Alan Dershowitz: On God, Abraham and Yale

Insider: It’s a rare book that makes me wish I were Jewish. We never covered a third of this stuff in Sunday school. How did you come by the idea?

Dershowitz: As a kid, I was always influenced by the Abraham story – the story of Abraham arguing with God….And then last year, we did a trial a mock trial at Temple Emmanu-El in New York, in front of 1,500 people. Abraham was put on trial for attempted murder of his son Isaac.

I was the defense lawyer, and Eliot Spitzer [the former governor of New York] was the prosecutor. And there was a real federal judge. We had a real trial. It was a close verdict, but we won. Abraham walked. He got off. I had been working on the book, but that kind of stimulated me to focus on the lawyer part of it.

Insider: I know defense lawyers – some very good ones. They don’t always speak of judges as infallible creatures. Sometimes just the opposite. When you put God and Abraham in a judge-and-lawyer frame, does it alter your concept of God?

Dershowitz: The Jewish concept of God is different than the Christian and Muslim concept of God. The Jewish concept of God is a learning God, a God who makes mistakes. A God who loses his temper. A God who regrets creating human beings. The Jewish God isn’t as perfect, just like the Jewish characters in the Bible aren’t as perfect. Jesus is perfect. Muhammad is perfect. Moses, Abraham? Not so much. And Jehovah? Not so much.

Alan Dershowitz, Abraham_Book Cover

That may explain why Jews are so argumentative and unwilling to accept authority. Even the Jewish God is subject to being talked out of something.

Insider: You start with Abraham’s defense of Sodom before God, and the philosophies behind being a defense lawyer. You’ve had a long career – what was your “defense of Sodom” case? Which one had you feeling you were arguing with God?

Dershowitz: When I have done cases in the Soviet Union, for example, during the worst times in the Soviet Union, I really felt that – not that I was arguing with God, but I was arguing with a godless, communist society. But it was very hard to be critical at all. In democracy, you can be critical. But when you’re arguing for a defendant in a tyrannical regime, like the former Soviet Union, you really do think you’re arguing with an authority that can’t be questioned.

Of course, when you’re arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court, you also have no place else to go. As one of the justices said, “We’re not final because we’re right, we’re only right because we’re final.”

Insider: I’m very interested in your take on Abraham and the near-sacrifice of Isaac as the birth of religious fundamentalism. Especially the line, “faith won, love lost.”

Dershowitz: The reason it’s so powerful is that it resonates in the three Abrahamic religions. For Christians, it anticipates the sacrifice by God of his own Son. For Muslims, the word, al-silm, means “submission.” Three different religions having three different takes on this incredibly powerful and moving story.

Then, of course, the question comes up: How do you explain the same Abraham arguing with God about strangers and not arguing with God about his own son? I had a lot of fun trying to figure that one out.

Insider: You had plenty of back-up there on the Jewish side. Do you know much about the Muslim side?

Dershowitz: On the Muslim side, it’s Ishmael, rather than Isaac. As I point out, there were two sacrifices that God tells Abraham to do. He sacrifices both his sons.

Insider: Sending Ishmael into the wilderness with his mother.

Dershowitz: So the Muslims, of course, focus much more heavily on that. And draw different inferences from it. One great thing about the Bible, why it’s so enduring – both the Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible and the Quran – is that they're Rorschach tests. They’re written in such broad terms that different generations can interpret them differently….

Insider: I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you at least one secular question. You’re very big on the First Amendment. Do you have any advice for students at Yale or the University of Missouri on the importance of free speech and a free press?

Dershowitz: First of all, understand that you’re not entitled to any safe space for your ideas. Your ideas are not subject to being put in safe spaces. You have to allow your ideas to be criticized. It’s not an answer to say, “I’m offended by your ideas, therefore you shouldn’t be able to express them.” There should be no safe spaces for ideas on university campuses.

Obviously, there should be safe spaces from physical assault. But there’s an enormous difference between physical assault and not liking what somebody else might have to say about controversial issues on campus....