Speech at The UN for Interfaith Harmony Week on Building Bridges

There is something important that the spiritual needs to say to the political, and it begins with a story from the Book of Numbers. When the Israelites were very close to entering the Promised Land, the prophet Moses sent messengers to the surrounding nations to ask permission for the Israelites to pass through their lands. He promised that the Israelites would stay on the main road, that they would not eat their food or drink their water, and that if they did, that they would pay for them. Not one nation agreed, and a few of them attacked or threatened to attack. This story, seen through the lens of our understanding, actually provides the paradigm of a perfect world. If all the nations had cooperated, everyone would have benefited. They would have become allies and friends; there would have been trade and commerce, prosperity and enough resources for all. Instead there was death, destruction of crops and property, illness, privation, war, and loss of land.

This story gives us a glimpse of how the world is really supposed to work. When we cooperate and help each other, with kindness, compassion, generosity, and caring, there is more for everyone. It shows that there is not a finite amount of resources, but that through cooperation and friendship, there is enough for all. There is a miraculous component to all of this, and it’s been said that there is no religion at all without miracles. We know we share one earth. On a spiritual basis we share one life and one soul. This is our deeper reality. However, we humans also share a common problem: that we look separate from one another. Our 5 senses tell us where I end and where you begin. But there is a deeper reality: that we are all connected to each other and to the great Oneness of existence that some call God. As such, we are part of each other, all brothers and sisters for each other. If we could shake hands and exchange our protoplasm, our cell matter, in a spiritual handshake, we would understand this. There is truly no Us and no Them: only Us.

Since we are all One, the energies of giving to each other create more goodness and plenty in the system, activating the spiritual forces which allow all of us to be in the great cycle of giving and receiving. Similarly, should I harm you, it is like putting a knife into my own heart. The Chassidic masters in Judaism taught that blessings will flow to us as long as we don’t prevent those blessings from reaching us, by a failure to live out of the deeper reality that we are all One. We are already a part of each other. Our task is to shift our consciousness, our inner dialogue, away from purely linear and logical thinking, so that we can include the spiritual in our deliberations, and begin to live out of the truth that we are One. The bible says, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I always wish that it had added, because your neighbor IS yourself. The bridges between us already exist. It is up to us to realize this truth and to take concrete action to make these bridges real.