Why we need each other
Rabbi Robert L Tobin
Comments on receiving the “Light the World” Honor, 2025, Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints, Morristown, NJ.
Thank you. Let’s be clear - this honor, which is truly humbling, is only given to me because of the team of religious leaders who joined with me under the convening leadership of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest, then led by Dov Ben-Shimon, with the leadership of Linda Scherzer at the JCRC and recently Stephanie Abrahams the Associate Director of the Jewish Community Relations Committee there, and now led by my friend and colleague Rabbi Abby Treu of Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange NJ. From the earliest days, we were joined by visionaries whom you have heard from tonight: Dr. Chaudry, Fal Pandya, and Sariah Johnson here at the Morristown Stake. Over time we were joined by the Atkinses, the Ludlams, Father Phil of the Roman Catholic Church, Robin Tanner of the Unitarian Universalists, and so many more. I remember after the attacks on the Tree of Life Congregation in 2018, the Poway Chabad Synagogue in 2019, and the Colleyville Texas synagogue attack, in January of 2022, we convened hundreds of educators, community leaders and local law enforcement to join in common cause to oppose all hate and antisemitism. Our fledgling group was trying to decide what to call ourselves, and we were suggesting “Leaders against Hate and Antisemitism” which seemed pretty straight forward. I recall Sariah being even quieter than usual, and hesitant. I asked her what her thoughts were, and she taught me a beautiful lesson of her faith: “I am not comfortable being against anything - I am for the good, for the light.” I have not forgotten that moment of moral, ethical and theological clarity. She is an example of why we do what we do, and when I think of the meaning of the Light the World honor that you have asked me to accept, I accept it as a mitzvah - a sacred commandment to embody the light, rather than define myself as fighting the dark. Light dispels darkness, and darkness can never dispel the light.
So why, and how, do we do what we do in interfaith relationships? We start with our own deep and abiding faith in our God, and our people in sacred relationships. We hold dear the testimony of our ancestors who received sacred teachings, and passed them down faithfully generation to generation. We recall the sacrifices and prayers of those who came before us, who would surely see the lives that we are privileged to live in this generation as answers to their most audacious prayers for their great great grandchildren one day. We start with gratitude to accept the gift of our parts of God’s world, our role within humanity, and the profound responsibility that comes with accepting those gifts. A responsibility that is meant to always champion to cause of the widow, the orphan, the stranger - to feed the hungry, and cloth the naked - to protect life, and to seek peace, and to never be satisfied with the failures of the moment that lead to the opposite of all of that. We oppose those who would maim and massacre, bribe and steal, who would betray and belittle, or who would deny God’s gifts to others. There are times when that seems obvious, and there are times when we all need those reminders. These days, we seem to need the reminders.
We then make a second decision born of faith and humility: we accept the possibility that we don’t know everything, that we aren’t always right, and that God - who spoke to our ancestors - surely spoke with other peoples as well. What I learn from Mt. Sinai and the giving of the Torah is not that I am special and everyone else is wrong, but that God likes to have private conversations. God recognizes the precious nature of each of his peoples. The promise to Ishmael was that that they too would become great and many nations. I learn that is how God works. And I lift my eyes and scan the world and I see the infinite variety of people, places and things that God has created and nurtured and my confidence that I am loved leads me to the conclusion that all of it is loved. That my being precious proves your being precious. Who am I to say that because the Torah is true, the Baghavad Gita are not. Or because the Koran and the New Testament acknowledge the Hebrew bible that are partly true, but partly false and that there is no Dao in the universe, no Maui for the Hawaiians, no Krishna, no Olódùmarè for the Yoruba, no Manitou for the Algonquin, no Chukwu for the Ibo, no Vishnu. I don’t have the tools, and I am not a part of your conversations with God. And that’s okay. I have plenty to pay attention to in my own conversations with God.
And then we come to the third moment that drives us together: If it all comes from God, and it is so varied, then it is precisely the differences that create the big picture. The world will not be perfected when we all become just one of our traditions, but when we all live up to God’s hope for each of our traditions. When the Hindu is truly Hindu, the Muslim Muslim, the Saint is a Saint, the Jew a Jew, and so on. The enemy of faith is not other faiths, but apathy and disregard for the divinity found within all of our faiths, and shared by all of us in God’s incredibly complex spectrum of light we call humanity. And this realization comes with responsibility. For far too many of us, we have fallen silent in the face of hatred bias or radical fundamentalism in our own traditions. This is as true for the Jew as for the Muslim the Christian the Hindu and so on. We all have people willing to hate and to kill in our names. This is the brilliance of “the pledge” that Dr. Chaudry has championed and which years ago we all adopted - to name and condemn hatred not in someone else’s community but within our own. And one need not look beyond the most recent war in Gaza to see the consequences for all of us when we fail to be that beacon. It is easy, when we are the victims of another person’s violence, to hate, to condemn, to stereotype, to group, to shout. It is hard to stay in relationship, to listen, to hold empathy, to seek like minded voices in each other’s communities. Despite the justice found in any one people’s cause, somehow it is the extreme voices that coopt the room, take the microphone, plant the flag and claim the mantle of leadership. So many interfaith relations have evaporated overnight in the past two years. Surely it is time to reach back and to try to build a better world from the rubble.
We are here to share this world. To share the land. To share our resources and to share our wisdom, where we have it. We are not here to hate or destroy, but to live, to love, and to learn. And there is only so much we can ever learn from ourselves. If we want to know more of God, we will have to listen to each other. We will each have to be in relationship with a Sariah, so that we can hear that loving rebuke of our own assumptions, and as a result become more of what God hopes for all of us. And in gathering each other's light, we may truly, with God’s help, Light the World.
If I have been able to be a small part of this work, I am grateful. Thank you for allowing our work together to be honored tonight, and for embodying the best of what I believe God hopes for all of us. Thank you.
