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Day 1: Is Social Justice the Soul of Judaism?
By Steven I. Weiss / January 15, 2007
It's Martin Luther King Day, and as American Jews pause with the rest of the country to reflect on the civil rights struggle, we also take pride in our own community's role in it. The legendary image of the bearded rabbi and theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel marching together with King in Selma, Alabama in 1965 epitomizes the passion for justice that seems so much a part of the Jewish tradition. Why, just look at any issue of Tikkun, and you'll see it a thousand times over: Tikkun olam! Pikuach nefesh!
But is the quest for social justice truly intrinsic to Judaism? Or is this just the wishful thinking of liberal Jews distorting an archaic and illiberal tradition?
Steven I. Weiss is the bile-spewing iconoclast behind the Canonist blog. Daniel "Mobius" Sieradski is the eccentric true believer behind Jewschool. In this week's Big Question these two deans of the Jewish blogosphere debate the question "Is social justice the soul of Judaism?"
From: Steven I. Weiss To: Daniel ‘Mobius’ Sieradski Subject: Is Social Justice the Soul of Judaism?
Dan,
"Justice, justice shall you pursue." I recently saw a Jewish hipster wearing a t-shirt with that quotation of the famous Biblical passage. I don’t doubt for a second that the guy wearing the t-shirt assumed that the quote advocated social justice. Since it’s straight from the Bible, and seems to advocate social justice, perhaps we can just leave the dialogue there.
Of course, that Biblical passage had nothing to do with social justice—not w
hen it was written, and not as it was interpreted throughout at least 90% of subsequent Jewish history. According to every one of the dozens of citations I found, from the Talmud through medieval commentaries, this quote refers to the types of judges one should use when engaging in litigation. The passage before it tells judges to engage in “judgements of justice,” and then our passage tells the rest of the Jews “justice, justice shall you pursue.”
People fond of quoting this verse might be surprised to learn that it has little relevance to the pursuit of social justice. They shouldn’t be. Social justice as a broad, Aristotelian concept only came into existence many centuries after the verse was written. And only more recently—millenia after the Biblical passage was authored—did “social justice” acquire its modern association with the political left.
We could get into tons of definitions of social justice (I’m looking at the size of the Wikipedia entry on this), but for now let’s just say that two core concepts are equality and redistribution of wealth.
The Jewish tradition clearly doesn’t regard equality as highly as we do. Throughout almost all of its history, it’s been biased against lefties, gays, women, converts, ba’alei teshuva, hermaphrodites, those with ejaculatory problems, wives who’ve widowed three husbands, and those who didn’t observe the commandments or belong to specific communities. Oh, yeah: it’s also biased against everyone in the world other than the Jews.
Nor does it encourage much redistribution of wealth. When Jews were last running the show in the Holy Land, they were required to give some of their earnings to priests and leave some for the poor; they also were expected to give charity, make Temple contributions, and other such things. But from the perspective of America’s current progressive tax system, the notion that ancient Israel engaged in any substantial redistribution of wealth is a transparent joke. And things didn’t change much between then and the modern period.
If these elements of social justice were the “soul of Judaism,” you’d think they’d at least show up at some point.
But “almost all of its history” isn’t the entirety of the Jewish story. There’s the past couple hundred years, after all, which saw the birth of denominational and secular Judaism. Orthodoxy more or less continued the path that Judaism had crafted before it, but Conservative and Reform Judaism went off in substantially new directions.
Conservative Judaism has done a lot to make women equal; give it another ten or fifteen years, and the movement might look pretty well balanced from top to bottom. Gays and lesbians don’t have that equality. Though their status has improved, they’re still not equal; in any case, since their progress comes so long after the left po
litical establishment started pushing for it, we can see that social justice is not “the soul” of Conservative Judaism (though that’s not to say it might not be a part).
Reform Judaism is more likely to have social justice as its “soul,” bound as the movement so often is to the liberal political agenda in America. But here, too, gays and lesbians aren’t fully equal in the sense that they are in, say, Massachusetts.
Those are just the simplest examples of bias in a series of denominations rife with them. And that’s before we even begin to talk about how they treat non-Jews.
What about secular Judaism? Well, it comes with almost nothing by way of mandatory ideology or actions, so saying that anything specific is at its “soul” is a stretch. And yet it still seems to go very much against the grain of equality: for some reason it puts special value on Jewish culture and on marrying other Jews.
As for redistribution of wealth, not a whole lot has changed in the past couple hundred years. People in all denominations discuss tithing and giving charity—and they may at turns advocate for various tax policies and social welfare programs in America—but all of them celebrate the multi-millionaires (and occasionally billionaires) in their midst.
Those who assert that a social justice agenda is fundamentally Jewish tend to ignore all this. Instead, they point to Biblical verses and lines of the Talmud that seem to imply that social justice has been there all along.
But most often haven’t they simply misunderstood those verses and lines just as they have “justice, justice shall you pursue”? And if social justice is the soul of Judaism, how come no one figured it out until recently? How come Jewish history and contemporary Judaism don’t look very socially just?
Steven
Tuesday: Dan Sieradski asks whether conscience is a Jewish invention.
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Michael Nehora – Yours is the first intelligent post I’ve seen on this site. Good job!
As for the article itself, there is a straw man aspect to it. The writer assumes that some other person is saying “Judaism is all about social justice!” I don’t think I’ve ever heard an educated Jew say something like that. If you have, Mr. Weiss, then perhaps you should bring more substantive proof than a t-shirt that you saw someone wearing. Also, if the person who holds that belief is not educated about Judaism, then your article is unnecessary. It would be like arguing with people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts but have no idea who he was.
Several of your points are not well founded. First: “But from the perspective of America’s current progressive tax system, the notion that ancient Israel engaged in any substantial redistribution of wealth is a transparent joke.” Prove it. As a counterexample, it seems clear from a basic reading of Ruth that one could get by on gleaning. Also, your comparison with America’s tax system isn’t quite fair. Disposable income is a new concept. That’s why there are lots of new responsa that deal with the issue of how much tzedakah to give if one has money for more than the essentials.
Subject says it all
As many of the posts above have pointed out, some seed of social justice is a necessary component of Jewish life; but because our Jewish understanding of social justice is Jewish, it doesn’t always conform to the social justice conceptions of our broader culture. This view is expressed in Pirke Avot with a quote attributed to Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria: “Without bread, there is no Torah; without Torah there is no bread. (3:21)”
In the 20th and early years of the 21st century, American Jews have seen a broad turn toward the “rights” discourse of America’s founding texts as our mode of expressing our Jewish social justice yearnings. At times this engagement has been at odds with the p’shat of the majority of Jewish texts, and at times it has been harmonious with the interpreted tradition that came before it. As the “justice pursued,” “We all read Jewish tradition selectively,” and other posts have pointed out, this reading against the plain meaning of the text is a perfectly Jewish mode.
One of the things I find fascinating is the extent to which Jewish engagement with civil rights is that it is just subset of a phenomenon we’ve seen in the last hundred plus years in which a many Jews have found a profound harmony with social justice movements and our core selves, even to the extent that we’ve participated in movements that would actively extinguish our identity as Jews.
While Israeli socialist movements were strongly focused on peoplehood, many of them would have actively wiped out religious Jewish identity. Even more starkly, American Jewish participation in communist groups and Ethical Culture were quite clear in their goal to wipe out religious and ethnic identity. Even some of the most extreme ends of the early Reform movement tended to erode Jewish identity even as it trumpeted social justice.
I would like to think that the most vital expression of Jewish social justice comes out of a deep engagement with our textual and ritual traditions and a deep engagement with society at large. I believe that in some ways this is why the image of Heschel’s marching with King is so deeply implanted on American Jewish consciousness. Heschel’s engagement seems more authentically Jewish to us than the engagement of some of his less textually engaged predecessors and contemporaries.
In American Jewish life, those efforts which harmonize our duality as Jews and Americans often lead to tremendous success. The Soviet Jewry movement allowed us to be both pro-Jewish and anti-Communist. The institution of the 5-day work week allowed us to help fight the Great Depression and observe Shabbat. The civil rights movement allowed us to fulfill our obligations to social justice in the Torah and express a deep commitment to America’s founding documents. Sensitive American Jewish leaders will be able to continue to help us find the movements that help us bring together our two identities.
My teacher, Rabbi Dr. Arthur Green, in one of his Brandeis lectures, once said that every interpretation of Jewish tradition is necessarily selective. It is possible to find support for virtually any socio-political cause by pulling out this or that text. Are you a Peace Now pacifist? "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." (Isaiah) Are you a Kahanist hawk? "You shall drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you." (Deuteronomy) Are you a vegetarian/vegan activist? "Behold, I have given you every green thing" (Genesis) Are you opposed to vegetarianism/veganism? "There is no rejoicing except with meat and wine" (Talmud, Pesachim)
Are you a feminist Jew? You can point to Deborah being a judge in matters of law, or to the tradition that Saul's daughter Michal, and Rashi's daughters, wore tefillin. Are you a non-feminist Jew? You can find Talmudic sources saying that "women are lightheaded" and therefore supposedly incapable of understanding the finer points of law.
So, you may ask, is there any common ground in Judaism, or "core values" as someone put it in one of the dating threads? That's the 64,000-shekel question. But most varieties of Judaism have in one way or another based themselves around the following three concepts:
God– whether as omnipotent, omniscient creator, revealer and redeemer; as the force of good within humanity; or some conceptualization between these two. (Yes, there are many people active in Jewish life who don't believe in any God-concept at all, but that's historically a very recent development and time will tell whether a lasting community can be built around it.)
Torah– in the larger sense of all Jewish written and oral tradition, whether as infallible, literal record of God's will; as an imperfect but useful human-created system; or somewhere in between. No known Jewish community in history has completely done away with Torah and attempted to start from scratch. Modified, reinterpreted, abridged, or expanded it, yes–but not completely abandoned it.
Israel– in the sense of the Jewish people as a distinct and mutually responsible worldwide community, whether as the "chosen people" of God for a messianic mission, as a culture valuable in its own right but no more special than other cultures, or somewhere in between. (Early Reform Judaism denied that Jews were a "nation" as such, merely Americans/Germans/etc. "of the Jewish persuasion," but by the 1930s the movement had repudiated that notion.)
Beyond these three broad concepts, however, each Jew as an individual and as a community has always read into Judaism what they wish. Therefore, I see "social action" as one possible application of Judaism, but not the only correct one. For others, Torah study is the focus; for another, smaller group, the focus is mystical union of the Godhead through constant contemplation of divine names. Are all of these approaches, among others, identical or even mutually compatible? Not necessarily. Are they all Judaism? Yes, very much so.
As a student of Social Work with predominantly Jewish professors, I have to wonder where I got this love of humanity and the desire to heal all of the ills I see in the world today and why so many Jews are currently in this field today.
Was it perhaps from my hippy freedom fighter parents who took me to rallies and instilled a deep drive to adhere to the task of Tikkun Olam given to us by our forbearers?
Or perhaps it was the Social Action committee I sat on in my USY chapter all through high school.
I know, it must have been when I first noticed a tzedakah box in my house and on every counter of every kosher cafe I have entered since I was 9.
I have never attended a Shabbat service where during the announcements there wasn’t at least one announcement regarding some committee or group raising money or traveling for a cause. Or a Rabbi’s sermon about how we must continue to fight for equality and freedom throughout the world. Never have I been to a service where at least one person’s home wasn’t open to a complete stranger so that they may enjoy a meal. And never have I walked into a Shiva house and not seen food prepared for the mourners with thought and love and without the least thought to ones own benefit, simply assisting someone who needs help and support.
Mr. Weiss, you tell me, does any of this constitute social justice within Judaism?
Judaism didn’t develop rule of law, but it did develop morality.
Hammurabi’s Code = Rule of law to ensure order.
Halakha = Do this because it’s inherantly good.
One’s a practical step, the other a set of first principles from which to reason from. The result of milennia of judicial, priestly, prophetic, and rabinnic reasoning from that is modern Judaism.
A soul of judaism- too big for me.
Sentences in the Torah- a revelation at one time, meant for all time, must clearly be open to each generations grappling and interpretation to hold water as our Revelation…That said, there is the process of how our people have interpreted it in the past that can and should imbue, though not pre-determine our present understandings… That is the essence of Oral Living TOrah, which someone so nicely alluded to…
There is the crux that Hillel brought the torah down to…And You’ll Love your neigbor like yourself…
In modern eyes,this may be seen as a basis for social justice.
from the social justice eyes, I think Jewish civil law teems with halachot striving to protect the people— a social justice type leaning.. Debt forgiveness, land redistribution, even protecting small businesses from, neigborhood noisecodes, environmental justice– granted these laws are written in the context of a way of living we no longer engage– but it’s our responsibility as the people of our Book to bring these laws up to date, The Torah just gave us the commandment to learn and —establish court of law and find teachers to work on understanding those laws…
And from the broader perspective– I think Jews have done a good job of being progressive, and if one opens their mind to how Torah and the Jewish people might be working in the world– the ideas and pushing of Abby Hoffman, Marx and other Jewish progressives (not to hold them up as the bastions- what do I know about how was their family life…) are signs of a Jewish spirit of change and disciples of tzedektzedek, allegians to the belief that Hashem is in everyone and everything– no matter how forbidden our current garments may seem…
shauldavid
For me it look as either author is uneducated, either he counts readers as uneducated an not intilligent. Cheap cheating.
Please read this quote from the soviet time book:
Nowadays,when the ideals of communism find it’s way into the hearts of men from allover the earth, the protectors of mystics and superstitions have a different time, and they, looking back at jewish history find a person by the name of they can cover their anthipathy to modern progressive ideas. They found such a figure – BESHT, the founder of hasidism.
Atheist’s Handbook
Politizdat (Political press)
Moscow 1987
Manipulation is a bad thing, Steven
Anonymous – The issue wouldn't be what he knows about social justice, but what he knows about the history of the phrase "tikkun olam," and he's pretty much spot-on in that article on that point. For all I know, he looked it up in Aspaklaria, or Encyclopedia Talmudit, or the Bar-Ilan CD, and didn't know a thing about it before he did that research; but the research speaks for itself, no matter who the author or his prejudice.
wtf does avi shafran know about torah’s definition of social justice? he covered for a pederast! even the most simple jew knows this sort of behavior to be completely inconsistent with torah values.
shafran is no one to speak on such subjects an d he’s just as much a political hack, misrepresenting torah, as the people he’s criticizing for supposedly doing the same.
Erica – For a valuable perspective you might not have seen, check this out.
Jewish belief is a subjective thing, and the "heart of Judaism" is clearly not a definable concept. The scope and variation of Jewish belief is too broad, both now and across history. How can we identify a defining belief for all of us when there are Jews who don't even believe that we secular folk qualify as Jewish?
We each decide where the soul of our own Judaism lies. Or within certain traditions, we may let our community define it for us. We may define it according to texts. We may define it according to tradition. We may define it according to matzo ball soup.
For some Jews, that "soul" is the prinicple of Tikkun Olam, which we may choose to equate with social justice, within the context of our own lives and beliefs.
But don't look to history. History will never provide an objective location for the "heart of Judaism."
The difficulty in this subject (one that I am really interested to see where it goes this week) is that it is nearly impossible to get at the heart of answering the question of what is representative when we say "Judaism."
Are we talking about a strictly text/tradition based view of Judaism? That is to say, are you arguing for/against the social justice tradition withiin Jewish doctrine?
Or, rather, is it more an argument about trends within the entirety of Jewish history?
Both seem difficult to quantify in any sort of reasonsable way. From a textual standpoint, there is the risk of picking and choosing what to concentrate on (I think which is somewhat at the heart of Steven's argument). And from a history standpoint, that history is so vast and diverse, that it would be nearly impossible to fully and accurately characterize A Jewish history. I don't mean to suggest that we shouldn't be wildly proud of our contributions to social justice, in particular in the modern age. I suppose what I am getting at is that the boundaries of the discussion need to be well-defined in order to come to any sort of conclusion.
I composed a lengthy post about "Why Judaism Isn't Football" inspired by your arguments in your first comment.
As to your latest: Athens and Sparta probably had a worse slave situation than the Jews, but probably treated women & gays better, and definitely treated adherents of non-state religions better. I don't know that I'd call either them or ancient Israel a clear winner.
Re: Judaism not having an "objective, modern or socially just" notion of right and wrong, that isn't to say it's either irrational or purely historical, but simply that it is its own thing, and that the degree to which it adheres to those other categories is coincidental.
Steve – Just because I joked about my personal notions of Judaism doesn't mean I haven't done my homework. Compare ancient Israel to some of its most well-recorded regional contemporaries: Athens & Sparta. Both subsisted on economies driven by slave agriculture, limted citizenship, and militarily enforced tribute. Or the mass slave-armies of the Persian empire. Judaism was never big on slavery, having experienced the receiving end. That's a big step towards equality for its time. And no, I didn't use superlatives on purpose. But a little credit for effort and regional innovation. Again, we didn't have advance notions beyond an unrelated innovator we'd never heard of. That's like saying that native hawaiians weren't such great sailors because they failed to invent the trireme. They got to Hawaii. Good enough for me.
You don't have to be the spearhead of change for it to be a core notion of your identity. It's good enough to be a good solid spear-shaft. Sure, Massachusetts got gay marraige right. But 100 years ago they were prosecuting sodomy laws. For someone with a fixed notion of law, you have very fast expectations for the time-frame of a major shift in community norms and acceptance. We're certainly beating the Southern Baptists on this one.
You close by saying that that the Judaic notion of right and wrong is neither objective, modern, nor socially just. Are you then saying it's irrational or purely historical? The former I refuse to accept as a governing principal of my life of religion (and yes, this lack of blind faith may be what you equate with chicken soup & neurosis Judaism, but I'm fine with that), the latter has a Turtles Problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down). At the bottom must lie something. Or more precisely some things, many of them evolving norms rather than fixed principals. And one of them is social justice.
Not going to have time to respond again, but thanks. It's been interesting. I'll leave you to "Mobius."
- dan
PS – References to my hubris & lack of humility don't strengthen your argument. I promise. They're well known facts. Kavod habriyot, as you might prefer I put it.
Chasing the next social revolution is bound to at some point bring you into conflict with the mitzvot of the Torah. And a Judaism without the mitzvot is like a frat party without a keg. Just look at what the gay marriage thing is doing to the Conservative Movement. I would humbly suggest that the question is not whether Social Justice is the soul of Judaism, but rather, whether it is at all compatable. Let's be honest — if all the college kids are doing it at the Lefty schools, this is probably a very bad sign.
Dan - Please don't misinterpret what I wrote. Just because Judaism doesn't have social justice as its soul doesn't mean that one shouldn't engage in actions that will better humanity. One would have a very hard time finding a Talmudic source for doing something about Darfur, but that doesn't mean one's off the hook for it.
Now, you do make an interesting analogy to football. As someone who thought the ESPN series on USC's place in college football history was ridiculous for the way it compared 250-pound linemen of yesteryear to 350-pound linemen of today and declared the latter the obvious victor, I've got a lot of sympathy for this line of argument. However, as someone who acknowledges that "for me Judaism is either social justice or a weak combination of chicken soup and neurosis," you should show some more humility before you go bandying about the amazing, unique qualities of your religion/race.
You declare that "We were some of the the best wealth redistributers in the world." Based on what research? Have you done a comparison of Jewish charity as compared with that of contemporaries in the ancient near east? What was the wealth distribution in contemporary Asia, or the Americas?
You argue that "We realize now the importance of equality for gays and lesbians, when we didn't realize it before." Great, so society moves ahead, and eventually Judaism might figure out a way to catch up in part. That hardly shows Judaism as the spearhead of progressive change.
Even if I grant that Judaism was better at charity for a period of time, if a constant progressivism were at its core, it'd have remained so in perpetuity, and not lost that edge. Even if I grant that Judaism will have complete equality for gays and lesbians at some later date, if a constant progressivism were at its core, it'd have figured it out before other elements of society, not much later.
And even if I grant every hubristic suggestion you make regarding Judaism's alleged superiority on social justice issues at one time, some millenia ago, that doesn't mean that Judaism had social justice on its agenda. It had a set of rules, laws, and norms that created a specific society that was not, in virtually any sense, socially just. At any point, any set of rules and laws can make its intent known, and Judaism did not declare social justice a goal.
You suggest that the reason for the pursuit of learned juges is "a notion of both legal and ethical right and wrong." Except it was a Judaic right and wrong, which is its own morality, not an objective one, a modern one, or a socially just one.
Weeell… the term “social justice” is very much rooted in community civics education, that is, taking care of the place around you…
But why should the context and meaning of any given pasuk not be up for re-contextualization, according to what anyone wants to use it for? If they can do that, and get people empassioned with them– isn’t that the soul of the Torah? People wanting to say things, as if they were important, to those who have to listen?
To the degree that Rabbinic Judaism and R Yehuda Ha Nasi’s trip is called Torah, wasn’t the founding statement of Judaism a pasuk taken out of context to mean the oppostie of it’s Pshat, because it was a truer, more important idea (at least according to him, but ratified, by like, everyone?)
I understand your complaint against Mr. Weiss but that’s not a Straw Man. You haven’t explained at all how the argument is a Straw Man. In logic, a Straw Man is a misrepresentation of an argument that essentially makes the argument easier to defeat because the misinterpreter can easily defeat the misrepresented argument. You’ve just argued that Weiss misinterpreted the passage “Justice, Justice you shall pursue.” Okay, fair enough, I gather that’s the whole point of the article; what’s the proper interpretation of the passage? A simple statement that you disagree is good enough, don’t throw around logic terms attempting to deconstruct the argument unless you’re going to elaborate on how its logically flawed.
That there is also something somewhat problematic with the "social justice" solely based brand of Judaism (I most definitely am NOT calling out Mobius on this one, at all. There are many people though who oversimplify there Judaism in any number of ways, social justice just being one). Here's my objection…
1) Those who say things such as, "Well, I'm not really religious, but I do believe in tikkun olam." entirely ignore that Judaism is (amongst other things–peoplehood, of course) a religion. One that we all choose to belong to or not, in any number of ways. I don't want to state the obvious here, but religion is pre-disposed by ethereal ideas of G-dliness, the order of the universe, etc…This isn't to say that the "tikkun olam-only" folks don't consider these issues. What I am saying is that good deeds does not a religion make alone.
2) If one were to accept the solely social justice model as a mode of religion, it seems to be somewhat chauvenistic towards other religions, agnosticism, atheism, etc…Who is to say that one cannot believe in reparing the world and not be a Sufist, Hindu, etc..It just seems like a convenient way to pick-and-choose. No less than if I only were to give zakat would I be considered a Muslim.
Certainly I am not claiming to ever chime in on the "who is" and "who isn't" debate. I suppose that really all that I am trying to say is that the social justice ideal has been somewhat run with by many people. And just in the same way that our religion can't be defined by tefilah alone, it is impossible to ever define something so complex (philosophically, religiously and historically) by one concept.
ilAn – Say I grant the idea that Judaism somehow founded the notion of a rule of law (forgetting of course, the law codes that preceded it and were contemporaries to it). A truly basic social justice philosophy of the rule of law doesn't simply work with just any set of laws. The laws themselves must be just. A great many systems of law have been unjust, but that didn't make them any less lawful, or any less systematic, and certainly no less ruling.
To say that Judaism is a foundational element of social justice, or vice-versa, based on the idea that it works from a system of the rule of law, the Jewish laws must be socially just. Proponents of this idea are tapping-in to that reality when they reinterpret verses like "justice, justice, shall you pursue."
This entire post was a creation of a straw man; that Mr Weiss then was very pleased to smugly and gleefully burn.
The line “Justice, Justice you shall pursue” is very clear in its meaning.
It is essentially the celebration of the rule of law.
Now Mr Weiss does not like what the law says in some cultures, especially that of Jewish Orthodoxy; and so, he hates to admit that it is from within this culture that he despises that the principle of the rule of law; the central pillar of social justice; arose. And, furthermore, that it has been enshrined, and revered, in this Ancient Jewish Law from its inception (which was a time when it existed nowhere else.)
– ilAn
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