A Hindu Purohit faces no difficulty in admitting a Jew who follows relevant Vyavaharik rules and is capable of uttering the relevant mantra into the highest Hindu Varna. A Rabbi, by contrast, can't even promote a non-Kohain to Kohain status. Even accepting the conversion of a Hindu who might plausibly have Jewish ancestry is a controversial matter.
Thus there can't be reciprocity between Hinduism and Judaism though there can certainly be a highly productive type of harmonious co-existence.
Alon Goshen-Gottstein, the head of the Elijah inter-faith Institute, is an Israeli Rabbi and academic who has listed some ways in which the two religions can develop better relations.
I list them below in bold with my comments appended in italics.
1) Judaism is not fully recognized in Indian public consciousness as a distinct religious tradition. There is a long history of Judaism being subsumed as a branch of Christianity, rather than appreciated as a self-standing tradition.
I was not aware that this was the case. Indeed, I was going to challenge this till I realized that this guy is an Israeli academic. They check their facts rather than just dash off anything that comes into their heads.
The truth is, even cosmopolitan Hindu preceptors, like Vivekananda, saw Judaism as being like Purva Mimamsa as opposed to Vedanta- i.e. a fossil religion. In this view, denial of Christ as the avatar was similar to the type of ritualistic Brahmanism which gave no special place to Lord Krishna, being content to just follow the old tradition in a mindless and spiritually dessicated manner.
The truth about Judaism is quite different. The 'Pharisee'- whom an earlier generation of Hindu would have identified with the Navya-Nyaya pedant- had a marvellous collective Spiritual life based upon a very high 'Mussar' ethical conception expressed by the formula 'the material needs of the other are the spiritual needs of the self'. The notions of Sarvodaya and Daridra Narayan are the root out of which all diaspora Judaism originates. (The Samaritans never left Palestine).
2) there is no reciprocity of interest. Hindus travel to Israel for studies or for business. They are not learning about the spiritual and cultural treasures to be found there.
Israel is a very successful knowledge economy. However, its extraordinary achievements in Science and Technology have their wellsprings in the Religion itself. 'Jewish' Maths, or 'Jewish' Physics, or 'Jewish' Econ- do exist in the sense that the same ethical values, the same scrupulous accuracy in reasoning, the same sublimity of spiritual insight, are to be found in these Secular fields as have always flourished in the realm of the Sacred.
It seems to me that those Hindus who have made genuine contributions- not careerist 'second order' work- to research in Maths or Physics, had a similar psychology. Our mistake is to pretend we can achieve Intellectual excellence through shabby careerist means. Like the Israelis, we must ensure that we have the right motivation.
Indian Universities were set up from 1857 onwards. Israel's Universities, which were smaller and less well funded, came into existence some 60 years later. But, significantly, they chose to teach in Hebrew, not German, though few Jews would have spoken Hebrew back then. Secondly, they were devoted to Research from the get-go. They weren't 'degree mills'. Later, Higher Education did change to accommodate the needs of the 'bildungsburgertum' (middle class by education) but it was done in a pragmatic manner, not just to ration job opportunities or provide a credential for marriage purposes. The Israeli who is genuinely interested in a subject will be aiming to do Research from day one. In India, people did a PhD because they didn't get into the Civil Service or were intending to emigrate.
3) . Reciprocity of mutual learning. As a consequence of the previous two points we note total lack of reciprocity in academic studies. Indian studies and the study of Hinduism have a place in just about all major Israeli universities. By contrast, there is not a single chair in Judaism in the entire subcontinent. In introducing a book called Karmic Passages, a work that features the academic achievements of Israeli academics on things Indian, then Indian ambassador to Israel, Arun Singh, notes that Israel is probably the only country in the world where academic studies are the follow-up to in-person exposure to Indian culture, experienced by Israelis through their travels. There is no similar tradition of Hindus visiting Israel which would provide feeders for the Academy. Thus, lack of reciprocity extends to academic study, teaching and research. India is important for Israeli intellectual life. The reverse is not true.
All our 'Research programs' in the Humanities are 'availability cascades' of an obviously meretricious type. To take an example, Indian historians and social scientists have been repeating Gayatri Spivak's utterly mistaken notions regarding the Guleri Rani for three decades now. Along comes an Israeli back-packer who spends a couple of months in Garwhal and then goes back to register as a research student and the next thing that happens is we have a proper, fully researched, paper capturing all the salient features of that Queen's story. Still, we Indians ignore the Israeli's alethic contribution in order to 'whine about whitey' by quoting Spivak. (Come to think of it, I was attracted to her books only because of that Jewish sounding name! I thought the author might be someone like Ruth Prawer Jhabhwala who would see things invisible to us 'natives''.)
Israeli intellectual life is based on alethic, as opposed to credentialist, research. No doubt, they take an interest in India and China and everything under the Sun. Our young people aren't wholly different to Israel's in this respect. But our Academy is.
4) Commonality of foundational teachings.
Judaism and Hinduism are the solution to a coordination problem viewed as a 'repeated game'. They are non-coercive and can exist without Kings or States or coercive mechanisms.
Hinduism explicitly shows that the Just King, or family or enterprise head, must understand Game theory in order to overcome hamartia and 'vishaada' (accidie). Robert Aumann has been showing game theory in the Talmud. Unfortunately our Game theorists- people like Kaushik Basu- are careerists or copy-cats simply. So, first some Israeli will have to research this topic and publish a ponderous tome, then the Indian savants will rush in with some meaningless 'second order' refinement.
Actually, this would only be true if the Israeli is someone like David Shulman- i.e. also has a prestigious chair at Ivy League. Still, the thing can be done- the Indians can see that they have a commonality of foundational teachings with Judaism- once the Jews have done the heavy lifting.
5) Centrality of Spirituality
As with (4) this is problematic. Certainly, the supposed supernatural powers attained by the great Rabbis are similar to those of the Rishis. However, for Hindutva, Spirituality would mean a rejection of material power or other felicity, gained though it be by supernatural means, in favour of selfless service to the Creator by means of service to the entire family of Creation. This is not different from Mussar Judaism.
Professor Alon says- both struggle to realize the challenges of spirituality in the face of the challenges of today’s world. Secularization, technology, exposure to external cultures and ideologies, the challenges of transmitting tradition – these challenges are common to both nations and both cultures. If we recognize that the encounter between these nations and cultures is a meeting point of classic spiritual aspirations and contemporary realities, our conversation will proceed along lines that will be mutually beneficial. We can then share survival strategies, educational lessons and the vision that is common to both traditions.
The big problem here is that Indians have neglected shiksha (study) have scamped seva (service) and turned sadhana (worship) into a gaudy spectacle which is an end in itself rather than a training in tenderness of the heart.
It would not take much effort for an Urdu speaking Indian to grasp Jewish spirituality because the Hebrew vocabulary is almost the same as the Islamic Sufi terminology familiar to us from popular singers and poets. The difficulty is to link these ideas to open problems in Maths and other alethic disciplines so that 'shiksha' once again gains salience. The atmosphere in India was such, in the aftermath of Independence, that Acharya Kausambi's very gifted son published worthless proofs of the Reimann hypothesis while writing pseudo-Marxist nonsense about ancient Indian history and literature. Being a Brahmin, he naturally ascribed magical powers to Brahmins. Sheldon Pollock, being almost as lazy and bombastic as the Kausambi type of Hindu, has won the favour of the Murthy family because he too ascribes magical powers to Brahmins. This sort of nonsense can't get us very far. David Shulman, by contrast, though often writing grandiloquent nonsense, has some alethic content. Significantly, he teaches in Israel as well as America.
6) Commonality of God
A decade ago, a representative group of Hindu leaders met with some of the top representatives of the Jewish religion, including the Chief Rabbis of Israel. The Hindu group, and the initiative, were led by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, who was PM Modi’s Guru. Swami Dayananda considered one of the great achievements of the Jewish-Hindu religious summits to be the acceptance by all parties that in fact Jews and Hindus worship the same God. Hindus, stated the common declaration, worship the Supreme Being only and not any lower form, even while the Supreme Being is worshipped through other forms. For Dayananda, this put to rest the charge of idolatry that Hindus felt was levelled against them by Jews (and other monotheists).
The 'bat kol' (voice from Heaven) of Judaism and the upashruti (which can also be translated as rumour) of Hinduism have no judicial force. Furthermore, both religions have a notion of halachah vein morin kein in the special sense of a Law which, iff known, prohibits the very action it otherwise enjoins. This defeasible, anti-akrebic, commonality is indeed divine and points to a common moral oikonomia.
Given the tremendous lead tiny little Israel has taken in alethic research and genuine, as opposed to credentialist, scholarship, I'm afraid the relationship between Hindu and Israeli Jew would be that described in the Kuzari as existing between Judaism and the King of India.
Prof. Alon writes- The challenge remains. I have devoted a book length study, titled Same God, Other god – Judaism, Hinduism, and the problem of Idolatry to this challenge. I am not convinced the problem has been resolved by an English language declaration that received next to no exposure on the Jewish side. I think a lot more has to be done in order to affirm commonality of belief in God. These efforts involve Jewish theological reflection, research data among Hindu believers, consideration of educational initiatives on the Hindu side, and above all much more sharing and dialogue. Cultures that have been estranged for millennia cannot close gaps in understanding in a matter of years, or even decades. This is one of the most formidable challenges, and one that can and should be addressed, even at the next convening of our imaginary council of the Jewish and Hindu wise, when the PM of Israel pays his reciprocal visit to India.
Islam is the bridge, or barzakh, between Judaism and Hinduism. It may be that we can seek a common genealogy in the annals of ancient Iran. The notion of barzakh derives from the Avesta and, in Hinduism and Indian Buddhism, has an erotic charge. Perhaps the imagery of the Chinvat bridge has been transmogrified by esoteric Judaism. It seems to me that the juxtaposition of the words 'da'at' and 'yichud' could holdsa similar erotic charge. Of course, the collocation would be more familiar to my young readers from the game 'Wolfenstein'.
7) The challenge of personal identity. Identity is a key feature of the Jewish encounter with Hinduism. My The Jewish Encounter with Hinduism – Wisdom, Spirituality, Identity explores this challenge at length. Maintaining Jewish identity is the primary concern of Jewish organizations globally, facing weakening of identity, assimilation and intermarriage. Conversion to another religion has been seen as a threat to Jewish continuity and survival for millennia. Jewish converts to Hinduism similarly challenge the Jewish community in that they are considered a loss to the Jewish community. This is a point to which Hindu leadership has shown very little sensitivity.
This ought not to be a big stumbling block. We would say that a Jewish Vaishnava has Krishna as her ishtadeva but retains her kuladeva which she can transmit to her children. Anish Kapoor considers himself Jewish and was awarded the Genesis Prize.
Still, it is something Hindus should keep in mind. A Jew can always be Hindu-ish without losing their identity. In any case, such inter-marriage is more likely among highly educated people and, given the prestige enjoyed by the Jewish religion, the Hindu side is less likely to prove intolerant. However, in the case of divorce, it is likely that the Hindu sentiment which stresses the superiority of the mother's rights will get short shrift. Some years ago, a female Doctor married to a Jewish 'house-husband' felt very bitter when her Religion was presented as outlandish in Court and thus the father got the children as well as a big financial settlement. Interestingly, one reason for Jewish intellectual pre-eminence was the tradition of the wife working to support her husband's studies.
Prof Alon writes- Some perceived Jewish missionary work with the tribes of bene menashe has even got in the way of Jewish-Hindu relations. I think these conversions were from Christianity to Judaism in a sensitive tribal area. Incidentally, there was some talk of conversion of Dalit Christians to Judaism some years ago but again this was not a problem for Hindus. Indeed, the impression in India was that the Israelis had put pressure on the Indian Govt. because they didn't want darkies to turn up claiming 'right to return'!
8) Affirming collective identity. Israel's Army has turned into something like an Academy which encourages technological research. India could take the same road by turning its various tax funded institutions into productive, fit for purpose, engines of growth. The only way to affirm collective identity is by creating collectives which actually do something useful.
Israel, which people thought would be predatory because it was financially unsustainable, has made its army pay for itself. This has changed the geopolitical equation. It appears the Saudis are on side. Who knows what the future may hold? Fifteen years ago, there was speculation that the neo-cons in Washington were hoping to renew the Israel-Iran alliance on a theological basis. An American journalist reported that a senior neo-con had said that the Ayatollahs had similar rules to the Orthodox Rabbis on various recondite matters.
Now, it seems, Israel will be friends with anti-brotherhood Sunni regimes.
Meanwhile, in India, it appears that caste will once again trump religion so Hindutva may be on its way out.
9) Balancing religion and politics. Flowing from the previous point is the thorny issue of relations between religion and politics. Israel does not have Church-State separation; India does formally. Yet, with the rise of Hindu-oriented political parties, the political landscape is increasingly informed by religious concerns (and the religious landscape increasingly informed by political associations). The past week has seen how politics plays out in Israel and the Jewish world in relation to conversion and the status of the Western Wall. In India there are equally problematic expression of legislation by religiously oriented political parties, that have consequences for some parts of society. One of the hot topics in India is very recent legislation limiting the sale of cows, in an attempt to reduce or prevent cow slaughter. This issue has become a bone of contention, cause for riots and even killings. At the root is the challenge of mixing or balancing politics and religions, and how these play out especially in relation to minority religious groups. There is a lot to gain from a discussion across the traditions. Personally, I believe such a conversation can provide correctives to drives that all too often go unchecked when a tradition, or political party, simply follows its own mandate, based on particular religious teachings.
Prof Alon probably does not know that Gandhi's first foray into mass politics in India was a smoke screen. What was really going on in Bihar was a campaign of violence against the Muslim minority which ended when they gave up cow sacrifice. Gandhi himself wasn't complicit in this, but that's what actually happened. The cow ban was implemented by some States. It is a directive principle in the Constitution. All this happened under Gandhi and Nehru. There has been no 'very recent legislation' in this area. The laws were passed long ago. Enforcement was a different matter. Insanitary slaughter houses paid bribes and continued to function. The agricultural crisis changed the ground reality. A rent previously pocketed up by the higher ups would have to be shared with local thugs. This is not about 'balancing politics and religion'. It is about who gets to extract rents. There is also a Sociological dimension in States like Gujarat- but the BJP has to tread carefully. Modi has consolidated a cross-caste 'good governance' vote but the agricultural crisis will worsen. Similarly, a shakeout in the modern sector has to precede any real take-off. Modi may be able to get a second term but the truth is Caste is trumping Religion. Rent-seeking, not Governance, is what is uppermost in the minds of most politicians.
It is important to remember that the RSS is not really a Religious party like the Ikhwan. It is an anti-casteist organisation. But, most Hindus reject it for precisely this reason. Ideally, like the Lingayats, we'd all like to gain minority status for our own sects because we believe that the occupation traditional to our own caste is the true imitatio dei. Only our own caste-fellows are the true Kohanim.
10) Advancing a culture of pluralism and dialogue. Indian spokespersons praise India for being religiously tolerant and consider this an expression of Hindu culture.
Hindu Jurists give priority to local common law while holding scriptural law to be defeasible. This militates for, not pluralism, or dialogue, but 'Tiebout sorting'- i.e. subsidiarity and competition rather than the synoecism and universality characteristic of Judaism.
Incidentally, 'Indian spokesperson' means someone who is using his mouth for a purpose normally associated with the anus.
Yet, reality on the ground is shifting. Moreover, Indian pluralism is often based on lack of meaningful contact beyond daily living. Superficial tolerance often breeds deeper lack of acceptance. Today’s India is experiencing this increasingly. The roots of intergroup intolerance remain unchecked. India has a very little developed culture of interreligious dialogue.
Sadly, this isn't true. Every time a riot occurs in some cow-town, the District Magistrate organises an inter-faith dialogue and a 'kavi sammelan' (poet's conference). The very thugs who were busy killing their rivals the week before turn up at these events and quote Kabir and Nanak and so forth.
I recall reciting a verse I had laboriously composed on one such occasion which included an Arabic hadith. The D.M jumped to the conclusion that I must be some particularly psychotic nutjob and asked the police to investigate this evidently very low caste infiltrator. Much to his chagrin, he learned we were related.
I have seen this in my efforts to bring the know-how of dialogue to Indian religious leaders and academics.
Indian religious leaders have been rendered utterly imbecilic by the mindless adoration they receive. They can give 'darshan' (audience) but they are not like a Jewish darshan who can engage in hermeneutic disputation.
As for 'Indian Academics', Ved Mehta, who was born blind, was able to see how that class has perpetuated itself. What happened was that his father sent him to a Blind School where he was taught Braille. This enabled him to read out aloud to the Headmaster who had been chosen for this post by his family because he was illiterate.
The Indian Academy is adversely selective. Why? Well, common sense tells us that if a person takes ten years to read a Subject everybody else masters in a year, then clearly they are unfit for any type of useful work. They might as well teach those as retarded as themselves.
Even more significantly, it has a very low level of religious literacy in all that concerns other religions.
Illiteracy is Godly. A true Holy Man proudly boasts that the nonsense he utters was not learnt from any book.
Due to State-Church separation, no religion is taught in the school system and therefore opportunities for educating to a culture of tolerance and acceptance based on real knowledge of the other are almost non-existent.
The real problem is caste. Kids are left in blissful ignorance as to its origins and thus heteronomous notions get linked to this aspect of Indian social life. Once one realises that every occupation is an imitatio dei, then false 'pathogen stress' derived notions of 'pollution' are sublated.
This paradigm is very different from the paradigm that informs large parts of the Western world, especially the English speaking world, where educational efforts include religious pluralism. Sadly, in this respect Israel is much more like India than it is like parts of the Western world. Ignorance of the religious other is rampant and engagement in constructive encounter and dialogue a low national and educational priority.
I'm not sure the 'Western world' does justice to Judaism. Still, I imagine great strides have been made in the last few decades. But, perhaps, films and TV have played a bigger part. Certainly, in India, the film industry has helped improve appreciation and understanding between communities.
A three day visit is probably not enough time for our imaginary group of leaders and scholars to engage all these issues. But it is an occasion for recalling that much more ties Israel to India than agriculture or the sale of military equipment. The relationship holds huge promise, but such promise also requires a spirit of honest exchange and interrogation, that would allow both nations to advance in their respective societal missions through dialogue with the contemporary reality of the other. Let us hope that this imaginary conversation can one day be made real, to the benefit of Jews, Hindus and all members of the states of India and Israel.
Amen! Or as we say down South 'mind it kindly!'
Amen! Or as we say down South 'mind it kindly!'
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