“Families of Abraham – Our Commonalities and Differences”

Ash Shaheed/Myers Park Baptist/Temple Beth El Dialogue
Levine Museum of the New South 2007
Rabbi Schindler

My soon to be five year old son, in talking this week about the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the different colors of people’s skin remarked, “If everyone were the same color, the world would not be as beautiful.”

This past Thursday I came to view the Families of Abraham exhibit for a second time. I was alone in the exhibit hall listening to the liturgical music of our three faiths, taking in the sacred and simple moments of the eleven families that were photographed. In that time of reflection, my feeling was similar to that of my son. As I took in the diverse and powerful photos, I noted to myself, “If everyone were the same religion, the world would not be as beautiful.”

Our three faiths descend from one man… not only are we all branches of the same, though very distant family tree, but all of our faiths revolve around the family -- family meals, family celebrations, family remembrances.

What struck me also is that we are three separate families. We all mark as sacred the moments of the lifecycle, do good world in the world, and build our lives upon those texts that we deem sacred. Yet the texts that we each value as most elevated are different: the Torah for the Jewish community, the New Testament for Christians, and the Koran for Muslims. And, as depicted in the exhibit, all of our holidays are completely different:

Christmas, Good Friday, Pentacost and Easter for the Christians.
Rammadan, Eid Al-fater, the Hajj, and Eid al-Adha for the Moslems.
Simchat Torah, Chanukah, Purim and Yom Kippur for the Jews.

We have no sacred time in common. Even our Sabbaths fall on different days: the Islamic community celebrates on Friday, the Jewish community celebrates on Saturday, and the Christian community marks Sunday as their day consecrated to God.

We consecrate births differently, marry our children off with different rituals, bury and mourn in a different fashion. We even view the afterlife through a different lens. As one member of a Christian family in the exhibit remarked, “Everybody is doing to die, if you believe in Jesus, you will ascend to heaven.”

What gets us into heaven is not dwelt upon in this exhibit, but it is a fundamental difference between us.

On a different note, we can be proud of all of the families in this exhibit for they reflect our best – the best of families, the best of faith, the beauty of religious living. These families were all made up of people who live their religions in all that they do: they bring it into their work, their homes, and their world. They embrace the values of peace that are a foundation of all of our faiths.

But the reality is that so many of our families are not these. They take their religion casually and for granted. They are “High Holiday Jews” as we would call them, or “CEO’s - Christmas Easter Onlys” as Christians might call them. And I do not know the Islamic equivalent but I suspect it exists. Sadly, many of our parishioners have read some of our sacred texts, but do not know them well nor do they strive to live, in all that they do, the values these texts transmit.

And then in all of our faiths there are the fundamentalists who use religion not to build up the world, but to knock down those who are different from themselves.

Dr. Julian Hammer wrote “Only when we know our commonalities and differences can we understand and build peace.” This exhibit and this dialogue help us to achieve this goal.

As we saw and as we know, we have an abundance of commonalities. We are all people of the book. We all pray to God – the Lord, allah, or Adonai. We all view Jerusalem as a holy city and believe in our responsibility to heal the world.

One Christian subject commented: I live my life in conversation with God. All of our faiths require us to do so. In our synagogues, above our ark which holds the Torahs it states, “Da lifnei me atah omed, know before whom you stand.” All of us as people of faith, as children of Abraham, see ourselves as standing before God.

And as three communities of faith we have differences. The language and content of our prayer, the ritual garb that we wear, the foods we eat, the community with whom we pray.

In the exhibit, the family that challenged me most was the Christian family who was insular and chose to home school their kids so they could be educated about God (since that is not the domain of our secular schools). I was struck by the simplicity with which they live their lives. They don’t have birthday parties -- the father simply lays his hands on the birthday child and prayers for him, offering him a blessing. And women do not rise to positions of leadership.

Every faith, Christian, Jewish and Moslem has such insular families who follow traditional gender roles. In my faith, the ultra Orthodox Jews are not so different.

But, at the same time, what I loved about this same Christian family was the way that the father described each child, “Hannah is my grace, Gavin my strength, Jonathan my joy, Corbin my servant hood, Leigha my peace.”

Just as this father saw each child bringing to him a gift, we need to see the same. We are all children of Abraham, each with our own invaluable religious contributions.

Imagine Abraham saying the same thing as this father, about his three children of faith – all of us. We can practically hear our patriarch whispering from the grave, “Each of my children of faith has his own noble attributes. Each child is special in her own right. Each child at times disappointments me and at other moments fills me with the greatest of pride. Each child brings his gifts into the world. Each child is special in my sight and in God’s sight.”