The Bahai Faith and Judaism

Shalom, I am Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg. This video is about Baha’i and Judaism. I lived, not too far, from the Baha’i temple, the main spiritual center and in fact the only religious shrine of Baha’i in the America. There are some around the world. I have also visited the main Baha’i World Center in Haifa. I want to tell you a little bit about Baha’i and what it partakes in terms of Judaism. First of all there is lot of similarity, the background is it started in Islam, the middle of 19th century and the religion leaders were persecuted. The maid Baha’i guy believes he is the most recent prophet in comes in kind of a capped to all the other prophets. Baha’i claims to recognize the legitimacy of other religious traditions, that the main prophets of Judaism, mainly Moses, and the Christianity, of Islam, of Zoroastrianism, of Shi Ayt, Islam or all the legitimate prophets and their view and that his is the final revelation that of course we do not agree with. They believe there is only one God, to the creator known by many names, that Judaism definitely believes it. There is only one religion progressively revealed, as I mentioned Judaism does not believe that. There is Judaism for Jews and that other legitimate religious passed through other people. You do not have to be Jewish, you do not have to be a Baha’i, you can be whatever you want as long as you observe the laws of Noah—basic human decency and civilization. They say that all the world people belong to one human family. The differences in skin color, appearance, culture, and language are result of environmental differences that is definitely a Jewish teaching from thousand years ago way before Baha’i. The great sage just thought that, the bible begins with one Adam precisely to teach that. I explained them in my videos on Jewish values, that concept that we have one Adam to begin Torah so that no one could say my father better than you. It is definitely Jewish teaching that all the world’s people belong to one human family. They want to secure the world of peace, well the most important concept in Judaism is Rodaive Shalom. Ensuring equal rights and privileges for women, Genesis begins with man with a woman are created equal, that God made humanity, male and female, he created them. One of the interesting in Baha’i is that there are no females, we believed serving on international council which is a problem, abandon all forms of prejudice absolutely, eliminate extremes of wealth and poverty, the Torah requires to do that. Harmonizing religion and science—absolutely that is something that many Jewish philosophers and some of the great thinkers of Judaism have long thought. Universal literacy, the Jewish people have been the most successful people in the world in promoting literacy for all. Adopting the universal language that the civil take communication that is certainly a challenge, used to try that with Ladino for Spanish use, a Yiddish for Jews, certainly English is becoming kind of the universal language but it will be nice that people can all speak to each other, although the story of the Tower of Babel indicates to us that it is probably an impossibility. So in other words, there are many ideas here in the Baha’i that are thought by Judaism. Some of the best ideas a Baha’i have been thought for Judaism for thousand of years namely, how are all one human family—there is just a human race, there is Jews in every religion, culture and race, that we long world peace, that we believed in equal rights for men and women, that we believed in universal literacy, that we believe that everyone should have certain basic benefits and to eliminate the extremes of income. What we do not believe is that all of this is other prophets are successors to Moses and legitimate prophecy. Sure that they are wonderful teachers. But one of the great problems with Baha’i then is that what do you do with contradiction that is exists between them. For example, Mohammed clearly advocated submitting the word Islam is submitting to God and you have to the Islam or nothing. How can that coexist with a religion like Judaism, they do not think the Jewish is legitimate or being Christian is legitimate and Baha’i also thinks that Judaism is a kind of baby religion because it growing the Baha’i, but we do not believe that to be true. Most of the profound ideas in Baha’i came from Judaism as it did most with the ideas in Christianity and Islam. And the idea that somehow it has been superseded by Baha’i, we simply do not accept. It is also interesting they have no clergy which is a Rabbi or not, better know about that. They also they do not have a lot of prayers houses, they have one here and otherwise people pray at homes or they do not take it very seriously the issue of having a sacred prayer space other than this magnificent building and a few around the world. But they hope someday to have one, I believe, in every community. One of the amazing things about the Baha’i house is that hey started building it nearly part of the 20th century and they did not complete it until the middle of the 20th century, that has they had the resources to continue to build it. They only take money from Baha’i worshipers. So that is a little bit of my analysis of the Baha’i. I will stress again the beautiful parts of it which would be embraced, namely; that all humanity is one race just like the teaching of one Adam, the desire for universal peace, equality of men and women, elimination of prejudice, the idea of universal literacy—all the ideas thought by Jewish sages thousands of years before. Thank you.