Review of At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden - Information Resources - Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies



	Information Resources Review of Yossi Klein Halevi's At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land (New York: William Morrow), 2001 Rabbi Charles L. Arian Yossi Klein Halevi grew up in Borough Park, Brooklyn, in a community of Orthodox Holocaust survivors. As a child, he was terrified whenever his route forced him to walk near a church, "fearing that grasping hands might emerge from the massive doors and drag me into the basement, where priests would kidnap me and force me to become a Christian." As an adult, Halevi made aliyah to Israel. His service in the Israeli army brought him to a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, where on patrol he was struck in the head by a large rock and nearly killed. This background hardly seems one to lay the ground- work for a two-year-long attempt to understand and experience both Christianity and Islam from the inside. Yet that is the task that veteran journalist Halevi, Jerusalem correspondent for The New Republic, set himself. He chronicles his journey in his new book, At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden. Halevi's search was motivated by his desire to see whether religion, which has served as a divisive force throughout most of modern Middle Eastern history, could serve as a unifying force instead. Halevi writes that he opposed both the occupation, "because Jewish history forbids us to be oppressors," and the Oslo process, because he didn't trust Arafat, and because "the Oslo Accords tried to impose a peace of secular elites on a region whose language and instincts are religious." Halevi attempted to meet Islamic and Christian believers on their own turf and even to participate in their rituals, to the extent possible without violating his own beliefs as a religious Jew. The result of Halevi's journey is a well-written and engaging book that introduces us to some of the fascinating characters who inhabit the religious and spiritual landscape of Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Perhaps the most fascinating of all is Halevi's guide into the world of Sufism (Islamic mysticism): Eliyahu Charanamrit McLean, Hawaiian- born son of a Jewish mother and Christian father, raised as a Sikh, who converted to Sufi Islam in Cairo before becoming an Orthodox Jew with long sidelocks. Boundary crossing is a difficult task. All of us have certain comfort zones, and it is not at all easy to move out of them. Halevi's Islamic encounters are a case in point. Jews and Western Christians have shared the experience of enlightenment, religious reform and living in a democratic and pluralistic society. The Palestinian Muslim experience, to say the least, is different. While Halevi had to overcome his own fears and suspicions in order to relate to Christians, in his contact with Muslims he had to overcome their suspicion of him (as well as their efforts to convert him to Islam). Nevertheless, Halevi did manage to have some positive and meaningful experiences of Islam. He even joins in their prayers, while discretely omitting their affirmation of Mohammed as the last and greatest of the prophets. In Ramle, a mixed Arab-Jewish city within Israel, he participates in a Sufi zikr. During their ecstatic dance, the Sufis acknowledge their Jewish guests by invoking the unity of God both in Arabic (wahad) and Hebrew (ehad). The experience changed him in some way: "I felt purged of my unease in this place, at home among its lovers of God. They obviously felt the same way toward me . . . we had together inhaled the name of God, joined in the brotherhood of the zikr." It is interesting to note that while Halevi's Islamic contacts were with Palestinians, most of the Christians he encountered were non-indigenous. Halevi introduces us to the Community of the Beatitudes, a mixed male-female monastic order whose members hail mostly from France and Germany. This community celebrates Shabbat, studies Hebrew and tries to identify with Israel and the Jewish community in an attempt to reconcile the Church's view of itself as "spiritual Israel" with the reality of the People of Israel. Unfortunately for this community, the church-owned property it was given for its monastery is in Palestinian-controlled Bethlehem, limiting the possibility of contacts with Israeli Jews. The indigenous Christian community with which Halevi did have contact was the Armenians, with whom he decided to experience Holy Week. Halevi's reasoning was interesting: the shared experience of genocide would help Halevi overcome the fear of Christianity instilled by his Holocaust survivor father. In fact, Halevi found many similarities between the Jewish and Armenian experiences, including not only the fact of genocide overshadowing so much of life, but also the melding of nationhood and religion that we are accustomed to thinking of as uniquely Jewish. At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden is an important book. The tragic events of September 11 have given a new urgency to the search for understandings of religion that bring people together rather than dividing them. Those of us involved in the dialogue between Christianity and Judaism will appreciate Halevi's insights and his understanding. The book is extremely well written, and, though dealing with sometimes-difficult subjects, is nevertheless a fairly quick read. Halevi has the good journalist's knack for making his subject accessible without oversimplification. Halevi's work poses a particular challenge to American Jews. He writes that his dialogue with Christianity and Islam was made possible only because he is an Israeli, and thus, in an ironic twist of history, relates to both communities from a position of power rather than weakness. He, the Jew, is part of a sovereign majority governing Christian and Muslim minorities. For Diaspora Jews, he writes, "maintaining distance from Christianity and Islam was crucial to maintaining their besieged identities." I think Halevi overstates his case here. There is no lack of interfaith dialogue taking place in the Diaspora, though no doubt Diaspora Jews do need to be more careful than Israelis about respecting boundaries. This brings me to the second challenge of Halevi's book. The model of interfaith dialogue followed by the ICJS and others has been intellectual rather than experiential. Jews and Christians engage each other in common text- study and theological discussion, rather than in worship. Halevi sought not to learn about Islam and Christianity but rather to experience them. Here Halevi, as an Israeli with a traditional Jewish education, may well be on firmer ground than many Diaspora Jews whose knowledge base and comfort with their own tradition may be shakier. Suffice it to say that while Halevi's journey may not be one that others can or should choose to replicate, the fruits of that journey can enrich us all. Rabbi Charles L. Arian is the Jewish Scholar on staff at the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies If you would like to purchase this book, click here. Who We Are :: What We Do :: Events Calendar Clergy and Educators :: Scholars' Corner :: Newsletter Information Resources :: Get Involved :: Home
	The Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies 1316 Park Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21217 410.523.7227 / fax: 410.523.0636 email: Info@icjs.org