors of different religious faiths. This is one important aspect of inter-religious understanding. Last spring a delegation from our Congregation worked with St. Julie’s Catholic Church in South San Jose to put together a special seder experience. It talked about the experiences both of the ancient Israelites in fleeing slavery in Egypt and of modern day immigrants, both Jewish and Latino, coming to America seeking refuge from persecution and want.

In addition to sharing holidays, visits of different religious communities to each other’s synagogues, churches and mosques, help to promote understanding. Our junior high school students, who study comparative religion as part of their curriculum at religious school, make trips to many different places of religious worship. Shir Hadash hosts many different kind of groups ranging from adult Bible study and children’s Confirmation classes to putting on a special Saturday morning service last winter especially for guests from the community, and which included Torah study and a special lunch.

Studying different religions can also help in our understanding of our own faith. Let me give you an example from this week’s Torah portion, mentioned in an article by Rabbi Arthur Waskow published in the Jerusalem Report in 2005. He illustrates how understanding rabbinic texts can help in understanding the new Testament.

Many of us are familiar with the saying: “Render unto Caeser what is Caeser’s,” but its exact meaning has long been debated among Biblical scholars. Its origin is in a story told in Gospel of Matthew and found in parallel texts in Mark and Luke. Jesus is being asked for a ruling: Are we or are we not permitted to pay taxes to the Roman Emperor? Coins at that time had a picture of the emperor on them with the word God. For Jews, this could be construed as idolatry. Jesus’s enemies may have been trying to force him into an answer that would then get him into trouble with the authorities.

Jesus’ response satisfied his questioners: “Give to Caeser what is Caeser’s and to God what is God’s.” This is often understood to mean that Jesus was suggesting that there are two different spheres of life, one ruled by Caesar and one ruled by God, and that people should submit to Caesar’s authority in the material world, while adhering to God in the spiritual. But there are problems with this understanding in terms of Jesus’s other teachings.

It is here that a knowledge of Judaism, particularly of the Judaism of the lifetime of Jesus can be very helpful.

In studying this week’s Torah portion, your Torah portion Jason, the Jewish teachers of Jesus’s time focused on the miracle of human diversity. The rabbis of his time taught: “Adam, the first human being, was created as a single person to show forth the greatness of the Ruler who is beyond all Rulers, the Blessed Holy One. For if a human ruler mints many coins from one mold, they all carry the same image. But the Blessed Holy One shaped all human beings in the divine image, as Adam was shaped, in the image of God, and yet not one of them resembles another.”

Scholars today believe that what Jesus was saying in this story was the following. Whose image is on this coin? asks Jesus. “Caesar’s,” says the crowd. Then Jesus points to his challenger’s face: “And whose image is on this coin?” he asks rhetorically, reminding the crowd of God’s image implanted within each of them. And then he teaches: “ Coins may belong to the authorities, but “Render unto God what is God’s”, you must give your whole self to the One who has imprinted his image upon you.”

Rabbi Waskow ends his article; “Whose Image on the Coin?” with a message for people of all faiths. He reminds us to say to ourselves as we look at the “face of people in New Orleans and Bangladesh, Tel Aviv and Gaza City, Bagdad and Washington,…. this is the face of God.”