In his latest book, Faith and Power, the distinguished Jewish scholar of Islam Bernard Lewis reminds readers that for most of the last 1,500 years, “creative Jewish achievement was entirely in the hands of Christendom and Islam, and it is these two different traditions that we see coming together in Israel at the present day.”
The dominant force in Islam is Shariah, which is almost identical with what we understand as Halachah. Some Jews want to make the latter the law of the State of Israel, corresponding to Shariah in Muslim countries.
By contrast, after centuries of deadly wars between Christian denominations, Christendom developed the notion of the separation between church and state. In that scheme of things, religion isn’t state-controlled but private and personal. The Muslim way exclusively dominated earlier times. The Christian way is a function of modernity.
“There are historically two kinds of Jews,” writes Lewis, “the Jews of Islam and the Jews of Christendom.” In the Diaspora, the two lived in different parts of the world with minimal interaction. Jews in Muslim countries adapted to the ways if Islam. Emancipated Jews in the modern West thrived without state interference. In Israel, the two have met.
This leads Lewis to assert that most of today’s internal tensions in the Jewish state can best be understood as encounters “between the Christian Jews and the Muslim Jews.” The former are the proponents of such things as civil marriage and religious pluralism. They oppose religious political parties. The latter are staunch advocates that the rule of Halachah to be enforced by the state.
Many current controversies purport to have come about in order to protect the soul of Israel. Recent battles include the proposed changes to the conversion bill, the discrimination against the Women of the Wall, the wish to expel Israeli-born children of non-Jewish workers, the difficulties of some couples to be allowed to marry in Israel, etc. Lewis would say that these aren’t religious but cultural divisions that stem from the two, often opposing influences on Israeli life.
As a growing number of Muslims are settling in former and still nominally Christian states, similar divisions are surfacing there, too. For example, the debates in Paris and elsewhere over headgear for Muslim women and in New York over the site of a mosque near Ground Zero reflect them.
In this scheme of things, I see myself as a “Christian Jew” and hope that so do you. If the Muslim way of Judaism wins the day, liberal Jews will be forced out of Israel.
