Response to “What the Torture Debate Reveals about American Christianity” by David Gushee, National Summit on Torture, 9/11/08

In his soul-searching and inspiring reflection on the response of the Evangelical community to the torture crisis, David Gushee raises two critical questions:
1. Can the moral imperative of our faith traditions to seek justice and dignity for all human beings overcome the formidable social and political factors that inhibit resistance to injustice in general, and to the practice of torture by our government specifically?
2.   How have our respective communities responded to the torture crisis?  What is our record?

In my response I want to focus on these two questions from the vantage point of Judaism and the Jewish community.

David Gushee's outrage as a Christian at the indifference of so many Christians to the murder of the Jews is so inspiring.  His effort to understand what motivated  "Hasidei Umot Ha'Olam," "the Righteous Gentiles", the minority of Christians who actually did save Jews, is essential to our efforts to improve the response of our own religious communities to current and future injustice.

 As a Jew, born seven years after the Holocaust, growing up in South Africa under Apartheid, the question of why people and especially religious people and institutions often stand idly by the blood of our neighbors was a central moral question that we wrestled with every day. What did religious faith mean to those who attended church services during the time of the Holocaust yet were silent about the extermination of the Jews?  

Growing up in South Africa under Apartheid, I had to confront the sobering reality that the response of many in my own community to the injustice of Apartheid was not that different from that of the Christian community during the Holocaust.  It is true and a source of great pride that Jews were disproportionately represented among the most courageous resisters to Apartheid. Yet notwithstanding a few inspiring exceptions, it was precisely those Jews who were seemingly most disconnected from our community and its religious. traditions who were most active against Apartheid.   Most of our rabbis, religious institutions, and the members of those religious institutions were either silent or did far too little to end Apartheid.  

As a young person I was particularly grateful to those rabbis and Christian clergy who did challenge Apartheid.  

David Gushee reports that the response of the Evangelical community to torture is mixed.  While we all are inspired by those people and institutions in our traditions who courageously uphold the rights of all, most of our faiths have been far too silent in the face of injustice.

One of the great blessings of Evangelicals for Human Rights, Rabbis for Human Rights, the National Religious Campaign against Torture and this conference, is that if offers us all an opportunity to reclaim the integrity of our faiths by giving voice to the prophetic vision that calls us to resist injustice, even e it is scary, even when it may be unpopular, even when, or especially when it involves a group that is seen as the other.  The litmus test for the integrity of our religious traditions is not when we stand up for ourselves but rather when we stand up for the "widow, the orphan and the stranger", those who are most vulnerable and those who are not part of our ethnic and/or religious community

Now I want to address the second question regarding our individual faith traditions' response to the torture crisis. How has the Jewish community responded?
Like in the Christian community there was a lag of about 4 years in the response of the Jewish community to the torture crisis.  Rabbi Arthur Waskow was the first to raise the issue of U.S. sponsored torture in the Jewish community.    Shortly thereafter, Rabbis for Human Rights-North America launched our North American Human Rights program.  We chose to make torture the first issue of our new program precisely because there was so much silence on this issue in our community.

Our participation in the Princeton conference and in the National Religious Campaign against Torture strengthened our work.   We started by enlisting rabbis to sign a Rabbinic Statement against Torture.  We created a rabbinic educational resource on Jewish Values that outlined four fundamental Jewish values that inform our opposition to Torture:
1.    Kvod Habriot/The dignity of all Human Beings
2.    The historical experience of the Jewish People as victims of torture.
3.    Rodef/The Law governing the Pursuer: The prohibition on killing someone who is pursuing you if there is any other way for you to protect yourself.
4.    The almost total ban on self-incrimination in Jewish law which is a response to experience of torture and the unreliability of confessions elicited by torture.

This outline of Jewish values has been the basis of our work with other Jewish organizations such as the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs in working as we join together to address this issue in our community.
Torture is now on the agenda of our community and we have successfully created a large network of Jewish leaders and communities passionately involved in the struggle to end torture.

We face a few challenges:
1. While there is general agreement in much of the Jewish community that torture is wrong, many in our community are unsure about an unconditional opposition to torture, citing the hypothetical scenario of the "ticking bomb." This is of particular concern to many Jews in relation to Israel.
2. Despite the fact that the Israeli Supreme Court has banned the use of torture in interrogation, and Rabbis for Human Rights has held up this decision as a model for the United States, many Jews fear that the focus on U.S. sponsored torture may raise the issue of the illegal use of torture in Israel. This concern constrains the opposition of some in our community.
 3. We have not been very successful in gaining the support of the Orthodox Jewish community.

I want to end with the question of the "other.

In the first chapter of the book of Exodus, we are told of the two midwives who refused Pharaoh's order to kill the Hebrew children.  They refused to obey this order because of their "fear/awe of God."   The Hebrew text, hameyaldot ha-ivriot can be translated either as the "Hebrew midwives" or the "midwives to the Hebrews."  This textual ambiguity makes it unclear whether they are themselves Hebrews or Egyptians who serve as midwives to the Hebrew women.  Much of the tradition assumes that they are Egyptian midwives who could not obey the order because of their fear of God, because they know that such an act is one that violates the most basic notion of religious faith.   This yirat Hashem, this fear of God is what we need to nurture and sustain in all our traditions.  A fear of God is what makes it impossible for us as people of faith to do acts of injustice to others, or to be silent in the face of acts of injustice.  

The killing of the firstborn was an act that shocked the conscience.  Torture, too, is such an act.

May we all have the clarity of the midwives, and may we all be guided by our shared fear/awe of God that will make it impossible for us to be silent or complicit in any act of injustice.   

May God bless our efforts.  

Rabbi Brian Walt is the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America.