Rereading Chayyey Sarah in the Age of Division.

Dear Members and Friends,

This Sunday, we will dedicate the main foyer of the LJS to the memory of Rabbi David Goldberg, the late Emeritus Rabbi of the LJS, who served our synagogue for nearly 30 years. In preparation for this event, I have been reading his sermons. Below is an excerpt from one of them, delivered at the LJS on Saturday, November 26, 2000. In it, he reflected on this week’s Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, and specifically on the meeting between Abraham and the Hittites, connecting it to a modern theory of civilizational conflict. 

Rabbi Goldberg cited Samuel P. Huntington, a Harvard scholar, who argued that in the post-Cold War era, cultural differences, rather than ideology or economics, would be the primary source of conflict globally. He identified several major civilisations, notably noting the rising influence of Islamic and Confucian civilisations and the decline of Western civilisation. Huntington suggested that as civilisations interact more, they will clash over differences in language, religion, values, and social structures. He illustrated this with maps showing fault lines in regions such as Europe, where divisions exist between different religious and national groups.

Reflecting on Huntington’s theory, Rabbi Goldberg said:

We don’t have to agree with Huntington’s thesis. Indeed, we can robustly refute it, by showing that nowadays almost all industrialised nations are heterogeneous, and that cultural diversity is the norm rather than the exception in the developed world. Nevertheless, when the religion, language, customs, literature, institutions and claimed territorial home of one civilisation come into direct conflict with the same accoutrements of another civilisation, what follows is the situation that we have in the Balkans, in Kashmir, and least soluble of all for the last hundred years, in the Middle East.

We must continue to put our faith in negotiation, not war, and to press for compromise on both sides... If only, we might sigh, the positive experience of Abraham with the Hittites four thousand years ago could be duplicated in our own time.

Rabbi Goldberg’s words feel as urgent now as when he wrote them 26 years ago. Many forces in our world use our differences to divide us. Some forces present our world as a clash of civilisations. We don’t have to agree with this worldview. In that ancient meeting between Abraham and Hittites, each side recognises the humanity of the other. They speak with courtesy, they listen, and they reach an agreement. Their encounter is marked not by suspicion or dominance, but by mutual respect. In our own fractured world, where cultural, political, and religious differences are often weaponised, the vision of respectful co-existence remains relevant. Encounters of civilisations need not mean collision, division and conflict.

The “fault lines” and tensions on the world map may still run across our world. Still, Rabbi Goldberg’s reading of Chayei Sarah offers another kind of map: one that creates the possibility of meeting, understanding, and shared dignity. It is a map that points us not toward the clash, but toward the conversation, the space where we can still recognise one another as b’tzelem Elohim, made in the image of God.

As Rabbi Goldberg put it, if only the positive experience of Abraham with the Hittites four thousand years ago could be duplicated in our own time. Perhaps, the task of all liberal, progressive, and open-minded Jews in the Age of Division is to do exactly that - to be agents and examples of positive encounter with others.

Ken Yehi Tatzon. May this be God’s will.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Igor.

You can read the Rabbi Goldberg’s sermon in full here