Three Abrahamic Faiths But Still We Survive

Moses’ mother wove a basket,
and put her infant into it,
and then into the Nile, a task it
Pharaoh’s decree made illegit,

because she feared the babe might drown,
which she prevented like all parents
who’d done the same, without renown,
for sons like Miriam’s and Aaron’s

young sib, enabled to survive,
as Aaron clearly had — perhaps
without those steps that kept alive
the future leader of all Jewish chaps —

steps taken by the Hebrew clan
of Moses’ mother; Miriam;
and Pharaoh’s daughter who foiled the plan
of deaths in Pharaoh’s dark dominium.

Abarbanel wrote Torah blogs
implying what I wrote above,
explaining that the plague of frogs,
the one that surely kids most love,

occurred because the loud noise they
made echoed bitter wails of woe
made by sad parents in dismay
when suffering the dreadful blow

caused when their little children drowned,
unlike the baby Moses who,
when by a miracle was found,
survived when Pharaoh’s daughter drew

him from the Nile. You’ll now read what
I’ve chosen in this verse to tell:
remember its midrashic plot
is by a Don, Abarbanel.

Due to the Spanish Inquisition
the Don was victim of a crack
in Judeo-Christianity,
a concept which some now repack

as “Abrahamic,” thus uniting
three faiths whose conflicts in the past
should not be minimized, still blighting
beliefs blessed by the Abrahamic cast.

The Inquisition paradigm
from one of them has long departed,
but with jihad, a most cruel crime,
one faith still makes Jews feel downhearted.

Inspired by Rabbi David Wolpe’s Off the Pulpit for Shabbat Bo 5766, 1/14/16 (Off The Pulpit):

Mothers

The word describing the basket in which Moses is placed as an infant is “tevah,” the same word used to describe Noah’s ark. Many commentators draw the parallel between the man who saved the world and the man who saved the Jewish people.

But who made the ‘tevah’? In Noah’s case, he made it at God’s direction to save himself. But in Moses’ case, it was made by his mother at her own initiative. She fashioned a sort of ark, not to save herself, but to save her child. Moses is then rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter. Perhaps the story is less about Moses and more about mothers.

For many of us, our mother is the one who placed us in the vessel that enabled us to float out into the world. She gave the ark a gentle push, offering it direction. As Jocheved did with Moses, our mother is one who both anticipated the danger and prepared the container to shelter and bring her child to safe shores. Moses survived and grew up to instruct the world; but his accomplishment was only possible because before he was born, Jocheved sat in hiding, waiting for his birth and weaving a basket.

Yet how useful a phrase like “Abrahamic religions” is as a help to achieving mutual understanding between Jews, Christians, and Muslims is questionable. On the one hand, as Jon Levenson observes, “To the extent that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are focused on a belief in [one] God and a proclamation of him to the world, . . . the appeal to Abraham as a source of commonality and kinship among these three groups makes eminent sense.” On the other hand, as Levenson points out in qualifying this judgment, “the connection of Abraham with ongoing [Jewish, Christian, and Muslim] communities and their distinctive practices and beliefs” can become “a point of controversy among them, and not simply, as many would desire today, a node of commonality.”

This is if anything an understatement. True, there is no great controversy over Abraham between Judaism and Christianity, both of which revere the same Hebrew Bible and regard its stories as sacred truth; precisely this underlies the “Judeo-Christian tradition.” This is not the case, however, with Islam, which holds, in accordance with the Quran, that it was Ishmael, the progenitor of the Arabs, not Isaac, the progenitor of the Jews, who was Abraham’s beloved and nearly sacrificed son. Since in the eyes of Islam, Judaism and Christianity’s version of Abraham’s life is based on a fundamental lie, just as Judaism and Christianity regard the lie to be Islam’s, what is to be gained by calling them all “Abrahamic religions”? Far from uniting them in a shared belief, the story of Abraham divides them sharply.

But is this not what the Bible has been telling us about the sons of Abraham all along? Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob and Esau (whom rabbinic tradition identified with Christendom), Joseph and his brothers—like brothers everywhere, their closeness must vie with the envy and rivalry they feel. There is no bond stronger than a fraternal bond; no hatred greater than fraternal hatred; no quarrel more bitter than a quarrel over an inheritance. This is part of the story of Abraham and his descendants, too. It is also Abrahamic.

In “Where Did the Idea of Three ‘Abrahamic Faiths’ Come From? The incompatible narratives of Judaism and Islam, and what the Bible has to say about them,” Mosaic Magazine, 11/14/24, Philologos (Hillel Halkin) writes:

The belief that Abraham was the world’s first true monotheist is common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alike, making him a foundational figure in all three religions, though one occupying a more central place in the Jewish and Muslim narratives than in the Christian one. Nor is “Abrahamic” new as an English word, the phrase “Abrahamic covenant” having first occurred as far back as 1807 in a treatise titled Two Discourses on the Perpetuity and Provision of God’s Gracious Covenant with Abraham and His Seed.

Yet “Abrahamic” rarely appeared again until the second half of the twentieth century, the earliest contemporary use of it having possibly been in James Kritzeck’s 1965 book Sons of Abraham: Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Kritzeck, as observed by the University of Rochester professor of religion Aaron Hughes in his article “Abrahamic Religions: A Genealogy,” was a Catholic scholar influenced by Louis Massignon, a French Catholic intellectual who promoted Catholic-Muslim interchange. Massignon’s impact on the Catholic church was reflected in its 1965 promulgation Lumen Gentium, which spoke of a divine “plan of salvation” that included “all those who acknowledge the Creator,” foremost among them “the Mohammedans who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God.”

Slowly at first and then picking up speed, “Abrahamic” has proliferated. Yet how useful a phrase like “Abrahamic religions” is as a help to achieving mutual understanding between Jews, Christians, and Muslims is questionable. On the one hand, as Jon Levenson observes, “To the extent that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are focused on a belief in [one] God and a proclamation of him to the world, . . . the appeal to Abraham as a source of commonality and kinship among these three groups makes eminent sense.” On the other hand, as Levenson points out in qualifying this judgment, “the connection of Abraham with ongoing [Jewish, Christian, and Muslim] communities and their distinctive practices and beliefs” can become “a point of controversy among them, and not simply, as many would desire today, a node of commonality.”

This is if anything an understatement. True, there is no great controversy over Abraham between Judaism and Christianity, both of which revere the same Hebrew Bible and regard its stories as sacred truth; precisely this underlies the “Judeo-Christian tradition.” This is not the case, however, with Islam, which holds, in accordance with the Quran, that it was Ishmael, the progenitor of the Arabs, not Isaac, the progenitor of the Jews, who was Abraham’s beloved and nearly sacrificed son. Since in the eyes of Islam, Judaism and Christianity’s version of Abraham’s life is based on a fundamental lie, just as Judaism and Christianity regard the lie to be Islam’s, what is to be gained by calling them all “Abrahamic religions”? Far from uniting them in a shared belief, the story of Abraham divides them sharply.

But is this not what the Bible has been telling us about the sons of Abraham all along? Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob and Esau (whom rabbinic tradition identified with Christendom), Joseph and his brothers—like brothers everywhere, their closeness must vie with the envy and rivalry they feel. There is no bond stronger than a fraternal bond; no hatred greater than fraternal hatred; no quarrel more bitter than a quarrel over an inheritance. This is part of the story of Abraham and his descendants, too. It is also Abrahamic.