Judaism
Judaism has had a profound influence on Western civilization, an influence particularly remarkable in regards to ancient Israel's marginal status as a people who lived in a very contentious region dominated by a succession of powerful states. How did this marginal group of people survive, but even more, how did they succeed in lighting a beacon of Justice that has shone through the ages?
The earliest Jews were nomadic, a small Semitic tribe, wandering around the upper reaches of the Arabian Desert. The Jews eventually settled down sometime in the middle of the second millennium B.C.E. in unremarkable territory that was about one-eighth the size of Illinois (just a little larger than my home state of Delaware). Over a thousand year period this obscure nation/people, living in a "mild and monotonous" region, often at the privilege of greater nations, through their potent religious vision, laid the foundation of what we know as Western Civilization.
We can trace several major themes through three millennia of Judaism's influence on Western Civilization:
- monotheism—the notion of one and only one God;
- a passion for meaning, including the meaning of material creation and in that creation the special meaning of humankind—the seed of an optimistic humanism and a questing spirit;
- a liberal sense of Justice as a fundamental feature of a healthy society.
Sigmund Freud at the end of his life, in the lengthening shadow of Nazism, wrote a series of essays "Moses and Monotheism" to explore Jewish endurance and influence, what Mr. Freud called "its peculiar power." Huston Smith in his perennial classic of world religions, The Religions of Man, argued, "What lifted the Jews from obscurity to permanent religious greatness was their passion for meaning." In my scheme of the contributions of the great world religions, the Jewish contribution to the notion Justice looms largest.
Covenant and the Demands of Election
At the outset it's important to emphasize that in Jewish tradition Justice comes from God—whose name was too sacred to say or write, but whom we know as Yahweh. Justice was conditioned by a formal relationship known as covenant. Jewish history is expressed in a series of covenants. A covenant is an agreement or contract extraordinaire; binding the parties involved in an all encompassing and open-ended relationship. The central covenant was realized through Moses at Sinai.
Moses carried God's message to the people: ".. .[I]f you will obey My voice/and keep My covenant, /You shall be My own possession/among all peoples;/for all the earth is Mine,/And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests/and a holy nation. (Ex.19:5-6). The Ten Commandments, written by God's finger on tablets of stone, sealed this covenant. It was in the light of this central covenant that Jewish history is interpreted.
Adam entered into a covenant (the Adamic Covenant) with the Creator with only one stricture—that the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil shall not be eaten, because such knowledge would lift up Adam and Eve to the level of God and the heavenly throng. And God argued to the heavenly throng, with such knowledge won't Adam and Eve immediately eat of the Tree of Life and live forever; and therefore, be like us? The punishment was swift and sure for breaking the covenant: banishment from Paradise and the beginning of the human condition with its travail, pain, and death.
A second covenant (the Noachian Covenant)was made with Noah (for his steadfastness) after the flood, in which God promised never to unleash a universal deluge on the earth again and placed the rainbow in the sky as a signature of that pledge.
A third and formative covenant (the Abrahamic Covenant) was made with the father of the Jews, Abraham whose allegiance to Yahweh and Yahweh only was met with a promise by Yahweh to make of Abraham's descendants the people and nation of Israel. This covenant was put to an almost cruel test when God told Abraham to sacrifice his first son and heir Isaac.
The notion of covenant established God's Justice and went hand-in-hand with righteousness. When Israel lived by the covenant the people and nation prospered. When the covenant was neglected or broken, eventually God would punish Israel with misfortune and grief. So the covenant relationship was something of a two edged sword: it rendered the Jews the chosen people; but being chosen placed great demands—even a unique suffering—on them. The Jews were compelled to live up to the people/nation's election by God, and to do so in humility.
An illustration of this humility is found in a Midrash legend: When God created Adam from clay, God gathered that clay from every part of the world and of every color of earth to signify the oneness of humanity. So the dignity the Jews found in their special relationship with God was projected outward, and in essence, they were charged to give to the rest of humankind what God granted them. The ancient Jews thrived - at least in religious consciousness - in their being chosen as well as living up to the ethical demands election implied. Jewish history, over a thousand or so years, before the Common Era is a remarkable chronicle of religious and ethical progress, particularly through an expanding sense of Justice.
The Prophetic Tradition
The Jewish Prophetic Tradition revealed God's design and will to humankind. The prophetic tradition progressed through three stages:
At first prophets gathered in guild-like groups and engaged in ecstatic practices in which they would lose their self-consciousness in a God-consciousness. Ethics were not part of the first stage of prophecy.
In a second stage, known as the Non-Writing Prophets, particular prophets filled with God's spirit, emerged from the guild-group as inspired individuals to personally and dramatically confront egregious injustices. The names of some of the Non-Writing Prophets are familiar: Elijah, Elisha, and Nathan. Two stories illustrate how this second group of prophets dared to challenge the king for his immoral behavior. Until then, no one dared question royal prerogative.
In one tale, Elijah berated King Ahab, who through state trickery stole the vineyard of Naboth, which Ahab coveted. Elijah was told by God to go to Ahab and say: "In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick your own blood."
A parallel story was told in the tale of David and Bathshesba. David lusted for Bathsheba To make her available for his pleasure, David sent her husband Uriah to the front lines of the battlefield to be killed, which he was. Hearing of this, Nathan the Prophet went to King David and relayed God's displeasure over this injustice, promising to David that he would reap what he had sewn. What he'd done to Uriah, Nathan prophesied, God would similarly do to him— taking David's wives and giving them to other men.
These two tales from the Non-Writing Prophets tell of a radical innovation: royal prerogative was subject to a higher, that is God's, law; and more significantly, the royals could be called to account by ordinary people in whom God's Justice burned—ecstatically! This challenging of authority in the name of Justice was a radical departure in the course of civilization.
The third stage of the prophetic tradition involves the great Writing Prophets, who left behind books that became scripture. The Writing Prophets—including Hosea, Amos, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah—lived in a morally decadent era, when the rich and powerful of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah lorded it over the enslaved, the poor, women, children and other underprivileged. The great Writing Prophets spoke out against not merely corrupt individuals, but against the whole corrupt social fabric that had become the people Israel and the nations of Israel and Judah. These Writing Prophets invoked the demands of the covenant relationship Israel had with God, even as they intoned God's displeasure. They warned that God's righteousness would punish an evil people who had abandoned right relationships with God and with one another. The moral imperative they proclaimed was simple: establish what we now call social Justice—an equitable and fair society kept through "laws" that reflected transcendental (or Divine) ideals, not selfish special interests.
A Progressing Heritage
The progressive ideal of social Justice realized through the Prophetic Tradition in ancient Israel are early and secure links in a long chain that have made Justice a centering principle of Western societies. Justice has passed from the ancient Jews, through several millennia of complex evolution, to come to us today in ever expanding understandings. (Whether or not the ancient Jews came up with the varying aspects of Justice all alone or borrowed and adapted from surrounding peoples is moot. But it is a fact that the ancient Jews focused Justice as a beacon for the ages.)
Whenever I read the founding sentiments of our nation, phrased by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, I hear a resonance with ancient Israel. In particular, two related notions strike a harmonious chord: the notion of the Divine in every person (rudimentary humanism) that comes from ancient Jewish doctrine that humankind was formed in God's image and the notion that Justice has a transcendental source. Recall now, Mr. Jefferson's words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
I think it's relatively easy to recognize that what we have come to cherish as "unalienable Rights" have a sure resonance, if not a common source, in Judaism's remarkable parlay of covenant, election, humanism, and Justice. The Jewish religious and ethical consciousness firmly established society's purpose not in politics or power, rather in transcendental ideals.
Though we may no longer take literally the covenant notion that sooner or later God will punish injustice, especially an unjust society, we may well take that notion figuratively. Injustices, especially borne by the so -called “underprivileged" have in them the seeds of their own destruction. As Huston Smith phrased it, "The prerequisite to political stability is social Justice; it is ingrained in the nature of things that injustice breeds its own demise."
Wisdom guides us toward Justice, certainly. But prudence also guides us toward Justice. It's politically prudent in the short term and matter of survival in the long term to create a social system of Justice that is fair and serves everyone from the most powerful and privileged through the weakest and most underprivileged. Indeed, the Justice-deprived demand special attention so their oppressions will be lessened. True social Justice has in it the practical imperative of egalitarianism, if only equal opportunity or a level playing field, otherwise the society will eventually perish. A Prophet-voice for broad Justice resounds as passionately now as it did 2500 years ago.
I identity certain contemporary liberal attitudes and outlook with a Jewish sense of Justice:
- sensitivity to civil liberties,
- compassion for the poor and unfortunate,
- a fierce commitment to a society that is fair to all—of, by and for the people,
- a willingness to adapt laws to changing awareness and understanding—a progressive vision of the rule of law centered in not only Justice but equally in mercy that edges into fairness.
What is the culmination of that vision, the meta-ideal society of human beings? Perhaps the Prophet Isaiah phrased it best:
[The people] shall beat their swords into plowshares,
And their spears into pruning hooks;
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war any more. [Is. 2:4]
