Rabbi Shmuley Boteach writes in The Jewish Press:
Two weeks ago I debated Michael Steinhardt, the renowned philanthropist and self-declared atheist, and Prof. Noah Feldman, arguably America’s foremost thirty-something legal mind, on the subject of whether or not Jews are different based on their values. Are we as a people distinct based on the values we cherish, or are we like everyone else?
To be sure, Jews are fiercely devoted to their identities. Even when they assimilate and/or marry out, they still never give up the title "Jew," as they rarely ever convert to the religion of their non-Jewish spouse. It’s as if they feel innately that there is something infinitely meaningful in the simple title "Jew."
But can we identify the values that make Jewish identity so consequential to so many people?
In my remarks, I approached the subject with a two-tiered system of Jewish values. First, there are the values the Jewish people gave the world that have since been co-opted by other faiths and for which we have lost a copyright. Since these values have been adopted by other nations who do not credit the Jews with their origin, this makes many believe that the only Jewish legacy is one of suffering and death.
In thinking of golden civilizations and high points in history, the average secular Jew will conjure up images of pontificating Greek philosophers, Roman legions shimmering in the bright sun, and the artistic wonders of the Renaissance masters. Tell him that in terms of world history the Jews have outshone all these civilizations and he will break into a fit of giggles.
The Jews, he thinks to himself, are the ones who were defeated by the Romans, slaughtered by the crusaders, expelled by the Spaniards, disemboweled by the Cossacks, and cremated by the Nazis. Every Jewish child studies in school about how each nation lived and how the Jews died.
This is, sadly, due to the fact that the many gifts of the Jews now go by other names. The Jews gave the world the idea of one God. Today that concept is known to billions of people as Allah or Jesus. The Hebrew Bible’s idea that all men are created equal today goes by the term "democracy." The idea of a brotherhood of nationalities, rooted in the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah, today is known by the name "United Nations."
Consider also that the teaching of Leviticus 19:18 – that one must love one’s fellow man as oneself – is today called the Golden Rule and almost universally attributed to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.
British historian Paul Johnson, in his A History of the Jews, puts it this way: "To [the Jews] we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person; of the individual conscience and so of personal redemption: of the collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the basic furniture of the human mind. Without the Jews it might have been a much emptier place."
But there is a second tier of values – values that remain wholly Jewish, that have not been embraced by the world and that could bring great healing if only they were to be disseminated.
In America, the age of Judaism has arrived. Why? Because Christianity and Islam mostly focus on the big questions of how one gets into heaven and where one goes after death. Judaism instead focuses on the small questions of everyday existence at which most people today fail: How do I stay married? How do I inspire my children? How do I live a life of spiritual purpose that is not dominated by corrosive materialism?
There are six central values that are uniquely Jewish and that the world desperately needs in order to heal. Their exclusive perpetuation among Jews will be to the earth’s detriment. It therefore should be our objective to mainstream these values everywhere. They are, in acrostic form, DREAMS.
