Many parallel lines can be drawn between the month of Tishrei, the Jewish month of High Holy Days, and the Muslim month of Ramadan. Despite their different origins, the two religions have much in common in these holidays: The many prayers, the fasting, the atonement, and the large meals, including the Iftar at the close of the Muslim fast day and the Eid ul Fitr festival of the breaking of the fast at the close of the Muslim month, and the large festive meals in Judaism.
The Muslim fast, which characterizes the month of Ramadan, like the Jewish fast characterizing Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, do not constitute an aim in themselves. The refraining from food and drink is not practiced as a health exercise nor to achieve weight loss, but to lead us on a journey inwards, into our souls, to cleanse, purify, and lead us towards repentance and atonement.
A wonderful description of the fast is brought in the words of the Prophet Isaiah (ch. 58, verses 1-7):
Cry out full-throated and unsparingly, lift up your voice like a trumpet blast; Tell my people their wickedness, and the house of Jacob their sins. They seek me day after day, and desire to know my ways, Like a nation that has done what is just and not abandoned the law of their God; They ask me to declare what is due them, pleased to gain access to God. “Why do we fast, and you do not see it? afflict ourselves, and you take no note of it?” Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits, and drive all your laborers.
Yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting, striking with wicked claw. Would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!
Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance: That a man bow his head like a reed, and lie in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?
This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own.
This period of the year can serve as an excellent opportunity for self reflection, of examination of “whence we came” and “where we are heading” regarding the relations between the two religions.
It should be a time for self-reflection rather than mudslinging, for repentance and atonement, expression of regret over the misdeeds of the past and acceptance - a commitment to better conduct in the future.
It may not be by chance that the Ramadan and the Jewish month of High Holy Days fall during hot days, meteorologically. According to one source, the origin of the word “Ramadan” (ر م ض) is from the Arabic root denoting “intense heat”. It is possible that in the past, in the pre-Islamic era, this month fell in the midst of summer, in a period when leap months were still inserted into the calendar, enabling the Ramadan to fall during the same season each year, as opposed to present times, when the season of the Ramadan is not fixed.
Indeed, days of intensive religious activity could be used as leverage for achieving the reverse aim: incitement, increasing hatred, strengthening feelings of resentment, alienation and animosity towards the other side. Such things have happened.
If truth be told: both religions (and other religions too) contain contrasting sources. On one hand, they speak in praise of brotherhood, tolerance and peace. At the same time, in bothIslam and in Judaism, sources can be found which express hatred and animosity towards the Other, the stranger, he who is different, who does not belong to the “religion of truth”. And if that is the case in primary sources, it is found all the more in written commentary accumulated over centuries and millennia.
The task before each of us is to sift through the various sources and locate the deserving commentaries, o try to emphasize the commonalities over the differences; the peaceful and tolerant expressions within each religion, rather than the inciting, alienating racist expressions; the unifying, alongside the unique, rather than the divisive and differentiating.
This is no easy task. Besides a glorious, centuries-long tradition of Muslims and Jews living side by side, in brotherhood and comradeship, sharing cultural values and inspiring one another, history also recounts the outbreak of wars, zealotry and hatred, resulting in many dead and injured.
The days of repentance that lay ahead can and should serve as leverage for renewal of thoughts, refreshment and growth, in the relations between the two religions—leverage for mobilizing the values of religion, on all their didactic and moral themes, leverage for enhancing peace, for nurturing the values of tolerance, and not, Heaven forbid, leverage to enhance hatred and animosity.
May it be that the year ahead will be a better year, one of peace, brotherhood and comradeship.
With wishes for a good year, Ketiva ve-Chatima Tova. May Allah accept your fasting. Have a blessed Ramadan and Eid Mubarak.
Dr. Aviad Hacohen is chair of Mosaica; Dean of Shaarei Mishpat College and Research Fellow at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem.
