Does Judaism see other faiths as valid?

This year marks the 60th anniversary of probably the most significant interfaith declaration post-War. The Second Vatican Council issued Nostra Aetate, forged in the aftermath of the Shoah, which absolved Jews collectively of the charge of killing Jesus and put Catholic-Jewish relations on a new footing. It paved the way for further advances including recognition that the Covenant between God and the Jewish people remained valid.

Traditional Judaism has never reciprocated such initiatives, in terms of official statements. It has generally been thought enough to point to the rabbinic principle, that the righteous of all nations have a share in the World to Come, to demonstrate that Judaism does not believe it has the only key to the gates of heaven.

But a new book, translated from the Hebrew, argues the case for re-evaluating our attitude to people of other faiths. It is the product of the Ohr Torah Interfaith Centre, one of the network of modern Orthodox Israeli institutions founded by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin. On the historic anniversary of Nostra Aetate it envisages a new accord between Jews and Muslims.

The centre’s executive director Rabbi Yakov Nagen, one of the contributors to the book, believes that with the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in Israel, a new chapter in Jewish history and the prophetic mission of spreading awareness of God should be considered afresh.

He draws on the inspirational visions of the prophets. “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lod, to the House of the God of Jacob, that He may instruct us in His ways,” Isaiah predicts of other nations (2:3). “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:3-8).

For Malachi, too, spiritual knowledge is spread far and wide. “For from the rising of the sun to its setting My name is great among the nationsl” (2:3). While Zephaniah foresees that God will “transform people with a pure language, for them all to call on the name of the Lord, to serve Him shoulder to shoulder” (3:9).

“In the period of redemption,” Nagen writes, “Jews transform from reactive survivalists to proactive visionaries.” One of the book’s goals, he states, “is to stake the claim that beyond achieving the noble goals of mutual tolerance, respect and positive influence, adopting a news is necessary for the final redemption to progress.”

One of the values of the book is that it offers a selection of sources from medieval and modern thinkers on the subject - not only Maimonides and Rabbi Yehuda Halevi but lesser-known figures such as Rabbi Elijah Benamozegh (1823-1900), who was born in Livorno, Italy to a family of Moroccan origin or Rabbi Yehuda Leon Ashkenazi (1922-96), nicknamed Manitou, who was raised in Algiers but lived in France. The British-Israeli rabbi Johnny Solomon contributes an essay on the thought of Rabbi Lord Sacks.

In the eyes of tradition, the baseline are the seven Noahide Laws, which are regarded as binding on the non-Jewish world. For Maimonides, it was not simply enough to observe them but non-Jews were required to acknowledge that they originated in the revelation at Sinai, a gift of revelation.

What’s more, the Noahide Laws were sufficient; non-Jews were not permitted to invent their own religions, according to Maimonides. Nevertheless he was not entirely dismissive of Christianity or Islam, regarding that other religions had a role to play in disseminating the idea of salvation, “to pave the way for the King Messiah and to prepare the entire world to serve together”.

But other rabbis, the contributors point out, thought of the Noahide Laws as not a “ceiling” but a “floor” on which they could build their own system of acknowledging the Divine. The 12th-century Yemenite authority, Rabbi Nathaniel Fayyumi, considered Islam to be “of divine revelatory origin,” Nagen writes. His theology “gives monotheistic world religions seats next to Judaism at the head table, because it considers them the product of revelation.”

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Since we tend to view historic Jewish-Christian relations through the lens of Jewish persecution, some of the generous appraisals of Christianity seem remarkable. Rabbi Menachem Meiri (1249-1316), an authority from Provencal, said Christians “belong to the peoples bound by religious morals who believe in the existence, unity and omnipotence of God, even if they have got some things wrong according to our beliefs.”

Later Rabbi Jacob Emden, the 18th century German talmudist, took the view that the early Christians had sought to restore practice of the seven Noahide Laws which had forgotten: Jesus and the apostles had not sought to abrogate the Torah. Furthermore, in his thinking, supersessionism - the idea that the Church is the “new Israel” replacing Judaism - was a ploy “to help Christianity find a warm welcome among non-Jews”, Dr Assaf Malach, fellow of the Beit Midrash for Judaism and Humanity, explains in the book.

While Benamozegh criticised elements of Islam and Christianity, he nonetheless considers them “primary instruments for disseminating the Torah’s image,” Malach writes. The Italian rabbi wrote that “religious truth… has many voices in order to speak to various levels of intelligence.

Manitou envisaged humanity as “a floral bouquet” in which “the task of the Jewish people is to be the unifying factor that binds them all together.”

Towards the end Nagen tells the story of an interfaith encounter where an Israeli rabbi recited the prayer uttered by King Solomon at the inauguration of the Temple which includes an appeal for God to answer the prayers of those from far-distant lands. An Islamic sheikh, moved by this, linked the prayer to Mohammed’s night flight to Jerusalem in the expectation that God would answer a non-Jew who had come to the site from far away.

A shared sense of sanctity offers a “ray of hope” even if the world of harmony currently seems remote, he suggests.“An understanding that the presence and prayers of others enhance the sanctity of the site, rather than detract from it, can turn the Temple Mount into a centripetal force that draws in all religions and nations in unity.”

God Shall Be One - Reenvisioning Judaism’s Approach to Other Religions, Yakov Nagen, Sarel Rosenblatt, Assaf Malach, Maggid/Ohr Torah Stone, is out now

main image: Reaching out: Chief Rabbi of Rome Riccardo Di Segni (left) taking part in an interfaith dialogue along with representatives of the Vatican and local Muslim leaders in the Italian capital in 2006 (Photo: Getty)