Greg Daly
Cain and Abel are the first word about the human condition, but not the last, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks tells Greg Daly
Sibling rivalry lies at the heart of stories central to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, according to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the United States and Commonwealth, but the Scriptures show that this rivalry is not inevitable and reconciliation between brothers is possible and even desirable.
“It’s so clear to me that the transformation of Jewish-Catholic relations since Vatican II is the great sign of hope that things do not have to continue the way they have done in terms of relations between the faiths,” he says, explaining that in his latest book he attempts to examine the roots of violence, adding, “I want to take that one level deeper because if moderates stand together against radicals, we win.”
Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence, he says, was “not an easy book to write”, and one that has taken him 12 years, during much of which he sat and meditated, wondering what it is that God is asking of us in a time when people have reverted to violence in his name.
“The book is quite a complex analysis in which I try to look at the roots of violence – the strange phenomenon of dualism and the strange phenomenon of scapegoating,” he explains.
He draws on the ideas of the French literary theorist and cultural anthropologist René Girard to highlight our tendencies to see things in terms of ‘us’ and a dehumanised ‘them’ and to tackle the problem of communal violence and competition by focusing blame and violent energies on outsiders who simultaneously appear both weak and powerful, and looks to how these ideas can help open up such Biblical tales as the stories of Sarah and Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael, and Jacob and Esau.
“What I’m really trying to do,” he says, “is go one level deeper than normal levels of readings of these passages.” Explaining that these stories, which focus on one person being chosen ahead of another, all have long histories of exegesis, he says: “When we read of all them in a new way, looking at their literary style and narrative art, we begin to notice something very strange indeed
“Our sympathies are drawn to the one not chosen. They are drawn instead to Hagar, to Ishmael and to Esau because he sits with Isaac. The Joseph story – when it reaches its conclusion – forces the brothers into a role reversal.
“Role reversal does not take an enormous space in the history of moral philosophy,” he says, citing the modern story of a radical role reversal where one of the leaders of Hungary’s anti-Semitic Jobbik party discovered that he was himself a Jew, “but that is what these narratives are forcing us to do. How does it feel to be Rachel or Leah?”
It is possible to hear lessons in the stories that our ancestors could but rarely hear, he explains. “Our vantage point is different because we live so closely with difference,” he says, now that Christians, Muslims, Jews, and others can live side by side. “In the past we were never forced to step outside our community and see it from another vantage point, but this new proximity empowers and calls to us.”
Historically, he says, “there was a real and deep estrangement between Jews, Christians and Muslims for a very long time”, adding that with few exceptions Jews and Christians have really only met as friends in his lifetime. This time of proximity and mixing is, he says, “a rare theological moment”, pointing out that the so-called Islamic State “is shot through with theology even more than Al Qaeda was”.
In responding to this “we must penetrate to the depths of theology”, he says, adding, “I can’t believe that the Abrahamic monotheisms do not have within them the resources to address this crisis and be more than equal to it.”
The unprecedented nature of this point in our history, he explains, can help us open up our sacred texts in new ways, enabling the narratives to “disclose a depth of meaning we weren’t able to hear before”.
References
Although Not in God’s Name makes references to Christian and Muslim theology and exegesis, Rabbi Sacks clarifies that he was careful in writing the book not to step outside his own faith tradition. “It would just be wrong to tell Christians how to do Christian theology, and to tell Muslims how to do Muslim theology,” he says, explaining that he hoped, instead, to invite others to attempt similar projects in their own faiths.
The need for such projects could hardly be more pressing, and although the rabbi is under no illusions that his book will persuade members of Islamic State to become moderates, he nonetheless hopes similar books might help persuade other young Muslims that their texts can and should be read honestly in ways that do not lead to violence.
“In the Middle Ages, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all had multiple levels of reading,” he says, adding that while he is not enough of a scholar of Islam to explain why less nuanced approaches to the text won out after the 12th Century, it is clear that Islam remains capable of complex interpretations.
In his previous book, The Great Partnership, the rabbi argued that modern secular ethics are ultimately unwieldy, and in Not in God’s Name he goes further, arguing that moral relativism can offer no serious defence of freedom.
Our best hope for the future, he argues, lies in the promotion of religious freedom. “Religious liberty was actually invented by very religious people who saw the wars of religion and, realising that they didn’t know who was going to win, came to the conclusion that the most important thing was to safeguard religious freedom whoever wins,” he says.
While he thinks that will eventually happen within Islam, in the meantime moderates of all religious traditions must stand up and protest on behalf of those whose very existence is now being threatened, doing so under the banner of article 18 of the universal declaration of human rights, which guarantees freedom of religion.
“We must stand together under that banner,” he says, “and we have a theological basis to do so.”
