Islam and Judaism

Shalom! Now this video is about Islam and Judaism to compare and contrast.

I think for Jews today, one of the main problems is that we hear so many voices out of Islam saying terrible things about Jews and Judaism that commonly accepted that the average sermon on Fridays and the mass around the world is anti Semitic and we have the President of Iran saying kill Jews and wipe out Israel, but it has always been that way and I know of that are not true heart of Islam.

So let just talk about Islam and Judaism. First of all, Moses was, in the Exodus, in Egypt was about 1300 BCE. Abraham was about 500 hundred years before that 1800 BCE and so you have a couple of thousand years of history before Mohammad came on the scene, in fact about the 2600 years of Jewish history before Mohammad.

So with Judaism is very old religion and Mohammad in the about 700 decided to find a new revelation and have some new insight. So what are the differences and similarities. Well, first the similarities. Both Judaism and Islam have a serious of religious law. Jews called it Halakha and Muslims have a different name for it. They both have daily prayers as we pray three day and Muslims have five prayers a day. We have dietary rules, in fact Muslims can eat the kosher’s slaughtered meat, so we share that in common and both our community monotheistic faiths. In fact in the middle ages, the Rabbis clearly ruled that Islam was not idolatry, it is purely monotheistic.

So what have been major differences between them? Well, Muslims believed that Mohammad Koran supersedes the Torah in Judaism and we completely reject that—nothing supersedes Judaism and the Torah. They certainly entitle they have their own religion as our Christians.

In fact if you want to see that video on the differences between the Judaism and Christianity, that is jewu182 and I also have a video on how non Jews can achieve salvation which is jewu155. Those might be helpful videos if you have not seen them already.

In addition, the Muslims said that Jews adopted up the Torah, we changed things but it was really Ishmael that Abraham want to sacrifice, there was no evidence for that, it is completely absurd. All the evidences that we have continued to maintained—the manuscript faithfully. And so by monotheist living in a Muslim world issued the principles of faith and it says clearly, it is a Jewish principle of faith, that the entire Torah is the same, the Jews have always had. And Moses is the chief prophet, not Mohammad for us—it is Moses. We completely rejected.

Now, Muslims can believe whatever they want as long as there is peace in people. But we reject categorically the idea that the Torah is doctored to change the story. Just as easily that believed that a hundred of hundreds of hundreds of years after, thousands of years are actually we have the Torah ready but the Muslims changed the story. They have their own reading at the text.

In addition to that, we need to point out that Jews have been very indebted to Muslims sort of centuries, in fact one of the greatest period of Jewish history was called the Golden Age of Spain before the Christians to go over in Spain which was a terrible periods for Jews, Jews enjoyed living with Muslims. In fact it is true that Arabic translations of some of the great philosophers of the Greeks, that Jewish thinkers in that period, became familiar with them. And some of the great Jewish scholars in the middle ages Saadia Gaon, Bakiah and Dakuttah, Judah ha-Levi even by Maimonides wrote the philosophical works in Arabic.

And perhaps it has even been suggested that Maimonides made the code of Jewish law the Mishneh Torah was influence by Arabic codes about the same period. And much medieval Jewish poetry was influenced by the Muslims. In fact one of my professor of medieval liturgy at the Jewish Liturgical Seminary, Professor Ray Schiehlen wrote many books on this including “Wine, Women and Death” about Jewish poetry of that period and how it was influenced by the Muslims. And in fact Bakkiah and Dakuttah great book “Judaist of the Heart” was strongly influenced by the Sufi-asceticism of this day.

So we completely reject Islam as a not a religion for Jews but that is not to say that Islam is a good religion for Muslims as long as they are peaceful and law abiding and follow the laws of the sons of Noah and they follow the religious law and they keep peace and do not hurt anybody, it is a very good religion to that extent. And I know that the overwhelming majority of Muslims want to that way and are ashamed of the suicide bombers and the murderers and those cries out that Jews are beneath contempt, kind of the Hitler ideas.

So we are prayed we live in the world with peace and there are certainly a huge amount of relationship and similarity between the two—basic monotheistic religion in this regard we should celebrate what we have in common and play down the differences and live together peacefully in the world and celebrate each other uniqueness and the contributions that we both have made to the world.


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