29 | Empathy, Reality, and the Divine in Judaism and Islam
May 20, 2025Welcome to the Cow Behind the Barn: A podcast exploring humanity, the world, and the divine, as experienced and interpreted by an artist. I’m Kevin Caldwell, a co-finder of the Table Collective.
This Episode is a continuation of my attempt to understand whether empathy is in some way an element, even the most significant element, in the nature of whatever it is that is ultimately real. So far the short answer is yes, and while I need to elaborate on that, I want to emphasize again why I think this is such an important question. In the last Episode I asked us to:
Imagine if we saw the entire cosmos rooted in empathy in its very being?
Imagine if you and I lived in keeping with that essential element of the cosmos?
What if?
It is my growing conviction that empathy has two modes. It is ontological, rooted in “isness” as an aspect of what is really Real. And empathy has an “existential” mode, it can be experienced and cultivated.
However, that is not always easy! It is not always easy to treat others with empathy, to allow myself to feel as if I am them. But it is also not easy to do so even for myself. That may seem strange, but I find myself often more able to offer this to and for and with others than to the face in my mirror.
Here is a song I wrote trying to explore that difficulty. I offer it here as a particular way of experiencing the difficulty I have with one aspect of this experiential quality of empathy.
Here is my song, “Love Song to My Mirror.”
Love Song to My Mirror
Someone said to look into a mirror, and say “I love you”
But there was nothing in the air,
No voice that I could hear,
Just me in the silence standing there
I want to tell you that I love you
But I can’t find the way, the words will not obey
I want to tell you that I love you
I’m never at a loss for words unless the words I’m saying
Are I love you
Wish my mother’s face inside my phone would say “I love you”
I always felt alone,
That I was on my own,
Even now when I am grey and grown
I want to tell you that I love you
But I can’t find the way, the words will not obey
I want to tell you that I love you
I’m never at a loss for words unless the words I’m saying
Are I love you
I see my face inside of my own eyes, and I’m trying to find my voice
I’m trying to tell you that I love you
Trying to find the way, to make the words obey
I’m trying to tell you that I love you
I’m never at a loss for words unless the words I’m saying
Are I love you
Why does it seem important to apply this ourselves? Well it has been said that wounded people wound people, that our inner atmosphere affects our external weather we could say. Well then our lack of empathy for ourselves will result in the inability to offer it to others.
Now, back to the ontological aspect of empathy! The ontological mode has of course raised questions about the divine, since questions about ultimate reality sooner or later bring us to the question whether there is a God or not.
As such, I have been looking at “theisms” through the lenses of religion.
To recap:
Atheism, there is no divine being. I looked at the non-theism of the Buddha.
Pantheism, there is nothing that is not the divine being. I looked at the Bhagavad Gita.
I included Lao Tzu in that conversation with Buddha and Gita given that he stands in the so-called eastern religious stream. Though strictly speaking he fits neither the non-theist or the pantheist worldview.
In each case, I found that yes, each of these heritages see reality as including empathy as I have defined the term, whether that reality is divine or not.
For reasons I explained in another Episode, I have not specifically included quantum physics in the conversation, however I have come to wonder whether what physics speaks of as entanglement in the interactions of sub-atomic particles might be a way of describing the ontological mode of empathy as well. Not in an emotive sense of feeling empathy, but in the sense of being how the cosmos functions in its entanglement. Empathy in the language of science.
Coming back to the religious world, in this Episode, I turn to monotheism, the view that there is a single, ultimate divine being.
And so, we will explore what Judaism and Islam might have to say about empathy and the divine nature. Since my question is about the nature of ultimate reality and for monotheistic religions God is that ultimate reality, I am not just asking about whether these heritages teach that God has compassion for humans and the world, but whether within the divine nature there is anything like empathy: caring and feeling as if I am the other.
Taking the two heritages chronologically, I start with Judaism.
Empathy in the Jewish Scriptures
The Jewish scriptures do not use the word "empathy" explicitly.
There are, however, numerous references to compassion, kindness, and understanding for others. These qualities are presented as descriptions of God’s own character as well as commands for human beings. In other words, there are both ontological and existential elements in the Jewish scriptural portrayals of compassion and mercy.
In Exodus 34:6–7 we see this:
The Lord passed before Moses and proclaimed, ”“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.’”
There are five attributes: merciful, gracious, slow to anger, full of steadfast love, and faithfulness. These provide the soil from which divine forgiveness flows.
Psalm 145:8 rehearses the same divine attributes first recorded in Exodus 34:7 and then adds, “The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he had made” (Ps. 145:9).
In the Jewish scriptures God’s mercy is an ubiquitous force that shapes all of reality. This is its ontological dimension.
As to the existential aspect, grounded in this reality there are injunctions for us to live in keeping with compassion and mercy.
Many passages describe how we are to treat others with care, and urge us towards a deep understanding of the struggles of others and a desire to alleviate their suffering: foreigners, orphans, and widows, and the marginalized.
A lot is made of the Israelites' experience as slaves in Egypt. They are urged to treat immigrants and refugees with kindness and compassion, because they were once immigrants and refugees themselves. For example in Leviticus 19, verses 33 and 34 the text says, “‘when a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”
Thus, the Old Testament, though not using the word "empathy," demonstrates a strong emphasis on compassion, kindness, and understanding for others, particularly those in need, and promotes a culture of justice and care for the vulnerable. And this is consistently rooted in the experiences of the people, and in the fact that these qualities are qualities of the divine nature itself.
But is it really part of the divine nature? I need to dig deeper.
Divine Empathy in the Jewish Scriptures?
Again, compassion is caring for another, empathy is caring as if I am the other and the other is me.
Let me say right here that I do not find anything in the Jewish texts that directly reflects this definition of empathy as a divine quality.
However, that is not the end of the story. I need to lay the groundwork for this.
First, it is clear from these texts that all our thoughts and what I might call our “inner-ness” is known to God.
Psalm 139
1 You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
Second, this deep divine knowledge of our innermost hearts is not just passive awareness. Another Psalm describes the active divine engagement with what is happening within human hearts:
Psalm 33
From heaven the Lord looks down
and sees all mankind;
14 from his dwelling place he watches
all who live on earth—
15 he who forms the hearts of all,
who considers everything they do.
Then, Psalm 42:7 says, “deep calls to deep.”
These texts describe some sort of “divine experience” of the inner life of humans, of human thoughts and feelings, of the entire human psyche in all its depths and mysteries.
What is known about our innermost being is known in a corresponding way within the inner being of the divine. While I want to be careful about language, this suggests to me that there is an experiential aspect to the divine way of knowing our human feelings and thoughts and imaginations and confusions and dreams and decisions and regrets and griefs.
Monotheistic conceptions of the divine often refer to omniscience as a divine quality (though there are many nuances in that view especially in recent discussion). In my way of thinking, now, I would suggest that if the divine being is omniscient, then it is a compassionate, experiential, omniscience.
Is that empathy?
Divine Empathy in the Jewish Scriptures, Part 2
Let me suggest something as I continue to draw from the Jewish scriptures.
I will start with Leviticus 19 which I mentioned earlier. It begins from a core principle in verse 2:
‘Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.’
In other words, all of the commands which follow that principle are grounded in the fact that they reflect the divine character. And right in the middle of the list of commands are two expressions of actual empathy:
Verse 18 “‘love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”
Empathy is clothed in this command, and as noted just a moment ago, it appears that the rationale for the command is the divine nature. Thus, empathy is a quality of the divine.
Known as the “golden rule,” this command is seen by many rabbis to be the center of all the ethical teaching of the Torah, the Law. One famous rabbi, Hillel, is reported to have said that this command, “is the whole Torah; the rest is the commentary; go and learn.”
In Leviticus 19, verses 33 and 34 which I cited above, the text says, “‘when a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”
The people are told to treat foreigners the same as themselves, called to remember their own past, their own experiences as foreigners and immigrants and refugees, and told to draw on that collective memory when thinking of others.
The existential dimensions of empathy within these commandments are founded in an ontological element, divine empathy. This brings me to a final observation that adds to the force of this idea.
In Genesis 1, verses 26 and 27, we read that, “God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So, God created mankind in God’s own image, in the image of God, God created them; male and female God created them.”
If human beings are made in God’s image, and if empathy is at the very heart of the commandments of the Jewish scriptures, then it follows that empathy is part of the divine character.
Empathy is ontological, grounded within the nature of the divine Being.
To be clear, the line between the divine and the human is maintained. The ontological nature of empathy is different from what we saw in the Gita, since Judaism is monotheistic, not pantheistic.But the link between existential and ontological empathy is clear.
Normally, I follow a chronological flow, and as such would typically move from Judaism to Christianity. However, in this case I will move conceptually. And as such, I turn now to another monotheistic heritage, one that shares much of the same worldview as what we have just seen, at least in terms of my current questions about empathy and the divine nature.
I will turn now to explore what Islam adds to the conversation and then come back to the Christian heritage, and will say more about my reasoning then.
Empathy in the Islamic Heritage
In asking how the Islamic tradition understands the place of empathy in relation to “reality” and the divine, I will primarily limit myself to what we can discover from the Quran.
Muslims refer to the Surahs, or chapters, usually by the names that they have traditionally been given rather than the numbers. For ease here I will use both.
From the 9th chapter, Surah Taubah, verse 128:
“There has certainly come to you a Messenger from among yourselves. Grievous to him is what you suffer; he is concerned over you and is kind and merciful to the believers.”
This text highlights Muhammad's concern for believers, whose burdens are grievous to him, leading to concern, kindness, and mercy. The verse seems to ground those qualities in the fact that Muhammad is “from among” them, one of them, like them. This is not empathy, directly, but is close.
Surah Al-Anbiya, chapter 21, verse107:
“We have sent you ˹O Prophet˺ only as a mercy for the whole world.”
This passage highlights the divine motivation in calling and sending Muhammad: mercy. Below I will come back to the term mercy, and to the nature of divine mercy.
Surah Ar-Rahman, chapter 55, verses 7 to 9:
“As for the sky, He raised it high, and set the scales of justice, so that you do not defraud the scales. Weigh with justice, and do not give short measure.”
What does justice have to do with compassion, and empathy? Justice is in fact dependent on the leveling of rights in a society, removing privileged treatment, requiring treatment of others as if they are us, ourselves.
Chapter 7, Surah Al-A'raf, verse 156:
The verse begins with a report of a prayer, “and ordain for us what is good in this world and in the world to come, for to you we have turned.”
The passage also reports what God said as a response to the prayer, and it starts off sounding like bad news! “I afflict whomever I wish with my chastisement.” Then the next statement, God continues. “As for my mercy, it encompasses everything.”
There seems to be a limitation that God self-imposes, as it were, upon the divine chastisement or correction. But there seems to be no such limit to mercy. Again, I will say more about the divine mercy, and thus touch on empathy, below.
I said I would focus on the Quran, however I want to mention one statement reported in what is known as the Hadith (collections of sayings and actions of Muhammad which are respected alongside the Quran though not given equal authority).
There is a famous saying in the hadith which profoundly shapes Islamic ethics that deserves mention here. In that hadith, Muhammad said, "None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself".
This is obviously similar to the passage we cited in the Jewish scriptures, “love your neighbor as yourself.”
To give a summary of what I am seeing in those contexts, as with the Jewish scriptures, there is no direct reference in the Quran to empathy. The Quran clearly emphasizes qualities such as compassion, kindness, and concern for others, which are all qualities that can be applied towards another, and are not the same as seeking to put myself in the place of another, or to feel and think as if I am the other.
Though the Islamic version of “love your neighbor as yourself,” as I noted when discussing Judaism, can only happen when we engage some form of empathy.
Thus far we have seen qualities that are listed in reference to human beings.
However, it is the relationship of empathy to the divine in Islam that I am most interested to explore.
Empathy and the Divine Nature in Islam?
One important approach to understanding the divine nature in Islam is through the lenses of the “99 Names,” often referred to as the Most Beautiful Names. The names are a set of adjectives and titles that each indicate a particular attribute or virtue of the divine nature.
The most relevant names for our discussion are the two most frequently repeated of the 99 names. They are frequently repeated within the Quran itself and also repeated in the daily life of Muslims. The two names are “ar-Rahman” and “ar-Raheem”, “the merciful” and “the compassionate.”
Almost every chapter or Surah of the Quran begins with those two names. And in Muslim devotion, every activity is to begin with invoking those two names.
It is common to find the explanation that ar-rahman refers to the divine mercy or compassion as broad and all encompassing, offered to all creation. While ar-rahim signifies the mercy of God in a more particular sense towards human beings, and even more particularly those who are believers.
But let’s dig more deeply.
There is a saying in the hadith in which Muhammad says that God spoke these words,
“I am Ar-Rahman. I created the Raham (womb, ) and derived a name for it from My Name.”
There is a connection between these two names of God, “ar-rahman” and ar-rahim with the Arabic word for womb, “raham.” Now, what I assumed this would mean is something like this:
“My name, ar-rahman, comes from the word for womb, raham, because mothers bear their children within themselves and there is nothing as tender as the mercy of a mother…” In other words, start from maternal mercy and say that this is what divine mercy is like, or something to that effect.
But Muhammad said it is the other way around, that God’s merciful nature came first, ar-rahman. And because of that deep mercy, “raham” is a fitting word for womb.
In other words, the divine mercy being is not something like a mother’s, rather, the womb-deep tenderness of a mother’s love is something like the divine tender mercy.
I also need to draw out the implications of the fact that the two words are almost always used in combination. Their meaning is so close, and given that both words are drawn from the same root, womb, raham, aren’t they just synonyms? Why combine them?
The primary effect of using them twinned like this, in combination, is that it serves to intensify their meaning. Combining them is like a multiplier, as if we are saying that divine mercy and compassion and mercy and compassion to the nth degree. Infinite. All encompassing. Unfathomable.
But is this empathy?
While the Quran doesn't explicitly use the term "empathy," the doubling and intensification of the use of rahman and rahim might suggest there is something beyond compassion here, something beyond caring for and about another. I do not think it is a stretch to suggest that the twin usage of these terms conveys empathy: caring as, and in, and with the same feelings as the other.
I personally believe that the intensified combination of ar-rahman and ar-rahim and the way those are connected with the root word “raham”, womb, suggests that empathy is a divine quality. And I also add here that the repeated usage of these combined names for God in daily life and in the Quran itself suggests that empathy is in fact the primary quality of the divine nature.
However, to be clear, that is not explicit in the Quran, and the linkage I am making is not as strong as what I have found in the other heritages thus far.
Conclusion
The two monotheistic heritages I explored here lead me to conclude that empathy is in fact a divine quality. And as a way to try to experience that from a creative perspective I will share again a poem I have shared before, “Touch the Ecstatic.” While the emphasis is on the ontological side, I am also aware that the poem is exploring the experiential, and thus existential, dimension of the nature of reality, and the divine.
Touch the Ecstatic
Inside that sway of grass in wind
This pulse, dull eyes, a dusty rose,
There is something.
Ecstatic.
I cannot say, but I know.
Believe.
More honest: I only want to live
If I can believe, and touch.
Ecstasy is chaos dancing
Electrons, protons
Morons, skeletons, put-ons
On and on,
Colliding on pulsing-universe-mystic-strobe light-floors
Loved on
Ecstasy is a god’s kiss
Pressed on the first fleshy mouth
Divine moist intimate breath through parted lips.
Eyelids flicker open, embrace the gaze of God,
Entwined lovers in the after-glow,
In a raw green world
Satiated
Ecstasy is me beside myself
Seeing inside myself from outside myself
Myself as myself.
My own eyes seeing
Me for the first time,
Tender
Ecstasy is joy unbridled
Lustrous lust, throbbing unholy godliness
Walking naked carnal
Warm in the glow of Eden
Wiping juice from giddy lips
With the back of a wanton hand
Unashamed
Loved on, satiated,
Tender, unashamed,
Joy unbridled, beside myself
A gods’ kiss, chaos dancing.
I touch, am touched.
Ecstatic.
What is Next?
I said above that I would come back to say more about why I am not including Christianity in this Episode. There is a space consideration, since I could not treat Judaism and Islam and Christianity in one session. But typically that would mean this Episode would have been Judaism and Christianity since I normally proceed chronologically.
This time I divided these three heritages based on the “theisms” I introduced in a prior Episode. I have looked at atheism, pantheism, and now monotheism. I have yet to look at what polytheism might say about all this, and I will need to do that, even if briefly. But I have decided to explore what the Christian heritage might say about empathy and the divine under the banner of panentheism, the view that everything is in the divine, and the divine is in everything. That is not necessarily a view universally agreed upon in the Christian world, so it will require some explanation. Which I will try to provide…
Next time!
