My name is David Rosen. I'm an Orthodox rabbi. I was chief rabbi of Ireland. Before that, I was rabbi of the largest congregation in South Africa.
Before that, I was trapped into the Israeli Defense Forces in West Sinai.
For the last 15 years, I am in charge of all the American Jewish Committee's interfaith work around the world, and I'm based in Jerusalem.
So basically, I'm employed to be ambassador for Judaism to the religions of the world.
I'm also the advisor to the chief rabbinate of Israel in terms of its interfaith work as well.
And we have some formal institutional structures for dialogue.
Well, of course, education is a critical factor, but there is nothing more educational than the human encounter.
The more we can enable people to meet with one another, to look in the other's eyes, to see each other as a child of God,
as a creature of the divine one force behind the cosmos, the less we will be inclined to stigmatize, to generalize,
to label people, and the more we will be able to understand them.
And, of course, the one religion that has a specific imperative in this regard is Islam.
We created you from one couple, male and female, and made you into peoples and nations so that you may know one another.
In other words, Islam has an imperative of dialogue, and that dialogue should be the essential foundation for all religions.
The more we get to know one another, the less chance that we will do to one another the terrible things we do.
People can only do such horrific acts that are done today terribly in the name of religion by dehumanizing the other,
making the other into purely an object with no human identity, let alone divine soul.
And every time you pray, you pray for the children of Abraham, therefore you're praying for me.
And people don't understand that.
So, of course, education is very fundamental in that regard.
It's not just a matter of fabricating hadiths.
It's also a matter of how you interpret certain verses within the scripture.
And, therefore, you can interpret verses in the Koran.
So, you can have a passage which talks about the desecraters of the Sabbath being turned into apes and pigs.
And you can understand that to be the advantage of Judaism, that Jews are meant to be observant, and those were the sinners.
Or you can take it and generalize that all Jews are apes and pigs.
And so, there's always a danger of abusing religion when people have violent intent.
And, therefore, the question we also need to ask is, what is the source of their violence?
It's not just bad education.
It is manipulation for various economic, social, political interests, people who are marginalized, looking for some kind of purpose in life, all these factors.
So, these have to be addressed.
Education is critical, absolutely, but not alone.
It has to come in hand with us addressing the sources, if you like, of the swamps that breed these Anopheles mosquitoes.
And the fundamental teaching of both the Koran and the Torah is that the human being is called to live a righteous and just life.
And that, first and foremost, means respecting the life and the dignity of each and every human being.
That latter part, I don't know, is being actually the text of the Koran.
I know the first part of being the text of the Koran, and I know that there are those who interpret that, which, of course, is not in the Koran,
that if the people sinned, as a result, they broke God's promise, and, therefore, that promise was no longer theirs.
But now is the Ummah Khair, which is that Muslims are no longer the Jews.
But, again, that just proves our point.
The point is, if you have a political agenda, you will interpret the text to suit your political agenda.
But, thank God, not amongst all.
And there are lots of good people and lots of good Palestinians as well.
And, thank God, the vast majority of Muslims in the world are good people.
And, thank God, we live in a time where there's more interfaith or cooperation than ever before in a human history.
So, in fact, interfaith cooperation is an exponentially growing industry.
I travel maybe 50% of the time, and I turn down 10 times as much as I take on.
We do not have the resources to meet the demand.
So, it's already a sign that we're living in a very blessed, wonderful age.
The problem, of course, is that what gets into the media, into the newspapers and television, by definition, is the sensational and the negative.
The problem is to do with something in the human heart.
We enjoy the sensational more than the good pedestrian activities.
So, we want something that's exciting and that's negative.
And, therefore, as a result, we get to know about all the terrible things in the world.
But, there are far more good things and wonderful things in the world that we simply don't know about.
I try my best, as much as God will allow me.
Inshallah.
Thank you.
I come from time to time.
I was there at different conferences.
Istanbul is one of the centers of the world.
So, it's a crossroads, as it always has been.
Thank you.