Rebuilding Australia’s interfaith relationships

Some years ago Madonna belted out that she was a material girl living in a material world. Since October 7 I have felt like I’m a distressed guy living in a dystopian world. After that day I felt that the interfaith bridges we had built had all been burnt. I resigned from the Jewish Christian Muslim Association a week later, stunned by its lack of moral clarity and conviction.

Immediately after October 7, a Jewish Interfaith Task force for rabbis and leaders was set up across Australia. The aim was to explore our response to the trauma and the tectonic shift it had brought to our identity and place in the world. The consensus was that we needed a pause and that we could no longer engage with our Muslim counterparts if they failed to distinguish between Hamas and their own Islamic faith.

It also felt like we needed to reexamine our general interfaith relationships. Too much interfaith endeavour of the past was based on a small group committed to celebrating our similarities and shared customs rather than interrogating the thorny theological differences that divided us. Too much Kumbaya, too little “come let us debate our differences”.

Now we feel that we need to know their intentions regarding anti-Jewish, not to mention anti-Israel, teachings in their schools and mosques. And we need to be prepared to hear their pain about the suffering caused by what they perceive as Israel’s harsh occupation and how it erodes their faith in us and our morality.

We need to understand why they focus exclusively on mob intimidation and protests with an anti-Jewish flavour and why they are not on the streets protesting for a ceasefire in Sudan, where some five million face famine or protesting for their kin in Myanmar and China.

We also need to acknowledge Israel’s moral failings in its treatment of its Arab citizens, and on the West Bank, not to mention the apparent lack of food aid to the Gazans. But it’s not just the Muslim community. The deafening, or at best awkward, silence of many of our faith interlocutors, including some of our Christian friends, was deeply disheartening.