You
Were There!
What
Makes Us Different?
Rabbi
Michael L. Feshbach,
Temple Anshe Hesed
Erie, PA
Temple Anshe Hesed
Erie, PA
Long
before the headlines of this past summer, before I knew that scientific
excitement would come in the form of fossils in a meteor, I was reading a
series of science fiction books about Mars. In these books, the first settlers
on the red planet were developing a society, a way of life distinctly different
from anything that had existed on earth. For these people and their children
were, they argued, fundamentally different from those who had gone before. They
came from many different backgrounds on Earth, but they were united now in a
unique way, shaped by their journey, changed by their experience, forged by the
flame of fate into a group that came from, but was different than that which
had gone before.
What
makes Jews different from gentiles? The question is one that touches on both
the identity of Jews - and the essence of Judaism. And it is not an easy
question to answer.
Is it our beliefs that set us apart?
But I know, and you know, Jews who are atheists. And unlike in other religions,
whatever I may think of their arguments, there is nothing I can (or would) do
to read them out of the Jewish fold. They, too, are Jews. And there is the old
joke: if you have two Jews in a room, you have three opinions.
Is it, then, our ethnicity? On November 11th, in my synagogue in
Erie, our Jewish community will welcome traveling representatives of Project
REAP, the Reform Movement’s Ethiopian Jewry Assistance Program, as part of
their national tour to bring attention to and awareness of the ongoing
absorption issues faced by the Ethiopian community in Israel. Those who have
met Ethiopian Jews know that it is not ethnicity alone that makes us different.
For we come in every shape and size, every color and combination of colors in
the human rainbow.
Is it that we are a people, or, simpler, just born Jewish? But how,
then, could one join? How account for the inescapable fact that some of our
most dedicated devoted, knowledgeable and spiritual individuals ... were not
born as Jews?
Is it that we are the Chosen People of God? It is a controversial
concept, powerful - and provocative. There were, indeed, tremendous differences
between the polytheistic cultures of the Ancient Near East, and the world’s
first monotheist. The
concept of being the chosen people made sense then. Today, however, with
daughter faiths that have flourished in the loving light of the One God, it may
well be out of date. Or time to update.
In the first eleven chapters of Genesis, our tradition describes a
God who tried to work with all human beings at once. This is universal history
- and it was an abject failure. God winds up expelling us from Eden, witnessing
the first murder, drowning most of the world and then deliberately confusing us
with different languages.
It doesn’t say much for us. But, frankly, it wasn't a great record
of accomplishment on God’s part, either. History takes a major turn with the
twelfth chapter of Genesis. For here, God doesn’t deal with everyone in the
whole world all at once together. God calls Abraham. And God begins to deal
with human beings ... in groups. (Personally, I believe that God remained
universal, and interested in all human beings. God called to all groups, in
different ways.)
However literally you take these stories in the pre-history of
Genesis, with this twelfth chapter our ancestors express an important insight.
Yes, all human beings, every one of us - male and female, black and white and
brown and yellow, each one of us is created in the image of God. Yes, we share
that common heritage as human beings. But we also live our lives in groups. We
do not begin as citizens of the world. We relate first to families, and then in
expanding circles of similarity outward.
It
is good to take pride in the groups of which we are a part. It is healthy. It
is natural. It is human.
But
there is a thin and fragile line ... between pride in ourselves ... and thinking
that what is good in us makes us better than others. There is a dangerous
difference between pride and prejudice, between cohesiveness and chauvinism,
between liking what makes us different from other people ... and not liking
what makes other people different from us.
This
is the challenge of our human heritage: to balance pride with appreciation, to
realize that different is not better and different is not worse. Different is
different.
And
perhaps we should even remind ourselves ...that the path to God is found not on
one road alone, but in many ways. We reach out to God with our own traditions
and celebrations. So, too, do others. What binds us together is the potential
to reach out. Even if we do so in very different ways.
