How to be human - Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt on community and social justice

I’m currently completing a PhD thesis on the topic of Jewish social justice education. I was fascinated by the proliferation of social justice campaigning and educational work all over the Jewish world, and by the surprising absence of any theoretical or academic writing on the subject. The outcome is that while lots of people are trying to do Jewish social justice work, no-one has a clearly defined sense of exactly what this means.

For example, what do we mean by social justice – what is our vision for a just society and how does this inform our critique of existing political and economic arrangements? Are we concerned about human rights, the environment, poverty, the breakdown of community, international development issues, all or none of the above?

What is specifically Jewish about this vision? Does it derive from halacha, Biblical values, Jewish history, modern Jewish political movements – or is it enough to have a universal vision which happens to be pursued by Jews? Either way, is there anything specifically Jewish about the way in which we pursue justice? Can social action itself be recognisably Jewish and what might this mean? If we can’t answer these latter questions, perhaps it would be better to recognise social justice as a universal, political pursuit and throw our lot in with broad-based, secular campaigns and organisations.

My research has focused on interviews with 15 UK-based Jewish social justice educators, including the head of informal education at JCoSS, a freelance educator doing feminist education around gender within Orthodox schools, the directors of Yachad and the New Israel Fund, Citizens UK’s Jewish community organiser, a modern-Orthodox rabbi who specialises in interfaith work, the Reform founder of Tzelem – a rabbinic voice for social justice, our own senior rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, educators from human rights NGO René Cassin and the Jewish LGBT organisation Keshet, and Maurice Glasman, a Labour peer, community organiser and inventor of ‘Blue Labour’.

Despite the diversity of this group, they are united in their understanding that discrimination, exclusion and inequality oppress people by denying them their humanity. The remedy is the opposite of this: enabling all human beings to realise their human potential. But what does it actually mean to be fully human? Different people answer this question in different ways, but it boils down to three key ingredients. First, being human means being involved in critical thinking and action in the world – what philosophers call praxis. This is what distinguishes human beings from all other animals. Second, it means being involved with spiritual concerns – not necessarily God, but non-materialist questions of meaning and values. Finally, it means being in community and relationship.

Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt

But even this final idea raises more questions, as there exist radically different concepts of community and relationship, each of which has a different kind of humanising impact on its members. I’ve been exploring alternative versions of this idea as put forward by two seminal 20th century thinkers – the philosopher and theologian Martin Buber, and the political theorist Hannah Arendt.

In his classic book I and Thou, Buber teaches that human beings relate to each other in two different ways. Most of the time we deal with other people as parties to a transaction or as means to some end we’re trying to achieve. This is most obvious in the case of bus drivers, shop keepers or our tax accountants, but can also be true in the case of intimate relationships: we often use friends and partners to meet our own emotional needs. While human society could not exist without this way of interacting, it also leads us to objectivise other people and can be alienating and ultimately dehumanising. But Buber also holds up the possibility of an alternative way of relating to other people not as ‘It’ but as ‘You’. When we see someone as ‘You’, we refuse to instrumentalise them but instead encounter them genuinely in all their unique individuality. This is the true meaning of relationship.

Buber writes that the evolution of modern, industrial, mass society has made relational encounters more and more difficult to achieve. As a result, we have become progressively less authentically human. His solution is to rebuild society as a network of independent, organic communities, within which genuine relationships can take place and people can reclaim their humanity. It’s no surprise that Buber was among the early supporters of the kibbutz movement and always argued that kibbutzim should remain as small, intimate, community groups.

If Buber believes that being human is the ability to engage in genuine, intimate, one-on-one relationships, Hannah Arendt proposes a very different model of relational, community life. She harks back to classical Greece, where she claims there was a clear division between the private and public spheres. The private sphere or the family was not only the location for intimate relationships but was also the basic unit of economic production and social stability, ruled over in an autocratic style by the head of the household. The public sphere, in contrast, emerged at the point where material wellbeing had been assured and took the form of democratic politics: a process of deliberation among active citizens about the important matters that affected the community.

Arendt’s view of community is summed up by the cut and thrust of deliberation, debate and the exchange of views, through which participants realise their freedom and bring their innate uniqueness as human beings into the world. In this light, Buber is guilty of transplanting the private sphere (family-style, intimate relationships) into the public arena, thereby endangering the autonomy and agency of the participants. Against this, Buber would argue that Arendt’s model of political community risks seeing other people as tools for one’s own self-advancement, thereby destroying any chance of genuine relationships.

For Arendt, humanisation means nurturing the potential within each individual human being. Community is a means to this end. Buber believes that being human means encountering the Other: for him, community and relationships are therefore ends in themselves.

Want to find out more about my research? Please get in touch!

Failures of leadership – towards a Masorti response

The UK is reeling from a comprehensive failure of political leadership.  Whatever your view on the outcome of the referendum, it’s become clear that senior government leaders gambled with the future of the country for the sake of tactical advantage or even personal ego – sometimes to the extent of campaigning for a solution they didn’t even believe in.  Millions of people saw their vote not as an opportunity to influence the outcome, but as a protest against an establishment with which they feel no sense of connection.  Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Opposition, failed to throw his weight behind his party’s policy and is refusing to step down despite having lost the confidence of 80% of his MPs, being unable to fill his Shadow Cabinet, and the real risk of splitting his party for good. 

And in case we’re tempted to think that the answer is stronger leadership, a former charismatic Prime Minister stands accused of pushing the country into what has been described as the biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez by withholding information and strong-arming his colleagues rather than listening to them.

I’m reminded of the story of Rabban Yohanan Ben Zakkai the most prominent leader of the Jewish people at the time of the war against Rome, the siege of Jerusalem and, ultimately, the destruction of the Second Temple (66-70 CE)*.  At that time, the Jewish people was riven by sectarian conflict.  The Zealots, an extremist party who preferred death to what they saw as enslavement by the Roman empire (and whose story ended in mass suicide at Masada), had responded to the siege of Jerusalem by burning the city’s grain stores and bringing on famine – creating a situation so desperate that the people, they hoped, would have no choice but to fight.  But when Ben Zakkai, the leader of a moderate faction, walked the streets and saw the people cooking straw and drinking the water, he understood that there was no hope of defeating Rome. 

Ben Zakkai sent for his nephew – a leader of the Zealots – and together, secretly, they hatched a plan to escape from the besieged city and negotiate with the Romans.  Ben Zakkai faked his own death and two of his students carried his coffin to the gates of Jerusalem, knowing that the Zealot guards’ piety would require them to ensure that no dead body was left overnight in the holy city.  Upon reaching the Roman camp, Ben Zakkai sprang out of his coffin and presented himself to the Roman General, Vespasian, addressing him as ‘King.’  When, a few moments later, a messenger arrived from Rome to inform Vespasian that he had indeed been appointed Emperor, Vespasian interpreted Ben Zakkai’s words as an omen and offered to grant him any request he might make.  But rather than asking for Jerusalem to be saved, Ben Zakkai asked for the establishment of a rabbinical academy at Yavneh; this would become the foundation of a new form of Judaism which could survive the destruction of the Temple and which has now lasted for close to 2000 years.

This story (recorded in the Talmud, admittedly, by the descendants of Ben Zakkai’s moderate, rabbinic faction) contains stark lessons about leadership.  The Zealots, characterised by ideological purity and a refusal to compromise in the face of reality, failed to achieved their goals and condemned thousands of people to catastrophe.  Had they got their way, Judaism would have died along with them.  Ben Zakkai’s leadership, in contrast, was marked by pragmatism, a willingness to snatch partial victories from the jaws of defeat, and most of all by his success at building and capitalising on relationships.  He saw and understood the concrete situation of the people, he enlisted the help of his followers, he prioritised rescuing his colleagues and, most surprisingly, he built tactical relationships with his opponents and enemies.

A true leader is someone who has followers (look behind you – is anyone there?) and who knows how to bring people together to work for common goals.  This is no less true in community life.  A community is a network of relationships – the stronger the relationships, the stronger the community.  The most successful Masorti communities are the ones which prioritise relationship-building as an end in itself, where guests and new people are introduced to the members and invited into their homes, where community leaders hold regular one-to-ones and small group meetings to build relationships and find out what’s going on in their members’ lives, and where there’s a clear plan for how to get specific individuals more involved in aspects of community life which speak to them and make use of their talents.  Communities which struggle are the ones which spend all their time thinking about programmes and activities (which in the absence of systematic relationship-building rarely bring in more than a hard core of around 15% of members) and where the only time you get a call from the shul is when they want something from you. 

One of Masorti Judaism’s most important programmes is Jewish Community Organising, a training course for developing relational community leaders.  The cohort from this year’s course (including members from New London, New North London, Edgware, Elstree & Borehamwood and New Stoke Newington shuls) will now form the core for a movement-wide relationship-building exercise.  Each course participant plus leaders from additional communities will recruit a team of five ‘listeners’ who, after some initial training, will conduct five one-to-ones with their members.  The outcomes?   We’ll have built relationships between leaders and up to 50 members in each community.  Those leaders will understand the real needs of their members.  When it comes to planning programmes, we’ll know who to get involved, what we can ask of them and where our focus should be.  Most importantly, our investment in relationship-building means that when we invite people, they’re likely to show up. 

While synagogue life does not typically throw up the life-and-death dilemmas of national leadership, there are lessons here that some of our politicians would do well to learn.

*Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 56a-b

Parshat Behar - Freedom From and Freedom To

Parshat Behar - Freedom From and Freedom To

The Torah's take on whether individual rights are worth anything without social and economic equality

At the centre of modern progressive politics has been a debate over the meaning of freedom.  Classical liberals believed all human beings have a fundamental right to live free from outside interference.  They emphasised freedom from – the absence of coercion – and often prioritised the free market and rolling back the power of the State.  Against this, social democrats and contemporary, egalitarian liberals claimed this was not enough.  Freedom from meant nothing without freedom to – and you can’t have freedom to without a basic level of resources.  Freedom of expression means nothing, for example, if you’re denied access to education and don’t know how to write.  Or think of a homeless person who gives up their liberty by committing a crime in the hope of being locked up somewhere warm for the night.  Freedom to, in this sense, means not only the absence of coercion but the fair distribution of goods and opportunities.

In this week’s parashah we read that the Jubilee was a year of freedom in which land was redistributed and all Hebrew slaves were set free.  But in Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 15 we learn a different procedure: Hebrew slaves are to be released after six years of servitude unless, of their own volition, they decide to submit themselves to the permanent ownership of their master.  A quirk of these texts is that they use different words for freedom.  The freed individual slave is described in Exodus and Deuteronomy as ‘hofshi’, while this week’s reading from Leviticus instructs us to ‘proclaim freedom –“dror” – throughout the land’.  What’s the difference between these two terms?

As pointed out by various commentators, hofshi is used by the Torah in the context of liberty for the individual slave, while dror means universal freedom for all.  Similarly, hofshi connotes a conditional release – Hebrew slaves have the option of remaining chained to their masters – while dror reflects an unqualified freedom with no exceptions.  Other scholars have pointed out that whereas hofshi means a rather narrow release from serfdom and labour, dror implies a much more sweeping freedom from any kind of subservience or domination by a master.  More broadly, hofshi can be understood as a negative release from coercion, whereas dror signifies the positive gift of freedom.  But what is the positive content of this freedom?

In the Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 9b) Rabbi Yehudah interprets dror to mean the freedom of a person to dwell wherever he likes and to carry on trade in the whole country.  This explanation is etymologically grounded - dror comes from the same root as ‘dwell’ – dar in Hebrew or medayer in Aramaic.  This interpretation connects the release of slaves to the redemption of the land.  It has been argued that just as freedom from subservience to a human master enables us to serve God, so too the redistribution of land reflects the abolition of limited human ownership in favour of God’s absolute sovereignty.

But perhaps the Torah is making a simpler, political point.  Being free to live and trade where you like means having land, a house, and goods to sell.  True liberty requires both freedom from – the release from slavery – and the equitable re-distribution of resources: a deeper conception of freedom to.

Why Yom Kippur doesn't work - and (maybe) how to fix it

This is the drasha (sermon) I gave on Yom Kippur 5776/2015 at New North London Synagogue.

I remember myself as a 14 year-old, the second Yom Kippur after my bar mitzvah, refusing to go to shul, staying home and demonstratively eating because I didn’t believe in God and I refused to be a hypocrite.

Things have changed – here I am! – but in some ways, while I’m less concerned about inconsistency, have found my place within traditional Jewish observance, and have a more sophisticated view of the problems, nothing’s changed for me.

Here are my problems with Yom Kippur. 

Firstly: the whole construct of the Yamim Noraim (and in some ways Judaism as a whole) is built on an unsustainable anthropomorphism – a judging God who rewards and punishes.

I don’t believe in such a God and, on a deeper level, I reject the underlying assumption which is that the world is in some way inherently just.

Secondly: morality for me as a modern, liberal individual, is about the mitzvot beyn adam le-havero (commandments between people), which I regard as the expression of a binding ethical system.  It’s hard to imagine the observance of the mitzvot beyn adam le-makom (between a person and God) as more than a lifestyle choice, since they don’t affect anyone but me.  And why would I need to repent from a lifestyle choice?  

While the process of teshuva (repentance) relates to both kinds of mitzvot, the rabbis teach that Yom Kippur only repents for sins between people if we’ve already made good the damage, received forgiveness and repented before the day starts.  And if, as the Rambam teaches, teshuva is the essence of atonement, then the rituals of Yom Kippur itself seem to have no essential function.

This problem has another aspect: teshuva means making change, changing ourselves.  This requires a deep process of personal transformation, which we’re more likely to achieve through some kind of long term therapy, working with another person or in a group, than by standing in shul, surrounded by other people, but essentially alone with our thoughts. 

This is recognised in the tradition: the Rambam (Maimonides) writes that true repentance means a change both of behaviour and of attitude, requires a person to avoid negative, habit-forming behaviours and to remove herself from the situation in which the sin is likely to recur, and teaches that true repentance can only be achieved by confessing one’s sins to others.  The confessional prayers we say in synagogue, reciting a fixed formula of words in unison, can hardly be described as an authentic confession of personal sins.

Thirdly, modern, liberal ethics has to be based on autonomous choice.  Not just free will in the sense of deciding whether or not to obey the commandments we’ve been given – this is assumed by the rabbis and implies an a priori acceptance of the commandments themselves – but freedom to think for ourselves and shape our own moral code.  I expect not only to choose how to behave, but also to decide for myself the difference between right and wrong. 

But the vidui (confessional prayer) of Yom Kippur presents us with a list of sins, our job being to accept the framework and judge ourselves accordingly.  Even if we happen to agree with many of the sins we’re presented with, how can this be a framework for proper, autonomous moral deliberation?

So what kinds of answers can I suggest?

Firstly, the tradition provides some justification for my concerns and basic perspective.  This is not something that needs to separate me from Judaism, but something that our thinkers have always grappled with.

As an arch-rationalist, Maimonides – perhaps our most important halachic authority and theologian – clearly could not accept the anthropomorphic view of atonement, nor the idea that the ritual has any kind of magical effect.  But he also knew that the traditional concepts were important to his medieval audience.

In his Hilkhot Teshuva / Laws of Repentance, he says: ‘at present, when the Temple does not exist and there is no altar of atonement, there remains nothing else aside from teshuva.’ He also says, ‘the essence of Yom Kippur atones’ but only ‘for those who repent.’

The anthropomorphisms and the rituals are a means to an end, a way of focusing our minds, of bringing people to the correct psychological state to engage in confession and soul-searching.  The essence is the internal process of repentance itself.

Maimonides helps affirm my basic perspective that the real work of repentance has to be done outside of shul, with people, over a long period, and that I don’t need to adopt a simplistic theology in order to engage with it.  Yom Kippur is a moment of introspection, reflection and making personal commitments about the change I want to create.

A practical solution might be to change what we do in shul, building in a process of facilitated, group-based introspection and reflection over the yamim noraim – the ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.  (For more on this see, this article by Donniel Hartman: http://bit.ly/1iNB8tt).

But the Rambam doesn’t help with my fundamental problem: the clash between the vidui, the framework of the mitzvot, and my aspiration to be an autonomous moral agent.

I want to address this through an article by the one of the most important modern Jewish philosophers, Emil Fackenheim (click here to read extracts from the article: http://bit.ly/1LyBsad).  Fackenheim agrees that we cannot stand before God and respond affirmatively to the commandments without free choice.  Recognising and living out our freedom is a necessary condition for any relationship with Judaism. 

But at the same time, freedom to make choices about our relationship with the tradition, means standing in the presence of God and hearing that commanding voice. 

Freedom and service or obedience need each other.  We can’t shape our relationship with the mitzvot unless we accept the framework of mitzvot as our starting point. 

Perhaps this is the function of the vidui, the Al Het prayer we recite throughout Yom Kippur.  It confronts us with this framework, and with the underlying commanding voice of God (alternatively the voice of the tradition or the idea of an objective moral code).  This is the precondition for any meaningful, authentically Jewish, process of deliberation, soul searching, teshuva, and choosing, freely, to be different.

Gmar hatima tova.

Should we print pictures of the Prophet Muhammad?

Should we print pictures of the Prophet Muhammad?  This for me is the thorniest issue to come out of the recent terrible events in Paris.  What’s more important – free speech or respecting the religious beliefs of others?  The question comes down to a clash between two different kinds of rights, where believers tend to emphasise one value, and liberal secularists the opposing one. 

We might assume that freedom of speech inevitably trumps some ill-defined right not to be offended – or to respond to offence.  But the situation is complicated by the fact that it’s clearly legitimate to oppose racist hate speech, and criticisms of Islam can never by entirely disconnected from prejudice against Muslims who are not only a religious group but, in most western countries, a vulnerable ethnic minority too.  As Jews, this sensitivity should be particularly clear to us.

Jewish tradition has two other important contributions to make to this debate.

One is Judaism’s radical monotheism, articulated most powerfully by Maimonides, the 13^th century legal authority and philosopher whose most important intellectual influences were the Islamised versions of Aristotelian thought he learned from Arabic writers like Al Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes.  Maimonides teaches that the fight against idolatry is no longer about combatting the worship of physical images.  Idolatry in his day manifested itself in people’s internalised, anthropomorphic, mental images of God.  For Maimonides, God cannot be conceptualised, known, or spoken about in any way.  God is beyond the grasp of the human intellect and imagination.  Any image of God is by definition human, not divine.  So too, revelation is a purely intellectual process and any anthropomorphic account (which has God speaking or writing, for example) must be understood allegorically.

Maimonides’ theology should make clear to any remotely sophisticated monotheist that blasphemy does not affect God, only the feelings of believers who incorrectly assume that God needs their protection.

The second contribution stems from the fact that unlike western legal systems, Jewish law focuses on obligations, not rights.  This distinction dissolves much of the tension between freedom of speech and freedom from religious offence in which we try, problematically, to defend the absolute right to offend the religious sensibilities of people who we want to avoid upsetting or indirectly harming. 

Rather than rights to speak and respond to offence, Judaism posits two relevant duties: the obligation to avoid harming others through speech (unless specific circumstances mean refraining from speaking out will cause more harm) and the primary obligation not to inflict injury or death.  Every individual has to weigh up whether and how to speak, write and draw in light of the harm likely to be caused by action or inaction.  But if someone steps over the line, we all have an absolute, unconditional obligation to refrain from violence.

Yesterday I met with a Muslim colleague who is keen to initiate serious dialogue between the Jewish and Muslim communities in an effort to create a nuanced, non-fundamentalist theological discourse which will lend support to the values of peace and co-existence.  In the present climate, I believe the role of religious people of faith has never been more important.

Wrestling with the moral dilemmas of Gaza: Martin Buber’s ‘Hebrew Humanism’

I’ve argued in a previous post that our challenge during Israel’s war in Gaza is to sustain our solidarity with the Jewish people while simultaneously expressing our commitment to the Jewish value of human life and the idea of universal human rights.  Now I want to explain why this challenge is so difficult, and – perhaps – to suggest a way through the dilemma.

The problem is harder to negotiate than many of Israel’s advocates would have us believe.  Let’s assume for a moment (and I think this is a correct assumption) that it’s legitimate for Israel to defend its citizens by attacking Hamas’s rocket launch sites and tunnels in the Gaza Strip, even when Hamas intentionally locates these in densely populated areas.  Let’s also assume that Israel does its best to comply with international humanitarian law by not targeting civilians, giving warnings before each attack, and trying to minimise civilian casualties. 

None of this means that a Palestinian civilian whose home is destroyed or who is killed or injured has not had her human rights infringed.  This is true even if we argue that Israel’s actions are legitimate specifically because their aim is to protect the human rights of Israeli civilians.  And if Palestinian human rights are being infringed as the result of Israeli actions, then Israel has to take responsibility for this, even if every act carried out by the IDF is morally and legally justifiable. 

(The same goes for Hamas, of course, the difference being that no-one could argue that Hamas makes any effort to avoid civilian casualties of Israelis – or of their own people).

The internet is awash with one-sided, simplistic responses to this dilemma.  Half the responses justify Israel’s behaviour and, as a logical next step, either deny Palestinian suffering or blame it on Hamas.  The other half bewail the abuse of Palestinian rights and draw the conclusion that Israel’s actions are therefore morally illegitimate.

To me it’s clear that both sides only have it half right: it’s entirely possible for legitimate actions to lead to terrible suffering.  This is the paradox: the fact that Israel’s actions may be defensible does not absolve us from responsibility for their indefensible results. (Disclaimer: I’m not making a moral judgement about specific Israeli actions as I don’t have the necessary military or legal expertise to do so.)

So how should we respond?

The religious philosopher, Zionist and peace activist, Martin Buber, has profound advice to offer on this difficult topic.  In his essay ‘Hebrew Humanism,’ published in 1942, Buber argued that the Bible is the most important moral and spiritual resource for the Jewish national movement.  But the function of the Bible is not (as most Zionists had it) only to teach us about our history and our right to the Land.  Rather:

“What it does have to tell us, and what no other voice in the world can teach us with such simple power, is that there is truth and there are lies, and that human life cannot persist or have meaning save in the decision in behalf of truth and against lies; that there is right and wrong, and that the salvation of man depends on choosing what is right and rejecting what is wrong; and that it spells the destruction of our existence to divide our life up into areas where the discrimination between truth and lies, right and wrong, holds, and others where it does not hold, so that in private life, for example, we feel obligated to be truthful, but can permit ourselves lies in public, or that we act justly in man-to-man relationships, but can and even should practice injustice in national relationships.”

For Buber, Judaism teaches that morality is absolute.  There is a difference between right and wrong, and this difference holds in every area of life, the political and the military no less than the private and the interpersonal.  But Buber is not naïve about the difficulties of this position.

“It is true that we are not able to live in perfect justice, and in order to preserve the community of man, we are often compelled to accept wrongs in decisions concerning the community.  But what matters is that in every hour of decision we are aware of our responsibility and summon our conscience to weigh exactly how much is necessary to preserve the community, and accept just so much and no more; that we do not interpret the demands of a will-to-power as a demand made by life itself; that we do not make a practice of setting aside a certain sphere in which God’s command does not hold, but regard those actions as against his command, forced on us by the exigencies of the hour as painful sacrifices; that we do not salve, or let others salve, our conscience when we make decisions concerning public life, but struggle with destiny in fear and trembling lest it burden us with greater guilt than we are compelled to assume” (my emphasis).

Statehood means we’re not always able to live up to the demands of justice.  Sometimes we have to act for the good of the community in ways which do not accord with textbook ethics.  Shelling rocket launchers in civilian areas of Gaza would seem to be one of those times.  Buber makes two requirements of us in such situations.  First, that we do what is needed to preserve the community and save life, and no more.  We must never allow ourselves to be guided by the desire for power and certainly not by the need for revenge. 

Second, when self-preservation leads us to use force, we must retain absolute clarity about the moral status of our acts.  When we’re forced to do something wrong, under no circumstances must we convince ourselves that we’re in the right.  Morality, or God’s command, is absolute and universal.  We have to look our existentially necessary but immoral acts in the face. 

The recent controversy over the publication of the names of Palestinian casualties of Israeli shelling is a case in point.  Buber would argue that while the IDF’s actions may be justified in terms of national survival, there’s an accompanying moral imperative to recognise the harm that we’ve done and the people we’ve hurt.  Refusing to publish the names of the victims is the start of a spiral towards redefining morality in a narrow, chauvinistic way.

Our job is to understand the complexity of Israeli military actions, defend them when we believe they are necessary to protect Israeli lives while squarely acknowledging the suffering and the immoral results that flow from them, and to work for the realisation of the Judaism’s – and the State of Israel’s – values of peace, justice and human dignity.

Why is this important?  Buber believes that without a moral, spiritual vision at its core, the Jewish state will not survive:

“By opposing Hebrew humanism to a nationalism which is nothing but empty self-assertion, I wish to indicate that, at this juncture, the Zionist movement must decide either for national egoism or national humanism.  If it decides in favour of national egoism, it too will suffer the fate which will soon befall all shallow nationalism, i.e. nationalism which does not set the nation a true supernational task.  If it decides in favour of Hebrew humanism, it will be strong and effective long after shallow nationalism has lost all meaning and justification, for it will have something to say and to bring to mankind.”

All quotes from Martin Buber, ‘Hebrew Humanism’ (1942), reproduced in Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, pp 457-459.

Israel, Gaza and Masorti

For anyone who has a relationship with Israel, the past three weeks have been a time of anxiety, depression, and maybe even despair.  How should we respond and what can we do to help?

I was in Israel two weeks ago, participating in a conference on Israel education, when I observed a interaction between a Jewish educator from France and Hagai El-Ad, the director of B’tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation.  El-Ad described B’tselem’s work in monitoring and documenting human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza – the majority of which are inflicted on Palestinians by the Israeli authorities – and explained his belief that we have a responsibility as Israelis and Jews to look this harsh reality in the face and call our government to account.  My French colleague responded by accusing him of peddling disinformation but, once El-Ad had refuted this idea, went on to her main point: that by making this material public, B’tselem are whipping up antisemitism and endangering the security of French Jews.  ‘You are killing Jews in France,’ she told him.  The interaction ostensibly presented a clear dilemma – should we campaign for human rights or should we stand up for Jews?

There are some Jewish organisations which feel able to take a clear position on this dilemma.  In this time of war, some choose solidarity, backing the decisions of the Israeli government, defending Israel’s unconditional right to self-defence, explaining the humanitarian nature of the IDF’s actions in Gaza, and fighting against antisemitism in the Diaspora.  Others (I’m talking about mainstream Jewish organisations, not anti-Zionist ones) call for ceasefires, advocate for the resumption of negotiations and hold Israel at least partly responsible for the failure of the political process, recognise the truth in some of the criticisms of Israeli actions, and condemn the rise of anti-democratic trends within Israel.

I’m proud to be an Israeli citizen, having made aliyah and lived in Israel for over ten years.  But this dilemma, accompanied by growing feeling of despair at the situation, is where I’ve found myself over the last two weeks.  I also believe a similar dilemma affects Masorti Judaism as a whole.  The diversity of our members’ views means we can’t respond to the conflict in a one-sided way.  What, then, can we say about it?

I believe there are three vital ideas, deeply rooted in the ethos of Masorti Judaism, all of which we need to hold in our minds if we are to respond to the situation in an authentic way.

1. The value of nuance and complexity.  The situation in the middle-east is extraordinarily complex and cannot be reduced to right and wrong.  Any interpretation of events which seeks to put all the blame on one side or attribute it to one single cause can always be challenged by taking a different perspective, changing context or bringing in a different historical frame of reference.  Not only Israelis and Palestinians disagree over the causes of the violence and what path might lead to its resolution.  Even within the Jewish-Zionist community, there’s no consensus.  I believe we need to look reality in the face and do our best to understand the complexity of the situation, even when this is difficult or painful.  And this should lead us to be cautious about advocating simplistic, one-sided diagnoses and solutions, as if the situation could be resolved easily if only we were in charge.

2. The value of Jewish peoplehood.  I see the Jewish people as an extended family.  It causes us pain when other Jews are killed or injured, and it troubles us when we see Jews doing things we disapprove of.  When I hear news of Israeli casualties or rocket attacks on Israeli communities, it touches me more deeply than similar news from elsewhere in the world – and that’s okay.  Israelis are part of my family and siding with my family is natural and good.  But that doesn’t mean I agree with everything my family members do.  The challenge I experience is finding a way to express this love and solidarity with the people of Israel, while avoiding one-sided statements which don’t reflect my values or my understanding of the conflict in all its complexity.

3. The Jewish value of human life.  Jews of all political persuasions like to invoke values drawn from the tradition to defend their position.  In the UK, universal values of peace and human life tend to dominate our discourse, but Judaism just as often emphasises the values of military force and the right to the Land.  Jewish tradition is no less complex than contemporary political reality and, in a way, can be seen as an ongoing argument between welcoming, egalitarian, universal attitudes, and discriminatory, exclusive ones.  Once we understand this, we have a choice as to how we want to interpret our tradition and which of its values we want to promote.  I choose (and I believe that Masorti Judaism should choose) openness and universalism over insularity and hostility to the Other.  We should draw on Jewish tradition to teach the values of compromise, reconciliation and, most importantly, the idea that all human beings are created in the image of God and that all human life is infinitely and equally valuable.

To rephrase in a different order and, perhaps, with a different emphasis.  I believe our role is to live out the fundamental human values which Judaism teaches: human life is sacred as we are all created in the image of God.  We should do our best to comprehend the historical, political, social and military reality of the situation, no matter how complicated or difficult it is, and make sure our speech and actions adequately reflect this complexity.  And, against the background of these two principles, we should remember that we have an additional, profound obligation at this time of crisis: to demonstrate love and support for our extended family – the people of Israel.