Shabbat Devarim
Written by Halima Krausen Monday, 11 August 2008
Halima Krausen is a Muslim scholar and teacher who is a member of the College's interfaith committee and JCM planning team. Having studied Islamic theology, Halima now teaches in Muslim study circles in Germany, the UK and beyond. After many years of interfaith dialogue, she greatly enjoys teaching and studying with people from other religious traditions, focusing on source texts and their interpretations.Studying this Parashah as Muslim theologian using my own traditional 'toolbox' rather than Jewish methodology is an unending journey of discovery. Just three thoughts:
Moses introduces his 'farewell discourse' with a self-critical glance back at the vicissitudes of forty years in the wilderness, a community with a law and a social structure, ready to start a model society in the Promised Land. He recollects the appointment of judges and the crisis after the misinterpretation of the information about the land, followed by a summary of defeats, negotiations and victories. Looking at the language and history, I am horrified at the concept of cherem that, after the defeat of the kings Sihon and Og, implied killing men, women and children - the more so since haram, the familiar cognate word in Arabic, means forbidden, taboo, inviolable, sacred, as in the Qur'anic injunction, 'do not kill a life that God made sacred.' According to Jewish commentaries, this refers exclusively to the conquest of Canaan, while Jewish and Muslim traditions generally consider someone 'who kills a person like someone who kills all humankind' - I hope even the most extremist reader understands that. I would nevertheless be careful not to be too proud of living in a more humane world, considering that modern weapons of mass destruction can leave a similar result. We have each our difficult texts to struggle with, but problems like that we must tackle together.
Like a contrast, there is a different message beyond the contemporary situation. As elsewhere in the Torah, being impartial and not discriminating against the strangers is emphasized: the same law applies to all. Moreover, the people are instructed not to molest the descendants of Esau and Lot: their space was given to them by God just as God is giving Canaan to the Children of Israel. This is one of the examples where the Tanach goes beyond exclusively following the story of the Children of Israel, opening up a theological perspective of coexistence and communication on eye level, respecting others in their own, different relationship with God.
The book of Devarim starts a holistic tradition of remembering and studying. A holy scripture is not a manual but a meaningful message for human life that is generally always a sequence of ups and downs, every 'happy end' a source of new challenges. There are failures, new insights, successes - and God is always there, reproaching, forgiving, blessing, urging on. Looking back on forty years of my own struggle for interfaith understanding, I remember painful setbacks like 9/11, embarrassing misunderstandings, and many successful projects of Jewish, Christian, Muslim encounter. The fruit was often lasting friendship. Therefore I find an important message in the passage as a whole: Don't be afraid. The Eternal your God is fighting for you.
Halima Krausen
August 2008
