Building a Curriculum for a Culture of Peace: Understanding “Amen”: How Historiography Solves an Interfaith Puzzle

In my previous article on building a curriculum for peace, I emphasized the importance of historiography – the study of how historical writings emerged from their own environments, and how communities understood each other. This is useful because engagement in interfaith study without this context can create confusion.

A simple example illustrates this well: Both Islam and Judaism say “Amen” in response to blessings.

We can marvel at this shared practice. Yet an honest question arises: Who inherited “Amen” from whom?

This takes us to a well-known set of ahadith reporting that the Jews of Medina were jealous of the Muslims for saying “Āmīn.”

To a modern Jewish reader, this is puzzling, after all, Jews also say “Amen.” Why would there be jealousy?

Here are the relevant narrations:

“The Jews do not envy you for anything more than they envy you for the Salām and (saying) Āmīn, so say Āmīn a great deal.”
— Sunan Ibn Mājah 857

“The Jews do not envy you for anything more than for saying Āmīn behind the imām.”
— Sahih al-Bukhārī 782; Sahih Muslim 404

Muslim scholars explain this by saying: The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) revived an ancient Abrahamic practice of vocalizing “Amen” that the Jews of Medina no longer performed aloud.

This interpretation is supported by major commentators such as Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (15th c.) and al-Nawawī (13th c.).
But this explanation raises another question: Did the Jewish people truly stop saying “Amen”?

Most Jews today would say: absolutely not. So how could envy arise?

This is precisely the kind of puzzle that historiography can solve.

A Lost Practice—But Only for Some

To understand this hadith, we must understand Jewish sects at the end of the Second Temple period.

Four major groups shaped Jewish religious life:

Pharisees – ancestors of Rabbinic Judaism; believed in Oral Law; said “Amen.”

Sadducees – rejected the Oral Law, were members of the Priestly class and dominated the second Temple; did not say “Amen” in Temple ritual.

Essenes – ascetics, possibly proto-Christian; desert mystics.

Sicarii – militant faction; responsible for burning stores of food and fuel during the Roman siege in 70 CE in order to force the Israelites to fight Rome. Rabbi Gamliel suppressed any further revolt, this may mark the beginning of the pacifism that would characterize the Pharisaic-Rabbinic leadership.

There were also Herodians and Tobiads, smaller political-religious sects.

Why this matters: Temple priests did not say “Amen.”

During the Second Temple services:

The Israelite people responded Amen, the Priests in the Temple did not.

Temple worship included practices not carried outside the Temple:
animal sacrifice, using fire on the Sabbath, mixed wool and linen garments, and the absence of “Amen” in priestly liturgy.

When the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, the Jews dispersed.

Pharisees, later known as Rabbinic Jews, moved primarily to Persia and northern Israel, and transcribed the oral tradition into the Mishna and Talmud. . Their descendants became today’s Rabbinic Jews, who preserved the practice of saying “Amen.”

Sadducees dispersed southward into Egypt, Yemen, and Arabia. It is this group whose remnants were in Himyar (southern Arabia) and who would have interacted with emerging Islam.

Thus, when the hadith says that “the Jews envied you for saying Āmīn,” it may refer not to all Jews, but specifically to the Sadducean descendants who did not say Amen in Temple ritual, preserved Temple-centric customs long after the Temple was gone, and lived in regions where early Muslims first encountered them.

Jews today, who descend from the Pharisees, did preserve the practice, so naturally, they would find this hadith confusing without historical context, and Muslims would be puzzled at the Jews’ insistence that they never lost this practice. The mystery is thus solved via historiography and tracing various customs to their sources in different Jewish sects.

Historiography Restores the Missing Piece

Once we account for Jewish sectarian diversity at the dawn of Islam, everything becomes clear:

Muslims restored an older Abrahamic practice (“Amen” aloud).
Some Jewish groups (Sadducees) had ceased that vocal practice.
Other Jewish groups (Pharisees/Rabbinic) retained it.

The Prophet’s encounter was not with “Judaism” as we know it today, but with a specific faction whose customs differed sharply from Rabbinic Judaism.

This is exactly why historiography is essential.
It does not undermine faith, it protects it by giving each tradition the dignity of its own context.

Relevance for a Culture of Peace

When we place these traditions back into their historical setting:

Puzzles become understandable.
Conflicts become solvable.
The “Other” becomes less foreign.
Our shared spiritual heritage becomes clearer.

This is how we build a Curriculum for a Culture of Peace, by teaching not only what we believe, but how our ancestors understood one another, and how much they shared.

And this is only the beginning.

Author Bio

Rebecca Abrahamson is passionate about Muslim-Jewish relations, and in that capacity co-directs the Al-Sadiqin Institute with her husband, Rabbi Ben Abrahamson