Obama at the interfaith memorial service in Boston, by CJ Gunther, EPA
This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
With Boston’s lock-down over and the city picking up the pieces of its collective psyche, my thoughts return to the interfaith memorial service held there a few days ago.
Private mourning and collective mourning are different. Public memorial services are scripted and function in certain ways. They need to be analyzed.
You may have noticed that the number of these memorials is increasing. They are becoming definitive markers of our political – and religious – culture. What’s spoken and unspoken in these memorials is politically important.
So many “political” realities go unmentioned in our public tributes to the victims of violence. The politics we “rise” above may be at the heart of the very horrific situations being memorialized.
Questions need asking. Are we memorializing the victims of furthering our own interests? Are we reaching out to others or are we feathering our own nest?
Political leaders are liable for such examination. Religious leaders are as well.
If after reading what follows, you think that I’m obsessing about Jews, Israel, Palestinians and Palestine, that’s your prerogative. After all, the memorial service in Boston was for the victims of the bombings at the Boston Marathon. As you will see, I believe that if mourning is to be genuine, we have dig underneath the sentiments expressed. When we unearth the unspoken that should have been spoken, a more genuine mourning can commence.
The interfaith service was held in Boston’s Cathedral of the Holy Cross. Among others, President Obama was in attendance and addressed those gathered. The mood was somber and intense. When the service was held both suspects were still on the loose. More carnage lay ahead.
Cardinal Sean O’Malley spoke of his recent Easter retreat where he and a number of priests visited Galilee, Jerusalem and beyond. The Cardinal intoned the Hebrew words tikkun olam for the healing needed after the bombings.
The Cardinal did not mention that part of his retreat was held in Palestine. He did not use any Arabic words of healing. That would strike the wrong “political” note.
Why Palestine and Arabic is political in our lexicon, therefore divisive, and Israel and Hebrew is typically seen as apolitical, therefore healing, has important ramifications for the cultural and political word we live in. It is reflective of way Jews and Muslims are perceived in America and the imbalance we see on the ground in Israel/Palestine.
The Jewish community had its representative say with words of healing and reconciliation worthy of our attention. Here’s how the Huffington Post reported the Jewish voices:
“In times of crisis, we have to make sure we are together. We felt that we’re not alone,” said Rabbi Matt Soffer of Temple Israel of Boston, who came with a group of clergy from several faiths at 7 a.m. to wait outside the 2,000-seat cathedral. By the time he arrived, the line already stretched for blocks.
Rabbi Ronne Friedman, the senior rabbi at Soffer’s congregation who spoke at the service, cited Psalm 147, addressing God as the “healer of the brokenhearted” who will “empower them with strength and courage and restore to them and to all of us who grieve with them a sense of life’s goodness and purpose.”
Though I agree with the sentiments, I’m curious where the Rabbis stand on Israel – and Palestine. I can’t find much of anything on their views. According to the website of Temple Israel where both are Rabbis, in 2011 the congregation embarked on a three year study of “diverse voices” on Israel. The first speaker was Peter Beinart.
Overall, Temple Israel is a liberal congregation. On immigration, education and racial justice the congregation is quite vocal. The given reason for the congregation’s Israel study is because issues relating to Zionism and Israel are causing tensions within the congregation. More than a year into their study, I wonder where they have arrived.
Jewish voices lack credibility on other issues if they refuse to speak about what’s happening to Palestinians. It’s too easy to evoke beautiful sentiments about suffering in Boston if you’re not working to end the more or less permanent lock-down Palestinians endure. For Temple Israel the question remains if the reason for their study is to keep the congregation from imploding or to fashion action that confronts the state of Israel on behalf of the Palestinian people.
The Christians the Cardinal met and prayed with on his Easter retreat were no doubt mostly international. If there were Palestinians from the Galilee present, I’m sure they were on their best “universal Christian” behavior. As with the memorial service, it wouldn’t look right if they sullied spirituality with politics. God forbid!
If most every religious time is the wrong time, one wonders if there is ever a right time to speak for justice.
Unfortunately, too many Palestinian Christians buy into Christianity’s false universalism. They believe that Christians from America will naturally be attentive to them, if not because they are suffering, then at least because they are Christian.
Palestinians couldn’t be more wrong. The Christian hierarchy in the West has a self-interested investment in Jews. It’s about Christians and their credibility after the Holocaust.
Perhaps, behind the scenes, discussions of the plight of Palestinians did take place. The Cardinal might even know the real score in Israel/Palestine, as more and more Church officials do. But the public airing in Boston was typically Israel and Jewish only. Cardinals know when to keep their mouth shut.
Check out the Cardinal’s blog which recalls the Easter retreat. (http://www.cardinalseansblog.org/) The pictures of ancient Christian art and churches are marvelous. The retreat participants visited a number of Christian holy sites in northern Israel – as noted in the blog. These included the Basilica of the Annunciation, Mount Carmel, the Sea of Galilee, the Church of the Transfiguration, Qumran, the Mount of Olives, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Cenacle. The latter are in Jerusalem, part of which international law recognizes as Palestinian.
On one day of the retreat the Cardinal and his priests ended up you-know-where – at the Western Wall. For those on retreat it was an emotional moment. Father Gregory Vozzo relates it:
We concluded our day of pilgrimage at the famous Western Wall of the city, where devout Jews of many places and rabbinic schools were getting ready to begin the Sabbath. This wall is significant because it is part of the very same wall that one enclosed the Temple area. Although the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D., we do well to remember, as these Jews do, that God’s dwelling in the Holy of Holies was once on the other side of this wall. Although many people call the Western Wall “the wailing wall”, this name is not accepted here. What we saw and learned today makes plain why this is. Those who come here to pray long for what is to come, not what once was. They long for the Messiah and for God’s everlasting reign in Jerusalem. Their pilgrimage, much like ours, is one of joyful remembrance and hope. May all our tears be dried by the God who comes to save His people.
You can check out the rest of trip on http://www.thegoodcatholiclife.com but be warned, it’s not for the faint or (secular or liberation theology) heart. The Cardinal’s Easter retreat features a world without much reality, political or otherwise. It’s a scandal really. Cardinal Sean, as he likes to be called, should be ashamed.
There was a Muslim speaker at the memorial service. He was on his best behavior, too. No doubt he was glad to be invited and, like Jews decades ago, he functioned as symbolic representative of the broader American Muslim community. It’s important that he looks good on television and speaks in good English. He did.
That’s just the beginning of the story of Muslim angle. The Huffington Post reported this way:
While a suspect has not been named in the Boston attack, speculation has aired in news reports about the race and faith of the culprit. A Muslim who chairs the New England Interfaith Council, Nasser Weddady, who spoke on behalf of the city’s Muslims, shared his story of becoming a United States citizen last week. “Whoever kills a soul, it is as if he killed mankind entirely. And whoever saves a life, it is as if he saved all of mankind,” he said, referencing Islamic and Jewish scripture.
The director of civil rights outreach for the American Islamic Congress, Weddady sought asylum from Mauritania in 1999, and though he did not mention it Thursday, was in the media spotlight when he was wrongfully detained by law authorities after Sept. 11 on suspicions of ties to terrorism.
Thank God, Weddady buried his post-September 11th experience! Can you imagine him weaving an American Muslim “political” view of the aftermath of September 11th into his prayerful reflection?
September 11th and its aftermath, that’s a whole other kettle of political worms. And with President Obama sitting right there?
This post is genuinely outstanding.
“Cardinal Sean, as he likes to be called, should be ashamed.”
Just my opinion, though I have read every one of your posts, but I think you are at your insightful best when discussing interfaith issues…not that insights about Jewish helicopter gunships are unimportant…maybe its because I am Catholic and find your views interesting, provocative, challenging, etc.
They are all hypocrites. I avoid listening to these public politico-religo natterings–turns my stomach.
Hypocrites, hypocrites, hypocrites
Marc,
I think your analysis here was excellent and insightful. What about the myriad examples where Palestinian civilians, including Christians, are killed by the settlers or “rogue” Israeli soldiers? Why wouldn’t the bishop and others show sympathy for them?
One part of what you said is unclear or could go off on the wrong track:
In one sense this is a very good insight- in Boston you have an enormous Christian society, yet neither the society nor its bishops pay them attention. To the contrary, there is a gross play on stereotypes. And the people’s hope in this regard is dashed on the rocks of displays like this as you brought out well.
In another sense though the statement is incorrect- society’s failure does not mean that the ideology of Christianity pretends to be universal, but is not. One can legitimately believe he/she should follow a principle and yet fail to do it, without the principle being false.
Further, when American Christians really are presented with the facts of the abuse of native Christians, they feel it is bad. And it can even change their perception of what is happening- as it did in my case, Marc. The clergy as you pointed out had an opportunity to do this and failed. They could have at least provided “balance”, especially in an interfaith service with Muslims.
Finally, Mark Braverman pointed out that he was vastly surprised when, after being rejected in his message to his synagogues that taught human rights, he was greatly welcomed by strong numbers of Christians who thought that this was common sense and that we should be on board all along. So in fact it is also true that American Christians are naturally attentive. This dynamic was also played out in the CBS 60 minutes’ show on Christians in the Holy Land, which the Israeli ambassador did not want shown.
In conclusion, I thought you made a very good and penetrating article, but there is another underlying factor that was not in play that could be brought out- that Christianity’s universalism is real and that Christians could be disposed to be attentive to others’ suffering, but there is an overall political situation and ideology that is very powerful in American society as well- to the detriment of Christian operation.
Thank you.
Marc, thank you for this. Only when there is justice and peace for ALL – Christians, Moslems, Jews – would there be peace in the Holy Land. One party cannot be prospering and living while the other is festering and dying. All of us from the three religions deserve to live in peace and dignity. All of us, not some of us. All of us want peace and prospectiry and security for our children and their children.
As to the inter-relationship between Christianity and Judaism, that is a complex relationship founded in ages of guilt starting with Jesus being a Jew (originally) and then continuing through the ages up to the Holocaust and today Zionist Christians in the US.
What is surprising to me is the lack of realization that the Jews of then are in fact the Christians of today; the Jews of then are NOT the Jews of today, let alone the Israel of today. But the Zionists were very successful in hijacking that concept to the benefit of the state of israel. Truly astounding. But then again they were able to achieve that mirage by brainwashing the fundamentalist Christians in the US. Of course, Sep 11 didn’t help, although it had nothing to do with Palestinians.
So Palestine has a long slug to go to even gain the attention of the average US citizen, let alone win them to our side. It’s a long way but a challenge that we are working on with support of open-minded and progressive and just folks like most on MW. We shall overcome, propelled by more calls by more people for a 1S1P1V solution – one state, one person, one vote. We shall overcome, certainly, with or without the support of the US government because we will eventually win over the US people for our cause is just and humane.
I agree with your “take”. Jewish oil-on-water is acceptable, Arabic/Palestinian is not. But not all Jewish moralizing is acceptable, as you note.
“For Temple Israel the question remains if the reason for their study [of divergent views on I/P within the congregation] is to keep the congregation from imploding or to fashion action that confronts the state of Israel on behalf of the Palestinian people.” But another reason may be to suppress the conversation by holding the “study” and asking congregants to keep quiet in the meantime. I guess that falls within your “to keep the congregation from imploding” but censorship has its own name. Maybe the study is untertaken to “buy off” the big-old-money hard-right-Zionists who would withdraw support if the pro-Palestine Jews started sounding off, especially pubicly. Another reason for exercising censorship.