Rabbi Steinsaltz’s involvement in interfaith relations brings him to places around the world to meet with diplomatic and religious leaders, including the Dalai Lama and chief cardinals at the Vatican. In 2000, he delivered a keynote address at the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders at the United Nations, and in 2004, he presented at the World Symposium of Catholic Cardinals and Jewish Leaders, hosted by the World Jewish Congress.
The Irrelevance of “Toleration” in Judaism<br>
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
The Noahide laws provide a mechanism for thinking about religious tolerance, but they are not, at least in modern terms, examples themselves of liberal toleration. The Noahide laws presuppose the superior purity of Jewish belief and, to a more limited extent, of Jewish practices; thus, the difference between Judaism’s expectations of Jews and its expectations of gentiles suggests a hierarchy of religions. However illiberal this system may sound to modern ears, the existence of a hierarchy of expectations results in a set of rules for defining heresy that do not concern non-Jews. While the simplest violation of belief in the one God constitutes a heresy within the Jewish world, the popular beliefs of gentiles are met with understanding. The less than absolutely monotheist folk beliefs of Christians or Buddhists are taken in Jewish law to be violations of Christianity and Buddhism, religions that are in themselves adequately monotheistic; hence such beliefs are only problematic internally—solely within the discourse of another.
