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 Manna: The Forum for Progressive Judaism is the Journal of The Sternberg Centre for Judaism.
Published quarterly, you can subscribe by completing the form below:
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As a taster, here is the editorial by Rabbi Dr. Tony Bayfield from the latest edition of Manna.
I actually cheered when the BBC reported Lord Winston’s condemnation of the Catholic position on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Robert Winston is a practicing orthodox Jew and I cannot be sure that his views are shared by all members of the London Beth Din. But I was delighted and relieved that a prominent religious figure had spoken out against religious reaction and obscuranticism.
There are some complex issues to unpick. The main thrust of Catholic opposition is to the creation of hybrid or “chimera” embryos where human DNA is inserted into an ‘empty’ animal cell for research purposes.
The material, which is 99% human, must be discarded after the research. It cannot be used for implanting into a woman. There are strong indications that the procedure is necessary in developing effective treatments for motor neurone disease and multiple sclerosis.
Rabbinic tradition lays great stress on pikuach nefesh – saving life. As far as Judaism is concerned, that is the end of the story.
So why do we find Cardinal Keith O’Brien condemning the “monstrous” Embryo Bill, claiming that it will lead to the endorsement of experiments of “Frankenstein proportion”? Why does the Archbishop of Cardiff Peter Smith condemn the proposals as “gross interference in human life”?
Catholicism has long been particularly concerned about ‘ensoulment’, the moment at which the soul enters the body. It takes the view that ensoulment happens at the moment of conception. If human life is sacred and human life begins at the moment of conception – then protecting human life becomes an imperative from a very early stage. One can only understand campaigns against abortion and pro-life lobbying in this context.
But that is not the only religious view by any means. Judaism has always been less concerned, more laid back, more pragmatic about ‘ensoulment’. Judaism assumes that human life begins at a later stage than conception. When it comes to abortion, we have a liberal as well as a conservative tradition expressed as ‘the pain of the mother comes first’.
Judaism recognised early that, in medicine as in agriculture, a partnership between God and human beings is required and that human beings carry a huge responsibility to move the boundaries of medicine forward, to heal the sick and save life. Judaism is no less committed to the sanctity of life because it believes that conception is about potentiality rather than actuality.
That brings us to a very disturbing observation.
Let us start in an apparently obscure place, the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. This was a pivotal event in European history because it laid down the principle that the denomination of Christianity to be practiced across Europe, cuius regio, eius religio, followed the state ruler. One can argue that this is the point at which the modern western state was born and over the subsequent centuries that state has become more secular and more democratic.
As far as Jews are concerned, that has been no bad thing. Anti-Semitism and persecution have continued and secular democracies have proved open to subversion of the vilest kind. But it often has been the secular state which has been on the side of the angels and the faiths that have proved embarrassingly reactionary.
Last year – largely to the puzzlement of the press to whom he always seems to be a puzzle – the Archbishop of Canterbury led the voices that apologised for slavery on the 200th anniversary of its abolition. Although William Wilberforce became an evangelical Christian, it was the state that pushed through the abolition of slavery – in the face of opposition from the Anglican bishops in the House of Lords and a Church that not only benefited financially from slavery but received compensation for losses on its abolition.
In more recent times, religions have continued to seek conversions in the poorest parts of the world. Yet when the disaster of Aids was heaped upon the heads of the most impoverished and underprivileged human beings, the Catholic Church continued to oppose the use of condoms.It is the state that has pushed for equality between women and men and religions which have demanded exemption. The last bastions of male domination are many churches, orthodox synagogues and most Muslim societies.
It has been the state that has promoted the rights of gays and lesbians. Once again, the traditional churches, synagogues and mosques have clung to their prejudices. Only recently, a charedi member of the Knesset declared that earthquakes in Israel are a divine comment on homosexuality.Indeed, two of the three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Islam, have significant numbers within their conservative, right-wing streams who are dubious about democracy itself. Many within the religious parties in government in Israel insist that democracy is of Greece and has nothing to do with Judaism where what the Rabbi rules goes.
Many faith leaders are outraged by the simplistic attacks of secular fundamentalists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. But in many areas of ethics, in the extension of human rights across society, in respecting the equality and dignity of all human beings, the faiths have a patchy record, to say the least.
Nobody in their right mind would deny the right of Catholics to argue that ensoulment takes place at conception and to maintain their perspective on the sanctity of life. Whether that entitles the Catholic Church to use intemperate language to try to persuade the secular state that it is wrong – and to seek to persuade Ministers and Members of Parliament who are Catholic to toe a Catholic line rather than follow their conscience or the wishes of their constituents – is a challenging point which demands further debate.
But what is so deeply distressing is quite how often the faiths have proved reactionary and opposed to the shared, liberal, humanistic views of the secular state and the finest traditions of the Abrahamic faiths.
Once again, the liberal mainstreams of the three Abrahamic faiths need to assert themselves and convince society that religion and reaction are not the same.
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