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Judaism and Other Religions: Models of Understanding
With insight and scholarship, Alan Brill crisply outlines the traditional Jewish approaches to other religions for an age of globalization. He provides a fresh perspective on Biblical and Rabbinic texts, offering new ways of thinking about other faiths. In the majority of volume, he develops the categories of theology of religions for Jewish texts. He arranges the texts according classification widely used in interfaith inclusivist, exclusivist, universalist, and pluralist. Judaism and Other Religions is essential for a Jewish theological understanding of the various issues in encounters with other religions. With passion and clarity, Brill argues that in todayâ s world of strong religious passions and intolerance, it is necessary to go beyond secular tolerance toward moderate and mediating religious positions.
292 pages, Hardcover
First published February 15, 2010
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June 18, 2016
Alan Brill's Judaism and Other Religions: Models of Understanding is a masterful exercise in comparative Jewish theology, analyzing different Jewish perspectives on other religions. Brill applies a typology, apparently used in other works of comparative theology, to Jewish source texts, to describe four Jewish approaches to other religions.
Universalism: There is a single truth, philosophically or naturally apprehensible, and neither Judaism or other religions fully express it, or uniquely possess it.
Pluralism: All major world religions have some truth - and that truth is not fully known, or not fully knowable.
Inclusivism: Judaism is the true religion - other religions may be imperfect expressions of its truth.
Exclusivism: There is only one true religion - Judaism.
From this starting point Brill provides a tour of Jewish thinkers. Many thinkers include more than one of these positions in their work. Brill notes that Universalism, Pluralism, and Inclusivism are not exclusively modern perspectives. These are not merely flaky feel good ideas from the twentieth century. Rather, biblical sources and many medieval thinkers express versions of these positions, including surprisingly early Universalists such as Sa'adiah Gaon (882-942), Solomon ibn Gabriol (1021-1058) and Abraham ibn Ezra (1089-1164).
Nonetheless the reality of the Exclusivism's dominance in contemporary orthodoxy must be acknowledged. The author wisely discusses it last, after a wide ranging tour of the other Jewish ways of understanding the religious diversity of the world. He does this in part to remind us of what is possible, and perhaps because he prefers to deal with the most difficult questions last. Brill emphasizes the importance of confronting, and not ignoring, beliefs that denigrate the other, or the beliefs and practices of the other. It will do no good to sweep them under the rug. It is necessary to ask why they remain very much alive in the hearts and practices of many Jews today. The long history of persecution is one such reason. The unremitting rejection of Jewish existence in the land of Israel is another reason, one that unfortunately Brill does not consider very much. But as Brill points out, our narrative of medieval persecution is in some ways exaggerated by a reliance on a relatively few texts and an historical memory of a relatively few horrific persecutions of Jews by Christians. In reality, across centuries of Jewish life, Brill points out, Jewish life was typically peaceful and conducted in a neighborly fashion with people of diverse religions around the Mediterranean and in Europe. The Inclusivist, Pluralist and Universalist ideologies and philosophies that emerged within Judaism were, no doubt, a reflection of this lived social reality. That social reality should have every bit as much claim on our image of what it means to be a diaspora people as horrific persecutions, and the Holocaust itself, which have worked symbiotically with exclusivist theologies to create an image of history that locks the Jewish people in perpetual conflict with the world around it. Brill returns in his conclusion to consider how to change that dynamic.
~
I have come to define my own views, in Brillian terms, as Pluralist, based on what I would call linguistic pluralism. I conceive of religion, including Judaism, as a language. Most human languages are capable of expressing most human needs and human ideas, including ideas about the divine. Some languages may be richer in certain terms and thus be better able to convey nuances about the types of snow or the praiseworthy attributes of the divine. Each language may through its grammar and the daily habits of its "speakers" create a unique experience of reality - even unique possibilities for thought and feeling.
True multi-lingualism is even rarer in religion than it is language. We tend to have a mother language, a language of the heart, with which we speak most easily. As to the one reality of which all languages speak - I believe it is a single reality, shared by all human beings, but any attempt to align a single word in one language with a single word in another language, or with a single reality beyond language, is bound to create only an approximation of the original meaning. Meaning itself is such a subtle cloud of nuance, reference and intra-language implication that translation, although continually necessary in any meeting between speakers of two languages, always fails, even when it fails to good effect and creates new understandings and a sense of a mutually rewarding encounter. The problem with inter-religious dialogue is not that we can't understand each other, at least approximately, but that a second language is not a first language or a mother tongue, and a translation betrays some meanings at the same moment that it conveys others.
To speak a language well, is to live in a way in which one's thoughts and dreams and communications flow almost spontaneously through the concrete blocks of its words and its grammar. This is what it means to live a religion - we speak it natively, or make it our own by force of will or assimilation.
We live in a world of seventy tongues, and the encounter with other languages can be fascinating and enriching. For most people however, there will be a mother tongue, for which the gap between meaning and word, feeling and form of expression, is smaller than in any other language. This is one's spiritual place, from which we encounter other human beings in their places, uniqueness and experiences.
In Brill's terms, the Pluralist has no opinion about ultimate truth, and can only acknowledge that many frameworks (religions, or in my terms languages) exist. But I would include a side-order of universalism in my linguistic-religious pluralism. It is not as if we do not live a shared physical reality, apprehensible through science, which is, perhaps, intimately connected to an ultimate or transcendent reality. I do believe that there is a truth that all people can apprehend even as they name it differently, and even as they must talk about it in subtly nuanced ways that are ultimately incomensurable. Though translation between the seventy religio-languages of the world is impossible, and nothing we could say to one another could fully establish that we are speaking of the same reality or reality beyond reality, I choose to live my life on the assumption that we do speak of the same truth, no matter our language. So put me down for pluralist with a little spice of mystical-scientifico-universalism.
~
If these sorts of Jewish questions interest you, and you would enjoy comparing your own views with specific Jewish thinkers across history, Brill's book is worth a read. The real accomplishment here is the systematic framework for comparative theology, and the tour through the centuries of Jewish thought that is made possible by this organizing framework. I'm looking forward to reading the companion volume which focuses on the Jewish perspective on specific major religions, such as Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.
Universalism: There is a single truth, philosophically or naturally apprehensible, and neither Judaism or other religions fully express it, or uniquely possess it.
Pluralism: All major world religions have some truth - and that truth is not fully known, or not fully knowable.
Inclusivism: Judaism is the true religion - other religions may be imperfect expressions of its truth.
Exclusivism: There is only one true religion - Judaism.
From this starting point Brill provides a tour of Jewish thinkers. Many thinkers include more than one of these positions in their work. Brill notes that Universalism, Pluralism, and Inclusivism are not exclusively modern perspectives. These are not merely flaky feel good ideas from the twentieth century. Rather, biblical sources and many medieval thinkers express versions of these positions, including surprisingly early Universalists such as Sa'adiah Gaon (882-942), Solomon ibn Gabriol (1021-1058) and Abraham ibn Ezra (1089-1164).
Nonetheless the reality of the Exclusivism's dominance in contemporary orthodoxy must be acknowledged. The author wisely discusses it last, after a wide ranging tour of the other Jewish ways of understanding the religious diversity of the world. He does this in part to remind us of what is possible, and perhaps because he prefers to deal with the most difficult questions last. Brill emphasizes the importance of confronting, and not ignoring, beliefs that denigrate the other, or the beliefs and practices of the other. It will do no good to sweep them under the rug. It is necessary to ask why they remain very much alive in the hearts and practices of many Jews today. The long history of persecution is one such reason. The unremitting rejection of Jewish existence in the land of Israel is another reason, one that unfortunately Brill does not consider very much. But as Brill points out, our narrative of medieval persecution is in some ways exaggerated by a reliance on a relatively few texts and an historical memory of a relatively few horrific persecutions of Jews by Christians. In reality, across centuries of Jewish life, Brill points out, Jewish life was typically peaceful and conducted in a neighborly fashion with people of diverse religions around the Mediterranean and in Europe. The Inclusivist, Pluralist and Universalist ideologies and philosophies that emerged within Judaism were, no doubt, a reflection of this lived social reality. That social reality should have every bit as much claim on our image of what it means to be a diaspora people as horrific persecutions, and the Holocaust itself, which have worked symbiotically with exclusivist theologies to create an image of history that locks the Jewish people in perpetual conflict with the world around it. Brill returns in his conclusion to consider how to change that dynamic.
~
I have come to define my own views, in Brillian terms, as Pluralist, based on what I would call linguistic pluralism. I conceive of religion, including Judaism, as a language. Most human languages are capable of expressing most human needs and human ideas, including ideas about the divine. Some languages may be richer in certain terms and thus be better able to convey nuances about the types of snow or the praiseworthy attributes of the divine. Each language may through its grammar and the daily habits of its "speakers" create a unique experience of reality - even unique possibilities for thought and feeling.
True multi-lingualism is even rarer in religion than it is language. We tend to have a mother language, a language of the heart, with which we speak most easily. As to the one reality of which all languages speak - I believe it is a single reality, shared by all human beings, but any attempt to align a single word in one language with a single word in another language, or with a single reality beyond language, is bound to create only an approximation of the original meaning. Meaning itself is such a subtle cloud of nuance, reference and intra-language implication that translation, although continually necessary in any meeting between speakers of two languages, always fails, even when it fails to good effect and creates new understandings and a sense of a mutually rewarding encounter. The problem with inter-religious dialogue is not that we can't understand each other, at least approximately, but that a second language is not a first language or a mother tongue, and a translation betrays some meanings at the same moment that it conveys others.
To speak a language well, is to live in a way in which one's thoughts and dreams and communications flow almost spontaneously through the concrete blocks of its words and its grammar. This is what it means to live a religion - we speak it natively, or make it our own by force of will or assimilation.
We live in a world of seventy tongues, and the encounter with other languages can be fascinating and enriching. For most people however, there will be a mother tongue, for which the gap between meaning and word, feeling and form of expression, is smaller than in any other language. This is one's spiritual place, from which we encounter other human beings in their places, uniqueness and experiences.
In Brill's terms, the Pluralist has no opinion about ultimate truth, and can only acknowledge that many frameworks (religions, or in my terms languages) exist. But I would include a side-order of universalism in my linguistic-religious pluralism. It is not as if we do not live a shared physical reality, apprehensible through science, which is, perhaps, intimately connected to an ultimate or transcendent reality. I do believe that there is a truth that all people can apprehend even as they name it differently, and even as they must talk about it in subtly nuanced ways that are ultimately incomensurable. Though translation between the seventy religio-languages of the world is impossible, and nothing we could say to one another could fully establish that we are speaking of the same reality or reality beyond reality, I choose to live my life on the assumption that we do speak of the same truth, no matter our language. So put me down for pluralist with a little spice of mystical-scientifico-universalism.
~
If these sorts of Jewish questions interest you, and you would enjoy comparing your own views with specific Jewish thinkers across history, Brill's book is worth a read. The real accomplishment here is the systematic framework for comparative theology, and the tour through the centuries of Jewish thought that is made possible by this organizing framework. I'm looking forward to reading the companion volume which focuses on the Jewish perspective on specific major religions, such as Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.
Displaying 1 of 1 review