Why is this religion different than all other religions?

Has anyone ever asked you the $64,000 question: “Why should I believe that Judaism is any more ‘correct’ in its claims than the other religions? After all, there are over a billion Christians and close to a billion and a half Muslims who believe that they are right and we are wrong! What makes us so sure in our beliefs?” We must be prepared to answer this question especially if it comes from our children. Their future as Jews depends on our ability to articulate this to them. I had a great discussion this week with a group of men in Highland Park, and I want to share with you a concise summary of what we talked about.
Every religion has its “story” or “claim” which is used to explain exactly how it came to possess its unique theology and spiritual knowledge. These claims will inevitably include a description of some “revelation” or get-together between the Divine Being and the leader or prophet. The question that one must ask is simply: is this claim believable? When you look across the spectrum of major world religions, barring Judaism, there is a glaring commonality. Their “stories” or “claims” inevitably involve the retelling of a “personal” revelation where the Supernal Being tapped one individual on the shoulder informing him, and him alone, that G-d had “changed His mind,” rejected the Jews, selected a new “Chosen People” and appointed this fortunate individual as the new prophet or leader.
This reminds me of an old joke. (Sorry I can’t hold back here. It isn’t such a funny joke but it illustrates the point). There was once a great Chassidic Rabbi, the leader of a prestigious dynasty, who passed away leaving several sons. The squabbling began, each claiming that he was the heir to the rabbinic throne. One day, the youngest son gathered together the court of elders and informed them, “last night my father, the holy rabbi of blessed memory, came to me in a dream and informed me that I am to become the new Grand Rabbi.” The elders thought for a moment, stroking their long white beards, until finally one spoke up. “Yankel, if your father wanted you to be the Rebbe, he should have come to us in a dream!”
Only Judaism makes a qualitatively different claim. The Torah says that G-d spoke directly to the two to three million Israelites as they stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Now that is a pretty hard sell if it never happened. Let’s pretend that Moses was making this whole thing up. Imagine the scene:
“Hey Moses, what is that scroll you got there?”
“Oh, check this out it is pretty cool,” Moses says as he hands them this bogus document.
“Wait just one second. It says here that all 3 million of us saw G-d speaking to us at the foot of this mountain. That’s funny. Please explain why not a single one of us has any recollection of this?”
You simply can’t make such a claim and expect anyone to believe it if it never happened. And that is precisely why no other religion ever made such a claim. Think about it, why would G-d choose a “new people” and appoint a new prophet in a way that could never be verified or validated? Paul, Mohamed, Joseph Smith and the others all agreed that G-d revealed himself to the entire Jewish nation at Mt. Sinai. Why then, pray tell, did they not at least make a similar claim that G-d appeared to all the Christians or Muslims or Mormons? The answer is simple. They understood that there is no way to make such a preposterous claim and expect anyone to believe it if it never happened. They had no choice but to settle for the far inferior claim that “G-d appeared to me and told me to tell you…”
In my opinion, this fact, more than any other, is what distinguishes the Jewish religion and makes it far more credible. How did Moses convince 3 million critical, stiff-necked Jews that they all saw G-d communicate to them if it never happened? All other monotheistic religions validate the Jewish claim. Why don’t they claim that their revelations happened in a similar way? Because you can not fabricate such a lie and expect millions of people to believe they saw something that they did not.
Have a good Shabbos.
David