Study of Judaism opens new windows

It would be ironic, but sad, if an increasing interest in Jews and Judaism were to coincide with the decline of the Jewish community here. In the past year alone we have had Stanley Price's evocative documentary of Dublin Jews as seen through the eyes of a Jewish boy growing up in the city. Somewhere to Hang my Hat was shown on RTE. Then there is Dermot Keogh's fine historical study of the Jews in modern Ireland. We have had an international conference on Jews and the City in Antiquity, at the Royal Irish Academy, and at Trinity College the announcement of a chair of Jewish Studies And there has been the inauguration of the Herzog Centre for Jewish and Near Eastern Religion and Cultures in Dublin. Why this interest? Why in Ireland? Why now?

Jewish studies have made a relatively recent appearance on the academic calendar of universities. Responding to the Enlightenment in the last century, Jewish scholars in Germany began to develop the scientific study of their own tradition in ways similar to what Christian scholars were doing with the Bible and the received body of Christian doctrine.

These scholars attempted to understand the claims of their tradition in the context of a larger culture which had shaped it over centuries rather than as a body of unchanging truth delivered to Moses at Sinai. Despite their best efforts however they made little impact on German intellectuals. This was due mainly to deep-seated anti-Jewish biases, many of which it must be said had emanated from the Christian circles which dominated that culture.

As practised today, Jewish studies take their place within the larger study of the humanities. Jews and non-Jews participate together, and the aim is to understand the distinctive Jewish contribution in the context of the universal search for meaning within human society at different times and in different settings.

The Jewish experience, at least in the West, has been largely ignored, vilified and, most tragically, has been the subject of genocidal attack in the name of reason this century. The academic study of Judaism can help redress that history. For this reason, arguably, such study is more important for non-Jews than for Jews.

Majorities need to understand what it is like to be an excluded minority, and to learn to empathise with that experience. If critically conducted, this can tell those of us who are non-Jews much about ourselves. Things we need to have exposed but which very often we prefer to ignore. Few would deny that that is a lesson we could well learn in modern Irish society.

Despite its secular manifestations, Judaism is first and foremost a religious tradition, but it is not only that. It is also based on ethnic solidarity which over the centuries has been defined by participation in a shared religious heritage. That this is a living tradition today, responding often in very different ways to new challenges - ethical, religious, social and political - is something that needs to be stressed. There has been a history of misinformation about Judaism and many false stereotypes still persist. This is so even among well-meaning people who are rightly appalled by the horror of the Holocaust.

When approached from this broader perspective, the study of Judaism is not just an account of survival against the odds. Jewish learning, that is the self-conscious approach to issues from the perspective which the Jewish worldview has to offer, has contributed greatly to art, literature, science, philosophy, as well as to the study of religion. A new and different window on many aspects of western civilisation is opened up when viewed through Jewish eyes.

Opening up such a window is precisely what it is hoped to achieve in a series of lectures running in the School of Hebrew, Biblical and Theological Studies at Trinity College Dublin on Thursday evenings at 8 o'clock.

Jews and Christians share a common heritage, namely the Hebrew scriptures or the Old Testament. Yet despite that shared reality major differences emerged between the two traditions almost from the beginning. Very often what Jews and Christians discover through dialogue is not so much what they share but how different they really are despite common roots. Realisation of that fact alone is highly illuminating for both since understanding "the real other" rather than "the other we so often project" is a truly salutary one.

The study of Judaism, as with the study of any tradition that has been able to discover new and creative possibilities within itself despite extreme adversity, is a most worthwhile exercise of the human spirit. Perhaps it is no coincidence that together with Jewish studies, Irish studies are becoming highly popular today, especially in the great diaspora of both traditions that is North America.

Jewish studies in Israel or Irish studies in Ireland might be deemed redundant. They are things we leave to our exiles and, apart from offering a wry smile at their romanticism, we are delighted if others too find us and our history interesting or even "useful".

In the modern global culture which we all share, however, the worst nightmare must surely be a scenario in which all traditions would become the same so that difference might be obliterated. Soon, if not already, our disaporas will be in our very midst, pockets of people who refuse to be carried along in a media-manufactured world where the only value is what the market decides is valuable, simply because it can be sold for gain.

In the long history of human civilisation, religions have all too readily been prepared to deny their own best insights and join the oppressor - if only by silence, as in the Nazi era. Yet religions, including Judaism and Christianity, have also shown the possibilities that belief in a God of universal care and love can offer resistance in the face of threats to human civilisation itself.

The wisdom of the first century Jewish rabbi Hillel serves as a timely summary of a need for the constant vigilance that our age requires. "If I am not for myself, who is for me? When I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?" Such sentiments can easily be adapted as appropriate for our modern situation. Establishing a strong sense of our own identity, while important and necessary, merely discloses our impoverishment in isolation from others. This insight calls for decisive action now in achieving a healthy balance between the personal and the communal, the local and the global.

Dr Sean Freyne is Professor of Theology at Trinity College Dublin and acting head of the Herzog Centre. Thursday's lecture, in the series is by Prof Robert Chazman of New York University. Its theme is "The Jewish and Christian Cultures at the time of the Crusades". Further information at 01- 6081297.