The Israeli rabbinic world has finally begun to take account of the religions of the world, especially Hinduism and Buddhism, and has recently declared that they have the same status as Christianity.
Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, of Yeshivat Har Beracha, who is considered one of the leading halakhic authorities of the Religious Zionist world,d has recently issued a new volume of his comprehensive presentation of Jewish law entitled Emunah veMitzvotav (Faith and its Commandments), (Har Berakhah, 2025). In the new volume, Melamed presents a Jewish legal view of other religions, specifically Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. To write these chapters, he consulted with several outside experts who were knowledgeable about both halakha and other religions (including myself). I will discuss these views of Hinduism in this blog post and will deal with his approach to Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam in later blog posts. I will also cite the English summaries on the Yeshiva’s website so everyone can follow, even though I have the Hebrew original.
The bottom-line conclusion is the Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism have been declared by Rabbi Melamed as forms of the halakhic category of shituf (associating something else with God), a category formulated because some Medieval Ashkenaz legal authorities who in their perception saw that Christian had the same Biblical God as Judaism but associated God with something else, Jesus. The innovation in this book about Asian religions is that he treats the statues and images in Hinduism and Buddhism in the same manner as Christianity. He is decisive that for non-Jew,s “according to most halakhic authorities, there is no prohibition against practicing idolatry b’shituf. Therefore, as long as the idol worshiper also directs his worship to the one God above all the gods, he does not violate any prohibition.”
Melamed naturally holds that this form of worship through images, intermediaries, and statues, where offerings are made and incense burned, is forbidden to Jews. For him, the second commandment not to have images is addressed to Jews only because they have a special status. Non-Jews can have images, statues, and intermediaries (See Nahmanides Ex 20: 3).
Many of us have been explaining for years that Hinduism today is not worshipping many gods. This was decaled in the Jewish- Hindu Rabbinic summits in 2007-2009, which was signed by the Chief rabbi and various rabbinic figures, but they have never been translated into Hebrew. He acknowledges that contemporary “Hinduism believes in a supreme source for all the gods.” This is a new start for a halakhic understanding of Asian religions, to treat them as believer in one supreme being. On some level already twenty five years ago, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz was stating that Hinduism and Buddhism are monotheistic enough for halakhah.
Even more importantly, Rabbi Melamed shows a great appreciation for the gifts of Hinduism, including meditation, religious pluralism, imagination, arts, personal expression, beauty, and sensitivity to all living beings.
It is important to note that the immense richness in Hinduism… the important place given to meditation that enables deep inner listening, has created an especially pluralistic position toward different religions and rituals… From the wealth of thought and imagination about man and his soul, they can offer humanity an abundance of personal expression, and ways of dealing with the challenges of existence. Thus, the pluralism within Hinduism will coalesce into a movement toward the correction of the world and will not dissipate, wasting precious energy in vain. The rich and magnificent art that developed in India in literature, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and more, will inspire people from all nations to add beauty and pleasure to the world. They will also be able to provide the world with the special sensitivity they developed toward all living creatures and plants, based on respect for all beings, and a desire not to harm them. The more they adhere to belief in one God and morality, the more they will channel this sensitivity toward the overall movement of correcting and redeeming the world.
This is an impressive acknowledgment from a halakhic rabbi, and he placed this statement in the middle of his legal discussion. This will be the mainstream position of his followers for decades to come.
On the other hand, Melamed needlessly includes an essentialist reading of Hinduism from Christian sources explaining how they used to be demonic, worship idols, and of low morals. He reproduces the classic early 20th century Christian reading of world religions where each one is to found defective. In this reading, Hindus are polytheists (a Protestant word) and demonic because 1 Corinthians 10: 20 affirms that Gentiles do sacrifices to demons and not to God. Following this line of thinking, he credits Hinduism with offering to demons. Yet, official forms of Hinduism since antiquity did not consider appeasement of various malicious spirits- Asuras and Rakshasas- as official Hinduism or as demonic. At best, they were forest spirits to be appeased when entering their realms. In contrast, Judaism has a large number of shedim, mazikim, ruhim, and lilin. The Talmud is filled with discussions of these beings and how to avoid, appease them, or even see them. We have many magical bowls and magical formula from the Rabbinic world. (see here in my interview with Prof Harari) The scapegoat ritual, as presented by Nahmanides, was to appease the demonic evil side, a clear act of demonic worship. Some have a custom at circumcision to place food for the spirits, and there are lots of Jewish customs of spilling water or wine to appease the spirits.
In a similar manner, he condemns Hinduism for its former human sacrifice. But this practice is uncertain and may, or may not, have ever existed in the Bronze Age. Or it may have been done by marginal cults or non-Hindus. Yet, the Bible is explicit that Abraham thought he was to sacrifice his son, Jephthah sacrificed his daughter (Judges 11), there was the cult of Moloch, and King Ahaz sacrificed his son (2 Kings 16:3) and so did King Manasseh (2 Chronicles 33:6). If these Biblical stories are not normative, then the Hindu examples are equally not normative except through the colonial Christian gaze.
Imagine if a Hindu would present Judaism as superstitious compared to modern Hinduism and trace how Judaism evolved from human sacrifice to a religion still inferior to Hinduism. This was the actual way that the Hindu Neo-Vedanta modernists such as Swami Dayananda, Swami Vivekananda, and the Scholar Surendranath Dasgupta saw Judaism as primitive compared to Hinduism and that Judaism is blind to its own idolatry and human sacrifice. (I dealt with it here and in my book). They said this a full century ago, based on Christian anti-Judaism, we should not be hearing these things today. Jews do not see the Bronze Age idolatry of the Bible as in continuity with Rabbinic Judaism (circa 200 BCE to 200 CE), even if we claim cultural continuity. Hindus do not shy away from acknowledging that the Indus Valley Bronze age culture had primitive elements, even if they are not in continuity with the Upanishads religion (circa 200 BCE-200 CE)
Rabbi Melamed also thinks the advancement of Hinduism in the modern era was due to the encounter with the ideas of Biblical Judaism as mediated by Christianity and Islam, which allowed them to find the best in their own tradition. “When it encountered fundamental ideas like those in the teachings of Judaism, about belief in one God and the moral imperative to correct man and society, it was able to give them a central place, as they resonated with deep currents that had existed within it for ages… Hinduism survived with vitality, as it has the ability to absorb lofty ideas, and progress through them.” Melamed is explicitly following the evolutionary thought of Rabbi Kook who wrote: “In every religion, there is a divine spark of morality that sustains it, through which it sets standards of good and evil. Thus, humanity can gradually advance towards the belief in divine unity and its moral teachings (‘Le’Nevuchei Ha’Dor’, Chapters 8; 14:1).” But Melamed adds that the “encounter with monotheism” from “the values of the Bible, whether consciously or unconsciously, became fundamental values in Hindu culture, based on which modern Indian society tries to build itself in the areas of governance, law, education, science, and economics.” He does not realize that in most of these fields, the Indian civilization was already advanced in antiquity; he has a British colonialist gaze. We should note that the same Hindu modernists of a century ago ascribed the rise of the Biblical Abraham as based on the more advanced Hindu culture of the Vedas. And that many Modern Hindu thinkers of the early 20th century, including Swami Sivananda, the modernist teacher of Yoga, wrote that Judaism is derived from Zoroastrianism which itself is a corruption of the Vedic religion. Hence, the Abrahamic religions are Vedic at their core.
To his credit, Rabbi Melamed accepted the ancient Upanishads quote proving Hindu theism from the Rabbinic author, Rabbi Yissachar Hyman, who wrote a Hebrew book called Judaism and Hinduism.
A student asks the sage: “How many gods are there?” The sage replies: “Three thousand three hundred and thirty-three.” The student says: “Yes, of course, but how many gods are there really?” The sage replies: “Thirty-three.” The student says: “Yes, of course, but how many gods are there really?” The sage replies: “Three.” The student says: “Yes, of course, but how many gods are there really?” The sage replies: “One and a half.” The student says: “Yes, of course, but how many gods are there really?” The sage replies: “One.”
It is an important quote for him to acknowledge that Hinduism did not just discover a single supreme being in the modern era. But Rabbi Melamed then has nothing to connect it with hisotriclaly or conceptually, hence he treats it as a hidden idea needing to be revealed in modernity through Biblical influence. However, the idea of one Supreme Being is in the Bhagavad Gita (~200 CE) and in the years 700-1000 CE, all the major religious commentaries and philosophers, including Sankara, Ramanuja, and Madhva, each taught a single divine being. It is like skipping in your understanding of Judaism from the Bible to modernity, thereby bypassing the Talmud and Maimonides.
Nineteenth-century Europeans used to write that Jews had no ethics, certainly not compared to Christianity, and the Europeans did not think that Hindus had ethics either. Rabbi Melamed reproduces this Western critique of Hinduism ,not realizing that the same books said Judaism had little ethics. He does not seem to know about the extensive Hindu systems of ethics, hospitality, responsibility, duty, and of repentance,
The need to bring up the caste system in ancient Hinduism was unnecessary and served no halakhic purpose or any purpose in contemporary discussions. It would be like a book on Judaism, starting with various difficult Biblical texts about marrying off a minor daughter or a discussion of contemporary Judaism, starting with Jews are divided into 12 tribes and the Levites don’t own land.
In sum, Rav Melamed, because of his acceptance and stature has changed the discussion n Hinduism. His treating Hinduism as shituf and acknowledging the gifts of Indian culture is a huge advancement. It is certainly better than the Rabbis who declare anything from Hindu culture as forbidden or declare that it has an impure spirit hovering over it, or who use Wikipedia drivel to declare everything polytheistic. Rav Melamed is even better than those who use Joseph Campbell’s (or Heinrich Zimmer’s) universal vision of the ancient Aryans as polytheistic heroes, which has little to do with the actual Hindu religion. And we have certainly moved beyond the 2006 sheitel hair controversy, where the Rabbi just asked how it compares to the Mercury worship mentioned in the Talmud. (For more, see here).
The article on the Yeshivat Har Beracha website includes a picture of a lined-up row of Ganesha statues waiting to be bought for use in worship. I am not sure that I would include such a picture of deities. Yeshivat Har Beracha would certainly not post a picture of a crucifix or even of a nativity scene. The fact that they posted a picture of a row of Ganesha statues indicates that the process of acceptance and integration of Hinduism is far from over. (Update: In response to my blog post, they changed the picture to someone meditating.)
The Book of Doctrines and Opinions: 