Living in North America today means, for the vast preponderance of Jews, not living in a ghetto. Each and every day, we mingle with a dazzling array of non-Jews from every corner of the globe. By choice, we live in the world as a part of the world. Most of us want our children to be exposed to a range of human cultures, to learn to treasure the beauty in the vast literatures and faith traditions of all humankind. The benefits of that exposure aren’t hard to see—and enlightened understanding of the human condition, an appreciation of the values of democracy, equality, and freedom, and a determination to fight bigotry whenever it rears its ugly head.
Harder to discern are the disadvantages of this triumphant universalism. After all, being a part of the symphony of human living is a glorious thing, isn’t it? What could be the down side of this international partnership of tolerance, support, and wisdom?
This difficulty of living in such open proximity to different peoples and cultures is that it often becomes harder to maintain one’s own way of life. Every ethnic minority in America struggles with how to retain and transmit its ancient ways, its writings and its faith, in the face of the blandishments and attractions of American syncretism. How do we remain distinct in a culture that celebrates blending?
As Jews who love Judaism and the Jewish people, this issue is particularly pressing. One million children who have a Jewish parent are currently being raised as non-Jews or as nothing (by their own definition). Clearly the American mixing is taking a toll on Jewish continuity. The struggle to continue biologically is merely the first and most visible aspect of the challenge, since the purpose of Jewish survival has always been the service of God through our ancestral brit (covenant), through the combination of Torah, worship, and deeds of lovingkindness that are the very purpose of Judaism in the first place.
In Southern California, and in many other places, one of the greatest challenges to our continued faith and faithfulness is the challenge of those Christians who feel that their own faith commitment requires them to persuade us to abandon ours. There was a time when Jews knew the Torah and the Talmud well enough that the slick quotations of zealous missionaries, always out of context and often mistranslated, were easily corrected and rebuffed. Today, however, we are hardly the people of the book.
Today’s Torah portion contains a lengthy passage that every Jew should stick in a wallet or purse and carry around for just such confrontations. To the claim that a Jew should abandon exclusive loyalty to Adonai and to the Torah, this passage gives a direct response:
If there appears among you a prophet or a dream-diviner and he gives you a sign or a portent, saying, “Let us follow and worship another god” — whom you have not experienced — even if the sign or portent that he named to you comes true, do not heed the words of that prophet or that dream-diviner. For Adonai your God is testing you to see whether you really love Adonai your God with all your heart and soul. Follow none but Adonai your God, and revere none but God; observe God’s commandments alone, and heed only God’s orders; worship none but God, and hold fast to God. As for that prophet or dream-diviner, he shall be put to death; for he urged disloyalty to Adonai your God — who freed you from the land of Egypt and who redeemed you from the house of bondage — to make you stray from the path that Adonai your God commanded you to follow. Thus you will sweep out evil from your midst (Deuteronomy 13:2-7 )
This crucial passage makes several points well-worth our attention:
• We experience God through the miraculous liberation from slavery, and from the many miracles of each day — the beauty of the sun coming up, the love of other people, the joy of simply being alive.
• God commands our devotion exclusively. The brit can only fit two parties: God and the Jewish people, just as only two people can be in a marriage at any one time. We must love only God, without any other claimant sharing that love or devotion.
• If someone urges us to abandon that love relationship, whether or not their prophecies come to pass, we are to disregard them, in fact, to view their proposal as evil. God wants Jews to be Jews, loyal to the Torah and our sacred traditions as they are interpreted by the sages and faithful of each generation.
God may well have other paths for other peoples, and our staunch loyalty to our own religion doesn’t imply that others are inferior or false, simply that what God wants from the Jews is fidelity to our ancestral covenant.
Let other peoples serve their own gods, we shall serve the Holy Blessing One, Creator of the heavens and the earth. Anyone who asks us to leave our covenant, our people, or our heritage is simply offering us an opportunity to affirm our love of God.
Shabbat shalom.