Proclaiming Justice with Laurie Cardoza Moore

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin: And then I realized we're less than 13 million Jews. There are close to two billion Christians. If we're going to guard ourselves against the extremists in Islam that have taken over Iran, for whom the public enemy number one, the Great Satan, is the United States of America, and are trying to take over many other places in the world. Unless we join hands with the Christians, who join us in belief in a God of love and morality and peace, there's no hope for the free world.

Laurie Cardoza Moore: I'm Laurie Cardoza Moore, and this is Proclaiming Justice podcast.

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin: And I began to realize that one of the great miracles of this generation of our return to Israel, alongside of the Jewish state which arose literally from the ashes of Auschwitz, alongside of the ingathering of exiles, the tribe of Dan from Ethiopia, the lost tribe of Manasseh from India near Bangladesh, in addition to all of those miracles, is the miracle of the rapprochement between Christianity and Judaism, especially in the period in which we're living.

When the world is being threatened by extremist Islam. The world is being threatened by terrorist murder squads. The world is being threatened by jihadists who believe that their God, who has become Satan in effect because he has urged people to become suicide bombers and promised 72 virgins in the other world for individuals who lose their lives murdering innocent lives as suicide bombers, that God is Satan. He's not the monotheistic God in whom we believe.

And then I realized we're less than 13 million Jews. There are close to two billion Christians. If we're going to guard ourselves against the extremists in Islam that have taken over Iran, and of course Al Qaeda, for whom the public enemy number one, the Great Satan, is the United States of America, unless we join hands with the Christians, who join us in belief in a God of love and morality and peace, there's no hope for the free world.

And therefore I think the rapprochement comes at a very important time, and we have a common mission. And that mission, as the Bible says it very clearly in Genesis 18, verse 19, that God says he chose Abraham initially so that he can teach the generations after him, tzedakah u-mishpat, compassionate righteousness and moral justice.

Our joint mission, the Christian mission and the Jewish mission, is to teach the world the tremendous importance of these two concepts, tzedakah and mishpat, compassionate righteousness and moral justice. And therefore we must join hands. We cannot mask over the differences. There are differences. Jews do not accept the divinity of Jesus by definition. Those who accept the divinity of Jesus must be considered as Christians.

However, what we share is much more important than what divides us. And we share the belief in a God of love, in a religion for peace, in a religion for absolute morality of "Thou shalt not murder," the inviolability of every human being, freedom for every people. And I've found tremendous heart within the Christian community.

And the strengthening of the bonds between Judaism and Christianity, especially as a bulwark against jihadism, is the most important thing that can happen in our generation because at stake is the free world. Jihadists are tragically the heirs of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. And we must see to it that the religion of love, peace, and morality takes over the world, not, God forbid, jihadism.

God never promised us a rose garden and never promised that things would be easy even for observant Jews, even for the good people in the world. But God did say that the Jewish people would never be destroyed and that ultimately the world would be redeemed and that the fundamental laws of morality would be accepted by everyone.

The great prophets, Isaiah chapter 2, Micah chapter 4, they speak of the Holy Temple, secure on the Temple Mount, and the Gentiles pouring into the Temple Mount, learning the Torah of Zion. Micah says specifically, each religion will call God in its name. We will call the Lord our God, Hashem Elokeinu, in our name for God. But everyone will accept that fundamental morality, "Thou shalt not murder," a God of love and the God of peace.

And the prophet Zechariah chapter 7, 8, 9, speak of 10 Gentiles holding onto the ritual fringes of one Jew saying, let us go with you, for God is with you. So the prophet foretells that it will happen. And it has to happen now because of the threat of jihadism. Because the threat of jihadism in a global village, where one madman can destroy the world with nuclear weaponry, requires a return to the religion of morality, to a God of love.

I think it has to happen now. I think one more thing. We, the Jewish people, have returned to our homeland, to the State of Israel. The return to our homeland means the return to history. For the last close to 2,000 years, when we were stateless and powerless, we couldn't possibly influence the world. Only when we've become a nation like all other nations does that possibility obtain.

And therefore I think this is the time for our rapprochement. This is the time for our joint mission to the world. This is the time when hopefully we will bring the world to redemption. I think there's not much choice because if we don't do it positively, God forbid, there will be no world to speak of.

Why is it that there are segments of the Jewish community who are not embracing the Jewish-Christian relationship for political reasons? Political reasons in terms of the right-wing stance vis-a-vis Israel that is being held by so many of these Christians. I feel very sorry for those Jews.

First of all, I don't think I have met one Arab who does not believe that the Arabs have a right to be in all of Judea and Samaria. Why are there so many Jews who don't believe that we have a right to be in Judea and Samaria? Not every right that one has does one have to realize. And therefore I happen to be in favor of a two-state solution ultimately, because I think the Palestinians do require their own state if there is going to be peace in the Middle East once we have secure borders and once they recognize our right to a Jewish state.

So that I would not necessarily advocate building settlements throughout Judea and Samaria, which would not allow for eventually a Palestinian state. But I don't question my rights to Judea and Samaria. I have 4,000 years of living rights. The Jews have lived in an unbroken chain in Judea and Samaria for 4,000 years. That's all I've ever heard from the evangelical community, that we have the right.

It seems to me that only a self-hating Jew who doesn't, because if you don't have the right to Judea and Samaria, neither do we have the right to Tel Aviv. We certainly don't have the right to Tel Aviv because we didn't live there 4,000 years ago. We did live in Judea and Samaria 4,000 years ago.

So from that perspective, I don't think they have a leg to stand on and I feel sorry for them. I really feel sorry for them. Because if our friend you think loves us too much, accept it as a blessing and as a gift. There are so many in the world that hate us too much, that don't think we have any right to be in Israel at all. If there is an evangelical community that loves us a little too much for your liking, accept it as a very beautiful gift.

The Nazis defined the Jews as a race and it certainly is a distortion, because what they meant by a race was genetic continuity and that everything depended upon the genes. And therefore we were the accursed race with the accursed genes and they were the blessed race with the blessed genes. Judaism is colorblind. Judaism never defined itself as a race. For us, it's not the genes. It's not the ethnicity that counts. It's the values and the lifestyle.

One of our most famous books is the little Scroll of Ruth that we read every year on the anniversary of the holiday when we received the revelation at Sinai, the Torah from God. And it's about a Moabite woman who converted and who became the grandmother of the progenitor of the Messiah, of King David. So Judaism doesn't depend upon race or genes as much as it depends upon practice, how you live your life and what values you live your life with.

There are those who say that we're living now in an era of a new anti-Semitism. It's not anti-Jewish; it's anti-Israel. I'll tell you something which I believe with all my heart. The anti-Semite wants to get at our jugular. Whatever he thinks is the most vulnerable spot, that's what he will attack. Whatever he believes is the most important for Jewish future, that's what he will destroy.

There was a period after the Hadrianic persecutions. We had lost the Temple, but we still exhibited tremendous staying power. And the Romans understood that as long as we kept on producing religious leaders, we would continue to flourish. So they became anti-rabbinical ordination, anti-the religious court called the Sanhedrin. And that was the focus of their attack because they knew that that was the secret of Jewish future.

Similarly today, after the Holocaust, it's very clear that it's the State of Israel without which the Jews would never have flourished worldwide, without which there would never be a vibrant Jewish community today. The anti-Semites realize it, and therefore they target the State of Israel.

And it's tragic, but we have to understand how important it is, how important it is for the future of Israel, how important it is for the future of Jewry. And since Israel is standing up against terrorism, how important it is for the future of the world. And understand that the more the Gentiles target Israel, the more we must realize how critical Israel is for us.

I want to add one thing. With the exception of Yad Vashem and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, I believe that there's something unhealthy about the proliferation of Holocaust museums and so many Holocaust studies in university, which is virtually the major studies, Jewish studies, on campus relating to the Holocaust. What's unhealthy about it? No one wants to identify with a victim.

What is critical about our God and our image of God is that He is a redeemer. That's what we say in all of our prayers. That's the great promise, that God will redeem us, the nation Israel, and God will redeem the entire world at the end of the days. And God's guarantee that we will never be destroyed.

We spend a whole evening, a Seder evening on Passover, going over the history of the Jews in Egypt and our exit from Egypt, our Exodus. We had a virtual Holocaust in Egypt. Jewish babies, male babies, were thrown into the Nile to be killed. We don't zero in on the destruction, and it was 210 years of destruction and enslavement. We mention it certainly, but only as the precursor to the God who took us out of Egypt, God the redeemer.

Yad Vashem, because it's in Israel, doesn't allow you to visit it without seeing that it is in the backdrop of the State of Israel. That God redeemed us, that we're here, strong and more powerful than we've been for the last 2,000 years. In Washington, in order to remind the world of what inhumanity can do, and again I think it must have a very powerful punchline about Israel, which I don't know that it's powerful enough, but I understand that as well.

Otherwise, Holocaust museums that wallow in the Holocaust and in the destruction ultimately do no service to the Jewish people and don't in any way guarantee Jewish future or encourage Jewish future. Only if the major part of the story, our return to Israel, is told in as dramatic a way as the tragedy of the Holocaust is told, is there a justification for a Holocaust museum.

Laurie Cardoza Moore: Thank you again for joining me on this edition of Proclaiming Justice. Please share this podcast with your family and friends. For more information about how you can get involved, please visit our website at pjtn.org. As a PJTN watcher, you can help us keep up the fight to preserve our freedom for our children and their children for such a time as this.