Michael Walzer - Jewish Political Tradition, Volume I: Authority

The Jewish Political Tradition

EDITORS Michael Walzer
Menachem Lorberbaum
Noam J. Zohar

VOLUME I Authority

EDITORS

Michael Walzer

Menachem Lorberbaum

Noam J. Zohar

COEDITOR

Yair Lorberbaum

Published with assistance from the Castle Fund, endowed by John K. Castle to honor his ancestor the Reverend James Pierpont, one of Yales original founders, and administered by the Program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics at Yale University.

Copyright 2000 by Yale University.
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.

Designed by Sonia L. Shannon. Set in Bembo type by Tseng Information Systems, Inc., Durham, North Carolina. Printed in the United States of America by Edwards Brothers, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
The Jewish political tradition / editors, Michael Walzer, Menachem Lorberbaum, Noam J. Zohar.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Contents: v. 1. Authority.
ISBN 0-300-07822-6 (alk. paper)
1. JewsPolitics and government. 2. Judaism and politics. 3. Judaism and state. 4. LeadershipReligious aspectsJudaism. I. Walzer, Michael. II. Lorberbaum, Menachem, 1958. III. Zohar, Noam.
DS140 .J475 2000
320.088296dc21 99-059743

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

ISBN 0-300-10201-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

... we see it as in a dream.Psalm 126:1

To the halutzimthe pioneerswho paved the roads connecting dream and reality

DAVID HARTMAN

MICHAEL WALZER

MENACHEM LORBERBAUM AND NOAM J. ZOHAR

MICHAEL FISHBANE

. Covenant: Gods Law and the Peoples Consent

. Revelation: Torah and Reason

. Kings

. Priests

. Prophets

. Rabbis and Sages

. Controversy and Dissent

. The Good Men of the Town

. The Gentile State

. The State of Israel

Chapter 11. Election

Chapter 12. Social Hierarchy

Chapter 13. Gender Hierarchy

Chapter 14. Converts

Chapter 15. Heretics and Apostates

Chapter 16. Gentiles

Chapter 17. The Communal Bond

Chapter 18. Husband and Wife

Chapter 19. Family

Chapter 20. Welfare

Chapter 21. Taxation

Chapter 22. Communal Government

Chapter 23. Enforcement and Coercion

Chapter 24. The Courts

Chapter 25. Land

Chapter 26. War

Chapter 27. Exile

Chapter 28. Politics Without Sovereignty

Chapter 29. Redemption

Chapter 30. The Value of Political Life

The quest for spiritual meaning is often identified with a leap of the alone to the Alone, with the religious experience of lonely men and women of faith. The biblical roots of the Jewish tradition, however, point toward a different conception, in which the central focus of spiritual life is on community. The covenant with God is mediated through a collective drama, the story of a nation deprived of freedom and dignity for generations, delivered from its bondage, and brought into a covenant with God. Only by participating in the collective liberation from Egypt can the individual grasp the meaning of a life rooted in the revelation at Sinai.

History and collective memory are definitive categories in the biblical tradition. The covenant is enacted day after day through the ethical, ritual, and political forms of community.

Israels loss of sovereignty and its exile from the land did not mean the end of this community. Rabbinic Judaism developed a comprehensive way of life mediated by explicit and precise legal norms that sustained the collective thrust of Judaic spirituality. Prayers were formulated in the plural; important segments of religious worship were conditioned upon a quorum of ten; the celebration of the Shabbat and the festivals was simultaneously familial and communal. The kahal provided both a site and a structure for the common life.

In response to this strong collective orientation, many modern Jewish religious thinkers sought to rescue and reinstate the individual by infusing Judaic spirituality with an existentialist passion. Their aim was to shift the focus of the Jews religious imagination from Mosesthe prophet as political and legislative leaderto Abraham and the patriarchs, that is, to religious figures who could mediate the intensity of the individuals experience before God.

But with the establishment of the state of Israelthe third Jewish commonwealthJewish thinkers have to address again the central issues of collective existence. Their challenge is to formulate a spiritual vision suited to the new social realities of sovereignty in the world. The complexity of the ethical and political issues that surface within the emerging Israeli democracy require a language rooted in the historical experience of the Jewish people but capable also of shaping the common life of a modern state.

Because of national renewal and empowerment, Jews are no longer living metaphors for the other, the stranger, the eternal victim. They now wield power in a sovereign state, and so they cannot conceal their moral failures by blaming others. The rebirth of Israel provides the Jewish people with a public arena where they themselves must take charge, drawing on the strength of their tradition to give a direction to political life and a content to popular aspiration. Now Jewish values must come to grips with Jewish power.

Judaism isnt confined to the privacy of the synagogue, the family, or the academy of learning. It is now being tested in the public square and the political assembly, where the hard questions that face self-governing nations cannot be ignored. There is no escaping to the privacy of the inner soul or to some spiritual sanctuary separated from the mundane issues of everyday life: poverty, social welfare, unemployment, relations with strangers, tolerance, pluralism, security, and justice. Given the compromises that a full political life requires, how can Jews retain a compelling moral vision?

If public life in Israel cannot derive moral strength and critical insight from the tradition; if the private and public domains, the worlds of the individual and the citizen, are totally isolated from one another, then the Jewish people will lose their sense of history and identity. If the language of politics is void of personal meaning, and the language of private life void of political idealism, we will forfeit a historic opportunity to build a society that overcomes the modern tendency to separate self-realization and communal commitment.

These volumes on the Jewish political tradition fill a pressing need: they aim to retrieve a Jewish political discourse concerned with issues like authority, distributive justice, membership, and welfare. They help correct the mistaken notion that the Jewish tradition was concerned only with ritual celebration, laws of purity, daily worship, the study of Torah. They make the political arguments that have gone on for more than three millennia accessible, so that readers can gain a new appreciation of the traditional meaning of covenantal engagementwhich encompassed not only the life of worship but also the building of a just and compassionate community.