Searching for God – Yossi Halevi’s journey rings true to me…

The road to peace begins with understanding, and no one knows that better than Yossi Halevi.  In his stunningly beautiful book, At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden, Halevi writes about his remarkable two-year journey toward “religious empathy”.  As a fellow seeker of religious understanding, I envied his journey, and found myself comparing many of my own interfaith encounters with his. Although clearly the two journeys cannot be compared in scope, there are several emotional similarities that I could not help but notice.

First, there is that deep need to search for something larger than not only yourself, but also the religious microcosm to which you’ve become accustomed. Second, there is the pain and confusion that often accompanies such a journey (including the uneasy feeling at times of betraying not only your chosen faith, but the friends and family who are a part of your inner circle.) Finally, there are the deep feelings of both joy and sadness when dialoguing with other faith groups. Joy at moments of unity and inclusion, and sadness at times of suspicion and prejudice. It can make for quite an emotional experience. 

 

People who have never taken up a truly spiritual search for answers, cannot understand the desperation and pain of looking for something that may not exist. I felt this desperation in my continual quest to find a new church.   Halevi discovered this need not only in himself as an Israeli Jew, but also in many Christian clerics who he met on his journey.

For example, on his talks with Germa – an Ethiopian Monastic, Halevi writes, “He longed for the company of saints, but they were no longer accessible, and those remaining in the monasteries, he insisted, were either charlatans or fanatics or well-meaning but ordinary men.  He carried the sadness of someone who had not only seen the end of an era but had himself participated in its destruction; the very nature of his job, after all, was to help the monks adapt to modernity. Yet the outside world, oblivious to the possibility of holiness couldn’t be fully home for Germa either. More than his physical exile, this was the real source of his dislocation: He craved a holiness he feared he could never possess.”

 

Halevi then speaks to an Armenian priest about his own search. “I told Father Enza that I was on a search for holiness among the Christians, and he laughed. ‘I’m no holy man and I don’t know any holy men in the Armenian Church.’  As if to say: Why do you expect to find among us any greater miracle than survival?”
    

Frustrated in not being able to find answers from these Monastics, his friend Yehezkel Landau suggested he see someone special. “ ‘Go to Lavara Natofa’” said Landau. It’s run by Father Yaakov Willebrands. He’s one of the few Christians living here who manages to keep his heart open to both Arabs and Jews without taking sides. And he’s got this wonderful church in a grotto he dug out himself. It’s a great place to meditate.’ ‘Besides,’ added Yehezkel, ‘he may be a saint.’” 

 

 Indeed, Father Willebrands was one of those rare souls who acknowledged and appreciated the diverse faith groups in the holy land.  Halevi asks Father Willebrands many questions – including the controversial assertion in the Christian gospels that Jesus is the only path to God. Speaking personally, this is the most troubling passage for me in the Christian bible. I can’t imagine a God who would create a whole world of people, and yet only allow a small group of them into his kingdom. So I was glad when the Monastic answered Halevi’s question.

 

 Father Willebrand said, “There are Muslims in the village. I can tell them to become Christian and they would.  But, what then?  They would become totally cut off from their families and their villages, and in Arab society, that means you are lost.  Is God to just abandon them? And can Jews accept Christ after all that has happened in history?  Are they not to be admitted to the kingdom?  The God of love doesn’t work that way. So he creates other ways to approach the kingdom.”

 

Father Willebrand was right on target as to religion potentially cutting one off from family and friends.  As I mentioned in my introduction, there is still a lot of pain and guilt associated with spending so much time with people of other faiths. For every person who supports the notion of peace and understanding between religious cultures, there are many more who fear or loathe the idea. Other people’s negative reactions to interfaith relations – be they of one’s same faith or different faiths, cannot only be puzzling, but painful. Strikingly, although people of different faiths clearly regard each other with suspicion, it is often the brothers and sisters of one’s own faith who seem most threatened.  Perhaps there is a fear that by reaching out and sharing with other faith communities, you are betraying your own faith community. You may be viewed as vulnerable to recruitment or conversion.  Such feelings of betrayal can be very damaging and lead to a great deal of guilt. 

 

This idea of betraying one’s heritage often starts at home. It is from our parents that many of us receive our faith, and it can be very difficult to break out of that mold without a sense of guilt. Halevi first addresses this notion of parental influence in his book.  He writes, “My upbringing hardly prepared me for the interfaith encounter. I was raised in the heartland of Jewish Isolationism, a Brooklyn neighborhood called Borough Park, populated mostly by orthodox Holocaust Survivors. My father, a survivor from Hungary, taught me that the non-Jewish world was divided between those who actively wanted to kill the Jews, and those who were indifferent to our fate.  My father reserved a special rage for Christianity which he blamed for preparing the ground of the Holocaust by demonizing the Jews…Religious custom forbid Jews from entering a church.”  I have no doubt that during some of those times he spent with Christians and Muslims, Halevi found his thoughts wander back to his father and wonder about that betrayal.

 

Clearly my own family’s background can’t be compared to those of Holocaust survivors. However, the sideways glances toward other religious institutions other than the Catholic Church was very prominent in my upbringing. As Catholics, we were not allowed to attend worship services at Protestant churches (or that of any other denomination.)  Receiving communion in non-Catholic churches would also be considered a sin. Eventually, the rules on visiting other churches were relaxed somewhat by the Vatican, but these churches were still not viewed the same as “the one true church”. Often, non-Catholic churches were viewed as blasphemous and possibly corruptive. 

 I was 20 years old when I first attended a Protestant service. And, like Halevi, I attended the church to accompany my future spouse.  Ironically, my husband – a Southern Baptist, was brought up to believe that Catholicism was almost cult-like. His parents were no more thrilled about his being in Catholic churches, than were mine at “straying” from the Catholic Church.

 

This concern for betraying one’s faith circle extends beyond family though. It encompasses friends, neighbors and colleagues.  In one particularly poignant part of his book, Halevi confides these fears to a nun he’s been spending time with: “‘Gabrielle’, I said, ‘I’m afraid’.  We were sitting, as usual, in the Beatitude’s library. ‘Can you imagine the reaction,’ I continued, ‘when my friends and relatives in the Orthodox community find out I’ve been going to monasteries? Do you know how that’s going to play in my old Brooklyn neighborhood? A Jew entering churches to experience Christmas and Easter.  There’s nothing worse than that. I’m about to become a Jewish traitor.’  Gabrielle said quietly, ‘I’m afraid too.’ ‘You’, I said, unable to hide my surprise.  The nun who prayed in Hasidic synagogues, who offered herself as a sacrifice to reconciliation? ‘I’m afraid of being considered too different,’ she confessed. ‘Even within my own community. Of course people there share my love for the Jewish people, but I worry that they’ll see me as an obsessive.’”

 

I know all too well the price one pays for going out on a limb when speaking of faith. When I first entered Seminary, I was talking to a very close friend about the Muslim view on Jesus being a great prophet, and how they don’t believe he was crucified. I told her I wasn’t even sure anymore if Jesus was the Son of God.  Her reaction? She never spoke to me again.

 

Halevi was not just being paranoid. From the very beginning of his journey, he too encountered resistance from both Israeli friends and Christian friends.  His Israeli friends, (even those who are active in promoting dialogue with Palestinians), said he was wasting time.  A Christian friend also dissuaded him, saying, “Maybe you should concentrate on Christian-Jewish relations. There is so much that we have to do together, why confuse it by bringing in another religion.”

 

Interestingly enough, there is more to this comment than appears on its surface. It is representative of another fascinating aspect of Halevi’s journey – the concern by others to not only keep him grounded to one faith community, but rather to keep him away from other specific faith communities. There were times throughout his adventure (as indicated above,) that religious figures/clerics would attempt to closely ally with him, by pointing out the shortcomings of other religions.  For example, Halevi writes about his visit with a Muslim Sheykh for whom he had great respect. In their discussions, the Sheykh said, “Jews and Muslims are closer to each other than to Christians.  We both have religious laws; the Christians don’t. We have fast days; they don’t. We forbid the use of images; they pray to images.  We believe in one God; they have three Gods.” 

To his credit, Halevi attempted to clarify some of these claims about his Christian brothers and sisters. He explained to the Sheykh that Christian images are used to “encourage devotion”, and although Trinitarian, Christians are indeed monotheistic.  But Halevi also admitted that he was pleased at the Sheykh’s “linkage” of Judaism and Islam, even if Christianity was excluded.

 

In a more disturbing passage (disturbing for me because the offender was a Catholic nun), disparaging remarks are made about Muslims in front of Halevi. It is a Christian crowd that includes Halevi, but the remark was made offhand – as if everyone would naturally agree.

He writes, “We walked the steep hills toward Manger Square…the muezzin sounded with the first light, rousing the day.  Gabrielle said, ‘He’s especially loud now. He wants to remind us on Christmas who really controls Bethlehem.’  She was probably right. Muslim extremists often used to the call to prayer to intimidate Christians and Jews, just as Muslims had built minaret that deliberately towered over Jewish and Christian holy places.” Halevi acknowledges that there may be something to the notion of reminding ‘people of the book’ that the ‘people of the final revelation’ are all around.  Another nun goes too far however, and Halevi is stunned. He writes, “ ‘I wouldn’t want to be Muslim,’ added a nun. ‘To have someone shouting at me in my sleep.’ Her friends laughed.  ‘It’s Ramadan I said. The first call to prayer is also a signal to begin the day’s fast.’ ‘They eat at night’, the nun replied shrugging, ‘I’m sure there are those who do it sincerely…’ But if so, she clearly implied, they were wasting their devotions in a false, even absurd faith. 

 

So just as the Muslim Sheykh had tried to bolster a Jewish/Muslim alliance at the expense of Christians, the Sister was now trying to promote a Jewish/Christian alliance through the exclusion/aspersion of Muslims. This point was not lost on Halevi.  “Listening to the nun disparage Islam, I realized why I couldn’t fully accept Gabrielle’s offer of a Christian-Jewish alliance of messianic expectation. That would allow Jews and Christians to pretend to evade the hubris of chosenness: If neither of us could be chosen alone, we would be chosen together.  The two biblical faiths, exalted above all others: the Muslims with their distorted scripture, the Hindus with too many gods, the Buddhists with no god at all. Jews and Christians would learn to deal with each other through love rather than theology as Grabielle had beautifully put it during one of our sessions.  But that wouldn’t apply to our relations with other faiths.”

 

The Nuns however, were not immune to the same kind of disparagement.  Halevi tells of the Christians being shunned by many Jews – particularly during times of remembrance for Holocaust victims.  Then came another instance of allying two religious groups against one – only this time it was the Christians who fell short. Halevi writes, “ Johanna was upset.  She’d just read a commentary by a French rabbi about the biblical concept of the place of ‘strangers’ in the land of Israel.  For non-Jews to be worthy of living in the Holy Land, wrote the rabbi, they must observe the seven Noahide laws, the basic biblical moral code. Muslims he continued, fully adhere to the Noahide laws because, he pointedly noted, they don’t place statues – idols-in their houses of worship.  Clearly, he was excluding Christians from the category of Noahide observers. ‘We defile the land’ Johanna said bitterly.”  Halevi explained to Johanna that the thought process came from a time when Jews had been persecuted by Christians. He said that there were Rabbis throughout history who disagreed with that thinking, but those rabbinic voices were a minority.

 

It can be even more difficult for those steeped in two faith traditions. Instead of being admired by both faith communities, there is often mistrust and rejection.  Halevi’s friend Eliyahu encountered this first hand. Eliyahu converted to Islam but then became a practicing Jew who lived in an Arab village and worked to bring Jewish and Arab youth together. “But outraged fundamentalists forced him to leave the village. He had accepted an invitation from local Muslims and joined a parade celebrating Id el Fitr the end of Ramadan.  Participating in a Muslim feast by an Orthodox Jew was not seen as respect, but as subversion.”

 

Finally, because of the dynamics of Palestinian Christians, Palestinian Muslims, and Jews all living in the land of Israel, some people don’t fit easily into any category.

“Sister Miriam said, ‘We don’t fit in anywhere. For Jews, we’re missionaries; for Muslims, we’re Zionists. A Palestinian Christian accused me of not being sensitive to his people’s suffering.  I know I should be open to everyone in equal measure, but I can’t do it.  I stand with the Jewish people. Sometimes I say to God, ‘why do you expect me to be an instrument of peace?’ And the answer I sense is ‘your suffering over your failures is what I need.’’”

 

For me as an American Christian, I know that my perspective on the three Abrahamic faiths is far removed from that of Christians in the Middle East. I am not in the religious minority here (although my particular thoughts on who Jesus was and what it is that makes me a Christian probably puts me very much in the minority.) I do not fear Jews or Muslims or feel that I need to take a side in their disputes.  I believe the Israelis have a right to hold on to their state, but I also believe the Palestinians are living in horrid conditions, and should be allowed their own state to co-exist with Israel.

 

Halevi has his own perspective on Christianity in Israel “In the Holy Land, Christian love was often selective.  Foreign Christians living here tended to embrace either the Jewish or the Palestinian narrative.  Each appealed to a different facet of the Christian soul: the prophetic fulfillment of Jewish homecoming, the Palestinian struggle for justice in the land of Jesus.  Well-meaning but one-dimensional outsiders became either Christian Zionists who despised the Palestinians and tended to see Islam as a satanic opponent of God’s plan for Israel, or else Christian liberationists whose “anti-Zionism merely updated the old theological contempt for Jews as enemies of the good. It was perhaps inevitable for Jews and Arabs to turn their life and death struggle into a passion play; for spectators similarly to trivialize on of the world’s most morally ambiguous conflicts meant squandering an opportunity for a neutral loving presence.”

 

I don’t know that Halevi found everything he was searching for. In fact, I’m sure he didn’t. But as I mentioned earlier, peace comes through understanding. Through his remarkable courage, empathy and beautiful sense of spirit, he was able to transport himself in and out of the depths of the Abrahamic religions, and then put his experiences into words for those of us still engaged in that desperate search for answers. I will never be able to live those experiences as he did, but I can learn from them, try to understand them, and hopefully become a real instrument for God’s peace.

 

In everything that Halevi wrote, one thing he wrote about Judaism – his own religion – was so poignant to me, that it literally changed my outlook on Christianity, and whether or not I should stay with the only religion I have ever known.  He said, “My eventual decision to return to Jewish observance wasn’t inspired by any sudden realization that Judaism was the “true” faith after all; Judaism simply was my language of intimacy with God.” 

Thanks to Halevi, I no longer feel conflicted about being a pluralist and a Christian – I can be both, (and still continue my search.) In the meantime, I’ve come to learn that Christianity is no longer the religion that dictates my belief system, but rather is MY language of intimacy with God.  What a beautiful sentiment.