Anyone
who has taken a trip down South Broadway in Hicksville cannot help but notice
an abundance of commercial establishments catering to a substantial Indian
population. The fashion displayed in the windows is an array of creative designs,
robust colors and fabrics. There are plenty of restaurants, some veggie and some
even kosher. India is a fascinating country, the seventh largest by square
miles and the second most populated in the world. It exhibits such biological
diversity that it is known as “megadiverse,” only one of 17 countries so named.
It is home to the largest population of wild tigers in the world. It boasts the
world’s fastest growing telecommunications industry. Though English is widely
spoken, there are some 22 official languages. Of great interest is the fact
that India and Israel collaborate on extensive military, economic and strategic
programs. It is no wonder that Israel and India have found each other. Both
have a common history in breaking with British rule, India in 1947 and Israel
in 1948.
Still,
I would imagine that the interactions between the Jewish and Indian communities
on Long Island are few and far between. Maybe that is about to change. I
received a refreshing call from my colleague, Mindy Perlmutter, the Executive
Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Long Island (JCRC), to
sit on a panel with Indians who had reached out to the JCRC in order to forge a
closer relationship between the two communities. The Indians were
representatives of the Telugu Literary and Cultural Association (TLCA), which
seeks to preserve the culture and language of the southern district of
Telangana, where Telugu is the local language, spoken by some 80 million people!
A distinct cultural ethnicity wished to connect with the Jewish community? I jumped
at the opportunity. The TLCA leadership presented the panelists with a colorful
shawl as a gift, since kindness to guests is deeply valued in Indian/Hindu
culture. We heard of some challenges the Indians face either due to their
darkened skin or religious faith. I spoke about human diversity as a blessing
from God. I sat next to a Hindu priestess who also shared some insights about
the Hindu view of the world and recited some prayers. The meeting ended with—what
else?—food, kosher Indian delicacies.
In
this age of rampant hatred, bigotry, and open anti-Semitism, it was profoundly
edifying to meet with a group that wanted to establish a connection with us. And
the TLCA members in attendance were just lovely, kind, gentle, and genuinely
interested in who the Jewish community was. At the same time, I found myself
amused by the irony of meeting with this kindly group of Hindus whom our
biblical ancestors might have consigned to the sword due to their belief in
multiple gods. The Hindus believe in
some 3,000 greater and lesser deities. This fact alone qualifies them as the
polytheists with whom our forebears forbade us to fraternize. In one gruesome
biblical tale, the priest Pinhas ran a spear through the bodies of an Israelite
and his Midianite-polytheist lover, thus stemming a plague brought on by our
jealous God who nonetheless took the lives of some 24,000 Israelites. And yet,
there I was with modern-day polytheists, reflecting on our common challenges,
sharing in our respective world views, and expressing appreciation for each
other’s culture and customs. It was the loveliest of gatherings, though the
irony of it all did not escape me.
As
with so many other things in this gorgeous and multi-layered world of ours, reality
is never quite as simple as it first appears. I have read and watched some
films about Hindu spirituality, but this was the first close encounter with the
people of that tradition. Professor Hayden J. Bellenoit of the U.S. Naval
Academy, who lectures on the history of British India, notes that Hinduism
defies the neat split the western world so often employs, pitting the
monotheistic traditions like Judaism and Christianity against pagan traditions
as practiced by the Greeks and Romans. Professor Bellenoit puts it like this: “The
best descriptor [of Hinduism] would be henotheistic, meaning that there is one
Supreme Being or central divinity but also other, lesser gods.”
Professor
Bellenoit makes a nice distinction. And were we really honest with ourselves,
monotheists do have traditions of angels, not gods, but certainly divine beings
greater than humans. I wondered how they might differ from the Hindu gods and drummed
up the temerity to ask one of the Indians about how angels and gods might
differ, if they do. My new Hindu friend explained that the gods operate on a
higher spiritual plane. That is how she explained it and it gave me an
understanding of how Hindus might differentiate between their gods and the
Bible’s angels. It was all so fascinating. I did, however, question my
enthusiasm. Was I in some way betraying my own faith, or worse, being
disingenuous, in expressing appreciation for Hindu culture, which promotes a
theology so contrary to our own?
Our
biblical ancestors were exercised over the whole polytheistic movement because
they understood the reality of one God to be so powerful and unassailable. They
found polytheism absurd with its pantheon of gods who operated on a moral level
not much higher, and sometimes far below that of humans. The jealousy of the
gods, their wars, their love affairs, their capricious decisions, their
jealousies, their deceits, were all so ridiculous that our forebears could do
no more than laugh at it at best, or go to war at worse. But we don’t live in 2000
BCE any more. And though we remain firm in our faith in the one God, today the
Jewish people face another theological challenge far more insidious than the
polytheism of the past or the present. It is the challenge of atheism, the
world view in which God is absent because God does not exist. For those who
construe our lives as an accident, our earth as an anomaly, our existence as
pointless, our God as a fiction, and our fate as doomed—all that is the real
problem. To be sure, the real challenge to Jewish thought these days does not
come from the people who are seeing too many gods, but from the people who cannot
conceive of even one.
At
some point, the priestess had the room chant, “We are God, having a human
experience.” I wasn’t among the chanters because as much as I approve of the
human experience, I don’t think of myself or anyone else as God. And yet, I do
believe, and I think we all should, that each of us bears a crystal of godliness
in our hearts. Was I quibbling over a mere matter of semantics? Not really. When
it comes to theology, precision matters. Then again, would that all of us could
see a little more of God in the people we love and in the people whom we love a
whole lot less. As Jacob said to his brother Esau when the two finally met
after twenty years of estrangement, “…to see your face, is like seeing the face
of God…” (Genesis 33:10).
I
like these Hindus. I like the initiative they took in meeting us! I like their
spirituality. I like their craving for peace. I like their food. We are not all
God. I am certain of that. But when we access the godliness stored within us, we
do have a human experience, and it is the very best experience that humanity
can achieve.
