It pays to be Jewish
It pays to be Jewish
By Ted Belman
As far back as the seventies, my orthodox father-in-law used to argue that gentiles have more respect for authentic Jews than for assimilated Jews. There is something attractive about a people or person who is proud of his heritage and lives by its precepts. As you know this idea ran contrary to the prevailing view held by progressive Jews that the more they emulated the gentiles, the more they would be accepted. He was right. Just look at the affinity of the Christian Right in the US for the Jewish settlers and their fight to keep the land.
Paul Eidelberg makes the same point in his important book “Jewish Statesmanship”.
“Contrary to the expectations of Jewish politicians and intellectuals who, out of fear of anti-Semitism, mindlessly portray Israel as a democracy so as to endow it (and themselves) with legitimacy and respectability, it is precisely this lack of Jewish national authenticity – this adulation of decayed democratic values – that underlies the international contempt for Israel.”
He characterizes this contemporary democracy as upholding “indiscriminate egalitarianism and unrestrained libertarianism”. Israel’s embrace, without question, of this form of contemporary democracy has lead to Arab Israelis who are PLO surrogates and thus enemies of Israel, being elected to the Knesset. It also leads to the PLO being permitted their own press in Jerusalem where they mightily contribute to anti-Israel propaganda and incitement. In other words, this slavish adherence to these contemporary democratic values threatens not only the character of the Jewish state but its very existence.
Instead, he argues that Israel’s statesmen should emphasize Israel’s raison d’etre as a Jewish State and that this necessitates that democracy must be assimilated to Judaism. It means that an authentic Jewish Commonwealth should embrace the supremacy of Torah and not of democracy.
The Left in Israel and around the world considers this to be a sacrilege, at least for Israel, while at the same time it recognizes that democracy must be accommodated to Islam and Arab culture in the Arab states.
Prof. Eidelberg argues that western normless democracy is inferior to Judaism. Such democracy is “little more than a random aggregation of individuals and groups pursuing their own aims and interests”. The result, he argues, is “eccentric pluralism and multiculturalism fortified by the doctrine of moral and cultural relativism that dominates every level of education in the West. Lacking in contemporary democracy are not only unifying norms of human conduct but any rational basis for national loyalty. Being normless, contemporary democracy denies the existence of universally valid standards by which to determine whether the way of life of one individual, group or nation, is intrinsically superior to that of another – superior in the sense of being more conducive to human excellence or to domestic and international harmony.”
“In contrast, Judaism is a nationality and a prescribed way of life.”
He goes on to describe the conceptual differences between Judaism and contemporary democracy noting that Judaism has a different conception for democracy (replacing the considered judgment of the majority subject to the Torah for the will of the majority, freedom (freedom to serve a higher purpose rather than freedom to do what you want) and equality (everyone’s life is equal to another’s but their rights may vary i.e more is expected of a learned man than an ignoramus).
Yet the Left worries that Israel would become a “theocracy”. By this, they probably mean a state ruled by priests or mullahsor rabbis. If so, then Israel could not be a theocracy because in Judaism, the rabbis don’t rule. “There is no Church in Judaism, neither theologically, since there is no mediation between G-d and the individual Jew, nor institutionally since there is no ecclesiastical hierarchy. But, if “theocracy” means the rule of G-d, then Judaism is theocratic for G-d is the ultimate source of law and authority. So what does this mean operationally?
In Judaism, “only publicly tested scholarship can lay claim to any validity regarding the laws of Torah.” Thus scholarship is the highest value of Judaism and any and all Jews can pursue it. A Jewish Israel would be ruled by the most learned people in the Knesset and in the Courts much the same way as Western Democracies are ruled but with the added caveat that they are all subservient to the Torah.
Jewish law has developed and governed the Jewish people for thousands of years. It consists of laws between man and man (Mishpatim) and laws between man and G-d (Hukim). The former are based solely on reason and thus must be changed or administered as is reasonable in the circumstances. So, the secularist need not worry about Mishpatim. As for Hukim, that’s between man and G-d. Thus without fear of G-d, they need not worry about Hukim.
Strange as it may seem, secular Zionists in the pre-state period recognized that Israel’s national renaissance and the rebirth of its national consciousness required the restoration of Jewish Civil Law, otherwise known as Mishpatim. As early as 1909 they declared,
“Our law is one of the most valuable assets of our national culture and a unifying force [among Jews] throughout the world. The Jewish People have developed and maintained a remarkable system of law whose foundations were laid at the dawn of our national existence: hundreds of generations have toiled over it, perfected it and adorned it, and even today it retains its power to renew its youth and to develop in a manner appropriate to the outlook of our time. During the thousands of years of the existence of our nation this law was influenced by many material and spiritual factors. It absorbed religious and ethical concepts; it reflected cultural, economic and social values; and it can still faithfully reflect the life of the people throughout the future.”
Unfortunately over the last century Israel has moved away from the primacy of Jewish law to embrace the law as it exists in the western democracies. As Prof. Eidelberg and many others point out, this represents a greater existential threat to Judaism and to Israel than do the Arabs.
“Severed from its own laws and constitutional history, a country’s political, economic and social history will be largely unintelligible. Its legal heritage will cease to have practical relevance. Fewer and fewer people will understand their past, the way their forefathers related to each other in daily life, the conditions under which they lived, their way of thinking, without such knowledge Israel will forget its world-historical mission.”
This loss of mission leaves Israel defenceless before the onslaught of the Muslim mission to recover all the lands of Palestine. Rather than to pursue our rights to the biblical land of Israel which are both historical and religious in nature, we abandon such rights and only pursue an illusory peace. We hear a great deal from the governments of Israel and the USA about protecting our security but nothing about protecting our rights to the land. It’s as if we didn’t have any rights.
The peace process should not be about a contest between their rights to the land and our right to security as enshrined in Res 242 but between our rights and their rights. The more we assert our Jewish rights to the land, the more support we will have for our cause. We can thus argue that justice and truth are on our side. As it is, by default, the world considers that we are occupying Palestinian land and therefore must give it back. With Jewish leadership, this would change.
Posted by Ted Belman at May 16, 2005 11:33 AM
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1.
Joe Katzman
said:
You know, the same comments are made re: democracy being inferior to Islam. The record in both Islam and Christianity is cause for grave doubts regarding the efficacy of a state based on Torah.
Aside from the fact that large numbers of Israelis would literally pick up guns to prevent this from happening.
And that many of us in the diaspora are less than entralled with the treatment we receive as Jews from the religious authorities who would be carrying this out.
He has a point when he talks about reinforcing the mission of Israel as a Jewish state, and living that proudly. When he starts talking about Israel as a Jewish theocracy, he becomes a lunatic.
Posted by: Joe Katzman on May 15, 2005 05:50 AM
2.
Ted Belman
said:
Joe, I must take issue with you. I reject the notion that one cannot distinuish between religions. Just because both Christianity and Islam have not done well when they ran or run the state doesn't necessaarily mean that the same problems would exist with Judaism. Jewish law has developoed over thousands of years and most would agree on its virtue and rationality. Eidelberg is just arguing for Jewish law to be supreme and to trump the law emmanating from western democracies. That's enough to make Israel a Jewish State. The fact that Jewish law is rooted in Torah doesn't mean that Israel would thus become a theocracy as it is general understood and feared. While there are some problems with Jewish law in a very limited number of places, we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water.
Posted by: Ted Belman on May 15, 2005 10:39 AM
3.
David Grader
said:
In the first place, I do not like theocracies. Every theocracy that have read of(I have never lived in a theocratic state) has been extremely intolerant and a heavy burden( or worse) on non-believers.I am a firm believer in democracy.
Secondly, Professor Eidelberg and Ted Belman seem to make an incorrect assumption - that there is an agreed interpretation of the laws of the Torah. I need only refer to the number of religious parties in the Knesset to show difficult it would be to establish a theocracy in Israel.
On the other hand, it should be remembered that many of the Laws of the Torah are already incorporated into the daily life of Israel. In this regard, I feel that Israel has established an excellent balance between democracy and theocracy.
Posted by: David Grader on May 15, 2005 07:25 PM
4.
Ted Belman
said:
Dave, I am not sure what your definition of democracy. A constitution or a Bill of Rights limits the will of the majority. But the US or Canada are still considered a democracy. What Eidelberg is proposing is that Jewish civil law which is subservient to Torah and derived from it be Israel's supreme guide. I doubt that this would make it a "theocracy" at least how you interpret the term. Democracy doesn't mean the will of the majority does it. How will Jewish law destroy democracy as you understand it. Eidelberg is not suggesting a dictatorship by Rabbis. He is all for changing Israel's government by producing a constitution that would make Israel more democratic yet embody Jewish Civil Law.
Posted by: Ted Belman on May 16, 2005 01:12 PM
5.
Ptah
said:
This is my two bits:
Christianity is totally unsuited for being a state religion, much less BE the state authority. If anyone BOTHERS to read the New Testament, it is obvious that all the advice, counsel, rebuke, and teaching is directed to individuals and to Churches, but NEVER the State. Certainly, there are passages where a Christian representative speaks to governmental figures, but only within the context of them being private individuals individually accountable to God and His moral laws. The take over of the Western Roman Empire by the Catholic Church? BIIIIG mistake. Had no guidance from the NT on how to run the place, so defaulted to human behavior and the Roman defaults. [sarcasm]That worked realllly fiiine.[/sarcasm] The current madness that is Restoration Theology advocates a Christian theocracy going to the Old Testament and cribbing the civil laws of the Torah, holding that God abandoned his Covenant with Israel and remade it with the Church. *Shakes head* Jews are Jews, and have their covenant and their marching orders. Different covenant and different marching orders for Christians. Those orders involves spreading the news that a Jew saves people from hellfire, not running the state that governs those people. Christianity is not built for the task of governance, and both the Church and the Governed have suffered badly from the design mis-match.
On the other hand, even a casual reading of their respective scriptures indicates that Judaism and Islam are government religions: I.e. religions intended to dictate the direction of the State. This is manifest in the various laws governing property, ownership, taxation of the people to support the state religion, what constitutes rules of judicial evidence, proscribed punishments for certain anti-religious behaviour, and authorization of the Death penalty as some of those punishments. Configuring a state that takes basic direction from Jewish Civil laws is theoretically possible, because the Torah contains civil laws that GIVE directions to the State. Can't do that with Christianity, for the texts simply LACK civil laws. (And no, I don't think worship guidelines can somehow be upscaled or tweaked into viable Civil laws.)
Is Eidelberg's program viable and possible? Maybe, but only if the laws as designed truly reflect Torah, and thus the will of the Giver of the Torah to Israel. This is where the issue of interpretation comes in. One of Jesus' accusations recorded in the New Testament complains of men teaching other men the traditions of Men as if they were the Commandments of God. Now, I don't have to debate the HISTORICAL validity of this accusation to point out the LOGICAL validity of it: Judaism's claim is that it follows the Commandments of God, and both Jew and Christian will agree that disregarding God's Command while following mere man's commands only promises nothing but Trouble (with a Capital "T" I point out.)
I have no opinion (being a Christian and not a Jew, much less an Israeli) as to how the Jewish state structures or re-structures itself: it is none of my business, and I would do well to attend to my own nation's knitting. However, I have a desire that the Jewish Israelis do the right thing and be blessed by God, for man's approval is thin gruel for the soul, and it would be a true tragedy to trade the former for the latter.
Posted by: Ptah on May 16, 2005 07:06 PM
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It pays to be Jewish
By Ted Belman
As far back as the seventies, my orthodox father-in-law used to argue that gentiles have more respect for authentic Jews than for assimilated Jews. There is something attractive about a people or person who is proud of his heritage and lives by its precepts. As you know this idea ran contrary to the prevailing view held by progressive Jews that the more they emulated the gentiles, the more they would be accepted. He was right. Just look at the affinity of the Christian Right in the US for the Jewish settlers and their fight to keep the land.
Paul Eidelberg makes the same point in his important book “Jewish Statesmanship”.
He characterizes this contemporary democracy as upholding “indiscriminate egalitarianism and unrestrained libertarianism”. Israel’s embrace, without question, of this form of contemporary democracy has lead to Arab Israelis who are PLO surrogates and thus enemies of Israel, being elected to the Knesset. It also leads to the PLO being permitted their own press in Jerusalem where they mightily contribute to anti-Israel propaganda and incitement. In other words, this slavish adherence to these contemporary democratic values threatens not only the character of the Jewish state but its very existence.
Instead, he argues that Israel’s statesmen should emphasize Israel’s raison d’etre as a Jewish State and that this necessitates that democracy must be assimilated to Judaism. It means that an authentic Jewish Commonwealth should embrace the supremacy of Torah and not of democracy.
The Left in Israel and around the world considers this to be a sacrilege, at least for Israel, while at the same time it recognizes that democracy must be accommodated to Islam and Arab culture in the Arab states.
Prof. Eidelberg argues that western normless democracy is inferior to Judaism. Such democracy is
The result, he argues, isHe goes on to describe the conceptual differences between Judaism and contemporary democracy noting that Judaism has a different conception for democracy (replacing the considered judgment of the majority subject to the Torah for the will of the majority, freedom (freedom to serve a higher purpose rather than freedom to do what you want) and equality (everyone’s life is equal to another’s but their rights may vary i.e more is expected of a learned man than an ignoramus).
Yet the Left worries that Israel would become a “theocracy”. By this, they probably mean a state ruled by priests or mullahsor rabbis. If so, then Israel could not be a theocracy because in Judaism, the rabbis don’t rule. “There is no Church in Judaism, neither theologically, since there is no mediation between G-d and the individual Jew, nor institutionally since there is no ecclesiastical hierarchy. But, if “theocracy” means the rule of G-d, then Judaism is theocratic for G-d is the ultimate source of law and authority. So what does this mean operationally?
In Judaism, “only publicly tested scholarship can lay claim to any validity regarding the laws of Torah.” Thus scholarship is the highest value of Judaism and any and all Jews can pursue it. A Jewish Israel would be ruled by the most learned people in the Knesset and in the Courts much the same way as Western Democracies are ruled but with the added caveat that they are all subservient to the Torah.
Jewish law has developed and governed the Jewish people for thousands of years. It consists of laws between man and man (Mishpatim) and laws between man and G-d (Hukim). The former are based solely on reason and thus must be changed or administered as is reasonable in the circumstances. So, the secularist need not worry about Mishpatim. As for Hukim, that’s between man and G-d. Thus without fear of G-d, they need not worry about Hukim.
Strange as it may seem, secular Zionists in the pre-state period recognized that Israel’s national renaissance and the rebirth of its national consciousness required the restoration of Jewish Civil Law, otherwise known as Mishpatim. As early as 1909 they declared,
Unfortunately over the last century Israel has moved away from the primacy of Jewish law to embrace the law as it exists in the western democracies. As Prof. Eidelberg and many others point out, this represents a greater existential threat to Judaism and to Israel than do the Arabs.
This loss of mission leaves Israel defenceless before the onslaught of the Muslim mission to recover all the lands of Palestine. Rather than to pursue our rights to the biblical land of Israel which are both historical and religious in nature, we abandon such rights and only pursue an illusory peace. We hear a great deal from the governments of Israel and the USA about protecting our security but nothing about protecting our rights to the land. It’s as if we didn’t have any rights.
The peace process should not be about a contest between their rights to the land and our right to security as enshrined in Res 242 but between our rights and their rights. The more we assert our Jewish rights to the land, the more support we will have for our cause. We can thus argue that justice and truth are on our side. As it is, by default, the world considers that we are occupying Palestinian land and therefore must give it back. With Jewish leadership, this would change.
Posted by Ted Belman at May 16, 2005 11:33 AM