#Subvert in a sentence how to#

Scriptureįor this exercise then I will focus on the “Children of Abraham,” postponing words on other religions for another time. To explain my current approach to this question, I would draw on the following four sources. But these are not terms of worship, and they cannot by any means be applied to our relations to the One to whom we pray. The question is asked in everyday terms, where “same” and “different” are measures we might apply to piles of apples and oranges. Which brings me back to the salient question: “Do we worship the same God?” I wondered about that for many years, but I gradually learned not to ask the question because it cannot be answered in the terms it offers. I did not seek to become “other”, but to engage deeply with others. I became a student of rabbinic tradition, seeking to be rooted in my people’s Torah, and then became a student of Jewish philosophy, seeking to reason more broadly about the relation of this people and traditions to other peoples and traditions. I sought to do the same among my own people, whose traditions I knew but deeply learned only during and after college. As a student of anthropology and philosophy, I later studied among several other peoples as well, and sought to gain familiarity with their wisdoms and faiths. In my case, I grew up the only Jew in my grade school and may be one of two in the high school. My people are scattered among so many nations, where many of us learn the ways and languages of our neighbours and fellow citizens.

Ours, you know, is not a missionary people who presumes to tell all other peoples how they should live. More than that, I do not learn from the Torah how each other people lives its life, how it prays, how it obeys its commands. As for the words commanded to my people, I assume they are a blessing for any who might study them, but I do not presume that they supersede the good words commanded to other people. Inspired by the prophet Amos, the rabbis expect that each people will do well if it follows these commanding words and will not do well if it does not. It is a commandment for this people who, this week, retell the story of their escape from slavery in ancient Egypt and their receiving the Torah dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai.ĭoes that mean that the Jews alone receive the word of God? No, I believe that what the rabbis call the “children of Noah” - each and every people on earth - receive commanding words from that One to whom they pray. So, as a rabbinic Jew, I do not receive the Torah as a commandment for all peoples on earth.

#Subvert in a sentence how to#

The rabbis taught the surviving Jews how to read and reinterpret the written Torah after this destruction, and their work remains the library of what we call Judaism ever since. But I am a rabbinic Jew: a Jew trained in the traditions of the ancient rabbis who reinterpreted the written Torah after Rome destroyed our temple and scattered us away from its precincts. I cannot ask “Do we worship the same God?”, because “the same” is a measure and who are we to measure God?ĭoes this mean that I now believe we worship a different God? No, because “difference” is also a measure and, as I said, who are we to measure God? As a human being, a child of Adam and Eve, it would make me very happy to believe that we all worship the same God perhaps in different ways. While I tried to do my best on that occasion, I’ll confess I was quite uneasy about the question, but I had not yet arrived at the answer that I would now give. With Passover, Holy Week, and Ramadan all overlapping this year, the question may arise: “Do we worship the same God?” Indeed, just over a decade ago I was part of a panel discussion convened by Yale Divinity School which put precisely that question to us.