Tolerance/respect (was Church, state)

[jwcpgh]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Amy Z" <lupinesque at y...> 
wrote:
<snip> I heard a very interesting talk by a rabbi recently about his 
> grappling with the "chosen people" passages.  They made him very 
> uncomfortable, as they did many members of his synagogue; they 
> conflict with their strong feeling (derived not only from post-
> Enlightenment, liberal US philosophy, but from Jewish teaching) 
that the Jewish people are *not* ipso facto superior to others.  He 
cited another passage in the Bible (Isaiah?) in which God makes it 
clear that he has positive plans for many peoples--something along 
the lines of "never you mind about the Hittites, I'll tell them what 
I have in mind for them."  The implication of that passage is that 
the Jews may be chosen for this particular message, the one given in 
the Jewish Bible, but that God gives other messages to other 
people.  A sort of separate-but-equal deal, except without the 
> unconstitutionality.

Laura responds:

Those passages make a lot of people uncomfortable.  If you read them 
as saying that we are superior to other people, they should make you 
uncomfortable because that's a gross misreading. Trying to read 
Bible text using an Enlightenment vocabulary is going to cause 
problems (let alone the hazards of translating Hebrew into Latin or 
Greek and then into English...but that's another topic).  

Chosenness means exactly what the Isaiah passage suggests:  that 
Jews have a particular relationship to God.  At the time of Isaiah, 
and certainly in Torah times, we were the only peoples to have such 
a relationship.  The relationship consisted (and consists) in a 
contract:  God will take us to be God's people and we will take God 
to be our God.  There are quite a lot of mutual obligations arising 
from that agreement, of course, but that's the essence.  As God's 
people, the early Jews were to live in such a way as to demonstrate 
to their polytheistic neighbors that there was another way.  

Now once other monotheistic religions appear, the question of 
chosenness becomes much more fraught.  It's no longer a introducing 
the world to the one God.  Now it's a family matter-who is God's 
favorite?  Of course, that's a tragically wrong way to look at the 
situation, but that's what happened.  Jews over time tended to adopt 
the "chosen means superior" stance in reaction to endless 
persecution.  And to some extent it has to be said that it was a 
successful strategy for our survival-if we'd succumbed to self-
hatred we'd have died out.  But it's no longer adaptive, IMHO, and 
it's time we returned to the original meaning of chosenness; that 
is, we tend to remember the benefit and forget the obligation, and 
we need to live up to our part of the contract.

<snip> 
Laura:
 Anyhow, we don't expect everyone to be Jewish, 
> > nor do we actively seek converts.  What we advocate for is 
> > monotheism and adherence to a basic set of broad ethical > 
> behaviors.  
> 
Amy:
> And even then, Jews seldom proselytize.  I grew up Jewish and was 
> never given the idea that I should talk to Hindus and Pagans about 
> their little polytheism problem.

Laura replies:

The proselytizing is much more likely to happen within the 
religion.  Lubavitcher Chassids are infamous for this.  We have 
people in my neighborhood who stand outside the kosher market on 
Friday afternoons and ask you if you plan to light candles for the 
Sabbath.  I always wish them a good Sabbath in Hebrew, just to play 
with their minds.  They don't expect a woman wearing jeans and with 
very short hair to be observant.  But I am.  
>
Laura wrote:   
> > I myself am not fond of the term "tolerance" in the first 
place.  There's a theologian named Stephen Carter (I think he's at 
Harvard)...
> 
Amy:
> He's at Yale and is actually a lawyer rather than a theologian, in 
> terms of his training. 

Laura replies:
Thanks for the corrections-it's been a while since I read his stuff.

Laura wrote:
...who wrote in one of his books that the word implies the power to 
> > allow or disallow others to exist.  That is, if we can decide to 
be tolerant, we can also decide to be intolerant and persecute those 
who don't believe or act as we do.  Instead, I think we should use 
the word "respect" or some other term that suggests more of a moral  
imperative and less of a power exercise.  I don't feel that I have a 
choice whether or not to "tolerate" others; they have the same right 
to their beliefs as I do. 

Amy:
> 
> I like your distinction, though it seems we need something between 
> generous "respect" and grudging "tolerance."  I not only tolerate, 
> say, Biblical literalism, but I entirely support and accept 
others' right to hold that position.  <snip> 

Laura replies:
Yes, what I meant was that it's the person's right to hold the 
belief that I respect.  I may agree, disagree or be indifferent, but 
I can't expect respect for my right to believe what I choose if I 
don't also believe that everyone else has that right.  The problem 
arises, of course, when a person says that their belief necessitates 
behaviors that might be objectionable to others, like proselytizing 
or outlawing the teaching of the theory of evolution.

Amy:
> Sad to say, you do indeed have a choice whether to tolerate 
others.  You can pass laws against their practicing their religion, 
or even beat them up or kill them if you can get away with it--and 
if the legal system is biased enough toward your religion and 
against theirs, you may well get away with it.  It happens all the 
time, though, thankfully, less here in the US than it used to.  So 
mere tolerance is no small step forward.

Laura:
Amen to that last sentence!

I should have distinguished between individual and state.  On a 
personal level I don't feel that respecting the freedom of others to 
believe as they see fit is a matter of choice.  I feel it would be 
wrong of me to take any other position.  The state can, of course, 
have a philosophy different than my personal one or my religious-
group one.  And because the state reflects the beliefs of its 
members, it may change its stance on a particular issue as the 
people it represents change their minds.  

<remainder snipped>