Judaism
Religion is a school of its own, teaching
what it values and what it marginalizes or
rejects, and why. Judaism, for instance, the older brother of
Christianity, has norms which have had
important influence on the formation of American character. Although very
few Jews lived here until the late
nineteenth century, the holy books of Christianity had been conceived by people reared culturally and
religiously as Jews, and the elders of the New
England colony actually looked upon themselves from time to time as the
lost tribes of Israel.
What can be extracted as living wisdom from
these Jewish religious thinkers when sieved
through many centuries of Christian cloth? The following at a bedrock
minimum:
1 .
As a condition of creation, humans are called upon to honor their origins in
flesh through honoring the father and
mother and in the spirit by closely studying the first five books of the Old Testament (known
as the Torah), to dwell upon divine
origins and a time when God directly interceded in the affairs of
mankind.
2.
The acceptance that authority is morally grounded in divine authority. The Commandments must be kept; God will not allow
compromise. From this comes respect for
law and further organization of Jewish culture around the belief that there is a right way to do everything,
discernible to intellect, revealed by wise
scholars to ordinary people. Close reading and subtly layered exegesis
are Jewish values which became
benchmarks of Western intellect.
3.
The Law of Hospitality to Strangers — in the tradition of Abraham and the
angels, the Jewish Talmud teaches that
strangers are to be treated with respect and
affection. This openness to experience led to great advantages for Jews
as they traveled everywhere. It
encouraged them to be curious, not always to remain self- ghettoized, but to take risks in
mingling.
4.
A tradition of prayer, and respect for prayer, as a way to know "before
whom you stand," the legend written
above the ark containing the Torah scrolls.
Judaism teaches that God wants our love
and loves us in return. The first five books of
the Bible are His gift to purify our hearts with the story of a pilgrim
people making its way through the desert
to God. Judaism teaches a way of life that sanctifies the everyday, an outlook that sees no accidents — not a
sparrow falling — without a moral charge to
select a course carefully, since God always offers a road to the good as
well as a road to trouble as His way of
honoring free will. Christianity has to some extent incorporated these precepts, but it also has a unique
doctrine of its own, just as Muslim stress on
egalitarianism, and Hindu and Buddhist stresses on renunciation and
self-knowledge are centerpieces of those
religions. I'll turn to what that uniqueness of Christianity is next.
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