Interreligious Theology: Its Value and Mooring in Modern Jewish Philosophy 9783110430455, 9783110439311

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
The Ambivalence of Religions
Pluralistic Theology and Interreligious Theology
Jewish Dialogical Thinking and Dialogical Theology
The Value of Interreligious Theology
“Trans-Difference”
Dialogue, Hospitality, Translating, and Listening
A Multiperspective Approach to the Ultimate Reality
Resisting the Abolition of Differences
Religions and a Peaceful Society
Presence and a Hermeneutics of the Other
Incomparibility, Knowledge, and Meeting
Acknowledgments
I Jewish Dialogical Philosophy and Interreligious Theology
Chapter 1. Jewish Dialogical Thinkers and Interreligiosity
Scholarly Studies on Dialogue between Judaism and Other Religions
Martin Mordecai Buber (1878–1965)
Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929)
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972)
Jewish Theology and Dialogue
Perspectives: Invitation to Dialogue
Chapter 2. Buddhist Thought and Heschel’s Jewish Philosophy: An Encounter
Heschel’s Religious Philosophy
Religion, Human Rights and Depth Theology
Buddhism and Heschel’s Judaism
Towards an Interreligious Dialogue and Theology
Chapter 3. Successful Interreligiosity: A Case Study
Chapter 4. Building Blocks for Interreligious Dialogue and Theology
Cultural Changes
Religion and the Ineffable
Positioning Oneself in Dialogue with the Other
Dialogue as Successful Meeting
Presuppositions for Dialogue
The Relevance of Presence in Martin Buber
Emmanuel Levinas’s Concept of Difference
Heschel’s “No Religion Is an Island”
Interreligious Learning
Translation, Untranslatability, Difference, and Trans-Difference
Admitting Negative Points, Adopting Maximum Interpretations, Making Changes
A New We?
Radical Otherness, Differences, and Trans-Difference
Three Final Remarks
Chapter 5. The Buber-Rosenzweig Bible Translation as a Jewish Dialogical Enterprise
The Context: Dialogical Thinking and Speech Thinking
A Jewish Translation
“Tombstone” or Testimony of a Dialogical Life?
Chapter 6. German-Jewish Religious Thinkers as Jews and Germans
Moses Mendelssohn
Samson Raphael Hirsch
Hermann Cohen
Franz Rosenzweig
Martin Buber
Multiculturality
II Towards an Interreligious Theology
Chapter 7. On the Necessity of Trans-Difference
The Role of Religions
Religion as Violence
Religiosity as Humanizing Force
Dialogical Hermeneutics
Towards Trans-Difference
Religion as Social Critique and Defense of Human Rights
Chapter 8. Constructing Religious Identity
Searching and Shaping Identity
Autonomy and the Need for Recognition
Problematic and Healthy Meta-Narratives
Maintaining Unity in Multiple Situations
Dialogue between the Self and the Other
Dialogue between Collective Egos
Religious Meta-Narrative and Personal Identity
Narrative of the Self in Relation with the Other
Chapter 9. Interreligious Exegesis: An Example
Two Preliminary Remarks
The Meaning of the Third Commandment in Jewish Tradition
Theological Reflection on the Meaning of the Commandment Today
Interreligious or Dialogical Reflections
Interreligious learning in a Broader Perspective
Chapter 10. Dialogical Philosophy and Social Transformation
Buber’s Relational Thought as Transformative Model
Spirit and Dialogical Man
I as “I-you”
The Concrete Spirituality of Religious Humanism
“I-you” and “I-it”: Separate Worlds?
Hebrew Humanism
The Challenge of Transformative Thinking
Dialogue between Groups
The Spirit of Israel
Narrow Nationalism and Communicative Openness
Alternative Thinking
Chapter 11. Interreligious Theology as a New Kind of Theology
Classical Theology or Religious Studies?
Different Tasks
The Question of Secular Science
Complementary Standpoints
The Case of the Study of Hassidism
Interreligious Theology
Philosophy of Religion, Science of Religion, and InterreligiousTheology
Contextual Interreligious Theology
Interreligious Theology and Comparative Theology
Translating
Particular or Universal Pluralism?
Education and Anti-Bias
Chapter 12. Beyond the Boundaries
Interreligious Dialogues
Postscriptum
The Necessity of Dialogue
Celebrating Diversity
Enriching the Self
Hospitality
Dialogical Hermeneutics
Towards Encounters
A Radical Change of Mind
Bibliography
Index of Subjects
Index of Names

Citation preview

Ephraim Meir Interreligious Theology

Ephraim Meir

Interreligious Theology Its Value and Mooring in Modern Jewish Philosophy

     MAGNES

This book was made possible through the generosity of the Veronika and Volker Putz Foundation, that sponsored my various stays at the Academy of World Religions at the University of Hamburg in the framework of the Emmanuel Levinas guest professorship for Jewish Dialogue Studies and Interreligious Theology.

ISBN 978-3-11-043931-1 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-043045-5 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-043051-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston & Hebrew University Magnes Press, Jerusalem Typesetting: Michael Peschke, Berlin Printing: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com www.magnespress.co.il



To Veronika and Volker Putz

Table of Contents Perry Schmidt-Leukel Preface  1 Introduction  5 The Ambivalence of Religions  5 Pluralistic Theology and Interreligious Theology  6 Jewish Dialogical Thinking and Dialogical Theology  6 The Value of Interreligious Theology  7 “Trans-Difference”  8 Dialogue, Hospitality, Translating, and Listening  11 A Multiperspective Approach to the Ultimate Reality  12 Resisting the Abolition of Differences  12 Religions and a Peaceful Society  14 Presence and a Hermeneutics of the Other  14 Incomparibility, Knowledge, and Meeting  15 Acknowledgments  15

I Jewish Dialogical Philosophy and Interreligious Theology Chapter 1 Jewish Dialogical Thinkers and Interreligiosity  19 Scholarly Studies on Dialogue between Judaism and Other Religions  20 Martin Mordecai Buber (1878–1965)  25 Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929)  32 Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972)  40 Jewish Theology and Dialogue  44 Perspectives: Invitation to Dialogue  45 Chapter 2 Buddhist Thought and Heschel’s Jewish Philosophy: An Encounter  50 Heschel’s Religious Philosophy  51 Religion, Human Rights and Depth Theology  54 Buddhism and Heschel’s Judaism  55 Towards an Interreligious Dialogue and Theology  60

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Chapter 3 Successful Interreligiosity: A Case Study  62 Chapter 4 Building Blocks for Interreligious Dialogue and Theology  69 Cultural Changes  69 Religion and the Ineffable  70 Positioning Oneself in Dialogue with the Other  71 Dialogue as Successful Meeting  72 Presuppositions for Dialogue  72 The Relevance of Presence in Martin Buber  73 Emmanuel Levinas’s Concept of Difference  74 Heschel’s “No Religion Is an Island”  75 Interreligious Learning  77 Translation, Untranslatability, Difference, and Trans-Difference  77 Admitting Negative Points, Adopting Maximum Interpretations, Making Changes  78 A New We?  80 Radical Otherness, Differences, and Trans-Difference  81 Three Final Remarks  82 Chapter 5 The Buber-Rosenzweig Bible Translation as a Jewish Dialogical Enterprise  83 The Context: Dialogical Thinking and Speech Thinking  83 A Jewish Translation  96 “Tombstone” or Testimony of a Dialogical Life?  112 Chapter 6 German-Jewish Religious Thinkers as Jews and Germans  117 Moses Mendelssohn  119 Samson Raphael Hirsch  120 Hermann Cohen  121 Franz Rosenzweig  122 Martin Buber  127 Multiculturality  128



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II Towards an Interreligious Theology Chapter 7 On the Necessity of Trans-Difference  131 The Role of Religions  131 Religion as Violence  134 Religiosity as Humanizing Force  136 Dialogical Hermeneutics  140 Towards Trans-Difference  141 Religion as Social Critique and Defense of Human Rights  143 Chapter 8 Constructing Religious Identity  146 Searching and Shaping Identity  147 Autonomy and the Need for Recognition  147 Problematic and Healthy Meta-Narratives  148 Maintaining Unity in Multiple Situations  149 Dialogue between the Self and the Other  150 Dialogue between Collective Egos  150 Religious Meta-Narrative and Personal Identity  151 Narrative of the Self in Relation with the Other  152 Chapter 9 Interreligious Exegesis: An Example  153 Two Preliminary Remarks  154 The Meaning of the Third Commandment in Jewish Tradition  154 Theological Reflection on the Meaning of the Commandment Today   155 Interreligious or Dialogical Reflections  155 Interreligious learning in a Broader Perspective  158 Chapter 10 Dialogical Philosophy and Social Transformation  162 Buber’s Relational Thought as Transformative Model  163 Spirit and Dialogical Man  163 I as “I-you”  164 The Concrete Spirituality of Religious Humanism  165 “I-you” and “I-it”: Separate Worlds?  166 Hebrew Humanism  168 The Challenge of Transformative Thinking  169 Dialogue between Groups  169

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The Spirit of Israel  170 Narrow Nationalism and Communicative Openness  172 Alternative Thinking   173 Chapter 11 Interreligious Theology as a New Kind of Theology  174 Classical Theology or Religious Studies?  174 Different Tasks  175 The Question of Secular Science  176 Complementary Standpoints  177 The Case of the Study of Hassidism  178 Interreligious Theology  178 Philosophy of Religion, Science of Religion, and InterreligiousTheology  180 Contextual Interreligious Theology  181 Interreligious Theology and Comparative Theology  182 Translating  182 Particular or Universal Pluralism?  183 Education and Anti-Bias  185 Chapter 12 Beyond the Boundaries  187 Interreligious Dialogues  187 Postscriptum  200 The Necessity of Dialogue  200 Celebrating Diversity  201 Enriching the Self  202 Hospitality  202 Dialogical Hermeneutics  203 Towards Encounters  203 A Radical Change of Mind  204 Bibliography  205 Index of Subjects  214 Index of Names  217

Perry Schmidt-Leukel

Preface

In terms of our awareness of religious diversity, the world is continuously getting smaller, while each country in it is becoming larger. That our world hosts a wide diversity of faiths – and has been doing so for thousands of years – is a fact of which, in the past, the vast majority of human beings, including the most educated ones, were hardly aware, while today this is increasingly common knowledge. In that sense, the world is becoming smaller. At the same time, each country is getting larger since this wide diversity has begun to reproduce itself within the territory of each culture and country in the world. To be sure, major cultural realms have for centuries been confronted with some segment of religious diversity, e.g., the Mediterranean world with the three Abrahamic religions; India with Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam; or China with Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. And even if pockets of other religious communities existed in those areas, nothing resembled the extent of interreligious penetration that so many societies experience today. This situation has both a dangerous and a creative potential. This is true on the socio-political level of the various nations’ and cultures’ self-understanding as well as on the theological-doctrinal level of the religions’ self-understanding. Some people fear the danger of losing their identity, while others welcome the creative opportunity of identity maturation and transformation. Yet both sides realize that the situation is one of intensive and significant change. With the increasing presence and awareness of religious diversity, interfaith dialogue is as necessary as it is inevitable. The question, however, is what kind of dialogue and to which depths it is allowed to go. Politicians see dialogue as a tool of permanent crisis management, and politically minded religious leaders tend to regard it as a means of sharpening the profile of one’s own denomination in contradistinction to the religious other. But interfaith dialogue harbors the potential to disturb, unsettle and even overcome such demarcations. This potential is activated if partners in dialogue start to discover truth in what their partners communicate and even more so, in that on which they base their lives. “Religious Pluralism” (not to be confused with the fact of “religious plurality”) has become the technical term for a theological understanding of religious diversity – now developing in each of the major faiths – which assumes that religiously relevant truth, in different but equally valid forms, is present around the world. Pluralists relinquish the exclusivist view that truth is confined to one’s own tradition but also the inclusivist conviction that one’s own tradition is uniquely superior to all other faiths. Pluralists attempt to combine the recognition of genuine

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diversity with the acceptance of genuine equality. Such a process becomes possible if the fragmentary character of all human understanding, including religious understanding, is fully acknowledged. This, in turn, is enabled by the deep intuition, which is also testified to in all major faiths, that ultimate reality necessarily exceeds human understanding, for otherwise it would no longer be ultimate. Religious consciousness relativizes human insight without becoming relativistic. However, is this pluralist interpretation of religious diversity itself true? I think that no one can justifiably claim to know this with infallible certainty. Religious pluralism is an assumption, a “vision” if you like or a “hypothesis” as John Hick phrased it, born out of dialogical experience and developed from fundamental beliefs found in one’s own religious tradition. Therefore, a pluralist view is always tradition-specific; it is a Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or Daoist, etc. pluralism. But at the same time it is more than that because it takes into account the religious others and tries to do them justice “theologically.” So pluralism is not only born from dialogue, it also finds its further confirmation (or disconfirmation, if it is wrong) in and through dialogue. Yet if pluralism is right – as is assumed ex hypothesi – it is the foundation and justification for a new way of how to do theology. Traditionally “theology” – and I take the word in that broad sense which would also include the type of religious-philosophical reflection found in major non-theistic traditions – has not been the exercise of giving intellectual expression to the specific creeds true for a particular religious community. In the first instance “theology” intended to express a truth which is true for all human beings alike, a truth of metaphysical dimensions. This truth, of course, was assumed to be either exclusively or at least supremely enshrined in the creeds of one’s own faith community. Yet if – as happens frequently in the wake of post-modernity’s antipathy towards universals, meta-narratives and, in fact, towards truth – “theology” loses its primary intention, if it is no longer interested in a truth that is true for all, but confines its efforts in giving some intellectual shape to a particular religious identity, it turns into a cheap, unconvincing, in the end needless and at worst harmful ideology. The theological challenge of today’s world is how to recognize and do full justice to the diversity and particularity of religious creeds on the one hand without, on the other hand, abandoning the prior quest for a truth that is the truth of all of us. The task ahead is indeed to perceive truth in its various and different fragments. Yet in order to recognize a fragment as a “fragment,” we need to discern the fragments’ inclination towards the whole. This is what some current religious thinkers have started to call “global,” “universal” or “planetary theology,” or – if one emphasizes its principally dialogical character – “interfaith” or “interreligious theology.”

Preface 

 3

Interreligious theology, I suggest, rests on four principles: First, instead of encountering the religious other with a “hermeneutics of suspicion” it does so with the “benefit of the doubt” or better, with a credit of trust. This is what is fundamentally presupposed by religious pluralism: that religiously significant truth is to be found in the faith of the religious other; or, to put it theistically, that evidence of divine revelation can be discovered within the whole human history of religions. This confidence is strongly connected with a second principle, the unity of reality. Interreligious theology is an anti-solipsistic project. It relies on the deep human intuition that, as Ephraim Meir expresses it in his first chapter, “we all live in one world.” This is even valid if one day our planetary theology might need to be expanded to an interplanetary theology. It is this second principle which permits the understanding of fragments as “fragments” in relation to a larger whole. Interreligious theology pursues the question of how insights originating from different religions relate to each other and – if both carry an element of truth – how they cohere or may even complement each other. This type of work cannot be carried out monologically. Therefore a third principle of interreligious theology is that it must be embedded in an interreligious discourse. This means that both/all sides are called upon to react to and comment on each other’s dialogical attempts and that all are expected to integrate what they have learnt into their own religious horizon, so that their previous religious understanding might change and long-standing demarcations be trespassed. Fourth and finally, interreligious theology is most likely a never ending process. If someone should imagine to have reached its ultimate consummation this would presumably just exemplify the Whiteheadian law according to which “the many become one and are increased by one” (Process and Reality 1,2,2). If understood along the lines of these four principles, interreligious theology is not too much of a radical break from traditional forms of theology. It is, in one sense, a new way of looking at one’s own religious tradition. It still reflects one’s own creeds and their traditional interpretation, but it does so by asking what kind of new light the insights of other religious traditions may shed on one’s own and vice versa. To use the words of Ephraim Meir and Manuela Kalsky: The denominational “we” is understood, reconceived and even transformed in the light of a broader multireligious and multidenominational “new we.” With Interreligious Theology. Its Value and Mooring in Modern Jewish Philosophy, Ephraim Meir adds his own powerful and profoundly Jewish voice to the circle of contemporary avant-garde theologians from the major faith traditions whose ideas about the future of theology move towards its interreligious conception. Since Heschel’s prophetic key word that “no religion is an island,” a number of Jewish thinkers have forwarded strong arguments in support of a Jewish and pluralistic interpretation of religious diversity. Not a few of them make use of the

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idea of multiple covenants and multiple elections. The Rabbinic teaching of the Noahide laws is reinterpreted as indicating an overarching framework within which we do not just find one specific election of one specific people with one specific covenant but many elections that find their expression in the different religions. The universal, said David Hartman, belongs to the category of creation. Revelation, in contrast, is always particular. It is part of God’s private communication with one special people. But each people is special to God. If, says Michael Kogan, Paul can claim that he became “all things to all people so that by all means some might be saved” (1 Cor 9:22), then “why cannot God do the same thing?” But if, as Kogan and others hold, religious diversity is the result of God revealing “different truths to different peoples at different times and places,”1 why should these different people not just continue with their own God-given message? Why should they listen to and even learn from each other? It is here that Ephraim Meir enters with his strong reminder that Jewish relational thinking is not only concerned with divine-human relationships but as much with the interpersonal relationships between humans. Perhaps God has told different things to different people so that at some point in history they will have something significant to share. As we read in the Qur’an (49:13): “We made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other.” In this sequel to his book Dialogical Thought and Identity (2013), where Ephraim draws on major Jewish dialogical philosophers in order to employ their insights in the realm of interfaith encounters, he now extends and continues this approach by outlining the productive and creative aspects of an interreligious theology as seen from the perspective of dialogical “trans-difference.” The book is full of inspiration and lays out initial steps. It is rooted in Ephraim’s personal experience of interreligious theological work as it is lived out on a day-to-day basis at one of Germany’s most innovative academic centers: The Academy of World Religions at the University of Hamburg. To be sure, the seed needs time to sprout and grow, and the rage of enthusiasm will inevitably calm down under the sweat of hard theological work as it confronts all the pitfalls, impasses, and wrong tracks of interreligious theology. In order to be sound, interreligious theology – as all theology – needs to be patient and careful. But it needs to be done, and this is what Ephraim professionally and skilfully encourages us to accept with confidence and joy.

1 Michael Kogan, “Toward a Pluralist Theology of Judaism,” in The Myth of Religious Superiority, ed. Paul Knitter (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005), 118.

Introduction The I becomes I through the Thou. Martin Buber Rabbi Yochanan ha-Sandlar said: Every assembly that is for the Sake of Heaven will in the end endure. Rabbi Yohanan ha-Sandlar omer: kol knessiah she-hi le-shem shamaim sofa le-hitqayyem Pirqe Avot 4:14 The Lord is close to all who call him in truth. Ps. 145:18 The lamps are different, but the Light is the same Rumi1

The Ambivalence of Religions The present volume contains reflections on the desirability and even the necessity of interreligious dialogue and of dialogical theology in a more and more globalized world. Arrogant ethnocentric and homogenizing tendencies as well as exclusivist truth claims largely disregard the uniqueness of the religious other. Yet, a kaleidoscope of various religions, each with its own specificity and cultural singularity, characterizes plural, open societies and demands an alternative approach. Religions may consider any outsider as inferior or wrong. They also may welcome and accept the otherness of the religious other, from whom one may learn and whose form of life could be potentially beneficial to the original group. The nightmare of a homogeneous society in which the other has no place whatsoever is challenged by the vision of a growing community in which one’s cultural and religious identity is formed, affirmed, and transformed in dialogue with others. The prophecies made in the second half of the preceding century concerning the slow death of religions and the gradual victory of secularity have proved to be false. Religions are booming and blossoming; they may be terrifying, missionary, and totalitarian, or humanizing, inspiring, and peace-promoting. One thing is certain: No religion can allow itself to be closed off from other ways of approaching the Ultimate Reality. Each is confronted more and more with varying ways of reaching final goals and answering the inevitable question of transcendence and the meaning of life. Religions with their specific customs, cult, prayers, mindsets, faith tenets, and moral behavior may contribute to the construction of peaceful 1 Rumi: Poet and Mystic, trans. R. A. Nicholson (London: Unwin Mandala Books, 1978), 166.

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 Introduction

and just societies. They also may instigate and support violent behavior and inhuman actions in an always harsh reality. This ambiguity of religions is recognized in the present work. It offers thoughts on the possible relevance of interreligious dialogue in shaping the societies in which people of different backgrounds and religions enjoy freedom and interact with each other in view of the creation of a rich, plural culture.

Pluralistic Theology and Interreligious Theology Although an interreligious theology could learn from a pluralistic theology of religions, they are entirely different concepts. Pluralistic theology accepts the diapason of plurality of religions in our present-day world. Interreligious theology starts from the interaction between religions and appreciates and studies the dialogue between them in interreligious and intercultural encounters. Dialogical theology goes further than pluralistic theology, which represents only a first step in the direction of dialogical theology. Interreligious theology as the intellectual reflection on the diversity of religious lifestyles and their unique participation in the truth is a new way of doing theology, based upon interreligious encounters. It is nurtured by interreligious dialogues that promote ethical acts out of beliefs.2 Its aim is not to create a uniform meta-religion, but to take seriously the variety, interrelatedness, and complementarity of differing perspectives on the absolute or transcendent reality. It presupposes that there are only limited understandings of perceptions of the truth and that no religion can say that outside its framework there is no truth. Truth is always truth quoad nos, from our limited standpoint.3

Jewish Dialogical Thinking and Dialogical Theology In this volume I spell out how Jewish dialogical thinking can contribute to the shaping of an interreligious theology and offer my own view of this new kind of theology. Already in my book Dialogical Thought and Identity,4 in which the subject, especially the religious subject, is approached in a novel way, from a dialogical point of view, I started to develop a dialogical theology. The present book is a follow-up to the preceding one; it discusses interreligious theology that 2 Paul F. Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 2010), 244–46. 3 John Hick, Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 179–94. 4 Ephraim Meir, Dialogical Thought and Identity: Trans-different Religiosity in Present Day Societies (Berlin and Jerusalem: de Gruyter and Magnes, 2013).



The Value of Interreligious Theology 

 7

places the other in the middle of the attention and is based upon living in dialogue with and learning from the other. Religions have always influenced each other, consciously and unconsciously: They have much in common, but this fact does not blot out great differences. Interreligious theology goes beyond conventional confessional theology in that its standpoint is much broader: It concerns mankind as such before God and not one specific community. However, since one’s standpoint is always specific, I will present the values of interreligious theology from a Jewish point of view that starts with Jewish dialogical thinkers and is inspired by the Jewish tradition as interpreted by these thinkers.5

The Value of Interreligious Theology I do not suggest that all people engaged in interreligious dialogue should develop an interreligious theology. I merely claim that interreligious theology has value and that it can be based upon an elaboration of some basic insights of contemporary Jewish philosophers. Accordingly, Part I of this book focuses on discussions that are anchored in texts of Jewish dialogical thinkers, and Part II contains my view on interreligious theology and its mooring in Jewish dialogical thought. I am well aware that constructing an interreligious theology based upon relevant insights in Jewish dialogical philosophy is provocative and challenging for traditional Jewish (and non-Jewish) theologians. The radical self-criticism necessarily involved in the shaping of an interreligious theology as well as the recognition of the imperfection of one’s religion and indeed of all religions, are rigorous demands of dialogical theology. Not everybody is willing to take those risks and start an open-ended dialogue. That one’s own religion with its rituals, customs, and dogmas is not the only one, is a step which many may refuse to take. Not all are ready to leave an exclusivist vantage point, a privileged position towards the Higher Reality, and to give up the superiority of their own religion. Some could even consider the project of interreligious theology as a sin or as destructive for religion itself. However, for me, and I hope for others as well, an interreligious theology based upon dialogical thought is the only logical consequence of interaction and solidarity between people of different religions and of a broader view that respects the plurality of religious phenomena and their interrelatedness. At the same time, the attentive reader will notice that the particularity of one’s own religion and, in fact, the par5 Although I refer to some classical sayings of the Sages that may be helpful for the shaping of an interreligious theology, my focus in this book is mainly upon modern Jewish dialogical thinkers, who inspire me in building such a theology. I could imagine a volume that studies the literature of the Sages in view of a dialogical theology, but that is a quite different project.

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 Introduction

ticularity of each and every religion is presupposed in what I call a “trans-different” religiosity that recognizes specificities and goes beyond them.

“Trans-Difference” Christian representatives of a pluralistic theology of religions include John Hick, Paul Knitter, Leonard Swidler, and Perry Schmidt-Leukel.6 Hick envisions a transcendent ground for all religions, where they all have different perceptions of and responses to the Real,7 and Knitter postulates a common vision of salvation as the ultimate unity of religions. Swidler considers the partner in the interreligious dialogue to be a kind of mirror through which one perceives oneself in a way that would be impossible without such dialogue, which inevitably transforms one’s own position. Schmidt-Leukel provides me with a specific case of interreligious theology when he discusses a multireligious identity in which one feels inspired by more than one religious tradition and in which there may even be a double-belonging. Like Knitter, he accentuates the possibility of learning from each other as well as undergoing transformation as a result of interfaith encounters. All religions, Schmidt-Leukel claims, are concerned with the Ultimate Reality, that is, are about something transcendent. This could lead to an interreligious theology that fosters cooperation between religious others who are self-critical and learn from each other.8 Once one accepts Schmidt-Leukel’s dialogical thesis, one is open to learn6 John Hick, “Gotteserkenntnis in der Vielfalt der Religionen,” in Horizontüberschreitung. Die Pluralistische Theologie der Religonen, ed. Reinhold Bernhardt (Güttersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1991), 60–80; Paul Knitter, Ein Gott – viele Religionen. Gegen den Absolutheitsanspruch des Christentums (Munich: Kösel, 1988); Knitter, “Religion und Befreiung. Soterionzentrismus als Antwort an die Kritiker,” in Horizontüberschreitung, ed. R. Bernhardt, 203–219; Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002); Leonard Swidler, Die Zukunft der Theologie. Im Dialog der Religionen und Weltanschauungen (Regensburg: Chr. Kaiser, 1992); Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Transformation by Integration: How Inter-Faith Encounter Changes Christianity (London: SCM Press, 2009); Schmidt-Leukel, “Intercultural Theology as Interreligious Theology,” in Religions and Dialogue: International Approaches, eds. Wolfram Weiße, Katajun Amirpur, Anna Körs, and Dörthe Vieregge (Münster: Waxmann, 2014), 101–12. In this paragraph and in the next one, I repeat what I wrote in my book  Dialogical Thought and Identity. Trans-Different Religiosity in Present Day Societies (Berlin and Jerusalem: de Gruyter and Magnes, 2013), 198–99. 7 John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (London: Macmillan, 1989), 240. 8 Perry Schmidt-Leukel, “Interreligiöse Theologie und die Theologie der Zukunft,” in Interreligiöse Theologie. Chancen und Probleme, eds. Reinhold Bernhardt and Perry Schmidt-Leukel (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 2013), 23–42.

“Trans-Difference” 

 9

ing new things about how others organize their lives around the transcendent. What remains important in order for an interreligious dialogue and theology to be built in the future is a recognition of the disparities between different religious persons, a recognition of the other and interaction with him or her, as well as the building of a peaceful, pluralistic community. A careful thinker, Schmidt-Leukel avoids the pitfall of dismissing differences between religions: He pluralizes theology without jumping hastily into a global, unifying religion.9 Moreover, in my view, particularity should not be absorbed in an all-unifying and homogeneous totality. However, no particularity should forget its being embedded in and its belonging to the greater world, in which the “we” is desirably not a mere conglomerate of various collective egos, but the product of interaction and mutual learning. The new “we” in which differences are kept and bridges are made spanning the differences, will be, as Franz Rosenzweig knew well, “the community of everything developed from the dual.”10 The otherness of the other and his refusal to be absorbed in a totality do not prevent proximity and are even conditions for a mature relationship between the self and the other. In adopting a “trans-different” position, all may learn from all, without losing one’s specificity. On the other hand, once one enters into dialogue with religiously others, one does not remain unchanged, because the individual identity, conceived as essentially related to the other, becomes relative in the etymological sense of the word. Further, if one sees oneself through the eyes of the other, a different self-understanding ensues. A dialogical attitude of religions implies interaction between the self and the other. So, for instance, Jews may read the Rig-Veda and the Bhagavad Gita and discover quite different worlds. As becomes clear from the lifestyles of people such as Ayya Khema, Thomas Merton, Ton Lathouwers, or Paul Knitter, non-Buddhists may integrate (elements of) Buddhism in their lives. In a dialogical perspective, a hierarchization of religions becomes problematic. We may discover how others live and think. Readers of the Koran may become readers of the Hebrew Bible and become aware of worlds of difference. People of various religions may meet each other and ask each other questions about how they organize their lives. One’s religious specificity and uniqueness is not abolished in a global theology, it is in fact necessary for such a theology; but one’s own view of transcendent reality will not remain the same after meaningful

9 Perry Schmidt-Leukel, “Religious Pluralism and the Need for an Interreligious Theology,” in Religious Pluralism and the Modern World: An Ongoing Engagement with John Hick, ed. Sharada Sugirtharajah (University of Birmingham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 19–33. 10 Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. Barbara E. Galli (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), 254.

10 

 Introduction

encounters with religious others who perceive the Higher Reality in a different way. On the intrareligious, internal level, an orthodox Jew may learn from his reform counterpart flexibility and readiness for renewal, adaptation, and careful listening to the claims of modernity. Vice versa, a liberal Jew may learn from his orthodox fellow Jew about continuity and faithfulness to old words that continuously receive new meanings in various contexts. In a “trans-different” attitude, one may learn from others. On the interreligious level, non-Buddhists may become interested in the equanimity of Buddhists, who develop an equal proximity to the near and the far, to man and woman, and to human beings and other sentient beings. Pastors may be inspired by rabbis and vice versa: Martin Luther King and Abraham Joshua Heschel inspired each other. Catholics who give priests a sacramental status may learn from the Jewish and Protestant view about the priesthood of all (Ex. 19:6), that everyone in the congregation is destined to be in direct contact with God. A Jew may situate the Christian Savior in the Jewish context and become interested in the Jewish aspects of the New Testament. A Christian theologian may develop sensitivity for the otherness of his or her Old Testament and discover simultaneously that the Hebrew Bible constitutes the basis for autonomous Jewish life. They may become aware that the Hebrew Bible is not merely the background for the New Testament, but that its setting in life is necessary for any real understanding of Jesus and the first Christian community. Jews who visit India may come in contact with the great, concrete spirituality and practical wisdom of Hindus. They may learn from Buddhists that inner peace is the condition for outer peace, and Buddhists may learn from Jews about an active “reparation of the world” and become socially active. Dialogical theology is therefore characterized by thoughts on the (critical) complementarity of religious lifestyles. Based upon interreligious discourse, the nature of dialogical theology is “processual, essentially incomplete.”11 It opens up an entirely new field of theology and presupposes “the kind of inquisitive spirit that makes theology – like any form of science – such a fascinating enterprise.”12 Moreover, interreligious encounters may unite people of different religions who value the ethical elements in their own religion, which they interpret as anti-magical. An adherent of one religion may find parallel concerns and a confirmation of his or her own position in other religions. A Buddhist feminist may inspire a Jewish feminist. Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim feminists may 11 Schmidt-Leukel, “Intercultural Theology as Interreligious Theology,” in Religions and Dialogue, 108. 12 Ibid., 112.



Dialogue, Hospitality, Translating, and Listening 

 11

unite in contesting patriarchal elements in their own tradition or discover ancient inspirational texts that are prone to supporting a more woman-friendly atmosphere. In my view, comparing oneself to others always remains problematic, but being inspired by others is a great blessing.

Dialogue, Hospitality, Translating, and Listening “Translating” one’s own world in terms of the other and the other’s world in terms of oneself creates bridges between worlds. Every religion and in fact every human being is specific, but we all live in one world. Through “translating” one reaches out to the world of others. Translating engenders communication and mutual involvement. In a world in which challenges are great for all religious people, “dialogue” as a basic religious attitude could become exemplary for religious as well as for non-religious people. In fact, the dialogue between religion and the secular world, the saeculum, is the aim of religion when understood as a “binding” experience that brings people together in view of a less indifferent world. The saeculum has its own legitimate demands, e.g., for democracy and freedom or equality between people. In dialogue, religions could become attentive to these demands. Another dialogue exists between one’s past and one’s present. Converts in their permanent discovery of new ways of being religious may remain in dialogue with their own past: A new Jew in Israel, for instance, may smilingly say that he is “dreaming of a white Hanukka.” Remaining in dialogue with one’s own past is important for any religious newcomer, given the real danger of the pitfall of disrespecting the original tradition while embracing the new one.13 “Trans-different” religiosity and theology which I present here is about carefully listening to the narrative of others that may be so different that at first sight no communication at all seems possible. But we live in one world and it is this very otherness in the other’s narrative that is the condition for any serious life-transforming experience in which one will discover the traces of the other in the self. To face the other means to be invited to enter into relation with him or her, not in order to get more information, but in view of being in proximity with 13 Approaching conversion processes as a ‘push-pull’ dynamic, Wingate provides the reader with an appropriate analytical tool for understanding what motivates one to leave behind the old faith in order to embrace a new faith. Reasons for such a move may be religious-theological, cultural-social, personal-psychological and political-economic-institutional. Andrew Wingate, “Interreligious Conversion,” in Understanding Interreligious Relations, eds. David Cheetham, Douglas Pratt, and David Thomas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 184–85.

12 

 Introduction

him or her. Consequently, dialogical theology does not know a priori, neither is it about knowing more; it is rather the result of a reflection on the significance of meetings between people of different religions. Dialogical, trans-different theology is not about knowing better or comparing, but about recognizing the other’s transcendence and imagining one’s own subjectivity as hospitality.

A Multiperspective Approach to the Ultimate Reality Dialogical theology brings with it a brand-new perspective. One’s own faith is only one way to come near to the Ultimate. Dialogical theology starts from the fact that no individual is isolated and that religious collective identities are all linked in pursuit of the Ultimate and in giving remedy to spiritual illnesses: Each and every individual and collectivity is invited to acknowledge that all are the result of and embedded in a network of relations. It is in proximity that the viewpoints of religious others open unexpected perspectives and eventually lead to a critical revision of an individual’s perspective. This interaction is necessary in view of the recognition of the validity of various ways of approaching the truth in its fullness. A “trans-different” theology as developed in this volume is not syncretistic; it acknowledges differences, and it retains the own as well as the other.14 But at the same time it recognizes that there is no self without the other, that a self-referential position is problematic, and that one cannot escape the interrelatedness of every religion and every human being. Above all, trans-different religiosity as described here avoids any confusion of religion with the Ultimate Reality itself and recognizes that different religions are necessary for different people who may become transformed in contact with religiously others.

Resisting the Abolition of Differences A temptation in the construction of a theology of religions is to skip over the differences too quickly in order to procure communalities or a minimum religiosity. Such a temptation was already palpable in Lessing’s Vernunftreligion without a cult or rites, and in Kant’s moral religion “within the limits of reason” (inner­ halb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft) without dogmata, commandments, or rites. Also noteworthy in this context is the publication of a German common 14 Against a radically subjectivistic standpoint in which religiosity is perceived as a private affair and as the result of one’s own idiosyncratic worldview, I argue that religions are practiced in different, concrete historical communities with their own specific norms and worldviews.



Resisting the Abolition of Differences 

 13

prayer book in which distinctions between the religions are blotted out and God is addressed as “Father” or “Lord.”15 In my eyes, differences remain important as well as trans-different bridges. I favor the recognition of necessary differences, as well as acknowledgement of the other and of the I, who enter in dialogue with each other.16 With Perry Schmidt-Leukel,17 I imagine an interreligious theology that does not dismiss differences. In such a case, theology in the plural will be the result of interreligious learning and will not be arrived at aprioristically, but inductively. Further, as Schmidt-Leukel points out, pluralist theologies “do not predetermine dialogue but can be understood as suggesting a hypothesis whose credibility can be enhanced or reduced through dialogue, a hypothesis which is, on its own premises, a strong encouragement of dialogue as a way of mutual learning and enrichment.”18 In an interreligious theology, one may come to appreciate the different approaches to what is beyond pure reason and to what is ultimately unutterable. We may learn from one another and even, in the course of dialogue, come to courageous revisions of old views and visions. At the basis of my thoughts on interreligious praxis and theology lies an approach to an I which is not a solitary, abstract, thinking I, a pure cogito, but rather a relational I that is addressed, faced and spoken to, the “Here I am” in Levinas’s philosophy of the other. Such an approach to an I that is faced and looked upon has repercussions for any dialogue, which becomes the possibility of the I to transcend itself, to be in touch with the other and feel obliged. The self-sufficient, self-interested I, looking merely for self-fulfillment, is replaced by an I who is demanded by the neighbor to become engaged with her, to become one-for-the-other. In the present work, confirmation of the other means contact with the Ultimate Reality, in theistic language: In relation with the other, God’s Name is at stake. Immanentism is punctured by the other. My view does not lead to a (con)fusion with others; it is rather a reflection on the loftiness of connection with others that respects and promotes the uniqueness of the other and of the self as well as the interaction between both.

15 Martin Bauschke, Walter Homolka, and Rabeya Müller, eds., Gemeinsam vor Gott (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2004). 16 Marianne Moyaert investigates the attraction as well as the limits of participating in the prayer and ritual of the religious other. Moyaert, “Unangemessenes Verhalten? Über den rituellen Kern von Religion und die Grenzen interreligöser Gastfreundschaft,” in Interreligiöse Theologie. Chancen und Probleme, 129–57. 17 I corresponded with Schmidt-Leukel on the subject and we had a conversation on this topic. 18 Schmidt-Leukel, “Religious Pluralism and the Need for an Interreligious Theology,” in Religious Pluralism, 28.

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 Introduction

Religions and a Peaceful Society To my mind, an interreligious theology, a plurality of religious lives and respect for heterogeneity in religiosis, could become exemplary for an intercultural, pluralist, peaceful society as such, where consensus and necessary dissensus coexist. A criterion for the success of the creation of such a society, however, is the development of a dialogical hermeneutics.The dialogical theology I portray in this book is not only a theology that is in dialogue with other religions, it is also in dialogue with society at large, since religions always function within a concrete society.19 Dialogical theology operates with the concepts of ultimate meaning and of the recognition of the other as other. It is about the self and the other, inner and outer, own and strange, as well as about emphasizing borders and crossing borders, and about the sublime activities of passing, learning, and translating.The underlying presupposition in this volume is that in the construction of a new (inter) religious identity, the “we” is not eternally opposed to a “they” and that there is an interchange between the inner and the outer. Testimonies to the ultimate meaning are multiple, and because human beings are not closed monads, they have to ask what motivates the other in his or her quest for what ultimately transcends. The fanatic idea of a “pure” religious society will have to be renounced in view of a multilogic relationship with others that is open to an unknown future.

Presence and a Hermeneutics of the Other Interreligious theology is not the reflection about a new faith or a faith for all. It is principally about dialogical conversing, which is not merely concentrated upon contents, but primarily requires attitudes of full, agenda-less presence before the religious other as well as a new hermeneutics. This hermeneutics is one of listening to and recognizing the other; it eliminates the dominance of the interpreting I and places the other and his or her world at the center. Far from a fusion of horizons or from only enriching one’s own horizon, a hermeneutics of encounter works with radical openness to the other, who cannot be absorbed in my horizon. The other’s difference, I claim, is not assimilable, not only because his or her world is other than my own world, but because of her radical alterity that comes into expression in the demand to respect and promote her. I am priorizing the other with her dissimilarity. But finally there is also “trans-difference,” since the 19 Rosenzweig put this idea in pregnant words: God did not create religion, He created the world. (“Gott hat eben nicht die Religion, sondern die Welt geschaffen.” Rosenzweig, “Das neue Denken,” in id., Kleinere Schriften (Berlin: Schocken 1937), 389.

Acknowledgments 

 15

other is different from me just as I am different from the other.Not in spite of, but thanks to these differences, real communication between people remains a marvelous human possibility.

Incomparibility, Knowledge, and Meeting Very often, in intercultural encounters, comparisons are problematic and understanding becomes too intellectualistic. I deem that (a) nobody can be compared, because all are unique and that (b) in a purely intellectual game one does not see the whole person. By comparing, one already judges. By using dialogue in order to know more, one abuses dialogue, subordinating it to one’s own intellectual curiosity. In order to bypass the abovementioned problems, I suggest working with categories such as being inspired, recognizing, empathizing, promoting, bridging, learning, extending hospitality, translating, discovering the unthought in the own religion and contact points between religions, sharing associations and the like. Prior to comparison and knowledge is meeting, in which the other human being with his own unassimilatable world is recognized as such and respected in his otherness. One first sees a face that faces and challenges the self; words and explanations come later.

Acknowledgments Some materials brought together here have appeared elsewhere in earlier versions. However, they were entirely revised in view of this publication. I thank the Traugott Bautz publishing house and the Konrad Adenauer Foundationas as well as Daniel Krochmalnik for their kind permission to use these publications.20 I wholeheartedly thank Yehoyada Amir for his careful reading and helpful suggestions concerning the structure of this book and the necessity of dealing with con20 Ephraim Meir, Differenz und Dialog (Münster: Waxmann Verlag, 2011), 10–34; Meir, “Reinterpreting Judaism in the German Context: On German-Jewish Thinkers as Jews and Germans,” in The Legacy of the German-Jewish Religious and Cultural Heritage: A Basis for German-Israeli Dialogue? Proceedings of an International Conference Held at Bar-Ilan University June 1, 2005, ed. Ben Mollov (Jerusalem: Yuval Press, 2006), 25–35; Meir, “Reading Buber’s ‘I and You’ as a Guide to Conflict Management and Social Transformation,” in Mollov, 119–31; Meir, “The Buber-Rosenzweig Bible Translation as Jewish Exegesis,” in 50 Jahre Martin Buber Bibel. Beiträge des Internationalen Symposiums der Hochschule für jüdische Studien Heidelberg und der Martin Buber-Gesellschaft (Altes Testament und Moderne 25), eds. Daniel Krochmalnik and Hans-Joachim Werner (Berlin: LIT, 2014), 87–120.

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 Introduction

servative theologians, who could perceive dialogical theology as a threat rather than as a value. I also thank a second anonymous reviewer of this work, who made some useful remarks. I owe thanks to Michal Michelson for her editorial services. At the end of this introduction, I would like to mention the inception of my lively interest in interreligious, dialogical theology. Many persons influenced me and inspired me to construct such a theology. There is, however, one person whom I especially want to thank: Prof. Wolfram Weiße, Director of the Academy of World Religions at Hamburg University. Prof. Weiße created a unique institute in Europe that not only initiates and stimulates research on religions, but also promotes living dialogue between religions as they function in our contemporary society. In his Academy, I was able to test my dialogical theories in a practical way and receive feedback and inspiration from colleagues who are also developing theories concerning interreligious dialogue. My friend and colleague Wolfram Weiße has given me the opportunity to be a regular Guest Professor at the Academy, where I am now the Veronika and Volker Putz Levinas guest Professor for Jewish Dialogue Studies and Interreligious Theology. Without his friendship and his permanent stimulus and interest, I would not have finished this work. Prof. Weiße’s Academy, with its staff and library, provided me with the fitting framework and intellectual milieu to carry out the research, the result of which is presented here.

 I Jewish Dialogical Philosophy and Interreligious Theology

Chapter 1 Jewish Dialogical Thinkers and Interreligiosity I believe that God loves all men and has given nations, has given all men awareness of his greatness, of his love. And God is to be found in many hearts all around the world, not limited to one nation, to one people, to one religion. A. J. Heschel in an interview with Carl Stern, 1972 “Dieu: la compossibilité de la pluralité des religiosités.”1

This first chapter presents the way in which contemporary Jewish dialogical thinkers have contributed to interreligious dialogue in multicultural societies. It further offers perspectives for future research in this field. First of all, I bring some general considerations on how Judaism has understood itself over the course of history. In Judaism, as in other religions, the prevailing trend was frequently to present its own religion as the true one. The starting point of Judaism consisted of distancing itself from dominant cultures and religious habits, in order to forge a Jewish identity. Abraham had to leave his homeland and the children of Israel had to dissimilate themselves from the indigenous population of Canaan. In its prophetic manifestation, Judaism was a particularity that aimed to establish ethical, universal values. In Talmudic times, when Jewish life became regulated in all its details, Judaism was defined and lived as the true contact with God. Yet, because Judaism as an originally ethnic religion did not present itself as missionary, other religions were not perceived as necessarily without importance. The utterance of the Sayings of the Fathers (Pirqe Avot) quoted as adage at the start of this volume, testifies to the fact that there was an openness and respect for any assembly that serves God. Nonetheless, hierarchical thinking was the rule. The early concept of the Noahide laws2 allowed for a positive approach to non-Jews, on condition that they kept certain commandments. From a Jewish point of view, the reinterpretation of these laws for modern times is crucial and challenging in view of a theology of the other in which religious diversity is seen as God’s will.3 Maimonides and Jehuda Halevi, medieval Jewish thinkers, viewed Islam and Christianity as serving Judaism: They were relevant for the world as part of the preparation for the coming of the Messiah of Davidic descent. The medieval 1 Emmanuel Levinas, Carnets de captivité suivi de Écrits sur la captivité et Notes philosophiques diverses, eds. Rodolphe Calin and Catherine Chalier (Paris: Bernard Grasset/IMEC, 2009), 141. 2 Tosefta Avodah Zarah 8:4; Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 56b. 3 Ruth Langer, “Jewish Understandings of the Religious Other,” Theological Studies 64 (2003), 267 and 276. The article discusses halakhic rulings concerning the interaction with Christians and Muslims in view of a Jewish theology of the religious other.

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 Jewish Dialogical Thinkers and Interreligiosity

idea that what is forbidden for Jews could be permitted and legitimate for nonJews, is another idea that is helpful in building a dialogical theology.4 In modern times, Jewish thinkers discussed Christianity mainly in order to defend their own religion. Moses Mendelssohn, for instance, had to guard his faith against the aggression of his Christian opponent Johann Kasper Lavater. Most modern Jewish thinkers relate to other religions for apologetic reasons. However, a change has occured in recent times. Jewish scholars in the last decennia have written articles and books that testify to a praxis and theory of dialogue between Judaism and other religions.5 Most recently, a number of articles have described and discussed interreligious dialogue from a Jewish point of view.6 In the following, I discuss the thoughts of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Abraham Joshua Heschel, because these towering thinkers succeeded in challenging the traditional polemic attitude and introducing a more dialogical approach to religions. These major Jewish philosophers accepted that others also have the right to organize their lives around what is beyond the boundaries of pure reason. They opposed any form of proselytizing Jews. They were persons committed to their community and at the same time they communicated with others beyond the limits of their own religion. Because of the relevance of their thoughts for any interreligious dialogue and theology, I clarify their positions, and discuss them critically in order to offer perspectives for an interreligious theology, to be constructed in the future. I am the first to propose such a theology in Israel. However, I am not the first to write on interreligious dialogue. I therefore start by referring to books and articles by contemporary Jewish scholars on the subject of the dialogue between Judaism and other religions.

Scholarly Studies on Dialogue between Judaism and Other Religions Many others have dealt with the theme of interreligious dialogue. Consequently, it is not my task to give an exhaustive list of scientific studies on these matters. Instead, I offer a selective list of studies on the Jewish dialogue with Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism and on the dialogue between Judaism and society at large. Within the field of the relationship of Judaism to other religions, I have 4 Ibid., 276. 5 See e.g. Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Judaism and Other Faiths (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994); Cohen-Sherbok, ed., Interfaith Theology: A Reader (Oxford: Oneworld Publication, 2001). 6 Alon Goshen-Gottstein and Eugene Korn, eds., Jewish Theology and World Religions (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012).



Scholarly Studies on Dialogue between Judaism and Other Religions 

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sound reasons to focus upon the relationship of Judaism with the three aforementioned religions. Judaism’s contact with Christianity is two thousand years old, whereas the contact with Islam is one thousand three hundred years old. Jews lived in Europe within a dominant Christian society that shared the Jewish Bible with them. In Islamic countries they had the Dhimi-status and enjoyed a relatively better life than under Christian rulers. Jews and Muslims both have a religion based upon laws, and Islamic philosophy and science greatly influenced Jewish thinkers. In recent times, finally, Jews increasingly relate to Buddhism, as is clear from the growing interest in meditation and from the phenomenon of the “Jubus,” Jewish Buddhists.7 Discussing the various Jewish positions on dialogue with other religions would be a challenging project, but my goal is to offer a critical evaluation of the contributions of the three Jewish philosophers mentioned earlier to the construction of my own dialogical theology. Since this is also linked to what has recently been achieved through the reflection on interreligious dialogue, I refer to some well-known works on the subject. Basic to the Jewish engagement with other religions and to a Jewish theology of religions as such are the works of Alan Brill,8 as well as the volume of Alon Goshen-Gottstein and Eugene Korn, which contains a wide variety of articles dealing with Judaism and other religions.9 Scientific literature encompasses first of all Jewish perspectives on Christianity.10 Of particular interest in this respect are Jewish books on Jesus and his 7 Jonathan Magonet, “Jüdische Perpektiven zum interreligiösen Lernen,” in Handbuch interreligiöses Lernen, eds. Peter Schreiner, Ursula Sieg, and Volker Elsenbast (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2005), 134–41; Magonet, Talking to the Other: Jewish Interfaith Dialogue with Christians and Muslims (London: IB Tauris, 2003). 8 Alan Brill, Judaism and Other Religions: Models of Understanding (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010); Judaism and World Religions: Encountering Christianity, Islam and Eastern Traditions (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012). 9 See note 6. For further case studies on the dialogue between Judaism and other religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam), see The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Inter-Religious Dialogue, ed. Catherine Cornille (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2013). 10 For instance, in David Novak, “The Quest for the Jewish Jesus,” Modern Judaism 8/2 (1988): 119–38; Irving Greenberg and David Hartman, Visions of the Other: Jewish and Christian Theologians Assess the Dialogue, ed. Eugene J. Fischer, (New York: Paulist Press, 1994); Fritz A. Rothschild, ed., Jewish Perspectives on Christianity (New York: Continuum, 1996); Helen P. Fry, ed., Christian-Jewish Dialogue: A Reader (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1996); Ephraim Meir, “David Hartman on the Attitudes of Soloveitchik and Heschel towards Christianity,” in Judaism and Modernity: The Religious Philosophy of David Hartman, ed. J. W. Malino (Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute, 2001), 253–65; Reuven Kimmelman, “Rabbis Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Abraham Joshua Heschel on Jewish-Christian Relations,” Modern Judaism 24 (2004): 251–71; Harold Bloom, Jesus and Yahwe: The Names Divine (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005) and Michael S. Kogan, Opening the Covenant: A Jewish Theology of Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

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 Jewish Dialogical Thinkers and Interreligiosity

Jewish background.11 The present writer has analyzed American Jewish attitudes on Jewish-Christian dialogue.12 On the practical level, dialogue between Judaism and Christianity takes place in various national dialogue institutions that are part of the umbrella organization International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ). Moreover, the website of the World Jewish Congress advances many aspects of dialogue between the three Abrahamic religions. Also well-known are the regular congresses in David Hartman’s Institute and in Alon Goshen-Gottstein’s Eliyah Interfaith Institute in Jerusalem, where Jewish and Christian theologians meet and discuss together. For the dialogue of Jews with Christians and Muslims, one may read Jonathan Magonet,13 Alon Goshen-Gottstein,14 or Alan Brill.15 An entire issue of the review The Reconstructionist is devoted to the encounter between Judaism and Islam today.16 This volume, entitled “Judaism and Islam: Dialogues and Trends,” explores ways in which Jewish and Muslim thinkers, writers, and leaders create dialogue today. There is also an empirical study of a religious, peace-promoting dialogue between Israeli Jews and Muslims in Gaza.17 On the level of the dialogue between Judaism and non-theistic Buddhism, Nathan Katz wrote a survey article on Buddhist-Jewish relations.18 He writes inter 11 Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2006); Michael J. Cook, Modern Jews Engage the New Testament: Enhancing Jewish Well-Being in a Christian Environment (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2008); Marc Z. Brettler and Amy-Jill Levine, eds., Jewish Annotated New Testament. New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). For an appreciation of the latter work wherein fifty Jewish scholars comment and explain the New Testament, see Martin Kavka and Randi Rashkover, “Revisioning the Jewish Philosophical Encounter with Christianity,” in Jewish Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century. Personal Reflections (Supplements to the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, vol. 23), eds. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 175. 12 Meir, “Innerjüdische Debatten über den Dialog. Hintergründe des Dokuments Dabru emet,” in Wende-Zeit im Verhältnis von Juden und Christen, eds. Siegfried von Kortzfleisch, Wolfgang Grünberg and Tim Schramm (Berlin: EBVerlag, 2009), 283–300. 13 Magonet, Talking to the Other: Jewish Interfaith Dialogue with Christians and Muslims. 14 Goshen-Gottstein, “A Jewish View of Islam,” in Islam and Inter-Faith Relations, eds. Llyod Ridgeon and Perry Schmidt-Leukel (London: SCM Press, 2007), 84–108. 15 Brill, “Islam: Scripture, Prophecy, and Piety” and “Islam: Scholarship and Existential Attitude,” in Brill, Judaism and World Religions, 145–201. 16 The Reconstructionist 72/1 (2007). 17 Ephraim Meir, Ben Mollov, and Chaim Lavie, “An Integrated Strategy for Peacebuilding: Judaic Approaches,” Die Friedens-Warte. Journal of International Peace and Organization, 82/2–3 (2007): 137–58. 18 “Buddhist-Jewish Relations,” in Buddhist Attitudes to Other Religions, ed. Schmidt-Leukel (St. Otilien: Eos, 2008), 269–93.



Scholarly Studies on Dialogue between Judaism and Other Religions 

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alia about famous German-Jewish Buddhists such as Nyanaponika (Sigmund Feninger) and Ayyah Khema, about the 1990 meeting between rabbis and scholars with the Dalai Lama and a group of Buddhists, about the attraction and fascination of Judaism’s home-centeredness for Buddhists, and about Buddhist elements in the Jewish Renewal Movement. Jacob Jurah Teshima, a student of Heschel’s, has conducted a comparative study of Jewish mysticism and Buddhism.19 Let me also note some popular books that examine Jewish and Buddhist thought.20 Kennard Lipman compares Kabbalistic meditations and practices to Christian and Buddhist contemplative practices and concepts.21 More generally, mysticism plays a central role in the Jewish-Buddhist dialogue.22 It would be easy to add to this list of works other existing books and articles, and I am sure that in the next decade this list will grow significantly. The foregoing testifies to the fact that the interest in interreligiosity and the encounter between cultures is steadily expanding in our increasingly united world. In a special kind of dialogue, one may use religion as part of a conflict-management strategy. Marc Gopin’s work is a good starting point for this.23 The attention to religion as a possible forum for engendering peaceful societies is particularly important given the widespread association of religion with growing violence, which has been amply discussed.24 One has to recognize that a relation19 Jacob Teshima, Zen Buddhism and Hasidism (Lanham: University Press of America, 1995). 20 Rodger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet’s Rediscovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India (New York: HarperCollins, 1995) discovers the convergence of Tibetan Buddhist and Jewish thought. Sylvia Boorstein, That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Buddhist: On Being a Faithful Jew and a Passionate Buddhist (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1996), combines Jewish and Buddhist views. Also David M. Bader, Zen Judaism. For You, a Little Enlightenment (New York: Harmony Books, 2002) contains a (hilarious) melding of Jewish and Buddhist culture. 21 Kennard Lipman, Kingdoms of Experience: The Four Worlds of Kabbalah as Prayer and Meditation (Berkeley: Arts & Letters Press, 2011). 22 Schmidt-Leukel, “Die Bedeutung der Mystik im jüdisch-buddhistischen und islamisch-buddhistischen Dialog,” Zeitschrift für Missions- und Religionswissenschaft 97/3–4 (2013), 181–93. 23 Gopin is the author of Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence and Peacemaking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) and Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religions Can Bring Peace to the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) and To Make the Earth Whole: Creating Global Community in an Age of Religious Militancy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009). 24 Many books on this subject have appeared in recent years. Jan Assmann associates monotheism with a problematic distinction between the self and the other. See Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Assmann, Die Mosaische Unterscheidung oder der Preis des Monotheismus (Munich: Hanser, 2003). Assmann maintains that monotheism, which replaced cosmo-theism, did not longer recognize the other. The Mosaic distinction opposed the other to the self, truth to falsehood, belief to unbelief. The result was a theonomic individuum in the Deuteronomistic theology after

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ship between religion and violence exists, but the praxis and study of religion as a potential civilization building force could diminish or at least interrupt violence. Finally, a dialogue may transpire between religion and modern values such as democracy, human rights, and women’s rights.25 In this dialogue as well as in a dialogical hermeneutics, one may reread religious sources and grant force to marginal voices that have given prominence to the realm of the interpersonal.26 One may further recall traditional passages that contribute to dialogue, such as Midrash Gen. Rabba 17:5, where Torah from Sinai is perceived to be a surrogate, an incomplete version of the Divine wisdom (novèlèt hokhma shel ma’alah Torah), which is greater than any human can imagine. Such a viewpoint may lead to a “hermeneutics of humility.”27 Given the plurality in interpretations of human existence, we are in need of other interpretations that could complement or challenge our own interpretation.28 The foregoing list could easily be extended to include studies on Jewish dialogue with other religions and spiritual world-views. In recent years, such studies have not only flourished – one encounters a completely new form of theology, which can be called dialogical theology. The interaction between religions asks for reflection and a theory of dialogue. In my own contribution to the creation of a dialogical theology, I have been greatly inspired by certain Jewish thinkers who were instrumental in creating such a theology. I therefore now draw attention to Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Abraham Joshua Heschel, who all made qualitative contributions both to a dialogue praxis and to a dialogical theory.

the fall of Judah and the Babylonian exile. Assmann notes that Christianity opened the door to others, but it did so in an exclusivist, aggressive manner. The problem with Assmann’s thesis is that he prefers a global consciousness, in which the other is another I, to a universal consciousness, in which otherness is a prerequisite in order to obtain a complete picture of higher realities. See E. L. Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life: Reflections on Freud and Rosenzweig (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2001) and Meir, Identity Dialogically Constructed (Nordhausen: Traugott Bautz, 2011), 10–26. 25 Hans Joas, “Values and Religion: The Transmission of Values and Interreligious Dialogue Today,” in Religions and Dialogue, 39–40. 26 See for instance Einat Ramon, “The Matriarchs and the Torah of Hesed (Loving-Kindness),” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues 10 (2006): 154–77. 27 I borrow this expression from Wolfram Weiße. 28 Joas, “Values and Religion,” 35.



Martin Mordecai Buber (1878–1965) 

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Martin Mordecai Buber (1878–1965) Religions and Religiosity Adopting a critical, meta-religious standpoint, Buber preferred religiosity to religion. This viewpoint, which radicalized Georg Simmel’s distinction between religion and religiosity, allowed Buber to give weight to Christianity and to place it next to Judaism as one of the ways of serving God. In his reflection on a religiosity in and above religions, Buber was critical of a Gnostic kind of religion, disconnected from the world, and he situated the relationship with God within the intersubjective meeting. In his masterpiece I and Thou, it is only through the presence before the other that one receives a glimpse of the ever present, eternal Thou. Consequently, God is never an object of our thoughts, an “it,” but rather is to be addressed as a “Thou.” Lowering God to an “it” was the eternal problem of religions that wanted to “possess” God, and make Him permanently available. In religions, one desired “to have God.”29 By contrast, authentic religiosity or the real encounter with the eternal Thou is understood as taking place in openness to the other human being. Faith and cult may degenerate and freeze the living, holistic “I-you” relationship into a relationship of lesser degree, the fragmentary “I-it” relationship that occurs between subject and object. Inversely, thanks to the living, actual relationship, cult and faith may turn again and again into presence.30 Buber’s concept of religiosity as pure presence represents an alternative to a magical or Gnostic approach to God that in his view threatens every real religiosity. In magic practices, one uses childish means in order to dominate the eternal Thou. In Gnostic secret knowledge, one gives the impression of completely understanding the divine reality. Both ignore the possibility of a real meeting that does not dominate the other and refuses to neutralize his otherness.31

Jewish-Christian Dialogue In the application of his dialogical thoughts, Buber pays special attention to Christianity. He was actively engaged in the Jewish-Christian dialogue. He belonged, 29 Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), 161. Hereafter I and Thou. 30 Ibid., 167. 31 Buber, “Der Glaube des Judentums,” in Buber, Kampf um Israel. Reden und Schriften (1921– 1932). (Berlin: Schocken, 1933), 41–45.

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for instance, to the multireligious Forte Kreis. In June 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War I, the people of the Forte Kreis, who were striving for a society of peace in Europe, convened. At the meeting, Buber expressed his conviction that Jews could adequately understand Jesus from his Jewish background. Thirty-six years later he wrote an entire, thought-provoking book on the subject. In 1926 he founded the journal Die Kreatur (The Creature), which he coauthored with the Protestant physician Viktor von Weizsäcker and the Catholic theologian Joseph Wittig. Their journal existed until 1930 and aimed, in Buber’s words, to create a genuine dialogue between the different religions that were defined as houses of exile.32 After World War II, Buber resumed his dialogue with German Christians and, as Maurice Friedman rightly remarks, this “was an important part of a whole new phase of his involvement in Jewish-Christian dialogue.”33 Indeed, in 1950 Buber published his book Two Types of Faith (Zwei Glaubensweisen) through the Manesse editing house in Zürich.34 In the preface of this book he states that he is not apologetic, although one may doubt whether he was completely free from apologetics.35 He distinguishes between emuna, trust, and pistis, creed. Emuna is dominant in Judaism as opposed to pistis in dogmatic Christianity. By placing Jesus in the history of the Jewish faith, Buber challenged Christians to understand Jesus from his Jewish life setting, within the tradition of emuna. To a great extent, Buber’s distinction between emuna and pistis overlaps his distinction between “I-you” and “I-it” in his I and Thou. It further overlaps the difference between religiosity or prophetic attitude and religion or priestly organization. In his exegetical work, Buber frequently opposes prophetic and priestly attitudes. The opposition, which he finds in the Bible, reflects his own anti-institutional religious attitude. Prophetic and priestly viewpoints were to be found in Judaism as well in Christianity, but from Buber’s perspective, the accent upon prophetic religiosity is more clearly present in Judaism. Buber was well aware of the differences between Judaism and Christianity and never blurred the specificity of either religion, but he deemed that, in eschatological times, the “exiles of the ‘religions’” would be gathered in the Kingdom

32 Maurice Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge: A Life of Martin Buber (New York: Paragon House, 1991), 192–95. 33 Ibid., 315–32, especially 315. 34 Buber, “Zwei Glaubenweisen,” in Buber, Werke. Erster Band. Schriften zur Philosophie (Kösel: Lambert Schneider, 1962). 35 Ibid., 657. “Es braucht kaum gesagt zu werden, dass mir alle apologetische Tendenz fern liegt.”



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of God.36 This eschatological perspective made religions relative and put them in a radical way in service of the Kingdom of God, which should not be identified with only one religion. Buber built bridges between different religions and his “trans-different” attitude made it possible for him to feel at ease in the interreligious encounter with people such as the Swiss theologian Leonhard Ragaz or the German-American theologian Paul Tillich. He sincerely wanted to teach Christians that Jesus could only be understood from his Jewish background. Most importantly, he believed in an interaction with Christians and hoped that they could see Jesus with new eyes and learn what had been neglected through the ages: that Jewish emuna should not be replaced by the Hellenistic pistis. The subtitle of Buber’s Two Types of Faith is relevant in this context: A Study of the Interpenetration of Judaism and Christianity. One religion could learn from the other, since they “interpenetrated.”

A Link between Judaism and Christianity In his Two Types of Faith, Buber did not accept Jesus as a mediator between God and man, as “Christ” in whom one has to believe. But he definitely accepted Jesus as the link between Jews and Christians and wanted to be a teacher of Christians. He did not believe in Jesus, but with the belief of Jesus. He placed him in the history of Messianism and saw him as someone with Messianic forces, as a suffering Servant of the Lord, an arrow that came out of God’s quiver, a Messianic person who stepped out of hiddenness.37 In this manner, he thought that he had created a common platform between Jews and Christians. As someone who spent many years writing about the Bible and about Jewish culture, he hoped that Jews would give Jesus a place in the history of Messianism and of Servants of the Lord. He admonished Christians to recognize that Jesus belonged to Judaism and that he could not be extracted from his most natural Sitz im Leben in favor of the invention of Christ as presented in Paulinian theology and in the dogmata. At the same time, he disagreed with Jewish religious fundamentalists, who did not want to hear about Jesus or Christianity. He thought that he had created a common ground between Christians and Jews.

36 Ibid., 782. “Der Glaube des Judentums und der Glaube des Christentums sind, in ihrer Weise, wesensverschieden, jeder seinem menschlichen Wurzelgrund gemäss, und werden wohl wesensverschieden bleiben, bis das Menschengeschlecht aus den Exilen der ‘Religionen’ in das Königtum Gottes eingesammelt wird.” 37 Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge, 316.

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Buber considered Jesus to be his “big brother”: “My own fraternally open relationship to him has grown ever stronger and clearer, and today I see him stronger and clearer than ever before.”38 For him, Jesus was a person who had operated completely within the Jewish tradition and had desired that people not forget the intention behind action and remember to hallow each detail from everyday life. His Jesus was anti-dualistic and anti-Gnostic, like a Hasid, who sanctifies every aspect of life and accentuates intention and interiority. Buber’s Jesus related to the world, which had to be mended and brought to the Kingdom of God. During his entire life, Buber was not interested in the Christ of the Church, but he wrote extensively about Jesus as an eminent dialogical person and as a Jewish son of God: How powerful, even overpowering, is Jesus’ I-saying, and how legitimate to the point of being a matter of course! For it is the I of the unconditional relation in which man calls his You “Father” in such a way that he himself becomes nothing but a son. Whenever he says I, he can only mean the I of the holy basic word that has become unconditional for him. If detachment ever touches him, it is surpassed by association, and it is from this that he speaks to others. In vain you seek to reduce this I to something that derives its power from itself, nor can you limit this You to anything that dwells in us. Both would once again deactualize the actual, the present relation. I and You remain; everyone can speak the You and then becomes I; everyone can say Father and then becomes son; actuality abides.39

Buber stressed that the process of bringing the divine Kingdom to the earth implied suffering, taking upon oneself the burden of others, as a responsibility. His view of God, who suffers with the suffering tsaddiq, is reminiscent of Heschel’s theopaschism.40 However, Heschel would never have adopted Buber’s extraordinary Jewish position towards Jesus. For Buber, Jesus was a suffering Servant, as in Deutero-Isaiah. In his exegetical work The Prophetic Faith, he considers the suffering Servant to be an individual person in every generation. Abraham, Moses, and David are servants of God, and the culmination point of this series of servants is the suffering Servant of Deutero-Isaiah who comes close to Job. Buber further identified the suffering Servant with the whole of Israel in

38 Ibid. 39 Buber, I and Thou, 116–17. 40 See further Susannah Heschel, “The Revival of Theopaschism in Post-World War II Theology,” in Judaism, Topics, Fragments, Faces, Identities: Jubilee Volume in Honor of Rivka Horwitz, eds. Haviva Pedaya and Ephraim Meir (Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University Press, 2007), 69–86. Susannah Heschel writes on the influence of her father’s idea of the suffering God upon German theologians. Henceforth when not specified Susannah Heschel, Heschel references are to A. J. Heschel.



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the Shoah.41 He sincerely thought that his understanding of Jesus as a suffering Servant could diminish dualistic, Gnostic tendencies in Christianity. With his contrast between “belief in” (pistis), “faith,” and “unconditional trust” (emuna), he rephrased his philosophical categories I-it and I-you and applied them to the religious domain. In the hoped-for Renaissance of Judaism, Jesus would be recognized as somebody who said “Thou” to the Father. He would be a “son of God,” sprouting from a community of “sons of God.” In Buber’s dialogical perspective, the emuna of religiosity was critical of any fixed belief of the religions.

Critical Evaluation Religion Devoid of Deeds? It is laudable that Buber wrote about Judaism as linked to moral deeds and to acts of social reformation. Buber was not an anti-nomist in this sense. He did not observe the ceremonial commandments of Judaism, but he brought Jewish religiosity and moral behavior together as two twin realities, as two sides of the same coin. Deeds, in his view, characterized Judaism. One could object that Christianity is likewise not devoid of deeds. Christian theologies of liberation in South America, for instance, desired to influence societies and to stimulate a passage from dictatorships to more just and democratic regimes.42 Progressive circles in Christianity wanted and still want to reform society, a goal that is striven for as specifically inspired by the Christian faith. It is therefore questionable if one may attribute emuna as an existential attitude to Judaism more than to Christianity. With its Paulinian-Augustinian origins, part of Christianity developed into a religion in which deeds were secondary, because one believed that Jesus redeemed sinful humanity solely through grace, sola gratia. But may one truly say that the whole of contemporary Christianity remains at that stage? Does the Paulinian God who, according to Buber, judges and is enraged because of sinners, still replace the benevolent Father, who loves 41 On the last page of The Prophetic Faith, published in Hebrew in 1942, he speaks about the Messiah, not as an individual but as a name for the Jewish people, for the collective suffering Servant. He refers to all of Israel as “Ebed” (servant). Israel, he writes, knows the “mystery of suffering,” but on all his paths recognizes God as shepherd and “Führer” (sic). Buber, Werke. Zweiter Band. Schriften zur Bibel (Munich and Heidelberg: Kösel and Lambert Schneider, 1964), 483-484. Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge, 291-292. 42 See, for instance, the theologies of Camillo Tores, Paulo Freire, Gustavo Gutiérrez and Leonardo Boff. Cfr. Hermann Brandt, “Theologie,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Müller et al. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002), col. 306-311.

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human beings?43 Is the loving Father and the demanding King of Judaism (avinu malkenu), who wants man’s return, not also present in present-day Christianity? Are Christians today fleeing from the world in a Gnostic way? They do not have mitsvot as commanded deeds regulating daily life, but they are certainly not without ethical demands, which according to Buber belong to authentic religiosity. Many Christians in the past and until the present day do not underestimate this. In other words: Christians today are also in emuna and not merely in pistis. On the other hand, from a purely sociological point of view, Judaism today is not without dogmatic thoughts. In fact, in Judaism an “I-it” attitude is possible, just as in Christianity an “I-you” attitude is possible. The holistic “I-you” as well as the fragmentary or functional “I-it” are present in every religion. Buber’s distinction is therefore too typological and does not adequately describe reality, which is more complex. Notwithstanding his own remark at the beginning of his Two Types of Faith, Buber remained apologetic in his book. Of course, apologetics are not necessarily polemics, but Buber placed emuna too exclusively and too typologically on the side of Judaism.

Apocalyptic Elements Buber rightly perceived apocalyptic elements in Paul’s theology. He contrasted these apocalyptic-deterministic elements with the free act of “return,” that restored the broken relationship between man and God and led to a prophetic reform of society. In a parallel way, he contrasted in his Gog und Magog the apocalyptic-magic vision of the Seer of Lublin with the view of the Holy Jew, who did not interpret the Napoleonic wars and tribulations as the predecessor of the Messiah. The Holy Jew demanded from his disciples a concrete return to God through the return of the whole soul to one’s fellow Jews.44 In my view, the apocalyptic elements that Buber perceives and describes in Paul’s writings and in the behavior of the Seer of Lublin are present in Judaism as well as in Christianity, and also in their respective secularized forms. Further on, I ask if the anti-apocalyptic elements that certainly typify most of the writings of the Jewish Bible are not also tangible in present forms of Christianity. My standpoint is that apocalyptic and anti-apocalyptic elements are present in both religions and that intersubjective relationships remain the parameter of real religiosity in both religions.

43 Buber, “Zwei Glaubenweisen,” 756. 44 Martin Buber, “Gog und Magog. Eine Chronik” in Buber, Werke. Dritter Band. Schriften zum Chassidismus, (Munich: Kösel and Lambert Schneider, 1963), 999–1261.



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A Teacher of Christianity Through his writings on the Bible and in his book on Christianity and Judaism, Buber inspired many Christians. He described Jesus as a Messianic person who called for teshuva, a return. Jesus had a faith that expressed itself in deeds, but placed the emphasis upon one’s interiority, upon the way one performs commandments. In this manner, Buber purified Jesus from the dogmatic garments in which he was dressed by his followers after his death, starting with Paul. Similarly to Buber, David Flusser tried in his historical research to understand Jesus from his Jewish origins.45 Buber and Flusser, each in his own way, thereby laid foundations for a fruitful and challenging dialogue between Judaism and Christianity.

Interreligious Learning and Building Bridges It was Buber’s intention to contribute to the construction of what we call today an interreligious dialogue and theology. In his vision, Judaism could learn from Christianity and vice versa. Christians believe individually, but could learn from Jews to see the implications of their faith on the collective level. Likewise, Jews, with their interest in the collective, may learn from Christians that the individual is important too.46 This remark at the end of Buber’s book on two types of faith is conducive to a real interreligious attitude, in which one is open to learning new things from the other in the search for a good life in face of the Ultimate Reality. Buber’s prophetic vision of a future interaction between religions does not lead to mere multiculturalism, it rather stimulates the fruitful interaction between religions, or interculturalism and interreligiosity. His recognition of the Messianic forces in Jesus and his faith in the necessity of Servants of God during the entire course of human history builds bridges that surmount unavoidable differences. Jews and Christians could even unite around the figure of Jesus, not as the ultimate Messiah, but as someone whose historical lifestyle is exemplary in both religions.

Differences I wonder if Buber does take into account enough the differences between Judaism and Christianity, in his effort to show that early Christianity had its roots in Judaism. In his endeavor to come to what I call “trans-difference,” he did not fully appreciate that Christianity has its own autonomy as a world religion, which is one concrete way of organizing life in view of the Ultimate Reality. His effort to 45 See, i.a., David Flusser, Judaism and the Origins of Christianity (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988). 46 Buber, “Zwei Glaubenweisen,” 782.

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bring Christianity closer to Judaism is to be appreciated. But did he sufficiently respect Christianity’s self-understanding as rooted in Judaism, and at the same time, as enlarging Judaism’s horizon to the whole world?

Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) Rosenzweig too was much concerned with Christianity, for biographical reasons.47 In his Star of Redemption,48 he conceived of revelation as the divine address to every individual human being. God commands the human being: “Thou shalt love.” By doing this, Rosenzweig created a common ground for Jews and Christians, and discussed the overarching category of revelation before analyzing the different tasks of Judaism and Christianity in the process of redemption. The divine command at the basis of revelation made it possible for Rosenzweig to treat Judaism and Christianity as twin religions that are critical towards each other, but also complement each other: In their answer to the common revelation, each of them has its own specificity. Both religions, which he analyzed through their ceremonial calendars, were answers to the divine revelation. Nevertheless, in the Star, Rosenzweig put Judaism above Christianity, as did the medieval philosophers Jehuda Halevi and Maimonides.

Institutional Forms of Religion Unlike Buber, who was critical of the fixed form of religions, Rosenzweig was interested in the institutional forms of Judaism and Christianity. In Part III of the Star, he discusses the liturgical structures of Judaism and Christianity. Whereas Buber had an anti-institutional approach to both religions, Rosenzweig gave weight to institutionalized prayer in order to depict the self-understanding of Judaism and Christianity. At the same time, Rosenzweig refrained from relating to Judaism and Christianity as institutional “religions,” but rather as ways of life in response to the divine command, which he saw as the common platform for both.

47 See Ephraim Meir, Star from Jacob: Life and Work of Franz Rosenzweig (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1994) (Hebrew); Meir, Letters of Love: Franz Rosenzweig’s Spiritual Biography and Oeuvre in Light of the Gritli Letters (Studies in Judaism 2) (New York: Peter Lang, 2006). 48 Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption.



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Eastern Religions and Islam in the “Star”: Rosenzweig’s Flaw Unfortunately, Rosenzweig only wrote on Judaism and Christianity as bringing redemption, in the third Part of the Star. In the first and second section of that Part, which treats a plurality of reactions to revelation, Christianity and Judaism are the only protagonists. They appear in reference to the negative background of Islam. Islam was treated only in Part II of the Star and is represented as not contributing to the redemption of the world due to its lack of understanding revelation as the loving relationship of God to human beings. Eastern religions were also seen as inferior to the twin religions of Judaism and Christianity, and were treated only in Part I of the Star. They lacked understanding of the relationship between God, world, and man that led to creation (as the relationship of God to the world; Part I), revelation (as the relationship of God to men; Part II), and redemption (as the relationship of men to the world; Part III). Australia based Wayne Cristaudo deemed that Rosenzweig’s view on Islam was legitimate and David Paul Goldman, writer of the “Spengler” column for Asia Times Online, even considered Rosenzweig’s view on Islam as prophetic. These radical opinions were rightly contested by many others. Robert Gibbs, Michael Oppenheim, Peter Gordon, Yossef Schwartz, Gesine Palmer, and Gil Anidjar all think that Rosenzweig’s treatment of Islam is prejudiced and an impediment to building a serious interreligious theology.49 I, with others, deem that Rosen­ zweig’s exclusion of Islam from the redemption of the world was the result of his adopting Hegel’s interpretation of Islam. It is a troubling prejudice and does not contribute to the construction of an interreligious dialogue and theology. In the Star, Rosenzweig developed a dialogical attitude towards Christianity, but not towards Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism. Yet, his dialogical approach of the Christian other could and should be extended to extra-biblical religious others.50

Translating: Opportunities and Problems In his relationship to the Swiss Christian Gritli Rosenstock-Huessy (1893–1959),51 Rosenzweig became a specialist in “translating,” thus starting a dialogical 49 Kritik am Islam (Rosenzweig Jahrbuch 2) (Freiburg/Munich: Karl Alber, 2007). 50 Bernhard Casper, “Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) – Neue Wege der Begegnung zwischen Judentum und Christentum,” in Wegbereiter des interreligiösen Dialogs, eds. Petrus Bsteh, Brigitte Proksch, Peter Ramers and Hans Waldenfels (Vienna: LIT, 2012), 98. 51 Gritli (Margrit) was the wife of Eugen Rosenstock, who was born to an assimilated Jewish family and converted to Christianity at the age of seventeen. He and his wife were close friends

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hermeneutics that is essential to any interreligious dialogue.52 In contrast to Rosenzweig’s interreligious correspondence with Gritli, which discusses Judaism and Christianity in a dialogical manner, his correspondence with Eugen Rosenstock (1888–1973) is largely apologetic and polemic. Rosenzweig had to defend the “despised” Jewish religion to Eugen, who related to Judaism as passé with the coming of Jesus. Rosenzweig’s correspondence with his cousins Hans and Rudolph Ehrenberg is also apologetic in nature. The social pressure on Rosen­ zweig to become a Christian was great. He defended the despised religion of Judaism as had Jehuda Halevi centuries before him, and refused to adopt the view of Eugen, who did not see the relevance of Judaism. He devoted his entire short life to highlighting different aspects of the Jewish religion in comparison with Christianity. For any further discussion on Rosenzweig’s contribution to interreligious dialogue and theology, it is crucial to note that he did not ignore the people who wanted to convert him, but instead developed a rich, sometimes harsh dialogue with them. In her introduction to Cultural Writings of Franz Rosenzweig, Barbara Galli has mused upon the wonderful experience of translating as described in Rosen­ zweig’s “New Thinking.”53 She describes how, in Rosenzweig’s “Speech Thinking,” translating means welcoming the other, and how in fact he considers all speech as translation. Rosenzweig’s philosophy of the “and” prevents a totalizing movement. In his non-totalizing philosophy, there is only one language, though it is palpable in many languages. This is what he writes in the preface to the translation of the poems of Jehuda Halevi: There is only One Language. There is no peculiarity of one language that – even if only in dialects, childish speech, or idioms of a particular class – cannot be detected, at least in embryo, in every other language. This essential unity of all languages, and based on it the commandment for all human beings to understand one another, is what creates the possibility and also the task of translating – the possibility, the permissibility, and the obligation to translate.54

of Rosenzweig. Eugen continually attempted to persuade Rosenzweig to convert, whereas Gritli respected what she called Rosenzweig’s “Jewish heart” (“Franz, ich suche dein jüdischen Herz”). Rosenzweig, Die “Gritli”-Briefe. Briefe an Margrit Rosenstock-Huessy, eds. Inken Rühle and Reinhold Mayer (Tübingen: Bilam Verlag, 2002),410. 52 For a discussion of the correspondence with Gritli, see Meir, Letters of Love: Franz Rosen­ zweig’s Spiritual Biography and Oeuvre in Light of the Gritli Letters. 53 Barbara E. Galli, Cultural Writings of Franz Rosenzweig (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 3–57. 54 Rosenzweig, Ninety-Two Poems and Hymns of Yehuda Halevi, ed. and with an introduction by Richard A. Cohen, trans. Thomas Kovach, Eva Jospe, and Gilya Gerda Schmidt (Albany: SUNY Press, 2000), xlv-xlvi; Rosenzweig, Jehuda Halevi. Zweiundneunzig Hynmen und Gedichte.



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Rosenzweig was convinced that each person is capable of understanding the other, and that peace and mutual understanding are possible. These insights contribute greatly to the understanding of a human being’s profound identity. “Translating,” which means “passing” to the other, or welcoming him, is tantamount to what I define as a “trans-different” life. It is perhaps the ultimate act of “trans-difference,” of building bridges to the always different other. Rosenzweig’s translation of the Bible together with Martin Buber, to which I return infra, in Chapter Five, is further proof of his belief that, finally, translation of one world into the terms of another world is not only possible, but also necessary. Less known or studied than the Buber-Rosenzweig Bible translation is Rosenzweig’s translation of ninety-two poems of Jehuda Halevi into German.55 On August 22, 1924, he wrote a letter to Margarete Susman in which he admitted that he only understood a poem through translating it.56 In translating he felt that he participated in someone else’s world and that such a participation was a true human possibility. He even believed that only in translation does one’s voice become really audible (laut). On October 1, 1917, he wrote: Translating is after all the actual goal of the mind [das eigentliche Ziel des Geistes]; only when something is translated has it become really audible, no longer to be disposed of. Not until the Septuagint did revelation become entirely at home in the world, as long as Homer did not yet speak in Latin he was not a fact. In a corresponding way, also translating from person to person.57

In the Star, Rosenzweig developed an entire theory of language in which the imperative “love me” is the “absolutely perfect expression, the perfectly pure language of love” (ganz vollkommener Ausdruck, ganz reine Sprache der Liebe).58 The culmination point of language in his view is the language of love: “Like lanDeutsch (Berlin: Lambert Schneider, s.d.), 155. “Es gibt nur Eine Sprache. Es gibt keine Spracheigentümlichkeit der einen, die sich nicht, und sei es in Mundarten, Kinderstuben, Standeseigenheiten, in jeder andern mindestens keimhaft nachweisen liesse. Auf dieser wesenhaften Einheit aller Sprache und dem darauf beruhenden Gebot der allmenschlichen Verständigung ist die Möglichkeit wie die Aufgabe des Übersetzens, ihr Kann, Darf und Soll, begründet.” 55 Rosenzweig, Ninety-Two Poems and Hymns of Yehuda Halevi. 56 Nahum N. Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (New York: Schocken Books, 1953), 134. See also Douglas R. Hofstadter, Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language (New York: Basic Books, 1997). In this book on language and translation, Hofstadter writes about some eighty-eight translations of Marot’s poem “Ma Mignonne.” 57 Rosenzweig, Briefe und Tagebücher. 1.Band. 1900–1918 (Franz Rosenzweig. Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften I), eds. Rachel Rosenzweig and Edith Rosenzweig-Scheinmann, in collaboration with Bernhard Casper (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), 460–61. 58 Rosenzweig, Star, 191; Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung (Bibliothek Suhrkamp, 973), (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988) (hereafter Stern), 197.

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guage itself, love is at once sensible and supra-sensuous.”59 And as love cannot be purely human, so too language at its peak is changed into something superhuman: “For the sensuous character of the word is full to the brim with its divine supra-sensuous meaning.”60 Descriptive language is a lower stage of language in his view. Dialogical language characterized the interhuman encounters as well as God’s command to love and man’s answer to it. Like Johann Georg Hamann, who opposed the Enlightenment’s emphasis on scientific reason and who held that language precedes reason and that its source is divine, Rosenzweig thought that language precedes thought and that it is of divine origin.61 Rosenzweig deemed that everybody had to translate and in fact, translates: Everyone must translate and everyone does translate. Whoever speaks is translating his thoughts for the comprehension he expects from the other, and not for an imaginary general ‘other’ but for this particular other in front of him, whose eyes widen with eagerness or close with boredom, depending on whether or not his interest is aroused. The listener translates the words that strike his ear according to his lights and so – to express it concretely – into the language he himself uses. Everyone has his own language, or rather, everyone would have his own language if there were really such a thing as monologue […], if all speech were not really dialogue to begin with, and hence translation.62

Rosenzweig did not ignore the many difficulties in translating; he did not overlook the problem of not listening carefully enough or of not speaking correctly. Yet, he recognized that a real conversation between persons or groups of persons is basically a question of translation: Thus, in speaking and listening, the ‘other’ need not have my ears or my mouth – this would render unnecessary not only translation but also speaking and listening. And in the speaking and listening between nations, what is needed is neither a translation that is so far from being a translation as to be the original – this would eliminate the listening nation – nor one that is in effect a new original – this would eliminate the speaking nation. These could be desired only by a mad egoism intent on satisfying its own personal or national life and yearning to be in a desert surrounded by an oasis. Such an attitude is utterly out of harmony in a world created to be not a wilderness but a place to contain every kind of people.63

Rosenzweig therefore not only conceived of human existence as essentially plural, he also believed that this world in all its plurality was intended to be one 59 Rosenzweig, Star, 216. 60 Ibid. 61 Aviezer Cohen, ed., Franz Rosenzweig: The Star and the Man. Collected Studies by Rivka Horwitz (Beer-Sheva: Ben Gurion University Press, 2010), 152. 62 Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought, 255. 63 Ibid.



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and united. Differences were necessary and “trans-difference” was a miraculous event.

Appreciation of the Act of Translation In my view, every conversation is a crossing of the border, since it takes place between different worlds that are in contact with each other. Hence, in each real meeting, an act of hospitality takes place. Through the act of translating, the translator becomes other to himself; he is “self-different” as the result of othering himself in contact with otherness. There is also a “self-difference” in the one who hears or reads the translation: He becomes different to his own self through an act of “self-transcendence,” in openness to an “other” world, which is expressed in words. In his philosophy of language, Rosenzweig insisted upon the fact that the depth of language stems from the command to love. Far from being a mere instrument, language is therefore revelatory, as in the Song of Songs. It does not have the mere instrumental function of describing, although that function also exists. It is basically about the expression of the availability of the one for the other. It is ultimately about being there for the other, “for it is possible for many languages to exist, but there is only one language.”64 Language is indeed the possibility of conversation, or the possibility of unity beyond and through (never without) diversity. One could object that some subjects are so caught up in their own particularity that no bridge is able to reach them: There is simply no possibility to rupture their totality. Indeed, Rosenzweig does not deem that conversation is possible with every human being. He merely argues that it is a wonder if a person is able to enter into contact with another person and that when this occurs, it involves speech and translation. His argument is that it is possible to be open to a “strangeness” (eine Fremdheit) that will always escape our own understanding, for “who can serve two masters?”65 He further claims that our own subjectivity is changed when we encounter this strangeness. The subject does not have to neutralize the other in himself, but to allow the other to transform or alter him.66 All this seems to me of utmost importance for any definition of dialogue. In a postscriptum to his translation of Jehuda Halevi’s ninety-two poems, Rosenzweig illustrated his philosophy of language beautifully. The aim of a trans64 Rosenzweig, Star, 159. 65 Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig. His Life and Thought, 254. 66 Rosenzweig, Jehuda Halevi, 154; Rosenzweig, Ninety-Two Poems, xlv.

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lation, he claims, is not to make the strange element familiar (Eindeutschung des Fremden). Such a process takes place when one is, for instance, a German businessman who has to send his products to Turkey. In that case, the businessman makes use of the services of a translation bureau. However, in the case of a letter from a Turkish friend, such a service will be useless, though not because the translation will not be accurate. The translation will be accurate German, but will not relay the full meaning of the Turkish original. In the case of the Turkish friend whose letter has to be translated, the translation made by a translation bureau is insufficient because one does not hear in it the concrete human being with his special tonality and his beating heart. Rosenzweig concludes that one has to render the specificity of the stranger, the special tone of his voice. One should not neutralize the strangeness (den Fremde einzudeutschen), but instead make the familiar strange (das Deutsche umzufremden). With these considerations on translating, Rosenzweig pled for a translation that changes the translator’s language: The language into which Shakespeare, Dante, or Isaiah is translated cannot remain untouched by the act of translation; it is in fact renewed.67

Rosenzweig’s Contribution to Interreligious Dialogue Rosenzweig’s considerations on language and the possibility of translating are crucial to the building of an interreligious dialogue. They analyze the conditions for every true conversation, including the interreligious one. In his philosophy of language, Rosenzweig placed dialogue in the center. In order to enter into interreligious dialogue, one has to take into account the “strangeness” and the impossibility of assimilating the other, but also be ready to translate this otherness in one’s own language, with all the risks this involves. From the perspective of respect for otherness, one has to be careful in comparing religions according to surface details. Saying, for instance, that Jews have Pèsach, Christians have Easter, that Jews have Yom Kippur and Catholic Christians have confession, that Jews have a yarmulke, whereas the Pope and bishops also wear a head covering, proceeds too rapidly. Not all things are easily communicable and one has to take into account incommensurable particularities. Dissimilation is crucial and a condition for a relationship. For Rosenzweig, Judaism was positively separated from the world in function of its redemption, whereas Christianity with its idea of mediation also contributed in its own way to the final redemption, in which God became the only One, so to speak redeeming Himself from his involvement in the world. The egalitarian position does not have to conceal or obscure the 67 Rosenzweig, Jehuda Halevi, 154–55. In chapter 5, I will return to this theme.



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specificity of the different religions. At the same time, one should not forget that God is above the religions, because He is flawless and religions are not. Divine inclusivity forbids religious exclusivity.

Constructing Identity in a Positive Way With all its flaws, notably present in his hierarchical vision of religions, Rosen­ zweig’s dialogical interreligious thought serves as the beginning of a yet to be built interreligious theology. Rosenzweig distinguished between Judaism and Christianity. He was well aware of the many differences between these religions, but believed in their interaction and complementary function.68 With his dialogical, theological project, he attempted to construct his own identity in a positive way. He did not always succeed, but he did start a path that remains exemplary and may be followed by others. In his considerations on Jewish identity, Rosenzweig, like Buber, developed an eminently dialogical attitude. He conceived of Judaism and Christianity as twin religious phenomena. He deemed that Christians and Jews constitute genuine communities that both want to realize infinity or “eternity” in the finite world. They co-exist, and are united in a kind of dual covenant. With his intercultural thoughts, Rosenzweig noted that Christians ask Jews not to forget the world, and Jews demand that the ever-expanding community of Christians not assimilate into the world. Rosenzweig placed Christianity in proximity to Judaism. The two communities are mutually complementary, but they are also critical towards each other. His recently published creative correspondence with Gritli Rosenstock-Huessy remains exemplary of a dialogue that respects different identities and goes beyond them in an effort to create a common world, in a “trans-different” attitude.

Interreligiosity in Buber and Rosenzweig Rosenzweig accentuated the specificity and superiority of Judaism, but nonetheless recognized Christianity, in a way that had never been done before in the tradition of Jewish thought. He thought that Jews would live in the redeemed world in an a-historical way of life, whereas Christians would be more involved in history. Buber did not adopt Rosenzweig’s standpoint that Jews live an a-historical life. 68 However, Rosenzweig, who insisted that Christianity has faith whereas Jews are faith, failed to understand the Christian dogmas as elucidations of their own experience of faith.

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Whereas Rosenzweig chose to live in the Diaspora, Buber opted for the historical realization of the dream of a dialogical society in Zion. Unlike Rosenzweig, Buber separated the historical Jesus from his dogmatic, Christological image. He was more open to the figure of Jesus, ready to see him as an eminent Servant of God. In this manner, he reached out to Christians. Messianic aspirations, in Buber’s view, would unite Jews and Christians: As Jews actively mend the world, producing a series of Servants of the Lord, Christians wait for Jesus’s return. Both Jews and Christians have Messianic visions, centered around the figure of the suffering Servant. Rosenzweig did not allocate attention to Jesus as did Buber, for the simple reason that he needed to spend a lot of energy in the defense of his Judaism against those who desired his assimilation to general culture and to the dominant religion. Buber’s extraordinary contribution to an interreligious theology lies in his openness to every human being, who may say “you” to another human being and be present before him. Religiosity, to him, was broader than religions, which were not absolute entities. Rosenzweig too made the twin religions less absolute by writing that religions have their truths in as far as they are linked to God, but the whole truth is in God. Judaism and Christianity were respectively “the fire or eternal life” and “the rays or the eternal way” and, as such, they participated in the truth which was in God.69 Rosenzweig’s idea of God as the truth, in which the human being participates, is still a very useful concept. Another useful concept of his is the idea that God did not create religions, but the entire world. This again makes religions rather relative, in function of the entire world. Judaism and Christianity formed the human organizations that responded to the orientation of revelation, to the “external order” (äussere Ordnung)70 that provoked a Jewish and a Christian collective reaction. Both Buber and Rosenzweig discussed Judaism in its interaction with Christianity, contributing in this manner to the pluralization of theology.

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) The third dialogical thinker whose religious philosophy I would like to discuss is Heschel. Although Heschel’s world was quite similar to those of Buber and Rosenzweig in his focus upon Judaism and Christianity, he nevertheless developed a broader perspective on the different religions. Heschel was ready to see the plurality of religions as the will of God: “In this aeon diversity of religions is 69 Rosenzweig, Der Stern, 463–64. 70 Rosenzweig, Der Stern, 208.



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the will of God.”71 In 1966, he published his groundbreaking article “No Religion Is an Island.”72 In the article, he stated that to equate religions and God constitutes idolatry. One has to search for God passionately, but this quest for God has to be humble, with the consciousness that others too are searching for God. In his depth theology, which provides a common ground for religions, Heschel put a sense of wonder and mystery at the heart of the religious experience that characterizes religious man as such. He did not formulate a confessional theology, he rather spelled out the spiritual experience of the divine presence for mankind. In his Hassidic phraseology, Heschel wrote that in dialogue, one had to keep alive the divine sparks in the souls of all.73 Alon Goshen-Gottstein claims that Heschel is “the father of Jewish reflection on the meaning of interfaith dialogue as a new form of cultural practice.”74 However, Heschel articulated a theory of interreligious pluralism, and not a Jewish theory of religious dialogue that implies the active interaction between people of different religions. He did not remark, for instance, that Jews could learn from Christians and vice versa, as did Buber and Rosenzweig. True, he was influential in Vatican II and in that sense he contributed to the “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions” (Nostra Aetate) that started a new age in the relationship of Catholics to Jews.75 He met with Cardinals Bea and Willebrands and with Pope Paul VI, and influenced Thomas Merton and

71 Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, ed. Susannah Heschel (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996), 244. 72 The article was first published in Union Seminary Quarterly Review 21/2 (1966): 117–34. I quote from the article as it appeared in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity. Stanislaw Krajewski explores Heschel’s pioneering role with regard to the much-discussed Jewish declaration on Christianity Dabru Emet of 2000. Krajewski, “Abraham J. Heschel and the Challenge of Interreligious Dialogue,” Abraham Joshua Heschel: Philosophy, Theology and Interreligious Dialogue, eds. Stanislaw Krajewski and Adam Lipszyc (Jüdische Kultur 21) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), 168–80. 73 Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” 250. 74 Goshen-Gottstein, “Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue: Formulating the Questions,” in Abraham Joshua Heschel: Philosophy, Theology and Interreligious Dialogue, 164. 75 This document, together with the “Declaration on Religious Liberty” (Dignitatis Humanae) and the “Decree on Ecumenism” (Unitatis Reintegratio) brought a new area in the Catholic Church, promoting intra- and interreligious dialogue, defending religious liberty and admitting all that is true and holy in other religions. See Leonard Swidler, “The History of Inter-Religious Dialogue,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Inter-Religious Dialogue, ed. Catherine Cornille (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2013), 7–8. Marianne Moyaert calls Nostra Aetate “a milestone in the history of interreligious relations” and adds that “the World Council of Churches also played an active role in promoting interreligious dialogue.” Moyaert, “Interreligious Dialogue,” in Understanding Interreligious Relations, 200.

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Reinhold Niebuhr.76 He was a pioneer in courageously correcting another religion. His position on religions was definitely anti-isolationist. In dialogue, both communication and separation of religions were necessary; fundamentalism and literal-mindedness were forbidden. Heschel transcended the conventional limitations of confessional thought, formulated the common task of the Abrahamic religions, and favored the unification of all religious people, but did not develop an interactive, interreligious philosophy. In my view, Heschel did not go far enough, although he rightly perceived fear and trembling, humility and contrition, as conditions for any future interreligious dialogue.77 The mushrooming interreligious dialogue of today implies much more than pluralism and the correction of others; it also involves self-criticism, self-examination, and the humility of recognizing that one’s own religion is imperfect and that only God is perfect. Heschel was certainly critical towards his own religion and towards Christianity, but he did not actively support critical interaction between religions, as did Buber and Rosenzweig. He was more than merely tolerant, more than a religious pluralist, but less than a promoter of interreligious dialogue.78 He paid special attention to Christianity and, more broadly, to the Abrahamic religions.79 But he barely related to the Asian religions.80 Heschel rightly 76 Niebuhr predicted that Heschel would become “the leading authoritative voice” for Jews and in American religious life. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Masterly Analysis of Faith. Review of Man Is Not Alone,” New York Herald Tribune Review, April 1 (1951), 12. 77 Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” 239–40. 78 Goshen-Gottstein notes that Rabbi Dov Baer Soloveitchik and Heschel shared “an understanding that excludes the core of faith from the field of dialogue” (“Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue,” 165, note 6). I disagree with this: Soloveitchik indeed did not want people to discuss the articles of faith of the other, yet, Heschel was not afraid of recognizing similar lines of thoughts in Christianity and Judaism. See Meir, “David Hartman on the Attitudes of Soloveitchik and Heschel towards Christianity,” in Judaism and Modernity: The Religious Philosophy of David Hartman, ed. J. W. Malino (Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute, 2001), 253–65 and Alexander Even-Chen and Ephraim Meir, Between Heschel and Buber: A Comparative Study (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012), 278–79. 79 Heschel was aware that in the Koran, the idea of Allah as the Father of mankind does not appear, given divine omnipotence. Yet, his own idea of a merciful and compassionate God with an infinite concern could have provided him with more common ground for Judaism and the Islamic discourse on Allah. Cfr. Seth Ward, “Implications of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Ecumenicism for Muslim-Jewish Dialogue,” Abraham Joshua Heschel: Philosophy, Theology and Interreligious Dialogue, 210. Ward further characterizes Heschel’s idea of God’s need for man as un-Islamic (p. 214). 80 In The Prophets (New York: Harper and Row, 1962) Heschel mainly discusses Asian religious concepts in order to contrast them with his own vision of the prophets and revelation. The “quietistic” Tao (the way) of Lao-Tzu and its non-action (wu wei) is antithetic to the prophetic view of a God with pathos, who asks for obedience to His will. “Tao, the ultimate ground from which all



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contested the illusion of the different religions to be the only way to serve God. On the practical level, he demanded that one should pray for the health of the other and help the other in preserving his respective legacy. Religions should further assist each other in preserving a common legacy. Like Rosenzweig and Buber, Heschel opposed missionizing the Jews and wanted Christians to preserve their Jewish roots. Heschel was far from being an exclusivist; he was more accurately a type of inclusivist, recognizing truth in other religions, but convinced of the truth of his own religion.81 His depth theology provides us with a theory that permits the creation of an interactive interreligious dialogue. In practice, Heschel himself did not reach this stage. Harold Kasimow writes that Heschel, in his critique of other religions, differs from pluralists like John Hick: “While he does not hold that Judaism is the only true religion and agrees with Knitter and Hick that all religious traditions produce saints, he does not see all traditions as equal. They are all valid, but they are not equally valid.”82 Kasimow goes on to describe Heschel’s esteem for the Bible: “No other book so loves and respects the life of man.”83 He concludes from this that Heschel’s elevation of the Hebrew Bible seems to suggest that he has an inclusivist rather than a pluralist perspective. Yet, Heschel is for him neither a pluralist nor an inclusivist, but rather “a Jewish interreligious artist who transcends the categories created by Christian scholars.” 84 I agree things emanate, is a dark abysmal something, nameless and indefinite”; it is “the unchangeable law of cosmic order, immanent in all things.” (235) Also Confucianism is far from the prophetic vision: there is little communication between heaven and man; heaven remains silent and does not respond to people (236). Further on, the doctrine of karma, which “claims that the well-being and suffering of every individual is the result of acts committed in a previous incarnation,” is deemed incompatible with the theology of pathos, understood “not as the blind operation of impersonal forces,” but as characterised by the freedom of God and man (236-238). At the end of his book (466-469), Heschel states that in the Indian religion revelation is “revelation of what is latent in man, a revelation that is timeless, not restricted to a real person in history.” Neither Buddhism nor Chinese Confucianism and Taoism know about revelation as a source of inspiration, extraneous to human wisdom. In short: in The Prophets, Heschel did not discuss Asian religions in order to understand them in themselves, even less to enter into dialogue with them, but merely in function of his own view: They form the negative background for his own description of the lofty phenomenon of the prophets. 81 Harold Kasimow, “Heschel’s View of Religious Diversity,” in Abraham Joshua Heschel: Philosophy, Theology and Interreligious Dialogue, 200. Yet, Heschel’s depth theology and viewpoint on other religions broadens the horizon and goes clearly in the direction of a dialogical praxis and theology. 82 Kasimow, “Heschel’s View of Religious Diversity,” 199. 83 Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976), 239. 84 Kasimow, “Heschel’s View of Religious Diversity,” 200.

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with Kasimow that Heschel’s depth theology and viewpoint on other religions significantly broadens the horizon in the direction of a multireligious praxis and theology that is, however, to my mind, not yet a critical, interactive, interreligious praxis and theology. Heschel was a prophetic figure, whose praxis-oriented religiosity allowed him to remind others that true religiosity requires mending the world.85 In this sense, he created a dialogue between religion and the secular world. In his Israel: An Echo of Eternity, published immediately after the Six Day War, he pleaded for peace between Jews and Muslims.86 Together with Buber and Rosenzweig, he created a basis for interreligious dialogue.

Jewish Theology and Dialogue At the start of my book, I quoted Ps. 145:18: “The Lord is close to all who call Him in truth.” Raphael Jospe quotes the commentary of Rabbi David Kimhi (Radak, c. 1160–1235) on this verse: “The Lord is close to all who call Him” means “from whatever nation he may be, so long as he calls Him in truth, that his mouth and heart be the same.” I agree with Jospe that to maintain absolutist epistemic claims is intellectually untenable and morally dangerous.87 Jospe deems that there is ample evidence in Jewish sources for both “internal and external pluralism.”88 He gives the example of rabbinic interpretations of the verse of Jer. 23:29: “Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer smashing a rock?” The medieval commentator Rashi, in his discussion of Genesis 33:20 and Exodus 6:9, cites this verse as alluding to a plurality of internal interpretations, like the sparks set off by the hammer smashing the rock into pieces. Rabbi Yishma’el has interpreted the verse as meaning that one single biblical verse contains several meanings and that every single commandment was spoken in seventy languages.89 In Jospe’s view, he thus defended internal and external 85 In an interview with Carl Stern, Heschel declared: “I’ve written a book on the prophets. A rather large book. I spent many years, And really, this book changed my life. Because early in my life, my great love was for learning, studying. And the place where I preferred to live was my study and books and writing and thinking. I’ve learned from the prophets that I have to be involved in the affairs of man, in the affairs of suffering man […] I say that this book on the prophets which I wrote changed my life.” Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, 399. 86 Heschel, Israel: An Echo of Eternity (New York, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1969). 87 Raphael Jospe, “Pluralism out of the Sources of Judaism: The Quest for Religious Pluralism without Relativism,” in Jewish Theology and World Religions, 120. 88 Jospe, 121. 89 Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 34a and Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 88b.



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pluralism. Jospe concludes that there are precedents in Jewish sources for both kinds of pluralism. As far as I am concerned, I am less interested in pluralism or in looking for precedents of pluralistic views in rabbinical literature than in searching for the conditions of future positive interaction between religions. Pluralist theology represents to me a less developed stage than interreligious theology. The rabbinical dictum elu ve-elu divre elohim hayyim, “these and those are the living words of God” (or “these and those are the words of the living God)90 as referring to the multiple interpretations or “seventy faces” (shivim panim) of the Torah, could be enlarged beyond the borders of the Torah. It could be applied to all religions and worldviews, which are all related to each other in the search for the Ineffable, to what escapes us, but is nevertheless profoundly related to human existence.

Perspectives: Invitation to Dialogue The philosopher of science Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922–1996) claimed in his “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” that in science, competing paradigms cannot be reconciled, because they are frequently incommensurable. Does this also apply to different religious systems? If Kuhn’s position were true mutatis mutandis on the level of competing religions, one could not really communicate and interreligious dialogue would become an impossibility. On the other hand, Kuhn is right in his judgment that objective criteria are not enough in science and that the opinion of the scientific community is important too. In a parallel manner, on the level of different religions, one could give up mere objectivity and admit that Ultimate Reality cannot be approached in one, objective way. In other words, different approaches remain necessary in order to live with a noumenon that can never be reached or adequately understood. I accept the plurality of approaches in religiosis, but I also believe in interreligious dialogue and communication, in the possibility of contact with the world community of religions, a contact that, in my view, is the condition for religious life today. Contact with others presupposes the possibility of “translating” the insider’s language into a language that outsiders may understand. It assumes beforehand that one is not condemned to remain within an exclusive insider language and that one may invite the other to be a guest in one’s own home.91

90 Babylonion Talmud, Eruvin 13b and Gittin 6b. 91 For concrete examples of the children, who present themselves in email exchanges with other children and who communicate about their communal identity, see Julia Ipgrave, “The Language

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For the construction of a future interreligious, dialogical theology beyond the boundaries of confessional theologies it is therefore necessary to recognize the possibility of exchange as well as the subjective truth in each and every religion. The plurality of truth has to be confirmed, but there are limits: Confirmation of the other is necessary, but only in as far as his concept of truth does not lead to violent behavior. Heschel and Buber, each in his own way, deemed that if one hurts a human being, one injures God, and that if one is present for a human being, if one is involved in the affairs of man, one is present for God. Perry Schmidt-Leukel’s view on the principally open character of an interreligious theology is a great idea that revolutionizes any confessional theology and invites scholars to go beyond the boundaries of their own confession.92 Such a standpoint does not imply that one leaves one’s own point of view; it rather strives for an integration of different perspectives and is ready to engage with others in a learning process. Buber, Rosenzweig, and Heschel brought building blocks for the construction of an interreligious dialogue and theology. Buber greatly contributed to the interfaith dialogue in that he articulated the way of entering into conversation with others. The content itself of the conversation was less important for him; one had to develop a new attitude, of being “present” and listening without wanting to teach or preach. It is this openness to the other, the recognition, confirmation, and approval of the other that creates real meetings.93 Buber’s dialogical thinking is most fruitful for diminishing conflicts and promoting peace, as I will show in Chapter 10. His “I-you” thought could be applied on the level of the relationship between collective identities.94 In the relationship between groups as well as in the intersubjective relationship, cognition of the other is less important than his recognition, his affirmation. In Buber’s perspective, making the other present is the real alternative for any kind of dichotomist thought, for opposition and violence.95 of Friendship and Identity: Children’s Communication Choices in an Interfaith Exchange,” in British Journal of Religious Education 31/3 (2009): 213–25. 92 Schmidt-Leukel, “Interkulturelle Theologie als interreligiöse Theologie,” Evangelische Theologie 71/1 (2001), 4–16. 93 Stanislaw Krajewski, “Abraham J. Heschel and the Challenge of Interreligious Dialogue,” in Abraham Joshua Heschel: Philosophy, Theology and Interreligious Dialogue, 177–78. 94 Ephraim Meir, “Reading Buber’s ‘I and You’ as a Guide to Conflict Management and Social Transformation,” in The Legacy of the German-Jewish Religious and Cultural Heritage: A Basis for German-Israeli Dialogue? Proceedings of an International Conference Held at Bar-Ilan University June 1, 2005, ed. Ben Mollov (Jerusalem: Yuval Press 2006), 119–31. 95 René Girard has analyzed how a scapegoat mechanism takes place in societies that entertain the illusion of attaining social peace by “sacrificing” certain groups. In a phantasmagoric behavior, one repeats the original violent act. Girard deems that the Jewish Bible and the New Testament oppose this sacrifice mechanism, taking into consideration that the sacrificed is in-



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Whereas Buber described the openness to and “presence” before the other as a most profound human quality, Heschel spoke about reverence, humility, and mutual esteem.96 Both thought that faith is more than creed. But Buber was less interested in religions as such in his meta-religious standpoint, whereas Heschel with his depth theology provides his readers with a common ground for religions, “for communication and cooperation on matters relevant to their [=the Christian and Jewish] moral and spiritual concern in spite of disagreement.”97 Like Buber and Rosenzweig, Heschel thought that religion was only a means, not an end in itself, and that the Creator and Lord of history transcended religions: I suggest that the most significant basis for meeting of men of different religious traditions is the level of fear and trembling, of humility and contrition, where our individual moments of faith are mere waves in the endless ocean of mankind’s reaching out for God, where all formulations and articulations appear as understatements, where our souls are swept away by the awareness of God’s commandment, while stripped of pretension and conceit we sense the tragic insufficiency of human faith.98

From Rosenzweig, Buber, and Heschel we learn that the houses of religion are not the Kingdom of God himself. The three philosophers were convinced that God is greater than religion. But their perspective was limited: They focused primarily upon Judaism’s relation with Christianity. It seems to me that a future Jewish theology in the plural has to take into account all the religions and spiritualities of the world, all of which could give fuel to wars and oppression or – alternatively – bring light into the world, ensure social cohesion and create civilized, peaceful societies. The three major Jewish thinkers whose thought I have discussed started a pluralization of theology and interfaith dialogue, but it is still a long way to go to construct an interreligious theology that respects differences and goes beyond them in a “trans-different” attitude. In the dialogue between Judaism and Buddhism, for instance, one could easily show how the Dalai Lama’s definition of Buddhism as “interbeing” comes close to Buber’s approach to the person as co-person. The Buddhist truth of non-violence, of compassion and empathy, runs parallel with Buber’s insistence upon the creation of “betweenness,” upon sharing and being connected. Conflict interruption or, more positively envisioned, the creation of peaceful societies, results from real meeting and dialogue, about nocent. René Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1977); Girard, The Scapegoat (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986); Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2001). 96 Krajewski, “Abraham J. Heschel,” 179. 97 Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” 239. 98 Ibid., 239–40.

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which both Buber and the Dalai Lama spoke. Beyond the question of whether compassion that implies forgiveness is compatible with justice (the Dalai Lama grounded justice in compassion), both spiritual men knew that all people – not only religious ones – are linked to each other. Rosenzweig’s ability to “translate” the own in the language of the other testifies to his “trans-different” capacities. We will have to elaborate what the consequences are of such a linguistic-cultural movement towards the other that enables the change from a self-confident, substantialist, prefabricated identity into a relational identity. If one adopts a relational identity, one will have to accept the heterogeneity of interpretations of revelation in different subgroups of one’s own religion as well as in different religions. A relational identity also implies the rejection of hierarchical or patronizing thinking that is present in expressions such as “leading religion” or “mother religion.” In a more general way, relational identities are identities in which cultures are interwoven.99 They recognize otherness and give room to it. In a kind of internal dialogue, the I does not compare itself with the non-I, it rather transforms itself through the discovery of something other than the self, which changes its perspective and worldview. The relational, dialogical I is the I which is a frequent traveler between the self and the other.100 Such an I brings an alternative to a clash of civilizations.101 99 In his postcolonial studies, Homi K. Bhabha understands cultural phenomena less as comparable in terms of communalities or oppositions than as essentially interwoven. In this context, he uses the term “cultural hybridity.” Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). 100 For a creative philosophical discussion of understanding other cultures, see Michael Gerhard, “Jesu Eintritt ins nirvana und Buddhas Kreuzetod. Irrungen und Wirrungen Komparativer Philosophie am Beispiel asiatischer Kulturen,” in Das Vertraute und das Fremde. Differenzerfahrung und Fremdverstehen in Interkulturalitätsdiskurs, eds. Sylke Bartmann and Oliver Immel (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2012), 237–52. Avoiding the thesis of identity in modernity and the thesis of difference in postmodernity, Gerhard does not reduce or neglect the alterity of the other. He does not leave the other in his total otherness and, at the same time, he does recognize his strangeness. In reference to Roland Faber, he distances himself from an objective unbiased standpoint, a tertium comparationis, and from dialogue as a regulative idea. Roland Faber, “Der transreligiöse Dialog: Zu einer Theologie transformativer Prozesse,” Polylog 9 (2002), 65–94. In his inspiring thoughts, Gerhard does not strive for a new meta-synthesis of cultures. He proposes to bring the new as the “translative and transmutative, i.e. living moment” in one’s own culture (252). 101 According to Huntington, a clash of civilizations characterizes history after the cold war and the tension between the United States and the ex-Soviet Union. In his view, conflicts in history today are between cultures rather than between political or ideological blocks. For instance, Christian cultures clash with Islamic cultures, since both are missionary, absolute religions which have a teleological view of history. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). Yet, clashes do also occur outside the relations between cultures.



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Another stage in the direction of a full-fledged intercultural and interreligious dialogue can be reached through reflection on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), who discussed the alterity of the other. In Levinas’s thought, this otherness is to be understood not in the physical or psychological sense, but in an ethical way. One cannot absorb the other in one’s own totality, because of the endless responsibility towards the other, “facing” the I. The “infinity” of the other’s appeal ruptures one’s “totality” and totalizing tendencies. Levinas’s ethical metaphysics provides us therefore with a common ground of responsibility for religions and cultures. Without blurring differences, we may come to transgress the own boundaries in an act of hospitality, in order to be a guest of others or to host them in our own spiritual home. The humanity of religions depends therefore upon acts of hospitality and upon the engagement in universal responsibility, in the framework of a secular world.

Chapter 2 Buddhist Thought and Heschel’s Jewish Philosophy: An Encounter Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? He who learns from all men. Ben Zoma omer: ezehu chakham ha-lomed mikol adam. Pirqe Avot 4:1

The previous chapter mainly dealt with the Jewish-Christian encounter as seen from select Jewish points of view. However, I certainly do not intend to construct a confessional theology of the Jewish-Christian dialogue, but a dialogical interreligious theology, inspired by Jewish sources and thinkers. In the present chapter, I return to Heschel’s philosophy of religion, this time in order to show the interconnectedness between Heschel’s depth theology and Buddhism. I thus present an example of a dialogue between Judaism and a non-monotheistic, even non-theistic religion. Dialogue is often seen as a nice word frequently used by utopists, who have lost contact with harsh reality. It is considered a soft power that quickly has to be replaced by a hard power which guarantees a fragile equilibrium that is as easily disrupted as it is reached. One believes even less in interreligious dialogue as a means that could diminish tensions and promote peace. Notwithstanding much skepticism, I believe that dialogue, more specifically interreligious dialogue, can greatly contribute to establishing peace between people. My belief is based upon the fact that during many centuries, religions were (as well as being divisive forces) the positive energy that inhabited people who dealt with evil and who found ways to alleviate suffering. In view of the construction of an interreligious theology that serves the aim of peace in civil society, I focus upon the engagement and thought of Abraham Joshua Heschel, who put interreligious dialogue at the center of his attention. Although Heschel himself restricted his scope mainly to the dialogue between Jews and Christians, I lead his dialogical thought into contact with Buddhism. I hereby bring up several themes, which the Buddhist nun Dr. Carola Roloff and I touched upon in the Hamburg based Academy of World Religions and which Prof. Dorji Wangchuk and I explicitly discussed in Hamburg and Jerusalem. I imagine an encounter between Heschel’s philosophy and Buddhist thought as an example of a possible interaction between Jews and Buddhists. First, I provide details of Heschel’s philosophy. In a second move, I juxtapose this philosophy with the Buddhist way of life. Finally, I envision what both have to say to each other in view of the construction of an interreligious theology.



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Heschel’s Religious Philosophy Heschel was a dialogical person, but far from a naïve utopist.1 Existentially and theologically, he endeavored to radiate the image of God in himself and in others. His radical interpretation of Judaism had consequences for daily life. Human rights and involvement in the terrestrial world formed the core of his religiosity. With Martin Luther King, he wanted to bring about equality between black and white people in the United States in a quiet revolution. Heschel’s dialogue with King, the spiritual leader of African-Americans, was intended to generate equality and respect for the dignity of every human being, whom he saw as uniquely beloved by God. The social and political reality in the 1960s was quite different, and one frequently encountered open racism. With his prophetic voice, Heschel qualified racism as a great sin that – as any offense to fellow man – cannot be forgiven by God.2

God as the Father of All Heschel’s dialogue with and struggle for African-Americans had a prophetic undertone, since in his religious philosophy, the prophets, following God’s pathos, were not indifferent to evil. Racism, called by Heschel an “eye disease,”3 was the antipode of a religion in which all men are equal, and made in the image and likeness of God. Honoring God meant honoring black people. God was one and humanity one. The most frightening thing was to desecrate God’s name.4 In dishonoring the name of a black person, one profaned the name of God. God was every man’s pedigree: “He is either the Father of all men or of no man. The image of God is either in every man or in no man.”5 It is this theological insight that pervades both Heschel’s depth theology and his social action. Heschel thought that in religion as conceived of in the Jewish tradition all are God’s children and, consequently, nobody should remain in slavery: “The exodus became, but is far from having been completed. In fact, it was easier for the children of Israel to cross the Red Sea than for a Negro to cross certain university

1 For a short introduction into his life and thought, see the entry “Heschel, Abraham Joshua,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica vol. 9, second ed. (2010), 70–72 (Fritz A. Rothschild/Ephraim Meir). 2 Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Religion and Race,” in The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence (New York: The Noonday Press, 1967), 89. 3 Ibid., 87. 4 Ibid., 95. 5 Ibid.

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campuses.”6 The allusion to the exodus of all mankind became influential in the States and was specifically employed by Martin Luther King. In Heschel’s view, the problem of the African-American was the problem of the white man; it was everyone’s personal problem. Discussing equality, Heschel conceived of human history as the history of the tension between equality and power. His argument is that the equality of all men follows from God’s love and commitment to all. In a typical reversal of what many normatively believe , Heschel does not deem that the ultimate worth of man is due to his virtue or faith; it is “due to God’s virtue, to God’s faith. Wherever you see a trace of man, there is the presence of God.7 God’s covenant is with all men. Every man is “[t]he symbol of God” and, therefore, every man has to be “treated with the honor due to a likeness representing the King of kings.”8

Compassionate Religion or Racism In his opening address at the National Conference on Religion and Race in Chicago, on January 14, 1963,9 Heschel explicitly tackled the problem of African-Americans in America. In his speech, invoking the Jewish tradition, he argued that a universal God shares the pain of all human beings and demands a struggle against oppression and humiliation.10 Maintaining that one has to choose religion or race, he upheld the rights of black people. From one single man, he argues, all descended. “You cannot worship God and at the same time look at man as if he were a horse.”11 Segregation was idolatry: “Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not with you, is an idol.”12 Heschel remarks that, although the crime of murder is punishable by law whereas the sin of insult is invisible, bloodshed in Hebrew–shfikhat damim – specifically denotes both murder and humiliation.13 The Talmud mentions that it is better to throw oneself into a burning furnace than to humiliate somebody publically.14 In Heschel’s theology, God shares the pain of the human being.

6 Ibid., 85. 7 Ibid., 94. 8 Ibid., 95. 9 At the congress, Martin Luther King Jr. gave the closing speech. 10 Heschel, “Religion and Race,” 85–100. 11 Ibid., 86. 12 Ibid.; italics in the original. 13 Baba Metsia 58b. 14 Berakhot 43b.



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The Prophets Suffer the Suffering of Others Heschel warns that one cannot close his eyes to the problem of racism or separate people living apart in different neighborhoods. Neither is it enough to point to progress that has been made. It is further insufficient to delegate the problem to the courts, where only a few acts of violence are focused upon. It is precisely in this concrete context that Heschel chooses to talk about the prophets, on whom he had already written in his doctoral thesis in Germany and later discussed for the American public.15 The prophet is an advocate or champion defending the weak, who cannot defend themselves: “The prophet is a person who is not tolerant of wrongs done to others, who resents other people’s injuries. He even calls upon others to be the champions of the poor.”16 The God of the prophets is not indifferent to evil, for He “suffers the harms done to others. Wherever a crime is committed, it is as if the prophet were the victim and the prey.”17 God is a God of pathos. As in many of his writings, Heschel highlights here that God is concerned with social problems and with the affairs of the marketplace. The prophet is sympathetic to divine pathos and to the suffering of the fellow man: “A prophet is a person who holds God and men in one thought at one time, at all times.”18

God in Need of Man In a further refined theological reflection, Heschel mentions that the human tragedy lies in the bifurcation of the sacred and the secular. Against religious parochialism and bigotry that is not concerned with the world as such, he writes that many worry more about the purity of dogma than about the integrity of love. This kind of criticism of religion I would describe with David Koigen’s term “meta-religion,” a word that chastises religion as it is frequently lived.19 In Jewish life, one steadily repeats that intentions are not enough. Alluding to Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith” and distancing himself from the Danish philosopher, Heschel wanted “a leap of action”: In his view, the deed purifies the heart and sanctifies the mind.20 One has to set one’s mind on issues of a sublime nature. 15 Heschel, Die Prophetie (Krakow: Polska Akademja Umiejetnosci, 1936); Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper and Row, 1962). 16 Heschel, “Religion and Race,” 92. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 93. 19 See Martina Urban, “Deconstruction Anticipated: Koigen and Buber on Self-corrective Religion,” Shofar 27/4 (2009), 107-135. 20 Heschel, “Religion and Race,” 97.

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Heschel mentions that God needs the help of man in order to bring the divine grand design into history: “God needs mercy, righteousness; His needs cannot be satisfied in space, by sitting in pews, by visiting temples, but in history, in time. It is within the realm of history that man is charged with God’s mission.”21 This passage testifies to Heschel’s meta-religious thought that fulminates against religious practices which are indifferent to the world in which we live. To be religious means to be concretely engaged in the world.

Religion, Human Rights and Depth Theology I wish to transpose what Heschel said on African-Americans to any situation where people are not given their fundamental rights. Heschel himself began to do so concerning the situation in Israel. He did not naively and one-sidedly accuse the Israeli side, but was conscious that respect for and promotion of the other man lie at the heart of Zionism. Immediately after the Six Day War (1967), he wrote: Our aim must be to help in bringing about peace and reconciliation. Violence postpones problems, it does not solve them. We believe that by good will and full cooperation among all the nations of the Middle East, constructive solutions will be found.22

Heschel was not only active as a man of peace, but also contributed to interreligious theology with what he called his “depth theology.” In a lecture given at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in 1960, he described the difference between theology and depth theology.23 Theology as the reflection on pre-theological religious existence discusses the content of believing, he declared. Depth theology concerns the very act of believing.24 Theology concerns doctrine, creed, and dogma. Depth theology pertains to events and moments of insights: “Theologies divide us; depth theology unites us.”25 Heschel specified that depth theology works with an indicative, allusive language that articulates the sense of the ineffable, and he insists on the inadequacy of our faith.26 In this way, he saves the religious event from its incarceration in religious institutes and temples and links it to the secular, which has to be sanctified. His depth theology thus became

21 Ibid. 22 Heschel, Israel: An Echo of Eternity, 217. 23 Heschel, “Depth Theology,” in The Insecurity of Freedom, 115–26. 24 Ibid., 116–17. 25 Ibid., 119. 26 Ibid.



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a protest against religious self-indulgence and the narrowness of dogmas, concepts, and definitions. It saved what is ineffable from the armor of fixed formulas. Heschel does not merely distinguish between theology and depth theology, he also deems that they need each other: The moments of insight are fleeting, but in theology, one tries to convey insights to others in concepts; theologians formulate crystallized insights. Heschel warns that dogmas are not to be confused with God himself, that words are not a substitute for the ineffable, and that information is not evocation. “Dogmas are the poor mind’s share in the divine,” he declares.27 He points to the tension between dogma and faith, doctrine and insight, ritual and response, the sense of mystery and conceptual theology, mystery and meaning, and wonder and explanation. Heschel’s depth theology is therefore a serious attempt at making dogmas and rituals relative without abandoning them. His depth theology points to the ineffable, about which many religions have so much to say. Depth theology studies situations in which one experiences the mystery, in which one is in wonder and awe and has a sense of indebtedness. It is about the awareness of grandeur and the ultimate concern. Heschel claims that all religions are about wonder, reverence, and indebtedness. I appreciate Heschel’s distinction and the tension between theology and depth theology that he elucidates, but I have my doubts concerning what he describes in his depth theology as the basis for every religious human being. I maintain that it is difficult to find a common ground for all religions, except for the acceptance of something transcendent and ultimate. All religions are about an Ultimate Reality, approached in different ways through various religious experiences.

Buddhism and Heschel’s Judaism As mentioned at the start of this chapter, I intend to point to dialogical elements in Heschel’s Jewish thought and bring them into contact with Buddhism. Until now, I have shown how Heschel claims that all religions should care for fellow human beings, for their freedom and rights. God is the Father of all. How would Buddhism react to this?

27 Ibid., 121.

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The Problem of God An initial problem lies in the fact that Heschel’s thought and Judaism as such are theistic and dualistic: They talk about God and man, whereas Buddhism as a unitive lifestyle does not talk about God or about God’s pathos. Yet, this is in my view not a real problem, for two reasons. First of all, religion is broader than theism. And second, Buddhists also have their absolute, their highest truth: Nirvana. The fourth seal in Buddhism reads: “Nirvana is peace.”28 Significantly, one of the epithets for God in Judaism (and in Islam) is “peace.”

Peace The question, however, is what does peace mean in both traditions? Do Jews and Buddhist mean the same thing when they talk about peace? One could say that in Buddhism “peace” is reached as the result of self-redemption, although it would be absurd to talk about self-redemption if there is not such a thing as a separated self.29 Let me therefore rephrase: In Buddhism “peace” is the cessation of suffering or pain and its causes. This lies in becoming awakened. Nirvana is reached when one becomes free from suffering through the development of a tranquil mind.30 In the Jewish view, peace is reached through the realization of tsèdèq or justice. One has to actively bring about peace, by paying attention to human rights, for instance, for the black people in America or for the Palestinians in the region where I live. Are these views compatible? I argue that in a developing interreligious theology and dialogue, Buddhists may interactively learn social engagement from Judaism and from theistic religions in general. Of course, there is the so-called “engaged Buddhism” in which monks protect trees or take care of the sick.31 A Buddhist feminist like Carola Roloff exemplarily cares about equality between men and women. Most probably, European Buddhism will develop a different path than the many manifestations of Buddhism in non-European countries. Yet, generally speaking and as things stand now, the soteriology of Buddhism is very different from the Jewish soter28 Christof Spitz, “Religiosität und Philosophie im buddhistischen Selbstverständnis,” in Buddhismus im Westen. Ein Dialog zwischen Religion und Wissenschaft, eds. Carola Roloff, Wolfram Weiße, and Michael Zimmermann (Münster: Waxmann, 2011), 54, 58–59. 29 Sic Oliver Petersen, “Erfahrungen eines Buddhisten im interreligiösen Dialog in Hamburg,” in Buddhismus im Westen, 150. 30 Spitz, 55: “‘Nirvana ist Frieden’ bedeutet, dass Leidfreiheit mit der ‘Befriedung’ der das Bewusstsein trübenden Leidenschaften durch Geistesschulung ensteht.” 31 Petersen, 152.



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iology, which invokes an active tiqqun olam, a reparation of the world, working in history. Consequently, peace as the absolute is reached in different manners in Buddhism and Judaism. Against appearances, I would like to argue that the two world visions are nevertheless not irreconcilable. Perhaps one may enrich his own existence by carefully and intensively listening to what others have to say in order to develop a more complex viewpoint on what ultimately matters.32

Dialogue as a Transformative Process In a real dialogue, which to my mind is always transformative, one does not have a monopoly on the absolute. One learns from the other. People are different, but in “trans-difference,” one opens up to the other.33 Buddhists may learn from Jews that there are people who are engaged in the world, because in their view God cares for His world and is concerned about the future of mankind. Jews may learn from Buddhists, and for that matter also from Christians and Muslims, that many other people organize their lives around the idea of redemption. I see a complementary function in Judaism and Buddhism. The two worldviews could critique each other. Buddhists could ponder on a selfless existence that is reached in active empathy with others, and Jews could understand that outer peace is only reachable with inner peace. Time will reveal if Buddhists are ready to call Moses a Bodhisattva (at any rate, they can never rule out that he was not a Bodhisattva) and if Jews will one day call the Buddha a prophet. A living and respectful dialogue with people, rather than reading books about them, will enlarge the horizon of the respective partners in dialogue. As Heschel formulated it, we need more text-people than textbooks.34

Selfless Existence In Heschel’s religious philosophy, self-effacement is “the only way of redemption from the enslavement to the ego.”35 The uniqueness of the human being lies in

32 Eva-Maria Koch notes that the immature ego sees itself endangered by what is foreign: one stabilizes a weak I in which differentiation is underdeveloped through a black-white picture of the world. Koch, “Kann man gleichzeitig Buddhist und Christ sein?” in Buddhismus im Westen, 95. 33 Ephraim Meir, “Quo vadis, religio? Religion as Terror and Violence or as Contribution to Civilization: A Plea for Trans-Difference,” in Meir, Identity Dialogically Constructed, 10–26. 34 Heschel, The Insecurity of Freedom, 237. 35 Heschel, God in Search of Man, 398.

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his possibility to surpass the self: He may serve higher ends and transcend his needs.36 The self is defined as a bundle of needs and it is man’s assignment to transcend his own self. One has to leave self-centeredness and go to the wider world, in care and compassion for the other, just as God ecstatically reaches out to the human being and challenges her or him to share divine care for human beings. This point of view on self-effacement has its parallel in Buddhist thought, where a selfish attitude causes suffering. According to Buddha, the self is basically anatta or “no(n)-self.” One may become awakened in the experience of Nirvana as a spiritual event. One’s eyes may become opened and one may become aware of the interrelatedness of all, the reality of the web of interbeing. In the experience of the no(n)-self, one gains wisdom as a Buddha and becomes full of compassion as a Bodhisattva. The accent upon the release from a problematic self is parallel in Buddhist and Jewish thought. There is an amazing kinship between Buddhism that denies a substantive self and Hassidism that decenters and erases the self in favor of the infinite, the only ultimate value.37 Buddhism criticized the Hindu idea that atman, the self, is Brahman, the supreme reality. It strived to achieve release from obsessive concern over the self, for all is in constant change. Hassidism, on the other hand, teaches that one’s individuality is illusionary: In bittul ha-yesh (annulling of the existent), the I (ani) is transformed into the nothingness (ayin) of the infinite (ein-sof). Both in Buddhism and in Chabad Hassidism egocentrism is overcome and one is freed from a merely autonomous existence. For Hassidism and Buddhism, this world is finally an illusion. However, although Heschel was raised as a Hassid and inspired by the Hassidism of the Ba’al Shem Tov and the Kotzker rebbe, he would not go as far as to deny that there is no self and no other in the interconnection, and that one has to accept and even embrace all that is, as in Buddhism.

Rituals and Concepts As mentioned, Heschel maintains that religious rituals, although important and necessary, are not the aim, only a means. The aim of the commandments, of blessings and prayer, is to have God always before one’s eyes: “‘God asks for the heart,’ not only for deeds.”38 Deeds are important in Judaism, but they are 36 Ibid., 397. 37 For this idea, see Jerome (Yehuda) Gellman, “Judaism and Buddhism,” in Jewish Theology and World Religions, 304, 310–12. 38 Ibid., 309.



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not the ultimate target: “We exalt the deed: We do not idolize external performance.”39 Heschel warns against religious behaviorism without intention. The objective of performing ritual finally lies in the transformation of the soul.40 Yet, ritual remains important, for “(s)pirituality is the goal, not the way of man.”41 There exists a clear parallel in Buddhism to Heschel’s thoughts about the relationship between the way and the goal. In Buddhism, rituals, concepts, symbols, and meditation are important only insofar as they contribute to the experience of the deeper reality, of liberation and truly seeing.42

How to Deal with Suffering Through his longtime study of the prophets, who harshly rebuked their contemporaries and continued to hope for a better world, Heschel learned that to be religious is to be involved in the affairs of the suffering man. As an activist theologian, he wanted to free people from poverty, injustice, and oppression. He refused to consider the world to be in principle already redeemed and strived to mend it. From his perspective, God is in search of man, He is in need of human deeds, concerned about humanity and, in the course of history, He also becomes disappointed. He asks for justice and compassion. God is not apathetic, but passionate and empathic. He takes man seriously and suffers with the suffering human being. The prophets with their unique experience of God participate in the divine concern for the human being. They are involved in the matters of everyday life. Heschel’s daughter Susannah notes that, after the Holocaust, theopaschism, the belief that God suffers, reemerged as a central feature of Christian theology.43 In this theological thought, present in the work of Jürgen Moltmann and Eberhard Jüngel, God is affected by human activity and suffers with human beings. Heschel’s theology of God’s pathos had its roots in the experience of Israel, as, for instance, in the idea of the Shekhinah (the divine Inhabitation as the feminine aspect of God) that accompanied the people of Israel into exile. Buddhism too is very much concerned about suffering and is full of compassion. Yet, whereas in the Jewish tradition one actively realizes justice as a divine

39 Ibid., 308. 40 Ibid., 310. 41 Ibid., 297. 42 Spitz, 59. 43 Susannah Heschel, “The Revival of Theopaschism in Post-World War II Theology,” in Judaism, Topics, Fragments, Faces, Identities, 69–86.

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demand, Buddhism rather seeks peace in the heart by accepting what is. Buddhists give priority to awakening, to being peaceful, to being mindful. At first sight, these orientations are incompatible. However, it was Paul Knitter who in his famous book on Buddhism and Christianity remarks that action and contemplation do not contradict each other.44 He writes: “If you want peace, work for justice. And if you want justice, work for peace.”45 Knitter does not believe in justice without compassion, an idea that also appears in the Jewish tradition: Din, justice, is not without rahamim, mercy; they meet each other in tifèrèt, (spiritual) beauty. He combines making peace with being peace. In the footsteps of Knitter, I would like to say that, mutatis mutandis, Judaism as external and social and Buddhism as interior and personal may well complement each other in interreligious dialogue. All may learn from all and combine action and contemplation, justice and compassion. Whereas Buddhists teach that one has to tranquilly accept the facts of human existence, Heschel highlights that a prophetic existence implies the struggle against evil. To my mind, Jews may learn from the Buddhist attitude to life that bringing peace consists in being peace. They may add to their own religious sensibility the serene Buddhist attitude to the world. In the other direction, Buddhists may learn from the active, social engagement of Jews in the world. In a dialogical philosophy of religions, different paths will always exist and are necessary as multiple ways of approaching what is of ultimate concern.

Towards an Interreligious Dialogue and Theology I started this chapter by exposing Heschel’s eminently Jewish thinking. At first sight, this thought is far removed from Buddhism. However, if one endeavors to shape one’s Jewish identity without reference to the negative background of other identities, an unexpected horizon opens up. Judaism and Buddhism are different paths, which both point to an Ultimate Reality. However, they join each other in their concern with man’s suffering. The Buddhist karuna or compassion and the Hebrew rahamim, mercy, which designates what happens in the womb (rèhèm) are not that far removed from each other. Both religions see rituals as important, but, ideally, do not confuse them with the aim, which in Judaism is to live in the presence of God, who asks for compassion, and in Buddhism to reach Nirvana and

44 Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009), 197, 201. 45 Ibid., 201.



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be compassionate towards every sentient being.46 To bring about tsèdèq, justice, and to fight for shalom, cannot be done without there being peace. For one to be peace implies actively bringing peace. In this manner, Judaism and Buddhism complement each other: They need each other in order to view the world from more than one standpoint, from the more complete standpoint of interreligious dialogue and theology. As Heschel pointedly said: “No religion is an island.”47 Today, more and more Jews practice some kind of meditation and not a few Buddhists are involved in social, political, economical and environmental action. Socially engaged Buddhists make a connection between meditation and social action.48 They view the aim of Buddhist practice to be liberation from suffering and perfection of wisdom and compassion.49 In their understanding, the teaching of interdependence and no-self leads to worldly engagement. A dialogical philosophy and interreligious theology will have to rethink identities and conceive of them as essentially relational identities that are different, but not indifferent to the other. In such a concept of identity, one’s worldview becomes transformed in real meetings with others. With our distinctive ways, we are all interconnected, interculturally, and inter- and intrareligiously. Our lives and ways of holiness are different, but intertwined. Jews and Buddhists, Muslims and Christians, Alevites, Bahai, Druze, and Sikh: We are all linked. We know each other better than we did before, there is more information than ever, but what we need right now is not only cognition, but most of all recognition and confirmation of each and every human being.

46 Study in Judaism and meditation in Buddhism are ways of concentrating on what makes life worthy to be lived. 47 Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island.” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 21/2 (1966): 117–34. 48 Sallie B. King, Socially Engaged Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i, 2009), 39-66. 49 Ibid., 44.

Chapter 3 Successful Interreligiosity: A Case Study I have already referred to Paul F. Knitter’s pioneering role in interreligious Christian-Buddhist dialogue. This chapter presents in detail the content of his inspiring book on Christian-Buddhist dialogue as an example for shaping one’s identity in a dialogical way.1 I describe Knitter’s work extensively because his life is paradigmatic for a multiple belonging, about which Schmidt-Leukel writes.2 Combinations are also possible in Judaism: Jews may combine their Judaism with values of feminism, democracy, and human rights. They may identify with the country in which they live. They may at the same time deepen their Judaism and interact with people from other religions. They may learn from Buddhism and integrate Buddhist elements in their lives. Knitter does not confuse worldviews and religions. He rather gives a personal, sincere, well documented, and sometimes humorous example of living a religious life in an interreligious manner. To my mind, Knitter’s work proves the possibility of successful multiple belonging and how one may (re)shape one’s own spiritual identity in contact with others. It demonstrates that religious identity is not static, established once and for all, but a permanent, dynamic, and self-transforming process. In recent times, the dialogue between religions and worldviews has become more intense than ever. Given the religious plurality in our modern societies, the construction of an interreligious theology has become an urgent task. As mentioned in the first chapter, Alan Brill showed the extent to which Jews are in contact with other religions. There is a need for a Jewish theology of religions. Yet, I am not interested in the construction of a confessional theology of religions, but rather in an interreligious theology that appreciates the interrelatedness between religions. The ongoing interaction and self-transforming dialogues between different religions creates a new atmosphere and a new era on which theologians can and must reflect. More and more Jews, for instance, are attracted to Buddhism. Many converts to Buddhism are Jews. Many important masters of Buddhism are Jews, as, for example, Nyanaponika, Ayya Khema, Sylvia Boorstein, 1 Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian. This chapter is based upon a short description of this book that appeared in Journal of Religion. For the sake of the present book, it was thoroughly reviewed and extended. The phenomenon of Christians who become highly interested in Buddhism is well known today. Michael von Brück, for instance, is a Professor of Sciences of Religion in Munich as well as a Zen and Yoga teacher. Sallie King is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at James Madison University; she is a Christian who writes on socially engaged Buddhism. 2 See introduction, p. 8.



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Sharon Salzberg, Bernie Glassman, and Norman Fisher. Yet, since Jews are not the only ones to relate to Buddhism, I describe the work of Knitter as a paradigm for successful interreligious praxis and thought. Paul Knitter, the Paul Tillich Professor of Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, has done groundbreaking work in interreligious dialogue, more specifically in the field of the Buddhist-Christian dialogue. He looks beyond the traditional borderlines of Christianity and deals with problems in Christianity, which he wants to overcome by “passing over” to Buddhism and “passing back” to his own Christian identity and beliefs, now enriched by Buddhist insights. Knitter defines himself as a Buddhist Christian and takes his double belonging seriously. He gives his readers a responsible account of his own existential path into Buddhism. The dialogue of this Christian theologian with Buddhism has engendered a successful hybrid religiosity. The first chapter of Knitter’s work on Christianity and Buddhism bears the title “Nirvana and God: The Transcendent Other.” Knitter deals with the problem of a God “up there” or “out there,” the totaliter aliter, the “Self-subsistent Being,” who – in his self-sufficiency – is not affected by others. He deals with such a problematic, distant God, whose action in history is a one-way street, and does so in a non-dualist manner, in which God and the world are distinguished, yet not separated. Knitter finds such a non-dualistic experience in Buddhism, in which Interbeing or Interconnectedness is central. He explains how, in Buddhism, the world is constantly becoming and things continually change because of the interrelatedness of all. According to Buddha, nothing has its own existence, as everything is related. Instead of possessing in selfishness that causes suffering, one may become awakened in the experience of Nirvana. In the Mahayana (reform) tradition of Buddhism, this awakening or Enlightenment is also seen as direct cognitive access to Sunyata or Emptiness, thereby causing one to be receptive to things as they are, and able to receive anything. This experience of Sunyata inspires Knitter when “passing back” to his Christianity. In a unitive experience, one feels oneself united with something larger than oneself, one feels an expanded self or loss of self. In Knitter’s mystical experience, God is felt to be “the Ground of Interbeing” and is equated with Interbeing. After having passed over to Sunyata, Knitter passes back to God, perceived now as the mystery of Interbeing that surrounds and animates the human being. As a result, God becomes for him the connecting Spirit, the divine Spirit that energizes anything. In this way, he finds an antidote to a problematic dualism, in a kind of panentheistic world-vision, in which God is felt present in everything. The second chapter of Knitter’s book again deals with the notion of God, this time as a “you,” as a personal God, which for Knitter is problematic (not,

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of course, in the dominant Jewish experience).3 “Passing over” to the Buddhist experience, he notes that, in Buddhism, the ultimate concern is not the love of God, but Enlightenment, characterized by wisdom or prajna, and compassion or karuna. In wisdom, one’s eyes are opened and one awakens to the Interrelatedness of all, to the reality of the web of Interbeing. Once one experiences the “noself” in the web of Interbeing, compassion or love for all sentient beings follows naturally. As a Buddha, one gains wisdom; as a Bodhisattva, one adds compassion. In Interconnection, there is no self and no other, only letting go. Learning from Buddhism, Knitter reflects on the Divine as an “all-pervading Spirit.” His God is, rather, “a presence or energy with personal qualities.” “Passing back” to his Christianity, he reminds the reader that for Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner all God-talk is symbolic: The divine reality cannot be contained in only one symbol. Knitter then defines God as a “connecting Spirit,” to be experienced in wisdom and compassion, in caring for the other. The Spirit needs the human being, who in turn needs the Spirit: There is interconnectedness, interdependency. Knitter also touches upon the problem of evil. In Buddhism, evil is seen as “ignorance.” To call someone or somebody evil is to add to ignorance. All is a confluence of “causes and conditions.” Yet Knitter hastens to add that Buddhists are positive; they are “mindful” that there is movement and they believe that any person in given circumstances is not all that he can become. They believe one is capable of producing good karma. Bad things happen, but one may deal with it. With the possibility of good karma, Knitter feels himself akin to process theologians, who see the Spirit as the source of endless possibilities. In chapter three, Knitter discusses the problem of language in relation to the mystery of God and Nirvana. Whereas Christians are wordy and verbose, experience comes first in Buddhists’ thoughts. In Zen Buddhism words are secondary, and the experience itself of Enlightenment is primordial. Zen Buddhists say: “The finger is not the moon.” Students may hear the question: “What’s the sound of one hand clapping?” and are sent back home until they “get it.” All words, Knitter concludes in his “passing back,” are fingers, or as Hindus say – speaking about God – : “neti, neti” (not this, not this). The mystery of God cannot be contained in a word, and so the word God itself is a symbol: It points. Tillich therefore speaks of “the God beyond God,” to which religions point.4

3 Yet Mordechai Kaplan, founder of the Reconstructionist movement, also had problems in addressing God as “you” as if He were a person. 4 It is noteworthy that Martin Buber did not share Paul Tillich’s doctrine of a primal ground (Urgrund). For him, the word God as primal word (Urwort) was not to be replaced by something else. Friedman, Encounter On the Narrow Ridge, 192 and 382.



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In the chapter entitled “Nirvana and Heaven,” Knitter again confronts problems in Christian theology. He subsequently passes over to Buddhism, which offers useful insights and then passes back to Christianity. After having described how Christianity envisions the afterlife, with punishments and selfish rewards, Knitter passes over to Buddhism, which does not have a view of life after death, but believes that as anatta one may become part of the Interbeing. Following the natural law of karma, there is rebirth. Passing back to Christianity, Knitter then “tailors” his Christianity with “some Buddhist scissors and patches.” He concludes that the way one lives can be so harmful to others that this extends into the reality that comes after one’s death. Happily, he notes, there is the positive flip-side of this kind of karma: Bad karma never has the last word. Chapter Five focuses on Jesus and Gautama, the Buddha. To start with, Knitter interestingly makes Jesus’s centrality relative by recalling the biblical idea that all are God’s sons and daughters. Jesus in his eyes is not the “repairman,” who saves humanity from the mess that people have made. Neither does he regard God as an abusive parent, asking for a sacrificial victim.5 Knitter does not believe in the “superiority” of his religion and refuses to be an inclusivist, who recognizes only partial truth in other religions. All are called upon to realize their full human nature, to realize Buddha-nature. Passing back to Christianity, he conceives of Jesus as the one who realized his human nature in a maximal way. In this view, Jesus’s uniqueness does not exclude others, for it is not exclusive, but relational. From Mahayanists, Knitter learns that the goal is to become a Bodhisattva, who postpones the final entry into Nirvana in order to save others, like the Buddha did.6 After the discussion about God, afterlife, and Christ, the penultimate chapter explores the connection between prayer and meditation. Again, Knitter shows his discontent with a dualistic viewpoint and an overly verbose approach. He learns from Buddhism the power of silence. Buddha distanced himself from Hindu practices embodied in Brahmanism. Instead of the ceremonial sacrifices and precise formulae known only by an elite, he discovered Groundlessness and Interbeingness, through which one is related in compassion and in the wisdom of the one who really sees.

5 See also David R. Blumenthal, Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), who describes God as loving and merciful, but also as abusive. Blumenthal defends the innocence of His victims. 6 Perry Schmidt-Leukel informs me that the Bodhisattva does not postpone awakening: He strives for Buddhahood, he wants to become an awakened Buddha, but he vows to remain in the Samsara in order to work for the liberation of all. Theravadins believe that the Buddha did leave Samsara, while the Mahayanist Lotus Sutra proclaims that he only pretended to do so.

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Knitter discusses respectively “wisdom-filled” and “compassion-filled” meditation. Vipassana or insight meditation, that starts in one’s body and leads to insights in the flux of reality, belongs to the first kind of meditation. In Zen Buddhism meditation, one sits down and aims at no-thinking, an awareness of the presence of Sunyata. Vajrayana finally is the mediation that works with paintings (mandalas) and sounds (mantras). In a second, more user-friendly kind of meditation, “compassion-filled” meditation, several possibilities again present themselves. The metta meditation starts with loving kindness to yourself, and then, one wishes for continually broader circles of others to be happy, well, and without suffering. In the tonglen meditation of Tibet Buddhism, one finds someone who is suffering and takes on his or her suffering in connectedness. In all these unitive experiences, one may become connected to wholeness, to everybody and everything. Instead of not facing reality, of being “nowhere,” without a link to this world,7 Knitter suggests being “now-here” in meditation, which he calls “the Sacrament of Silence.”8 The last chapter of Knitter’s book, its acme, bears the title “Making Peace and Being Peace.” This chapter is of crucial importance for anyone who is actively involved in peace-making. It was highly inspirational for my own reflections on the Jewish-Buddhist dialogue. Knitter rightly distinguishes between Christianity, which is external and social, and Buddhism, which is interior and personal. In his eyes, both complement each other. A peace activist himself, Knitter learned to appreciate the Buddhist viewpoint that the value of acts for peace depends upon being peace. Christians, who want peace, work for justice. Buddhists insist that if one wants peace, one has to find peace in one’s own heart. Buddhists may learn from Christian liberation theologians, and Christians may learn from Buddhists that structural changes are impossible without a change of the heart. The Buddhist position of non-violence, of receiving every person and event, of embracing and hugging what is, without judging, is perhaps the most difficult thing for Christians (and Jews, I add) who fight for justice to accept. But with Buddhists, Knitter believes that bad things happen as the result of “ignorance” and of certain “causes and conditions.” In Buddhism, compassion applies to everybody, including the oppressor. Buddhists teach Christians that transformation is already here, and that eschatology is not a far-off point in history. Confronted with evil, Knitter adopts, therefore, the position of non-violent, compassionate resistance, combining action and contemplation, justice and compassion. Here again, Knitter has a challenging hybrid position: He takes from Buddhism something that is useful for his own Christianity. The Buddhist viewpoint that feels oneness with those 7 Knitter, Without Buddha, 161. 8 Ibid., 163.



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who do not (yet) realize that they are bearers of the Buddha nature parallels that of the famous Hindu Mahatma Gandhi, who opposed and embraced the British colonizers.9 Knitter sees possibilities in a Christianity that always has to be reinterpreted, as do all other religions. He wrestles with some of Christianity’s acute problems. In doing so, he is inspired by Buddhism. His detailed viewpoint and lived position are paradigmatic for anyone who wants to responsibly combine religious elements. Knitter is proud of his hybrid religious identity which is exemplary for people of other religions, who have their own religious experiences and practices, but may also become transformed in the process of dialogue with other religions and worldviews. His book is not an amalgamation or a fusing of worldviews and religions. It is a personal, courageous, and sometimes humorous attempt to live one’s religiosity in an interreligious way. All religious people may learn from each other, since all are different “fingers” pointing to the same elusive Mystery that lives in us and is greater than us. All may learn that their own experience is not the experience of everybody and that, in contact with other worldviews, their own experience may glow with new meaning. Dialogue with others permits one to critically review one’s own values and beliefs. Religions, each of them with its own love story, are finally all part of a mosaic in which a variety of colors points to a Mystery, in which and from which human beings live. Religious identity is frequently shaped in contrast to other religious identities. From Knitter’s personal story, which is relevant to others as he himself time and again reminds the reader, 9 Gandhi proposed that the Jews who wanted to flee Germany remain there and pursue an attitude of radical non-violence (satyagraha or soul force) towards the Nazi atrocities. Martin Buber could not agree with this viewpoint and he wrote to Gandhi on the themes of justice and non-violence. His letter, dated February 24, 1939, was sent together with a similar letter by Judah L. Magnes, president of the Hebrew University, on March 9, 1939. Gandhi did not reply. Martin Buber and Judah Magnes, Two Letters to Gandhi (Jerusalem: Reuben Mass, 1939); Glatzer and Mendes-Flohr, eds., The Letters of Martin Buber: A Life of Dialogue (New York: Schocken, 1991), 476–86. I identify with Buber’s standpoint. However, more generally spoken and seen in a broader context, it seems to me that in an integrative, non-dilemmatic approach, realistic and non-violent, peaceful approaches do not exclude one another, but could complement each other and are all necessary in navigating conflict management efforts. For a new, detailed study on the longtime friendship between the German-Jew Hermann Kallenbach and Gandhi, including their different views on Zionism, see Shimon Lev, Soulmates: The Story of Mahatma Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach (Andhra Pradesh: Orient Backswan, 2012). Like Buber, in 1937 Hayim Greenberg wrote a letter to Mahatma Gandhi, urging him to raise his voice in favor of the persecuted Jews and the return to their homeland. After Gandhi published his article concerning the Jewish question, in which he advised Jews to embrace the heroic resistance according to the principle of satyagraha, Greenberg wrote in 1939 a very critical reaction to Gandhi’s position. Hayim Greenberg, The Inner Eye. Selected Essays (New York: Shulsinger, 1953), 219-229; 230-238.

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one may learn that being in touch with others does not diminish one’s own value, but may enrich one and invite one to reformulate and reshape his or her own identity in a real dialogical existence. Communication with others, giving and taking with others, and multiple belonging, all work in a transformative way. With Knitter, I believe that being religious in today’s world means essentially being interreligious. Interreligious or dialogical theology is the reflection on the necessary interconnectedness of all religions.

Chapter 4 Building Blocks for Interreligious Dialogue and Theology The fundamental fact of human existence is neither the individual as such nor the aggregate as such. Each, considered by itself, is a mighty abstraction. The individual is a fact of existence insofar as he steps into a living relation with other individuals. The aggregate is a fact of existence insofar as it is built up of living units of relation. The fundamental fact of human life is man with man. What is peculiarly characteristic of the human world is above all that something takes place between one being and another the like of which can be found nowhere in nature. Martin Buber1

All religions are about something that transcends everyday empirical perception: They are windows to an Ultimate Reality. This fact gives us the rationale for the realization of an interreligious religiosity and the construction of an intercultural theology.2

Cultural Changes Theologies are traditionally intellectual reflections upon denominational attitudes and ideas. In the past, theologians claimed to be in sole possession of the religious truth. However, during the last decennia in Western Europe, dramatic changes have taken place on cultural, social, and religious levels. Contacts with different cultures and religions have become quite normal, and what were once 1 Buber, Between Man and Man (London: Routledge, 1993), 203. 2 See John Hick, God Has Many Names: Britain’s New Religious Pluralism (London: Macmillan, 1980); Diana Eck, A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation (San Francisco: Harper, 2011); Paul F. Knitter, “Doing Theology Interreligiously: Union and the Legacy of Paul Tillich,” Crosscurrents 61 (2008): 117–32; Perry Schmidt-Leukel, “Religious Pluralism and the Need for an Interreligious Theology,” in Religious Pluralism and the Modern World: An Ongoing Engagement with John Hick, ed. Sharada Sugirtharajah (Birmingham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 19–33; Wolfram Weiße, “Religious Education as Encounter with Neighbor Religions,” in Religious Education as Encounter: A Tribute to John M. Hull, ed. Siebren Miedema (Münster: Waxmann, 2009), 111–28. Weiße refers to Hans-Jochen Margull and Abdoldjavad Falaturi as pioneers who laid a theological basis for an interreligious dialogue in Germany. In the United States the influential Christian theologian Paul Tillich contributed to the construction of a dialogical theology. In his article, Knitter writes on “the legacy of Tillich,” for whom religious diversity was seen as God’s will. He formulates Tillich’s standpoint pointedly: “to be religious today means to be religious interreligiously.”

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foreign religions have quickly become what Wolfram Weiße calls “neighbor religions.”3 Given this situation, an interreligious religiosity and a pluralization of theologies are far from being solely intellectual pastimes; they have become necessities. These necessities cannot be reduced to the need for an “oecumenical” attitude: This term is too Christian. In the present chapter, I offer building blocks for an intercultural, interreligious encounter and for the construction of a “transdifferent” theology. As I will describe in detail in Chapter Seven, such encounters and theologies are no longer optional or voluntary, a nice hobby; in the present constellation of our interlinked societies they have become inevitable.

Religion and the Ineffable Since people of different religions desire access to the Ultimate Reality that in the end escapes any grasp, one has to admit that one’s own religion is only a single attempt to discuss what is ultimately ineffable, which is deliberated on in a mosaic or kaleidoscope of approaches. What is beyond anyone’s comprehension cannot be accessed in a monologic manner. Others organize their lives around a Higher Reality as well. Their religious acts and thoughts may be relevant for one’s own religious life. The Talmudic saying “the Torah speaks the language of human beings” (dibra Torah ki-leshon beney adam)4 may be broadened: All speech about God is human speech. From this comes the need for interaction between religious people. Real meeting and interaction between people produce insights into the Ineffable. In traditional Jewish words, the divine Inhabitation dwells amongst people who are privileged to love each other.5 In the process of opening up traditional theologies to what other theologies have to say about the ineffable, one gradually becomes conscious that one’s own religious identity is intimately linked to the religious identity of other persons: One knows oneself only through the other.

3 See the title of Weiße’s article, “Religious Education as Encounter with Neighbor Religions.” Here Weiße uses the term in reference to Michael Klöker and Udo Tworuschka; Religionen in Deutschland. Kirchen, Glaubensgemeinschaften, Sekten (München: Olzog, 1994). 4 The expression appears several times in the Babyonian Talmud. For example, in Tractate Nedarim 3a. 5 Sota 17a: ish ve-isha she-zakhu shekhina benehem.



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Positioning Oneself in Dialogue with the Other In the praxis of interreligious dialogue in the world’s urban centers, one’s own religious position is often challenged by another. In multicultural areas, different reactions to such a challenge are possible. One may, in an exclusivist view, maintain that the entire truth is in one’s own religion and that consequently, all the others are wrong. Such a view is less and less common, although one should not underestimate the growing power of fundamentalists who still proclaim it, protecting and defending their own tenets of faith against a threatening outside world. We also find inclusivists, who will admit certain truths in other religions, but remain convinced that the whole truth nevertheless lies in their own religion. Pluralists admit that all sincerely search for the truth about Ultimate Reality. In my own view, being a religious inclusivist or a religious pluralist is not enough. Present multicultural societies demand an interreligious religiosity and theology, an openness to what others have to say about Ultimate Reality, which all religious people strive for though it remains elusive. In the interreligious encounter one may feel threatened or forced to take a defensive position. In this case, one sticks to absolute truth claims, denying truth in the approach of others to what transcends daily life. With a different attitude, one may try to strengthen one’s own viewpoint in interaction with the other, without denying that he too searches for what is ineffable. In a further step in the direction of an interreligious religiosity, one may confirm the other in his search for truth, sincerely desiring that he make progress in his own way towards the Higher Reality. In dialogue there is frequently a shift of the boundaries of one’s own tradition in the search for truth. One may become influenced or inspired by others. Eventually one combines diverse cultures and integrates elements from different lifestyles in order to realize one’s own personal religiosity. Mixed forms of religiosity are not infrequent today. One may revive one’s own religion, reinterpret it, or even re-imagine it. One finally may look for an all-inclusive “new we” where nobody hurts or disturbs the other but instead all gladly accept each others’ lifestyles.6

6 See Manuela Kalksy, “Embracing Diversity: Reflections on the Transformation of Christian Identity,” Studies in Interreligious Dialogue (2007): 221–31 and Kalksy, “Multiple Religious Identities and the Logic of Diversity,” in The Challenge of Multiple Identities: Sino-European Perspectives on Religion and Society, eds. F. Fällmand and Y. Xusheng (New York: Peter Lang, forthcoming). See also Kalsky’s online web project, www.nieuwwij.nl (“New We”).

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Dialogue as Successful Meeting If interreligious dialogue is a specific way of being in dialogue, we have to reflect upon the essence of dialogue. Dialogue or genuine conversation exists when one allows his own monologue to be interrupted by the other. In one of his War Notebooks, Levinas makes the following remark: “Do I interrupt you? – No. Meaning, one always interrupts.”7 Being in dialogue means allowing the other to interrupt your own thoughts. Eminent examples of such dialogue as a chain of interruptions are to be found in the Talmudic tradition, where people discuss together and reach conclusions on the basis of rational positions, while preserving every deviating opinion. Although in the Talmud decisions are made, the opinions that are not accepted are never blotted out and the names of the people who are involved in the ongoing dialogue are always mentioned. The Talmudic discussions are therefore exemplary meetings. An authentic dialogue leads to a situation in which one is challenged by the other; one does not know a priori what will come out of the conversation. In a real conversation, one is forced to review one’s own earlier positions and (elements of) traditional views. One may have things to say about one’s own way to the Transcendent, without imposing one’s view to others. Above all, others may have things to say about the Ineffable that one has not heard before and that could be of relevance for one’s own position.

Presuppositions for Dialogue The multicultural and complex religious situation in Western Europe and in other parts of the world demands a reflection on the presuppositions of a real interreligious dialogue. In the following I will spell out some of these presuppositions. The teachings of three Jewish masters of thought come to my mind. I consider their ideas on dialogue to be highly inspirational for present-day interreligious dialogue and for the construction of a growing theology in the plural. The thoughts of Buber and Heschel have already been discussed in Chapter One in the context of their possible contribution to a future interreligious theology. Here, I focus on their reflections on the very nature of dialogue, and I add to these the metaphysical thoughts of Emmanuel Levinas on the one-for-the-other. What is common to the thoughts of these three towering spiritual persons is that they do 7 Levinas, Carnets de captivité suivi de Écrits sur la captivité et Notes philosophiques diverses (Paris: Bernard Grasset/IMEC, 2009), 83.”Je vous interromps? –Non. C’est-à-dire on interrompt toujours.”



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not focus upon contents or dogmatic elements in religions. They are not interested in creeds as such, but in faith and in approaches to the Absolute. They favor a novel attitude that allows people to listen carefully to others who also organize their lives around what is beyond pure reason. The Ineffable, beyond the boundaries of pure reason, always remains beyond our grasp. Yet, these three masters highlight that the noumenon of Higher Reality may be approached in the mystery of intersubjective meeting. Further, Buber, Heschel, and Levinas remind us that all religions have the function of creating holy peace. Holy wars were commonplace in the past; holy peace is our goal in the present. In meeting with others, one should not be naïve: Hatred and biased ideas are still present. However, according to the three thinkers I have chosen in order to discuss dialogue, all religions will have to save humankind from its own destruction, and all religions have the task of saving the human soul.

The Relevance of Presence in Martin Buber Buber’s philosophy as written down in I and Thou conceives of dialogue with other human beings as leading to the uncovering of a depth in which one receives a glimpse of the eternal Thou.8 If one relates holistically to the other, not in a partial or objectifying manner, one overcomes the traditional subject-object dichotomous scheme and enters into a meeting with another subject. The I becomes I-you in relation to the other: In a relationship, the I becomes an I committed to the other in pure presence. This I as I-you is to be distinguished from an I as I-it, who relates to the other in a partial way, using, classifying, and objectifying him. Buber was concerned about the steady growth of the I-it and he wanted to promote the emergence of I-you, of what he calls the “between-person” (Zwischenmensch), connected to the other. Eventually, a mutuality may come into being, changing the relationship (Beziehung) into a meeting (Begegnung). Buber did not immediately apply his dialogical thought to interreligious dialogue for the simple reason that he was more interested in religiosity than in religions. However, the third part of his I and Thou points to the necessity of religions, which all create “a new form of God in the world” to the degree that they relate to their living source and force, the ever-present Thou.9 Human beings may not always be present, for it can happen that I am present and make the other present or that the other makes me present and that I am less present. Human beings may 8 Buber, I and Thou, 113. 9 Ibid., 166.

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also be present to each other, which is a divine gift. But only the eternal Thou is always present and therefore He is the ontological ground for human existence. One may learn from Buber that one really meets another human being only when one is present for the other, making him present without preconceived ideas, without classifying and objectifying, and without functionalizing or admonishing him. Such an attitude and the realization of the “between-person” are cornerstones for the realization of interreligious meetings and theologies.

Emmanuel Levinas’s Concept of Difference Levinas had a quite different philosophy than Buber. He did not intend to correct Buber; rather, he started with the idea of the Infinite in the finite other.10 He focused upon an aspect of the relationship that might be of utmost importance for a sound understanding of interreligious dialogue. Levinas made it clear that relationship is only possible on the basis of recognizing the exteriority and alterity of the other, without expecting reciprocity. The ethical, infinite demand from the other urges me to respond. Like Gilles Deleuze,11 Levinas wrote about absolute difference that forbids its neutralization. In his view, difference is not opposed to 10 Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 68–69. One may however, ask if the thou-saying does not place the other in a reciprocal relation, and if this reciprocity is primordial. On the other hand, the I-Thou relation in Buber retains a formal character: it can unite man to things as much as man to man. The I-Thou formalism does not determine any concrete structure. The I-Thou is an event, a shock, a comprehension, but does not enable us to account for (except as an aberration, a fall, or a sickness) a life other than friendship: economy, the search for happiness, the representational relation with things. They remain, in a sort of disdainful spiritualism, unexplored and unexplained. This work does not have the ridiculous pretension of ‘correcting’ Buber on these points. It is placed in a different perspective, by starting with the idea of the Infinite. 11 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (London: Continuum, 2009). In this work, first published in 1968, Deleuze pleaded for “a thought without images” (une pensée sans images) (208). In his critique of the “I think” which implies a conceiving, judging, imagining, remembering, and perceiving I, “difference is crucified” (174). In the representing I, “only that which is identical, similar, analogous or opposed can be considered different: difference becomes an object of representation always in relation to a conceived identity, a judged analogy, an imagined opposition or a perceived similitude.” Deleuze’s “thought without images” is not a representing, recognizing, and reproducing thought, in which difference is finally neutralized. His “thought without images” and his effort to write about difference as that which “is not and cannot be thought in itself, so long as it is subject of the requirements of representation” (330) run parallel to Levinas’s explicitly ethical reflections on an alterity that resists a mastering, totalizing thought and provokes the exposition of the I to the other, in responsibility.



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sameness, which would put both terms in a common overarching category. In Levinas’s ethical metaphysics, difference – alterity or exteriority – is the main constituent of any relationship. In other words: I am only relating to the other’s difference out of respect for him, in obedience to the infinite, ethical demand, “Thou shalt not kill,” coming from his naked face. Levinas’s insight made it possible to think about God in terms of Infinity, which is urging us to act and to answer the other’s call. This is of great importance in the construction of a future dialogical theology. It seems to me that a pluralistic, or better, interreligious theology is more than a science. It is first of all wisdom that discusses a prescriptive or normative element: the uniqueness of every human being who asks to be listened to, honored, and respected. It is therefore not enough to respect differences between human beings when it comes to interreligious meetings. Levinas taught us that what really makes a difference in the meeting is an ethical, non-indifferent response to the alterity of the other, who resists his neutralization by my own totality or my own schemes. Exclusivists, but also inclusivists, totalize the other. Pluralists are liberal, their adage is “live and let live.” In itself the pluralist, liberal position is good, but still far removed from the position of the dialogical person who finds his own uniqueness in response to the appeal and challenge coming from the other. I have found in Levinas’s philosophy of difference a concept that could revolutionize the dialogue with (religious) others. This concept of alterity of the other could put the interfaith dialogue in a quite different light: One will not primarily compare what is different or what is common in the various religions. One will first of all be open to what the other in his irreducible uniqueness has to say to the I. The answer to the ethical command coming from his face will be the condition for any real dialogue.

Heschel’s “No Religion Is an Island” In his famous 1965 lecture “No Religion Is an Island,” as an influential neo-Hassidic thinker Heschel formulated some basic thoughts that are of importance for interreligious dialogue.12 He considered that what is needed in the dialogue 12 Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review. Heschel’s inaugural lecture as Harry Emerson Fosdick Visiting Professor at Union Theology Seminary, New York, was reprinted in No Religion Is an Island: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue, eds. Harold Kasimow and Byron Sherwin (New York: Orbis, 1991), 3–22 and in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays by Abraham Joshua Heschel, ed. Susannah Heschel (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996), 235–50.

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between religions is reverence and humility. Although, like Franz Rosenzweig, Heschel concentrated mainly upon the Jewish-Christian dialogue, one may understand his prophetic words on dialogue in reference to other religions and worldviews as well. His voice remains of crucial importance for the theory and praxis of present-day interreligious dialogue. In “No Religion Is an Island” Heschel writes, parallel to Buber, that religion is not an end in itself, but a means; religion becomes idolatrous if it becomes an end. God the Creator and the Lord of history is above all, and therefore – as already mentioned – “to equate religion and God is idolatry.”13 Heschel warned that one should not confuse religions with God Himself: God as perfect reality is not religion, which is our imperfect understanding of the ineffable reality. It is a fact that many in the past and even in the present are ready to be killed for their faith. On another level, there were and are people ready to kill for their religion. Separating between religions as houses of God and God Himself, as Heschel did, prevents one from absolutizing one’s own religion. In his depth theology, Heschel made his listening and reading public sensitive to the Divine by developing a sense of indebtedness, wonder, and mystery in them. For him, respect for the faith of the other was more than a political or social imperative; it was the demand that follows from the fact that God is greater than religion and that each theology is finally rooted in what he called “depth theology,” which provided a common ground for all religious people.14 In a world in which a new materialism and empiricism function as contemporary glamorous religions with hotels and malls as new temples, these words are a real remedy. There is more than what the eyes see and what one may possess. Religions in Heschel’s view have a soteriological function in that they fight against a lack of solidarity, indifference, poverty, and injustice. Heschel’s own fight for African-American human rights in the United States and his courageous anti-Vietnam War position were the result of his deep religious engagement. Like Buber and Levinas, he was unable to perceive of a relationship with God without a relationship with other human beings. For Heschel, humanism, the fight for human rights, and religiosity went hand in hand.

13 Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 243. 14 For an account of Heschel’s contribution to the interreligious dialogue, see inter alia Edward K. Kaplan, “‘Seeking God’s Will Together’: Heschel’s Depth Theology as Common Ground,” in Abraham Joshua Heschel: Philosophy, Theology and Interreligious Dialogue (Jüdische Kultur 21), eds. Stanislaw Krajewski and Adam Lipszyc (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), 188–95; Harold Kasimow, “Heschel’s View of Religious Diversity,” in Krajewski and Lipszyc, 196–201.



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Interreligious Learning A growing “theology in the plural” revolutionizes our thoughts. We are no longer talking solely about religions living side-by-side as “sons” of the one Father-King, as was the case in Lessing’s well-known ring parable.15 There are more than three religions; there are world religions with millions of followers and there are numerous small, regional religions with few adherents. All religions are, in Heschel’s words, “the will of God.”16 The anthropological consequence of this is well formulated by Knitter, who writes that “to be religious today means to be religious interreligiously.”17

Translation, Untranslatability, Difference, and Trans-Difference I have mentioned that diversity in approaching the Ultimate is not only to be tolerated, it is to be celebrated. In different religions, one may frequently hear the claim that only its adherents can understand what a particular religion is about: Only Jews understand Judaism, only Christians understand Christianity, and so on. I do not agree with this standpoint, since I believe that communication between people is possible and, therefore, notions and ideas belonging to one religion are to a certain extent comparable to and translatable into the terms and ideas of other religions. True, one has to be careful, since the same words may have different meanings in different religions, as I have shown in the case of the word “peace” in Buddhism and Judaism or in discussing pèsach-pascha (Passover) in Judaism and Christianity. I also admit that there are untranslatable elements in one’s own and other religions. Yet, the uniqueness of each and every human being does not prevent the lofty possibility of communication. On the contrary, it is the uniqueness and alterity of every person that makes possible what I call a “trans-different” attitude in which one affirms and transcends differences.18 As Perry Schmidt-Leukel aptly remarked in the Hamburg Academy of World Religions, from the perspective of reaching out to others, a Muslim may say to a Buddhist that Buddha is a prophet and a Buddhist may say that Moham15 The poet-philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing supported liberal positions such as that of Hermann Samuel Reimarus in his struggle against the dogmatic parson Goeze. Lessing told his famous parable of the three rings in Nathan the Wise, which appeared in 1779. 16 Heschel, “No Religion Is an Island,” 244. This reference is to the article in Union Seminary, not in Moral Grandeur, as before. 17 Knitter, “Doing Theology Interreligiously,” 117. 18 Meir, “Quo vadis, religio? Religion as Terror and Violence or as Contribution to Civilization. A Plea for Trans-Difference,” in Meir, Identity Dialogically Constructed (Jerusalemer Texte 4), 10–27.

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med is an enlightened person, a Bodhisattva. It is this openness and readiness to understand others in one’s own terms and also to translate one’s own words into words understandable to the other, that makes it possible for both to be able to start listening to each other. Franz Rosenzweig was a master of translation. To his beloved Gritli Rosenstock-Huessy he explained that for a Jewish family, Shabbat evening is something extraordinary; Shabbat evening, he writes, is a kind of family festival (“Familienfest”), like an anniversary.19 Franz thus made the singularly Jewish language understandable to Gritli. This was possible because of their openness to each other in “trans-difference.” Rosenzweig developed an entire hermeneutical method in order to explain his own world in Gritli’s words. He invited her, for instance, to wish him “a good year” on Rosh Hashanah.20 To his cousin Hans Ehrenberg, who had converted to Christianity, he explained the specific Jewish reality of learning Talmud together, of “lernen”: He designated it as a “sacrament.”21Lernen is of course not a sacrament, but by translating it into terms that his cousin could understand, Rosenzweig’s explanation of this particular Jewish reality points to a readiness to create a common, “trans-different” world. The art of translating and the readiness to share a common world, with all the differences that exist within it, is crucial in interreligious dialogue.

Admitting Negative Points, Adopting Maximum Interpretations, Making Changes All religions have verses and sayings that do not contribute to dialogue between religions. No religion is spotless. It is not difficult to find passages in various religious texts that hurt the outsider. This is a stumbling block to dialogue. Yet, fortunately, there is always the possibility of reinterpreting those passages in a dialogical way. Religious texts may contain some harsh passages that are incompatible with our humanistic views and feelings. Heschel was attentive to the fact that one may encounter a problem “in a number of passages [in the Bible] which seem to be incompatible with our certainty of the compassion of God.”22 However, he asks 19 Rosenzweig, Franz Rosenzweig: Die “Gritli”-Briefe. Briefe an Margrit Rosenstock-Huessy, eds. Inken Rühle and Reinhold Mayer, 568–69; Meir, Letters of Love: Franz Rosenzweig’s Spiritual Biography, 16. 20 Rosenzweig, Rosenzweig:Die “Gritli”-Briefe, 657. 21 Rosenzweig, Briefe und Tagebücher. 2. Band. 1918–1929 (Franz Rosenzweig. Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften I), 728. 22 Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976), 268.



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the reader “to keep in mind that the standards by which those passages are criticized are impressed upon us by the Bible, which is the main factor in ennobling our conscience and in endowing us with the sensitivity that rebels against all cruelty.”23 He reminds us that Moses, for instance,was rebuked by God for uttering harsh words against the people of Israel, that Abraham exclaimed, “The judge of all the earth shall not act justly?” and that Job questioned God’s fairness.24 For Heschel, Biblical texts are not to be taken literally, in a fundamentalist way. In continuous interpretation, in the oral Torah, they are to be understood personally, within history and in conscience: “The Bible is to be understood by the spirit that grows with it, wrestles with it, and prays with it.”25 In order to open up specific terms and to promote dialogue, one may adopt a strategy such as that of Yusef Waghid, for instance, who gives the broadest possible interpretation to classical Islamic categories such as umma (Muslim community), ijtihad (medieval juridical thought), and shura (engagement to solve problems), interpreted respectively as human community, juridical discussion, and dialogue. In his Conceptions of Islamic Education26 he offers a refined way of combining religion, issues of democratic citizenship, and cosmopolitanism, and opts for a maximalist Islamic education in South Africa.27 By widening specific concepts in his maximalist interpretation, Waghid succeeds in demonstrating the compatibility of Islam with modern values and the relevance of Islam for modern society. For Waghid, Islamic education in a maximal approach means that one actively reaches a dialogical exchange of meaning-making. He is conscious that in some Muslim communities indoctrination, ready-made answers, and uncritical listening is the norm, and talking back, questioning, and relating to the views of others is not looked upon favorably. For him, however, recognition of the presence of the other, with whom I may disagree, and the connection to him, is the prerequisite for any education. His anti-parochial view and his opening up of the particular to the universal is exemplary for all religions that seek to become relevant in the promotion of respect for human life, responsible action, and democracy. At times, as Luther said, it will be necessary to take certain terms “to the bath,” in order to purify them from connotations that are unfavorable to inter-

23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 272. 26 Yusef Waghid, Conceptions of Islamic Education. Pedagogical Framings (Global Studies in Education 3), (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 15–33. 27 In South Africa, there is a minority of Muslims, about 2 million, who represent 2% of the population.

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religious dialogue. It is important to keep in mind that no religion remains the same throughout the course of history. Many changes have occurred. Different approaches to Ultimate Reality are subject to historical changes. If one accepts the historical conditions of different religions, one may develop a greater flexibility in order to make courageous changes in one’s own religion. Participating in a living tradition not only preserves it, but also renews and eventually criticizes it. It was Buber’s ethical sensitivity and his dialogical understanding of the Bible that prompted him in a conversation with the orthodox Jew Markus Cohn to disapprove of Samuel’s killing of Agag the Amalekite (1 Sam. 15). Presented with the dilemma of choosing between God and the Bible, he chose God. He adopted an anti-bibliolatric standpoint and favored King Saul, who spared the life of Agag, over the prophet Samuel, who killed the prince of the Amalekites. Buber sincerely believed that the prophet Samuel misunderstood God.28 One still may construct a theology or intellectual reflection on one’s own faith, but the time has come to construct a theology of the faith of all.29 Conversions remain possible, but lesser changes should also be conceivable.30 In dialogue, the limitation of one’s view will become clear and – in the best case scenario – one will develop the virtue of humility.

A New We? A radical strategy is followed by Manuela Kalsky, who proposes not to reinterpret traditions, but to re-imagine them.31 In her opinion, one has to take into account the opaqueness of the other, not merely to pin him down to a past, whatever that may be, but to stimulate his sense of belonging. In order to create a “new we,” one should accept from the start that there are always differences. Constructing a con-

28 Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge, 287–88. 29 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Towards a World Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989), 125: “Theology is critical intellectualization of (and for) faith, and of the world as known in faith; and what we seek is a theology that will interpret the history of our race in a way that will give intellectual expression to our faith, the faith of all of us, and to our modern perception of the world.” 30 Hick, God Has Many Names, 85: “[I]nter-religious dialogue undertaken just like that, as two (or more) people bearing mutual witness to their own faith, each in the firm conviction that his is the final truth and in hope of converting the other, can only result either in conversion or in hardening of differences – occasionally the former but more often the latter. In order for dialogue to be mutually fruitful, lesser changes than total conversion must be possible and must be hoped for on both (or all) sides.” 31 Manuela Kalsky, “ln Search of a ‘New We’ Connecting the Differences,” in Religions and Dialogue. International Approaches, 151–66.



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textual theology and working in theology in an inductive way,32 she states that people are attracted to a “holistic spirituality,” that identities become gradually more fluid, and that boundaries are blurred.33 The phenomenon of religious bricolage is more and more observed and the percentage of “unaffiliated spirituals” or “unbound spirituals” is constantly growing.34 In Kalsky’s view, one counters the desire for a well-defined, nationalistic identity that quickly becomes xenophobic through the recognition of individually constructed (eventually “hybrid” or mixed) identities that all belong to a “new we.” In Dutch society, Kalsky proposes to replace a “logic of unity” by a “logic of diversity,” in which differences are perceived not as a threat, but as contributing to a “new we” that invites people of all types to develop a sense of belonging. Kalsky’s strategy is all-inclusive and strives to create a “we” that does not immediately exclude. Many may think that this goes too far. Yet, what I appreciate in her approach is the fact that her theology is oriented to daily life and that she focuses upon encounters with flesh-and-blood people, seeking “diversity in search for connections.”35

Radical Otherness, Differences, and Trans-Difference An interreligious theology serves the dialogue between people, who remain different. Frequently, one objects to a theology in the plural that it does not take into account one’s specificity. However, as Schmidt-Leukel communicated to me in a private correspondence, differences may be compatible in the interreligious dialogue and theology, and the question is therefore how one interprets these differences. As I mentioned when discussing Levinas, in my eyes, there is a radical difference in every human being, which adds to the interreligious dialogue an eminently ethical dimension. It is the ethical demand of the other, who wants to be taken seriously in his approach to the unutterable, which makes dialogue truly human. Something new can be learned from the other in his approach to the Divine. Additionally, if I do not open myself up to the other’s understanding of the Ultimate, I may miss an aspect of religiosity that is relevant to my own religious life. The standpoint of supremacy in which – God willing – all would have to be like 32 Ibid., 156. 33 Ibid., 154 and 158. 34 Ibid., 151 and 157–58. 35 Ibid., 166.

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myself is absurd. Such a standpoint is totalizing and hurts the uniqueness of every other person. The diversity of human beings as well as one’s own self-understanding demand that we leave behind a narrow confessionalism that does not contribute to an intercultural and interreligious dialogue concerning what touches the depth of our human existence.

Three Final Remarks It seems to me that one of the main problems in the interreligious dialogue is that one is perceived of or perceives the other as a representative and not as a unique person who has his own specific way of approaching what is beyond pure reason. In the construction of one’s (religious) identity, one is not merely a representative of some grand narrative. One is always a unique person, called upon to participate with other unique persons in the dialogue about what ultimately surpasses the boundaries of pure reason. Human beings are more than institutions; they do not have to sacrifice themselves to institutions, although institutions are not necessarily negative entities. One is first of all a human being and concrete, never a mere representative. Secondly, dialogical theology is not a kind of syncretism or another name for a unifying global religion. As I have noted, interreligious theology takes into account diversity, but does not limit itself to multiculturalism, in which one exists alongside another. Dialogical theology is rather the intellectual account of true intercultural and interreligious meetings. Finally, dialogue between religions is necessary in order to establish an enduring peace between people, races, and nations. If one knows and appreciates the other’s religion, a basis is formed for a coexistence that cannot be left to an elite of intellectuals or to economists and politicians.

Chapter 5 The Buber-Rosenzweig Bible Translation as a Jewish Dialogical Enterprise In the previous chapter, I argued that communication between people involves the possibility of translation. Intercultural meetings demand accomplished translation skills. Translating is also necessary for the person engaged in interreligious dialogue. Buber and Rosenzweig were both involved in the Jewish-Christian dialogue and translated the Hebrew Bible into German. This chapter deals with their unusual translation of the Bible as a Jewish dialogical enterprise that was started in 1925 and completed only in 1961. By their joint effort, Buber and Rosenzweig intended to lead Jews as well as Christians to the original text that was brought to life. I first discuss the link of Buber’s exegetical work and Rosenzweig’s speech thinking with their translation of the Hebrew Bible. I further interpret their translation as an eminently Jewish exegesis in which the content is not detached from the form. Their translation respects the concreteness of divine revelation and preserves in the target language what was said in the original language. They thus created a dialogue between languages and cultures. Finally, I contest Gershom Scholem’s pessimistic and even cynical remark on the Buber-Rosenzweig translation as a “tombstone” and “gesture” to Germany and give a positive evaluation of the translation as an admirable and paradigmatically still actual piece of interreligious and intercultural work. This chapter contains a detailed discussion of the Buber-Rosenzweig translation, since Buber and Rosenzweig wanted to create a trans-different German-Jewish world with enhanced respect for the Jewish difference that came into expression in the original text in all its concreteness. They believed in the transformational character of the divine word with which they identified. At the same time, they accentuated the importance of the specific cultural context in which this divine word was anchored.

The Context: Dialogical Thinking and Speech Thinking During his entire life, Buber studied and commented upon the Bible.1 In light of this, it is strange that scholars have focused less upon this particular field of 1 He wrote three books on the Bible: Königtum Gottes (1932), Torat ha-neviim (1942) and Moses (1945). Der Gesalbte (on Saul; appeared in parts, in 1938, 1950, and 1951), Zwei Glaubensweisen (1950), Recht und Unrecht. Deutung einiger Psalmen (1952), Sehertum (1955) as well as the an-

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his activities than upon his other literary work. In order to properly investigate Buber’s exegetical work and his translation of the Bible, one should view them in relation to his dialogical philosophy as inspired by the Jewish spiritual heritage. This has not been done sufficiently in scholarly work. Buber understood the Bible as the inspiring source of Jewish life and as actual for the world as such. In the Bible, the experience of revelation, understood as dialogue, is central.2 God speaks and man responds, as Buber recounts through his dialogical hermeneutics and narrative theology.3 His biblical theology adopts Rosenzweig’s dialogical, relational categories of creation, revelation, and redemption: Creation is the beginning, redemption the goal, and the lived experience of revelation is a permanent possibility. Revelation is continuous and always takes place in a concrete situation.4 However, the biblical word also had a function in the lives of numerous nations throughout history. An analysis of the essay “Der Mensch von heute und die jüdische Bibel”5 shows the closeness of Buber’s biblical exegesis and his dialogical philosophy. In his 1926 article, hearing the biblical word is perceived as therapy for the man of today, who has forgotten what relationships are all about. In an anti-Gnostic way, Buber writes that spiritual life is not a separate sphere of human life, on a psychological or sociological level, but rather takes place “between” human beings.6 When contemporary man hears the divine word from the Bible as miqra, thology Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung (in cooperation with Rosenzweig) (Berlin: Schocken, 1936) also belong to his works on the Bible. The anthology discusses Buber and Rosenzweig’s method of translating: they write about the Hebrew way of thinking, key motifs, and the uniqueness of the Hebrew language with its keywords and sentence structure, form, and sound. 2 Sinai was not at the center of the Jewish experience for Buber, who maintained, in contrast to Mowinckel, that the revelation at Sinai was historical. Yet, this theophany, he declared, was not unique, since God manifests himself in multiple ways. There was no central event in Israel’s history. What was revealed at Sinai was not the Law, but God’s presence. 3 Stephen Kepnes, TheText as Thou: Martin Buber’s Dialogical Hermeneutics and Narrative Theology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). 4 Fagenblat and Wolski remark that Buber’s appeal to a present experience of revelation draws heavily upon Dilthey’s concept of Erlebnis. This intensely lived experience involves a “re-situation” that transforms happenings into events and allows one, in Buber’s phrasing, “to respond and to be responsible for every moment.” Michael Fagenblat and Nathan Wolski, “Revelation Here and Beyond: Buber and Levinas on the Bible,” in Levinas and Buber: Dialogue and Difference, eds. Peter Atterton, Matthew Calarco, and Maurice Friedman (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2004), 158. 5 Buber, “Der Mensch von heute und die jüdische Bible,” in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung, 13–45. 6 Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge, 172, notes that Buber sardonically characterized religion in its separation from the world as “the greatest enemy of humanity” (der grösste Feind der Menschheit). Buber thought, as does Hassidism, that the whole of life had to be hallowed.



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when he reads it aloud, the word comes to him without a priori knowledge and he becomes a receptive receptacle.7 In his article, Buber defines revelation as “being addressed.”8 In revelation, one encounters an otherness (Anderheit); one is touched by the other and the gift of presence has to be recognized.9 Buber’s thoughts on biblical revelation are parallel with what he writes in I and Thou on the presence of a “more” (ein Mehr) encountered by the person who enters into relation: This “more” does not originate in him, yet it is there and can always take place.10 In the moment of revelation, a human being is radically changed: He is not the same person anymore.11 He receives not content (Inhalt), but presence (Gegenwart).12 Revelation is not written on tablets; rather, one receives it with the uniqueness of one’s whole being. It confirms the existence of meaning: Nothing can be meaningless anymore.13 In the same vein, Buber defines creation as a relational category: Creation is not to be reduced to something in the human being, a psycho-physical inventory or a sum of characteristics that can be brought back to a more primitive stage: A person is always unique and incomparable.14 In I and Thou, Buber defines creation as something in which one participates; one meets the Creator and gives oneself to the Helper and Partner.15 Finally, redemption is not a question of change (Änderung) or plans, it is rather made possible through a “return” (Umkehr). Redemption means being touched by a hand that wants to be seized.16 In I and Thou, we find a parallel formulation: Redemption (Erlösung) does not equal solution (Lösung).17 The “return” (Umkehr) is the recognition of what happens between people; in return one relates to others and through it the world becomes renewed.18 Applying his famous distinction between religiosity as lived relationship and religion as the concrete, but not unproblematic manifestation of religiosity, he writes that in “return” the word is born; in extension, it becomes religion; and in a renewed “return” it receives new wings.19 In Buber’s essay on the Bible as well as in his I and Thou, the realities of creation, revelation, 7 Buber, “Der Mensch,” 19. 8 Ibid., 28. 9 Ibid., 26. 10 Buber, Ich und Du. Um ein Nachwort erweiterte Neuausgabe (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1958), 96, 102. Hereafter Ich und Du. 11 Ibid., 95. 12 Ibid., 96. 13 Ibid., 96–97. 14 Buber, “Der Mensch,” 29. 15 Buber, Ich und Du, 75. 16 Buber, “Der Mensch,” 30–31. 17 Buber, Ich und Du, 97. 18 Ibid., 89. 19 Ibid., 101.

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and redemption are therefore fundamentally relational realities: Through them, a person is confirmed in his dialogical existence. Buber has an existential interpretation of the Bible. For instance, in his intensive discussions of messianic forces in Jewish history, the Messiah appears to be a person, but also the entire people of Israel.20 Against the “religion” of Job’s friends, he recognizes Job as encompassing his entire generation.21 When God speaks to Job, he also speaks to the generation of the Holocaust. Job is like a Holocaust survivor: He looks for God and experiences His presence, notwithstanding evil. In Buber’s view, the Suffering Servant (eved ha-Shem) of Deutero-Isaiah, who takes upon himself responsibility for the world, is to be personified permanently. Israel suffers and God suffers with them, but mysteriously – through Israel as God’s hidden arrow – this is what will bring redemption to the world. In Buber’s view, Tanakh is not biblia, books, but miqra, a living word that can be heard today and has to be answered by “returning” (teshuva), in hallowing daily life. In a creative way, Rosenzweig brings an analogy between Saladin, who in Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, in great heedfulness hears Nathan’s story, which shocks and transforms him, and the Biblical stories that are the surprising answer to existential questions.22 The Bible answered man’s profound questions. For both Buber and Rosenzweig, the Bible with its transformative power was also a response to a call,23 and dialogue is the key to the biblical stories. The foregoing thoughts of Buber and Rosenzweig on the Bible represent the framework in which the biblical translation receives its full meaning. When the Roman Catholic editor Lambert Schneider wanted Buber to translate the Bible,24 the latter accepted on condition that Rosenzweig collaborate with him. Rosenzweig already had experience in translating Yehuda Halevi. They started the project, ultimately publishing together ten volumes, from Genesis until Isaiah. Beginning in May, 1925, Rosen­­ zweig wrote to Buber that his role would be inspirational and critical, and that he would be both Diotima and Xantippe for Buber.25 He was ready to be like Socrates’s 20 Buber, “Der Glaube der Propheten,” in Werke. Zweiter Band. Schriften zur Bibel (Munich and Heidelberg: Kösel and Lambert Schneider, 1964) (hereafter Werke.II), 483. 21 Ibid., 447. 22 Rosenzweig, “Das Formgeheimnis der biblischen Erzählungen,” in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung, 245. 23 Buber’s account of a dream that he had had repeatedly and in which he received an answer to his call, serves as a model for dialogue. Buber, “Urerinnerung,” in Zwiesprache, in Werke. Erster Band. Schriften zur Philosophie (Munich and Heidelberg: Kösel and Lambert Schneider, 1962), 173–74. 24 Glatzer and Mendes-Flohr, eds., The Letters of Martin Buber: A Life of Dialogue, 326. 25 Rosenzweig, Briefe und Tagebücher. 2.Band. 1918–1929 (Franz Rosenzweig. Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften I), eds. Rachel Rosenzweig and Edith Rosenzweig-Scheinmann, in collaboration with Bernhard Casper (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979) (hereafter GS I, 2), 1035.



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nagging wife and like Socrates’s teacher: critical and inspiring. The translation was Buber’s initiative; Rosenzweig’s contribution was one of “productive criticism.”26

Biblical Criticism Rosenzweig and Buber accepted and applied Biblical criticism, but were more interested in the experience of revelation, which brought about “orientation” in life.27 Wellhausen’s document hypothesis was less important for them than the experience of an outer voice. In his exegetical books, Buber combined literary and historical-critical exegesis with a dialogical interpretation. Historical-philological knowledge was important, but secondary in service of producing the “whole man” (den ganzen Mensch).28 He was a “postcritical religious thinker.”29 It is probably because of his explicitly theological aim that biblical scholars do not consider Buber one of their own. Source criticism was not Buber’s interest; he related to the final, fixed text as miqra, a call that had to be existentially answered. In a private conversation, Uriel Simon told me that Buber was not a biblical scholar, but a theologian who largely reduced the Bible to the prophets. Buber was indeed a great theologian, who strove to produce the “whole man” or the “between-person” (Zwischenmensch) who knows about relationships with others, which lead to the eternal You. However, he did not narrow his view to the prophets. He also perceived a dialogical dimension in biblical stories, biblical historiography, and the Psalms. Moreover, he did not want to emphasize history, but rather the history of meetings and faith (Glaubensgeschichte), not mere facts, but teleology: The biblical voice had to be heard “today” (Ps. 96:5) and unity between people had to be realized. Through messianic deeds, history had to be transformed into the Kingdom of God. As Shemaryahu Talmon remarked, Buber, in the footsteps of Rosenzweig, did not separate science and faith: Historical Biblical science and existential, axiological commentary went together.30 Continuing this 26 Ibid., 1057. 27 Rosenzweig, Stern, 208; Rosenzweig., Star of Redemption, 201. 28 Buber wanted a “serving science” (dienendes Wissen). Buber, “Cheruth, Eine Rede über Jugend und Religion,” in Buber, Reden über das Judentum (Berlin: Schocken, 1932), 232. For a critical evaluation of Buber’s views on the history of Israel, see Karl-Johan Illman, “Buber and the Bible: Guiding Principles and the Legacy of His Interpretation,” in Martin Buber: A Contemporary Perspective, ed. Mendes-Flohr (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2002), 87–100. 29 Feigenblat and Wolski, 175. 30 Shemaryahu Talmon, “Darko shel Buber ke-parshan ha-Tanakh,” in Kan ve-akhshav. Iyunim be-haguto ha-chevratit ve-ha-datit shel M. Buber (Jerusalem: ha-makhon le-mad’e ha-yahadut,

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thought, Maurice Friedman notes that Buber was a man of science, but he had an existential interpretation of the Bible; he identified with the word, which is never a pure object of science, but something to relate to: He conducted a dialogue with the divine word.31 Every moment, in his eyes, could be one of revelation. Karl-Johan Illman is critical towards Buber, as is Uriel Simon, and does not rate Buber amongst biblical scholars: He was “misled by his rather intuitive method,” and misdated biblical passages.32 Yet, Illman also recognizes that “[u] sed as a hermeneutical paradigm and as a means of the theological interpretation of biblical texts, Buber’s dialogical principle is his legacy to the field of biblical exegesis.”33 I agree that Buber opened a new, dialogical way of reading the Bible and that this is his special contribution to biblical exegesis.34 Buber was an eminent theologian, whose viewpoint was not merely historical. His dialogical way of reading the Bible was nurtured by the historical memory of Israel that lived in him. The Hebrew humanist who believed in the possible unification of mankind turned to the Hebrew Bible that still had something to say to general society, and thereby opened a closed book that became instead a living word. Buber was obsessed by the ideas of unity and dialogue. One had to read the Bible as a unity. Genesis, for instance, was not a book written by one author, but, on the other hand, the document hypothesis had not been proven. Working with traditions rather than with sources, Buber understood Genesis as one work, and as one that has significance for the man of today who is called to become a “between-person.” He was further influenced by Wilhelm Dilthey’s distinction between “explain” (erklären) and “understand” (verstehen). The story of Shneur Zalman of Lyadi and the prison guard on the divine question “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9) illustrates Buber’s existential exegesis of the Bible: Through it, one has to answer God’s call.35 In the same vein, Rosenzweig remarked that one does not have to understand the Bible; rather, one should become more alive.36

1982), 128. See Rosenzweig, “Die Einheit der Bibel,” in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung, 52–54. 31 Friedman, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue (London: Routledge Kegan Paul and the University of Chicago Press, 1955), 127. 32 Illman, 99. 33 Ibid., 100. 34 For Dan Avnon, in all of Buber’s writings there is a hidden dialogue. Avnon, Martin Buber: The Hidden Dialogue (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). 35 Martin Buber, „Der Weg des Menschen nach der Chassidischen Lehre,” in Martin Buber. Werke. Dritter Band. Schriften zum Chassidismus (Munich and Heidelberg: Kösel and Lambert Scheider, 1963), 715-718. 36 Rosenzweig, Die “Gritli”-Briefe. Briefe an Margrit Rosenstock-Huessy, 470: “Man soll gar nicht die Bibel verstehn, man soll lebendiger werden.”; Meir, Letters of Love: Franz Rosenzweig’s Spir­ itual Biography, 92.



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Philosophy and Exegesis One may ask if Buber imposed his philosophical-dialogical vision upon the Bible. His philosophical reflections and his biblical commentaries went hand in hand, and some scholars were attentive to the fact that one cannot separate the one from the other.37 Théodore Dreyfus, for instance, deemed that Buber’s exegesis is the hidden aspect (la face cachée) of his more visible and more popular dialogical philosophy. In Buber’s work, all is linked (tout se tient).38 Dreyfus’s hypothesis is that Buber moved from the periphery of Hassidism to the kernel of the Bible.39 In more felicitous phrasing, he notes that Hassidism and the Bible testify in vivo to the dialogue between God and man. 40 His dialogical philosophy was between the two; it was universal and therefore, it was considered as essential and the Bible as secondary. Dreyfus himself, on the contrary, sees Buber’s work on the Bible as essential for his philosophy that focuses on the experience of relationship.41 There was a change of perspective from universality to specificity, but to a form of specificity that is open to the world.42 In my own words, difference (the specificity of Tanakh) and trans-difference (its universal value) went together. Through his exegesis, Buber prevented his dialogical philosophy from remaining merely philosophy.43 Israel as a community that remembers, called to be a “real community,” was paradigmatic for living unity.44 In his biblical exegesis as well as in his philosophy, spirit and life belonged together as the spirit of life and the life of the spirit.45 The Bible and Hassidism had exemplary dialogues that could continue.46 Buber did not want to turn back to the Bible, but to the “whole” of existence.47 37 In her doctoral dissertation, my student Nehama Kalmanovitch discusses this point. See N. Kalmanovitch, Darko shel buber ba-miqra. hasiah hakatuv ve-hasiah hadavur be-haguto shel buber al ha miqra, PhD dissertation, Bar Ilan University, 2013. 38 Théodore Dreyfus, Martin Buber (Paris: Ed. du Cerf, 1981), 92. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid., 100. 41 Ibid., 92–93. 42 Ibid., 96. 43 Ibid., 101. 44 Buber wrote: “Ein Volk muss den Völkern die Gott gehorsame Eintracht vorleben. Aus einer blossen Nation, aus biologisch-geschichtlicher Einheit eines goj (vgl. gwija: Leichnam, Körper) muss es zu einer Gemeinschaft, zu einem wahren ‘am (vgl. ‘im: gesellt zu...; ‘umma: Seite an Seite) werden.” Buber, “Die Erwählung Israels,” in Werke.II, 1045. 45 Dreyfus, 94-96. 46 Ibid., 100. 47 Ibid., 101. In Buber’s words: “Es gilt nicht eine ‘Rückehr zur Bibel’.[...] es gilt in bibeltreue Glaubensaufgeschlossenheit unseren heutigen Situationen dialogisch verantwortend standzuhalten.”

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Malcolm Diamond remarked that Buber’s exegesis and his philosophy influenced each other: “While Buber has undoubtedly interpreted the Bible in terms of his philosophy of dialogue, the Jewish Bible was itself a crucial influence upon the development of that philosophy.”48 That philosophy and exegesis belong together is clear to me; without the Bible, Buber’s philosophy remains an I-it.49 However, this does not answer the question of whether or not Buber imposed his philosophical standpoint upon the Bible. The question becomes urgent if we consider Buber’s previously mentioned interpretation of the episode of Saul and Agag the Amalekite (1 Sam. 15:1–35). Heschel could not agree with this interpretation: “Martin Buber’s declaration ‘Nothing can make me believe in a God who punishes Saul because he did not murder his enemy’ must be contrasted with the Kotzker’s statement: ‘A God whom any Tom, Dick, and Harry could comprehend, I would not believe in.’”50 Buber, however, was not ready to accept anti-dialogical elements in the Bible.51 Given the unity in Buber’s work, his philosophy, Zionist thoughts, and biblical commentaries always have to be seen as related to each other: Buber refused to accept the unethical Saul episode, since he wanted through his biblical interpretation to inspire people to create a dialogical society in Palestine. Samuel, he declared, had misunderstood God.52 He bore the story of Samuel’s killing of Agag “like an open wound.”53 Buber did not approach the Bible with a philosophical a priori. There is an organic link between his Zionism, his biblical exegesis, and his philosophical view on existence as coexistence. His 48 Malcolm L. Diamond, Martin Buber: Jewish Existentialist (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 65. 49 Even-Chen and Meir, Between Heschel and Buber: A Comparative Study (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012), 217. 50 Heschel, A Passion for Truth (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973), 292–93. 51 In his article “Wie Saul König würde” (1949), he describes how Saul is a suffering Jew: God does not reveal himself to Saul, who has only obligations. As Tchernichovsky in “Eyn Dor” (1893), he defends King Saul. Not everything in the Bible was acceptable to Buber: God was greater. In his booklet Begegnung. Autobiographische Fragmente (1960) he relates a conversation with an observant Jew about the episode in the book of Samuel about Saul, who could no longer be a king because he did not kill Agag the Amalekite. Buber said: “Ich habe es nie glauben können, dass dies eine Botschaft Gottes sei. Ich glaube es nicht.” If one has to choose between God and the Bible, one has to choose God. Buber was selective. Also in the story of the Binding of Isaac, he did everything possible to avoid an unethical interpretation. See Meir, “Buber’s Dialogical Interpretation of the Binding of Isaac: Between Kierkegaard and Hassidism” (Hebrew), in The Faith of Abraham. In the Light of Interpretation throughout the Ages, eds. Moshe Hallamish, Hannah Kasher, and Yochanan Silman (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan, 2002), 281–93. 52 Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge, 287-88. 53 Buber, “The How and Why of Our Bible Translation,” in Buber and Rosenzweig, Scripture and Translation, trans. Lawrence Rosenwald and Everett Fox (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 207.



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engagement as a Jew and his philosophical and exegetical activities followed from his embedment in the Jewish tradition. Buber wrote the history of biblical faith and interpreted the Bible with a “scientific-intuitive” approach.54 He intuited that ethics were already linked to monotheism in one of Israel’s early stages. He could not conceive of the Divine without ethics, since in his eyes ethics were the dominant trait of the Bible. Buber was conscious that the Bible was not objective history, yet, he believed it was based upon facts. The memory of Israel was safeguarded in historical legends and historical songs such as the song of Deborah and the song of the Red Sea, and sustained in rituals such as Pèsach. Both Buber’s biblical and philosophical work highlighted the relationship between God and man. There is nevertheless a difference between Buber’s I and Thou and his biblical commentaries: In the former God’s eternal presence is the focal issue. In the latter, God addresses man, and there is more of an accent upon the different stages of history.

Method Buber’s method consisted of slowly reading aloud, in order to taste every word. To him, to read meant to read aloud, and to understand meant to hear. He thus rescued the oral character of the Bible.55 He searched for the historical kernel, but went beyond it. He always had the unity of the Bible before his eyes, and he discovered the key-word method of the final redactors. To his mind, exegesis had forgotten two subjects: 1. the living voice and 2. the uniqueness of Israel. A brief look at some high points in modern hermeneutics shows the unique contribution of Buber and Rosenzweig to this field.56 Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey tried to understand the intention of the writer; Roland Barthes analyzed the structure of the text as revealing its message; Jacques Derrida focused upon the reader; and Hans-Georg Gadamer became famous for his reflections on the fusion of horizons (Horizontverschmelzung) of the text and the reader. In the field of Jewish studies, Levinas had a quite different approach. He demonstrated in his Talmudic readings that the text as the “other” may become inspirational, and be perceived as containing multiple meanings (peut dire) rather than only one (veut dire). The texts were like coals; one only had to enflame them by 54 Buber, “Der Glaube der Propheten,” in Werke.II, 242. 55 The Scandinavian school also went in this direction. The above-mentioned thesis of Nehama Kalmanovitch focuses on Buber’s attention to the spoken character of the biblical text. 56 I am imparting here some ideas that appear in Hanoch Ben-Pazi, Interpretation as an Ethical Act: Levinas’ Hermeneutics (Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: Resling, 2012).

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breathing upon them, as the Sages said.57 Buber and Rosenzweig paid attention to the dialogue between the biblical word and the auditor: One had to hear the text that is spoken. The text may speak again at all times, it may become tora shebe-al-pe. Their translation became a midrash: The transcendence of dialogue was more important than the historical context and circumstances. They deplored the fact that the text had become anonymous, a museum artifact, literature to be analyzed in a formalistic manner,58 an autonomous, mute object of literature, and believed that it could again become living dialogue, a being addressed. Through the discovery of the dialogue in the text and through dialogue with the text, one could find a new way of reading the Bible. Buber and Rosenzweig’s dialogical method is fundamentally different from the historical-critical approach and represents a novelty in the history of hermeneutics.

I-you and I-it Stephen Kepnes has called attention to the fact that Buber creates a dialogue between text and reader in his Bible translation. He uses technicalities that belong to the sphere of explanation, the sphere of “it,” whereas the Bible itself belongs to the sphere of “you,” the sphere of meeting.59 I deem that Buber saw the Bible as a mixture of you and it: He hoped that the “it,” the form, may bring forth

57 Avot 2:10. When I approached Levinas on a Shabbat and congratulated him for his interpretation of the Bible with Rashi and a Talmudic section, he said in a friendly manner: “I only breathed upon the text” (je n’ai fait que souffler). The development of an other-centered hermeneutics, inspired by Levinas, could provide us with a very different hermeneutics than that of Gadamer. In Gadamer’s hermeneutics, one expands one’s own horizon and is conscious of the radical historicity of one’s understanding. A Levinasian hermeneutics of the other fosters a relationship to the other that is not based upon an active interpreting I, but upon a most patient listening to the always exterior call of the other, who is beyond one’s own horizon. It is less about cognitive understanding than about listening to a commanding voice. Whereas Gadamer was attentive to the fact that one is always culturally situated and that one progresses in understanding the other by back and forth questions that make one conscious of one’s prejudices and preconceived horizon, Levinas’s metaphysics give priority to the ethical challenge as condition for any understanding. Gadamer thought that the truth is a process of discovery, but in Levinas’s perspective, meeting the other is not a question of discovery, but of facing the other, of “epi-phany.” In the interpretation of the Scriptures, one has to go “beyond” the verse, in ethical openness “à-Dieu.” A hermeneutics in the footsteps of Levinas could bring a Copernican revolution in this field: from the interpreting I to the other, who demands responsibility, from cognition to recognition, and from books to the other’s face through which words become meaningful. 58 Compare the status of the text in the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes. 59 Kepnes, The Text as Thou, 42.



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the “you” of a living, transforming voice, and that one could move from an object (Gegenstand) to a presence (Gegenwart). Just as he retold Hassidic stories for the modern listener, he let the Bible speak in such a way that one could hear it anew. In the case of the Bible, the content and the original form are intimately interwoven. Buber’s idiolect translation allows the Jewish and the Christian listener who have not mastered Hebrew to be in contact with the divine word as it comes into concrete expression in Hebrew. In this way, he respected the specificity of the biblical message and brought different worlds in contact with each other. In Buber’s exegesis as in his existential dialogical philosophy, dialogue was central and the “it” was transformed into a “you.”

The Bible and Zionism Buber used the scientific method, but concentrated upon the function of the Bible for the creation of a righteous society in Palestine. “Knowing” God’s word was more than scientific knowledge, which should be in the service of faith. Hearing the living voice of God anew through the prophetic messages could bring about a renaissance in the land of Israel, as in the times of the prophets, early Christianity, and Hassidism. The prophetic voice had to be heard again in Zion in order to create a dialogical, utopian society. The Bible offered a blueprint for Zionism as a movement in which moral demands were central. Zionism was a question of memory, present in the Bible and in the heads and hearts of the Jews. Buber was interested in Israel’s memory, which is still dynamic today. The historical legends were – in Grimm’s words – “objective enthusiasm” (objective Begeisterung), instrumental for the formation of the collective memory. They were not merely products of imagination, without a historical foundation. The texts, close to the events, were rhythmical, and rhythm was important for the formation of a living memory. They brought the believing reaction to an event (Ereignis) and were transformational, as were the Hassidic stories.60 Buber’s final intention for his work on the Bible and Hassidism was the renewal of Judaism in the land of Israel. He wanted people to be in dialogue with the biblical texts, to hear them as a living voice and to feel called. The real leaders in Israel had to bring unity; they had to be dialogical like the prophets who criticized kings for four hundred years.

60 In order to make Hassidism accessible to all, Buber stripped it of some specifically Jewish elements.

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Rosenzweig, of course, preferred the Diaspora above Zion. He also greatly differed from Buber on the question of the Law.61 But both interpreted the Bible as eminently dialogical and they translated Torah as Weisung, a guide to dialogical life.

Living Speech versus Abstract Language Buber worked more and longer on the Bible translation than Rosenzweig, but one should not underestimate Rosenzweig’s contribution to it. In his Erfahrungs­ philosophie, speech thinking (Sprachdenken) is part of the New Thinking that takes time and language seriously. Revelation is not the creation of reason as in Hermann Cohen’s interpretation, but of a soul, and with the soul, comes living, spoken language. In Rosenzweig’s speech thinking, words do not merely explain things, they primarily connect the soul with God. The divine word “Thou shalt love” changes man. Rosenzweig developed a “grammatical analysis” at the end of each of the three books of Part II, in which he analyses Genesis, the Song of Songs, and Psalm 115. Describing language is not the language of revealing love. In the here and now of love, one is loved and commanded to love, and in love, language comes alive. Speech is not the invention of man, but is a divine gift that changes man. It is in the present and in the second person, not in straightforward, impersonal language. God addressed man with his private, exceptional name, bringing about renewal in man. Whereas Idealism appreciated the abstract language of thought more than spoken language, Rosenzweig preferred the latter, as it comes into expression in the worldly yet spiritual Song of Songs. The divine command “Thou shalt love” is heard. Instead of the mathematical, descriptive language of Part I comes the 61 See GS I, 2, 975–77. Buber did not think that the Law belonged to the revelation at Sinai. But in his Zwei Glaubensweisen (1950), he defends the Law against Paul and the Marcionists. James Muilenburg, “Buber as an Interpreter of the Bible,” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber (The Library of Living Philosophers, 12), eds. A. Schilpp and M. Friedman (Lasalle, IL: Open Court, 1967) criticized Buber, who separated the Decalogue from the Sinai theophany. This separation “is not only contrary to what we know of all other Old Testament theophanies, where the theophany always issues into words and living speech, but also a cancellation of Israel as the people of the Torah in its covenantal origins, Torah understood as direction, guidance and teaching” (397). But Muilenburg does not say why Buber removes the Decalogue from the covenant, which was because presence was primordial for him, rather than commandments. According to Buber, the author of the Decalogue apparently felt addressed by God as king and added this to the Sinaitic revelation.



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language of revealing love in Part II. Spoken language is not descriptive language. It is not heard or verified in reality, but rather felt in the heart. The Urworte of the mute language in Part I of the Star are changed in the Stammworte of the spoken language in Part II.62 The monologue of the inner order is replaced by the dialogue of the outer order. This is the change from static thinking about deadening, abstract concepts to dynamic thought in living dialogue. From a symbolic language belonging to philosophy in Part I, Rosenzweig moves to a living dialogue in Part II, where the miracle, the wonder of “where are you” (aeika) and “here I am” (hineni) is central. After the indicative in Part I and the imperative in Part II comes envisioning language that anticipates the future in Part III. Rosenzweig shows the limits of rational thinking, introducing theology in order to talk about revelation: Part I is only philosophy and rational thought, while Part II is theology and philosophy interwoven together, in order to discuss the miracle that is already potentially present in creation. Logical thinking is replaced by grammatical thought, in which prayer is the spontaneous expression of the soul. Touched by revelation, the community prays for the coming of the Kingdom. The God of Idealism is “it,” an object of thought. In Rosenzweig’s existential philosophy, however, as in Buber’s dialogical thought, one addresses Him with “you.” Like Buber, Rosenzweig refuses the Kantian thought of God as a postulate of reason. In his “absolute empiricism,” the transcendent God is in relation with man; God brings man from his solitary existence into the existence of the other, not with the help of reason, but through dialogue and a loving relationship. Those who followed the idealist way of thinking were not affected by revelation beyond reason, and in their philosophical systems man and world also became objects of thought. Idealism had no confidence in spoken language.63 It only used symbols of silent language and preferred the language of aesthetics instead of spoken language. Therefore, Rosenzweig diagnosed idealistic philosophy as paralyzed. New Thinking, on the contrary, led into life, ins Leben. Thus, Rosenzweig’s philosophy became not another piece in the chain of philosophy, but healing and redeeming thought in function of life. Neither philosophy nor theology were central, but instead the experience of “orientation” about which theology spoke.

62 Rosenzweig, Stern, 140. 63 Rosenzweig, Das Büchlein vom gesunden und kranken Menschenverstand (Düsseldorf: Melzer Verlag, 1964).

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Both Buber and Rosenzweig understood the Bible as living speech that addresses contemporary mankind.64 They invited Jews and Christians to return to the spoken word.

A Jewish Translation Anti-Gnosticism With their translation, Buber and Rosenzweig had several aims in mind. The Bible is for them embodied spirit, a living voice; when read aloud, one may immediately hear the divine voice and be in dialogue; it is both spirit and form. Buber and Rosenzweig accentuated the unity of the Bible and its anti-Gnostic, world-confirming propensity.65 They wanted people to think Jewishly, i.e., to relate to this world and to pay attention to acoustics rather than to vision. Because Bible was miqra, to be read aloud, one could be in touch with the spirit of the Hebrew language, with respect for the concrete word and with sensitivity to “how” something was said. Event and expression were not severed but linked. The repetitions and associations present in the spoken words led to the biblical message itself. A single text to be read aloud (in Hebrew; miqra) called out (in Hebrew: liqr’o) for multiple ways of understanding.66 Buber and Rosenzweig explicitly wanted a Jewish translation, i.e., with Jewish characteristics that could, as such, contribute to Western civilization. It was one of the last attempts before the Holocaust to bring something eminently Jewish into German culture. Their translation was a great intercultural event, a passing from Jewish culture to German culture and back. On July 29, 1925, Rosenzweig wrote that one of their goals was to oppose Marcionitic tendencies in Christianity. Consequently, they had to “missionize.”67 In an anti-Gnostic manner, Buber and Rosenzweig linked the divine Kingdom to earthly 64 In I and Thou, God does not address man; He is addressed and approachable in what happens between people. In Buber’s later philosophy, God addresses man who had to answer the question, “Where are you?” 65 In his Star Rosenzweig commented upon the Song of Songs as a text in which earthly love and the love between God and Israel went together. See also infra on Rosenzweig’s and Buber’s anti-Gnostic understanding of the word ruah. 66 On the Jewish character of the Buber-Rosenzweig translation, see further Ze’ev Levy, Hermenoitiqa ba-mahshava hayehudit be’et hahadasha (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2006), 136–45. 67 Rosenzweig, GSI, 2, 1055–56. “Ist Ihnen eigentlich klar, dass heut der von den neuen Marcioniten theoretisch erstrebte Zustand praktisch schon da ist? Unter Bibel versteht heut der Christ nur das Neue Testament, etwa mit den Palmen, von denen er dann noch meist meint sie gehörten zum Neuen Testament. Also werden wir missionieren.”



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reality: The holy man is the one who hears the divine word and works in this world to redeem it. They both struggled against new-Marcionite, apocalyptic, and mystic tendencies that completely separated the holy from the concrete, present, and profane world with the claim that redemption is not from and in this world. With their translation, that respected and mirrored the Hebrew original, Rosenzweig and Buber intended to bring Jews into contact with the underlying text. They also wanted to teach Christians the Hebrew Bible, which was frequently seen as a propaedeutic for later, more actual scriptures. In this manner, they confronted Christian interpretations with the plain meaning of the original text. I offer one example. As is well known, the Church identified the famous text of Isaiah 7:14 on the alma, who gives birth to Emmanuel, with the virgin, the mother of Jesus. Yet, this would be, rather, the translation of betula. Buber and Rosen­ zweig translate: “Da die Junge wird schwanger und gebiert einen Sohn. Seinen Namen soll sie rufen: Immanuel, Bei uns ist Gott!” With their translation, they remained faithful to the original text against a dogmatic, christological interpretation. Their translation was therefore important for Christians who had become estranged from the original text. It would be an exaggeration to posit that the Buber-Rosenzweig translation had the same fate as the Septuaginta, which was originally meant for Hellenistic Jews, but became the authorized text for Christians.68 Let us not forget that they also wanted to reach Jews, whom they wanted to bring in contact with the divine word. Buber and Rosenzweig cared for Jews and non-Jews who did not master Hebrew, which was essential if they were to understand the biblical message. This was keenly understood by M. A. Beek, who said in his festive speech on the occasion of the Erasmus prize allocated to Buber on July 3, 1963: A young Jewish girl student, who surprised her teacher Delitzsch and her fellow students by her rapid progress in the language of the Old Testament, said: ‘Whenever I read a sentence in Hebrew, generations awaken in me.’ He who can read the law and the prophets in such a way needs no translation. But one who reads in that way and is concerned about those who cannot, will proceed to translate. What a task: what an undertaking!69

For Beek, Buber was a great mediator between cultures and religions. Buber and Rosenzweig wanted their translation to be as German as possible. Friedman notes that, even in his time (more than twenty years ago), the translation “serves many Israelis as commentary to the Hebrew original.”70 He quotes 68 Sic Talmon, 137. 69 M.A. Beek, in Praemium Erasmianum MCMLXIII (Amsterdam: Stichting Praemium Erasmianum, 1963), 31. 70 Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge, 168.

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Scholem’s words: “Many of us have again and again, when we read difficult passages of the Bible, asked ourselves, what would ‘the Buber’ say – not otherwise than we ask, what does Rashi [the great medieval Jewish commentator on the Bible] have to say.”71 Buber and Rosenzweig led the reader to the original spoken words. With their translation, Buber and Rosenzweig brought about a Copernican revolution. Jews and Christians were brought to the spoken Hebrew of the Torah itself. The translation followed the masoretic system to a large extent, in the conviction that the acoustic element was important for the biblical message. The rhetorics of words, the word order, and key words lead to the aim of the biblical stories. Instead of hearing oneself, the divine, normative word was to be heard. Ernest M. Wolf testified to the fact that for the Jewish youth, Buber’s translation was a substitute for the original, a Targum or a kind of commentary that they loved: The translation contributed to the renaissance of Jewish learning.72

Jewish Tradition Rosenzweig and Buber differed greatly in their approach to the Jewish tradition. Buber did not recognize any authority except for the divine voice that every man was able to hear. He failed to quote Rashi or Ibn Ezra. As Edmond Jacob notes, he was an independent spirit.73 To my mind, this does not mean that he was a defender of sola scriptura. In the field of grammatical exegesis, he and Rosen­ zweig frequently consulted the medieval Jewish commentators Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Kimhi, Gersonides, Nahmanides, Samuel ben Meir, and Isaac Abravanel.74 The translation of qorban by Darnahung (that which is brought near), for instance, is most probably inspired by the midrash that already plays upon the etymology of the word. Nevertheless, Levinas sarcastically remarked that Buber read the Bible as if he alone possessed the Holy Spirit.75 The harshness of this judgment is 71 Ibid., 171. 72 Ibid. 73 Edmond Jacob, “La théologie biblique de Martin Buber,” in Martin Buber. Dialogue et voix prophétique. Colloque international Martin Buber 30-31 octobre 1978 (Paris: Istina, 1980), 22, n. 6. 74 Everett Fox, “The Book in Its Contexts,” in Buber and Rosenzweig, Scripture and Translation, xviii. 75 Levinas, “La pensée de Martin Buber et le judaïsme contemporain,” in Martin Buber – L’homme et le philosophe (Brussels: Institut de Sociologie de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles; 1968), 52: “Il est incontestable que Buber lit la Bible comme s’il avait à lui tout seul tout l’Esprit Saint. Cette experience particulière de chacun est sans doute reclamée par l’histoire de la foi, mais devant elle la tradition ne saurait s’effacer. C’est l’union de cette experience personnelle et de cette tradition qui permet à la Bible hebraïque de conserver son sens plein.”



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explainable by the fact that Levinas appreciated the rabbinic tradition as containing the specifically Jewish spiritual physiognomy. The rabbinic tradition, skipped over by Buber, permitted the internalization of what was written. Buber largely neglected the rabbinic tradition. But, at the same time, Levinas recognized that Buber, who was more interested in pshat, the literalness of the text, had a keen eye for the moral dimensions of the Bible.76 Rosenzweig appreciated the Jewish tradition more than Buber. The unity of what is written is complemented by the unity of what is read.77 In this way, the entire tradition is in itself an element of the translation. It does not dominate the pshat, but rather enlarges and complements it.78 Rosenzweig himself offers two examples, one halakhic, another aggadic. The translation of lo tashikh le-achikha neshekh kesef” (Deut. 23:20) is: “Bezinse nicht deinen Bruder.” Unlike the straightforward meaning, tradition understands this verse as giving interest, not as taking interest. The prohibition of giving interest is halakha and therefore offers a glance into “Judaism’s innermost spaces” (in das Innerste des Judentum). Therefore, the Buber-Rosenzweig translation allowed for an interpretation of Hebrew using both meanings: The translation could be understood as a prohibition of taking interest, but also of giving interest.79 Offering a aggadic example for complementation of the pshat, Rosenzweig refers to Ex. 17:16: vayomer ki yad ‘al-kes yah milchama la-Shem, ba-Amaleq midor dor. Critical exegesis emendated the word kes into nes.80 But Buber and Rosen­ zweig chose the masoretic text, on the basis of the Messianic midrash that predicts that when Amalek is subdued, the high chair and the Name will be complete. Here is the translation into German: Und sprach: Wahrlich, Hand zum Hochsitz Jahs! Kampf für IHN gegen Amalek Geschlecht zu Geschlecht!

76 Fagenblat and Wolski, 165. 77 Rosenzweig, “Die Einheit der Bibel,” in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung, 49. 78 “Nicht wie für Hirsch ein den Pschat beherrschendes und bestimmendes, sondern […] ein den Pschat erweiterndes und ergänzendes.” 79 See Mishna Baba Metsia, chapter 5, mishna alef; Gemara in BT Baba Metsia 60:a (I thank Hanoch Ben-Pazi for these references). Buber had an anti-halakhic stance. Under the influence of the Lebensphilosophie, he intended to hallow the whole life, not parts of it, and he did not want to strangle life in a legalistic straitjacket. 80 The RSV, for instance, writes: “A hand upon the banner.”

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Buber and Rosenzweig wanted to be faithful to the text. In this respect, they felt their translation was close to that of Samson Raphael Hirsch.81 Buber and Rosenzweig translated one Hebrew word using the same German word.82 They were thus close to the midrash that employs gezera shava, analogy on the basis of a word that is repeated, and lashon nofel al lashon, paranomasia. Their method asserts that the form reveals the content.83 Buber and Rosenzweig not only kept the content and original form together, they even added their own mixture of form and content in German to this biblical mixture of form and content. A beautiful example is Gen. 2:22. They wrote: “Gott baute die Rippe die er vom Menschen nahm, zu einem Weibe und brachte es zum Menschen,” as a translation of vayivven ha-Shem elohim et ha-tsela asher lakakh min ha-adam le-isha vayyevi-e-ha el ha-adam. “Bringen zu” also means “make it, cause to succeed.” The translation suggests that a person is only complete as man and woman. Most of all, Buber and Rosenzweig produced a Jewish translation of the Bible because they wanted the text to be spoken. Just as the Torah is recited in cantillation in the synagogue and just as in Talmudic havruta one gives voice to what is written, their Verdeutschung of the Bible passed from the written to the spoken word. They brought a lineation of the text. However, unlike Henri Meschonnic’s translation, their cola or lines of translation did not always follow the masoretic cantillation signs, the te’amim. In their closeness to the form of the original Hebrew text, which was the code from which to decipher the message itself, Buber and Rosenzweig desired to start a “new-old” (neualt) Jewish biblical science.84

Not A Book For Rosenzweig and Buber, the Book of Books is not, in fact, a book and, in their self-understanding, the people of Israel are not the “people of the book.” The Bible is a living voice.85 Torah or guidance (Weisung) creates spirit between people who hear it and become alive through it. It is not a written document as a closed reality, like the cave in Plato’s parable in which one sees only the shadows of real 81 Rosenzweig, “Die Einheit der Bibel,” in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung, 50–51. 82 Talmon, 135, notes that this was not always the case, for instance, in the translation of Exodus 19:6. 83 Rosenzweig, “Das Formgeheimnis der biblischen Erzählungen,” Die Schrift und Ihre Verdeutschung, 239–61. 84 Rosenzweig, “Zur Encyclopaedia Judaica,” in Rosenzweig, Kleinere Schriften (Berlin: Schocken, 1937), 524. 85 In the book of the Zohar (vol. II, 99a; vol. III, 58a), the Torah is likened to a beloved, to whom one returns, in order to hear her words again and again in a multitude of interpretations.



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life. The uniqueness of the Torah lies in that it is a voice that lives on forever in the act of reading, or better: hearing. The Bible refers to something outside the book, that cannot be contained in the closed entity of a book. Through assonances, key words, plays on words, etymologies, rhythm, and all the rhetoric and technicalities used by the final redactors (=siglum R), recognized as Rabbenu (=Moses, our Teacher), the hearer of the divine word finds himself invited to leave his closed existence in favor of association with others, with the help of a transforming, unifying word.86

Spoken Word and Dialogue In a letter to Hans Ehrenberg on January 29, 1925, Rosenzweig writes that what is written, is “poison,” even in the case of the Holy Scriptures.87 He adds that only when it is spoken again, translated back, may he digest it.88 Also for Buber, the biblical text was less a text than a living dialogue and a word addressed to the people of today.89 Instead of the silent Marcionite God, Buber’s and Rosenzweig’s God speaks out and calls to the human being. The problem is that Jews and Christians in their familiarity with the Bible have forgotten how to hear. Buber and Rosenzweig attempted “to translate back into the oral, to reawaken the spoken word.”90 When Rosenzweig sent Buber the last part of their translation of Genesis, he wrote the following poem: Lieber Freund, Dass aller Anfang Ende sei, Ich habs erfahren. “Ins Leben” schrieb ich, schreibpflichtfrei, Nach knapp zwei Jahren Ward lahm die tatgewillte Hand, Die wortgewillte Zunge stand, So blieb mir nur die Schrift.

86 Buber, “Aus den Anfängen unserer Schriftübertragung,” in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung, 322. 87 Rosenzweig, “Schrift ist Gift, auch die heilige,” GSI, 2, 1022. 88 Ibid. 89 Buber, “Der Mensch von heute und die jüdische Bibel,” in Werke.II, 869: “Meinen wir ein Buch? Wir meinen die Stimme. Meinen wir, dass man lesen lernen soll? Wir meinen, dass man hören lernen soll. Kein andres Zurück, als das der Umkehr [...] Zur Gesprochenheit wollen wir hindurch, zum Gesprochenwerden des Wortes.” 90 Buber, “The How and Why of Our Bible Translation,” in Buber and Rosenzweig, Scripture and Translation, 212.

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Doch Anfang ward dies Ende mir: Was ich geschrieben, Ist kein –ich dank es, Lieber, dirGeschreib geblieben. Wir schrieben Wort vom Anbeginn, Urtat die bürgt für Endes Sinn. And so began Die Schrift.91

Given Rosenzweig’s final illness that prevented him from speaking, these words take on an extraordinary meaning. What made Buber and Rosenzweig’s translation Jewish was its spokenness (Gesprochenheit). They wanted people to “hear” the biblical word, without religious or scientific a priori. Aesthetics had a religious function. In their phonocentrism, they wanted people to listen and learn, a process in which the text would become a living voice.92 Critical exegesis had forgotten the oral Torah that speaks during all the periods of history. The words of the Bible had to become spoken words that are audible today. Buber and Rosenzweig’s Bible translation was Jewish in that it was a she ne’emar [as it is said], to which the Sages referred in speaking about the Bible. Their translation functioned as the words of the Sages, who made the divine words speak, introducing them by she ne’emar. The translation was this ne’emar; the words as spoken. In the Gesprochenheit of the Bible, the past became present: The divine word was heard again, here and now. The text itself, as pure object of science or cult object was metam’e yadaim:93 It had to again become living speech, to which one had to respond with one’s whole life. The same idea of readiness to respond which creates spirit is to be found in I and Thou.94 In Rosenzweig’s Sprachdenken as part of the New Thinking, one needs the other and takes time seriously. One speaks to someone and thinks for someone, for a particular human being. The Bible is the written form of the spoken word. Buber’s and Rosenzweig’s method was to read the Bible and hear the content “in” its form. As I noted, the same Hebrew word was translated by the same German word, synonyms remained synonyms in translation, and the colometry and even the sentence structure was preserved: The acoustic particularities of the text 91 The poem is dated 21.9.1925; GS I, 2, 1061. 92 Johan Gottfried Herder also preferred the oral to the written. 93 The expression that sacred scriptures make hands unclean (kitve ha-qodesh metam’in et ha-yadaim) appears, e.g., in Mishna Yadayim 3:5; Megila 7a; and Shabbat 14b. 94 Ich und Du, 38-39: “Geist in seiner menschlichen Kundgebung ist Antwort des Menschen an sein Du. [...] Geist ist nicht im Ich, sondern zwischen Ich und Du. Er ist nicht wie das Blut, das in dir kreist, sondern wie die Luft, in der du atmest. Der Mensch lebt im Geist, wenn er seinem Du zu antworten vermag. [...] Vermöge seiner Beziehungskraft allein vermag der Mensch im Geist zu leben.”



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were respected. The Hebrew prophet was even called by his Hebrew name, e.g., Yecheskhel and not Ezechiel.95 For Buber, the prophets used keywords and repetitions in order to communicate their message. In his exegesis and in his philosophy he wanted “it” to become “you”: Dialogue was central.

New Hermeneutics: Key Words and Unity Buber and Rosenzweig developed a new hermeneutics, a totally new approach to the Bible. One had to read aloud with attention to every word, to the structure of singular passages and of the whole. One had to hear the play on words, paranomasia, alliterations, synonyms, and foremost key words and key sentences as the key to understanding. Through this full attention, one would be able to catch the original biblical message. Septuaginta was destined for the Hellenistic Jews, the Vulgata for early Christians, and the Luther Bible for reformed Christian protestants: All these translations were palimpsests that concealed the original. In order to help their own people but also Christians, Buber and Rosenzweig wanted to return to the Grundschrift that was specifically Jewish, to miqra as the concretely spoken word that had to be answered. Buber gives a good example of the importance of keywords by analyzing the Abraham cycle, characterized by the keyword “see” (ra’ah) that links the different stories. As a seer (Seher; Moses too came from a family of seers), Abraham receives the divine revelation. The word plays a central role in the final Abraham story on the binding of Isaac (Gen. 22): Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place (erhob seine Augen, da sah er); God will provide for a lamb (ersieht sich das Lamm zur Gabe); he lifted up his eyes and saw a lamb (hob seine Augen und sah: da, ein Widder); Abraham calls the place God will provide (Gott ersieht). Keywords link stories together. In fact, the entire Bible is for Buber a unity, not a conglomeration of sources. Torah and Prophets, Torah and Psalms, and Prophets and Psalms are all linked to each other through words. The different parts of the Bible are connected to each other by keywords and key sentences. Through vocabulary and style a theologoumenon comes into expression. In order to understand one word, one has to search for its appearance in other contexts. For instance, the rarely used verb in Gen.1:2, richef, “schweben” of God’s spirit on the surface of the water, returns in Deut. 32:11: “Wie ein Adler sein Nest erweckt, über seinen Horstlingen flattert, seine Flügel spreitet, eins aufnimmt, es auf seiner Schwinge trägt: einsam geleitet es ER, kein fremder Gott ist mit ihm.” (ke-nesher yair kino, al gozlav yerahef, yifrosh knafav, yikachehu yisa’ehu 95 Buber, “Eine Übersetzung der Bibel,” in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung, 300–309.

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‘al evrato, ha-Shem badad yanchenu ve- ein imo ’el nekhar). God takes Israel from the midst of the nations and brings his people to the Promised Land. He is like an eagle, who broods or hovers over the nest and takes his eaglets on his broad, long wings. As the eagle with his gently beating wings, who spreads them above his children in the nest, God cares for his creation. In Gen. 1, the water is like the nest; the creatures, made by God, are like the eaglets. In the Buber-Rosenzweig translation, one word designates both roaring or blowing (Brausen, Wehen) and a spiritual activity. Nature and spirit belonged together. One did not have to choose: Und die Erde war Wirrnis und Wüste. Finsternis allüber Abgrund. Braus Gottes brütend allüber den Wassern.

In the edition of 1930 this verse is translated: Und die Erde war Irrsal und Wirrsal Finsternis über Urwirbels Antlitz. Braus Gottes spreitend über dem Antlitz der Wasser.

Rashi writes that the spirit of God is like a pigeon brooding over his nest.96 At any rate, ruah is a word that means both wind and breath.97 In Buber’s and Rosen­ zweig’s anti-Gnostic translation, the natural phenomenon and God’s spirit were brought together in the ruah elohim of Gen. 1:2. The spirit-surge (Geistbraus) is not wind and not spirit; it is both.98 The two foregoing example show how, for Buber and Rosenzweig, the Bible was one big unity. In a similar way, both creation stories were not seen as unrelated literary documents (wesensfremde literarische Urkunden). Rather, they complemented each other as two sides of a coin. In the first creation story, ruah elohim is the gently beating wings spread over the entire creation, and in the second story God gives his breath (ruah in Gen. 6:3) to the human being.99 In this manner,

96 kise ha-kavod omed be-avir u-merahef al pne ha-mayim be-ruah piv shel haqadosch baruch hu u-bema’amaro (Chagiga 15a): ke-yonah ha-merahefet al ha-qen (French: couver). Also RSV and Luther understand ruah elohim as God’s spirit. RSV: “And the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the water.” Luther: “Der Geist Gottes schwebte auf dem Wasser.” 97 Buber and Rosenzweig: “Die Bibel auf Deutsch,” in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung, 279–82. 98 Buber, “On Word Choice in Translating the Bible,” Buber and Rosenzweig, Scripture and Translation, 83. 99 In revelations to individual persons, ruah comes over them (ex. Sam. 1.10: 6-10; 11:6; 16:13).



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the story of creation becomes connected to the story of revelation.100 Rosenzweig wanted to understand Gen. 1 and Gen. 2 as conjoined and as sounding connected (“aus ihrem Zusammenstehn und Zusammenklingen”). He did not want to contemplate whether these chapters stemmed from different authors; Benno Jacob likewise did not believe they were written by different authors. Cosmologic and anthropologic creation belonged together.101 The sigla J and E had a limited meaning, and the existence of these documents was not proved. The different parts of the Bible completed each other. Creation and revelation were conjoined in still another way, since the words used for creation return in the rendition of the building of the tent of the divine presence. The repetition of the words (shisha) yamim, yom ha-shevi’i, asah, ra’ah, and berakh from Gen. 1 in order to depict the dwelling (mishkan, “Wohnung”) of God in the book of Exodus points to the connection between God’s activity in creation and Moses’s activity in the world. The world, created by God, is the world in which man is responsible for the realization of the Kingdom of God. Here again, as in the case of ruah, the anti-Gnostic purpose becomes clear. Buber was convinced that the repetition of key words would reveal the meaning of the text.102 He himself offers some examples. Genesis reports on election. There are leading or key words (Leitworte) and central motives (Leitmotive). Isaac says: vayomer ba’ achikha be-mirma va-yiqah birkatekha. vayomer ha-ki kara shmo Yaakov ve-ya‘aqveni zeh pa‘amim. et bekhorati laqah ve-hine ‘ata laqah birqati. vayomer ha-lo atsalta li beracha : “Mit Trug kam dein Bruder und hat deinen Segen genommen. Und Esau wieder: ‘Rief man drum seinen Namen Jaakob, Fersenschleicher? Beschlichen hat er mich nun schon zweimal: genommen hat er einst mein Erstlingtum [bechorati] und jetzt eben hat er noch meinen Segen [birchati] genommen!’ Und sprach: ‘Hast du mir denn keinen Segen aufbehalten?’ ” The key words (Motivworte) are: Trug (deceit), Erstlingtum (right of the firstborn), Segen (blessing), and Name (name). In his exile Jacob experiences himself what it means to be a deceiver. Laban deceives him and gives him his oldest daughter Lea instead of Rachel. Laban says: lo ye’ase ken bimekomenu la-tet hatse’ira lifne habekhira. “So tut man nicht an unserem Ort die Jüngere fortzugeben vor der Ersten [bekhira].” Through the keywords bechora (Erstgeburt) and bechira (Erstgeborne), it becomes clear that Jacob, the deceiver of Esau, becomes the deceived 100 Buber, “Der Mensch von heute und die jüdische Bibel,” in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung, 33-39. 101 Rosenzweig, “Die Einheit der Bibel,” in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung, 47. 102 Buber, “Leitwortstil in der Erzählung des Pentateuchs,” in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung, 211.

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of his father-in-law.103 Later, after twenty years, Jacob returns and struggles with a man. He wants to receive his blessing (berakha) and to know his name (shem). vayomer shalheni ki alah ha-shachar, vayomer lo ashalecha-kha ki im berakhtani: “Ich entlasse dich nicht, du habest mich denn gesegnet.” The unmentioned and unknown (der ungenannte und unbekannte)104 man asks Jacob’s name and adds: lo ya’aqov yeamer od shimkha ki-im Yisrael ki sarita im elohim ve-im anashim vatukhal: “Nicht als ‘Fersenschleicher’ mehr werde dein Name besprochen, sondern Yisrael, Fechter Gottes, denn du streitest mit Gottheit und mit Menschheit und überwindest.” The bad struggle is atoned for by the good one. And finally, we hear again about a berakha when Jacob meets Esau and asks him to accept his blessing, birkati. Jacob-Israel, who calls the place where he “saw” God (ki raiti elohim panim el panim) Peniel, is reconciled with Esau, whom he “sees” (vayisa yaaqov enav vayar ve-hine Esav). From examples like the foregoing, Buber concludes that key words or thematic words have to be translated consistently, given the larger context, and that they lead to the essence of the biblical text.

Unity Unity is an all-encompassing idea in Buber’s work. Hans Schravesande remarks that in Buber’s pre-dialogical period, unity is dominant. This remains so in the dialogical period, where the condition for unity is duality. Unity is the key for understanding his entire work, including his work on the Bible. 105 In contrast to the plurality of sources of professional exegesis, Buber highlighted the unity of the Bible. The idea of unity is also palpable in his thoughts on Hassidism.106 It is further present in his thought on Zion as necessary for the unification of the world. There is, finally, unity in the Bible. But whereas Buber saw unity in the Bible itself, Rosenzweig highlighted more the unity between the Bible and tradition. 103 Ibid., 251. 104 Rosenzweig, “Das Formgeheimnis der biblischen Erzählungen,” in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung, 252. 105 Hans Schravesande, “Jichud.” Eenheid in het werk van Martin Buber (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum Academic, 2009). 106 In Die Legende des Baal Schem. 1908 (Frankfurt am Main: Rütten and Loening, 1922), Buber discusses hitlahavut as unity with God; avoda as striving for unity in the community; kavvanah as realization of unity; and shfelut as feeling the other in yourself. There is an analogy between Buber’s “retelling” of Hassidic stories and his hearing anew the biblical word. The dialogical hermeneutics of Buber creates a link between the reader and the story: the text speaks, and there is a dialogue between subject and the text.



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For Buber, there are many authors and traditions in the Bible, but only one main idea, that of meeting and dialogue. Israel is called to realize the Kingdom of God about which the prophets spoke.107 Buber’s attention to and description of the centrality of the Kingdom of God is, for James Muilenburg, “the most significant and fruitful of all of Buber’s contributions to Biblical study.”108 The uniqueness of Israel lies in the recognition of God as King. For Muilenburg, Buber “has been a pioneer in this field.”109 Yet Karl-Johan Illman contested Buber’s position on Judaism as an archaic monotheism and a primitive theocracy.110

Biblical Exegesis and The Living Word Scientific exegesis had compared ancient Israel with other early cultures, and in the course of the comparison, Israel’s uniqueness had frequently been forgotten. In exegesis, the text had become an object of science; in the synagogue and the Church, it had become an object of veneration. Buber and Rosenzweig wanted to hear again the divine appeal, the living dialogue. They were not interested in the printed pages, but in hearing the voice that made the text come alive. The dialogue that came into expression in the Bible continued in all generations and they could hear the divine voice anew in different historical circumstances. For Rosenzweig, the person who received a soul from outside, and is personally loved, could read the Bible and find in it confirmation of his existence in love. In the 1970s, I had the privilege to be a student of Meir Weiss. His interpretive method was that of “Total-Interpretation,” which was part of the new “Science of Literature.”111 Weiss followed Buber and Rosenzweig in that he did not separate form and content: The form expressed the content. He did not combine the synchronic and diachronic method; instead of considering the components or layers of a text, he was only interested in the final text.

107 In Buber’s anti-institutional thoughts, the prophets were dialogical, not apocalyptic. They were not specialized, as the priests were, the experts in the cult. In Königtum Gottes, Buber calls God Ruler (Herrscher) and remarks that the verb used to depict God’s ruling activity is mashal (e.g., Judges 8:23), not malakh, which is reserved for the reigning kings. 108 James Muilenburg, “Buber as an Interpreter of the Bible,” 399. 109 Ibid., 401. Mowinckel, Engnell, and Albright all went in this direction, but “it is doubtful whether anyone has presented with greater vividness and lucidity the reality of the divine kingship and the sacral king than Martin Buber, and it is certain that no one has discerned or set forth their theological implications with equal profundity.” 110 Illman, art.cit. 111 Meir Weiss, The Bible from Within (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984).

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Like Buber, he considered the Bible to be a unity: Each detail explained the totality and vice versa. Moreover, like Buber, Weiss was not interested in stratification of texts and he was reluctant to change the text. But Weiss was more interested in literature, and Buber in a living voice and dialogue. The Bible is written word, but Buber wanted to free the word from its written character, and to bring it to life. By reading aloud, one heard the voice of the eternal Thou. The spoken character of the divine word is the Jewish element in Buber’s translation and commentaries. In his introduction to Darko shel miqra, Weiss writes that Buber opened a closed window.112 Scientific language had closed the window, which could only be opened by understanding the non-occidental language. Buber was sensitive to the Hebrew words and what was suggested by them. He considered the objective, descriptive language of science in which the signifier reaches the signified, as a dead language. Only the alive, intersubjective language could suggest the elevated reality of dialogue.

Etymology Buber and Rosenzweig understood the biblical words in their pre-theological, pre-conceptual meaning. Respecting the pshat and fascinated by the etymology of words, they rendered the original words in a way that is close to the original, literal meaning. Playing on the primal meanings of words, they make the original word present and accessible for the non-Hebrew speaker.113 Here are a few examples: –– Torah is not law, which would be a reduction to that from which Christianity would be free. Stemming from the root yarah, to show, it was rather Weisung, Unterweisung, showing the way, instruction, teaching. –– navi is not a person who knows the future (the word prophet stems from the Greek: pro-phemi). He is rather a messenger, Künder, who works in the present and announces what should be. With his charisma, the prophet wants to bring about the Kingdom of God. He does not foretell the future; he brings about a return in man’s life. Rather than predict the future and tell what is predestined, he wants man’s return. Far from fleeing from this world and threatening apocalyptic scenes, he announces God’s word. He proclaims, he heralds. He criticizes kings and brings heaven and earth together. According to Buber, prophecy culminated in the eved ha-Shem of Deutero-Isaiah. 112 Buber, Darko shel miqra: Iyyunim bidfuse signon batanakh (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1978). 113 André Chouraqui goes even further than Buber and Rosenzweig in his etymological rendering of the Biblical words. For example, he translates bereshit of Gen. 1:1, by “entête,” at the head.



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–– malakh is not an angel (Engel), but a messenger (Bote). –– qorban is not a sacrifice (Opfer), with a meaning close to the offering and abandoning characteristic of the pagan cult, but the act of bringing near (Darnahung). The word comes from the root le-haqriv, which is related to le-qarev, to approach. In this way, the distance between God and man is reduced. –– olah is related to the root la’alot, to ascend, to go up: it is that which is brought high (Darhöhung), not the usual holocaust or burnt-offering (Brandopfer). As in the midrashim, the spiritual dimension is accentuated in the translation of qorban and olah. –– mizbeach is not the usual “tabernacle,” which would be too spiritualistic. It is rather the slaughter site, the place of slaughter, “Schlachtstatt,” in order to avoid the Christian association of altar.114 –– kipper is not atone, expiate (sühnen), but rather the pre-theological cover, protect (decken; consequently, Yom Kippur is Tag der Deckung). –– ohel moed is not “tabernacle of foundation,” (Luther: Hütte des Stifts) but “tent of presence” (Zelt der Gegenwart), from the root ya’ad, being present. It is the place where God is present, the place of meeting. –– edut is the act of making present, Vergegenwärtigung. –– tohu va-vohu is rendered by a similar sound effect “Irrsal und Wirrsal.” –– ruah elohim, as mentioned before, is translated by “Braus Gottes.” The various meanings of the word ruah are thereby preserved: breath, respiration, wind, and spirit. There are many examples that show the accurateness of the Buber-Rosenzweig translation.115 The following are select examples: –– lo tirtsah is translated by “you shall not murder” (morde nicht). Instead of a prohibition of killing, adopted by radical pacifists, the prohibition is understood as of illegitimate killing. –– eved is not always the slave without rights, but the servant. For instance, in Ex. 21:2 (“Wenn du einen ebräischen Knecht erwirbst”). –– peri ha-ets in Gen. 3:3 is translated as “fruit of the tree.” Eve says to the serpent that they are not allowed to eat from the fruit of the tree (Frucht des Baums) in the midst of the garden. The serpent answers that God fears that the human being will be like Him, knowing good and evil. The Vulgata translates: “scientes bonum et malum” (Gen.3:5). Since “malum” means evil as

114 Buber and Rosenzweig, “Die Bibel auf Deutsch,” in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung, 285. 115 See Pinchas Lapide, Ist die Bibel richtig übersetzt? (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1989), 37–38, 55–56, 63, 74–75.

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well as apple, an apple fell in Eve’s hands in v.6.116 Buber and Rosenzweig, however, maintain the translation of general fruit (Frucht). A last example: ugav in Psalm 150 is translated by Buber as “Schalmei.” In the Greek translation, it is organon, a general name for a musical instrument. Hieronymus translated it in Latin as organum, which is again the general name, but also organ (as in modern Hebrew). Churches and reform Jews were glad with the translation as organ, but Buber remained close to the Hebrew.117 Through their word choice, Buber and Rosenzweig endeavored to keep the original meaning of the biblical words and thus became teachers for Christians, who were invited to respect what was written in the original. In their faithfulness to the source language, they freed themselves from Luther’s translation. The familiar German was surprised by something unfamiliar that educated the ear to be in touch with the concrete revelation as first expressed in Hebrew. In their translation as intercultural work, they preserved a strangeness that was not to be absorbed in the target language.

Formal-Equivalent or Dynamic-Equivalent Translation?118 The aim of Buber’s and Rosenzweig’s formal-equivalent translation was to hear the original text. For my former teacher, the Dutch exegete Chris Brekelmans, this is significant only for study reasons. A concordant, idiolect, hebraizing translation would not be Dutch enough. If one translates in an idiolectic way, one would have a theological a priori that would not be compatible with an “incarnation theology,” in which the divine revelation could be heard in different languages.119 As an example for his theory, Brekelmans interprets hineni of Gen. 22:7 as “What do you want” or “speak.” In Gen.22: 1 too, the word hineni does not tell 116 Lapide, 110, note 62, remarks that only in the nineteenth century was the apple imported into the East from Europe. Yet, tapuah in Song of Songs (2:3.5; 7:9 and 8:5) has a good chance of being our apple; the word is identical with the Arabic for apple (tuffah). 117 According to Brown-Driver-Briggs, ugav is possibly from agav, to “have inordinate affection, lust.” For Koehler-Baumgarten, it is a (long) flute. For the Targum, it is a reed-pipe or flute. For the Vulgata, it is a Pan’s pipe, made up of several reeds together. 118 For this terminology, see Eugene Nida, Toward a Science of Translating (Leiden: Brill, 1964), and Nida and Charles R. Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation (Leiden: Brill, 1969). Eugene Nida (1914–2011) was an American Evangelical and a translation consultant to the American Bible Society. 119 Christianus Brekelmans, “Hebreeuws en Nederlandse taalidiom,” in Van taal tot taal, eds. B.M.F van Iersel, M. de Jonge, and J. Nelis (Baarn: Ambo, 1977), 9–18.



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anything about Abraham’s readiness to bring the sacrifice. Rather, it indicates in both cases Abraham’s readiness to speak. Yet, I think that in Brekelmans’s dynamic-equivalent translation, the theologoumenon of the readiness for dialogue with God (Gen. 22:1) or with man (Gen. 22:7), as Buber in his idiolect translation sees clearly, gets lost. The concreteness of the revelation to Jews is more respected in Buber’s rendering. Deeply enrooted in the German as well as in the Hebrew culture, Buber wanted in his German rendering of the Hebrew to bring the hearer to the spoken word and to force him to listen to what was originally said: The way it was said was part of the message itself. Eugene Nida preferred a “dynamic equivalent,” functional and fluent translation that implied engagement with the message of the source text as well as with the target audience that received the message, above a “formal equivalent” translation with its fidelity to the wording of the source text and its attention to the specific character of this text that is not to be neutralized in the various vernacular languages. Nida was right in his opposition to a formalistic-fetishist translation of the basic text. But, from their side, Buber and Rosenzweig were attentive to the way translations functioned in contexts that tend to neglect the original. They respected the materiality of the original words, which was not to be dissociated from the spiritual message: Content and form belonged together and were not to be torn apart in an overly spiritual hermeneutics. To their mind, a translation à la Nida would not sufficiently preserve the foreign aspect of the source text in the receptor languages. As I remarked in the first chapter, Rosenzweig thought that one cannot serve two masters. The translator already falsifies, but has no choice. Translation provides the possibility of communication. However, he wanted to preserve the “strange” element, the Hebrew element, in the German translation. To preserve this element is part of any intercultural and interreligious theology and dialogue. Laurence Rosenwald has convincingly demonstrated that Buber’s and Rosenzweig’s word-for-word translation was not mechanical.120 They knew that one word may have several nuances, depending upon the context, and that an automatic translation is seriously flawed. It was rather in their attention to the words, the fact that they respected the keywords as the form of the final redactors that led to the meaning or the message of the text itself. As much as possible, but not always, they rendered a single recurring Hebrew word by a single recurring German word. Their translation as “metaphrase” was a challenge for translators, who split words and sense too quickly and preferred thought-for-thought translations over word-for-word translations, as if content could be easily separated 120 Lawrence Rosenwald, “Buber and Rosenzweig’s Challenge to Translation Theory,” in Scripture and Translation, xxix-liv.

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from form. Also in the interreligious praxis, listening intensively to the specific vocabulary and to frequently returning terms used by the partner in dialogue may contribute to a better understanding.

“Tombstone” or Testimony of a Dialogical Life? From the foregoing, I conclude that the translation of Buber and Rosenzweig was an act of great peace, an intercultural work. Scholem with his cynical remark on a tombstone (Grabmal) for Hitler’s Jewish victims did not appreciate this paradigmatic dialogue. The translation was neither a gesture to the Germans (Gastgeschenk), “a symbolic act of gratitude upon departure,”121 nor a tombstone (Grabmal). It was rather the product of living in a kind of Zweistromland, Aram Naharaim, where the streams of Bible and German culture and language met each other and fructified each other. As Raphael Buber remarked on January 2, 1926, when he had read the translation of Genesis: “[…] I am reading it [Genesis] in German and understanding it in Hebrew.”122 The text as “Thou” met with those who read it aloud. In his translation of Jehuda Halevi, dedicated to Buber, Rosenzweig expressed his belief that, finally, there was only one language.123 This allowed for translation: People were not damned to remain within their own language; communication was possible. Rosenzweig as well as Buber believed in the possibility of translating and, consequently, in the creation of one world that united the nations. As I have explained, it was Buber’s aim to achieve in Israel a model society. With Zionism, a renaissance of Jewish life could take place.124 Immediate contact with the living voice was for him a real possibility.125 Buber succeeded in rescuing biblical hermeneutics from a purely historical approach. Historiography remained important, but in humble service to a phenomenology of religious consciousness today, in function of the human answer to the divine appeal. The Bible was necessary for the shaping of Jewish identity and constituted an essential contribution to religious consciousness in the twentieth century.

121 Gershom Scholem, “At the Completion of Buber’s Translation of the Bible,” in The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1971), 318. 122 Glatzer and Mendes-Flohr, eds., The Letters of Martin Buber, 335. 123 Rosenzweig, Jehuda Halevi. Fünfundneunzig Hymnen und Gedichte. Mit einem Nachwort und mit Anmerkungen (Berlin: Lambert Schneider, s.d.), 155. 124 Rosenzweig also wanted such a Renaissance, but in Germany. 125 As I mentioned, he had a different position than Levinas, who could not understand the Torah without the literature of the Sages as the backbone of Judaism. Fagenblat and Wolski, 166.



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Buber’s Bible hermeneutics is dialogical. There was a dialogue between past and present, between word and hearer of the word. Biblical dialogue could only be understood in a dialogical manner and so the reader had to become both a listener and a speaker. The Bible was not something of the past, analyzed by science, history, and philology. Buber’s standpoint, which respected both the past and the future, reminds me of the Talmudic story of the two women belonging to one man: The younger one pulled out the grey hair, the older one pulled out the black hair, and he became bald.126 Buber preserved the form of the past, but in view of the future. For him the Bible was not a book like other books, an “it.” It was an incomparable book that offered a blueprint for community life in Israel.127 Buber and Rosenzweig wanted to hear the living voice that transforms man. In dialogue, man became more alive. Scholem asked for whom Buber had translated the Bible – no Jew reads it and the German language had changed. First of all, I think that Germanophone Jews read it, in and outside Israel. Second, the translation was not only for Jews, but also for Christians. Jews in their collective memory could hear again the testimony of a dialogue. Jews and Christians together were called by the divine voice. In a similar way, Buber had presented Hassidism as relevant for all. The Bible as well as Hassidism were Jewish phenomena, relevant for the world at large. Buber was, as James Muilenberg writes: “A celebrated teacher ‘both to Jew and to Greek,’ but also the foremost Jewish speaker to the Christian community. He, more than any other Jew in our time, tells the Christian what is to be heard in the Old Testament, what the Old Testament is really saying and what it certainly is not saying […] Buber is the great Jewish teacher of Christians.”128 To Scholem’s criticism of Buber’s view on Hassidism, that he did not give a faithful historical account of this spiritual movement, Buber answered – to the former’s stupefaction – that he was not a historian. Indeed, Buber was more interested in the spiritual influence that Hassidism could have today. In a parallel way, he wanted to comment upon the Bible as actual for today and to transform it from a book to a living voice. He was not a classical critical-historical exegete; he went beyond history and philology and approached the biblical word as correcting today’s society, which lacks meetings and encounters. The Bible was neither history nor literature; it contained the memory of events that had meta-historical value. Whereas exegetes work with literary sources, with documents, Buber operated with traditions as part of a history of faith. He deemed that exegetes 126 Also for Heschel, the Bible was unique and incomparable, just as his mother was unlike all the other mothers. Alexander Even-Chen and Ephraim Meir, Between Heschel and Buber: A Comparative Study (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012), 221–31. 127 Ibid., 280. 128 Muilenburg, “Buber as an Interpreter of the Bible,” 382.

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themselves are products of their time, and the history of faith is not mere history.129 Another major difference between classical scientific exegesis and Buber lies in the fact that Wellhausen and his followers considered ritual as earlier than morality, whereas Buber put morality first.130 In a succinct manner, one may appreciate the greatness and relevance of the Buber-Rosenzweig Bible translation in their translation of the divine name. In this case, we see again the close connection between Buber’s exegesis and his philosophy. The divine name had for Buber and Rosenzweig foremost an existential meaning. They rendered the tetragrammaton in a pronominal way, as: I, Thou, and He. The origin of the name would be the exclamation “O, He,” which became the verb “He is there” (Er ist da).131 But the existential meaning of the name is lost in what Rosenzweig calls the struggle against the “Old Testament.” The highly questionable transcription of the divine name did not tell anything. Rosenzweig sarcastically writes that the name of God was degraded into the name of an idol. Alluding to the New Testament (Matthew 27:46–47; Mark 15:34–35), he hilariously writes that the Jewish Bible exclaims: Eli, Eli, my God, my God, and the Old Testament exegetes shake their heads and explain: He calls Eliyah.132 Buber and Rosenzweig based their interpretation of the divine name upon the famous passage of Ex. 3:14: eheyeh asher eheyeh. In this revelation, Moses was addressed by God and a dialogue took place: “Gott aber sprach zu Mosche: Ich werde dasein, als der ich dasein werde [eheyeh asher eheyeh]. Und sprach: So sollst du zu den Söhnen Jisraels sprechen: ICH BIN DA [eheye] schickt mich zu euch.” Buber and Rosenzweig did not interpret the verse as an explanation of God’s existence or essence; it was rather about God’s presence. God asked not to be conjured. He will be present as however He will be present.133 Buber specified that He is present always in new forms.134 Rosenzweig reminded his readers that

129 Malcolm L. Diamond, Martin Buber: Jewish Existentialist, 80–82. 130 Ibid., 78–79. E.g., for critical exegetes, the ritual Decalogue in Ex. 34 comes first and is revised in Ex. 20 and Deut. 5. In Buber’s view, Ex. 34 with its sacrifices stems from a later, agricultural time and the Decalogue as we know it now fits more a community, as in Moses’ time, although Moses is not its author. 131 Buber, Werke II, 954. 132 Rosenzweig, “‘Der Ewige’. Mendelssohn und der Gottesname,” in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung, 205. 133 Buber linked the divine name to His presence and thought that the name of God was lost in the course of history. Muilenburg notes that this is “neither persuasive nor likely.” He interprets eheye asher eheye as: “I cause to come to pass what I cause to come to pass.” God is the Lord of history (Muilenburg, “Buber as an Interpreter of the Bible,” 393–94). In the dialogical philosophy of Buber and Rosenzweig, however, the divine name had to be linked to presence. 134 Buber, Ich und Du, 102.



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the name is only meaningful as a name which bears meaning.135 The divine name is “wholly word, wholly word of encounter and presence” (ganz Wort […], ganz Wort der Begegnung und Gegenwart).136 In his essay “Der Ewige,” Rosenzweig reflected upon Mendelssohn’s translation of the divine name as “the Eternal.” In the apocryphic Baruch letter one reads “ho-Aionios” and Calvin translated the divine name as “l’Eternel.” Mendelssohn thought that “the Lord” was too Christian; “the Eternal” was better. In the 1923 edition of I and Thou, Buber wrote about the “eternal Thou” and translated the divine name in the above-mentioned Exodus passage as: “Ich bin der ich bin.” In the edition of 1957, he translates “Ich bin da als der ich da bin.” This second translation fits his theology of divine presence. It is not yet a name, it is the meaning of God himself. Muilenburg remained unconvinced: JHWH did not always mean “He is there.”137 But without Buber’s philosophy of presence, which was intimately linked to his profound intuition of the biblical world, one cannot understand his interpretation of the divine name. The pronouns I, Thou, and He pointed to a dynamic God, linked to history and manifesting Himself in always new ways. God is the Thou that is eternally Thou in ever-renewed meetings.138 Buber and Rosenzweig heard the actuality of the divine words that culminated in the actuality of the divine, ungraspable name. With their translation, they strove to bring the reader in contact with the divine call, to which he had to answer with his entire existence. The biblical text was not a question of the past, but of the present, not only for Jews, but also for Christians, not only for those who know Hebrew, but for everybody who is ready to surprise himself by carefully listening to the divine address that is to be heard from the spoken biblical word. The Buber-Rosenzweig Bible translation with its demand to be “heard” by Jews as well as by Christians, is an eminent example of intercultural and interreligious dialogue. The biblical text as a product of the specific Jewish culture had a certain strangeness, a foreign tone which Buber and Rosenzweig preserved in their translation. They opposed the domestication and assimilation of the original text in the target text and culture. They resisted the temptation to completely absorb the original text in an all-devouring target text. At the same time, their translation contributed to cultural diversity and trans-difference since they brought the Jewish culture in interaction with the German one. In this manner, 135 Rosenzweig, “‘Der Ewige’,” 205. 136 Ibid., 207. Also the name adonai, my Lord, as replacement for the divine name, points to the divine presence. Ibid., 208. 137 Muilenburg, “Buber as an Interpreter of the Bible,” 386–87. 138 Friedman, Encounter, 170.

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they already announced today’s hermeneutics of the foreign, in which otherness comes into (critical) dialogue with sameness. With their sensibility for the particularity of the Hebrew world and their attention to otherness, they brought about a radical change of perspective in the hearers of the biblical word.

Chapter 6 German-Jewish Religious Thinkers as Jews and Germans The previous chapter dealt with Buber and Rosenzweig’s translation of the Bible into German as an eminently dialogical undertaking. The present chapter examines in a broader perspective the complex identity of Jews who lived in the German culture and expressed their Judaism in discussion and dialogue with that culture. Its subject is the interaction between Judaism and German culture. Paul Mendes-Flohr devoted a study to the complexity of the German-Jewish culture and identity.1 I was gripped by his analysis of German Jews, and in the following I closely review his way of thought, and point to what was once an intensive dialogue between Jewish and German culture. Interculturality was part and parcel of German Jews until a monolithic Germany became radically aggressive and pathological and put an end to what was once German Jewry. After the Shoah, the once-prevalent complex German-Jewish identity was frequently seen as highly problematic. Yet the religious, intellectual German Jews who figure in this chapter lived, in different ways, an interculturality that also characterizes the situation in which most of the Jews today live. In his essay “The Non-Jewish Jew,” Isaac Deutscher2 wrote about Jewish “heretics” who rose above their societies and nations and above the specificity of their time, and contributed significantly to general culture. People with creative and brilliant minds such as Baruch Spinoza, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Lev Trotsky, and Sigmund Freud, opened wide new horizons that remain relevant now and in the future. Like Elisha ben Abuyah, the Jewish heretic surnamed ha-’aher, “the other,” these genial and optimistic people remained outside the boundaries of Jewry, but penetrated the culture in which they lived with something that overflowed the borderlines of the culture they shared with others. They were outsiders on the Jewish level, who brought a dissimilarity into general culture that changed that culture from within. Certainly, in contrast to his contemporary colleagues, Elisha ben Abuyah still knew when Rabbi Meir, who accompanied him in order to learn from him, had to return to the community when they reached the boundary that Jews were not allowed to cross on the Sab-

1 Paul Mendes-Flohr, German Jew: A Dual Identity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). 2 Isaac Deutscher, The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968), 25–41.

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bath.3 Does one have to renounce his particularity in order to be involved in the general culture? In modern times, Germany knew many “non-Jewish” Jews. The present chapter, however, concentrates upon a few German-Jewish thinkers who differed from these non-Jewish Jews in that they actively remained in contact with the specific Jewish tradition, while at the same time they were also very much involved in the non-Jewish culture. They were not ambivalent towards their Judaism, which they loved and cherished; they interpreted the Jewish heritage in terms of their time and in dialogue with their German environment. They did not follow the call for assimilation, and they simultaneously refused to be enclosed in a ghetto. They opted, rather, for a life of interaction with their cultural environment. After the experience of National Socialism, it is a frequently occurring fallacy that one views the pre-Holocaust period as lacking any symbiosis between Germans and Jews. Many Jews before World War II remained Jewish to various degrees, and participated at the same time in general culture. They developed complex identities that took into account the specificity of Jewish existence as well as the best of German education and culture. One often hears in this context the term “assimilation,” and some talk about “hybrid” or “broken” identities. More probably, Jewish existence in Germany was the result of a give-and-take situation, in which one formed one’s identity in constant dialogue with the differing environment. Identity was and is the result of a dialogue between the same and the other. It is a give-and-take between particularity and generality, between similarity and dissimilarity, dissimilation and assimilation. The humanistic and liberal education available at that time, the Bildung, allowed Jews to appreciate common values. From the German side, though the Bildung was meant to be a humanistic-oriented education, it soon became a means for the formation of an exclusivist German collective identity. In a growing anti-Semitic climate, Jewish life was characterized as anachronistic and not consistent with German ideals. From the Jewish side, the Bildung led also to the abandonment of the Jewish collective identity. In other cases, it led to a more or less successful combination of Jewishness, of Judentum, with some lofty ideas of the German culture, of Deutschtum. The distortion of the Bildung palpable in the nationalistic perspective and the crushing of the humanistic ideal in Nazi Germany should not prevent reflection on the German-Jewish dialogue that once 3 As the modern revolutionary “others,” many “non-Jewish Jews” in the State of Israel lost almost all sense of belonging to the Jewish tradition. In a quite different sense, the same expression “non-Jewish Jews” could be used for the interesting phenomenon of Russian non-Jews in Israel, who feel very Jewish in their participating in Israeli culture. These people constitute another category of “non-Jewish Jews.”



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took place and that might be inspiring even today. I am thinking about the more than 100,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union, who immigrated to Germany in the 1990s and whose children will very soon confront the alternative: to completely assimilate or to integrate into German society retaining a consciousness of being Jewish. These young adults will become Germans with a Slavic background or live their complex identity in which Slavic culture is combined with German and Jewish culture.4 Once again, there is the possibility of a German-Jewish symbiosis. I would like to discuss a few German Jews – “Jewish” Jews–, who accumulated identities, whose different allegiances were desirable, and whose different loyalties did not make them spiritually poorer, but rather enriched them.5 I analyze elements of the rich German-Jewish heritage as it appears in the works of towering figures such as Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Martin Buber. Basing myself upon Mendes-Flohr’s analysis, I concentrate on the interchange that took place within these personalities between the German and the Jewish culture and on the way these thinkers interpreted Judaism in a manner that was compatible with the German humanistic ideal of permanent Bildung. Their participation in German culture allowed them to build an inclusive identity in which Jewish values were combined with the values of the Kulturnation. They transmitted the Jewish message in terms of their time, within the German context. In order to appropriately situate these prominent thinkers, I first deal with Moses Mendelssohn, father of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, in Germany. Mendelssohn was the first to combine his Jewish existence with an outspoken active interest in German philosophical culture.

Moses Mendelssohn Mendelssohn (1729–1786) was the first Jew to be recognized and accepted in Germany as a philosopher and a cultured man. He was a friend of the famous writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who was admired by many a Jew. Yet he did not accept all of Lessing’s ideas. In the name of reason, he criticized Lessing’s idea of a progressing humanity that would reach a higher stage through the 4 See Meir, The Rosenzweig Lehrhaus: Proposal for a Jewish House of Study in Kassel Inspired by Franz Rosenzweig’s Frankfurt Lehrhaus (Research and Position Papers, Rappaport Center), (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 2005). 5 In his address to the participants of a congress on the legacy of the German-Jewish heritage at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Prof. Moshe Kaveh appropriately compared the double German-Jewish existence with a particle that can be in two places at the same time.

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Christian religion. He thought that God had endowed man with reason and that every human being can reach truth through reason. Mendelssohn fully integrated into German society and was called the German Socrates. As an adherent of the Enlightenment, he was convinced that reason would unite people and lead the Jews to their much longed-for emancipation. To be a Jew meant for him to be obedient to the Law that confirmed the truth. Yet he emphasized that everybody could reach the truth. Jewish orthopraxis would be important in order to keep the truth un-compromised. Mendelssohn was a Jew and a German, and these two domains remained separate in his personality.6

Samson Raphael Hirsch A century later, Hirsch (1808–1888)7 became the leading figure of the neo-Orthodox movement in Germany. Hirsch served for 37 years as rabbi of the Adass Jeschurun Congregation, also known as the “Israelitische Religiongesellschaft,” in Frankfort on the Main. Like Mendelssohn, he participated in modern culture and emphasized the necessity of remaining faithful to the Torah. In his educational activities he strived to combine the study of the Torah with derekh eretz, secular education. For Hirsch, Judaism had to fulfill a specific and elevated task in the community of nations. Menschtum or humanity, based upon classic culture and humanism as conceived by German writers and thinkers, would prepare the higher stage of Israeltum. In 1836 he published Igrot Tsafon. Neunzehn Briefe über das Judentum, a dialogue between Benjamin, who was alienated from his sources, and Rabbi Naphtali, a representative of traditional Judaism. One year later, he published Choreb, oder Versuch über Jissroels Pflichten in der Zerstreuung, that contained a symbolic interpretation of the mitzvot, the divine commandments. Parallel to Mendelssohn, and in a way also to Spinoza, Hirsch was convinced that Judaism is characterized by the Law rather than by faith. Against reformers such as Abraham Geiger, he thought that Judaism was a nation, a people, am Yisrael, and not only a denomination. Furthermore, in his view modern times had to be reformed by the Torah, not the Torah by modern times. Jews should not look for progress but for elevation. At the same time, they should be open to the values of an elevated Torah as well as to modern life. Hirsch 6 Mendes-Flohr, German Jew, 22 and 75–76. 7 On Hirsch, see inter alia Heinz Mosche Graupe, Die Entstehung des modernen Judentums. Geistesgeschichte der deutschen Juden 1650–1942 (Hamburg: Leibniz Verlag, 1969), 213–17.



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was convinced that traditional Jewish life and European culture were compatible. He translated into German and commented upon such Jewish sources as the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and Jewish prayers.8 He defended the use of Hebrew in liturgy, but preached in German.9 In Hirsch’s eyes, one could be an enlightened human being and an observant Jew. There was interaction between Jewish and German culture, but again, as in the case of Mendelssohn, in Hirsch’s personality these remained two rather distinct domains.

Hermann Cohen Whereas in the cases of Mendelssohn and Hirsch, Jewishness and German culture stood rather apart without really intermingling, Hermann Cohen (1842– 1918) combined them in full harmony: He considered himself a German and a Jew, and he was proud of his dual position. He spoke about German culture as a humanistic tradition, in which the Jew had to participate fully. One could say that he identified with German culture. Of course, his Deutschtum was very spiritual. However, whereas Cohen looked upon Germany from the cultural point of view as a Kulturnation – as the nation of Kant – the Germans increasingly looked upon the Jews from a narrow nationalistic-ethnic point of view and considered them un-German. The historian Heinrich von Treitschke, for instance, looked upon the Jews as a foreign element in the German nation: They lacked clear identification with the German Volk and obstinately stuck to their own national identity. The only thing that remained for them to do was to completely assimilate. A dual nationality or a hybrid culture should not be allowed. One had to choose: to be Jewish or to be German. Countering such a widespread opinion as that of von Treitschke, Cohen developed an inclusive point of view: Emmanuel Kant, to whose thinking he devoted his entire life, would be of crucial importance for Germans and Jews alike. There would be a great affinity between Jewish culture and the ethical Idealism of Kant. Whereas for Hirsch, German culture remained non-Jewish, in Cohen’s perspective, Jewish culture and the best of German culture were equated. Cohen wrote

8 Samson Rafael Hirsch, Der Pentateuch übersetzt und erklärt, 5 vols., (Frankfurt: 1867–1878) (English translation 1956–1962); Psalmen übersetzt und erklärt, 1883 (English translation 1960– 1966); Israel Gebete, übersetzt und erläutert, 1895. 9 Yomtob Lippmann (Leopold) Zunz (1794–1886), father of the Science of Judaism, wrote his Gottesdienstliche Vorträge der Juden inter alia in order to abrogate the Prussian interdiction to preach sermons in the German vernacular.

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his last work, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism,10 in order to show how close Judaism was to reason and rational religiosity, as was enlightened Protestantism. On the other hand, in this posthumously published book, Cohen no longer wrote about pure “reason” that masters all else, but about reason that is connected to and informed by Jewish thought. Revelation was for him the creation of reason.11 Cohen was a Jewish thinker and a German philosopher, who loved his country, which he called his Vaterland. He was a fervent patriot who defended the German nation in WWI. His two war essays bear the telling title “Deutschtum und Judentum.”12 In these essays he defended the symbiosis between Germans and Jews, but also mentioned that various nationalities existed in the one German state and that Jews were one of these nationalities. In the words of Mendes-Flohr, Cohen “presented a beguilingly irenic view of a German-Jewish symbiosis, and [...] he implicitly illuminated the problematic nature of this relationship.”13

Franz Rosenzweig Rosenzweig (1886–1929), Cohen’s pupil, developed original thoughts about his twofold identity; he put his own emphasis in writing about his self-perception as a Jew and a German. After a personal crisis in 1913 that almost led him to baptism, he became Cohen’s student in Berlin. Cohen did not have children: He saw in his brilliant student a kind of son, and Rosenzweig returned Cohen’s love with special affection for this fatherly figure, in whom he also saw a great philosopher and a great Jew. Like his teacher, Rosenzweig developed a dialogical thinking, the kernel of which he found in Cohen’s idea of “correlation” (Korrelation) as the relationship between God and man, which transforms the human being into an individual. With the help of Cohen, and also of such people as Rabbi Anton Nehemia Nobel, Martin Mordechai Buber, Eduard Strauss, and Joseph Prager, Rosenzweig returned to his Jewish roots.

10 Hermann Cohen, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (Leipzig: Gustav Fock, 1919); Cohen, Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. with an introduction by Simon Kaplan, introductory essay by Leo Strauss (New York: F. Ungar, 1972). 11 Ibid., 84; “Die Offenbarung ist die Schöpfung der Vernunft” 12 Cohen, “Deutschtum und Judentum. Mit grundlegenden Betrachtungen über Staat und Internationalismus” (1915), in Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften. I, ed. Bruno Straus (Berlin: C.A.Schwetschke und Sohn, 1924), 237–301 and ibid., “Deutschtum und Judentum” (1916), in ibid., 302–18. 13 Mendes-Flohr, German Jew, 59.



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Rosenzweig had a vision of a Jewish renaissance in Germany. Two rivers, one Jewish and one German, would water Germany and bring it culture and vitality. In Germany, as in a Zweistromland, Judaism would renew itself, as it was once renewed in Babylon, the other land of two rivers.14 Rabbi Nehemia Nobel, much adored by Rosenzweig, also combined two worlds; he was not only literate in Jewish culture, he also lectured on Goethe in Rosenzweig’s Lehrhaus in Frankfurt, often quoting the famous writer in his much appreciated sermons. Like Nobel, Rosenzweig loved German literature and Goethe’s words were frequently in his mouth, but so were biblical verses.15 Like Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig admired Lessing. Yet, significantly, he also criticized the famous German writer who pled for a humanity where differences would be less accentuated.16 Rosenzweig preferred the saying of Richard BeerHofmann: “I am Jacob, because you are Esau.” Lessing’s indifference towards differences was overly neutral. For Rosenzweig, a human being is never general, but always concrete. And although a person does not have to sacrifice himself to his “home,” it is better to be at home than to be homeless. Rosenzweig felt he was a human being with other human beings and a Jew with other Jews: His double allegiance or double belonging was like his two hands which were both necessary. Rosenzweig was proud of his complex identity as Jew and German. His collection of general and Jewish essays that appeared in 1926 is significantly called Zweistromland. He loved the European culture, but also the Jewish one. He lived in Germany, in which Christianity was dominant, and there discovered his Judaism, which he would not allow to be absorbed in any general scheme. Under Friedrich Meinecke’s guidance, he wrote his Hegel und der Staat,17 but he subsequently became more and more involved in Jewish life and developed a growing interest in the Bible, Jewish prayer, and the philosophy and poetry of Yehuda Halevi. With time, he became increasingly critical of the German state and its war, opting for a life in communities where eternity would be realized. 14 Ibid., 23–24. 15 Meir, “Goethe’s Place in Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption” (Hebrew), in Daat - A Journal of Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah 48 (2002): 97–107. 16 See his letter to Margrit and Eugen Rosenstock d.d. 30.12.1919. Rosenzweig, Die “Gritli”-Briefe. Briefe an Margrit Rosenstock-Huessy, 512. See also the notes for his double lecture in Kassel, December 28 and 29, Zweistromland. Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken (F. Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften III), eds. Reinhold and Annemarie Mayer (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1984) (GSIII), 449–53. Rosenzweig lectured prominently on Lessing. The first lectures in what was to become a series were a greatly success and, through them, Rosenzweig established his fame in his hometown, Kassel. 17 Rosenzweig, Hegel und der Staat. Erster Band. Lebensstationen (1770-1806). Zweiter Band. Weltepochen (1806–1831) (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1920).

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In his Lehrhaus, he instigated a new type of learning, leading from the periphery of Jewish life into its center, from outside to inside, without forgetting the outside world. Rosenzweig trusted that something Jewish would emerge when Jews sit together and study. But non-Jews also lectured and participated in the Lehrhaus. The Frankfurt Lehrhaus was meant to be a dialogical institution, a place of dialogue mainly between Jews: between Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders or returning Jews who had become more engaged. Concerning the relationship between Christians and Jews, Rosenzweig was more critical than his teacher Cohen. It is well known that Rosenzweig inherited the idea of revelation as orientation in life from Eugen Rosenstock,18 who became a Christian in his teens. However, at the same time, he asked Rosenstock not to try to eradicate his friend’s roots, but rather to water the drying roots.19 He respected Rosenstock’s Christianity and expected that Rosenstock would not wish his friend to opt for other ways, but to go to his own people.20 Against the dominant thought that tended to be totalitarian, he highlighted that Judaism is a remnant; a remnant, but not without a link to general culture. Rosenzweig felt Jewish, but remained in close contact with his baptized friend Rosenstock. A dialogical attitude accompanied him during his life, until his last year when he referred to the Bible not only as the Jewish Bible, but also as comprising the Christian New Testament.21 I mentioned previously that in his magnum opus, Star of Redemption (1921),22 Rosenzweig put Judaism in a dialectic and critical relationship with Christianity. Although he clearly placed Judaism as “eternal life” above Christianity as “eternal way,” he pointed to the interdependency of both religious lifestyles. In his sociologically colored ideas about Diaspora Judaism, Rosenzweig maintained that Jews do not participate in history the way Christians do, who contend with history and try as ecclesia triumphans to bring pagans to the Father through the intermediation of the Son. He turned the frequent a priori upside down: Christians are permanently on the way to their goal, Jews have already arrived at the 18 Rosenzweig expressed this idea in his essay “Atheistische Theologie,” in GSIII, 687–97. It comes as no surprise that Karl Barth contacted Rosenstock because of the centrality of revelation in his thinking. 19 Rosenzweig, Die “Gritli”-Briefe. Briefe an Margrit Rosenstock-Huessy, 410. 20 Ibid., 427. 21 Rosenzweig, “Zur Encyclopaedia Judaica,” in ibid., Kleinere Schriften (Berlin: Schocken 1937), 537–38. 22 Rosenzweig, Stern; Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, translated from the second edition of 1930 by William W. Hallo (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), 441. The new translation of the Star by Barbara E. Galli, mentioned before, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in December 2004.



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objective, e.g. in their celebration of Shabbat, which is the aim of creation and the anticipation of redemption. I have to note that Rosenzweig’s two-way theory, which is in fact a one-way theory (since only Christians have not yet arrived), is not without problems. Jews and Christians frequently do not recognize themselves in his picture of two communities reacting to revelation. Nevertheless, his thoughts on the problem of a Christianity that may fall into paganism and on the problem of Jews, who do not recognize that Christians are the “rays” of their “fire,” remain relevant until the present day. What is exemplary in Rosenzweig’s thought is his inclusiveness: Jews and Christians are important to him as two different, complementary reactions to revelation. Refusing any exclusivist thinking, Rosenzweig remained in permanent dialogue with his Christian Jewish friends, from whom he expected the same openness towards his own “otherness.” In confirming Jewish life and participation in German culture, Rosenzweig lived a certain tension. He felt he was German, but first and foremost a German Jew. He wrote that if they tore him in two pieces, he would surely know which of the two halves his heart belonged to. But would he survive the operation?23 Jews live in time, and they are part of German culture. But they are also beyond time, living their meta-historical life as addressees of revelation. For Rosenzweig, Judaism is not to be absorbed into a totality: He does not perceive it as part of a whole.24 Judaism is a nation, as Buber knew, and a religion, as Cohen knew, but above all an exceptional situation that escapes totality. In his dialogical attitude Rosenzweig felt he belonged to Europe and to the Jewish world. He considered the Star to be a Jewish gift to German culture,25 and wanted a review of the book in the Frankfurter Zeitung.26 His complex identity was one that belonged to the Zweistromland of Judaism and of Germany.27 Rosenzweig’s Star contained a revolutionary “New Thinking,” that does not reduce reality to one “essence” or one “substance,” but in which dialogue between God, man, and the world is at the heart of reality. In the Star, the I is not a cogito, but an addressed and answering being. God addresses man with 23 See his letter from the end of January 1923 to Rudolf Hallo; Rosenzweig, Briefe und Tagebücher. 2.Band. 1918–1929 (Franz Rosenzweig. Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften I), eds. Rachel Rosenzweig and Edith Rosenzweig-Scheinmann, in collaboration with Bernhard Casper (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979) (GSI, 2), 888. Mendes-Flohr, German Jew, 84. 24 This idea pervades Santner’s book on Rosenzweig; Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life. 25 He predicted that the Star would be considered as a gift of the Jewish enclave to the German spirit. See Rosenzweig, GSI, 2, 887. 26 This was done by Hans Ehrenberg. See GSI, 2, 735-736; Briefe, 786. 27 Mendes-Flohr, German Jew, 43–44.

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the commandment “ve-ahavta,” Thou shall love (Deut. 6.5), and – like Abraham – the human being has to answer “hineni,” here I am (Gen. 22:1). The I that is unique and non-absorbable in totality is a “self” (Selbst) that turns through revelation into a “soul” (Seele). Revelation is thus conceived as the divine address to the human being, as the wonder of love; not as the creation of reason, but as the creation of the soul. Instead of a monadic I, Rosenzweig reflected on an I-in-relation, for whom “love is strong as death” (Song of Songs 6:8). With his dialogical philosophy, he challenged the entire reductive history of philosophy from Thales of Milete until Hegel; from Thales’s saying “All is water” through to Hegel’s absolute Geist. The individual is not to be absorbed in a total system, in an all-devouring history or philosophy. Dialogue, in which a human being becomes unique, ruptures monological thinking; revelation as the commandment to love ruptures totality. In his anti-Hegelian thinking with Hegelian echoes, Rosenzweig criticizes the philosophy of his time. Most importantly, instead of the reducing word eigentlich, “in fact,” he preferred the word und, “and.” In his life, Rosenzweig took the copula “und” seriously. There is God and the world (in creation), God and man (in revelation) and man and the world (in redemption). There is also Jew and Christian, because the answer to the divine revelation is multivocal. Finally, Rosenzweig was both a German and a Jew. In the same decennium that Heidegger published his Sein und Zeit, which concentrates on the disclosure of the anonymous Being, Rosenzweig published his Star of Redemption, which focuses on the human being and his openness to the other. In his masterpiece, Rosenzweig discusses not the exterior voice of Being, but the infinitely more exterior voice of a revealing God, addressing Himself to man.28 In Rosenzweig’s existential thinking, the human being discovers himself not as a lonely Cartesian thinking being, meditating solely in his room, but as an answering being, asked to love. In responding to an always exterior voice, a person finds himself. Rosenzweig’s philosophy is therefore far from the logos of Hegel’s dialectical philosophy; it discusses the dialogue, which transforms the isolated being into an answerable Mitmensch. Rosenzweig returned to the Bible, which contains answers given by human beings to the divine call “Where are you?” In the Jewish sources, he found the 28 In his book on Rosenzweig and Heidegger, Peter Gordon points out the similarities between both thinkers. Peter Eli Gordon, Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); ibid., “Redemption in the World: Authenticity and Existence in Rosenzweig and Heidegger,” in Franz Rosenzweigs “neues Denken.” Internationaler Kongress Kassel 2004. Band I. Selbstbegrenzendes Denken – in philosophos, ed. Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik (Freiburg: Karl Alber, 2004), 203–15.



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dialogue that gave him the force to challenge the lifeless academic philosophy of his time. He left the paralyzing life of a philosopher, who only looks upon what happens without any engagement. His “New Thinking” allowed him to get rid of a way of thinking that did not take time and speech into account. Rosenzweig gave the Star of Redemption to Germany and to Europe as a gift. Europe, which derives its culture from the heritage of Greece with its philosophy and polis, but which also has evolved from the Bible, was reminded through the Star that dialogue, attested in the Bible, is the very root of the logos as the universal discourse of Greece. Rosenzweig reminds Europe, which “forgot” the exterior voice, that the very meaning of being lies in being-together in communities as a response to the transcendent voice that calls for humanization and loving nearness.

Martin Buber Buber (1878–1965) was one of Rosenzweig’s closest friends. In the previous chapter, I analyzed their exceptional translation of the Bible into German. Both were engaged in informal Jewish adult education in Frankfurt. At the same time, they differed significantly. Whereas Buber was a Zionist, Rosenzweig was a man of the Diaspora. Rosenzweig returned to his roots, highlighting the necessity of the divine commandments; Buber thought that meeting and encounter are the lofty aims of the human being, not primarily obedience to divine demands, certainly not ritual ones. Rosenzweig returned to traditional Judaism, while Buber went beyond the boundaries of religions. Like Cohen, Buber largely equated Judaism with humanism. The terms were not opposed, but congruent. Jews would be the pioneers of humanity, yet everybody is elected to meet others, to develop an I-you relationship and, through that relationship, to get a “glimpse” (Durchblick) of the eternal Thou.29 Whereas Rosenzweig stressed Jewish specificity, Buber emphasized the universal dimension in Judaism and considered Judaism less as a distinct entity. Buber valued a “subterranean” Judaism above the institutional, official one. In this “subterranean” Judaism of, for instance, the Prophets and the Hassidic masters, the relationship with God occurred within the intersubjective relationship. Contact with the other human being was for Buber the only way of meeting the eternal Thou. In 1916, Buber founded the journal, Der Jude, which served as a forum for the Jewish intelligentsia of his time; people could now openly confirm their Jewishness. Moreover, as I argued supra, the translation of the Bible by Buber in 29 Buber, Ich und Du, 69; Buber, I and Thou, translated by Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 75. This translation is by Smith, not by Kaufmann.

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cooperation with Rosenzweig built a bridge between Jewish and German culture. This translation resembled the work of Samson Raphael Hirsch, in that Buber and Rosenzweig made an essentially literal translation. They introduced into the German language forms that were alien to it. Their translation linked the Jewish culture to the German one. They listened carefully to the source language and spoke excellently in the target language. Both Buber and Rosenzweig were proud of being Jewish and prompted their peers to rediscover the deeper layers of Jewish existence.

Multiculturality The life and work of the thinkers discussed above illustrate that combining cultures is desirable and that a monolithic culture is not sufficiently cultural. I am not adopting the viewpoint that frontiers and limits are superfluous. Yet, interculturality invites one to trespass one’s own border in order to visit the other or to receive her in one’s own world. This possibility opens new horizons. The alternative of remaining within one’s own world without any contact with the other is not only a form of provincialism, it basically lacks self-understanding, which is impossible without the other. Real culture is in contact and interaction with other cultural phenomena outside the boundaries of one’s own heritage. Being involved in multiple cultures should be acknowledged as spiritual wealth. A multiple identity is not a curse, but a blessing. Judaism may become an unchanged and frozen essence, and hence totally unattractive, but it may also become a challenge that prompts Jews to live an intercultural life in which Jewishness receives novel meaning. Such German-Jewish thinkers as Hirsch, Cohen, Rosenzweig, and Buber invite Jews to take part in different cultures in a distinctive way. In the complex relationship between the same and the other, while emphasizing the importance of the same, they never forgot the other. And in recognizing the other, they defined and understood themselves better. Germany, and more globally Europe, cannot be understood without the Jewish heritage,30 nor can Judaism understand itself without intensive contact with the best of Western European culture.

30 See Maurice-Ruben Hayoun, Ecoute Israël, écoute, France. Sachons préserver notre héritage commun (Paris: Armand Colin, 2005).

 II Towards an Interreligious Theology

Chapter 7 On the Necessity of Trans-Difference In the beginning is the relation. Martin Buber1 Religion as an institution, the Temple as an ultimate end, or, in other words, religion for religion’s sake, is idolatry. […] Religion is for God’s sake. The human side of religion, its creeds, rituals and instructions, is a way rather than the goal. The goal is ‘to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.’ Abraham Joshua Heschel2

In Part I of this volume, I described how Jewish philosophers developed dialogical thoughts that could inspire an interreligious theology and I gave two examples of such interreligious, cross-cultural theology. Part II contains my own view on interreligious theology. In the first chapter, I argue that religious “trans-difference” is not a possibility – “trans-different” religiosity is a must in the construction of a relational identity that is intrinsically linked to others. I further argue that interreligious theology functions in modern societies as a civilizing force that promotes interaction between different individuals and groups. After some preliminary remarks on religion in modern societies, I offer an overview of some recent research on the relationship between monotheistic religions and violence. Thereafter, I criticize the tendency to equate religions and violence. At the same time, I point to an alternative approach that does not deny the destructive forces hidden in religions, which have both caused and worsened conflicts, but I go beyond this position and present religiosity as a possible positive energy that could diminish tensions and promote interculturalism and social reform.

The Role of Religions It is evident that religions in the past did not always play a positive role in the growth of civilization. In fact, they were frequently counter-effective in the movement toward civilization. The role of religions in modern societies is also much disputed. However, since people behave religiously and use religious language, by neglecting this essential dimension of human existence one would miss a 1 Buber, I and Thou, 69. 2 A. J. Heschel, I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology, ed. Samuel H. Dresner (New York: Crossroad,1996), 40.

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great opportunity to use this energy in humanity in order to bring about a peaceful society. Religions may create a Sartrian Huis Clos situation in which the other is hell; they also may lead to an inclusive “we” in which the other’s experience appears as potentially enriching one’s own experience. Interreligious religiosity and interreligious theology are therefore an urgent task when it comes to engendering humanity in humankind. In Western Europe, migration, mainly that which has come from Muslim countries, has definitely changed a traditional Christian society, and religion does not always play a positive role in furthering mutual understanding between immigrants and the local population. Sometimes hard and emotionally charged discussions of religious symbols and religious customs take place in the public sphere in France, in Germany, and elsewhere in Europe. In these discussions, religious and secular persons come to perceive each other as irreconcilable opponents. In the Middle East, frictions and clashes between different groups frequently bear religious overtones. And ever since 9/11, Americans know for certain that terror also appears in a religious garment. All this prompts us to ask a question concerning the role of religion in Western secularized and pluralist societies: What is the impact of religious life upon civil society today? In different societies religion functions differently, and its Janus face3 places a choice before us: religion as an expression of violence or as a civilizing force. As a phenomenon with undeniable social components, it cannot be reduced to some “confessional” residues and to the private sphere, although many modern democracies would prefer it if that were the case. In this manner, religion as social fact either has a civilizing function or else it contributes to a clash of civilizations. Frequently, religion has been the enemy of modernity, yet it also contains values that remain important in our secularized societies. A thorough analysis of religion as a potential producer of violence has been carried out by people such as Jan Assmann, Regina Schwartz, and Hans Kippenberg, whose thoughts I discuss infra. In the face of the frequent use of religion for political purposes, one tends to adopt the position that the influence of religions has to be reduced as much as possible, since the various faiths have constantly fought bitter battles with each other, supported wars, and kindled the fires of existing conflicts. In his bestseller, The God Delusion, the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins even maintains that there is a logical link between the acceptance of God and terror, and that without religion the world would be much better off.4 3 This characterization of religious reality stems from José Casanova, great specialist in the sociology of religion. 4 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006).



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He hopes that religion will someday be a thing of the past. However, it is not clear that a world without religion would be less aggressive. Therefore, modern and postmodern societies do not have to exclude religious consciousness, since living religiosity may be a positive factor, a pillar in society, fighting nihilism and affirming life. Religion does not only foster fanaticism, and there is even a revival of religiosity that positively affects society. Taking into account the relatively new circumstances, which can be called the post-secular situation, I ask if we have to disconnect religious life once and for all from the public sphere. Perhaps religions, beyond secularism, could contribute, not to an undesirable melting pot, but to a much-needed community in plurality that is characterized by solidarity and recognition of the other’s uniqueness. It seems that secularization as self-sufficiency, or even as the liberation from religions, no longer has the last word.5 Significantly, Peter Berger has abandoned his theory of secularization for a theory of pluralization of religion.6 The relationship between secularization as a positive emancipation process and religiosity as pertaining to orientation has changed from a model of conflict to a model of cooperation. Although the Enlightenment placed reason and an anthropocentric standpoint in the center, religion or at least religiosity as the quest for the spiritual, is again à la mode; we are beyond secularization, in “ultra-modernity,” where the relationships between state, society, and religion are rearranged, and traditions and institutions reinterpreted and critically evaluated.7

5 Even a philosopher such as Habermas now writes on religion. See Jürgen Habermas, Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion. Philosophische Aufsätze (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005). Thanks to Wolfram Weiße for this idea. I owe the definition of secularization as self-sufficiency or liberation of religion to José Casanova (Georgetown University, Washington, DC), whom I heard at a conference entitled, “Beyond Secularism? The Role of Religion in Contemporary Societies,” that took place July 9–10, 2009 in Hamburg. 6 Peter L. Berger, “Die Pluralisierung der Religion in Zeiten der Globalisierung,” in Theologie im Plural. Eine akademische Herausforderung (Religionen im Dialog. Band 1), ed. W. Weiße (Münster: Waxmann, 2009), 14. 7 The term “ultra-modernity” stems from Jean-Paul Willaime. It designates the new stage of modernity in which a new dialogue between states, society, and religion is taking place. See Willaime, Le retour du religieux dans la sphère publique. Vers une laïcité de reconnaissance et de dialogue (Lyon: Olivétan, 2008).

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Religion as Violence Hans G. Kippenberg recently wrote a book alleging that monotheism is intolerant religiosity.8 Egyptologist Jan Assmann has maintained that biblical monotheism as it distinguished between false and true religion (die mosaische Unterscheidung) brought hatred and conflict, and that exclusivist and intolerant monotheism was violent. He perceived this hidden dynamite in the holy texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Idolatry, magic, and apostasy are the targets of religious violence that comes to the fore amongst religious fundamentalists.9 To this sad analysis, Regina M. Schwartz has added her own interpretation of narratives, such as the story of Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, and the conquest of the Land of Canaan. The particularity of one people chosen by God, who bestows privileges on His people, granting it the right to a territory, is characterized as violent.10 Kippenberg criticizes Assmann for not being radical enough: The Jewish people not only developed a “semantic paradigm,” they also acted. He mentions the case of the Maccabees, members of the ancient Hasmonean priestly dynasty, who fought against the Greek rulers and defined themselves as potential martyrs in case they were to lose the battle against the Hellenistic rulers and their collaborators. Whereas Assmann restricts his vision of the link between monotheism and violence mainly to apostates, Kippenberg recognizes a religiously legitimized fight against those who prevent religious autonomy in biblical texts. At the same time, he contests Assmann’s idea that there was no cohabitation between Jews 8 Hans G. Kippenberg, Gewalt als Gottesdienst. Religionskriege im Zeitalter der Globaliserung (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2008). For a survey of the main representatives of this view, see 17–23. In his book, Kippenberg devotes many pages to the socio-political situation in Israel. I agree with him that a geo-philosophy or a geo-theology is extremely problematic, and that religions are potentially violent. Yet when Palestinian attacks are called attacks of “freedom fighters,” isn’t that a one-sided view (121)? Is attacking innocent people legitimate violence? Does violence not remain violence, independently, whether it is religion-based or non-religious? Do all religious Jews think that occupation is redemption (122)? Kippenberg also analyzes the religious violence of Hamas, which has gone so far as to inherit the old European form of anti-Semitism (133–44). Noteworthy is his own slippery shift from “Selbstmordanschläge” (139; suicidal attack) to “Selbstmord” (suicide; 141), and the moralizing end of his own one-sided narrative: Israel and the United States are not able to recognize what is called the “patience” (Geduld; 144) of Hamas and its sincere offer of a possible “hudna” (armistice). 9 See Assmann’s books, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Die Mosaische Unterscheidung oder der Preis des Monotheismus (Munich: Hanser, 2003); Monotheismus und die Sprache der Gewalt (Vienna: Picus, 2006). 10 Regina M. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).



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and pagans. In many ancient pagan cities, he argues, Jews did cohabitate with pagans, who worshipped Adonai as the highest God. He quotes Peter Schäfer, who calls Assmann’s idea of an exclusivist monotheism a “mumbo” (ein Popanz) 11 that was historically nonexistent, and who protests against Assmann’s idea that anti-Semitism was the consequence or flipside of Egyptian anti-monotheism.12 Kippenberg’s final conclusion is that there is no necessary link (zwingend notwendigen Zusammenhang) between monotheism and violence. He agrees with Assmann that one cannot extrapolate from a language of violence to a praxis of violence. On the other hand, the fight against apostasy and against common enemies contradicts the thesis that monotheism was always peaceful and that violence is the exception. In his view, there is a connection between monotheism and violence, which is “contingent” (contingent), neither necessary (notwendig) nor impossible (unmöglich). All depends upon the concrete situation of a religious community.13 At the end of his book, Kippenberg writes that religions as such rarely cause the fire, but that they may accelerate situations of conflict and develop a martyrdom ideology. 14 He briefly mentions that religion may offer an ethics of fraternity (Brüderlichkeitsethik) as the motor for creative social organizations, yet this is obviously not his focus. Summarizing the above, one may conclude that scholars today discuss the topic of religion as violence and that there is a tendency to define religion as potentially violent. In light of this, it is deemed expedient to reduce religion to the private sphere, even to a personal preference. The Enlightenment belief in reason was followed by violent religious-eschatological thoughts, and today we are witnessing an unholy connection between religion and politics. Islamic defenders 11 See Peter Schäfer, “Geschichte und Gedächtnisgeschichte: Jan Assmanns Mosaische Unterscheidung,” in Memoria – Wege jüdischen Erinnerns. Festchrift für Michael Brocke zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Birgit E. Klein and Christiane E. Müller (Berlin: Metropol, 2005), 22. 12 Schäfer, “Geschichte und Gedächtnisgeschichte,” 28. Assmann defended himself, referring to Talmud Tractate Shabbat 89a, which states that when God gave the Torah on Mount Sinai, hatred came in the world; Assmann, “Antijudaismus oder Antimonotheismus? Hellenistische Exodus­erzählungen,” in Das Judentum, im Spiegel seiner kulturellen Umwelten. Symposium zu Ehren von Saul Friedländer, eds. D. Borchmeyer and H. Kiesel (Neckargemünd: Mnemosyne 2002), 34–35. Schäfer reacted to this defense (Schäfer, “Geschichte und Gedächtnisgeschichte,” 30–33), contending that the contrast between monotheism and polytheism/cosmo-theism would be a contrast between Judaism and other religions, and that this battle takes place in Judaism itself, especially with the manifold Godhead (vielfältige Gottheit) in Kabbalah. See Schäfer, “Geschichte und Gedächtnisgeschichte,” 22–24. 13 Kippenberg further mentions that in Christianity and in Islam rights were denied to apostates, but Islam did give Jews and Christians a position as “people of the book.” He refuses to label medieval societies as “persecuting societies.” 14 Kippenberg, Gewalt als Gottesdienst, 198–207.

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of Palestine, certain religious Zionists in the settlements, and Protestants, who expect the coming of the Messiah after the return of the Jews to Israel, all combined their beliefs with acts. Both Al-Qa’ida and 9/11 with their idea of jihad, as well as former U.S. president George W. Bush, who wanted a crusade against the “axis of evil,” used religious terminology. The attackers of Malala Yousafzai opposed education of young women for religious reasons. One understands why scholars are now more focused on the analysis of potential violence in religion and especially in Messianic religiosity.15 Western Europe itself has a long history of religious wars and violence that came to the fore, for instance, in religious anti-Semitism that prepared the ground for a national, industrial, and murderous racist anti-Semitism. It is significant that Kippenberg devotes only two pages in his book to the question of how religion can contribute to a disruption of violence (Gewaltunterbrechung). His answer is too brief to satisfy me. In his opinion, interruption of violence could come from trans-religious initiatives and international institutions. Furthermore, he believes, Jews who have made pacts with others in the past have to accept a “hudna” from Hamas, and religious Islamic groups that are involved in social welfare work have to be encouraged. In my view, all this is fine but largely insufficient. Suspension of violence is good, but countering violence through the active search for ways to coexist is better. My impression is that Kippenberg’s analysis that focuses upon violence as religion-based does not take sufficiently seriously the soft power of a humanizing religiosity in which human rights are central. Such a religiosity is not in contrast to a political sphere that is becoming more and more autonomous, but could be a source of inspiration in our modern societies. Theonomous thoughts are not necessarily in opposition with the autonomy of our daily lives; they may even demand and promote such an autonomy. Kippenberg ends where I would start. His is too external an approach, one which could be challenged by an “internal” vision that acknowledges the civilizing power in religions.

Religiosity as Humanizing Force I seriously doubt that modern societies will definitively say farewell to religions. One and a half million copies of Dawkins’s book will not change this. I do not agree with Herbert Schnädelbach, who tends to consider religions outdated and obscurantist. This well-known German philosopher writes about the “curse” of 15 For the link between Messianic religiosity (as well as Messianic secularity) and violence, see i.a. Yehuda Bauer, The Impossible People (Hebrew), (Binyamina: Nahar Books, 2013), 62–87.



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Christianity (der Fluch des Christentums), and thinks, like Kant, that morality has its own autonomy that is ideally free from religious influence.16 True, desacralization or secularization is a fact, and basing ethics and values upon man’s autonomy is a legitimate enterprise, but I believe that our societies have reached a post-secular or – in Willaime’s terminology – “ultra-modern” stage, in which religiosity as humanizing energy again plays an important role. In the following, I will give some examples of Jewish religious approaches and some examples of approaches that are common to the three monotheistic religions that stimulate people to live and work together towards a more humane world, in which diversity is seen not as a threat but as an enrichment. The examples from the Abrahamic religions that I will outline are the result of inclusive thinking. Against any claims of absolute truth, they uncover the ethical or dialogical potential in our religious sources. In a dialogical hermeneutics of monotheistic sources, the acceptance of one God (or one common Father), the interaction between love and law, the ideas of hospitality and of the ineffable, and, finally, the connection between love of God and love of the neighbor all represent centuries-old ideas that may contribute to the humanization of our societies, which have to be approached in a critical way. Together with a dialogical exegesis of religious sources, these inclusive and predominantly trans-confessional ideas may hopefully lead to the formation of societies that consist of dialogical communities. a. The three monotheistic religions foster the lofty idea of one God for all mankind. In Judaism and Christianity, God is the “Father,” whereas in Islam God’s transcendence prevents Him from becoming a “Father.” The existence of God as common Father not only guarantees the equality of all His daughters and sons, but also their uniqueness, never to be absorbed in generalities or in larger categories. When in a social psychosis the Law of the Father is denied, humanity ceases and equality is destroyed. Jean-Gérard Bursztein has revealed this process in his thought-provoking book on the Holocaust.17 Conversely, Jews and Christians may see fraternity as the result of the acceptance of the common Father and his Law. If one accepts the paternal prohibition, “Thou shalt not kill,” an equality among all is established. This is a positive effect of religion. From this perspective, acceptance of and respect for the other human being is a way of being in touch with the Divine. 16 Herbert Schnädelbach, Religion in der modernen Welt (Frankfurt: Fischer Tachenbuch, 2009). Schnädelbach considers Islamism a new form of fascism and thinks that the Jewish tradition was of importance for the West. 17 Jean-Gérard Bursztein, Hitler, la tyrannie et la psychanalyse (Aulnay-sous-bois: Nouvelles Etudes Freudiennes, 1996).

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In all three monotheistic religions, the ethical movement brings one into contact with the Infinite. The acceptance of one God makes the unity of mankind possible and makes monotheists modest, since all other human beings are also beloved children of God, and the fact that they are created “in His image” (Gen. 1:27) reflects the multiple aspects of the Divine. It was Freud who made us reflect on the cultural necessity of the acceptance of the Father and His commands. An eminent example of the potentially humanizing power of religion is to be found in his book, Moses and Monotheism, which appeared in Amsterdam in 1939.18 This volume was discussed by Assmann, who – surprisingly, after his negative qualification of exclusivist monotheism – sought a critical analysis and redefinition of the Mosaic difference that was not based on fixed revelations. It was also discussed by his opponent, Peter Schäfer, who interprets Freud’s theory as the transformation of monotheism by therapy.19 I offer my own interpretation of Freud’s book, free of apologetics of religion as such. When one reads this remarkable volume in an empathic way, rather than with the intention of claiming that it was written by someone who could not cope with his own tradition, one may come to the conclusion that in his first and last book on Judaism, Freud in fact uncovers the civilizing power or genius of Judaism. Freud reflected upon his own identity in an attempt to solve what he calls “the mystery” of Judaism. True, he defined religion as illusion, obsession, and neurosis, the result of childish needs. This remains his view throughout his work, but in his second critique of religion,20Moses and Monotheism, he regarded the collective religious experience of Judaism as the result of the renunciation of the immediate satisfaction of instincts (Triebverzicht), a process that originates culture.21 According to Freud, Judaism chooses life by accepting the prohibition, “Thou shalt not kill.” The prophets reminded the Jews to remain faithful to the universal God, who demands ethical behavior.22 Consciousness of their election made them optimistic and self-confident.

18 Sigmund Freud, Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion. Drei Abhandlungen, was translated into English in 1955 under the title, Moses and Monotheism. In the following I refer to the edition of “Der Mann Moses” in the Studienausgabe. Band IX (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2000). 19 Schäfer, Der Triumph der reinen Geistigkeit. Sigmund Freuds Der Mann Moses und die monotheisitsche Religion (Berlin: Philo, 2003). Schäfer thinks that Freud understood himself as a new Moses and a new Jochanan ben Zakkai, who – after the destruction of European civilization – made the last necessary transformation of monotheism, converting it into therapy. 20 The first critique was formulated in his Die Zukunft einer Illusion (The Future of an Illusion), written in 1927. 21 Freud, Der Mann Moses, 563. 22 Ibid., 500.



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In Freud’s analysis, Jews opted for the spiritual and have a religion that endows an enormous spiritual power in which one remembers the “forgotten” that is unforgettable; they remember the murder of the Father. A reflection such as this uncovers the hidden forces in the Jewish religion, the “Fortschritt in der Geistigkeit.” Such a progression in spiritual life is in my view as strong as the violent undercurrents, which must not be denied. Freud’s Moses and Monotheism highlights the positive impetus that religion may provide, indeed, also in our modern societies. As I have remarked, the idea of God as Father and of human beings as His children is absent in Islam,23 but Muslim monotheism also contains civilizing powers, since it could lead to the acceptance and love of others. b. A second possible contribution of the Abrahamic religions lies in the idea that the ungraspable, an element that is essential to our common heritage, constitutes an anti-dotum to the totalitarianism that characterized the preceding century. Of course, the term “God” may be used in a narcissistic way; it may be abused to confirm one’s own limitless grandiosity, but it also limits human violence through the recognition that there is a transcendence that cannot be reduced to what is. The recognition of transcendence, of the unutterable, could cause the consciousness that one is not master of everything. Religious tradition that highlights transcendence may provide a critique of self-sufficient and totalitarian societies. c. A third example of the possible civilizing force of religiosity lies in the exceptional relationship between law and love that characterizes Judaism: Law without love is cruelty, love without law is anarchy. If the limitations of the law are anchored in love, one avoids the sanctions of the super-ego. The pleasure principle therefore requires the reality principle, which has to remain linked to the pleasure principle. Reinterpreted in this manner, Judaism could offer to humanity the concept of the recognition of a God who loves and demands at the same time.24 d. A fourth example of the possible role of religious traditions in our post-secular age lies in their vital function of realizing the idea of hospitality. In interreligious dialogues, one frequently concentrates upon theological content. This has its own importance, since it illustrates how multiple and variant are the ways to God. This plurality is not only necessary because of the fact that we are not self-sufficient; pluralism is the precondition for a sound approach to the Absolute. Celebrating pluralism in religion goes against absolute truth claims and exclusiveness and promotes inclusive thinking and acting. Although the appreciation 23 See supra, p. 137. 24 For a development of this theme, see Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life.

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of theological differences remains important, the common effort of the various communities with their specific languages to prioritize human rights, to bring justice and peace, and to extend hospitality to each other is even more urgent. For the monotheistic religions, the practical realization of these goals means to live the Abrahamic adventure of hospitality anew. The way to God necessarily is effected by respect for the inalienable rights of the other human being and the welcoming of him.25

Dialogical Hermeneutics All religions may develop a dialogical hermeneutics that interprets their texts in an inclusive manner. Certainly, fanatical interpretations always remain a possibility, but mankind also has interpreted its religious writings in specific contexts in an inclusive way that contributes to the humanization of humanity. I give one example of a dialogical exegesis in the spirit of a dialogical theology, and provide another, more extensive one in Chapter 9. In the exodus-story as told in the Jewish Bible, each family of the children of Israel was commanded to slaughter a lamb, to eat it in haste, and to put its blood upon the doorpost and the lintel of their houses. Exodus 12:13 mentions that God passed over (pasach) the houses of the children of Israel, so that their first-born sons were saved, whereas the first-born of Pharaoh were slain. The festival of pèsach, of Passover (Ex. 12: 43), the feast of unleavened bread, is in remembrance of the redemption of Israel, of God’s skipping, pasach (Ex. 12:14). In the biblical story, pèsach is therefore derived from pasach, to jump, to skip. Let us now consider Christian exegesis. Christians of course interpreted the exodus as the prefiguration of Jesus who is the “real” Passover lamb. They derived pèsach not from the Hebrew pasach, but from the Greek paschein, to suffer. The early Church father Origines, who knew Hebrew well, disagreed with those who derived pèsach from paschein. The scientific etymology of pèsach is of course pasach: Origines and the Jewish exegetes were right, philologically speaking. But from the perspective of a dialogical theology and an interreligious hermeneutics, it would not be fitting to give only one explanation of pèsach. Jews will have to accept that Christians interpret the Bible differently, in a more spiritual way, whereas Christians will have to respect the Jewish account of pèsach, since their own allegorical interpretations only make sense if they also recognize the literal meaning of the text. A dialogical hermeneutics of religious texts will accept the plurality of interpretations, intrareligiously and interreli25 For a more detailed account of this view, see Meir, “Das Abrahamitische Abenteuer (Er)Leben” in Theologie im Plural, 33–40.



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giously. If one continues to talk about the “true Israel” or the “right” or “better” exegesis, one remains in one’s own totality, without reaching out to the other. The acceptance of an intra- and interreligious plurality could be exemplary for living in a society where differences between sub-groups are accepted. Polemic interpretations of biblical texts are still widespread, but the consciousness of the interrelatedness of all those who interpret the same texts could lead to more understanding and to a full acceptance of religious others. The early concept of the Noahide laws26 allowed for a positive approach to non-Jews, on condition that they kept certain laws. From a Jewish perspective, the commandment “You shall love thy neighbor as yourself” (Lev.19:18) in its broadest possible interpretation, as well as the commandment of the love of the stranger (Lev. 19:34), open the door for a dialogical hermeneutics. I conclude that religion and more specifically monotheism is therefore not only a problem – though it may produce indoctrination and coercion –; it is also and foremost an opportunity. If justice is central in religions, they will contribute positively to civilization and to the stability of our societies. In a monotheistic perspective, the recognition of the uniqueness of each religious group is a consequence of the belief in one Creator who apparently wants diversity. In a global consciousness, the other is merely an other I and the strange is ultimately familiar, but one may also adopt and develop a universal consciousness in which the otherness is not eliminated, but rather a prerequisite in order to obtain a complete picture of higher realities.27

Towards Trans-Difference The differences between the three monotheistic religions remain valid, but different houses do not yet constitute the whole street or the whole town. With thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, we learn to evaluate otherness versus sameness and also to discover alterity in ourselves. I would like to affirm and to transcend these differences in order to develop an attitude of communication, exchange, coexistence, and interaction. The affirmation of differences in itself may also bring with it domination, self-interest, and the neglect of what is common. With the end of what Lyotard called the “big narratives,” we witness multiculturality and interculturality. Intraculturality is not cultural enough. In one day, we may meet Jews, Christians, and Muslims in our towns, and churches

26 Tosefta Avodah Zarah 8:4; Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 56b 27 The distinction stems from Eric Santner.

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are no longer the sole house of God in Germany or France.28 Identities have become more dynamic because of the presence of the other and the daily contact with him or her. We learn about the other and from the other, about her and with her. We may learn not to be afraid of each other. One even switches identities if the old identity no longer fits, or freely adopts elements of other religions. One is not oneself, one becomes oneself. In such a context, what we need now is a “trans-difference” to serve as the common ground between us, notwithstanding the undeniable differences that remain.29 If we take into account that the aim of religion is not to separate but to cultivate nearness to the other, we may discover what unites us, what is the universal dimension in particular religions, and how religious humanism may contribute to other forms of humanism in modern society. The rediscovery of such common ground will enable a new dialogue between religious and public life. I propose to omit terms such as “Leitkultur,” dominant culture, which is coercive, paternalistic, and colonial; the dream of a homogeneous culture is a dangerous fantasy in our postcolonial epoch. The term implies an overabundance of assimilation and disrespect for otherness, and does not recognize the necessity of the dissimilation of subgroups. On the other hand, one should not overly accentuate dissimilation, which potentially creates ethnocentrism and social ghettos, and makes universal participation in the general society ultimately impossible. I use the term “trans-difference” in order to designate the movement that creates unity with respect for differences and avoids total assimilation, as well as extreme dissimilation. The realization of a “trans-different” society implies the creation of appropriate social and political structures, as well as laws for all; its source, however, lies in ethics that make possible responsibility for the Other who is different and with whom I communicate.30 In the United States, we witness multiculturality or a commonwealth of cultures. In France, one considers a human being rather as an individual, in trans-culturality; Northern countries in Europe opt more for the multicultural perspective, perceiving human beings as belonging to groups. In the “trans-dif28 For the pluralization of religion in our global age, see Berger, “Die Pluralisierung der Religion in Zeiten der Globalisierung.” 29 I use this term not as a break with binary thinking, outside of clear-cut differences (man-woman, East-West, etc.), in opting for the “third,” that is, fluidity as a supplement to existing differences. For such a definition of trans-difference, see Differenzen anders denken. Bausteine zu einer Kulturtheorie der Transdifferenz, eds. Lars Allolio-Näcke, Britta Kalscheuer, and Arne Manzeschke (Frankfurt: Campus, 2005). Using the term “trans-difference,” I favor changeability and multiple belonging in religiosis. 30 I conceive of responsibility as synonymous with “tolerance,” understood in its etymological sense as “bearing” (tollere) the other.



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ference” that I propose, one may transcend multiculturality that respects different subgroups, as well as trans-culturality that addresses the individual as belonging to the greater group.31 The advantage of the term “trans-difference” is that one takes into account both the difference and the commonality, the concrete particular and the interaction. In this manner, one avoids assimilation that is blind to the particular and a dissimilation that becomes authoritarian and reduces the human being to his ancestry. In “trans-difference,” one recognizes the particular and rises above it.

Religion as Social Critique and Defense of Human Rights With the preceding, I am not in any way advocating a simple return to traditional religions, nor do I have a neo-traditional approach to them. In our societies we witness frequent passing from one religion to another (religions by choice), as well as religiosity without strict belonging and syncretism. All these phenomena point to the end of the absolute dominion of traditional religiosity. There is greater freedom in religious lifestyle and practice than ever before. In our post-secular societies, religious spirituality, and its set of values, again fulfills a role: It is meaningful in the battle against relativism, anonymity, indifference, and lack of solidarity. True, nostalgia for a pre-secular age is still alive in fundamentalist circles that long for the religious control from which secularism freed our societies. Yet, religiosity that respects secularity and goes beyond it is another option. It is through the perspective of the renewal of religiosity with both its positive and negative aspects that I reflect on civilization, to which religions contributed and continue to contribute.32 31 For an elucidation of the terms “multi-culturality” and “trans-culturality,” see Jacques Demorgon and Hagen Kordes, “Multikultur, Transkultur, Leitkultur, Interkultur,” in Interkulturell Denken und Handeln. Theoretische Grundlagen und gesellschaftliche Praxis, eds. Hans Nicklas, Burkhard Müller, and Hagen Kordes (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2006), 27-36. Demorgon and Kordes use the term “inter-cultural” in a way that is parallel to my “trans-difference.” 32 Often radical reinterpretations beyond strict orthodoxy are necessary in this process. So, for instance, in the realm of Islam, Mohammed Arkoun discloses the unthought and the unthinkable beyond the fixed orthodox settings. To view his effort to liberate Islamic history from dogmatic constructs, see his The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought (London: Saqi Books, 2002). See also Ursula Günther, “Mohammed Arkoun: Towards a Radical Rethinking of Islamic Thought,” in Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur’an, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki (London: Oxford University Press, 2004), 125–68; Günther, Mohammed Arkoun. Ein moderner Kritiker der islamischen Vernunft (Würzburg: Ergon, 2004). I further refer to Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid (1943–2010), his humanistic hermeneutics of the Qur’an and his liberal interpretation of Islam. In the Christian tradition, Lessing “saved” forgotten or suppressed voices such as that of Reimarus against the or-

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In Western Europe, liberal democracies fought against the churches for freedom and equality for all. The war between religions and the oppressive behavior of the dominant religion can even be considered a heritage of Europe. Historically, religion was frequently an instrument controlled by political hands. Already in the seventeenth century, Baruch Spinoza deemed that the separation of religion and state was a sound principle. Religious dominance and indoctrination, as well as politico-religious confusion, was countered by the establishment of democratic societies that diminished the influence of religions in the public sphere as much as possible. Philosophical critique was also helpful in contesting absolute religious truth claims. Yet political structures and philosophies are far from perfect, and they are likewise not free of bias and violence. Violence does not, after all, come solely from religion. My position is that religion has the potential to fulfill a critical function in our modern pluralist and autonomous societies. Cooperation between the monotheistic religions is a necessity in our era of internet and global communication, in which we experience more and more interaction between people. In my eyes, the different which is not capable of being assimilated in trans-culturalism, and the common which is not adequately recognized in multiculturalism, go together. Martin Buber’s dialogical thoughts on the “zwischen,” the sphere of the “between,” are most helpful in this respect.33 One does not have to opt for one particularity against another. For Buber, “spirit” is “between” different individuals and groups. “Trans-difference” is realized between the same and the other, between the known and the unknown, between the particular and the universal. “Trans-difference” between religions expresses itself in an interaction between religions in their functions within the broader secular society. Instead of tolerating, ghettoizing, privatizing, or demonizing religions, I propose a new and creative dialogical interaction between secular society and religious cultures as well as a new sphere of interaction between the universal and the particular. Of course, in discussing the relationship between religion and state, Europe is not comparable with the United States, and both are different from the Middle East. But the return of religiosity is a fact in all of these parts of the world. Although in the Middle East, religion frequently does not further peace, there are religious persons, Jews and Muslims, who are conscious that the name “Peace” (Shalom/ Salam) is one of the names of God. Additionally, I am acquainted with progressive thodox pastor Goeze; see Michel Espagne, “Lessing et les hérétiques,” in Haskala et Aufklärung. Philosophes juifs des Lumières allemandes, Revue Germanique internationale 9 (2009), 133–45. In Judaism, Levinas radically interpreted the Jewish tradition as one of hospitality. See Meir, Levinas’s Jewish Thought: Between Jerusalem and Athens (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008). 33 See Buber, Ich und Du, 38.



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religious circles in which the furthering of peace is a high priority. Not enough has been written to date about the positive input of religions in conflict management.34 Moreover, just as in ancient times the prophet contested the king when necessary, religion may once again fulfill its critical function. In this manner, one could hear in the streets of Teheran that “God is great” as a protest against the repressive theocratic regime. This courageous call for freedom comes from the mouths of those whose religiosity cannot be denied. Too frequently, religion has chosen the side of power and thus theocracies have been too prevalent in history, in particular in the history of Christian Europe. Yet, at the same time, one cannot neglect the civilizing powers inherent in religions, which are manifest in their ethical and spiritual values. These age-old powers may again become relevant in our postmodern times. The standards of our modern democracies and of human rights go hand-inhand with ancient values traditionally transmitted by religions, such as equality and fraternity. Religious traditions, as well as religiosity without religions, in fact, may confirm and convey values that our modern democratic societies cherish. Most importantly, they may bring a critical regard to political and social ideologies and help counter anonymity, economic egoism, narrow nationalistic behavior, and lack of solidarity. Secularization is a positive development, but the autonomy of the social and the political does not exclude a renewed critical relationship between the religious and the public sphere. “Trans-difference,” as the possibility of combining the same and the other, is necessary in religions and in society at large.

34 See Meir, Ben Mollov, and Lavie, “An Integrated Strategy for Peacebuilding,” 137–58.

Chapter 8 Constructing Religious Identity The subject in responsibility is alienated in the depths of its identity with an alienation that does not empty the same of its identity, but constrains it to it, with an unimpeachable assignation, constrains it to it as no one else, where no one could replace it. The psyche, a uniqueness outside of concepts, is a seed of folly, already a psychosis. It is not an ego, but me under assignation. There is an assignation to an identity for the response of responsibility, where one cannot have oneself be replaced without fault. To this command continually put forth only a “here I am” (me voici) can answer, where the pronoun ‘I’ is in the accusative, declined before any declension, possessed by the other, sick, identical. Here I am – is saying with inspiration, which is not a gift for fine words or songs. There is constraint to give with full hands and thus a constraint to corporeality. Emmanuel Levinas1 What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary, go and learn. Hillel the Elder in Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a

Today, bookshop shelves contain series of volumes about shaping identity. They describe how our era is a time of individualization, pluralization, globalization, and virtualization. In this epoch, traditional identities have become more and more problematic, since people live concurrently within different contexts and the unified worldviews of the once dominant meta-narratives have less and less impact upon contemporary, postmodern individuals. Frequently, the traditional social frameworks of family or state are no longer the glue that keeps people together. Children have to cope with two or three “fathers” or without fathers at all. Nation-states have become pluralistic and a Turkish new German may feel more Turkish than German or more German than Turkish. People have become mobile, but are less in contact with each other. Under the pressure of economic globalization, many have left their original homes and are trying to acclimatize in other countries. The changes in society have led to changes in the view on identity. In this chapter, I will reflect on the impact of these dramatic social changes and on the resultant identity searching and religious self-understanding.2

1 Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), 141–42. 2 For a description of the problematics of identity constructions, see Heiner Keupp,  Thomas Ahbe, Wolfgang Gmür, Renate Höfer, Beate Mitzscherlich, Wolfgang Kraus, and Florian Sraus, Identitätskonstruktionen. Das Patchwork der Identitäten in der Spätmoderne (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch, 1999).



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Searching and Shaping Identity In order to deal with the uncertainties of our late modern society, one might be tempted to flee into a safe, fundamentalist world where no doubts are permitted to enter and authorities are still authorities. This is not, however, a serious option for human beings who want to uphold their critical minds, their autonomy, and their conscience. To be without any identity is another way of fleeing from one’s own identity; it is an auto-destructive way because one cannot escape one’s concreteness. Clearly, one cannot live without identity, although identity is no longer essentialist, as it was in pre-modern times when human beings had fixed roles in a hierarchically structured society sanctioned by the Church or another religious institution. Identity has now become a human construct.3 In a more and more fragmented world, human beings continually shape and construct their identity; they build and rebuild it. They tell and retell their lives, interpreting events and establishing causal links between them. In this manner, human beings somehow master their lives and continue to strive for unity in themselves. In their life stories, they experience themselves as interiorities that are maintained, even when the exterior situations constantly change. Identity has become a dynamic enterprise, and creating it a life-long task.

Autonomy and the Need for Recognition In the permanent search for identity, people realize that they are the authors of their own acts and responsible for the life-options they have chosen. The time when individuals possessed an immovable identity that provided a firm and fixed basis once and for all, is definitely gone. But the postmodern individual as an enterprising self and developing being with endless options also wants a home of his own, a place where he is “with himself,” where he may realize his life project and feel a sense of unity and a feeling of being recognized by others. A person creates a home, but this home is always part of a broader landscape. As before, people who build their own cultural home long for recognition by others. This is inherent in human existence. Paradoxically, one cannot come to a desired autonomy without relationship to and dependence upon others.

3 For some famous examples of complex identity constructions linked to “passing,” “inbetweenness,” fluidity, or hybridity, see Identität und Unterschied. Zur Theorie von Kultur, Differenz und Transdifferenz, eds. Christian Alvarado Leyton and Philipp Erchinger (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2010), 37–70.

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Problematic and Healthy Meta-Narratives In the ongoing quest for identity, one is confronted in Western Europe with the great narratives of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism. Since people are more flexible today than ever before, they may choose a different religion than the one in which they were raised. Some feel that a change of cultural and religious climate contributes to a more successful building of their lives. Among those who choose this life option, which is not the more accepted decision, the tendency to see all the good in the new religion and all the bad in the former, now relinquished religion, is tangible. The realization of this option, in which one remakes and retells one’s life, frequently creates the feeling of a “we,” contrasted to “all the others,” resulting in a high potential for psychic instability. On the other hand, one may positively evaluate the converts’ longing and search for meaning in a world without roots or traditions. Such individuals are looking for a more fitting framework and for a society in which they are able to realize and develop themselves; they become engaged in the broader community of which they have become a part. “Chose your identity,” which they have done, has become a well-known slogan. Independently of whether one chooses to remain in the religion in which one was born and grew up in or decides on more fitting alternatives, the narratives of the great religions themselves are no longer evident, neither for those who stay in the paternal or maternal religion nor for those who make the passage from one religion to another. Through migration, which is mostly undertaken for economic reasons, and through daily contact and dialogue with many different people, traditional relationships and values become less binding and obliging; they are even reconsidered, selectively chosen, or simply questioned. The individual frequently chooses between different life models. 4 Even within the framework of the great religions, adherents look for their own place under the sun, their own “home” within the religion to which they belong, and they creatively settle on the system of thought that best suits them. So, for instance, a Jew may feel more comfortable with the rationalist thought of Maimonides or with the more ethnocentric approach of Jehuda Halevi. He may become a Hassid, telling about God’s “feelings” and man’s sympathy with these 4 Today, one wonders how Tertullian could write about “anima naturaliter christiana” as if Christianity were the natural condition of humanity. The recognition of the multiplicity and legitimacy of religions is a result of the viewpoint that religion is a human phenomenon to be found in a variety of cultures. See Peter Antes, “Religion,” in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Band 7 R-S, eds. H. D. Betz et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), col. 274: “[…] Religion im Sinne eines Menschheitsphänomens, das in allen Kulturen anzutreffen ist.”



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feelings, but also a rationalist “mitnaged” who opposes himself to any sentimental form of religion. He may become religious or secular, and if religious, he may become a Reform Jew, a Reconstructionist Jew, or an Orthodox Jew. In the same way, a Muslim may be a Sufi with universal love, or he may become part of an extremist group. A Christian may feel sympathy with liberation theology à la Dorothee Sölle or more at ease with the theology of Luther, Schleiermacher, or Barth. Pluralization within great religious systems is therefore a fact, and in one religion different options are possible. The more pluralistic a group is, the more healthy its meta-narrative. Again, the option for a closed lifestyle, in which one sees the others in one’s own religion or in other religions as threatening, exists, but it is not the most desirable option. Unfortunately, problematic meta-narratives are rather frequent. Belonging to a religion is no longer self-evident. At any rate, in the multiple different lifestyles now available, the longing and need for orientation, coherence, and sharing a common spiritual world remain a real need of postmodern man. Religious affiliation is an expression of the identity of an individual, who may accept the values of a missionary religion or opt for a non-expansive religion that does not strive to absorb otherness in an all-compassing totality.

Maintaining Unity in Multiple Situations One of the extant problems is how a subject may come to unity while participating in numerous experiences. A subject has multiple sub-identities that he has to manage in order to feel that his self is nevertheless “one” in all the changing circumstances that demand the realization of sub-identities. One may change oneself continuously, in physical appearance, in clothing, by speaking different languages, and by living in different contexts and exhibiting different behaviors, but there nevertheless remains a residue of the self that is given and which guarantees that a person, notwithstanding great fluidity and diversity, feels “one.”5 If a person is not merely an actor, he acts out of a sense of unity. As I have mentioned, people express their feeling of unity in the construction of life narratives. In such narratives, one presents oneself as one sees oneself and relates how others perceive him. Life stories thus offer a coherent picture of the I.

5 As I mentioned supra, the self as separated unity is of course non-existent in the Buddhist experience.

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Dialogue between the Self and the Other In biographical narratives, individuals present their own identity. But it is evident that one’s identity cannot be constructed without others, who perceive the “I” as a “me.” In the complex search for himself, a person cannot do otherwise than relate to others, who appreciate him a lot, or less, or not at all. His existence is necessarily coexistence. His I is a relating I. In a successful lifestyle, the I becomes an I in dialogue with the non-I.6 Throughout many changing conditions, one may see oneself as the result of the interaction with others. In this way, for instance, one chooses to become a father, but the children themselves define one’s status as a father. One may marry, but once married one ceases to behave as a bachelor because of one’s responsibility for the partner. One comes to the concept of the same through the other; in relationship to others, the I becomes I. The individual finds his destination in dialogue with others. A successful (religious) identity is therefore in my view the one that takes into account alterity.

Dialogue between Collective Egos What is true for the individual, who constructs his identity in dialogue with others, is also true for the collective I. In this view, no healthy religion perceives of itself as an isolated and closed group. The health of a religion can be measured by the degree to which they relate to others.7 Theologically formulated, this is stated as follows: instead of absolute truth claims, authentic religions develop the “trans-different” capacity to listen to what other religions have to say about the ineffable reality that caused their existence. Differently formulated, it can read: the various religions fulfill their tasks only when they feel part of the common project of bearing witness to the Higher Reality, which can never be exhaustively articulated or dogmatically defined once and for all. Religiosity as the feeling of being related to one God, being His children, being princesses and princes of the great King,8is shared in both Jewish and Christian monotheistic religious meta-narratives. The construction of a religious narrative may be pathological if “we” is opposed to “they.” It may become problematic if this “we” thinks it can absorb or 6 Buber, I and Thou, 80; Buber, Ich und Du, 29. 7 See Meir, “The Contributions of Modern Thought to a Psychoanalytic Phenomenology of Groups,” Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought 19/4 (1996): 563–78. 8 Buber, Die Legende des Baal Schem, 32: “Das grösste Böse ist, wenn du vergisst, das du ein Königssohn bist.”



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oppose every “non-we.” So, for instance, Marcionism, which was anathematized by the Church but remained influential throughout the history of Christianity, considered the Old Testament as problematic. This sectarian movement opposed itself to the other. On frequent similar occasions, Christian identity was formed on the negative background of Judaism: It saw itself as universal as opposed to Jewish particularity, as a religion of grace versus a religion of law. The two religions were often contrasted, as if Judaism teaches a God of wrath and Christianity a God of love, as if Jews have a religion of slavish obedience and Christians of free subjects. The discontinuity between the past and the present has been emphasized, as Christianity has been progressively dejudaized and the two religions systematically contrasted. Also in Judaism, the tendency to see the “goyim,” the non-Jews, as opposed to the Jews not infrequently functions as a prejudicial way of strengthening the Jew’s own identity. A religious narrative will be successful if, in contrast, it constructs truth in permanent dialogue with others. This does not have to lead to a confusion or fusion of collective identities. One may remain with one’s own narrative, one’s own intimate story, but accept that other narratives are possible, real, and desirable. Just as the individual does not have to give up on his standpoint in relationship to the other, but constructs his personal identity in interaction with the non-I, one religious story does not have to lose its peculiarity when in contact with other religious accounts. In the construction or reconstruction of one’s narrative, the way one sees oneself is dependent upon how one perceives the other. Collective religious identities will have to develop strategies in which one comes to terms with the honest criticism of others. This is a most difficult task. Preconceived ideas about the other religion will lead to tunnel thinking, in which one’s view will become narrowed and deformed. Openness to other religious experiences, on the contrary, makes one’s own narrative somehow relative, but it also strengthens one in living his own story, as one color in Joseph’s multicolored garment.

Religious Meta-Narrative and Personal Identity An objection could be raised that religions as meta-narratives have ceased to play a role in history and that we are now witnessing the end of these grand narratives. But contrary to expectations, religiosity has not finished its role in society. The God-is-dead theologians and those who prophetically predicted the end of religions have been disappointed, because their predictions were premature. True, as explained in the previous chapter, in postmodern times we became con-

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scious of the aggression and power often hidden in the different meta-narratives.9 Accordingly, the return to religions can never again be a simple reverting to the old patterns if we want to limit aggression. Nevertheless, although the different meta-narratives are criticized, and although their institutional character progressively diminishes, they continue to play their role in the search for personal identity. There is a relationship between the way the individual constructs his own life project(s) and the broader societies and communities in which the individual lives. The individual who actively constructs his life is not without links to the religious, social, cultural, or political collective I, of which he is part and parcel.

Narrative of the Self in Relation with the Other The construction of the religious self is connected to the construction of the self, who has to realize his life project in his relationships to family, nation, work, and to a network of significant or less significant others. In all these different realms, he necessarily behaves in different ways, but he nevertheless feels some sort of stability while constructing his own identity. On the religious level too, one is confronted today with multiple choices between varying religions and within each single religion. In such a situation, flexibility, discernment, tolerance, and most of all communicability are needed. Being an adherent of one religion does not exempt one from relating to other religions. If the other religion is seen as an opportunity for enrichment and not as a threat, the movement towards the other will not cause fear and consequently regressive, non-dialogical behavior. The possibility of understanding and expressing one’s own self and life options in dialogue with significant others has not yet been fully exploited, but I am convinced that a dialogical construction of one’s own religious narrative will open unexpected perspectives that have not been sufficiently considered until today.

9 See, for example, Kippenberg, Gewalt als Gottesdienst.

Chapter 9 Interreligious Exegesis: An Example Dieu: la compossibilité de la pluralité des religiosités. Lévinas, Carnets de captivité et autres inédits1

This chapter offers some interreligious reflections on the commandment “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain” (Ex.20:7). If one reads one’s own religious sources with people who belong to other religions in mind, the religious writings may start to deliver messages that were not heard before. Interreligious exegesis asks for a complete change of mind, a different approach to religious sources, a Copernican revolution in reading sacred texts. Its novelty lies in a reading that takes into account the religiously other, the outsider who, so to speak, looks at the texts over the shoulder of the religious insider. Interreligious exegesis includes the outsider in an ethical hermeneutics. Dialogical, interreligious exegesis is relevant for interreligious education, which is a particular mode of intercultural education. I consider interreligious hermeneutics and meetings in schools and elsewhere of crucial importance in order to foster a peaceful coexistence between people who speak different languages and belong to different cultures. Since present-day Europe is characterized by immense wells of migrations that have amassed a great variety of cultures and religions, cultural interaction and interreligious dialogue and praxis have become an urgent task. In the following, I offer a possible interreligious reading of only one Biblical verse (Ex. 20:7) as a paradigm for an open reading of the Biblical text in a multicultural environment. After some preliminary remarks, I explain the meaning of the third commandment in the Decalogue in the Jewish tradition. I further elucidate what could be the possible theological meaning of this commandment today, and finally investigate the different meanings of the verse as an example of how to build interreligious exegesis. In my concluding remarks, I situate interreligious interpretations of religious texts in the broader framework of interreligious and intercultural contexts.

1 Levinas, Carnets de captivité, 141.

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Two Preliminary Remarks Let me start with two preliminary remarks. A first remark is of a methodological nature. In the Jewish reading of the Scriptures, one pays more attention to what verses may have to say than what they originally meant. Levinas made this point in his book Beyond the Verse,2 distinguishing between what the biblical text “means” (vouloir dire) and what it “could mean” (pouvoir dire). In the Jewish tradition, the biblical text is understood in the broader context of a continuous tradition of interpretations that are characteristic of the Jewish spirit contained in letters. With Levinas, I maintain that what the biblical text may say is far greater than what it originally meant, since the text refers to more than what was meant in the specific context in which it was originally written down. Letter and spirit are not contradictory, in fact they need each other. The spirit makes the letter come alive in people’s mouths and acts. The book of books bears, therefore, a surplus of meaning that is present in all the materiality of the words. This surplus of meaning is uncovered in rabbinic hermeneutics, in which one finds a way of signifying that does away with the direct line between the signifier and the signified.3 A second preliminary remark concerns my own hermeneutical approach to the Bible. I follow the path of eminently Jewish dialogical thinkers, who interpreted the biblical literature in a radically ethical way. This follows from my view that religiosity as serving God manifests itself concretely in respect for and love of the fellow human being.

The Meaning of the Third Commandment in Jewish Tradition The Sages related the prohibition formulated in the third commandment (Ex. 20:7) to giving false testimony (perjury), to lying while using the divine name (comp. Lev. 19:12), to profanation of the divine name, and to blasphemously or irreverently speaking about God.4 In his famous commentary on the Chumash, the five books of Moses, the medieval commentator Rashi of Troyes (1040–1104) explains the verse “You shall not take the name of God in vain” specifically as relating to a false oath. With such an oath, he comments, referring to the Talmud treatise Shevuot 29a, one presents 2 Levinas, “De la lecture juive des écritures,” in Levinas, L’au-delà du verset: Lectures et discours talmudiques (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1982), 135. 3 Ibid., 135–36. 4 Elie Munk, Qol ha-torah. La voix de la Thora. Commentaire du Pentateuque. L’exode (Paris: Fondation Samuel et Odette Levy, 1983), 223.



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things differently from what they are, as for instance in the case of a pillar of stone that is presented as being of gold. Given the fact that Rashi’s commentary served as the basis for hundreds of rabbinic super-commentaries, this explanation has become classical and authoritative, although one may find in the longstanding Jewish hermeneutical tradition a multitude of other interpretations of the verse. The prohibition is traditionally interpreted as meaning false oaths. But “evil prayer […] or sorcery might be intended too. Frivolous oaths (Philo, Josephus) and, finally any idle use of God’s name (e.g., in an unnecessary benediction, Ber. 33a) came to be included.”5

Theological Reflection on the Meaning of the Commandment Today In his commentary on the Torah, Rabbi Elie Munk explains that the third commandment concerns the words of the human being.6 The first and second commandments (on God’s unity and the prohibition of making images of God) concern a human being’s thoughts, the fourth one (on Shabbat) his deeds. The first four commandments are, therefore, about the sanctification of the whole of human existence: thought (first and second commandments), language (third commandment), and deed (fourth commandment). Munk deems that words make the human being distinct from animals and that they are the source of either the benediction or of the destruction of the world. He also remarks that the third commandment pertains to respect for God, whereas the ninth commandment (“You shall not bear false witness against your fellow man”; Ex. 20:12) contains the prohibition of hurting another human being by using words.7

Interreligious or Dialogical Reflections In the perspective of a future interreligious theology, the third commandment of the Decalogue may receive extraordinary meanings. What could be the meaning of the desecration of God’s name today in a multicultural and multireligious modern society? 5 Moshe Greenberg, “Decalogue,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 5 (Jerusalem: Keter, 1972), col. 1442. 6 Munk, Qol ha-torah, 223–24. 7 Ibid., 230.

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God of All Human Beings When one speaks about one’s “own God” in contrast to the “God of the others,” one profanes the divine name. In such a case, one does not only shape God in one’s own image, degrading the Divine into something human, one also disrespects the other human being, who is linked to God in his own particular way. This manner of speaking about “my” or “our” God, in contrast to the God of others, is a way of “using God’s name in vain.” Supra, I noted that Heschel remarked in his speech on “Religion and Race”: “Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not with you, is an idol.”8 Heschel was quite aware that God is the God of everybody or of nobody: Everybody is beloved by God, everybody is made in His “image” (Gen. 1:27). As mentioned before, this religious consciousness led Heschel to intense social action, such as defending the rights of the black people in the United States, together with Martin Luther King. He believed that the exodus was not finished. In Heschel’s footsteps, I deem that professing the divine name implies a profound humanism, the relentless fight against discrimination and racism,9 and a deep engagement with the creation of a just and peaceful society, in which equality of all citizens is a prerequisite.

Serving God in Multiple Ways for the Sake of a United Humanity The task of religions (religio) has not yet been fulfilled: They are destined to bind people together (religare). Human beings are different, but they could experience the miracle of what I call “trans-difference,” of belonging together, notwithstanding their differences, or better, thanks to them. This is conceivably the meaning of the well-known sentence that concludes each Jewish prayer service: “On that day the Lord will be one and his name one” (Zechariah 14:9b). In other words, in an interreligious theology of the divine name, the unification of the name of God will be realized through the unification of mankind, in respect for everyone’s specificity. The establishment of the divine Kingdom with the promise of peace and security will take place through the realization of unity of all man. The realization of 8 Heschel, “Religion and Race,” 86. 9 To name only one sad example of discrimination: that of the con lai Mӯ, children of Vietnamese women and American soldiers, especially in the first fifteen years of the war. Children of a Vietnamese mother and a black American father were the greatest victims of discrimination. See Sascha Wölckc, “Con lai Mӯ. Über Marginalisierung amerikanischer Besatzungskinder in Vietnam,” in Work in Progress. Work on Progress. Beiträge kritischer Wissenschaft, Doktorand_innenJahrbuch 2013 der Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, ed. Marcus Hawel (Hamburg: VSA Verlag, 2013), 167–83.



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this unity does not equal the creation of a uniform mankind, not now and not in the future. The Abrahamic religions will have to get rid of the totalitarian dream that one religion will finally prevail. In the dialogue between religions, but also and perhaps foremost in the intrareligious dialogue, one will have to take into account that there is no single path that leads to God. Every human being is unique and created in view of his unique contribution to the world. This is beautifully illustrated in the story of the blind Chassidic rabbi, Rabbi Simcha Bunam of Pžysha. Rabbi Bunam said that he did not want to be like Abraham since God would not profit from the fact that the forefather Abraham was like the blind Bunam and that the blind Bunam was like Abraham. In the same vein, the Chassidic master Rabbi Meschullam Sussja of Hanipol said that, in the coming world, he will not be asked: “Why weren’t you Moses?” He will be asked: “Why weren’t you Sussja?”10 The ways to God are as numerous as human beings themselves and God Himself is greater than the religious ways to Him. Denying diversity of religious paths, also within one particular religion, does not give enough respect to the divinely willed specificity of each and every human being.

God’s Unutterable Name In the Abrahamic religions God is perceived as ungraspable, transcendent, beyond being. The idea of God’s transcendence, essential to the Abrahamic heritage, constitutes an antidote to (religious) totalitarianism and limitless grandiosity. It is an eternal temptation to use the term “God” in a narcissistic way. In such a case, God is in service of men and one uses the ineffable name “in vain,” reducing the infinite to something finite. The Jewish tradition highlights that God’s name is ineffable. This recognition of God’s unutterable name, of His transcendence, enables a positive limitation of Promethean power and of egoistic self-assertion.

Peaceful Orientation of Religions “for God’s Sake” I firmly believe that religions could be instrumental in reaching the elevated goal of uniting people. It is true that the use of the name of God in order to perform morally despicable acts has recurred often in history. Blood has been shed “in the name of God.” Given the sad history of religions and the persistent desecration of the divine name, one may understand the plea to stop using the name of 10 Buber, Der Weg des Menschen nach der chassidischen Lehre, 720.

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God. However, people continue to use the word God, whose name may be “sanctified” by promoting equality between people and by linking the love of God to the love of one’s neighbor. In religions, the name of God was too frequently desecrated: God’s name was and is invoked in religious texts, liturgies, and homilies in order to discriminate and commit violent acts. The third commandment of the Decalogue prohibits the use of God’s name “in vain.” Positively formulated, the commandment consists of the consecration of the divine name, which implies that one has to save God from temples, shrines, texts, and violent, dehumanizing interpretations. By prohibiting the use of the name of God in order to perform inhuman actions, the third commandment invites people to let Him enter in their daily lives as an inspiration and a vital force for the construction of civilization.

Interreligious Learning in a Broader Perspective My basic standpoint is that all religious texts are open texts, i.e., accessible to all. These specific texts shaped particular religious identities and functioned during a long period of time in distinct communities. However, in modern, heterogeneous societies, specific communities are also part of a broader society. In this broader context, it appears to be largely inadequate to live side-by-side in a liberal mode, as if society were merely a conglomeration of diverse groups and sub-groups. The challenge of a healthy multicultural society lies in meeting with cultural others, in getting involved with them. In their search for the Ultimate, particular religious groups are affected by religious others whose basic otherness represents a potential source of inspiration in view of a responsible discourse about what is finally unutterable. I therefore plead for the replacement of an indifferent laissez-faire by an altered attitude, one of non-indifference, of recognizing and celebrating differences, of what I call a communicative “trans-difference.”11 As I noted, learning from the religiosity of others is not something that is only possible. It is necessary, in order to acknowledge the diversity of approaches towards what is experienced as the ultimate reality. Not being in touch with other approaches to what ultimately matters involves the risk of remaining in a closed identity, without contact with those whose approach to ultimate meaning could be relevant for one’s own spiritual life. Interreligious learning and exegesis receive their full meaning in the context of a dialogical philosophy and a philosophy of the other. We live in a time in 11 For more on the term “trans-difference” as well as on the related terms “self-transcendence” and “self-difference,” see Meir, Dialogical Thought and Identity: Trans-different Religiosity in Present Day Societies (Berlin and Jerusalem: De Gruyter and Magnes, 2013).



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which the I is no longer regarded as an abstract, pure cogito, but rather as embedded in a concrete situation. Today, it is recognized that one is always a concrete some-body, a concrete physical manifestation, and that human beings belong to different cultures, worldviews, and traditions. They have different identities and orientations. Even if one defines oneself as cosmopolitan, one’s self-definition originates in well-defined contexts.12 However, besides the situatedness of every human being, there is also the possibility, in fact the wonder, of extending hospitality to others or being in the home and at home with others. This implies not multiculturalism, but interculturalism, which is the only way of being truly cultural. Interreligious praxis and thought are one dimension of such an interculturalism. To my mind, the I is never only with him- or herself; one is always affected and moved by the other, who brings the I out of its enclosed existence. Every human being has a family. Each one of us inherits her or his mother tongue from others, others gave him or her a personal name, and desires for others inhabit our bodies.13 I am therefore from the beginning, and even before my beginning, linked to others. The concrete situatedness of the human being already points to otherness in the I. But there is more. It is inherent in the human condition that one may go beyond the own, towards the other. One may cross the border to the other and pass into his or her world. This passing to the other is never the result of my own initiative; rather, it becomes possible through the call of the other, before any action on my side. Respondeo, ergo sum, but my turn to the other is provoked by the other, who demands and summons me. My paying attention (in Hebrew tesomet lev: to put your heart on something) is made possible by the other who draws my attention.14 It belongs to the loftiness of human existence that I may give attention to the other, for instance by greeting her or him or bringing a present. But this attention paid to the other is prompted by the other. I turn to the other, who first turned to me. The totalizing tendency to master the other, to dominate, to subdue, colonialize or neglect him or her, runs against the appeal of the other to provide him or her with life, respect, and love. I am able to be myself when I am with the other.

12 See Avi Sagi, “mehuyavut erkit ve-zehut be-qium rav-tarbuti,” in rav-tarbutiut be-mivhan ha-israeliut, ed. Ohad Nachtomi (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2010), 63–79. 13 Bernhard Waldenfels, Grundmotive einer Phänomenologie des Fremden (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2012), 88–119. 14 Waldenfels highlights that there is an aspect of undergoing in our attention to others: they affect us, something or somebody draws our attention. He maintains that we experience what is not our own, what is foreign, as “pathos” which also includes suffering (131; comp. also 73–91).

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In his inspiring xenologic philosophy, the German philosopher Franz Fischer proposed not to reflect on the I, because one does not find oneself in self-reflection. Instead, he suggests practically making a turn to the other and living a life oriented towards him or her. He endeavors to approach the I not in a reflective way, but in a proflective manner: One is oneself in the recognition of the other who faces me and this being faced (Fremdgesehenheit) comes before one’s own self-accomplishment (Selbsterfühlung).15 For Fischer, the self is inhabited by the other. In a similar way, Martin Buber could not approach the I without its relation to the non-I. This Jewish dialogical philosopher developed a relational transformative model of thinking, in which the self is not central, but instead the orientation of an I to a you. His objective was to create a dialogical “between-man,” a Zwischenmensch: The I is I through its relation with the non-I. “I” is an abstraction, “I-you” is an I that turns to a you. In the address from an I to a you, an “it” turns into a “you”: The object (Gegenstand) changes into a presence (Gegen­­wart).16 For Bernhard Waldenfels as well, the I has otherness in itself. In his phenomenology of the foreign, he maintains that the I sets boundaries and distinguishes itself from others. He remarks that solipsism as solus ipse, as being only within oneself, is a problem because such a self has no borders and does not delimit himself or define himself in distinction to others.17 Waldenfels highlights that one is different from others, but others are always present. In my own view, setting boundaries also implies, at the same time, that these boundaries may be crossed. One passes to the other because the other demands one. I adopt the position of Emmanuel Levinas, who repeated again and again in his ethical metaphysics that the other is a positive disturbance for the I, whose natural order and spontaneity are called into question by the other’s presence. Through attention to this summons of the other, one avoids the pitfall of a “pure” identity that forbids otherness to penetrate the closed circle of the (individual or collective) self. Attention to the other creates an “open” identity that has otherness in itself: We are visited by others who ask us, of their own initiative, to make an exodus out of the prison of ourselves. Consequently, I cannot see the other as a mere alter ego. True, the other is an ego like myself, but his radical otherness that is never to be neutralized, stems from his or her call to me, which 15 Franz Fischer, “Liebe und Weisheit,” in Fischer, Proflexion der Menschlichkeit. Späte Schriften und letzte Entwürfe, 1960–1970 (Werkausgabe IV), eds. Michael Benedikt and Wolfgang W. Priglinger (Wien: Löcker, 1985), 550. 16 Buber, I and Thou, 63; Ich und Du, 16. See further Meir, “Towards ‘Proflective’ Philosophy and ‘Proligion’ with Fischer und Buber,” in Meir, Identity Dialogically Constructed (Jerusalemer Texte 4), 61– 86. 17 Bernhard Waldenfels, Grundmotive einer Phänomenologie des Fremden (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2012), 117.



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transforms the I. The other’s urgent invitation to relate ruptures the totality of the self. With Levinas, I approach the I as “the one-for-the-other,” l’un-pour-l’autre.18 I may receive the other in my home, I may also be at home with her. A Muslim may meet a Jew, a Christian may meet a Buddhist. We are different, but “trans-difference” becomes possible through the turn to the other, through the creation of a “between”-space. The fact that we belong to each other could lend new meaning to Terence’s dictum “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto”: The loftiness of my being human is situated in my being linked to others in solidarity. Alienation is the refusal of the acceptance of the other by the self, the refusal of hospitality. There is no I without belonging: The inner and the outer, the own and the foreign, are distinguished, and, at the same time, intimately interwoven. To be myself is to be with others. In this perspective, hospitality, also on the religious level, as well as the creation of a non-exclusive “we,” are the eminent characteristics of the human condition as such.

18 Levinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence [1974] (biblio essais 4121) (Paris: Hachette, 1990), 158.

Chapter 10 Dialogical Philosophy and Social Transformation Ethics and inner values without religious content are like water, something we need every day for health and survival. Ethics and inner values based in a religious context are more like tea. The tea we drink is mostly composed of water, but it also contains some other ingredients –tea leaves, spices, perhaps some sugar or, at least in Tibet, salt – and this makes it more nutritious and sustaining and something we want every day. But however the tea is prepared, the primary ingredient is always water.1

In the previous chapters I investigated the conditions necessary for interreligious and intrareligious dialogue as well as for multiple belonging. I also dealt with the double belonging of the German-Jewish identity as an example of the interaction between religion and society. In the present chapter, I broaden the scope further and examine the relationship between religious-dialogical thought, making peace, and realizing a righteous society. Thinking about the realization of peace is not only thinking about how to diminish violence and how to increase self-potential. It does not merely consist of proposing compromises between conflicting parties, although that is also necessary. Compromises do not suffice: If one reaches a frail peace by reducing mutual violence, one of the parties may become stronger at any random moment; subsequently, the fragile equilibrium will be broken again and the other “vanquished.” Thinking about peace means constructing a peaceful way of thinking about fostering beings who answer one another. The main question in this kind of thought is not who is right in the conflict, but how to make the other more real and how to make him present by satisfying his needs and recognizing his desires. Martin Buber belongs to those Jewish thinkers who lived and worked in Germany and developed challenging thoughts about peace. Together with people such as Franz Rosenzweig and Leo Baeck, he contributed significantly to what is now called the German-Jewish heritage. In the following, I detail and discuss his humanistic-religious thoughts on dialogue and meeting, and apply these thoughts on the socio-political level as significant for social transformation and conflict management.

1 The Dalai Lama, Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World (London: Rider, 2013), 17.



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Buber’s Relational Thought as Transformative Model Martin Buber provides us with a model of conflict resolution based on peaceful dialogue. In this model, one does not overlook the conflict between parties, but, by creating a common world, one enhances responsiveness and what Buber calls the development of the “I-you,” taking into account the “progressive augmentation of the word of It.”2 In the dialogical-relational model, it is not the self, self-consciousness, and narrow self-interest that are central, but the orientation or dedication of the I to a you. Buber’s dialogical, relational thoughts introduce a transforming effect into the efforts to bring a viable solution to the longstanding conflict between people and groups. They represent an alternative to purely interest-based standpoints, in which self-dedication is systematically removed. The recognition and confirmation of the other’s “presence” could lead to reduced violence and to the coexistence of two sides that are presently in almost permanent conflict. Instead of saying “I am right, you are wrong,” one could bridge between two worlds by making the other real. The recognition of the other in his economic, social, and political needs and not only the interest of the collective I as against the interest of the other collective I, creates a different atmosphere in the dispute.

Spirit and Dialogical Man In Buber’s I and Thou, first published in 1923, the word “Geist,” spirit, characterizes what happens “between” people. Spirit is “a response to the Thou, which appears and addresses him out of the mystery.” It is the discovery of the latent you-dimension in the self: “Spirit in its human manifestation is a response of man to his Thou.”3 Buber’s spirituality is therefore concrete; it is close to everyday life and to the world in which meetings are rare, but transpire. I and Thou endeavors to create a “Zwischenmensch,” a dialogical “between-person” related to other human beings.4 Buber writes that the spirit “is not in the I, but between [zwischen] I and Thou. It is not like the blood that circulates in you, but like the air in which you breathe.”5

2 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 37; Buber, Ich und Du, 37. 3 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 39; Ich und Du, 38. 4 For a discussion of elements in the dialogical man, see Buber, Elemente des Zwischenmenschlichen, in ibid., Das dialogische Prinzip (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1973), 269–98. 5 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 39; Ich und Du, 38.

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His dialogical philosophy intends to rupture the alienating it-world of experiment, observation, tactics, and use, and open up the reader to the lofty sphere of meeting as the heart of reality. The analysis of central ideas in I and Thou, Buber’s main dialogical work, may contribute to conflict-solving thought, which promotes a civilized and even harmonious life through societal change. However, one possible objection first has to be removed. One could think that Buber’s standpoint is naïve. I would rather characterize his thought as critical or radical. By considering dialogue between I and you as “real,” and the functional, utilitarian world of I-it as “unreal,” Buber’s ontology of presence urges the creation of reciprocity and orients the different parties to each other. Face to face with the non-I, the I becomes I. “Through the Thou a man becomes I” (“Der Mensch wird am Du zum Ich”).6 In the light of the countenance of the other, the I is not isolated, but a related “I-you.” The key to Buber’s dialogical thought is that the related I is real and that this I-oriented-to-the-other is also capable of making the other real. Alluding to the initial words of the creation story in the Book of Genesis, Buber succinctly writes: “In the beginning is relation” (“Im Anfang is die Beziehung”).7

I as “I-you” In Buber’s humanism, meeting and encounter come into being through the address of an I to a you. In the address of the I to a you, an “it” turns into a “you”: The object (Gegenstand) becomes a presence (Gegenwart).8 Alienation of the other in an objectivizing attitude and partial approach towards him is changed in the animation of the other through an empathic approach towards him, which makes him present. The chrysalis becomes a butterfly.9 The “you” jumps from an “it,” but does not originate in the “it.” The “you” that is addressed is concrete, although this concrete “you” is neither known nor experienced, because knowing and experiencing emanate from the functional world of I-it and not from the exalted world of I-you. In Buber’s dialogical thought, the I is destined to meet the other, not to approach him in a solely cognitive way. The “I” is basically an “I-affecting-you” (“Ich-wirkend-Du”)10: It is an I-in-relation. The relating I and the addressed you, which reveals itself, may meet, and this mutual “relation” 6 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 28; Ich und Du, 29. 7 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 18; Ich und Du, 20. 8 The German pun on words is to be found in Ich und Du, 16. 9 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 17; Ich und Du, 20. 10 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 22; Ich und Du, 23.



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(Beziehung) is “encounter” (Begegnung). Buber highlights that in the sphere of the “between” (zwischen) as the humanizing factor in human society, institutions are excessively “outside,” whereas feelings are overly “inside.”11 Institutions are objective and feelings subjective, whereas the meeting itself is intersubjective. In Buber’s poetic phrasing, “The separated I of institutions is an animated clod without soul, and the separated I of feelings an uneasily fluttering soul-bird” (“das abgetrennte Es der Einrichtungen ist ein Golem und das abgetrennte Ich der Gefühle ein umherflatternder Seelenvogel”).12 But “relation is mutual” (“Beziehung ist Gegenseitigkeit”).13

The Concrete Spirituality of Religious Humanism In Buber’s perspective, the mutual relation between the I and a you is also the locus theologicus, the very place where a person meets God. The I who says “you” simultaneously addresses the eternal “You.” Time and again, Buber highlights that the relationship to God occurs in the relationship with human beings and that it is nonsensical to want to make present the eternal You without creating a true dialogical society. His philosophy teaches us to utter the word “and”: I and you, God and man, God and involvement in the world. In Buber’s eyes, the loving approach of the world, its animation, is the kernel of any real spirituality. In meeting the world and in uttering the primary word I-you, we “look out toward the fringe of the eternal Thou,” we are “aware of a breath from the eternal Thou,” and we “address the eternal Thou.”14 In his panentheistic thought, which was influenced by Hassidism, the intersubjective meeting is the condition for contact with the eternal You. Within the meeting of a particular “you,” we receive “a glimpse [Durchblick] through to the eternal Thou.”15 The world alone does not lead to God, but neither does one find Him by leaving the world.16 Man’s turn, his return (Umkehr) to the real ex-centric

11 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 43; Ich und Du, 41–42. 12 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 44; Ich und Du, 42. 13 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 15; Ich und Du, 19. 14 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 6; Ich und Du, 12. 15 Buber, I and Thou, 5; Ich und Du, 69. One has to live in this world with a kind of otherworldliness. Only Realpolitik is largely insufficient. In her The Miracles of Antichrist (1897), Selma Lagerlöf writes about the real statue, whose Kingdom is “not of this world,” which is replaced by a fake statue, whose Kingdom is “only of this world.” 16 Buber, I and Thou, trans.Smith, 79; Ich und Du, 72.

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kernel of himself,17 to his “inborn you” (das eingeborene Du),18 in other words, his presence to the other makes the eternal You present for himself. Buber claims that human existence becomes a kind of sacrament: In meeting and encounter, God becomes present in the world. In a mystical mood, Buber writes that man has to “realize” God in the world (Gott in der Welt verwirklichen).19 Solidarity and contact make God real; they bring human beings to the eternal You, who never becomes “it.”20 The relationship with the eternal Thou is made true in concrete life with the other.21 God is called “the eternal presence” (“die ewige Gegenwart”), who is present in time and place, wherever and whenever one is present to the other. The husband who really loves his wife, and makes her present, is able to see in the you of her eyes “a beam of the eternal Thou” (“lässt ihn einen Strahl des ewigen Du schauen”).22 God’s presence is realized in man’s religious situation, which is significantly characterized as “his being there in the Presence” (sein Dasein in der Präsenz).23

“I-you” and “I-it”: Separate Worlds? Buber invites his readers to become a person (eine Person) who enters into relationships, instead of remaining an ego (Eigenwesen), who merely differentiates himself from other individuals.24 In opposition to the ego, the relating “person” is real and even reaches eternity in time: “Through contact with every Thou we are stirred with a breath of the Thou, that is, of eternal life” (“Denn durch die Berührung jedes Du rührt ein Hauch des Du, das ist: das ewigen Leben uns an”).25 The person, the relating man, shares in reality. The more contact one has with a you, the more real one is and the fuller the share (Teilnahme) in reality.26 These kinds of reflections on the nature of personhood and ego are typical of Buber’s

17 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 100, Ich und Du, 89. 18 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 27; Ich und Du, 28. 19 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 114; Ich und Du, 100. 20 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 112; Ich und Du, 98. 21 In Der heilige Weg. Ein Wort an die Juden and an die Völker (Frankfurt am Main: Rütten & Loening, 1919), 85, Buber defines true society (Gemeinschaft) as “die Verwirklichung des Göttlichen im Zusammenleben der Menschen.” 22 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 108; Ich und Du, 93. 23 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 95; Ich und Du, 85. 24 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 62; Ich und Du, 57. 25 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 63; Ich und Du, 57. 26 Ibid.



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dialogical thinking; they clearly reveal how Buber works with oppositions and antitheses. Are the I-you and I-it separated worlds, the way Buber presents them? One would wish that Buber would have written with more nuance on the precise relationship between I-it and I-you; in other words, on the relationship between institutional, strategic rationality and rationality of the heart.27 In fact, Buber largely neglects the institutional sides of human existence. Economic, politic, and scientific structures are not necessarily evil and, as he well knew, they receive importance and weight when linked to the interhuman meeting, to the “spirit.”28 True, Buber did not pay enough attention to strategic rationality, but his words, which flow from the rationality of the heart, are nonetheless a welcome protest in a world of global capitalism, of economic discrimination, of Realpolitik, and of too many partial approaches of man. The rationality of the heart expressed in I and Thou is likely to yield thoughts that provide alternatives to the usual approach to regional and international conflicts. Rather than being based upon conflict and opposition, this alternative works with “sharing.” The overall impression that I get from the relationship between “I-it” and “I-you” in Buber’s I and Thou is that they represent totally separate worlds, although Buber himself confirms the passage from “it” to “you.” There are largely two attitudes vis-à-vis the world, which most frequently appear as separate, but, sometimes, in too rare moments, Buber connects them. He writes, for instance, that the spirit penetrates and transforms the world of “it.”29 Living in God’s face is both living in the world of “it” and in the world of “you.” The double movement of a turn towards the “you” and of an estrangement from the “you” “are compassed by grace in the timeless creation” (“gnadenhaft eingehegt in der zeitlosen Schöpfung”).30 Poetically, Buber writes, “Our knowledge of twofold nature is silent before the paradox of the primal mystery” (“Unser Wissen um die Zweifalt verstummt vor der Paradoxie des Urgeheimnisses”).31 Despite such passages, utterances on the relatedness of the two basic words I-you and I-it are relatively rare in I and Thou. Yet, the understanding of the exact relationship between I-you and I-it is crucial if we want to develop a non-violent, but also effective thought, which takes into account the complexity of the I-it and which is inclined towards further negotiations between conflicting sides. 27 On the importance of the “strategic rationality” and the dialectic relationship between strategic rationality and communication, see Vittorio Hösle, Praktische Philosophie in der modernen Welt (München: Beck, 1992), 59–86, as well as Ephraim Meir, “Buber’s and Levinas’s Attitudes toward Judaism,” in Levinas and Buber,146–48. 28 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 48-49; Ich und Du, 46. 29 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 100; Ich und Du, 89. 30 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 101; Ich und Du, 89. 31 Ibid.

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Buber’s own hesitations concerning the relationship between the “it”-world and the “you”-world probably explain such different interpretations as those of Michael Theunissen and Jochanan Bloch, who both highlight the Buberian contrast between “I-it” and “I-you.”32 Theunissen believes that Buber snatches “you” out of the world, whereas Bloch is of the opinion that the “you” does not transcend the world, but rather is rooted in it. My own position in this debate is that Buber insists upon the relationship between “I-it” and “I-you,” because a “you” must again become “it” and an “it” may become a “you”: You is “bound to become an It” (“muss […] zu einem Es werden”) and It “may become a Thou” (“kann […] zu einem Du werden”).33 There is some connection between the two worlds, yet Buber separated them too much. He has a tendency to disconnect the two basic approaches to the world. A tension exists between the two basic phrases – I-you and I-it – and this tension evolves too quickly into an opposition. Buber’s spirituality, although world-oriented, is therefore not without problems. However, one cannot deny that he loves the world and that he does not want to leave it in order to be in touch with the eternal Thou. His thinking is therefore radically opposed to that of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who thought that one had to turn one’s back to the world in order to become an “enkelte,” – an individual or unique being before God.34 In Buber’s thought, existence is coexistence and the fullest meaning of reality is expressed in the presence of an I towards a you, who also becomes present. In its deepest sense, the I is a turning I.

Hebrew Humanism In I and Thou, Buber is an atypical man, interested in different lifestyles and open to such different personalities as Buddha or Jesus, who did not develop a philosophy, but rather showed a way. According to Buber, the people of the spirit belong to different cultures and bring renewal to the world. Dialogue changes the face of the world and brings it into contact with God.

32 Cfr. Michael Theunissen, Der Andere. Studien zur Sozialontologie der Gegenwart (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965), 307, 312–14 (this work was originally a doctoral thesis at the Freie Universität of Berlin), and the chapter “Das Verhältnis des Du zum Es” in Jochanan Bloch, Die Aporie des Du. Probleme der Dialogik Martin Buber (Phronesis 2), (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1977), 245– 78 (this book contains Bloch’s dissertation from 1968 at the University of Berlin, in which he brought additions and explicitly deals with Theunissen’s work). 33 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 33; Ich und Du, 32. 34 Buber, “The Question of the Single One,” in The Writings of Martin Buber, ed. Will Herberg (New York: Meridian Books, 1958), 63–88.



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Buber is therefore a religious humanist, but he is more: He is a Hebrew humanist. He is inspired by Hassidism, which hallows everyday life and for which matter is not to be neglected or abolished, but impregnated and elevated by the spirit. He writes about sparks, about building God’s “form” and about transforming the world of it, a transformation that influences the higher worlds. Buber writes about the reunion of God with the divine inhabitation, which is known in Jewish mystical thought as yihud. Also, his thoughts on the whole being, on the perfect man – “der ganz gewordene Mensch”35 – are reminiscent of Hassidism: Perfect man is equivalent to the tzaddik, the righteous one. Finally, his ideas concerning God’s omnipresence, man’s being made in God’s image and the non-reality of evil, have their roots in Hassidic thought. Expressing his religious and humanistic thoughts which are impregnated by Hassidic mysticism, Buber reminds Europe of its lost or nearly forgotten heritage of primal reality, the reality of presence (Gegenwärtigkeit), which is linked to time and place and is ultimately the presence of God in the world.

The Challenge of Transformative Thinking Buber’s thinking in I and Thou belongs to the growing movement of relational thinking that considers the separate “self” as an abstract mental construct. He formulates an alternative, considering the I as the one-in-presence-of-the-other or the one-for-the-other. This non-violent thought about the connected I contains possibilities that are insufficiently taken into account in negotiations between conflicting sides and in conflict resolution. Buber’s thought on the related I is an alternative to the many theories about self-development and self-assertion. It constitutes a different model of thinking that has a transformational power. The cooperative model replaces the competitive model; the model of the I-in-relation replaces the model of the separated self. Buber’s idea of the I, which becomes an I in relation to a you, is not an emotional nor a rational approach, but a holistic approach: The I is destined to become “whole” in relation to you. The I is not destined to remain I-it, with fragmentary approaches, but to become I-you, with his whole being.

Dialogue between Groups Buber’s humanistic philosophy may contribute in a vital way to the solution of regional and international conflicts in that it allows the development of a sound approach to the interaction between groups. His dialogical thinking constitutes a 35 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 77; Ich und Du, 70,

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protest against totalitarian thinking and the totalitarian tendencies of the ego. It is challenging to apply the results of his dialogical thought to the domain of group relations.36 An I-it perspective leads to depersonalization and to the repression of man’s freedom by lack of openness towards the other. In the I-you relationship, on the contrary, existence is coexistence. On the level of collective egos, the non-relating group develops a pathological attitude, whereas the relating group sees itself as positively constituted by other groups. Collective selves are authentic when they interact with collective non-selves; they are inauthentic when they deny the concrete existence of other groups. The difference between these two kinds of society is reflected in the contrast between the possessive aggression of narcissistically oriented groups, which do not see the other as “real,” and the peaceful behavior of positively minded groups, which make the other “present.” On the collective level, Buber’s philosophy allows the lessening of international tension and the avoidance of oppression, colonialism, and xenophobia. It permits groups to work on constructive dialogue and mutual understanding, and to live a “spiritual” and inspiring world in the zwischen-sphere, the sphere of “between.”

The Spirit of Israel Buber himself applied his intersubjective dialogical thinking on the political level. In 1939, he lectured in Jerusalem on the theme “Der Geist Israels und die Welt von Heute.”37In this lecture, he dealt with the problem of Nazi Germany and with Germany’s narrow nationalism, which threatened the Jews. In Buber’s mind, the “spirit of Israel” reveals a quite different world. He contrasted the Germany of the 1930s with the spirit of Israel, yet he warned his audience that this spirit is not given once and for all – it is not a permanent possession of the People of Israel, but has to be acquired and realized continuously. The spirit of Israel is the spirit of realization (“Der Geist Israels ist ein Geist der Verwirklichung”).38 At the start of his lecture, Buber recalled the Jewish story about seventy angels who lead the seventy nations of the world. Each guiding angel represents his own nation before God. When the nations fight each other, the angels fight each other. Each angel has his own function and receives power from God in order to fulfill his specific task. The angels have to act responsibly and to fulfill 36 See Ephraim Meir, “The Contributions of Modern Thought to a Psychoanalytic Phenomenology of Groups,” in Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Science 19/4 (1996): 563–78. 37 Buber, “Der Geist Israels und die Welt von heute,” in ibid., An der Wende. Reden über das Judentum (Köln: Jakob Hegner, 1952), 13–33. 38 Ibid., 23.



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their duty towards the Lord. Buber noted that there are angels who forget who has given them the power. One might think, Buber continued, that the Jewish nation, too, has its own angel. Yet, this nation does not live under the yoke of an angel, but under the yoke of God himself. The primeval source of Israel is, therefore, not to be found in the plurality of the nations where the angels fight each other, but in the Lord of the world himself. In telling this story, Buber opposed the collective self of nations that do not live by the Truth, which is above the nations. This Truth has to be realized in a united mankind. More particularly, Buber criticized Nazi Germany, which had made itself into an idol. A nation, he wrote, can never be God Himself. A nation might isolate itself by creating a myth of the State and by justifying its collective egotism. In such a case, the State turns into something absolute, claiming to be a substitute for the highest authority. As I have noted, the spirit in I and Thou is what reigns between an “I” and a “you”; it is the living word of dialogue. In his speech of 1939, Buber applied his thinking regarding the spirit to the relationships between groups. In sound interaction between groups, one builds peace. The “spirit,” he maintained, has to be realized: Through dialogue, the world has to become one and united, not a conglomeration of different limbs that may wrongly think that they alone represent the entire body. “Unity” (Einheit) is another keyword in the article on Israel’s spirit. With the word “unity,” Buber does not think about a unity of some limited scope, but about the unity of all of mankind. The Jewish nation, as a nation with many faces, could admirably live “a life of unity and peace” (“ein Leben der Einheit und des Frieden”).39 Israel is called and is destined to become “a real people” (“ein wahres Volk”)40 – the “one people,” as is said in the afternoon prayer of the Sabbath. In this manner, it is called upon to fulfill a pioneering task of forming an authentic community that paves the way to a community of nations. In writing about Israel, Buber remained realistic: He was conscious that the Jewish nation often forgot its task. He even told his Jerusalem public – in rather harsh words – that the Jewish nation had not become an authentic nation that preceded the nations on their way to the realization of the truth. Notwithstanding this most critical note, Buber mentioned Hassidism as a movement that had built a fraternal society around the living reality of the one God. He further believed that the ingathering of the Jews in the Land constituted another possibility of realizing brotherhood. The lofty message of Israel shall not remain without realization, but neither shall there be mere realization without the higher vision of God’s Kingdom. 39 Ibid., 19. 40 Ibid., 20.

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 Dialogical Philosophy and Social Transformation

Narrow Nationalism and Communicative Openness Buber himself was cured of a narrow nationalism during World War I by Gustav Landauer, who prompted his friend, called the “KriegsBuber” (the war-Buber), to move from his patriotic, German nationalistic attitude and from his war metaphysics towards a more dialogical attitude.41Buber gradually renounced his glorification of Germany in favor of his philosophy of dialogue. I and Thou represented a milestone in Buber’s writing. He concentrated less on the problematic side of the human being than on the possibility of his orientation towards others. Whereas Jean-Paul Sartre characterized a relationship as the objectivization of the other and focused upon the problematic side of relationships, Buber developed a more positive approach. Sartre analyzed “le regard” as antagonistic and conflictual; Buber was fascinated by the “presence” through which one makes the other more present. Both thinkers aimed at freeing people from spiritual slavery. They protested against dehumanizing structures and wanted to bring the human being to real freedom, which Sartre perceived in the freedom of choice (leading in the best scenario to humanism), and Buber in the higher freedom of the relationship. For Buber, the essence of freedom lies in relating to others. The interpersonal relationship was analogous to the interrelation between a group and other groups. The relating collective self comes to full realization in making the other collective self real. Buber opposed possessive and destructive attitudes in favor of the constructive and welcoming approach of the other. Through the positive, outreaching relationship with other groups, these groups would be affirmed and recognized. Such an attitude would free one from an impasse in which real openness is no longer thinkable. Buber was less involved in analyzing situations in which groups relate to each other as enemies, because he wanted to lead his readers to an alternative vision. The communication of collective selves would be a real possibility, although he was realistic about the fact that this possibility was not often put into practice. Fundamental to the group would be mutual care and fraternity. True community, for Buber, is not the sum total of individuals. A real community is one of people caring for each other and one of mutual promotion. In this sense, the economic group, interested in the mere material structure of man, would not be a true community. The political group, occupied with defending self-interests, would lack the characteristics of a real community that has the aim of furthering

41 See Paul Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue: Martin Buber’s Transformation of German Social Thought (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 97–101.



Alternative Thinking  

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full human relationships. The aim of the group lies for Buber in the promotion of all its members and in its relationship to other communities. I do not think – as many do – that Buber’s dialogical thinking was limited to the realms of friendship and intersubjective proximity. Nevertheless, he highlighted that politics, economics, and the many institutions of society always have to be rooted in dialogical attitudes, without which real society is impossible. In theory and practice, Buber was concerned about the dialogical interaction between groups. He applied his insights into healthy relationships between subjects to what can happen between groups once they reach the mature level of real communication.

Alternative Thinking Buber’s dialogical thinking is an inspiring model for managing conflicts and achieving social reform. In his existential thinking, relationship does not make the I poorer, but enriches it. This is also true on the level of groups. The collective I becomes more human in its realization of the openness toward another collective I. In the relationship, “spirit” becomes concrete: The I becomes authentic in relation to the non-I. True, Buber did not adequately take into account the fact that nations play their own power game. But his ontological thought on meeting as “real living,”42 which is succinctly expressed in the saying “In the beginning is relation,” is a welcome correction of the Realpolitik that is often found without any link to what makes a human really human. Buber was one of the humanistic, pacifist, and social thinkers, as were Gustav Landauer and Hans Kohn (Buber’s biographer), who believed in the possibility of change in human beings. He was a utopist, concerned about the utopic realization of his vision. In this manner, he wanted economics, as “the abode of the will to profit,” and the state, as “the abode of the will to be powerful,” to share in the spirit that dwells among people.43 He did not believe strongly enough that structures could minimize the human being’s evil tendencies, but his anti-institutional, almost anarchist thinking leads us back to the deepest reality of the meeting that is man’s very destiny. People and nations who seek power and follow their interests constitute only one facet of reality; the other facet is the possibility of communication by which one counters the game of pure power and makes other people and other nations real.

42 Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, 11; Ich und Du, 15 (“Alles wirkliche Leben ist Begegnung”). 43 Ibid., 48–49; Ich und Du, 46.

Chapter 11 Interreligious Theology as a New Kind of Theology Listen to the truth from whoever says it. Maimonides’s Shemonah Peraqim

This penultimate chapter investigates the relationship between traditional theology, sciences of religion, philosophy of religion, contextual theology, comparative theology, and interreligious theology.

Classical Theology or Religious Studies? The title of this section presents a dilemma. Should we scholars objectively study religion with the help of various scientific disciplines? Or should we rather approach the cultural phenomenon of religion from within, elucidating the rationale of our own religions? Is theology (in Israel called Jewish philosophy) more than the sciences of religion? Has it an added value? From the outset, I would like to make it clear that the dilemma, formulated in this way, is a false one that results from an erroneous starting point. I deem that the question of choosing between either the sciences of religion or theology is problematic. It suggests that a choice been made between an external perspective on religion and the insider’s viewpoint. My position is rather that an objective, scientific approach to religion may be complemented by a more empathic, theological clarification of one’s own religion as the intellectual account of one’s faith. Vice versa, the theological insights that stem from the person who professes his belonging to a particular religion could benefit from a more external viewpoint. Acknowledgment does not contradict knowledge. The mutual relationship between the internal and the external perspective is made possible because religion itself as a cultural and social manifestation, as concretely lived and critically reflected upon, is sui generis and at the same time never separated from other human realities and cultural manifestations.1

1 See Falk Wagner, “Religion” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie. Band 28, ed. Gerhard Müller et al. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997), col. 537: Im Interesse einer nicht bloss prinzipiell-begrifflichen, gar dogmatisch und berufstheologisch verengten, sondern empirisch gehaltvollen Erfassung der faktisch gelebten Religion sind die Binnenperspektive ihrer religionstheologischen (Selbst)Beschreibung und die Aussenperspektive ihrer externen Beobachtung aufeinander zu beziehen.



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Different Tasks In as far as it is not a purely confessional theology defending a certain faith or creed in view of a particular religious community, academic theology as the study of a lived experience develops a critical regard for the religious phenomenon. On the other hand, an objective, descriptive study of religion without the concrete lived praxis of religious persons is a bloodless and pale reality. Theology talks about the unutterable and its meaning for concrete religious societies, and the sciences of religion limit themselves to the study of different aspects of what comes into expression culturally and socially in reaction to the ineffable. I do not think that theology as the critical reflection upon one’s own religion has any extra value when compared with the objective gaze of the sciences of religion, which have their own legitimacy. The science of religion has the advantage of describing religion as it is daily lived by people, and so avoids a “high church” approach. Theology entering into the inner experience of the believer is different from the science of religion in that it is more than purely descriptive: It works with transcendence and explains the behavior and thought of a religious community from within. Theology and the sciences of religion have different tasks, so that the question of a choice between them becomes irrelevant. Both are legitimate approaches and the fact that one may learn from the other helps prevent extreme standpoints in the study of religion. Theology refuses to trivialize religion and teaches us that appreciation is more than information. From the sciences of religion one may learn that religion is part of human life that is studied in a kaleidoscope of sciences. The sciences of religion do not analyze religious utterances in view of their truth, but as reflections of linguistic, psychological, sociological, cultural, or political realities. Scientific theories give information on what is, theology discusses the goal of all that is. The former is interested in what is, the latter in what could be and in what “is” beyond being. However, the sciences of religion as sciences of what is, do not form a metabasis eis allo genos in relation to theology. Theology as the rational reflection on religion that gives priority to a lived praxis differs from the sciences of religion as the complex of theories that do not search for ultimate meanings and truths. One “knows” differently in theology than in the sciences of religion. At any rate, with Kant’s subjective turn, theology is prevented from objectively “proving” the existence of God. A post-Kantian theology links God to man in his search for meaning. Religious sciences scientifically study religion with the help of scientific disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, or textual criticism. Classical theology focuses upon a beyond and the meaning of it in concrete religious communities.

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 Interreligious Theology as a New Kind of Theology

In a refined article, Perry Schmidt-Leukel pleads for two approaches in religious sciences: an atheistic approach and a religious approach.2 He adopts a “methodic agnosticism,” stating that both approaches should be conscious of their presuppositions and refrain from apodictic utterances. No approach should present itself as reaching absolute truth. In my view, Schmidt-Leukel’s position resembles Wilhelm Dilthey’s distinction between “explaining” (erklären) and “understanding” (verstehen). Of course, Dilthey reserved the last category for the human sciences, whereas the first category pertained to the positive sciences. A text such as the Bible or the Zohar, for instance, may be approached from an historical-philological point of view as well as from a religious point of view, in its religious relevance for today. The pure scientific inquiry should not be given up because of theology, just as confessional theology should not prevent one from working with empirical or historical knowledge. The combination of both disciplines prevents fundamentalism as well as scientific dogmatism. If theology is a mere function of the religious community, it loses its autonomic and academic character. It then becomes parasitic on an essentialist thinking. If, on the other hand, the sciences of religion obtain a monopolistic position, the relevance of religion for concrete communities becomes nil.

The Question of Secular Science The false dilemma in which one is obliged to adopt an external viewpoint or a perspective from within stems perhaps from the need to value or to devalue secular science. It could also stem from the desire to minimize the importance of confessional theology. From a traditional religious standpoint, secular, worldly science is often seen as a threat, as relativizing religion with its absolute claims and lacking respect for religion as the attempt to offer answers to ultimate existential questions. This suspicion of or frustrated feeling about a threat from the behavioral, social, historical, and cultural sciences is probably not without a basis. A psychologist could, for instance, qualify religion as a neurosis and put believers on the psychology sofa as people displaying obsessive behavior. In another domain, one could study the Bible purely from the philological, historical, and literary perspective and forget the actual value that believers attribute to it in daily life and upon which

2 Perry Schmidt-Leukel, „Der methodologische Agnostizismus und das Verhältnis der Religionswissenschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Theologie,” in Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift 29/1 (2012): 48–72.



Complementary Standpoints 

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they base their lives. I do not see any epistemological conflict. Theology and the sciences of religions are both valid ways of studying religion.

Complementary Standpoints Feelings that arise from the threat of theology from the point of view of the sciences of religion or from the threat of the sciences from the point of view of theology are lessened and do not even surface if one adopts from the beginning a plurality of standpoints. From a certain point of view, what happens in ashrams, synagogues, or mosques, is a theater. From the standpoint of those who are at home in these places, it is much more than theater. It is the experience of the depth dimension in life. Neither is faith, seen from the inside, a mere projection of subconscious needs. It is a spiritual event, an (re)orientation in life, an awareness of and sensibility to a transcendent mystery or Ultimate Reality. But is an inside view enough, and does it not also need an outside view, just as the outside view is incomplete without the insider’s understanding? Theology cannot thrive without the sciences of religion because religion is also a cultural manifestation. On the other hand, the sciences of religion need theological insights if they do not want to be reductive sciences. Theology grows out of the inner faith experience that resists pure objectivization. I use here the expression “inner faith experience” in the largest possible sense of the phrase, in order to guarantee necessary academic freedom. This does not prevent the description of experiences of the sublime in an objective way, as William James did. Such an objective account of the phenomenon of faith becomes highly relevant if one realizes how different people live their particular religion in a way that is often incomprehensible for the adherents of another religion. Thus, the sciences of religion could confront us with the fact that there is more than one way to live the Ultimate Reality. They are not searching for values, but they are not necessarily value-blind. They may even open one’s eyes to the values practiced by people who organize their lives around the ineffable in a way that essentially differs from a conventional-religious point of view. The sciences of religion is obliged to admit that religious experiences cannot be reduced to matters of fact, without taking into account the transcendent element, just as music cannot be reduced to an acoustic phenomenon. Theology could learn from the sciences of religion that the unique experience of the believer may be objectivized to a certain extent. Theology further has to be as critical as the sciences of religion and has to accept, for instance, that after Kant, “proofs” for God’s existence have become highly problematic.

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 Interreligious Theology as a New Kind of Theology

The Case of the Study of Hassidism The false dichotomy of theology or science of religion is revealed in the famous controversy between Gershom Scholem and Martin Buber. Scholem, who was the founder of the science of Kabbalah, sharply criticized Buber’s interpretation of Hassidism for not taking into account all the historical facts and Buber baffled Scholem by stating that he was not interested in history as such; his objective was to highlight the power of the Hassidic faith for today. Their perspectives were entirely different. Scholem was interested in historical scholarship, whereas Buber wanted to save the vitalizing element in Hassidism that cannot be based upon purely objective knowledge. They were both right. As Maurice Friedman wrote in his last book: In the conclusion that I wrote for the Leo Baeck Annual on the controversy between Scholem and Buber over the interpretation of Hassidism, I cited the well-known Talmudic dictum, “Every controversy that takes place for the sake of heaven will endure.” The controversy between Scholem and Buber will endure, I asserted, without, as so many such controversies do, the need to pronounce either Scholem or Buber right or wrong.3

Interreligious Theology Let me take the reader a step further into interreligious, dialogical, praxis- and process-oriented theology. Theology as the discipline of reasoning about faith, ritual, and spiritual practices may accept that many ways exist in order to reach a spiritual, illuminated life. In this case, confessional theology is prone to develop into interreligious theology that accepts plurality as a fact and as desirable, and is grounded in the dialogical praxis. Confessional theology is the reflection upon one’s own religion, while interreligious theology is the reflection on the conditions for a dialogue in which partners learn from each other and appreciate or criticize each other. Not only mutual enrichment, but also mutual change could be the result of the interreligious encounter. Interreligious theology is not a pluralistic theology or theology in the plural. It is not a no-man’s land.4 It is rather a novel way of relating to different religious groups in society and admitting that exclusivism, inclusivism, or tolerant pluralism are not enough. Interreligious theology does less work with official representatives of religious institutions – which 3 Friedman, My Friendship with Martin Buber (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2013), 77. For a more detailed description of the controversy, see 72–77. 4 Schmidt-Leukel, “Interkulturelle Theologie als interreligiöse Theologie,” in Evangelische Theo­ logie 71/1 (2011): 11 and 16.



Interreligious Theology 

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is frequently boring and without depth – than with learning in bookless moments from and with people who live and think differently. Rather than operating with a fixed content, interreligious theology is open and contextual. Since interreligious theology is contextual, truth is understood as resulting from true dialogue, as that which contributes to a concrete dialogue. It does not follow that everything is of equal value. On the contrary, there is an overarching value in interreligious dialogue and theology. The rare, but existant peaceful communication between people is perceived as normative. In the emerging new discipline of interreligious or dialogical theology, core commitments are not seen as limitations, but as criterion for distinctness that allows for communication. Bridging and translating are essential in interreligious theology. Interreligious theology deals with religious diversity and is part of the reflection upon communities in which multiculturality is lived. As such, this theology is contextual in that it works inductively with contexts that are also investigated in cultural studies. It takes lived religiosity in a particular context as a basis. It further operates so that theory influences the praxis, in that one searches for elements in the religious sources that could inspire dialogue with others. Interreligious theology could lead to restructuring positions and to a creative rereading and reimagining of traditions in view of social coherence and peaceful societies. As grounded in the dialogical praxis, this new kind of theology does not work “from above” with identities fixed once and for all, but “from below” with an analysis of concrete situations in which there are all kinds of belongings: One may more or less belong; there are partial, double, and multiple belongings. On the level of lived religiosity, total belonging also exists, but this belonging too is finally linked to a broader context in which the other challenges the I. Interreligious theology is therefore rooted in a praxis which influences the theoretical reflection. It presumes that other religious persons are not necessarily opposed and that they could be conceived as people belonging to “neighbor” religions. It presupposes that religious others can become significant others for one’s own theological self-understanding. Interreligious or dialogical theology works with categories connoting belonging and alienation, regeneration of communities, and a holistic attitude to the other. It is attentive to concrete situations that are theologically interpreted or motivated. Dialogical or interreligious theology as a reflection on the interreligious dialogue further implies dialogue between religion and secularity, religion and society. Both the model of a complete separation between religion and State as well as the model of complete fusion and confusion between religion and State are challenged by the pattern of religious inspiration in view of the promotion of justice and peace and the realization of social coherence. Moreover, interreligious theology does not see religion as solving all of the problems of society, because

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it is contextual. It is situated in a real situation that is both religious and nonreligious, and in which religions function either negatively or positively. It is characteristic of interreligious theology that it does not accept absolute and universalizing truth claims. It takes into account the necessity of respect for otherness that resists totalizing movements. One also deals with intrareligious otherness and with tensions between religions.5

Philosophy of Religion, Science of Religion, and Interreligious Theology Philosophy of religion, as a relatively young discipline in philosophy, comes close to the science of religion in that it studies religion from a detached, objective standpoint. This branch of philosophy that started in the eighteenth century has the advantage of working with clear concepts, definitions, and systems. However, not everything can be expressed in clear-cut concepts: The transcendent or the Ultimate Reality cannot be enclosed in the straightjacket of reason. Reason that is conscious of its limits could point to what is without limits, and the latter is discussed by theologians. In interreligious theology, one works with the sciences of religion as the objective study of religious data as well as with a normative element of dialogue: It is therefore not only on the cognitive level, but also on the level of recognition. As mentioned, Schmidt-Leukel rightly subdivided religious studies into sciences of religion and academic theology. He denies absolute truth claims both to sciences of religion and academic theology: Both have to be conscious of their own presuppositions.6 Like the philosophy of religion, the sciences of religion with their objective scientific methods do not start from the intimacy which is lived in religion and studied in the theologies of the various religions. In these theologies, the subjective standpoint is respected: One elucidates the mystery that is palpable in the life of a particular religious community. The sciences of religion may become alienated from religion as it is concretely lived. On the other hand, theology in comparison with the sciences of religion with its great respect for the lived experience, may become not enough critical.

5 As, for instance, in the case between non-vegetarian Tibetian Buddhism and vegetarian Hinduism. 6 Schmidt-Leukel, “Der methodologische Agnostizismus und das Verhältnis der Religionswissenschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Theologie.”



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Interreligious theology, which bases itself upon the living dialogue of and interaction between people of different cultures and religions, will have to take into account the objective perspective of the sciences of religion as well as the subjective perspective of the theologies of the religions of the world. Interreligious theology unites, whereas confessional theologies separate. Interreligious theology is based on the praxis of living dialogue, and investigates the incomparability and incommensurability of religions as well as the comparability between them: It creates bridges.

Contextual Interreligious Theology In his theories on religion and theology, Heinrich Schäfer developed a praxeological, contextual theology that presents itself as a critical reflection on the praxis of faith and approaches theology as a human praxis.7 Schäfer follows the sociological thought of Pierre Bourdieu and takes into account the human context in which religion functions. He does not want to forget that a standpoint from below has to be supplemented by a standpoint from on high.8 Nevertheless, his focus is on the actors in the field, on macro-contexts and the social functions of theology. His advocacy of a contextual, critical theology reckons with the contexts that explain religious behavior as well as faith utterances and theological reflections and theories. To my mind, one of the great insights of an approach such as the one developed by Schäfer is that theology can no longer consider itself unrelated to contexts and to other theologies. Since theology always functions in well-defined intra- and interreligious contexts, in a web of social relations, contextual theology shows the relativity of positions; it is prone to promote self-criticism and to stimulate creative interaction with others. More specifically, in the context of interreligious praxis and theory, consciousness of the always positional, particular situation of theology may lead to the conclusion that dialogue is not a luxury, but a necessity. 7 Heinrich Schäfer, Praxis - Theologie - Religion. Grundlinien einer Theologie- und Religionstheorie im Anschlus an Pierrre Bourdieu (Frankfurt am Main: Otto Lembeck, 2004). 8 Schäfer notes that liberal theology, as that of Adolph von Harnack, took into account the human historical situations in which Christian dogmata originated. According to this theology, one had to study the praxis and thought of human beings who related to the Bible and to tradition and to take into account non-theological factors in order to understand theology. Schäfer further notes that in reaction to a liberal, historicist approach that absorbed religion into culture and neutralized the sharpness of the religious message, Karl Barth developed a theology from above, starting with revelation that interrupts human’s lives, and Rudolf Bultmann defended the not-absorbable “scandal” of faith.

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What I retain from Schäfer’s theories is that theology, as a human praxis, may contribute to dialogue and may recognize that other theologies originate in other contexts, which could lead, in a best-case scenario, to a much needed humility in religiosis and to an attitude of interrelatedness.

Interreligious Theology and Comparative Theology On the basis of the preceding, one has to conclude that all theologies are always to be seen in their local context and, as such, they are all different, coming out of diverse situations. Of course one theology may have common traits with other theologies,9 but they all have their specific traits and their specific Sitz im Leben. A distinction has to be made – interreligious theology is not comparative theology. Whereas comparative theology objectively describes different religious thought-systems and cults and compares between them, interreligious theology aims to promote interaction between different religions and to stimulate open dialogical learning, with all that this implies in terms of self-criticism and criticism of the other. Comparative theology describes religious phenomena and compares between them. Interreligious theology studies religious ideas, doctrines, rituals, etc., with the explicit aim of gaining theological insights. It compares with the aim of finding theological truth,10 but also with the aim of real coexistence. It is a new way of doing theology, that takes into account the variety of religions, each one of which is only one color in a multicolored tapestry. It is attracted to the great light of the Ultimate Reality, but does not forget the multiplicity of its reflexion in the different religions. For interreligious theology, recognition of the non-comparable other and respect and openness to the diversity and uniqueness of religious experiences is a conditio sina qua non.

Translating The art of translation is essential in interreligious theology, as the sublime possibility of formulating one’s own words in terms of the other and of formulating

9 Hans Küng is attentive to what is common in all religions. See his Projekt Weltethos (Munich, 1990). 10 Schmidt-Leukel, “Interkulturelle Theologie als interreligiöse Theologie,” in Evangelische Theo­ logie 71/1 (2011): 13.



Particular or Universal Pluralism? 

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the other’s words and conceptions in terms of the own.11 For example, Prof. Anantanand Rambachan, in a public interreligious dialogue in Hamburg on June 27, 2013, entered into the world of the Jewish Bible, wishing that the tent of Abraham would be stretched to non-Abrahamic religions. Translating as a form of communication is not always easy. In the case of a Hindu woman in London, for instance, who presented her understanding of the One God (ekam sat) as including all religions, adherents of non-Hindu religions felt threatened. Where was the respect for diversity in the different ways of approaching the One God? The woman in question had not foreseen that her theological utterance could be perceived as a lack of respect for the other’s specificity.

Particular or Universal Pluralism? In his article which will appear in a collection dedicated to Alan Race’s pluralistic thoughts, Perry Schmidt-Leukel states that Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism all have exclusivist or inclusivist superiority claims.12 Pluralists will find in their respective traditions some continuity, but they will also have to be critical of their traditions. Pluralism is only possible as a specific, particular pluralism: Jewish pluralism, Hindu pluralism, and so on. In his article, Schmidt-Leukel further maintains that the point of departure of Abrahamic religions is further removed from the pluralist goal than the mentioned Eastern religions. But in terms of the point of destination, they move more forcefully towards the pluralist goal. Schmidt-Leukel’s remarks are certainly useful for all those who want to give their pluralist position some plausibility and who desire to change their traditions from within. Yet, I am not sure that pluralism has to be specific and not universal. I deem that just as science of religion and confessional theology do not contradict each other, specific and universal pluralism do not have to exclude each other. I doubt that equality between religions can only be striven for in the various confessional frameworks. I agree with Schmidt-Leukel that traditions are different and that they will have to be changed from within. All religious thinking

11 See Schmidt-Leukel’s article on revelation and Buddha, in which he extends revelation to Buddhism. Schmidt-Leukel, “Buddha Mind – Christ Mind: A Christian Commentary on Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra (Christian Commentaries on Non-Christian Sacred Texts) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming). 12 The title of the article is “Pluralist Approaches in some Major Non-Christian Religions,” in Twenty-First Century Theologies of Religions: Retrospection and New Frontiers, eds. Elizabeth Harris, Paul Hedges, and Shanthikumar Hettiarachi (Amsterdam: Rodopi, forthcoming).

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is contextual. But my point is that internal changes in traditions will take place as a response to the encounter with people who live and think differently. It is not a change from within that comes first; what comes first is rather the positive shock of a confrontation with a challenge from outside that brings about criticism towards what is inside. The outer comes first and is the occasion for inner change. Plurality is less the result of embroadening one’s own horizon; it is foremost one’s own perspective that is suddenly opened up by others. We are all linked to each other in our specificity, but the interconnectedness or the mutual entanglement requires self-criticism and going beyond the classical confessional boundaries.13 My point is that one does not work in interreligious theology from a confessional point of view that is subsequently relativized given the plurality of points of view; it is rather an emerging field of research in which “in the beginning there is dialogue,” which necessarily colors one’s own particular point of view. Interreligious theology as a new way of doing theology surmises a relational identity in which the “between”-space is essential and which is constituted by the other who challenges and changes the I. It presupposes a consciousness, based upon real encounters, that identities are not invariable, established once and for all, but that they are open-ended and mutually shaped.14 I made it clear that confessional theologies that reflect on plurality are different from interreligious theologies that are also constructed from within a particular context, but with clear consciousness of the relativity of one’s own standpoint, given the mosaic of standpoints. Interreligious theology differs from confessional theology that enlarges its horizons, in that it is theology in the broadest sense of the word. It is a dialogical reflection on religions from within a particular context, 13 My position is therefore different from that of Schmidt-Leukel. A fortiori it differs from that of Reinhold Bernhardt, who maintains – against Schmidt-Leukel – that confessional theologies do not have to be subsumed under interreligious theology. For Bernhardt, interreligious theology has a place within confessional theology. In his view, confessional theologies will develop interreligious perspectives: confessional theology is the center, interreligious theology the horizon. Reinhold Bernhardt, “Theologie zwischen Bekenntnisbindung und universalen Horizont,” in Interreligiöse Theologie. Chancen und Probleme, 47–48 and 62. 14 In his article on interreligious theology as theory of communication, Ulrich Dehn describes interreligious theology as working with differences in view, with religious particularity and interreligious universality. He recalls the famous elephant-story in Buddhism and Jainism. In the Jain story, a wise man explains to the blind men who touch the elephant, that they only grasped parts of the elephant and that, therefore, they possess only a partial truth. Consequently, all are right. In one of the sufi versions of the Jain elephant-story, told by Sama’i of Ghazna (who died in 1131), the blind people represent the human beings who have incomplete knowledge of God. Dehn concludes that interreligious theology, in terms of the elephant story, is open to universality and supposes open communication. Dehn, “Interreligiöse Theologie als religiöse Kommunikationstheorie,” in Interreligiöse Theologie. Chancen Theologie. Chancen und Probleme, 113–27.



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that acknowledges the limitedness of one’s own point of view and is in need of dialogue with other perspectives on the Higher Reality. In the praxis of interreligious dialogue, upon which interreligious theology is based, particularity and universality do not contradict. One thinks from one’s own context, but always in relation to others: One’s own context is altered from the beginning, given the encounters that perpetually take place. It is because we were frequently thinking with concepts of identity, seen as pure and untouched by others, that dialogical theology, necessarily and ab initio rupturing one’s own theological view, is such a revolutionary new thought. The interreligious dialogue is only part of the broader intercultural dialogue in our increasingly globalized world. From the perspective of dialogical philosophy, dialogue supposes the encounter of partners with specific and unique point of views and lifestyles. In a real conversation, the partners are mutually transformed. On the level of interreligious dialogue as well, a radical change will be brought about once one becomes conscious that one meets people who have their own path to the Ultimate Reality. Most religions have a regrettable tradition of exclusivity, superiority, and rivalry. Openness without a priori, with eagerness to learn from the other, is part of a faithfulness not first of all to a confessional past, but to a future mutual transformation and to interreligious interaction. Interactive dialogue and interreligious theology will always be the result of an encounter between specific human beings within specific cultural frameworks. Yet, the real miracle that may occur lies in “transdifferent” encounters that radically change people. The pluralism or, better, the interreligiosity that I envision is therefore a universal one that does not forget the particular background and context of the interreligious theologian. It is the interhuman meeting that brings about criticism of one’s own tradition and the search for elements in one’s own tradition that could contribute not only to a liberal pluralism, but to the more elevated goals of an interreligious dialogue and theology.

Education and Anti-Bias Interreligious dialogue and theology presuppose education. In our religious communities we frequently make hierarchies: We are on the top of the pyramid, the others have not (yet) reached our level, so they are less. However, the adoption of an anti-hierarchical attitude is necessary for a successful dialogical praxis and theology. In other words, there is the necessity of an openness to alterity, where others are equal to us and legitimately organize their lives around the Ultimate Reality.

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Deviant behaviors in one’s own religion or outside one’s own religion are frequently condemned and seen as threatening the unity of the community. In our Israeli society, for instance, there are many people who do not perform “all” the commandments in the religious sphere, neither do they do “nothing”; they are doing “something” and this has to be appreciated by people whose lifestyle is eminently religious or eminently secular. A pluralization is much needed in our polarized and polarizing society. Such a pluralization is not the result of a degree of tolerance, but of a genuine dialogical attitude in which the other is not discriminated against or – worse – demonized. One has to start from the assumption that all belong, in one way or another. We often discriminate without being conscious of it, because we have inherited existing negative attitudes towards others. There are also acquired collective negative attitudes towards others, which make it difficult not to be biased. An anti-biased attitude will grow as a result of education that celebrates plurality as essential in our society: We are one, in great plurality. This fundamental feeling will eschew a superior, preaching, admonishing, or angry attitude towards religious or secular “others.” Distinctions will be welcome in as far as they are not discriminating. Distinguishing between people is good on condition that bridging remains possible. It is in this perspective that education in view of a world with diversity as well as unity is needed in order to start to develop intraand interreligious dialogues that will be the basis for a transdifferent, dialogical theology.

Chapter 12 Beyond the Boundaries Interreligious theology should never forget that uniqueness is always beyond comparison. Religions maintain that they are unique to the point that people of other religions barely understand what is lived in their particular community. A certain untranslatability remains in every religion. But religions are part of our common world and communication is possible and necessary, beyond the boundaries of one’s own religion. If all religions are linked to each other as attempts to come near to the Ultimate Reality, as one presumes in interreligious theology, they become comparable, without necessarily losing their uniqueness. Every religion remains a unique phenomenon and could learn from other religions. In this learning process and in the living dialogue with others, one searches for truth that is realized. The religious experiences of the one may fertilize and even change the experiences of the other. Interreligious theology is, as Wilfred Cantwell Smith wrote, Buddhist “plus,” Christian “plus,” etc.1 In my case, it is Jewish “plus” in that it takes into account other worldviews that are potentially relevant for Judaism. Without the praxis of dialogue, interreligious theology is doomed to remain a mere theoretical construct. This last chapter offers therefore four interreligious dialogues as examples of dialogical theology in laboratory.

Interreligious Dialogues In the Hamburg-based Academy of World Religions, I had the occasion to conduct a series of interreligious dialogues. The two first dialogues were conducted with a Hindu professor and a Muslim professor. They took place on June 22, 2013 in the framework of a seminar on “Jewish Building Stones for an Interreligious Theology” for MA students in religion and dialogue. I deem such interreligious dialogues important, since interreligious theology without these dialogues would be like a flower in a vase or, worse, preserved in a book, cut from the field in which it grows. 1. In a joint session in the Academy of World Religions, Prof. Anantanand Rambachan and I discussed a Veda text and entered into an interreligious dialogue. This first dialogue was conducted in English. The studied text reads as follows:2 1 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Towards a World Theology: Faith and the Comparative History of Religion (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981), 125. 2 Barend A. van Nooten and Gary B. Holland, eds., The Rig Veda: Metrically Restored Text (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994).

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Speech hath been measured out in four divisions. The Wise who have understanding know them. Three kept in close concealment cause no motion; Of speech men only speak the fourth division. They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni and he is The noble-winged Garutman. The One Being, the wise call by many names: They call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan.”3

Anant explained that, according to the text, we do not speak three quarters of possible languages, we speak only one quarter. The wise (vipraha) understand. The fact that we are able to access only one quarter of potential languages points to our limitedness in talking about the unutterable, the inexpressible. God exceeds our speech potential. I responded by pointing to a parallel perception in the Jewish tradition: God’s name is ineffable, for He is ungraspable for the human mind. We then entered into some considerations on the limitation of language. Wittgenstein’s last sentence in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent,” was recalled. In a parallel way, Anant recalled a tale in which a famous Hindu teacher was teaching: His students wanted to hear him, but all they heard was total silence. It was noted that descriptive language is only one kind of language, that there are different ways of speaking, different language games, which all have their own legitimacy. We then both entered into the question of different narratives about God. Anant opposed the explanation of the Veda text under consideration that all narratives are the same: He did not accept the explanation that every narrative is relative.4 I reinforced this idea by explaining the notion I use in interreligious dialogue and theology: “trans-difference.” This notion implies understanding and communication, without giving up one’s particularity and one’s own narrative.

3 For a detailed discussion of this RgVeda text (1.164.46), “Ekam sat vipraha bahuda vadanti” (The One Being the wise call by many names), in view of the development of an inclusive thinking and an affirmation of the validity of other religions by recognizing one God, without minimizing differences of religious traditions, see Anantanand Rambachan, “’The One Being the Wise Call by Many Names’. The Implications of a Vedic Text for Relationships between Hinduism and Other Religions,” in Hermeneutical Explorations in Dialogue: Essays in Honour of Hans Ucko, eds. Anantanand Rambachan, A. Rishied Omar and M.Thomas Thangaraj (Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2007), 81-88. 4 On the practical level of religious identities enacted, such an all-inclusive interpretation could be understood as threatening, absorbing one’s specificity in an unwanted general category in an attempt to bring all the religions under one umbrella in a relativism that does not respect the uniqueness of each religion. One’s personal contextual background and concrete spiritual horizons should never be forgotten.



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We both refuted the idea that God is of importance, whereas all the differences in speech about Him would be mere semantics. All is not the same, and differences remain different. We also touched upon the problem of violent narratives that lead to inequality and injustice. Anant noted that diversity stems from the fact that language is limited. I noted that differences remain in “trans-difference” which – as communication with respect to differences –, becomes possible because there is something transcendent in all our religious narratives. This transcendence makes possible a plurality of narratives as well as interaction between narratives in view of creating understanding and peace. Anant noted that the “one God” (ekam sat) in the Veda text was a general name, above all specific names. I referred to the title of John Hick’s book God has Many Names and to the interrelatedness of all religions. Before I pray my Jewish prayer in Israel, I hear the voice coming from a nearby minaret. Trans-difference does not abolish differences between people; in transdifferent dialogue and theology, however, I am necessarily linked to the other. Studying a Veda text with Anant made it clear to me that, in his interpretation, the worship of different representations of one God is not polytheistic at all, and that the one God (ekam sat), present everywhere, is approached in different ways. One could compare this position with some Jewish panentheistic views.5 I found the living and lively dialogue with Anant enlightening: We touched upon elements of each other’s traditions and upon philosophical-theological insights outside our own traditions.6 A meeting took place.7 5 Such as the text of Isaiah 6:3: “The earth is full of His glory.” See Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “Encountering Hinduism, Thinking Through Avodah Zarah,” in Jewish Theology and World Religions, 272. 6 In private conversations, we discussed other themes such as the recognition and misrecognition of the other in religions, religion and human rights, as well as religion and nationalism as global phenomena, with examples in Sri Lanka, Israel, India, Myanmar, and the USA. A text of the Bhagavadgita (Chapter 7: 16–17) shows interesting parallels between Jewish rabbinic thought on doing things “lishma” and not-“lishma” and Hindu thought. The text states as follows: “Four kinds of virtuous persons worship Me, the person in distress, the person desirous of wealth and power, the seeker of knowledge, and the wise. Of these, the wise person, constantly united with and devoted, excels. I am dear to the wise and the wise is dear to Me.” Also in Jewish thought, worshippers of God are all good, nobody is condemned (in the Hindu understanding, there is equal worth of all because God is the same in all beings), but there is a difference between those who see God functionally (not lishma) and those who worship God for His intrinsic value (lishma). 7 The well-known Israeli Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz does not consider Hinduism as polytheistic, but as compatible with the Noahide laws that are the minimum request of Jews towards non-Jews. Alon Goshen-Gottstein comments that Steinsaltz focuses on theology rather than on worship and ritual and that in the vedantic view itself, lower forms of understanding and practice are accepted, since dharma as teaching and practice of what a Hindu has to do, steadily declines. He

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2. A second dialogue at the Academy of World Religions, this time in German, took place between Iranian Prof. Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari and myself. We met informally before we entered into dialogue with each other before our public. We talked about our theological standpoints and discussed the political tension between Iran and Israel. I expressed the Israeli fear of the atomic program in Iran and of the fanatic utterances of Ahmadinejad , hoping that the transparence in the nuclear program promised by Iran’s new president Hassan Rohani would be fully implemented. Shabestari clearly distanced himself from Ahmadinejad’s fanatical utterances and we both hoped for less tensions and a better future for both of our peoples. In the spirit of interreligious dialogue, I quoted Pirqe Avot (4:14): “Rabbi Yochanan ha-Sandlar said: Every assembly that is for the sake of Heaven will in the end endure.” Stepping out of the elevator, Shabestari said to me: “You are the first.” “That is true,” I replied, “but only chronologically.” In our dialogue before fourteen students studying dialogical theology and some other guests, I explained my view on interreligious dialogue and theology. I told the public that, in dialogue with Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, A. J. Heschel, and E. Levinas, I outline a novel conception of a selfhood that is concludes that there is a certain patience in Hinduism itself and that Hinduism is “compromised monotheism, and as such is valid.” Ibid., 289–90 and 295. I am not entering here into a halakhic discussion of the relationship with Hinduism. I rather philosophically focus upon dialogue with the non-I that constitutes the condition itself for what Buber calls the creation of “I-Thou.” My attention goes to a dialogue between religions that promotes inter-culturality and avoids violence. Consequently, I am opposed to all kinds of violence as expressed by the oppression of others, in sati (burning of widows together with their dead husbands; the practice was legally abolished in the nineteenth century) or in the patrilinear caste system (which is rapidly changing, because of people’s improved education, which provides them with equality and dignity). See ibid., 294 and A. Rambachan, “Is Caste Intrinsic to Hinduism?” in Tikkun Jan. 1 (2008): 59–61. Rambachan’s opposition to the caste system is based inter alia on a theological utterance guaranteeing the equal worth of all, to be found in the Bhagavadgita: “God is the same in all beings” (5:19). For a description of Hindu-Jewish encounters, see Barbara A. Holdrege, “Hindu-Jewish Encounters,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Inter-Religious Dialogue, ed. Catherine Cornille, 410–37. Holdrege refers i.a. to the article of Yudit Greenberg Kornberg, “Hindu-Jewish Summits (2007–2008): A Postmodern Religious Encounter,” in Interreligious Insight 7/1 (2009), 26–39. A comparative historian of religion, Holdrege aptly characterizes the Hindu and Jewish communities as “embodied communities,” with modes of bodily practice such as purity codes, sexual disciplines, and dietary laws. “Through these regimens of bodily practice, the biological bodies of those whose ascribed identity is Jewish or Hindu, by virtue of birth into a community that defines itself in terms of blood descent, are reconstituted as ‘religiously informed bodies’ that are inscribed with the socio-religious taxonomies of their respective communities” (425). Holdrege remarks that Hindu and Jewish traditions are not missionary, and they have Scriptures (Veda and Torah) and dietary laws. Rituals, practices, and purity laws (dharmic injunctions and halakha), language (Sanskrit and Hebrew), people and land are important in both religions.



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grounded in dialogical thought and offer a new view on identity focused on the concepts of self-transcendence, self-difference, and trans-difference. The process of the self which confirms the other is called the process of “self-transcendence.” “Self-difference” is the crown upon the I; it is the result of a dialogical life, a life of passing to the other. The other makes the self different, and the self also differentiates him- or herself from the other. Between the self and the other, the sublime reality of “trans-difference” becomes possible. I presented my standpoint’s repercussions on the religious level as a new way of doing theology, based upon insights into the essence of dialogue. Shabestari replied that he agreed with my concept of trans-difference. He asked if Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed did not also have an interreligious relation to others. The recognition of one God, la-ilaha-illallah, implies that one relates to others and that one does not exclude (ausgrenzen). I confirmed the idea and stated that Moses, Jesus, or Mohammed would be very surprised if they were characterized as “founders” of a new religion. All three acted according to a Law that limits human spontaneity. Shabestari stated that Islam emerged with the Quran. He then emphasized that the Quran is a product of the human mind8 and that there are many interpretations of it, including a traditional-theological and a mystical one. He strongly advised the students to study philosophy of language. One further needed a hermeneutics that takes the other into account. I confirmed that building a dialogical hermeneutics is one of the most urgent tasks in the construction of an interreligious theology. An Afghani student asked if one cannot be mystically absorbed in God. Shabestari responded that if one sees himself as a part of God, this is a problem. I added that his viewpoint is almost a quotation from I and Thou, where Buber comes into dialogue with somebody who asks if the I is not erased in the mystical union. Buber answered that he only knows about I and Thou, about duality.9 Buber could not imagine a relation with God without a relation to human beings. We further reflected upon the meaning of emuna or iman, which is not religion or faith, but trust, an existential attitude. Finally, I pointed to the fact that Arabic-speaking Jews sometimes referred to Moses as rasul Allah (the prophet of

8 For this idea, he referred to Fred M. Donner and Joseph van Ess. 9 I agree with Buber that dialogue between I and thou is the most elevated form of human life. It leads to meeting (Beziehung) and encounter (Begegnung). In my view, however, unitive, non-dualistic views as present in Hinduism and Buddhism are also legitimate.

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Allah), to the Bible as Quran, and to halakha as sharia.10 Interrelatedness was seen by both of us as a necessity.11 3. A third dialogue, also conducted in German, took place with the Buddhist nun Dr. Carola Roloff, on July 3, 2013. I started our conversation mentioning that there is a lively interest in Buddhism, certainly among young Israelis, who search for spirituality and who find in the Buddhist worldview and in the praxis of meditation a complementary viewpoint or even a kind of therapy for their rather hectic daily life. The virtue of mercy is common to Buddhism and Judaism: It is called karuṇā in Buddhism and rahamim in Judaism. In the best of Jewish tradition, the self is further made relative or reoriented towards the other and in this sense one comes close to Buddhist anatmā (Pāli anattā), the non-self or even to its exchange between the self and the other, in which the boundaries between both become fluid. Finally, with their longstanding history of suffering, Jews became interested in alternative ways of dealing with suffering. They left a traditional theodicy in favor of a suffering God, a God with pathos, who is concerned with mankind with which he started an adventure that does not necessarily have a happy ending. Levinas, for instance, maintained that the classical theodicy became bankrupt with the Shoah, since human suffering is not to be justified. In a parallel way, Hans Jonas developed the idea that God withdrew and that through his contraction, the entire responsibility falls upon the human being. Buddhism is not interested in God, but it is a wise way of coming to terms with suffering. Carola answered that, indeed, for Buddhism, everything conditioned is associated with suffering, even the good deeds, as long as the person is not a saint, and that Buddhism itself is a way out of suffering. This may have led to the widespread outsider’s view that Buddhism teaches a pessimistic world view. But actually, she said, Tibetan Buddhists, for example, are happy people. They are happy, and Tibetan Lamas at the beginning of every teaching stress that all sentient beings want happiness and not suffering. She mentioned that in Buddhism there is also the affectionate, lovely inclination to the other (maitri). While karuṇā is explained as the wish to liberate others from suffering, maitri is loving kindness; in meditation one strengthens the wish to give happiness to oneself and others. In tonglen meditation, one inhales in order to take upon oneself the suffering and the causes of suffering of others, and one exhales in order to give them one’s own 10 Paul B. Fenton, “The Banished Brother: Islam in Jewish Thought and Faith,” in Jewish Theology and World Religions, 247. 11 In interrelatedness, people learn from the other. Maimonides’ son Abraham, for instance, in his “Complete Guide for the Servants of God” stated that Sufis in their practices imitate the prophets and follow in their footsteps: They observe ancient practices that have ceased to be practiced by Jews and Jews may learn from these “wonderful traditions” (Fenton, 248).



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happiness and one’s own positive karma, which Buddhists believe is the cause of happiness. This is a form of exchanging oneself with others. I responded that there is a saying that shared happiness is double happiness and that also Judaism wants to diminish suffering in the world. However, there is also a consciousness that responsibility is interwoven with suffering that accompanies the task of bearing others, like a father who bears his child in the desert (comp. Deut.1:31). I added that the idea of the Messiah culminated in Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, who bears the wounds and suffering of others. We touched upon the open wound of the Shoah and I mentioned that for us, Jews, memory is important, whereas in Buddhism the here and now is important. Carola confirmed that in Buddhism, the past is gone and the future has not yet come and therefore the present moment, living in mindfulness, is decisive. In mindfulness (Achtsamkeit) one karmically decides the future. She recalled a film in which Buddhist nuns who were tortured in China thought that nothing bad could happen to them when there was no karmic cause from their side as well. So as a Buddhist one always tries to see the main cause of suffering on one’s own side and not to blame the other, which does not mean that social injustice should be accepted. I reacted that the victims were innocent in the Shoah. Carola confessed that one of the reasons she came to Buddhism was that she could not combine the concept of a good God with suffering, while in a radio interview a person expressed reservation toward the concept of karma, giving the example of the suffering of an innocent child. She explained that from a Buddhist’s point of view nobody is born with an empty CD: There are innate and acquired faculties. The innate faculties are believed to be shaped by deeds in past lives. Karma is not seen as a penalty, but as a law of nature. It can also work positively. It is good that there is no negative karma that cannot be purified by sincere regret and redemption. In the “four noble truths” it says that there is suffering in life and that there is a way out of it. Suffering indicates that something is contaminated by greed, hatred, and delusion. But suffering also contains an opportunity in Carola’s view: If someone is aggressive, one has the chance to be patient. Mental strength and the ability to bear suffering can only be further developed if one has to master challenges. She told the story of a mother who kept her dead child in her arms and could not detach herself from the child. The mother asked the Buddha for medicine to revive her child’s life. The Buddha said to her, “Request mustard seeds from people in whose house there had been no death.” The woman then realized that such a house does not exist and that she had to release the child and accept the situation as it is. In a remarkably dialogical way, Carola quoted from Buber’s I and Thou, in which I as I-you does not experience (erfahren): One stays in the relationship and the I becomes I through a you. For her, there is an exchange between I and you.

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I maintained that the separation between both remains, for there is duality, but also orientation from the I to the you. Carola said that, in Mahāyāna-Buddhism, all sentient beings have in them the Buddha-nature or, comparably, in Theravāda the potential to become enlightened. Another direction in Buddhism explains the Buddha-nature not as impermanent potential, but stresses that everybody merely has a permanent kind of Buddha nature, which is hidden and needs to be unveiled through one’s own practice (I associated this unveiling of the Buddha-nature with the realization of Buber’s “der ganze Mensch”). She then reflected upon “mind-continuum” and how mind gets separated from the body with death. With a new body comes consciousness and the five senses, but in addition Buddhism speaks about the sixth kind of consciousness, subtle consciousness, which continues to exist after death and becomes connected with a new body until enlightenment. Enlightenment is arrived at when failures are left out and when the good is realized. We then studied a classical text of Mahayana Buddhism written by Nāgārjuna (second century).12 Here is the first paragraph of the eighteenth chapter: If the self were the aggregates, It would have arising and ceasing (as properties) If it were different from the aggregates, It would not have the characteristics of the aggregates.

Carola explained that the aggregates refer to five aggregates which can be divided mainly into body and mind. What about these aggregates? Are they like parts of a car? Are the parts the car? And is there a self without the parts, is there a separated self, a parts-possessor? Are body (a) and mind (b) apart (two I’s) or together? According to the Buddhist view they are interdependent. The I exists only nominally, in dependence upon its aggregates, but not independently or inherently. Mystics, she added, think about emptiness (śūnyatā), emptiness of independent, inherent existence. This does not mean that the I does not exist. This would be a nihilistic view and would make Buddhist ethics needless. The dependent I exists, while the independent I does not exist. Buddhists speak about two truths, conventional truth and ultimate truth. Dualistic appearance is conventional or relative, like an illusion. Emptiness of an inherent or intrinsic nature is the ultimate

12 Nāgārjuna,The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, trans. and with commentary by Jay L. Garfield (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 48–49.



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truth. Only a Buddha can apprehend both truths within and outside of meditation. They are not different entities.13 We then read some passages of Śāntideva (eight century): The Bodhisattva Path.14 For instance: At first one should meditate intently on the equality of oneself and others as follows: ‘All equally experience suffering and happiness. I should look after them as I do myself (90); Just as the body, with its many parts from division into hands and other limbs, should be protected as a single entity, so too should this entire world, which is divided, but undivided in its nature to suffer and be happy (91); Even though suffering in me does not cause distress in the bodies of others, I should nevertheless find their suffering intolerable because of the affection I have for myself (92).

I commented that Rabbi Aryeh Levin went to the doctor with his wife whose leg hurt, and said: “Our leg hurts.” I further recalled the mutual bound of people in Hassidic communities in which the suffering of one Hassid is felt by all the others. We concluded our reading with two other sayings15: “All those who suffer in the world do so because of their desire for their own happiness. All those happy in the world are so because of their desire for the happiness of others” (129); “Why say more? Observe this distinction: between the fool who longs for his own advantage and the sage who acts for the advantage of others…” (130). False perception of the self causes suffering. It comes from lack of knowledge. We talked about non-violence (ahimsā). Dependent arising of all phenomena, of everything that exists, its interdependent existence, as discussed previously (pratītya-samutpāda), and non-violence are considered to be the two main pillars of the Buddhist doctrine. According to Tibetan Buddhist interpretation, Buddhist ethical discipline, which for lay people consists of the observance of five rules, means to refrain from harming others’ life, property, relationships, or interests. The first of the five rules is that one shall not kill. I explained the commandment “lo tirtsah” as “thou shalt not murder.” From a Jewish perspective, killing

13 In a later correspondence with Carola Roloff, she further explained these two truths as seen by a Buddha, according to the thoughts of some leading Buddhist philosophers like Tsongkhapa (1357–1419). I compared a Buddha’s recognition of the two truths as different, but as being one with Maimonides’s thought. He distinguished between “truth” as the average Jew understands it and the higher truth, which is for the few, philosophically educated people, who have reached a high spiritual level. These truths are different and both are important, belonging, so to speak, to what we would call today along with Wittgenstein “language games.” 14 William Edelglass and Jay L. Garfield, Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 397. 15 Ibid., 398.

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cannot be done in good conscience, but it can be done in self-defense. Carola answered that killing, also with a good aim, has karmic potential: Without the will to kill it is impossible to kill. She then explained that a minister of religion in Tibet was a monk, but renounced his precepts during the Chinese invasion in order to participate in guerilla activities so that he could help to save the Dalai Lama’s life. He could have become a monk again afterwards, since by renouncing his precepts he was no longer bound by the precept of not killing. Knowing that due to the extraordinary circumstances he could not or did not want to keep that precept, he solved that inner conflict by renouncing the commitment to consciously refrain from killing. However, he received the trust of his people who made him minister. Carola herself, a Buddhist nun, would refuse to be in the army, but in Germany during her time there was no compulsory military service for a young woman anyway, and she had not been a Buddhist then. As a Protestant she engaged in a year of voluntary social service. In our continued conversation, we came back to Buber’s I-you. Carola explained that the inherent I has to be left out of Buddhist philosophical considerations; there is no independent self. Awakening (bodhi) follows. Bodhicitta is a state of mind, the wish to attain enlightenment for the benefit of others. All Buddhists want to attain enlightenment, but you can strive for it on your own or develop the attitude to attain enlightenment in order to be able to liberate others from suffering by showing them the way to enlightenment. Bodhicitta is based on equanimity (Gleichmut). This equanimity, she noted, is not indifference (Gleich­ gültigkeit), but proximity to all, because of the equality between the self and the other. In this context, I discussed the problem of Socrates’ “know yourself” (gnoti seauton) as well as Levinas’s non-identical identity, speaking about his view of the I as “hineni,” I am the one-for-the-other. In Buber’s perspective, once one develops an I-you attitude, one does not see borders between the I and the you any longer, although in Buber’s thinking a difference remains. 4. A last interreligious dialogue took place with Prof. Wolfram Weiße the day after my dialogue with Carola Roloff. The session started with some questions and remarks from the students, to which we responded. Wolfram gave a historical analysis of Christianity, with an accent upon anti-dialogical events like the crusades. It was recalled that the first crusade started in 1095, under Pope Urbanus II. The crusade aimed to reconquer the Holy Land, to vanquish the Muslims, and to conquer Jerusalem, the holy city of Christ. On this and other occasions Jews in Europe were massacred. People waged war and led pogroms with crosses on their breast. At the end of his sad survey, Wolfram mentioned the horror of the Shoah. I then quoted Raul Hilberg, who in his The Destruction of the European Jews distinguished between three stages in anti-Judaism: first, Jews are accused of having the wrong religion, afterwards, they are put in ghettos, apart from others, and finally



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they are murdered because they are denied the right of existence. I claimed that anti-Semitism in WWII was impossible without previous centuries-long Christian anti-Judaism. I referred to Christoph Browning’s analysis of Police Reserve Battalion 101 in Hamburg, disagreeing with his conclusion that anyone could have performed the evil which these “regular men” perpetrated. I claimed that the perpetrators of the Shoah aimed to massacre Jews and were impregnated by anti-Semitism. I then linked the Christian attitude towards Jews to the question of identity: Collective Christian identity was formed on the negative background of Jewish identity. From Chrysostom’s Kata Ioudaios one may learn that Christians once were attracted to synagogues and to Jewish religiosity, but they were admonished and commanded to sever any relationship with the religion they came from. A student confirmed that shaping identity in a positive way is important. In another remark, a Hindu student told that he was monotheist in theory and polytheist in praxis. Wolfram then explained that psychologically, religions play on fear and form enemy images. He referred to a specialist in politics who said that the less we know about religions, the more religion may be functionalized for political purposes. He further pointed to structural violence in interpretations. However, prophetic protest inspired by the Bible against bad social and political situations was also a possibility. In this context, he mentioned the courageous standpoint of Dietrich Bonhöffer, who gave his life in the attempt to get rid of Hitler. He also expounded upon the fact that in South Africa, anti-apartheid citizens who were Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus all prayed together. Religions therefore had to be interpreted and seen in their function in society. I agreed that religions change and that they are part and parcel of social, cultural, and political situations. An active memory of the Shoah could lead one to combine religion with humanism and human rights. One question of an Afghani student concerned history: Is it not possible to leave out history in religion? The question received a negative answer: All people are historically embedded. Trans-difference, however, remains possible. Another question concerned the relationship between the established religions and those that are derived from them and characterized as apostates. I replied that there are problems with any pyramidal concept of religions or with speaking about mother-religion and daughter-religions, with utterances such as “we were first” or “we are the best, since we are the last ones, containing everything before, but better.” Wolfram reminded us that interreligiously and intrareligiously one had to avoid saying that one is “authentic” and others not. But working together with people who brainwash others, like scientologists, is problematic. Wolfram then proceeded to discuss the thoughts of his former teacher Hans-Jochen Margull, a professor of science of mission and ecumenism in Hamburg, who

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was internationally known and contributed to the dialogue between religions.16 Three conditions were crucial for Margull in the interreligious dialogue: a. Religions had to understand themselves historically and had to be future-oriented; b. No objective, absolute truth claims had to be allowed; and c. All religions needed to be understood as particular. Margull enumerated some priorities in the dialogue between religions: a. Referring to Buber, he highlighted that one had to start with equality between (zwischen) the partners in dialogue; b. He conceived of Christian identity itself as essentially dialogical; c. One had to understand what is common between religions; d. Interreligious dialogue was not syncretism; e. Christians had to learn to listen and be silent in dialogue; and f. Theology did not start with the possession of truth; it was, rather, born and developed in dialogue. I conclude that the dialogues with Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity at the Academy of World Religions in June-July 2013 proved to be fruitful. They promoted understanding and peace. Exclusivist and traditional polemic attitudes were discarded in favor of interreligious dialogue and in view of the creation of an interreligious theology. Instead of talking about the other from a totalizing point of view, face-to-face encounters from below may and should influence highly sophisticated academic or ecclesiastic theological theories. In the dialogues, I did not perceive a growing interreligious religiosity as a substitute for my own faith. Neither did I experience any kind of fusion or confusion. Yet, I cannot and do not want to ignore the feeling that this kind of dialogue brought me different perspectives and changed my image of the other as well as my self-image. One cannot enter into a real dialogue without changing. I desire to keep the newly acquired perspectives that certainly will expand further and further in the future. Once one gives up his own isolated position, new horizons are opened up. The study of the other’s heritage in contrast to any difference-blindness and self-immurement or arrogance teaches us to perceive ourselves and the other as only parts of the entire human story, without a condescending or judgmental attitude. Distinctness and a multiplicity of worlds remain valid in the increasingly globalized world. The wonder of trans-difference, however, may occur when one really endeavors to be open for the other’s world and the validity of his or her worldview. Not everything is valid, since some worldviews are violent or oppressive and are to be excluded, but one has to be aware that also the hegemony of only one worldview inevitably leads to violence and misrecognition of the other. Reading and discussing Buddhist and Hindu texts with Carola and Anant was not done in an apologetic way. Core texts were not approached from the perspec16 See further Weiße,”Dialogue from a Christian and Muslim Perspective: Early Visions of a Dialogical Theology,” in Religions and Dialogue. International Approaches, 115–19.



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tive of the question of whether they were compatible with the Jewish tradition. The question was rather what unique spiritual wisdom comes into expression in these texts, and in what way they inspire and contribute to one’s personal spirituality. Reading and interpreting these texts from different perspectives allowed one to overcome the narrow boundaries of one’s own religion. I was fascinated, for example, by the Buddhist idea of equanimity and of exchange between the I and the thou. In reading texts of other religions, one opens oneself to spiritual treasures hidden in these documents and only in these documents. Of course, one has to remain conscious of one’s own incomplete understanding. However, eagerness to learn will result in ever new insights that come from a multitude of sources that are all necessary as ways to the Ultimate Reality. What is crucial is a listening attitude, a readiness to hear the other in what (s)he has to say to the partner in dialogue. Careful listening could lead to enrichment of one’s own tradition and eventually to changes in points of view. In any event, when texts of other religions become the object of dialogical reading, when they start to “speak,” one realizes the “between”-sphere that characterizes each real dialogue. In dialogue, the context of the interpreter of texts of his/her own tradition and the context of the learner who does not belong to that tradition come together in intercontextuality, in which the texts of the other as well as one’s own texts start to “speak” and receive meaning. If one wants to be taken seriously, one needs to see oneself as concretely situated within one’s own religion, without a meta-position. To lack a standpoint and to adopt a laissez faire attitude is unconstructive in the interreligious dialogue. Only mutual recognition of culturally situated beings guarantees a successful intercultural and interreligious dialogue.17 Dialogue is therefore the combination of both acceptance of the distinctness of the self and of the other, and the willingness to bridge and communicate.

17 Schäfer, Praxis- Theologie - Religion, 353–54.

Postscriptum Between is not an auxiliary construction, but the real place and bearer of what happens between men […] Martin Buber1

In this volume I endeavored to spell out what the necessary requisites are for a dialogical or interreligious theology. The shaping of this new discipline requires the development of various novel attitudes. Religions are ever changing, fluctuating constructs that influence each other. They remain different towards each other, but “trans-difference,” in-betweenness, bridging, translating, learning, hospitality, and recognition bring them together. In “trans-difference,” a between-space is created. Living contact with other religious persons may contribute to recognize the others without making an image of them in clichéd thoughts. We have to think the other, the un-thought, that which does not fit comfortably in our own schemes. Moreover, one may alter oneself in contact with others in order to avoid an eternal return to oneself. In contact, “self-transcendence” takes place: One is not alone with oneself in passing to the other. This leads to “self-difference” as the discovery of otherness in the self. The question is therefore not “Who am I,” but rather “How to become an I?” Contact with otherness characterizes the I. My reflections are about the lofty or higher identity of a human being, which is realized in the readiness to “translate” experiences of oneself and of others and to extend hospitality to others. I conclude with the enumeration of a few conditions for coexistence, more specifically for interreligious dialogue and interreligious theology.

The Necessity of Dialogue First of all, the I in the interreligious dialogue shall not be afraid of losing itself in interaction with others, because it is precisely in interaction with the non-self that the I becomes I. Just as a husband becomes a husband thanks to his wife, a father becomes father through his children, or a grandfather becomes a grandfather thanks to his grandchildren, the I is I thanks to the non-I. The I is a relational I, from the beginning, or better, before any beginning. The profound identity of the I lies in his being non-identical with himself in the acceptance and promotion of the other. Dialogue is therefore not a possibility, it is a necessity in human existence. In dialogue, the I with its specific contribution does not lose its iden1 Buber, Between Man and Man, 203.



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tity, it rather gets rid of its closedness in favor of listening to the other, who may have things to say that are relevant for the I. The bubble of the I is ruptured in the other’s demand for love and respect and in attentiveness to him. In dialogue with the other, one may discover that one’s own intimacy has always already been visited by an unescapable strangeness: The I is inconceivable without the non-I. The recognition of the non-I in the I permits the I not to eternally return to himself, but to reach out to the other. The relationship between the I and the non-I is therefore not one of travelling parallel paths, rather, it takes place when people interact and realize unity in diversity.2

Celebrating Diversity In the interreligious relationship, one shall always keep in mind that the I is different from the other and the other remains different from the I. Nobody is the same and diversity shall be celebrated. The fundamental difference between the I and the other has to be maintained, since only in the recognition of differences, does the creation of a common world, in which one learns from the other, become a real possibility. “Trans-difference” or communication and trespassing one’s own border in order to meet the other presupposes the existence of differences. In the interreligious dialogue, one humbly admits that others too organize their lives in a special way around the absolute. One accepts that the diversity of ways is necessary in approaching the Ultimate Reality. No way resembles any other way. Making a hierarchy of ways or worse, condemning other ways, impedes and harms the growth of dialogical theology. Christian missionaries in Africa, for instance, should not think about African tribal religiosity as less: African religiosity, also in its Christian form, is different. When it comes to forms of religiosity, differences remain and all may learn from all.

2 In the first number of Die Kreatur, Martin Buber, Viktor von Weizsäcker, and Joseph Wittig wrote: “Es gibt ein Zusammengehen ohne Zusammenkommen. Es gibt ein Zusammenwirken ohne Zusammenleben. Es gibt eine Einung der Gebete ohne Einung der Beter. Parallelen, die sich in der Unendlichkeit schneiden, gehen einander nichts an; aber Intentionen, die sich am Ziel begegnen werden, haben ihr namenloses Bündnis an der von ihren Wahrheiten aus verschiedenen, aber von der Wirklichkeit der Erfüllung aus gemeinsamen Richtung. Wir dürfen nicht vorwegnehmen, aber wir sollen bereiten,” Die Kreatur. Erster Jahrgang 1926/1927, Heft 1 (1927): 1.

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Enriching the Self The interreligious theology that is proposed here for the first time in Israel is not to be confused with comparative theology. It investigates the attitudes necessary for any intercultural and interreligious conversation. Dialogical theology, beyond comparing religions, articulates the conditions for intercultural and interreligious understanding and interaction. In a xenological and not dichotomist way of thinking, I go beyond a confessional theology in favor of an interreligious theology that works with openness and respect for the other and with the idea that not everything has been said about the Absolute in one’s own religious narrative. What is strange and not our own does not necessarily have to be a threat; it may become an enrichment. The religiously other may become someone from whom I learn and who may enhance my own existence. A Buddhist Zen-master, for instance, may read Eckhart and a Muslim may read the Hebrew Bible. A Buddhist may relate to a Christian and a Jew to a Hindu. An Evangelical may encounter a Sufi, a Bahai may visit his or her Jewish landsman. This is not necessarily about knowing more details of the other, but basically about living together and relating and shaping the I in contact with the non-I.3

Hospitality One of the conditions of a dialogical theology is that one is ready to have the religiously other as a guest in one’s own home. It is a great human act to extend hospitality to others. In receiving others, in confirming them in their existence, I am myself. In our homes, the presence of the other necessarily leads to a change of the I: The I is no longer sovereign, master. The I becomes the place where the other may flourish and feel at home. It is called to relate. In supporting others and developing a listening attitude to what the other has to contribute, the I becomes itself. One may only become religious in interaction with religious others. The price to be paid for this attitude is often that in one’s own community one is looked upon as someone who crosses borders4 and even as someone whose iden-

3 Volker Küster, Einführung in die Interkulturelle Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2011), 138–39. Küster distinguishes between three kinds of dialogue: dialogue of life on the preconceptual level, dialogue of reason on the conceptual level, and dialogue of the heart on the mystical level. 4 Ibid., 150. Küster uses the word “Grenzgänger.” In the footsteps of Hans Jochen Margull, he writes about the vulnerability (“Verwundbarkeit”) of such a person in regard to the other faith as well as in regard to his own community.



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tity is hybrid or multiple. However, no one can deny that the reception of alterity is inherent in the formation of the own I, in which contact with and interest in the religious other do not contradict loyalty to one’s own religious tradition.

Dialogical Hermeneutics One of the important prerequisites for a dialogical theology is the development of a dialogical hermeneutics. In an interreligious theology, one will have to approach one’s own religious texts in a way that does not hurt the other, but confirms and promotes him or her. This is a challenging field that has not yet been explored and the development of such a hermeneutics requires a Copernican change of mind. Dialogical hermeneutics do not only concern texts, but the entire culture in which these texts are historically embedded. It is further related to the actual context with a variety of interpretations. Intracultural and intercultural dialogue on occasions of reading these texts is the demand of the day.5

Towards Encounters As I wrote previously, in the interreligious dialogue as the praxis that accompanies interreligious theology, others are never pure representatives of institutions and religions. They represent themselves in all their concreteness with their unalterable uniqueness. An ethical reading of religious sources, in openness to others, is therefore not enough. What is needed is the living encounter with live people, who are always different from that which is written in textbooks and from the expectations institutions have of them. An interreligious theology based upon real encounters will contribute to the formation of a new “we,” characterized by passing to the other, by hospitality, by permanent translation, and above all by the readiness to be present for the other.

5 Küster’s idea of a “contextual hermeneutics” gives much weight to the interpreting community in which texts resonate (pp. 82–85). To my mind, foundational texts indeed belong to particular communities, but they are also part of our world culture in which a plurality of communities have access to a multiplicity of religious texts which are not necessarily one’s own religious texts.

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A Radical Change of Mind Moving towards an interreligious theology as the exploration of multiple ways of being religious implies a completely new attitude towards other religions. In dialogical learning, one has much to unlearn. One has to set aside a judgmental attitude, a narrow confessional standpoint, and habitual behavior. One has to bracket one’s assumptions and leave out self-occupation. Instead of opposing one’s own viewpoint to all the other viewpoints, genuine dialogue creates a new “we,” a community that allows for the uniqueness of each and every individual, for multiple participation in religiosity, and for deeper insights in the self, thanks to the perceptions of others. Real dialogue supposes attentive listening, humility, a critical attitude towards oneself and others, a good amount of self-relativism without radical relativism (because one is always concretely situated), and… humor. One has to get rid of a solely professional view, which does not mean that knowledge becomes unimportant: It means that knowledge will function in the encounter itself. Interreligious theology is not about purely objective knowledge, which misses the moment of encounter, nor about subjective interpretations, which misses the otherness of the other. It is about intersubjectivity, about openness to what the religious other has to say and contribute. It is about intensive listening to the other’s story and to his suffering, about adequate response and dialogical reading. It challenges us in leaving a monological stance in favor of dialogue, reciprocity, proximity, intersubjective relationship, engagement, and interconnectedness. Interreligious theology is based upon interreligious dialogue, which does not always succeed and which is often colorless, superficial, not personalized and exceedingly “official.” However, it is not because this kind of dialogue with self-criticism and attentiveness to the other is rare, that the marvel of a real dialogue with religious others does not exist. People of different religious backgrounds necessarily disagree with each other, but if they are willing to learn and be self-critical, the wonder of interreligious dialogue and intercultural learning may take place. Instead of defending oneself and excluding others, a more relaxed and more respectful attitude will have to be adopted. In the new dialogical theology, one turns to the other. One does not only accept him or her, one does not merely notice his or her otherness, one makes him or her present and enters into a cross-fertilizing, I-transforming dialogue. In the dialogical theology proposed here, one resituates, reorients, and reshapes oneself in interaction with the other. One extends one’s own boundaries, and passes to the other in order to pass back to the self, in a movement that does not leave the I unchanged.

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Index of Subjects aggadic 99 ahimsa, non-violence 47, 66-67, 195 Alevite 61 anatta, no-self 58, 61, 65, 192 anti-Semitism 134, 135-136, 197 apocalyptic 30, 97, 107-108 apostate 134-135, 197 assimilation 40, 115, 118, 142-143 atman 58 Bahai 61, 202 belonging – double 8, 63, 123, 162 Bhagavadgita 189-190 Bible – Hebrew 9-10, 43, 83, 88, 97, 202 bittul ha-yesh 58 bodhi, awakening 60, 63, 65, 196 Bodhicitta 196 Bodhisattva 57- 58, 64-65, 78, 195 Brahmanism 65 bridge, bridging 9, 11, 13, 15, 27, 31, 35, 37, 128, 163, 179, 181, 186, 199-200 Buddhism – engaged 56, 61-62 – European 56 – Zen 23, 64, 66, 213 Cartesian 126 Catholic 10, 26, 38, 41, 86 Christianity, Christian 2, 8, 10, 19, 20-27, 29-34, 38-39, 40-43, 47-48, 50, 57, 59, 60-67, 69-71, 76-78, 83, 93, 96-98, 101, 103, 108-110, 113, 115, 120, 123-126, 132, 134-135, 137, 140-141, 143, 145, 147-151, 161, 181, 183, 187-188, 196-198, 201-202, 205-206, 209-212 compassion 42, 47-48, 52, 58-61, 64-66, 78 confessional 7, 41-42, 46, 50, 62, 82, 132, 137, 175-176, 178, 181, 183-185, 202, 204 conflict management 15, 23, 46, 67, 145, 162, 210 Confucianism 1, 21, 43 conversion, convert 11, 33-34, 62, 78, 80, 138, 148, 213 covenant 4, 21, 39, 52, 94

creation, Creator 4, 6, 14, 24, 33, 43, 47, 76, 84-85, 93-95, 104-105, 112, 122, 125-126, 141- 142, 156-157, 161, 164, 167, 190, 198, 201 Daoism, Daoist, Tao, Taoism 1, 2, 42-43 democracy 11, 24, 62, 79 Dharma 189 Dhimi 21 din 60 dissimilation 38, 118, 142-143 double-belonging, see belonging Druze 61 ekam sat 183, 188-189 election 4, 105, 138 empathy 47, 57 emuna 26-27, 29-30, 191 enlightenment 23, 36, 63-64, 119-120, 133, 135, 194, 196 Evangelical 110, 202 exclusivity, exclusivist 1, 5, 7, 24, 39, 43, 71, 75, 118, 125, 134-135, 138, 183, 185, 198 exegesis – interreligious ix, 153-154, 156, 158, 160 feminism 62 five rules 195 fundamentalism 42, 176 Gnostic 25, 28-30, 84, 96, 104-105, 176 halakha, halakhic 19, 99, 190, 192 Hassidism, Hassidic x, 30, 41, 58, 75, 84, 88-90, 93, 106, 113, 127, 157, 165, 169, 171, 178, 195, 206 hermeneutics – dialogical ix-x, 14, 24, 84, 106, 137, 140-141, 191, 203, 209 – ethical 153 – humanistic 143 – of humility 24 – of suspicion 3 – of the foreign 116 Hinduism, Hindu 1, 2, 10, 21, 33, 58, 64-65, 67, 180, 183, 187-191, 197-198, 202, 211 Holocaust, Shoah 29, 59, 86, 96, 109, 117-118, 137, 192-193, 196-197



hospitality vii, x, 11-12, 15, 37, 49, 137, 139-140, 144, 159, 161, 200, 202-203 human rights vii, ix, 24, 51, 54, 56, 62, 76, 136, 140, 143, 145, 189, 197 humanism, humanistic ix, 76, 78, 118-121, 127, 142-143, 156, 162, 164-165, 168-169, 172, 173, 197 humanist – Hebrew 88, 169 – religious 169 identity – broken 118 – complex - 117, 119, 123, 125, 147 – German-Jewish 117, 162 – hybrid 67, 81, 118, 203 – multiple 128 idol, idolatry, Idolatrous 41, 52, 76, 114, 131, 134, 156, 171 ijtihad 79 iman 191 inclusivity, inclusive 39, 71, 81, 119, 121, 132, 137, 139-140, 188 Ineffable viii, 45, 54-55, 70-73, 76, 137, 150, 157, 175, 177, 188 Interbeing 47, 58, 63, 64-65 Islam, Islamic 1, 19-23, 33, 42, 48, 56, 79, 134-137, 139, 143, 148, 183, 191-192, 198, 205, 207, 211, 213 Jainism, Jain 184 jihad 136 Jubus 21 Judaism, Jewish vii-viii, x, 2-4, 6-7, 10, 15-17, 19-23, 25-34, 36, 38-44, 46-48, 50-53, 55-62, 64, 66-67, 70, 72, 76-78, 83-84, 86, 88, 90-91, 93, 96-100, 102-103, 107-108, 112-115, 117-128, 131, 134-135, 137-141, 144, 148, 150-157, 160, 162, 167, 169, 170-171, 174, 183, 187, 188-190, 192-193, 195-197, 199, 202, 205-213 justice, tsèdèq 2, 48, 56, 59-60, 61, 66-67, 131, 140-141, 179 karma 43, 64, 65, 193 karuna 60, 64, 192 Koran 9, 42 la-ilaha-illallah 191

Index of Subjects 

 215

learn vii, x, 3-10, 13-15, 27, 31, 41, 44, 46-47, 50, 56-57, 59-60, 62, 64-68, 74, 77-78, 81, 98, 102, 117, 124, 141-142, 146, 158, 175, 177-179, 182, 185, 187, 192, 197-202, 204 magic 10, 25, 30, 134 Mahayana 63, 194 maitri 192 Marcionism, Marcionite 96, 101, 151 meditation – metta 66 – tonglen 66, 192 – Vajrayana 66 – Vipassana 66 mercy 54, 60, 131, 192 meta-religious 25, 47, 54 midrash 24, 92, 98-100, 109 miqra 84, 86-87, 89, 96, 103, 108 mitsvot, commandments 12, 19, 29-31, 58, 94, 120, 127, 155, 186 Muslim 2, 10, 19, 21-22, 42, 44, 57, 61, 77, 79, 132, 139, 141, 143-144, 149, 161, 187, 196-198, 202, 210, 213 mysticism 23, 169, 172, 211 neti, neti 64 New Testament 10, 22, 46, 114, 124 “new we” 3, 71, 80-81 Nirvana 48, 56, 58, 60, 63-65, 208 Noahide laws 4, 19, 141, 189 Nostra Aetate 41 panentheistic 63, 165, 189 passing 14, 35, 63-65, 96, 143, 147, 159, 191, 200 pathos – God of 53 Paulinian 27, 29 peace – inner 10, 57 – outer 10, 57 Pirqe Avot 5, 19, 50, 190 pistis 26-27, 29-30 pluralism, pluralist vii, x, 1-4, 6, 8-9, 13-14, 41-45, 69, 71, 75, 132, 139, 144, 146, 149, 178, 183, 185, 208-209, 212 – religious 1-3, 9, 13, 41, 44, 69, 208-209, 212

216 

 Index of Subjects

post-secular 133, 137, 139, 143 prajna 64 proflective 160 prophet 42-44, 51, 53, 57, 59, 77, 80, 87, 93, 97, 103, 107-108, 127, 138, 145, 191-192, 208 Protestant 10, 26, 103, 136, 196 pshat 99, 108 rahamim 60, 192 rationality – of the heart 167 – strategic 167 Reality – Higher 7, 10, 70-71, 73, 150, 185 – Ultimate vii, 2, 5, 8, 12-13, 31, 45, 55, 60, 69-71, 80, 158, 177, 180, 182, 185, 187, 199, 201 redemption 32-33, 38, 56-57, 84-86, 97, 125-126, 134, 140, 193 relativism 44, 143, 188, 204, 209 religion – Abrahamic 1, 22, 42, 137, 139, 157, 183 – neighbor 69-70, 179, 213 – philosophy of x, 50, 60, 174, 180 – science(s) of x, 174-178, 180-181, 183 religiosity – hybrid 63 Rig-Veda 9 saeculum 11 Sages 7, 92, 102, 112, 154 Samsara 65 sati 190 satyagraha 67 secularization 133, 137, 145 self-difference 37, 158, 191, 200 self-transcendence 37, 158, 191, 200 Shabbat 78, 125, 155 shalom, peace 5, 10, 22, 26, 35, 44, 46, 50, 54, 56-57, 60-61, 66, 73, 77, 82, 112, 140, 144-145, 156, 162, 171, 179, 189, 198 sharia 192 Shekhina 59, 70 shfikhat damim 52 shura 79 Sikh 61

suffering 28-29, 43-44, 50, 53, 56, 58-61, 63, 66, 90, 159, 192-193, 195-196, 204 suffering Servant, Servant of the Lord, eved ha-Shem 27-29, 40, 86, 108, 193, Sufi 149, 184, 192, 202 syncretism 82, 143, 198 sunyata, emptiness 63, 66, 194 Talmud, Talmudic 19, 44-45, 52, 70, 72, 78, 91-92, 100, 113, 135, 141, 146, 154, 178, theology – comparative x, 174, 182, 202 – confessional 7, 41, 46, 50, 62, 175-176, 178, 183-184, 202 – contextual 174, 181 – depth vii, 41, 43-44, 47, 50-51, 54-55, 76 – dialogical vii, 5-7, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20-21, 24, 46, 68-69, 75, 82, 140, 179, 185-187, 190, 198, 201-204 – in the plural 13, 47, 72, 77, 81, 178 – interreligious vii, ix, x, 2-4, 6-10, 13-14, 16-17, 20, 33, 39-40, 45-47, 50, 54, 56, 61-62, 69, 72, 75, 81-82, 111, 129, 131-132, 155-156, 174, 176, 178-182, 184, 185-187, 191, 198, 200, 202-204 – pluralistic vii, 6, 8, 178 – praxeological 181 – process-oriented 178 – traditional 174 theopaschism 28, 59 Theravada, Theravadin 65, 194 tifèrèt 60 tiqqun olam 57 torah she-be-al-pe 92 trans-different 6, 8-13, 27, 35, 39, 47-48, 77-78, 83, 131, 142, 150, 158 translating vii, x, 11, 14-15, 33-38, 45, 78, 83-84, 86, 104, 110, 112, 179, 182-183, 200 translation – dynamic-equivalent 110, 111 – formal-equivalent 110 truth – absolute 71, 137, 139, 150, 176, 180 – conventional 194 – four noble truths 193 – ultimate 194



tsaddik 169 umma 3, 79, 89, 135 Veda, Vedic 9, 187, 188, 189, 190

Index of Names 

 217

Whiteheadian 3 wu wei 42 Zen 23, 62, 64, 66, 202 Zionism 54, 67, 90, 93, 112

Index of Names Abraham 19, 28, 79, 90, 103, 111, 126, 157, 183 Abu Zaid, Nasr Hamid 143 Agag the Amalekite 80, 90 Amir, Yehoyada 15 Anidjar, Gil 33 Arkoun, Mohammed 143 Assmann, Jan 23-24, 132, 134-135, 138, 205 Ba’al Shem Tov 58 Baeck, Leo 162, 178 Barth, Karl 124, 149, 181 Barthes, Roland 9, 92 Beek, M.A. 97, 205 Beer-Hofmann, Richard 123 Ben Zoma 50 Berger, Peter 133, 142, 205 Bernhardt, Reinhold 8, 184, 207, 212 Bhabha, Homi K. 48, 205 Bloch, Jochanan 168, 205 Bonhöffer, Dietrich 197 Boorstein, Sylvia 23, 62 Bourdieu, Pierre 181, 212 Brahman 58 Brekelmans, Chris 110, 111, 205 Brill, Alan 21-22, 62, 205 Browning, Christoph 197 Brück, Michael von 62 Buber, Martin vii, viii, ix, 5, 15, 20, 24-32, 35, 39-44, 46-48, 53, 64, 67, 69, 72-74, 76, 80, 83-117, 119, 122, 125, 127-128, 131, 144, 150, 157, 160, 162-173, 178, 190-191, 193-194, 196, 198, 200- 201, 205-213 Buber, Raphael 112 Buddha 48, 57-58, 60, 62-67, 77, 168, 183, 193- 195, 208-209

Calvin, Johannes 115 Casanova, José 132-133 Chrysostom 197 Cohen, Hermann 8, 94, 119, 121-122, 124125, 127-128, 206-207 Cohn-Sherbok, Dan 20 Cornille, Catherine 21, 41, 190, 213 Cristaudo, Wayne 3 Dalai Lama 23, 47-48, 162, 196, 207 Dawkins, Richard 132, 136, 207 Dehn, Ulrich 184, 207 Deleuze, Gilles 74, 207 Derrida, Jacques 91, 141 Deutscher, Isaac 117, 207 Diamond, Malcolm L. 90, 114, 207 Dilthey, Wilhelm 84, 88, 91, 176 Dreyfus, Théodore 89, 207 Eckhart, Meister 202 Ehrenberg, Hans 78, 101, 125 Ehrenberg, Rudolf 34 Elisha ben Abuyah 117 Esau 105-106, 123, 134 Faber, Roland 48 Falaturi, Abdoldjavad 69 Fischer, Franz 160, 207 Fisher, Norman 63 Flusser, David 31 Friedman, Maurice 26-27, 29, 64, 80, 84, 88, 90, 94, 97, 115, 178, 207, 210-211 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 91-92 Galli, Barbara 34, 89, 124, 207, 212 Gandhi, Mahatma 67, 206 Geiger, Abraham 120 Gellman, Jerome (Yehuda) 58, 207 Gerhard, Michael 48, 208

218 

 Index of Names

Gibbs, Robert 33 Girard, René 46-47, 208 Glassman, Bernie 63 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 123, 210 Goldman, David Paul 33 Gopin, Marc 23 Gordon, Peter 33, 126, 208 Goshen-Gottstein, Alon 20-22, 41-42, 189, 207-209 Greenberg, Hayim 67, 208 Greenberg Kornberg, Yudit 190 Günther, Ursula 143 Habermas, Jürgen 133 Halevi, Jehuda 19, 32, 34-35, 37-38, 86, 112, 123, 148, 212 Hamann, Johann Georg 36 Hartman, David 4, 21-22, 42, 210 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 33, 123, 126 Heidegger, Martin 126, 136, 208 Heschel, Abraham Joshua vii, viii, 3, 10, 19-21, 23-24, 28, 40-44, 46-47, 50-61, 72-73, 75-79, 90, 113, 131, 156, 190, 207-210, 213 Heschel, Susannah 28, 41, 59, 75, 208 Hick, John 2, 6, 8-9, 43, 69, 80, 189, 208, 212 Hilberg, Raul 196 Hillel, the Elder 146 Hirsch, Samson Raphael viii, 99-100, 119-121, 128 Huntington, Samuel P. 48, 208 Illman, Karl-Johan 87-88, 107 Ipgrave, Julia 45, 208 Isaac 90, 103, 105 Jacob 32, 105-106, 123, 134, 210 Jacob, Edmond 98, 209 James, William 177 Jesus 10, 21-22, 26-29, 31, 34, 40, 65, 97, 140, 168, 191, 209 Job 28, 79, 86 Jonas, Hans 192 Jospe, Raphael 44-45, 209 Jüngel, Eberhard 59, 205 Kallenbach, Hermann 67 Kalmanovitch, Nehama 89, 91 Kalsky, Manuela 3, 71, 80-81

Kant, Emmanuel 12, 121, 137, 175, 177 Kaplan, Edward K. 76 Kasimow, Harold 43-44, 75-76, 208-209 Katz, Nathan 22, 209 Kepnes, Stephen 84, 92, 209 Khema, Ayya 23, 62, 89 Kierkegaard, Søren 53, 90, 168 Kimhi, David 44, 98 King, Martin Luther 10, 51-52, 156 King, Sallie 61-62 Kippenberg, Hans G. 132, 134-136, 152, 209 Knitter, Paul F. 4, 6, 8-9, 43, 60, 62-69, 77, 209 Koch, Eva-Maria 57 Kogan, Michael 4, 21 Kohn, Hans 173 Korn, Eugene 20-21, 207-209 Kotzker rebbe 58, 90 Krochmalnik, Daniel 15, 210 Kuhn, Thomas Samuel 45 Landauer, Gustav 172-173 Lao-Tzu 42 Lathouwers, Ton 9 Lavater, Johann Kasper 20 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 12, 77, 86, 119, 123, 143-144 Levin, Aryeh 195 Levinas, Emmanuel 8, 13, 16, 19, 49, 72-76, 81, 84, 91-92, 98-99, 112, 141, 144, 146, 153-154, 160 -161, 167, 190, 192, 196, 207, 209 -210 Lipman, Kennard 23, 210 Luther 79, 103-104, 109-110, 149 Lyotard, Jean François 141 Magnes, Judah L. 67, 206 Magonet, Jonathan 21-22, 210 Maimonides 19, 32, 148, 174, 192, 195 Margull, Hans-Jochen 69, 197-198, 202 Meinecke, Friedrich 123 Meir, Ephraim 3-4, 6, 15, 21-22, 24, 28, 32, 34, 42, 46, 51, 57, 77-78, 88, 90, 113, 119, 123, 140, 144-145, 150, 158, 160, 167, 170, 207 -208, 210-211 Meir, Rabbi 117 Mendelssohn, Moses 8.20, 114-115, 119-121, 123, 211



Index of Names 

Mendes-Flohr, Paul 67, 86-87, 112, 117, 119-120, 122, 125, 172, 208, 211 Merton, Thomas 9, 41 Meschullam Sussja of Hanipol, Rabbi 157 Meshonnic, Henri 100 Mohammed 191 Moltmann, Jürgen 59 Moses 23, 28, 57, 79, 83, 101, 103, 105, 114, 154, 157, 191, 205, 207, 212 Moyaert, Marianne 13, 41, 211 Muilenburg, James 107, 113, 211 Munk, Elie 154-155, 211 Nagarjuna 194, 211 Niebuhr, Reinhold 42, 211 Nobel, Anton Nehemia 122-123 Nyanaponika (Sigmund Feninger) Oppenheim, Michael Origines 140

23, 62

33

Palmer, Gesine 33 Paul 4, 30-31, 94 Plato 100 Prager, Joseph 122 Race, Alan 183 Ragaz, Leonhard 27 Rahner, Karl 64 Rambachan, Anantanand 183, 187-190, 211 Rashi 44, 92, 98, 104, 154-155 Roloff, Carola 50, 56, 192-196, 212 Rosenstock, Eugen 33-34, 123-124 Rosenstock-Huessy, Gritli 33-34, 39, 78, 88, 123, 212 Rosenwald, Lawrence 90, 111, 206, 211 Rumi 5, 212 Samuel 80, 90 Santideva 183, 195 Sartre, Jean-Paul 172 Saul, king 80, 83, 90 Shabestari, Mohammad Mojtahed 190-191 Schäfer, Peter 135, 138, 212 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 91, 149 Schmidt-Leukel, Perry vii, 1-4, 8-10, 13, 22 -23, 46, 62, 65, 69, 77, 81, 176, 178, 180, 182-184, 207, 209, 212 Schnädelbach, Herbert 136-137, 212

 219

Schneider, Lambert 86 Scholem, Gershom 83, 98, 112-113, 178, 212 Schravesande, Hans 106 Schwartz, Jossef 33 Schwartz, Regina M. 132, 134 Shneur Zalman of Lyadi 88 Simcha Bunam of Pžysha 157 Simmel, Georg 25 Simon, Uriel 87-88 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell 80, 187, 212 Socrates 86-87, 120, 196 Sölle, Dorothee 149 Soloveitchik, Dov Baer 21, 42, 210 Spinoza 117, 120, 144 Strauss, Eduard 122 Susman, Margarete 35 Swidler, Leonard 8, 41, 213 Talmon, Shemaryahu 87, 97, 100 Terence 161 Teshima, Jacob Jurah 23, 213 Thales of Milete 126 Theunissen, Michael 168, 213 Tillich, Paul 27, 63-64, 69, 209 Treitschke, Heinrich von 121 Tsongkhapa 195 Urbanus II, Pope

196

Waghid, Yusef 79, 213 Waldenfels, Bernhard 33, 159-160, 213 Wangchuk, Dorji 50 Weiss, Meir 107-108, 213 Weiße, Wolfram 8, 16, 24, 56, 69-70, 133, 196-198, 205, 212-213 Weizsäcker, Viktor von 26, 201 Wellhausen, Julius 87, 114 Willaime, Jean-Paul 133, 137, 213 Wingate, Andrew 11, 213 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 188, 195 Wittig, Joseph 26, 201 Wolf, Ernest M. 98 Yishma’el, Rabbi 44 Yohanan ha-Sandlar, Rabbi Yousafzai, Malala 136 Zion

40, 93-94, 106

5