Monday morning at LimmudLA, I catch Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller’s lecture on "A Jewish perspective on the relationship between Judaism and Islam."
The rabbi says it is important to dialogue with other religions but it was very difficult to dialogue with Islam. After two years, he gave up.
"To do real dialogue, you have to be able to talk not only about all the good things in your tradition, but you have to be able to talk about the bad things. Masochism is not my way. If I’m going to reveal some of the negatives [about Jews and Judaism], politically, that’s what they’re most interested in, and the Muslim participants sit there absorbing it all and never letting go of themselves, you’re just human. I became resentful and I left.
"I came back to a meeting and told them why I left. Everybody was upset and resentful. There were some good people there…"
"I want you to be able to recognize fundamentalism…[including] in your own community. Thank God our fundamentalists are not militants, some are."
"Read Commentary this month, the article on moderate Muslims. It puts Daniel Pipes in his place. Please don’t follow Daniel Pipes. If you follow Daniel Pipes, you are down the road of hopelessness."
"If we had listened to Daniel Pipes, most probably there would not have been a 9/11.
"So why didn’t we listen to Daniel Pipes? Because you couldn’t. He made everything so bad that no one could believe him."
"You have to speak a language people can absorb. If you say they are all bad and the only good Muslims are Zionists, no one’s going to believe you. First of all, those Muslims, no one cares about them except Jews. Why do we need Muslims to be Zionists? We need Jews to be Zionists."
"We need strong Muslims who believe in their cause who we can argue with… I’m not hopeful."
"The Muslim critics are mostly in the West. Muslim critics are very scared…that they’re going to die."
"Nietzsche called it a slave morality. We developed our morality in the conditions in which we were oppressed. Therefore, we developed a whole theory about how to deal with those who are vulnerable in society. No empire developed a theory about how to deal with those who are oppressed."
"My teacher and friend Krister Stendahl taught me…that when they (his Harvard students) study [New Testament] texts in their class which are anti-Jewish… Number one. Contextualize. That passage has to do with the First Century. It has nothing to do with Jews today. Number two. If you can, reinterpret those texts."
"Every religious tradition has baggage."
"It has to be identified and reinterpreted if possible."
"We’re supposed to wipe out the seven nations. That’s not a good verse. The worst thing you can do is justify it."
"One of the reasons for our survival is the interpretative tradition."
"Stendahl says contextualize, you have to give it some history. History is important. History neutralizes the sense that it is divine ordinance. You have to live on two levels. That you believe it is God’s word and that it has history. Once you historicize something, it gives it a sense of life. It lived in the world. You give it some context. It is not eternal."
"Second, reinterpret. Third, if you can’t reinterpret, sometimes you have to make a judgment and say that it is immoral. That is very difficult."
"There is a pre-history of the Koran. The problem is that people who do research about the pre-history of the Koran can get killed because it is God’s word. When you proclaim that something is God’s word, it is a good thing to be moderate. It’s dangerous.
"That’s the story I was going to tell before. When we had a dialogue between Jews and Muslims, and they asked us all to come with a story from our Tradition. I was a wise guy. I chose the story where the [Talmudic] rabbis rejected God’s miracles. The Christians loved it. The Muslims were sitting at the edge. I told myself, good thing this is on Hilgard Avenue. If this were the Middle East…"
The rabbi draws his finger under his neck.
"People who do historical studies on the Koran are taking their lives into their hands. This guy wrote a Ph.D. at the University of Cairo on the literary analysis of the Koran and they rejected his Ph.D. and they made sure that his professor could not teach again."
"They have a very bad problem. We can’t work it out for them. We suffer for their problem. When I debate with Muslims, I talk about this. What right do I have to be critical of Islam? I say, I’m suffering for the things they’re teaching. I’m going to talk about it. It’s no longer theoretical."
The rabbi reads an excerpt from the Koran calling Jews apes and swine.
"When you call people apes and swines, that’s a causus belli."
"The garbage in the Koran was there all the time. It was there in Spain when Jews and Muslims got along well. In good times, no one paid attention to this. In bad times, it all came to the surface.
"There was no motivation within Islam [to deal with these garbage texts]…because Islam was dominant throughout its history. The theory of Islam is that Allah is with us. There is no mechanism in Islam for dealing with bad times. In 1967, Islam was in turmoil [because Israel won the Six Day War]. History is not history in Islam. It’s theology. It’s the unfolding of God in the world and the Muslims are supposed to be on top, particularly in their world. And the Jews come along and defeat them.
"We are the cause of the rise of Muslim fundamentalism. If you read the literature, the Muslims say that 1967 was a sign that the Westernization of Islam was a cause of the decline of Islam and we have to cleanse Islam to return to an Islam that never existed."
"The need for equality [between Muslims and non-Muslims in Muslim lands] doesn’t exist anywhere in Islamic writers."
A woman educated at Aish Ha Torah says: "I’m a little confused about Islamic history being the unfolding of God. I learned that history was the unfolding of God in Judaism and that everything that was happening now was part of the End of days scenario. Isn’t that the same thing?"
Rabbi: "Be careful with that. I don’t know anything about the End of days."
Woman: "I hear one thing from one group and another thing from another group. How do I know which group is right?"
Rabbi: "What we have to focus on is making this world better. You want the End of Days? Make this world better and you’ll have the End of Days."
"When you get into magic, you’ll have the Muslims say we are the unfolding of God in the world and Jews will say we are the unfolding of God in the world, and you’ll have a party and people will kill each other. That’s what people do when they want an unfolding of the End of Days… People are going to die for the One Truth."
"[According to the Koran:] Jews have Torah and mitzvot because God is punishing them."
"Not everything [the Torah] says the pagans did do we have evidence for. When you’re trying to say I’m right and the other guy is wrong, you’re going to try to make the other guy look bad."
"Why do they hate the rabbis? Because we choose to correct God’s word. We have the arrogance. Jews are arrogant. That’s a standard accusation in Islamic literature."
"All the sources for the Rambam’s Guide For The Perplexed are Muslim. There’s not a single Jewish philosopher that he can quote that undergirds his philosophical thinking."
"The Rambam says I’m not always going to give you the name [of my source] because you’ll get excited."
"For the most part, the glories we attribute to the Golden Age was a construct of scholars of the 19th Century as a polemic against Christianity."
"What’s so attractive about Islam? The prayer line and the haj. There’s a humility in Islam. If you’re a practicing Muslim, there you are on the floor with everybody. Same with the haj. The opportunity to be part of the oneness of being and you sense some transcendence."
"You have a tradition that prides itself on self-criticism and another tradition that tries to cover up. One people is called Yisrael, meaning struggle with God. One people is called Ishmael, which means obediance, submission."
"Muslims are individually humble and collectively arrogant. Jews are individually arrogant and collectively humble."
The rabbi gives me permission to put his speech online.
