Joe Katzman has posted a detailed response to the thoughts posted yesterday by me and Meryl on the matter of Abraham Zelmanowitz's true faith. Just writing that last sentence makes me a little queasy. How inappropriate! Nevertheless, because I feel that Joe so completely missed the point in his response, I feel obliged to try to address a small but critical segment of his post. Joe said:Abe Zelmanowitz was a great Jew. And a great Christian. And a great Muslim, who died in true Jihad and a state of marifah. He stood fully in the spirit of G-d, where all of those faiths intersect without conflict.
No, Joe, he wasn't. And he didn't. I don't think you can possibly know anything about what kind of Jew Mr. Zelmanowitz was. Neither can I. What I do know is that he wasn't any kind of Christian. And that for someone to suggest that this devout Jewish man, who was murdered along with thousands of other people by jihad-crazed Muslims, was "a great Muslim, who died in true Jihad" is more than I can deal with in anything resembling civil discourse. (I apologize. This is a cop-out. But words fail me here.)
As for this mythical space "where all of those faiths intersect without conflict," it doesn't exist unless you first intend to deny each of those faiths their unique, special essence. You're inventing your own private religion here, Joe, and insisting that it trumps the most basic beliefs of millions of Jews, Christians and Muslims. I am you and you are me and we are we and we are all together? If that's your faith, then who am I to disagree? But it has nothing to do with Judaism, Christianity or Islam, and it has nothing to do with Abe Zelmanowitz.
Joe continues:
Like I said in my Saturday blog post:
"Whatever church you're talking about, if it's a real church then Abe was inside. All the way inside."
I don’t know what this means. A “real church?” The word “church” has a definition in the English language. Here it is (via Webster’s):
church (chûrch) n., v. (churched, church-ing) n.
At the risk of repeating myself, an Orthodox Jew does not consider himself to be "inside" any church. If, on the other hand, your intent is to define "church" as whatever state of grace you imagine Abe Zelmanowitz to have been in, and to then say he was there, the statement is a tautology. It doesn't tell us anything.
Sadly, this "debate" will get us nowhere. It's pointless (although sometimes interesting) to debate matters of faith, precisely because they are so personal, so emotional, so baggage-laden, so utterly inconclusive. Meryl and I each tried to express how and why we are deeply offended by efforts to invade the spiritual essence of our Jewish heritage and replace it with something else, whether that something else be traditional Catholic doctrine or some new age, universalist group hug. We don't find value in attempts to take the core principles of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and try to puree them in some big happy food processor in the sky. We've tried hard to express our outrage without insulting the beliefs of others. It appears that our sincere attempts to explain the offense have only resulted in additional insult. And Mr. Zelmanowitz's name and memory have already been abused too much in this discussion.
