Yehuda Halevi lived in the twelfth century, heir to Spanish philosophical and poetic traditions. He wrote a defense of Judaism, called the Treatise in Defense of a Despised Tradition, popularly known as The Kuzari. The work has been popular over the centuries and is still read today by students seeking a guide to basics of Jewish theology.
:Israel among the nations is like a heart among the organs of the body. It is the healthiest, as well as the one most prone to disease. As the verse [Amos 3:2] states, "Only you have I known from all of the families of the earth; therefore shall I punish you for your iniquities.” (Kuzari II:36)
Similarly, all religions that came after the Torah of Moses are part of the process of bringing humanity closer to the essence of Judaism, even through they appear its opposite. The nations serve to introduce and pave the way for the long-awaited messiah. He is the fruit and they, in turn, will all become his fruit when they acknowledge him. Then all nations will become one tree, recognizing the common root they had previously scorned. (Kuzari IV:23)
Yaakov Emden is an exemplar of a traditionalist pulpit rabbi and talmudist in Hamburg responding to the Eighteenth century Enlightenment and ideals of tolerance all around him. He stretches the traditional inclusivist position into universal directions.
<blockquote>:We should consider Christians and Moslems as instruments for the fulfillment of the prophecy that the knowledge of God will one day spread throughout the earth. Whereas the nations before them worshipped idols, denied God's existence, and thus did not recognize God's power or retribution, the rise of Christianity and Islam served to spread among the nations, to the furthest ends of the earth, the knowledge that there is One God who rules the world, who rewards and punishes and reveals Himself to man. Indeed, Christian scholars have not only won acceptance among the nations for the revelation of the Written Torah but have also defended God's Oral Law. For when, in their hostility to the Torah, ruthless persons in their own midst sought to abrogate and uproot the Talmud, others from among them arose to defend it and to repulse the attempts. (Commentary to Pirkey Avot, 4:13)</blockquote>
Emden’s position is less overtly messianic than Halevi’s – and, consequently, apparently more positive about Christians and Muslims in the present world. Other religions share our God (who commands on Sinai and rewards and punishes) and acknowledge our scripture; accordingly, they have become our allies in this world. Emden's abstraction of the concept of Mosaic Torah as the acceptance of Scripture, allows him to view Christians and Moslems as sharing our devotion to Torah even if they do not accept the laws.
Samson Raphael Hirsch was the Frankfort pulpit Rabbi and ideologue behind the Neo-Orthodox philosophy of remaining Torah-true while accepting the cultural, aesthetic, and intellectual mores of the wider culture. Our example here of this ideology is his acceptance of Western civil society provided that the Jewish religion serves as a light unto the nations.
<blockquote>:'''And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great; become a blessing. ''' (Genesis 12:2)</blockquote>
<blockquote>:The people of Abraham, in private and in public, follow one calling: to become a blessing. They dedicate themselves to the Divine purpose of bringing happiness to the world by serving as model for all nations and to restore mankind to the pure spiritual status that Adam had possessed. God will grant His blessing of the renewal of life and the awakening and enlightenment of the nations, and the name of the People of Abraham shall shine forth. (Commentary on Genesis, ad loc.)</blockquote>
The prophetic call of Jews as “light unto the nation” plays a central role throughout Hirsch’s theology. It is not only a tool by which to interpret non-Jewish religions, but serves as a consistent trope in his interpretations of the mitzvoth. Jews are to be role models, spreading the enlightenment of experienced, non-intellectual knowledge of God to all. Hirsch bases this theology on his direct readings of the words of scripture mediated by the thirteenth-century commentary of Rabbi David Kimkhi, who had already explained the verses as teaching that the goal of Judaism is to be a Light unto the Nations.[11]
When God unites with Israel and one merges with the other, then all the heavenly princes will be made into one group to worship God, may He be Blessed. They will all serve the community of Israel, because it is from her that they will be sustained.
:As it is said [in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy], ‘Therefore make all Your Creation aware of Your awe, YHVH our God, and Your creatures will fear You and all of Creation will bow before You as one unity to do Your will with a pure heart.’ God will remove all His appellations in the future in order to receive the community of Israel so that He can unite with Her, then all the nations will serve God; the nations will be outside and the Name YHVH will stand inside with the community of Israel joyful and tranquil.[12]
The notion that each of the nations has a corresponding heavenly power – an angel – goes back at least to Rabbinic sources. In classical contexts, it enables a distinction between direct Divine providence granted to Jews, and the indirect guidance granted through the ministering angels to the other nations. Here, Gikkitila is adding the notion of the Divine names. The apparent implication is that the religions of the gentiles provide access to some of the names of God, even if not as directly as does Judaism, which connects Israel to the greatest and most powerful of names, YHVH.
R. Ovadiah Seforno was a rabbi, rabbinic scholar, exegete, and philosopher in Renaissance Italy. He is noted for teaching Torah to gentiles, and dedicating his theological work, Light of the Nations, to King Henry of England. He suggests that Christians share with Jews this universal relationship with God and all humanity is the chosen people. However, after the Fall of Adam when humanity turned towards materialism, then Jews and the pious of the other nations are more special. He uniquely proffers only a quantitative difference between Judaism and the other faiths.
<blockquote>:'''“And now if you will diligently listen to my voice and observe My covenant, you shall be consecrated (segulah) to Me from all the nations, for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation unto Me.” ''' (Exodus 19:5-6)</blockquote>
:“You shall be consecrated to Me”: Humanity as a whole is more precious to Me than the lower forms of existence, since man is the central figure in creation. As our Sages taught: “Beloved is man who was created in the Divine image.” (Avot 3:14) However, the difference between [Jews and non-Jews] in the hierarchy of the universe is that, although “the entire earth belongs to Me,” and the righteous of the nations are precious to Me without a doubt, [nevertheless] “you shall be a kingdom of priests unto Me.” This is your distinction: You shall be a kingdom of priests to teach all of humanity that they all shall call upon the name of God to serve Him with a common accord (Zephaniah 3:9). It also states, “And you shall be called the priests of God,” (Isaiah 61:6) and “For out of Zion shall the Torah come forth.” (Isaiah 2:3)
<blockquote>:'''“Although You love the nations, all of the holy one's are in your hand; they are subdued beneath Your feet, for he brought Your word.” ''' (Deut. 33:3)</blockquote>
:“Although you love the nations.” With this You make known that all of humanity is precious to You. As the Rabbis taught, “Beloved is man, who was created in the Divine image.” Nevertheless, “all holy ones are in your hand.” You declare that all holy ones -- the holy myriads who received the fiery religion are in your hand as silver in [the hand] of the refiner. “They are subdued” - they are broken, like one who has been reproved and prays with a broken spirit. “Beneath Your feet” - that is, at your footstool, Mount Sinai. “He brought Your word.” That is Torah which Moses commanded. They said to God, “Moses brought us your word, the Torah which You commanded us to heed.”
For Seforno, all humanity is beloved by God and chosen from amongst all creation. As Zephaniah has prophecied, the nations will in messianic times all call upon God. The distinction between Israel and the nations is the presence – or absence – of the Sinai revelation. All have the image of God, but the Sinai experience is only for Jews – there are two aspects to our lives. The universal and the particular; The image of God and our commitment to Bible as understood by Rabbinic literature, Torah study, ritual law, and peoplehood.
Rabbi Yehudah ben Betzalel Loewe (c. 1525-1609) was an eclectic Renaissance Jewish thinker who served as rabbi in Posen and Prague. His system, like many others in the early modern era, Jewish and non-Jewish, worked by creating binary pairs: in this case the redeemed world’s sustaining Jews and their opponents the gentiles. Maharal built his theology more on Midrash with its apocalyptic and typological themes than on Biblical or philosophic universalism. The ancient struggles of Israel with the seven wicked nations and Amalek are ever with us.
:Israel and Edom are inverse and opposite–when one is in ascent then the other is in descent (Sanhedrin 21b)
:At the beginning, Israel is connected to the nations like a shell around a fruit. At the end, the fruit is separated from the shell completely and Israel is separated from them. (Gevurat Hashem 23)
Maharal embraces separation and particularism. Where Yehudah Halevi used the metaphor of the fruit to refer to the branch religions that sprout with Judaism, Maharal gives the metaphor the opposite valence: Israel is the fruit whose connection with the other nations – the shell – only decreases with time. This opposition between Israel and the world – Edom – is real and absolute, a zero-sum game where cooperation is not conceivable.
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (1902-1984), the seventh leader of Chabad Hasidism, armed with a messianic sense of current era, wanted to bring Hasidism even to the gentiles of America. He does not need to rewrite the offensive text because, for him, since times have changed, the text does not apply. All gentiles are now seen as capable of appreciating the Divine light of Torah. He was also in favor of school prayer and acknowledged the Christian and civil religion of America as a necessary moral force. In some of his homilies he even invokes "in God we trust" printed on United States currency as showing that we share one God.
:The "spreading of the wellsprings" of Chassidic teachings should not be limited to Jews alone, but should be extended outward to non-Jews as well. As [Maimonides] states, the purpose of giving the Torah was to bring peace to the world (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Chanukah 4:14). Similarly, he writes that every Jew is obliged to try and influence those who are not Jewish to fulfill the Seven Laws of Noah. Maimonides also states that one of the achievements of the Messiah will be to spiritually refine and elevate the nations of the world until they, too, become aware of God to the point where Godliness will be revealed to every flesh, non-Jews.
Since the rewards of Torah come "measure for measure" it follows that among the efforts to bring the messianic age must be the effort to spread the Seven Laws of Noah, as well as the wellsprings of Chassidic teachings associated with them, outward to non-Jews. Indeed, the Prophets tell us, "Nations shall walk in your light." Although the Torah was given to the people of Israel, it will also serve as a light to the nations.[18]
For the Rabbis – or at least some of them – Divine prophecy was self-evidently too powerful to be bound by human categories of Jew or non-Jew. While this is not a multi-covenant theology, this strand of Rabbinic thought paves the way for such a possibility.
<blockquote>:The prophet Elijah said: I call heaven and earth to bear witness that anyone -- Jew or gentile, man or woman, slave or handmaid -- if his deeds are worthy, the Divine Spirit will rest upon him. (Tanna Debai Eliyahu 9:1)</blockquote>
:When the Holy one Blessed be He, revealed himself to give the Torah to Israel, he revealed himself not only to Israel but to all the other nations. (Sifrei Devarim 343)
====Rabbi Nathaniel ibn Fayumi====
While we earlier emphasized Hirsch’s inclusivist vision within his Jewish theology, Hirsch also sees a universal loving God who accepts the upright of all peoples. Their own ethical laws have been their own formulations of revelation, the Noahide laws, and providence.
<blockquote>:Judaism does not say, "There is no salvation outside of me." Although disparaged because of its alleged particularism, the Jewish religion actually teaches that the upright of all peoples are headed toward the highest goal.</blockquote>
<blockquote>:In particular, they have been at pains to stress that, while in other respects their views and ways of life may differ from those of Judaism, the peoples in whose midst the Jews are now living have accepted the Jewish Bible of the Old Testament as a book of Divine revelation. They profess their belief in the God of heaven and earth as proclaimed in the bible and they acknowledge the sovereignty of Divine Providence in both this life and the next. Their acceptance of the practical duties incumbent upon all men by the Will of God distinguishes these nations from the heathen and idolatrous nations of the Talmudic era. (Principles of Education, "Talmudic Judaism and Society,” 225-7)</blockquote>
<blockquote>:The Torah calls Israel a treasured nation. However, this does not imply, as some have mistakenly assumed, that Israel has a monopoly on God's love and favor. On the contrary, Israel's most cherished ideal is that of the universal brotherhood of mankind. (Nineteen Letters of Ben Uzziel, tr. Bernard Drachman [New York, 1942], p. 15.)</blockquote>
For Hirsch, there is one true and loving God over all humanity and we are all part of one brotherhood. He does not seek to define these terms based on narrow Rabbinic parameters but on the acceptance of the practical duties of mankind.
Mendes (1852-1937) served as rabbi of New York’s traditional Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, in which capacity he attended the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago. He was the first president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, and the first professor of homiletics at Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Theological Seminary in New York. He wrote:
:There is a legend that, when Adam and Eve were turned out of Eden or earthy paradise, an angel smashed the gates, and the fragments flying all over the earth are the precious stones. We can carry the legend further. The precious stones were picked up by the various religions and philosophers of the world. Each claimed and claims that its own fragment alone reflects the light of heaven, forgetting the setting and incrustations which time has added. Patience my brother. In God's own time we shall, all of us, fit our fragments together and reconstruct the gates of paradise. There will be an era of reconciliation of all living faiths and systems, the era of all being in at-one-ment, or atonement, with God. Through the gates shall all people pass to the foot of God's throne.[21]
Here we have an Orthodox thinker who clearly affirms a common core of all religions, which over time became encrusted and thereby lead to devolution of various faiths. In the modern age we now seek a collective activity of all humanity’s seeking to return to the original core. The Biblical vision of becoming a light unto the nations is as part of a joint effort to worship together. The eventual goal is a messianic restoration to Eden.
Rabbi Israel Lipschutz (1782-1860) from the port city of Danzig, offers a surprising universalistic sentiment in his Mishnah commentary.
<blockquote>:R. Elazar ben Azaryah said, "If there is no Torah there is no civilization [derech eretz: lit. way of the land.]." The word "Torah" here cannot be meant literally, since there are many ignorant people who have not learned it, and many pious among the gentiles who do not keep the Torah and yet are ethical and follow the “way of the land.” Rather, the correct interpretation seems to me to be that every people has its own Divine religion, which comprises three foundational principles, (1) belief in a revealed Torah, (2) belief in reward and punishment, and (3) belief in an afterlife. They only disagree on the interpretation of these principles. These three principles are what are called here "Torah."[22]</blockquote>
Lipschutz's offers a vision of tolerance based on a generic sense of revelation, reward, and afterlife found in all religions. Rather than approaching religions as an other, he senses a common core based on morality. If one wanted to develop an approach to non-Abrahamic faiths, then his general definitions offer a useful starting point. For him, enlightenment, karma, and reincarnation could be considered valued forms of Torah for gentiles.
In many ways he continues the inclusive-hierarchy model of valuing Jewish monotheism over the trinity and the inclusive-mission model by placing Judaism as the heart of the nations, with the nations following the Noahide laws and the Jews following the commandments. He is most original when he acknowledges the cultural embeddedness of religion and that there is truth in every religion even if their conceptions of monotheism and revelation are deficient. He has theological statements on why Judaism rejects the Trinity, why the New Testament cannot supersede the Sinai revelation, and why Jews accept a progressive revelation in the oral law.
:The idea of the personality of God necessarily implies that of the unity of substance. …Christianity which possesses a trinity of persons while maintaining the unity of God's substance…might best be called tritheism.[23]
:As for those who tell us that Christianity embodies a new revelation, do they not see that if the Christian mysteries were truly a radical innovation, then the entire system of Divine revelation would be overturned?… It could no longer be a question of a unique and perfect Revelation coming, like the material creation, from the sovereign intelligence of God….From the moment that one abandons the notion of a unique revelation -- with the intention of combating Judaism -- there remains only the hypothesis of multiple religions.
:A glance at the pagan mysteries will enable us to understand very clearly the influence of paganism upon the educated class in Israel.[24]
:Through dispersion among gentiles, [Judaism] gathers and incorporates the fragments of truth wherever it finds them scattered.[25]
He finds Christianity wanting on monotheism because it has a trinity, and on revelation because revelation is to be eternal and unique, incapable of being superseded by later revelations. Yet, in his writings, he openly compares and contrasts to Judaism, Christianity, pagan mysteries, Taoism, and Hinduism. He creates a vision of a single world religion with Judaism at the pinnacle and that all religions were needed for the progress of mankind.
==References===
[1] Alon Goshen-Gottstein, [http://www.jcrelations.net/en/displayItem.php?id=1754 "Jewish-Christian Relations: From Historical Past to Theological Future" Ecumenism No. 146 (2002). http://www.jcrelations.net/en/displayItem.php?id=1754].
[2] Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times (New York: Schocken, 1969.
[25] Ibid, 75.
[26] [http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/meta-elements/texts/cjrelations/resources/documents/interreligious/alexandria2002.htm The First Alexandria Declaration].
==See Also==
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