Does God Speak to Different Peoples Through Different Religions?

“In the course of history,” wrote the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his The Dignity of Difference, “God has spoken to mankind in many languages: through Judaism to Jews, Christianity to Christians, Islam to Muslims.” To some of his Orthodox readers, this statement seemed a radical departure from traditional understandings of revelation. Indeed, in the second edition of the book—a powerful and humane defense of pluralism and particularism—Sacks reworded it. Gil Student, drawing on an array of ancient, medieval, and modern rabbinic sources, argues that the original formulation rests on grounds that even the most strictly Orthodox reader should see as solid:

Even though God has a special relationship with the Jewish people, He still cares about and maintains a relationship with Gentiles. [Rabbinic sources attest that] God used to speak to Jews and Gentiles through prophecy and other sub-prophetic means. . . . Man can interpret God’s speech with a genuine effort, but his understanding will always be limited by his knowledge and abilities. Even when God speaks to Christians and Muslims, they filter the message through their own experiences and knowledge.

Yet, Student adds, one need not go quite so far to support Sacks’s claim. Take the argument articulated, most famously, by Moses Maimonides (1138–1204):

Through the tools of providence, God could be guiding humanity to an ultimate goal, using those religions as tools to bring people closer to truth. Those religions are a step from the chaos and paganism of the ancient world to the pure monotheism of the future world. These religions orient people toward family, community. and stability, and to some degree toward the Bible. If this is the case, then God speaks via divine providence to Christians through Christianity and Muslims through Islam. [As Maimonides puts it], “the entire world has already become filled with the mention of the messiah, Torah, and commandments.”

More to the point, we see today how atheism and secularism break down community and family, and raise uncertainty about everything in life, including gender. These are biblical concepts of family, community, and identity that once seemed obvious but now are being preserved mainly by religious communities, including non-Western religions. Even idolatrous religions can preserve basic biblical notions and institutions.

Read more at Torah Musings

More about: Jonathan Sacks, Judaism, Moses Maimonides, Pluralism

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society