We Are a Jewish and Christian Nation

[lord of the mark]

If democracy is not a jewish or christian concept, its hardly a greco-roman concept either, not if democracy means anything like the principles stated in the declaration. There are aspects of the Greco-Roman political ideals that are contributory to democracy, just as there aspects of Judaic-prophetic social ideals that are contributory, esp to the more socially progressive developments of democracy. A western tradition that was only Hebraist, and not at all Hellenist, would be insufficiently intellectually free and questioning, but a one that was only Hellenist and not at all Hebraist would be too indifferent to social injustice.

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Kasich meant the US was founded on Judeo-Christian ideas (the 10 Commandments blah blah blah), not that we are a Jewish-Christian country. He just got panicked when his "anti-God" guest was not only a Christian but an informed Christian. He found himself in a theological debate and armed only with ignorant cliches. I'd love to see someone respond to that nonsense by asking which of the 10 Commandments actually formed the basis for our government. Explain how we can have religious freedom if we are to worship only the God of Moses?

Well, by religious freedom, the Founders simply meant that we were all free to worship the Judeo-Christian God, on whose principles they built the nation, not that we had other choices. It's freedom OF religion, Berz, not freedom FROM religion!

That's actually one of the answers I've gotten discussing the matter with acquaintances here. I've also asked, repeatedly, on which Judeo-Christian principles the nation was founded, and never gotten anything better than "There's not enough time in the world to name them all." Neither of those came from the nutty former friend that basically told me any non-Christians were lucky to be allowed to live in our Christian nation, and cited the Mayflower Compact as our most important founding document. When presented with the Treaty of Tripoli language, he dismissed it as "appeasing Muslim terrorists."

[lord of the mark]

"Democratic concepts were always a part of Jewish thinking and derived directly from the Torah. For instance, the belief that all men are created in the image of God logically leads to the idea of all men being equal. And the idea of the covenant between God and the Israelites, in which both parties accepted upon themselves duties and obligations, shows that power is established through the consent of both sides rather than through tyranny by the more powerful party. One can easily see how the biblical covenant could lead to ideas such as government by consent, constitional law and no absolutism.

Yet a democratic form of government was not part of early Jewish history, tradition or law. In biblical times, the Jewish nation was a monarchy. The first century Jewish historian Josephus Flavius called the priestly-dominated government of the Second Temple era “theocratic." And democratic ideals were not prevalent when the Mishnah and Talmud were being written, between the 2nd and 6th centuries.

In all fairness, democratic governments, in which authority resided with the people, did not exist anywhere during those times.

By the late 10th century, however, hundreds of years before Locke and Montesquieu developed their version of modern Western democracy, democratic principles were beginning to be formulated and implemented by Jewish scholars. These scholars were responding to the rise of autonomous Jewish communities.

These autonomous Jewish communities were social units that needed to regulate the activities of its members, provide educational and social services to its members, and even impose and collect taxes for both their own community and often the state. The communities elected their own internal leaders. The communities also had their own courts with authority in civil law and even, to a limited degree, in criminal law.

Existing Jewish law could not handle the legal difficulties emanating from the rise of these new communities. So, from the end of the 10th century onward, over hundreds of years, Jewish law developed to include the legitimacy of the public to enact regulations. These laws contained the ideas of elected representation and majority rule.

The renowned 13th century Spanish talmudist Rabbi Solomon Ibn Adret (Rashba) summarized the principle that communities should be governed by majority rule:

As regards the decisions of the people of a specific locality, the law is that whenever the majority agree to enact a law, and accept this law, we pay no attention to individual opinions, since the relation of the majority in each town to the individuals of the community is equivalent to the relationship between the Great Court to the entire Jewish people: Whatever they decree shall stand, and whoever disobeys is to be punished."

[lord of the mark]

"Judaism and Democracy

Freedom of the Individual

A commonly held view is that Judaism and liberal democracy necessarily exist in conflict with each other. This view finds adherents among both liberal democrats and Orthodox Jews. There are liberal democrats who consider Judaism to be a paternalistic religion that is hostile to freedom, and there are Orthodox Jews who consider liberal democracy's separation between church and state - the public and the private spheres - to be atheistic in intent and permissive in practice.

The apparent conflict between Judaism and democracy stems from differing evaluations of the freedom of the individual: whereas liberal democracies are constituted by the rights given to citizens by the state, in Judaism there are ten commandments given by (no less than) God. (According to one Talmudic authority there are actually 613 commandments for Jews). To state the matter grossly, but not altogether incorrectly, whereas liberal democracy is primarily concerned with the rights of the individual, Judaism is primarily concerned with an individual's duties. The two thus appear to exist in conflict with each other, because where Judaism demands obedience to God's will, liberal democracy, if it is to remain liberal, must guarantee the individual's right to freedom of, or from, religion.

It would be incorrect, however, to conclude from the differing evaluations of the freedom of the individual that the conflict between Judaism and liberal democracy is fundamental.

A thorough comparison between Judaism and democracy is, of course, beyond the limits of this article. However, in order to render questionable the commonly held opinion that Judaism and democracy are essentially opposed to each other, I would like to briefly explore a claim that has recently been raised by three different scholars ¯ Princeton University Professor Michael Walzer, recently deceased, Bar-Ilan Professor and President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daniel Elazar, and President of the Jerusalem-based think-tank, the Shalem Center, Yoram Hazony. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, these three scholars have claimed, in different forms, that Judaism and democracy possess a common foundation.

The American Revolution is the best place to begin the exploration, because the American Revolution was the first modern, democratic revolution. If it can be demonstrated that the American revolutionaries turned to the Hebrew Bible - to the Torah - for inspiration and guidance, then this would indicate that the commonly held view about the conflict between Judaism and democracy might be mistaken.

It is of course well known that the founders of the American republic established their state in opposition to the British monarchy. But to whom did the founding fathers turn for inspiration in their fight against the tyranny of the throne? Princeton University Professor Michael Walzer, in his book, Exodus and Revolution, attempts to demonstrate the extent to which the story of Israel's exodus of Egypt functioned as a paradigm for political revolutions throughout history. The clearest example of the extent to which the exodus story functioned as a paradigm for later generations of political revolutionaries, is the case of the American Revolution, “In 1776, Benjamin Franklin proposed that the Great Seal of the United States should show Moses with his rod lifted and the Egyptian army drowning by the sea; while Jefferson urged a more pacific design: the column of Israelites marching through the wilderness led by God's pillars of cloud and fire.” (p. 6) Franklin went so far as to propose that the inscription of the Great Seal should read, “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”

Why did Franklin and Jefferson see the American emancipation from England in light of the emancipation of the nation of Israel from Egypt? And where did Franklin get the strange notion that, “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God?”

The answer, according to Walzer, is that Franklin and Jefferson read the Torah - what they called the Old Testament - according to its original intention: they read it as a political text. What is the nature of the Torah's political teaching?

The story is well-known: the nation of Israel had been enslaved in Egypt, and was tyrannically ruled by Pharoah. The savior Moses then appeared and, under the cover of the ten plagues sent by God, took the Jews out to freedom. The Torah thus set up an opposition between Pharoah's will and God's will. Pharoah wanted Israel to serve Egypt; God wanted Israel to serve Him. After God's will, not surprisingly, trumped Pharoah's will, and the Jews were led into the wilderness of freedom, one might expect that God would simply take Pharoah's place and rule over Israel like a tyrannical king. After all, God is stronger than Pharoah, and Israel was a nation of freed slaves, wandering around the desert, vulnerable.

The Torah teaches, however, that instead of ruling over Israel tyrannically, God made a brit, a covenant with Israel. An agreement. Both sides - God on one side, Israel on the other - while maintaining their integrity, accepted upon themselves duties and obligations.

This covenant between Israel and God was a political revolution. The idea that the right to rule does not simply belong to the stronger, but that power is established through the consent of both sides, was a radical political teaching. Professor Daniel Elazar in his series, The Covenant Tradition in Politics, claims that the idea of the covenant was instrumental in the political development of the West. Writes Elazar, “Politically the covenant idea has within it the seeds of modern constitutionalism in that covenants define and limit the powers of the parties to them, a limitation not inherent in nature but involving willed concessions.” (Covenant and Polity in Biblical Israel, p. 68) Elazar goes on to claim that, “The justification for the republican revolution was drawn directly and explicitly from the covenant idea,” the religious understanding of the covenant idea being that, “God, in establishing His covenant with humanity, rejected tyranny as a violation of the terms of that covenant.” (Covenant and Commonwealth, p. 50) It should now be evident that Benjamin Franklin, when he claimed that resistance to tyrants is obedience to God, was expressing the political spirit of the Torah thought through to a possible, logical conclusion.

According to Yoram Hazony, the spirit of resistance against tyranny that the Torah stimulated also lies at the root of the Western notion of civil disobedience. As Hazony wrote in his article, 'The Jewish Origin of the Western Disobedience Tradition,' from the summer, 1998, issue of Azure, “While the disobedience teaching of the West is well-known, virtually forgotten is the fact that this teaching is itself the essential Jewish political teaching.” It is the essential Jewish political teaching, according to Hazony, because, “Unqualified obedience to the state is the fundamentally pagan idea, the essential political teaching of the great idolatries of antiquity; [while] freedom of conscience and disobedience to unjust law are the core of the biblical political teaching, which arose as a rejection of pagan statism.” Hazony exaggerates when he states that freedom of conscience is a Biblical ideal, but his central point remains: the Jewish idea of God and His Law directs one's horizon beyond the particular horizon of the state. All laws must be justified before God's Law, and one can refuse to comply with man-made law upon the grounds that God's Law is superior. According to Hazony, the Greek appeal from that which is right by convention, to that which is right by nature, was preceded by the Jewish appeal from man-made law, to God-made Law. Hazony, in a silent nod to Michael Walzer, then ties his claim to the exodus story when he writes, “The subsequent story of the Jews in Egypt is a paradigm of resistance to oppressive government, to which resistors and revolutionaries throughout history have turned for inspiration. Like the other tales of the books of Moses, this one opens immediately with an act of resistance against the state,” the act of resistance being the refusal of the Hebrew mid-wives to carry out Pharoah's tyrannical order to kill all the Hebrew males (Exodus 1:15-21).

In telling the story of the exodus from Egypt, the Torah constructs a paradigm for resistance against tyrannical rulers. Democracy was, of course, also born out of resistance to tyranny. Walzer, Elazar, and Hazony all point out in different ways that the foundation of the Jewish tradition and the first principle of democracy oppose the same thing: tyranny. In other words, the foundation of the Jewish tradition and the first principle of democracy, far from existing in opposition to each other, actually exist in harmony with each other. It is an established, historical fact that Judaism served as the inspiration for certain democratic notions of freedom. This fact makes problematic the commonly-held view, which is in reality an extreme view, that Judaism and democracy exist in opposition to each other.

While the position that democracy and Judaism essentially exist in conflict with each other is an extreme view, one should guard against going to the opposite extreme and claiming that there is an essential harmony between Judaism and democracy. The truth is somewhere in the middle: while Judaism and democracy might agree about political fundamentals, there is a deep disagreement between the two over the proper ends of human life. It is beyond the limits of this article to investigate the question of the proper ends of life according to Judaism and democracy, but for present purposes it is sufficient to note that while democracy can tolerate atheism, Judaism, of course, cannot. We can imagine an individual claiming that freedom of conscience dictates that he or she be allowed to come to whatever conclusion seems fitting according to his or her mind with regard to the question of the existence or the non-existence of God. Judaism can respond at best that it is not afraid of speculation. However, according to Judaism, there is a correct answer to the question of God's existence. On the question of God's (non)-existence, however, contemporary democracy does not teach that there is a right answer; it remains silent.

Perhaps the best that can be said about the connection between Judaism and democracy is that, because of the common foundation, they can talk to each other. They both say 'no' to tyranny, and this 'no' forms a kind of fellowship. There is a common enemy.

Today, thousands of Orthodox Jews are free citizens of the United States of America, a country in which they feel completely at home. The present state of things demonstrates that democracy can make room for (Orthodox) Judaism in its midst. In light of the Jewish roots of certain democratic notions of freedom, perhaps this fact should not come as a surprise. The question that remains, however, is if Orthodox Judaism is able to conceive of a political system in which dissent against Judaism's fundamental principles can be accorded a legitimate place. This is a question that Orthodox Jews living in Israel have the responsibility, challenge, and privilege of wrestling with."