Parshat Yitro 5766
By Rabbi Mark B Greenspan
(With the help of Naomi Greenspan, Program Associate
Commission on Interrelations Affairs of Reform Judaism)
Only it occurred to me the other day that there is one thing missing from this list of ten. In fact I don’t think it appears in the Torah. So maybe we should talk about the eleven commandments…
It’s one of the first lessons we’re taught as children. Someone hits us and we turn around and hit them back even harder. An adult breaks up the fight and punishes both of us. When we complain that they hit us first, we’re told, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Well I guess that, “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” is not exactly a commandment (maybe that’s why it doesn’t appear in the Torah) but it is certainly a truism of how we live or ought to live.
With that in mind I have a message that I’d like to share with you this morning with which you may not agree. It is a hard lesson for me to articulate and a bitter one, but it’s a lesson about which we need to think more seriously. Simply put, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” And until we finally understand and internalize this life lesson, and take it more seriously, wars will continue to be fought, people will continue to hate, and the world will be filled with violence.
Virtually every act of aggression in the world can be reduced to this simple lesson. Who hit whom first? Who was the first aggressor? Who wronged whom? In the end it doesn’t really matter because two wrongs don’t make a right. When we look back at most wars it’s not at all clear where the first wrong occurred, who threw the first punch, or who is more culpable. Whether we’re talking about individuals, families or nations we often can’t even remember why we got angry at one another in the first place and where our disagreements comes from.
What I want really want to address this morning are cartoons, especially political cartoons. I’d like to spend a few moments reflecting on a certain cartoon that appeared on the editorial page of Danish weekly about two weeks ago. It depicted Mohammad wearing a turban containing a ticking bomb. That picture – though it was not the first time it appeared in the press – caused shock waves throughout the Moslem world and led to violence, riots, boycotts, threats of assassination, the destruction of the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria, and virtual universal condemnation from the adherents of the Islamic religion.
For those who value freedom of speech, the response was extreme and incomprehensible. After all this was not the first time we saw political cartoons that were in poor taste and meant to shock us. That is the whole point of an editorial cartoon. But Muslims did not seem to understand or appreciate this. They blamed a whole nation for the actions of an individual and equated the editorial policy of a single newspaper with the attitudes toward Islam of all people in western civilization. The extremism, the violence and the vitriol with which the Muslim world reacted seemed to validate our worst prejudices about Moslems in general and Arabs in particular.
Now it would be easy for me to stand here this morning and criticize the extreme response of the Moslem world to a single political cartoon. And it would be simple (and maybe simple-minded) for me to condemn the violence and hatred that resulted from this cartoon, or the lack of understanding of freedom of expression that seems to typify much of the Moslem world.
It would be especially easy for me to say, “they had it coming’ with regard to this cartoon given the long tradition of provocative and violent cartoons that have appeared in Arabic media against Israel and America over the years. Israel and Jews are regularly depicted as bloodthirsty monsters that kill Arab children and control the world. While I can’t think of a picture that we Jews would consider blasphemy in sense that depicting Mohammad is blasphemy for Moslems, there is ample evidence of how Muslim journalists have used such cartoons in the most distasteful and hateful ways against Israel and America for years. So it would be easy for me to stand here today and say, “They did it first.”
But two wrongs don’t make a right. Because we Jews understand how distasteful and damaging words and pictures can be, we have a responsibility to condemn such forms of expression no matter who they are used against. Freedom of expression is one thing. Insensitivity to the basic beliefs and tenets of another person’s faith or culture, or purposely portraying the faith of another as demonic and evil is just plain wrong. By portraying Mohammad as a terrorist, this picture was actually saying that all Moslems are murderers. This is no less prejudicial than the portrayal of Israelis and Jews as murderers and haters of Arabs that one finds in the Arab press.
But let us think about this from another perspective. Imagine, for instance, that a local newspaper depicted the pope fondling young a boy. While I doubt Catholics would go out and riot, I suspect that the Catholic world would rise up in outrage and anger against such depictions. Does that mean Catholics are against Freedom of Expression? Of course not! But that does not mean such a depiction is appropriate. Such a picture suggests that all Catholic priests are somehow pedophiles, and that the church as a whole is guilty of the actions of individuals.
But not only would Christians protest, I suspect many Jews would speak out against such provocative depictions as well. Yet Jewish and Christian leaders this past week were quick to condemn the violence while ignoring the affront to Moslems that this cartoon represented. For Moslems, the depiction of Mohammad is strictly forbidden, and while non-Moslems are not bound by Moslem strictures, to use such images in an inflammatory way is worse than provocative – it is hateful and prejudicial.
I don’t want to minimize how wrong I believe the violence was but right now we need to look at our own actions as Jews and as Americans and not those of others. How often do we speak about the Muslim world as if all adherents of Islam are the same, as if the actions of extremists reflect the attitudes of the entire people? The Media went out of its way over the past two weeks to show us violence and mayhem. Nothing was said about the more moderate Arab groups that condemned this violence. When we portray Moslems as if they were all of one clothe we misrepresent not only them but their religion and that is no better than portraying Jews as representing one political or religious point of view.
I don’t want my attitudes and actions to be construed as the same as those of Chabad, for instanced I wouldn’t want the world to think that I agreed with Israeli settlers who throw bricks at soldiers and defy the law of the land in an effort to hold on to settlements in land that they believe was given to them by God. Judaism is a complex religion and the Jewish people are a diverse community; no one group should be presented as representative of the whole. And that is just as true of the Muslim and Arab world.
So where is the condemnation of violence by Muslim leaders? Unfortunately I believe that the media often ignores such statements in favor of the more news worthy expressions of outrage and anger that some Islamic leaders express. For instance, the Muslim Public Affairs Council condemned statements made by the Iranian president this week when he once again questioned whether the Holocaust took place and suggested that Israel be dismantled and moved to Europe. The Islamic Society of North America also condemned a plan by an Iranian newspaper to solicit cartoons denying the Holocaust… Individuals and organizations across North America condemned the violence in the Arab world while expressing their hurt at depictions of Mohammad that so offended them. Yet those statements never made it beyond the internet.
My daughter, Naomi, has become an advocate for increased dialogue between Muslims and Jews. She has spoken and written extensively on this subject, and in a recent piece which she wrote for the Commission on Inter-religious Affairs for the Reform Movement, she made a number of suggestions that we ought to consider about our own attitudes towards Islam. I’d like to share them with you at this time:
1. We need to make an active effort to learn about Islam and Muslim cultures.
2. We should reach out to Muslims in our community and engage in dialogue with them
3. Expand our knowledge of the Muslim world to include sources other than the popular media.
4. We should learn about and draw attention to moderate Muslim voices both in America and around the world.
5. We need to educate others about our own religious tradition.
It is easy to condemn “the other.” But how can we ever hope about reconciliation and understanding unless we are willing to deepen our appreciation of what Islam really is both as a religion and a culture. Today what we need is more understanding. If we wait for others to understand us, it will never happen. As Jews and as Americans we need to act unilaterally and rise above the political rhetoric in an effort to understand who our neighbors are.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Because the Muslim world often displays an ignorance of the west does not mean we should remain just as ignorant of who our neighbors are. We don’t like it when we hear people make statements about “All Jews.” Why should it be any more acceptable to make statements about “All Moslems?”
Before we proceed with the Ten Commandments maybe we ought to start with what our parents told us.
Two wrongs really don’t make a right.
