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HomeCommentaryLearning from Differences, Rabbi Art Green's Keynote at Ohalah

Learning from Differences, Rabbi Art Green’s Keynote at Ohalah

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By Kimberly Burnham

“Be respectful of differences. Saying—we are all saying the same thing is not helpful.” Speaking at Ohalah, The Association for Rabbis for Jewish Renewal, Art Green quoted a Japanese monk saying, “to say—mine is the only God or the only way is like saying my wife is the only woman.” You can be in a good marriage or a good religion / spiritual tradition while acknowledging that there are other good marriages and traditions. You can’t and don’t need to know all of them from the inside.

In his keynote speech, Rabbi Green explained that “Deep Ecumenism,” the theme of the conference, borrows from ecology. He laid out three things any faith community should remember.

  1. Use non-polluting or non-poisoning language in religious dialogues. We each have a built in meaning making need or a desire to become a unique image of God. In our religious or spiritual traditions we need to respect those unique qualities and differences.
  2. Consider what it means to stand in your tradition. Think more about the question “How am I capable of loving?” than “What do I love?” Not all love is the same. A Christian may read the Psalms in a very different way from a Jew. A Muslim may interpret the love expressed in a Rumi poem in a very different way than other traditions reading of the Psalms. “Not all love is the same but we can learn a lot from each other,” said Green explaining that “all love is on a continuum: the love of God and the love of Eros.” Sometimes we have more in common with someone of another tradition than we do with people of our own tradition. We can respect and learn from each other and our differences.  Even abuse is on that spectrum. We can speak up against distortions of love, while still holding that every human being has a soul that came out of a place of love and did those things out of suffering and distortion, said Green.
  3. Be careful of spiritual imperialism. “Your religious legitimacy is about your relationship to God not your relationship to another religion,” said Green to a packed crowd in Colorado.

Green, who considers himself a Neohassid and a loving cousin of the Jewish Renewal movement said, “We have a struggle going on for the soul of Judaism. Other traditions have a similar struggle. What we teach and say today is terribly important.”

 

 

Kimberly Burnham
Kimberly Burnhamhttp://www.NerveWhisperer.Solutions
Author of "Awakenings: Peace Dictionary, Language and the Mind, A Daily Brain Health Program" Kimberly Burnham, PhD (Integrative Medicine) investigates the relationship between memory, language, caring and pattern recognition to create a daily brain health exercise program enabling people to achieve better neurological health, mood, and quality of life. She is on a mission to create more peace and understanding in the world by collecting and writing about the nuanced meaning of “Peace” in 4,000 different languages and is looking for funding to complete the project. Known as The Nerve Whisperer, Kimberly uses words (books, presentations, and poetry), health coaching, guided visualization, and hands-on therapies (CranioSacral therapy, acupressure, Matrix Energetics, Reiki, and Integrative Manual Therapy) to help people heal from nervous system and autoimmune conditions. She also focuses on vision issues like macular degeneration and supports people looking for eye exercises to improve driving and reading skills as well as athletic visual speed. An award-winning poet, Kimberly grew up overseas. The child of an international businessman and an artist, she learned Spanish in Colombia; French in Belgium; then Japanese in Tokyo and has studied both Italian and Hebrew as an adult. The author of “My Book: Self-Publishing, a Guided Journal”, she can be reached for health coaching, publishing help, bible study zoom presentations or talking about peace at [email protected] or http://www.NerveWhisperer.Solutions.

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