Abraham
 Bruce S. Feiler
 (Associate Reviewer - Victor Cohen)
 2002 William Morrow/HarperCollins
  ISBN: 0380977761


A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths.

“No one is alone in Jerusalem: even the stones know your father. Once inside...Christians turn north. Today is the last Friday before Christmas, and this afternoon monks will lead a somber procession carrying crosses down the Via Dolorosa. Jews turn south. Today is the last Friday of Hanukkah, and at sunset rabbis will hold a jubilant ceremony lighting six candles at the Western Wall. Muslims turn east. Today is the last Friday of Ramadan, and at noon clerics will hold a massive prayer service with two hundred thousand bending as one.”

Guest Reviewer Victor Cohen writes:

Bruce Feiler's Abraham is a book written by an American Jew in search of his identity as well as that of his biblical forefather Abraham. Feiler sets out on his quest for a historical Abraham who, he wants to believe, will be common to the three major Western religions, in the hope that through Abraham, a foundation of mutual respect, understanding & coexistence might be forged among the three faiths: Judaism, Christianity, & Islam.

In spite of some recurrent stylistic & pseudo-scholarly irritants (some of which I discuss below) this is a compelling book. It is replete with interesting insights into Abraham, as well as the three faiths, which Feiler draws from a myriad of sources, spanning many centuries.

For me, the primary interest in Abraham derived not so much from the musings about Abraham -- the “historical” & the mythic architect of monotheism -- but rather from the interviews that Feiler conducted with religious leaders & scholars. Many of the interviews took place in Israel, primarily in Jerusalem, the spiritual center of Feiler's quest.

Feiler discovers that the “historical” Abraham described in Genesis undergoes countless permutations, character modifications, shifts in his relationships with his two sons Isaac & Ishmael, & shifts in the raison d'être of his centrality to the three major Western faiths: “when one religion's Abraham ended...another began.” (p. 116)

A reading of Freud's Moses and Monotheism could have helped Feiler rise above the naiveté of his early assumptions. Figures like Abraham or Moses defy historical definition, even if they had lived lives & experienced the revelations we attribute to them. Their mythic nature continually evolves. That is what Jewish midrash is all about: the rabbis create legends surrounding biblical figures in order to make spiritual, moral, or ethical points. Feiler is, of course, not unaware of the evolutionary nature of Abraham; in fact, this is a major theme in his book.

Early in his quest, Feiler sought insight about Abraham from Rabbi Arnie Belzer of congregation Mickve Israel in Savannah, Georgia, Feiler's home town. Rabbi Belzer views Abraham as representing the estrangement of the human condition: “We're all aliens. Abraham is blessed -- the nations of the world are blessed -- because he had the courage to go to another place and make himself a stranger. Because believe me, at some time in our lives, all of us have to go [sic] another place, too, and make ourselves strangers.” (pp. 52-53)

In Israel Feiler seeks out Rabbi David Rosen, the former Chief Rabbi of Ireland, who provides a somewhat similar view. The Abraham story, asserts Rabbi Rosen, is all about modesty: “You can take the story of Abraham and teach people they don't have all the answers, because we are Abraham...and we don't have all the answers. We don't know our destination. And we certainly don't know everything about God.” (p. 135) So, according to these modern-day rabbis, Abraham teaches humility & compassion for the stranger, the outsider.

Feiler explores the differences between the Abraham of Judaism & the Abraham of Christianity with the Reverend Petra Heldt, a German Lutheran minister who came to Israel over thirty years ago “to improve Jewish-Christian relations.” She explains to Feiler that each religion, at different times, for different reasons, tried to establish itself as the dominant religion. “Claiming Abraham for yourself is just one way to establish your authority.” ( pp. 155 ff.) This, to me, questionable idea is one that Feiler appears to accept readily: “The deterioration of the relationship between Jews and Christians can be seen as vividly as any place else in their rivalry over their shared father.” (p. 137) This facile explanation for historical acrimony between Christians & Jews sidesteps the central problem of the belief in Jesus as Christ the Savior. The Reverend Heldt believes that if Jew & Christian can come together “and begin to draw a picture of Abraham,” then a “giant figure, who holds our joint expectation in his life, and whose character we both see as representing the best of ourselves” will emerge. She concludes her ecumenical vision with: “Now let's find a Muslim. The three of us will do the same, and we're on the way to solving the problems of the world.” (pp158-159 passim)

The Reverend Heldt & Feiler's beautiful reverie finds a mixed reception in Chapter 7, entitled Muslims. Feiler devotes a number of pages filled with interesting historical detail to describe the rise of Islam, & Muhammad's ultimate turning against Jews & Christians for not accepting the new-found faith.

The roots of Islamic enmity toward Christian & Jew lie deep in Arabian sand. Feiler quotes a ninth-century Muslim commentator who wrote: “Muslims prefer Christians to Jews because the latter actively opposed the prophet in Medina: ‘The reason that the Christians are less hideous -- though they certainly are ugly -- is that the Israelite marries only another Israelite, and all of their conformity is brought back among them and confined with them...'” (p. 174)

It is dangerous to draw conclusions about contemporary religious belief & bias from a ninth-century commentator. Feiler, more interested in the opinions of present day clerics, visits Masoud El Fassed, the imam of a mosque in East Jerusalem, to gain further insight into Muslim beliefs about Abraham, as well as Jews & Christians. El Fassed indicates that Christians & Jews do not worship God “correctly”: “We worship God around the clock, five times a day, then do extra prayers. Look at the Jews and Christians, you don't worship God as Muslims do.”(p. 179) I had been unaware of this “prostrative” competition between Muslims & Jews or Christians. El Fassed's theology is made quite clear when he discusses 9/11/01: “He [Allah] sent people very strong, who killed themselves, in order to kill you. This is something unbelievable what happened in America, but it came from God.” (p. 179) My chest tightened at this point in the narrative. According to El Fassed, non-Muslims are punished because they “abhor Islam and try to destroy the religion of the Creator.” Although the “punishment is going to come from the Creator,” God does not punish them directly, but “through the people”: “Like Hitler, for instance,” El Fassed continued, “According to the Jews, Hitler killed six million people. I was asking myself, ‘Why does Hitler love the Jews so much that he grilled them alive?'...The Jews don't do what the Creator wants. They do the opposite.” (p. 180) My breath stopped altogether. Was this the end of Feiler's quest for tolerance & understanding through a unifying Abraham?

Praise be to Allah, there are other voices in Islam, some more reasonable & tolerant than Masoud El Fassed's. Sheikh Abu Sneina, the imam of the famous El-Aksa Mosque, told Feiler that “even if Jews and Christians just follow what's mentioned about Abraham in the Bible,” ignoring the Abraham of the Koran, “then we can reach unity.” Abu Sneina concluded his interview with optimism: “If all people -- not just Muslims, Christians, Jews -- follow the correct path of Abraham...If we look beyond the details, which we may disagree about, and follow the principles of Abraham -- truth, morality, and coexistence -- then most of our problems will disappear.” (p. 184) My lungs filled up again with breaths of hope.

I admire Bruce Feiler's struggle to find the Abraham of Reconciliation, but I disagree strongly with his contention, referred to earlier, that Abraham has been a divisive force among Christians, Moslems, & Jews, because of an imagined rivalry in claiming him as the Founding Father.

“And just as Christians believed their version of the [Abraham] story superseded the Jewish one, Muslims believed their version trumped both the Jewish and Christian ones. A story nominally about submission to God had become the story of triumph in the name of God. As a result, the true victim of Abraham's offering proved to be not his son, or even the ram. It was accord among his descendants.” (p. 107)

I think many Jews & Christians would be stunned to learn that their version of Abraham had been trumped by Islam's. It seems doubtful to me that Jews, Christians, or Muslims have much knowledge of an Abraham apart from their own. How much do we know about Abraham even within our own tradition? More objectionable to me is Feiler's view of Abraham as a prototype for terrorism:

“Abraham, I was discovering, is not just a gentle man of peace. He's as much a model for fanaticism as he is for moderation. He nurtured in his very behavior—in his conviction to break from his father, in his willingness to terrorize both of his sons—the intimate connection between faith and violence. And then, by elevating such conduct to the standard of piety, he stirred in his descendants a similar desire to lash out, to view pain as an arm of belief, and to use brutality to advance their vision of a divine-centered world.” (p. 108)

I find this characterization of Abraham, as well as of faith, both startling & offensive. While the making of this point may be appropriate within the context of a sermon -- indicating how Abraham might be viewed in this light, & therefore how mankind may similarly be viewed -- it is historically & theologically inappropriate to present this idea as the Abraham of one's tradition. This kind of hermeneutic overreaching appears to be characteristic of Feiler's style. Note his description of Sarah:

“Sarah takes her maid and gives her to Abraham in an echo of the way Eve takes the fruit and gives it to Adam...Sarah is trying to wrest control of creation...Abraham may be wavering in his faith, but Sarah seems to have abandoned hers.” (p. 64)

Although this interpretive style is a little too glib for my taste, this objection is greatly outweighed by the honesty of Feiler's search for spiritual rootedness & humanity:

“I had come [on this journey] because I needed to understand the depth of mistrust among the monotheistic religions, and I needed to understand how it was connected to the basic building blocks of my own identity, geography, family, faith. I had come because I felt hatred myself, and because I needed to know if the roots of that feeling also held possibilities for accord...” (p. 214)

At the end of this journey Bruce Feiler does find his Abraham, not in any one place, he tells us, but everywhere. Abraham, he learns, is neither Jew, Christian, or Muslim. His legacy is shared with all of us.

I am grateful to Bruce Feiler for sharing his quest with his readers. The journey is not always comfortable or comforting, but it is one that I wholeheartedly recommend to any reader interested in the conflicts in the world -- between races, religions, & nations. I don't believe that a Common Abraham is going to unite Humankind, but I do believe that Feiler has shown us a way through dialogue & openness which, in spite of the El Fasseds of the world, can lead us toward peace, harmony, & mutual respect.

More from Bruce S. Feiler:
Walking the Bible:A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses; Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan; Under the Big Top: A Season with the Circus; Dreaming Out Loud: Garth Brooks, Wynonna Judd, Wade Hayes, and the Changing Face of Nashville; Looking for Class: Days and Nights at Oxford and Cambridge.
(12/01/02)

Victor
2004©Victor Cohen
A RebeccasReads.Com Associate Reviewer

Reviewer's Bio:
Victor Cohen has degrees in Mathematics, Literature, & Linguistics. He has worked as a writer & translator, university instructor, school director, & software engineer. With a lifelong interest in music, he was a builder & teacher of recorders, & director of a consort in Israel. He is a founder of the Triad Early Music Society of Greensboro, North Carolina. Today, retired from his software career, he leads recorder workshops & teaches English at the Center for ESL at the University of Arizona in Tucson.