Dialogue between religions and cultures

Israeli minister talks God

Kyle Lamothe, Staff

Although the extreme weather kept attendance low, the third annual Sol Kanee Lecture on Peace and Justice went ahead as planned last week, welcoming Rabbi Michael Melchior to the U of M campus. Rabbi Melchior is the deputy minister of education, culture and sport for the Israeli parliament and is recognized internationally as a leader in promoting discourse between religions for world peace.

He has received many peace-related awards and was instrumental in developing the Alexandria Declaration, an agreement by which religious leaders from the Holy Land decided to work together for peace and understanding.

In his lecture, entitled “The world at a crossroads,” sponsored by the Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice at St. Paul’s College, Rabbi Melchior spoke to the need for understanding and respect between religions and cultures.

“If we come to the point where the conflict in the world is my God against your God, we will never be able to find a solution — who wants to compromise on our God?” he said. “Therefore, our purpose must be to say that: our God and your God — it’s the same God! God was created in all of us and is in all of us: the basis for all humanity. First of all we are human beings and then afterwards we are Christians and Jews and Muslims.”

He also described the difficult reconciliation between traditional religious society and modernity, and the problems associated with building peace when new technologies and the media make it easy to spread “a message of hatred, bigotry, xenophobia and poison to millions of people.”

Specifically on the topic of peace in the Holy Land, Rabbi Melchior spoke to the importance of not compromising on religious beliefs, but instead fully understanding religious texts in their entirety. Then, he said, the true “philosophy of Judaism” can be understood as acceptance that Jewish people were given a divine promise to the land, but that there are other people living there.

“It’s true that we have a divine promise to the land, by the way the Muslims also believe that they have a divine promise to the land. But, we are here and we will not move from here because it is our land, and they are here and they will not move,” he said. “And if we want to live together then we will have to divide the land so that we can all find security and peace.”