WHAT’S YOUR PREJUDICE?

Let’s admit it: We all bring our prejudices to the way we study our sacred texts.

OK, if you find the word “prejudices” too daunting, then try the word “predispositions.” The truth remains that Jews certainly bring forgone assumptions and axioms with them when they study the Bible. But, so do atheists, academic empiricists, subscribers to higher Biblical criticism, and a broad spectrum of Christians, from fundamentalist-literalists to Catholics to Brueggermann-influenced Presbyterians. Even among orthodox Jews, can we honestly say that students who are predisposed to the Chasidic interpretive style approach the Bible with precisely the same eyes as the non-Chasidic rationalists?

Two qualities, however, distinguish the genuine scholar from the Bible-toting duffer: One is an openness and respect for other intellectually honest approaches to Biblical understanding. The other, even more crucial, is the humble acknowledgement that we are all prejudiced by the assumptive worlds that we bring to our sacred texts. Hence, the all-critical question is not, “What does the Bible say?” but “What are we predisposed to seek from the Bible?”

Thus, the argument that one can find just as much bloodlust and xenophobic rage in the Jewish Bible and Christian Testament as one can in the Koran is patently bogus. Of course one can find both nasty and nice stuff in the Judeo-Christian heritage, as one can in the Islamic heritage. If there is to be an argument it should be built on, “What is each tradition – Jewish, Christian, Muslim – predisposed to seeking and finding in its sacred texts?”

The Jewish tradition may not have a perfect track record, but it has been overwhelmingly inclined for the past millennia to focus on teachings that promote kindness, gentility and social justice, and to de-emphasize – even to the point of obsolescence – apparently bloodthirsty doctrines. No post-Biblical record exists of a suspected adulteress’s trial by ordeal or the stoning to death of a recalcitrant child, despite the clear Biblical proviso to do so.

By Talmudic times, the strictures of imposing the death penalty – seemingly an everyday occurrence, if you read just Exodus and Deuteronomy – were so nitpicking that Rabbinic Judaism had essentially written capital punishment out of the Book. And, I have never heard a credible rabbinic authority of any denomination invoke the Bible to muster a genocidal war against the Amalekites, whom we cannot even identify. Were a rabbi to do so, s/he would instantly be excoriated and marginalized by the contemporary rabbinate, as was the late demagogue Meir Kahane.

To the contrary, the Jewish prejudice toward viewing its sacred texts through the filter of compassion and kindness is reinforced every time the holy scroll is returned to its resting place, accompanied by the admonition that “its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace.”

What of the Christian prejudice? Suffice it to say that Christendom is so complex that it presents a panorama of sometimes-conflicting predispositions. Hence, one could look at the Christian testament through the eyes of the vituperative John Chrysostom, or with equal credence through the eyes of the gentle, compassionate Francis of Assisi. Could even the most orthodox Jew disagree in spirit with a single word of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount or the Lord’s Prayer? Certainly, the Christian legacy contains enough substance to allow for an approach to its Bible that underscores allegiance to values that are compassionate, inclusive and peaceful.

I remain optimistic about our Muslim brethren. That is precisely why the silence of the Imams, the teachers and interpreters of the Koran, is so deafening. Does the Koran reflect its share of bloodlust? Certainly. Does it also espouse doctrines that are compassionate and peaceful? Yes, that too.

So, intrinsically, the Koran – just like the Bible – is a vehicle for neither good nor evil. It, too, is subject to the prejudices that its teachers and students bring to its study. So far, the air has been dominated by virulent voices that cite the Koran only to wreak havoc upon the innocent.

True, too many Jews and Christians have already made up their minds about the inherent evil of the Koran. Yet, I believe that there are thousands of others, including me, who are aching to hear bold, authoritative, Koran-based pronouncements that bespeak a prejudice toward tolerance, harmony and understanding in the Muslim tradition.

Honorable Christians were not silent in the face of Hitler, and many died making their voices heard. Decent Jews were not silent in the face of Kahane’s racism. Honorable Muslims, with Allah’s help, will likewise raise their voices to disassociate themselves from, and bring an end to, the bloodlust of the Koran-thumping Bin Laden and his cohorts.