BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON Judaism, Unitarian Universalism, and the Universal Quest
James Ishmael Ford
8 January 2006

By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept
As we remembered Zion.
On the willow trees there
We hung up our lyres,
For those who had carried us captive
Asked us to sing a song,
Our captors called on us to be joyful:
"Sing us one of the songs of Zion,"
How could we sing the Lord’s song
In a strange land?
Psalm 137:1-4

Today I want to explore a little the relationship between Unitarian Universalism and Judaism. I’ll start with my own experience and then speak of our historic connections as communities of faith. From that brief outline I’ll go on to assert how we religious liberals in fact owe a great deal to Judaism for who we are. And I’ll suggest we might continue to find value in a dialog with contemporary Judaism, and end with an example.

I recently stumbled upon another of those Jeff Foxworthy-inspired lists; in this case you might be a Baptist if… As many know I’m a child of the Baptist tradition, with so many of its assumptions so deeply engrained in my body even all these years and decades since moving on to other spiritual fields that I actually still have trouble dancing. I felt an uncomfortable sense of recognition with several items on the list. Among them you might be a Baptist if you honestly believe Paul spoke King James English; if you think Jesus used Welch’s grape juice and saltine crackers at the Last Supper; or, if you believe you’re supposed to take a covered dish to heaven. Okay, I didn’t believe that last one. But my grandmother did. And she set the spiritual tone for our family.

Another of the peculiarities of the Baptist faith is its complicated relationship with Judaism. At least for the subset of Baptists I belonged to Jews were the Chosen People; capital “c,” capital “p.” But, by the convoluted logic of religious communities, this meant it was the particular responsibility of Baptists to convert the Jews – in order to fulfill their true place as the leaders of the Christian church.

I recall throughout my childhood various preachers visiting our churches who were involved in Jewish Christian missions of one sort or another. And I recall how my grandmother took considerable pleasure in speculating whether her maternal grandmother had been a convert. She informed me if she were right this would mean I was Jewish, and she absolutely meant this as a good thing. Anyway my childhood relationship to Judaism was, as I said, complicated. The only religious thing more complex in our family dynamics was the fact my father was nominally Catholic. But, we can save that for another sermon.

Then I grew up and became a Buddhist. Perhaps you haven’t heard the story of the woman who declared to her husband, “It’s time to go see the Lama.” He tried to dissuade her; after all they lived in New Jersey and the lama was in a monastery in India. But she wouldn’t be put off. “It’s time to see the Lama,” she’d repeat. Her friends said, it’s really too far. You’re too old. Come on. But, no, she’d just say “It’s time to see the Lama.” Finally her husband agreed and she purchased her flight to Delhi, took a bus to Dharmasala, and from there a taxi up to the monastery.

She arrived at the monastery’s gate, and told the attendant she was there to see the Lama. “It’s time,” she insisted. He replied the Lama is very busy, and is not available for visitors. She insisted, “It’s time to see the Lama.” He said no. She insisted further, so he went in to check with the Lama’s secretary. After a long time the attendant came back and told her “You can see the Lama, but only for five minutes. So, please have your question brief and clear.” She said she could do that. There were all sorts of purifications and other rituals that had to be done before she could actually see the Lama. When they were finished, finally, she was led into the Lama’s rooms. There he was sitting on the high throne surrounded by monks and nuns. He looked over to her; she looked up to him and said, “Morris, it’s time to come home.”

The first time I really got to know real live Jews was when I became a Buddhist monk. I’ve often said I learned pretty much all the Yiddish I know when I entered the Zen monastery. People think I’m joking. I’m not. For whatever mysterious karmic reasons in those mystic sixties and early seventies, a disproportionate number of young Americans who took up an interest in Eastern religions were Jewish. And it was, as they were called, JuBus who gave me my first introduction to Judaism. In fact my late son is named for a Jewish Buddhist who I first met at a Zen center we both attended.

Later I found the “pure” Zen Buddhism I was practicing didn’t quite work for me. Among other things I had unfinished business with my Western roots. Now I’d done all that I needed to with my Baptist origins. But there was still Western stuff to deal with. After some further adventures among Episcopalians, Gnostics, Sufis and others offering, at least by its most generous definition, Western spiritualities in California’s great spiritual marketplace; I discovered Unitarian Universalism. Pretty quickly it became home. And, interestingly, throughout all this my encounter with Judaism has continued to deepen in many ways. Judaism’s stories, its approaches to faith; its deeper realities have constantly informed my own dynamic investigation of truth, and hope, and possibility.

I’ve now served among you for five and a half years. You may have figured out by now I’m a pretty hardnosed rationalist. For me Abraham and Moses are as mythic as Noah’s flood or Jonah and his great fish. I seriously doubt there’s even a shred of history behind their stories. I strongly suspect Jewish history begins with the Babylonian captivity. In fact I assume that’s so.

But. And as with so much that counts in our lives, there’s a lot in that “but.” While I believe the Jewish people were a sub-set of the Canaanite/Phoenician culture that inhabited what we now think of as Israel and Palestine; there was something special that emerged, particularly, as I’ve just suggested, within and out of the Babylonian captivity. Associated with their leader Ezra and the Scriptures he and his associates appear to have woven together out of various oral traditions; from that time something curious and miraculous emerged.

It was Judaism, a universal faith predicated in worship of a single unseen God and a deeply felt knowledge that all people could achieve salvation, healing of our universal human hurt. Also, it was profoundly humanistic; its concerns were mostly with how we live our lives in the here and now. And all of this was wrapped up in a story. Frankly it doesn’t really matter if there was an Egyptian captivity and a Moses and a journey to a promised land. Historically it’s incredibly unlikely. But as a metaphor for our lives; it works. It really works.

I think it very interesting that when proto-Unitarians began to emerge during the Reformation, when they were tried by Catholic and orthodox Protestants, the heresy that would be named was often, usually “Judaising.” That is they were accused of trying to change Christianity into a school of Judaism. Or, as we might more accurately say today, returning Christianity to a school of Judaism.

Of course that isn’t what happened. Our Unitarian cousins in Transylvania aren’t a Jewish sect. Nor are our English speaking cousins. Nor are we. For all sorts of reasons people in mixed marriages come to us. This is a wonderful thing. It enriches us in so many different ways. But, as welcoming and open as we are, we are in fact a distinct religious movement. So, when I meet with people who are seriously considering joining us, and they are a mixed marriage; I feel it very important to tell them yes, they are more than welcome to come among us exactly as they are. But, and this important for them to hear, their children will be Unitarian Universalists.

What’s so intriguing for me and the major thread I want to follow today; is how much of what has become Unitarian Universalism in fact owes to some core elements of the Jewish way. The particular debt we owe to Judaism circles on the unity of human experience, a practical acknowledgment of suffering, and a moral path that culminates in a call to justice. Each of these things is washed through our Christian heritage, our debt to the Enlightenment, and to our contemporary rationalist spirituality which has proven to be able to incorporate wisdom from many sources ranging from earth-centered traditions to eastern religions, in particular Buddhism – but it can also be followed as a thread right back to Judaism. And perhaps more important, can be informed and clarified today as we re-examine our contemporary liberal faith through the lens of contemporary Judaism.

First, the unity of human experience. While the Jewish tradition is one of discrete expression, remember the chosen people thing, it also freely, and near as I can tell was the first religion, to say the holy, the good, belongs to all people. This births universalism. This carries the message that God or love, however you want to name it, transcends place and history. God, love, belongs to all of us. Or, perhaps more accurately, we all belong to, are carried along by, and find our fulfillment within our experience of that overwhelming love. Judaism also offers the complicated but important message that this universal love needs to be experienced in specific ways. God may be invisible, but God is known only within relationships. In the twentieth century the great Jewish theologian Martin Buber explored what this might mean in ways that continue to inform many of us.

Second, that practical acknowledgment of suffering. Often the work of religion has to do with denial of what’s actually going on. In my childhood faith if you believed “right” you wouldn’t suffer the way other people do. We’d never be tested beyond our capacity. A terrible conundrum when in fact we were pushed beyond our capacity all the time. I’ve known too many people who have been broken; I know too many stories of unmerited suffering even to death. From the beginning Jews have acknowledged universal hurt. And if one takes the story of Eden as a story about us, it in fact reveals much about why we hurt in the ways we do. We lost paradise when we discovered how to divide the universe and became like gods. We gained the ability to create, and we lost our original home. Here those haunting words of the psalmist, that lament of captivity “by the waters of Babylon” becomes our universal longing.

And that brings us to the moral way that finds its fulfillment in a quest for universal justice. In the loss of our home, out of the loss of our deep knowing we are all related, in forgetting that that universal experience included not only every human but all of creation; we’ve also lost our moral compass. We don’t know which way to go. Instead of generosity we too often follow only our appetites. Instead of clarity in our dealings with each other we too often are overwhelmed by resentment, anger and hatred. And instead of a holy curiosity, a wanting to learn, we take our opinions and make them God’s law.
Its here we discover the commandments and what they can really mean for us. In fact there aren’t Ten Commandments. According to contemporary Jewish tradition there are six hundred and thirteen commandments. One of the conceits of orthodox Christianity is that Judaism is about the law and the Good News is about being freed from the law. While the core Christian call to an overwhelming and liberating love is profound and beautiful, this comparison is nonsense. We are liberated only through our actual humanity, and the ways we actually live. And that’s the ancient Jewish message.

Coming to understand the ways the human universe is ordered opens gates to our genuine liberation. Now, the reason I’m not Jewish is I don’t believe the commandments are in fact given by God. They are human artifacts, some amazingly right on, others of questionable use, and others simply offensive to human dignity. Of course this reveals the danger for us as Unitarian Universalists where we often want it both ways. We want the practical expression of our faith, but we’re wary of or actually denying our human limitations.

There are boundaries, and we need to find them. But, again, if we take the story as true, not historically, but true in its broad telling about who we are, as about us, and how we might live in a more healthy way; then we are given some direction. As we unravel the commandments, we discover they really are about the fact human beings are limited. We are finite. And, that we find our greater reality in our presence each of us to the other, and in how we actually relate to one another and the great world itself. Here it turns out the real lesson for us given by the Jewish way is that our personal liberation is tied up completely with the liberation of the world. We are all children of the one God.

For me it can all be brought together in the first Psalm. I love Stephen Mitchell’s rendition, which collapses the text a little, polishes it a bit, and then presents it as both ancient Jewish teachings, and I really believe, our deepest Unitarian Universalist wisdom.

Blessed are the man and the woman
Who have grown beyond their greed
And have put an end to their hatred
And no longer nourish illusions.
But they delight in the way things are
And keep their hearts open, day and night.
They are like trees planted near flowing rivers,
Which bear fruit when they are ready.
Their leaves will not fall or wither.
Everything they do will succeed.

If this is the only lesson we take from Judaism, it will assure our path is true, our work holy, and the love that is God will be spread across the world. And wouldn’t that be great?

Amen.