Tribalism with a Human Face

I feel grateful and privileged to be a member of the small group of people, representing five different religious traditions, invited periodically by the World Council of Churches to discuss questions of both theological and practical concern. It is not only a personal honor to be given the enormously challenging task and responsibility of representing the Jewish people and its ancient faith. I feel it is also an honor for the Jewish people, long considered a pariah among the nations, to be invited to the conference table as an equal among the world’s great religious cultures. When I consider that the other faiths represented all number at least several hundred million adherents worldwide (and in some cases, more than a billion), I feel that we are living through a most significant turning point in our history. After all, by the most liberal accounting, the Jewish people numbers no more than 13–15,000,000 today, and at no point in our history did we ever have more than about 18,000,000. That we are considered worthy of inclusion in these meetings is a tribute to our culture and a fulfillment of the biblical verse, “for you are the fewest of all peoples” (Dt. 7:7; N.R.S.V.). To some extent, we have always been “the other,” so our participation in these discussions is particularly meaningful.

I am reminded of a personal experience that affected me deeply. Several years ago, I was invited by the then-Lutheran-bishop-elect of Jerusalem, Dr. Mounib Younan, to his investiture. At the beginning of the service there was a procession of bishops from throughout the world. As they walked past in their official garb, I realized that I knew personally at least four of them. I could hear my late grandfather, who had grown up as a Jew in early-twentieth-century Poland, nodding his head and saying, “Debbie, it is most essential that you cultivate these friendships. You never know when it might be important for the Jewish community to turn for help to the bishop.” Except that now, the shoe is on the other foot. Living in Jerusalem as a member of the sovereign majority, I have had occasion to use my pull with Israeli government officials to try to help Mounib and his Palestinian congregants.

Interfaith dialogue, as it has developed in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, has given Jews an opportunity to share spiritual insights with other human beings. This may be a way of fulfilling our biblical charge to be “a kingdom of priests, a holy nation” (Ex. 19:6; N.J.B.). But, as distinguished from some interpretations of that task, in which the priest-hood is one-sided and Jews are bidden to teach the world Torah, we now have an unparalleled opportunity to learn as well as to teach. Moreover, much of Jewish history has been spent living in the shadow of persecution. Jews are sometimes seen as suffering from a kind of collective syndrome of post-traumatic stress. I long for the Torah that may someday develop in an atmosphere of security and mutual respect, nourished by positive interaction with other cultures and other approaches to spirituality.

Once we Jews will be able to see ourselves in a new light and not only as victims, we will not only be able to assume more responsibility for whatever injustices we have caused, but we will also be able to revisit and rethink some of the problematic notions of our own heritage. Personally, I would like us to reconceptualize the notion of chosenness and indeed the whole question of our interaction with the rest of the world. A famous Midrash explains the use of the term HaIvri (“the Hebrew”) to describe our patriarch Abraham. In a typically rabbinic play on words, the rabbis suggested that Abraham stood on one side (“eiver”) while the whole rest of the world stood on the other. I find this Midrash problematic, in that it educates generations of Jewish children to...