Judge Dennis Davis
Social Justice in the Jewish Tradition
Judge Dennis Davis | Social Justice in the Jewish Tradition | 04.27.22
- Well, good evening or morning or afternoon to everybody. I think this is a fairly unique presentation for the following reason, I am sitting in Livingstone, in Zambia, on the edge of the Victoria Falls, which I saw this afternoon for the first time from the Zambian side, absolutely magnificent site. I have to address a conference of African competition antitrust authorities tomorrow. So here I am. So I suppose I got one accolade that I can brag about. I must truly be the first person at Lockdown University that who will be teaching from Zambia.
Visuals displayed and video played throughout the presentation.
The talk today is, of course, on social justice in the Jewish tradition, and it’s inappropriate for a couple of reasons. In the first place, of course, we’ve just finished Pesach, , the time of our freedom, and we’re on route to the time of the giving of the law at Sinai. And I’ll make a point about that in a moment. The second reason is for those of you who are South African, or at least lived in South Africa for any appreciable period of time, today was Freedom Day. 27th of April, 1994 was when the first Democratic elections in South Africa took place. And that was a cause for considerable celebration. Sadly, I suspect what this year would be is much more a cause for reflection and earnest angst, but that’s another matter. So it’s appropriate to talk about social justice and particularly, since we talk about it from the Jewish tradition to do it this evening.
Now, the point I want to start with, if I may, is I mentioned to those of you who listened last week when I was talking about Pesach and the Passover and the music from the seder, I mentioned that to a considerable extent the structure of the seder was reflecting a journey, a journey from idle worshipers, slavery to, as it were levels of freedom, which would culminate ultimately in the coming of the the Mashiach, the Messiah, hence, of course, that we have the fifth cup of wine for Elijah with the seder. And it is true that, therefore, freedom is not something that simply happens. In our tradition, we believe that it is a process. And if you think about it, the six weeks which connect Passover Pesach to Shavu'ot is a process of how you could call it from unfettered freedom, which is that we essentially obtained our freedom from the slavery, the tyrannical rule of Pharaoh to the getting of a law. And without the law, without a law which ultimately reflected a moral code and therefore was something which could actually construct the community, freedom itself was very questionable. And so that’s the sort of fundamental idea that I want to pursue this evening in regard to the question of what in the Jewish tradition constitutes social justice?
That is the journey towards a society based to a considerable extent on social justice. Many of you would’ve heard the words the repair of the world. Significantly, you don’t find that in the Torah, there’s very little reference to it in the Talmud, but it appears in the Aleinu leshabei'ach prayer, which we cite all the time about to repair the world in the image of God. And so the question which is very often is, what does that mean as a whole? what does it mean to repair the world? What does it mean to infuse the world with a conception of social justice which will basically adhere to every single member of society? And that’s the question I want to pose for you. I do not have final answers to these questions. I’m sorry about that, but I do have some pointers. But before I get there, I’ve got for you an icebreaker, just a five minute clip of, which essentially discusses social justice in the Jewish tradition. So with your permission, if we could listen to that first, and then I’ll take it up from there. So Lauren, the clip please.
[Clip begins]
♪ How may roads must a man walk down ♪ ♪ Stuck in November ♪
After three decades of being a rabbi and a teacher in a Jewish community, I found that audiences couldn’t answer the question, what is the purpose of Judaism? They’re ready for a question about what makes up Judaism, and they want to tell you about Shabbat or Purim or a Passover Seder, but what is the purpose, was too big a question, and maybe it was too basic a question. So I argue that the two primary purposes of Judaism are Tzedek and Kedusha, both deeply rooted in Torah. Tzedek is the mandate for Jews to extend the boundaries of righteousness and justice in the world, to help mend the broken world. Kedusha is the notion of our being a sacred people with a sacred purpose, which is stands somewhat apart from the rest of the world, meaning that the only way to maintain the integrity of the Jewish idea of the covenant at Sinai, is for us to be a little bit apart from the rest of the world, what I call sacred apartness. And the irony, of course, is that Tzedek requires full engagement with the world. Kedusha requires pulling back a little bit and to affirm the fact that there is value in Jewish particularism. When I look at all the Jewish justice organisations that are gathered here at this wonderful conference for Siach, one common thread is that they all get the Tzedek piece, but all them really struggle with the Kedusha piece because very few people have seen a model that integrates the work of justice in the world with what makes this a sacred calling.
I think our world is, is increasingly fractured and divided, and I think our ability to be aware of the needs of the other is becoming harder and harder. And I think for me, one of the goals that I have in my life is that people will see service and social justice and involvement in our community, and not just the Jewish community, but the broader community as an imperative of what it is to be Jewish, like what’s our value proposition as Jews. We lead with all these other ideas and goals, and it’s about continuity, and it’s about this, and it’s about the Israeli Palestinian conflict and it’s about inter marriage, but those aren’t really values, you know, it’s like to me, when we start talking from a place of we value service, service to the other, you know, addressing some of the most pressing needs in society and in the world, then I think we have something to say in the world and we have a rich tradition and history that comes from that place and speaks to those things. And to me, that’s what we need to be focusing on as a community.
Now we’re living in a world that’s very much globalised. The economy is globalised, cultures are globalised, politics is, you know, very much a global affair. I feel that if we’re global in every other way, we also have to be global in our ethical reach. We have both the right and we have the privilege to taking action to try and create a better future for humanity.
Look at the Torah, “There will always be poor in the land. Therefore, I command you to open your hand,” you know, “to the stranger, the widow, and the orphan.” Remember, you were strangers in the land of Egypt. The thing that is our, you know, an animating principle for so much of Jewish tradition is the recollection of having been there. We were slaves in the land of Egypt. What is the Passover narrative? It’s from exile to redemption, from slavery to freedom. Like that’s rooted so deeply in our narratives. And if you look at like what do you, what is Purim? What is one of the dominant themes of Purim? It’s not just, you know, getting so drunk, you can’t hear Haman’s name anymore. It’s also giving gifts to the poor. It’s an imperative built within in the holiday. What is Sukkot? You know, Sukkot, you’re supposed to welcome, you’re supposed to be out, you’re supposed to essentially live homeless and you live outside and you’re supposed to be able to hear the voices of the street.
Victory in the work of Tzedek is not getting rid of the problem, it’s having the fortitude and the character to say, “I’m doing this for some higher reason and I’m connecting my work with some kind of sacred calling.” And the people who are most successful in the work of Tzedek, Jews and non-Jews are the people who feel that it’s part of a calling, whether by God or sacred purpose. And we Jews have that in spade. We really have a rich legacy of what is our sacred purpose, but I think for a lot of Jews who have come to their Jewish connections through justice work, through Tzedek work, they’ve yet to acquire the language, the vocabulary of Kedusha.
[Clip ends]
- Thanks, Lauren. So that gives you some idea of perhaps the direction I want to take. I’m going to quote to you two sources from our own position, which basically give the, we’ll get to David Hartman in a moment, but long before we get there, let me give you two quotations which I’ll read to you, which are central to what is the premise upon which this plea for social justice is predicated. In the Jerusalem Talmud in Masekhet, the tractate of Sanhedrin 4:22. The following is written, “This is why the human race was started with the creation of a single organism in the whole world to teach that anyone who kills even one human life is deemed as if he had wiped out an entire world, while anybody who saves even one human life is deemed as if he had saved an entire world. Another reason the human race was started with the creation of one single organism is for the sake of peace amongst people so that no one could say to another, ‘My ancestor was greater than yours,’ yet, another reason was to proclaim the greatness of the King of Kings, the Holy Blessed One, for when a person cast came from one mould, they’re all one like the other, while the King of Kings, the Holy Blessed One, cast each and every person in the mould of the first human, and yet, not one of them is the same as another. This is why each and every human being is obliged to say, ‘For my sake, the world was created.’”
It is a central proposition of Judaism that we do see a universality in the world. That we do regard there as being one humanity. And I’ll come back to the problems about that in a moment. But the rabbis were pretty astute about this because I’m sure there are people who are going to be saying to me, “Aha, but what about ourselves? Don’t we care for ourselves?” If it’s for that reason that Hillel had the very, very famous statement, which is perhaps central to the entire tradition, “If I’m not for myself, who will be for me?” “And if I’m only for myself, what am I?” “And if not now, when?” There is a fundamental proposition that we do believe because of this principle from Sanhedrin, that central to everything is the dignity of each human being created in image of God, no one is superior to the other. Each deserves fundamental concern. And if you think about that, if you think about that every modern constitution, which essentially proclaims justice, both economic, social, and political, is predicated on the fundamental proposition of the dignity of each human being.
The concept of dignity from which all of this flows really is sourced in the very text of the Sanhedrin, which I’ve just read, Masekhet Sanhedrin, which I’ve just read to you. Now, let me say immediately, before we move on to talk about David Hartman, that I perfectly understand that the ideas that I am portray that within the tradition, within our history, we do this because we exited Egypt and we were once slaves in Egypt. I’m perfectly appreciative of the fact that this concept of trying to develop a code for all of humanity, which is essentially the idea of repairing the world as was indicated in the video that I’ve written, that you’ve just watched, that both of the, that the concept is increasingly challenged from two opposing forces, a more particularistic trend within the Jewish community, which is essentially, if you want to say survivalist in its ideology, one which believes that we’re under threat, stop worrying about everybody else, worry about ourselves. “If I’m only for myself, who am I? Who will be for me?” Nobody will be for me. It is that central to the whole idea of the creation of the state of Israel 1948, it was particularly the recognition that nobody else would be for us.
And yet, the other side, kind of a whole bunch more on of you wish on the left, who suggests that effectively, we seem to be concerned only with Jewish issues and that what I’m arguing is completely ridiculous because it’s sourced in the notion both of the particular and the universal. And that for them that’s not acceptable because they cannot be reconciled, one or the other. And what I want to argue is that when we talk about social justice within the Jewish tradition, as I’ve indicated through the Sanhedrin text, Judaism promotes universal values. It holds that all human beings are created in the same egg. It therefore holds that we have a responsibility for the well-being of our neighbours regardless of their faith. And we should ensure justice for all. We are told to particularly have, pay special attention to the widow, the orphan, the stranger, those who are traditionally poorest in the society and most vulnerable and doing greatest need of social justice, as well as for the environment as guardians of the creation. And we should seek peace and the welfare of all communities. Now, there’s no doubt about it, that’s part of our tradition. And for particular of us to ignore that is essentially a track away, a very central component of our tradition.
But I’ll be naive not to concede that there’s also a particularist tradition after all if no one, “If I’m not going to be for myself, nobody else will be for me.” And that tradition becomes more evident at times when the Jewish communities, whether particular or general, have faced persecution and oppression. And it’s a natural reaction of Jewish thinkers and leaders trying to rally their followers and ensure the survival of the Jewish people and its tradition that there is a particularism, which essentially then gains a hegemonic status in moments of persecution, expulsion, and finally, the genocide which engulfed Jews as a result of the Nazis, but it does appear to me between those, the point that Hillel is raising, which is a middle ground, not necessarily universalistic, but certainly also not particularist. The idea of being that our tradition, our tradition seeks as it were to create an exquisite balance between concerned for our selves and concern for others, hence Hillel’s quote.
Now, significantly, Rav Kook, who was the first chief rabbi of Palestine, and he certainly is an extraordinary source of our range of theological insights, believed that there was room for synthesis of these concepts as I’ve indicated. He argued that individuals can have concern for themselves, their community, humanity, and the creation, at the same time. He summed it up in what he called the Four-Fold Song of Judaism. Let me read this very slowly because it’s really important, the song of the soul that is self-development, the song of the nation, responsibility to the Jewish community, the song of humanity, responsibility to all of humankind, the song of the world, responsibility to the creation and the environment. And that he then said that ultimately all mixed together with this person at every moment and at all times. In other words, Rav Kook believed that Judaism dictated that there should be a particularistic faith that expounds universal values. And I, the real point about is to try to create a framework in which that occurs. I’m worried in the particular position we are in at present, that that wonderful insight of social justice within the Jewish tradition is being lost.
I understand again that the concept of social justice often criticised by more survivalist strands in the community for being too outward looking at a time where it’s an existential threat to Jews in terms of rising anti-Semitism and various nuclear threats, for example, from Iran et al. And that’s true. But you have to defend the particular, but on its own by looking inward and know more of, you are failing to promote the foundational principles of the tradition. After all, and I’ve spoken about this before, Tzedek, Tzedek, we are told, “Justice, justice thou shall pursue,” why is justice repeated twice in the Torah when we all know that in fact the text is very parsimonious in its usage of language? The answer is, the answer is because Tzedek, justice, the first justice is for ourselves, but the second justice is for others. And therefore, what I’m trying to argue is this exquisite attempt to understand our identity, to protect our identity to essentially defend it at all times whilst at the same time trying to balance the other imperative, the other said.
Consider for a moment, consider for a moment a short passage that I’ll read to you from Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, the scion of modern orthodoxy, who wrote a wonderful book called “Halakhic Man” in which is really deserving of a serious treatment in Lockdown University, if we are a priest, want to talk about some of the great Jewish thinkers who tried to combine the secular with the religious. And what Rabbi Soloveitchik writes is this, and it’s well worth listening to, “The peak of religious ethical perfection to which Judaism aspires is man as creator.” Forgive the fact that the language is somewhat outdated and should be men and women, persons. “When God created the world, He provided an opportunity for the work of His hands, man, to participate in His creation. The creator, as it were, impaired reality in order that mortal man could repair its flaws and perfect it. God gave the Book of Creation that repository of the mysteries of creation to man, not simply for the sake of theoretical study, but in order that man might continue the act of creation.”
And the act of creation is precisely to create a better world, not just for ourselves, we fail ignominiously, it seems to me, if we move totally into the universalistic perspective or alternatively on the other hand, the particularist, the idea is to balance the two. Now let me, with that in mind, let me read to you two texts which I’d like to take you through. And the reason for this, they come from Rabbi David Hartman, Rabbi Hartman, who was a student of Rabbi Soloveitchik and, who was a rabbi in Montreal and then made Aliyah perhaps in my opinion, the finest exponent of modern orthodoxy, certainly in the most recent times. And anything he writes is well worth reading. He was really a remarkable man. So let me just take you through, let me read this with him, what he had to say.
This is a real opportunity to kind of just consider a really very insightful way of the concept of social justice. “Today we have an opportunity to reestablish the normative moment of Sinai, rather than the Exodus story as the primary framework for evaluating the significance of Jewish history. To be religiously significant, a historical event does not have to be situated between the moment of the Exodus and the coming of the Messiah. It can be significant by encouraging us to discover new depths in the foundational moment of Israel’s election as a covenantal people. I respond religiously to the establishment of state of Israel from a Sinai covenantal model for the following reasons. In reestablishing the Jewish nations, ancient homeland, Jews have taken responsibility for all aspects of social life. The divine call to become a holy nation, committed to implementing the letter and the spirit of Torah must influence our economic, political, and religious institutions. Through establishment of the state of Israel, we are called upon to demonstrate the moral and spiritual power of the Torah to respond to the challenges of daily life.”
And that’s a very profound statement. Some of you may not like it, but the truth is, think about it, what he’s saying that we’re not there to be just particularistic nationalists and no more. To be sure, as I’ve indicated, we have to be concerned about ourselves, but think more deeply about what he’s saying, that we’re in this period between Pesach and Shavu'ot between the freedom and the covenant which we got at Sinai. There’s a covenant, it’s a set of laws predicated in a moral conception of the world. That moral conception of the world is content to those laws. Those laws are predicated to a large extent and precisely the fundamental principles of our time. And when he talks about reestablishing the Jewish nation, that’s what he’s talking about. And he’s therefore saying there’s a divine call to be committed to the letter and spirit of the Torah, not to be involved in ridiculous debates about what is more kosher and what is less kosher, but rather to be interested in the debates as to how, as to how our tradition can shape our economic, political, and religious institutions. And by goodness they can’t, because we all know that within the Torah there’s a serious code of redistribution, of seeking to deal with the poor, of the sabbatical years, in the jubilee years, to ensure that there should not be levels of inequality of an unspeakable current.
And there are, that’s the challenge facing us in the world today. And I find it really ironic that on Freedom Day, I have to read, which perhaps the day before, that a South African born entrepreneur called Elon Musk has got a $44.6 billion in cash that he can dish out to buy Twitter, I mean, one human being. You do realise, just to give you a concrete example, that is 60%, 60% of the amount of tax that we collect in a year, our whole country. And so when we talk about a concept of social justice, of influencing economic, political, and religious institutions, that’s what Hartman is talking about, but let me take it further. When he says, “When Maimonides describes morality as an imitation of God’s actions, he’s describing a morality which has its roots in an intellectual understanding of God.” Let me pause there. Maimonides is, as I indicate to you, is irrationalist, did not believe in these Berber, Misers, of anthropomorphic conceptions of God having a grey beard and sitting there and saying, “Aha, today, I’m going to give Dennis Davis a bad day, tomorrow, I’ll give him a good day.”
It’s an intellectual understanding. “The ground of this morality is neither a specific rules nor principles, but, rather, the actions of God as they are manifested in nature. The key difference between the morality of the multitude and the morality of the religious philosopher is that the former is rule-dominated and based in juridical authority of God, the latter, an imitation of the God of Creation. Knowledge of God based on the study of nature reveals loving kindness, righteousness, and judgement as constant features of being. The constancy of God’s hesed, loving kindness, reflected in being, guides the religious philosopher to act with hesed towards men even though they have no claim on him.” Think about that, think about that. That is a really powerful point. It’s a point in which Rabbi Hartman is suggesting that in effect we can’t know what God is. We have no idea. And it’s silly to try to actually create some anthropomorphic conception.
What we can do and what we can do only do is to suggest that there’s certain divine features and we should comport ourselves according to those divine features. And those divine features are the features which we actually say on Yom Kippur all over and over and over again. We talk about God who is compassionate, who has loving kindness, who essentially seeks to bring a morality into the world. And we have to imitate that that’s what imitatio Dei means for Rabbi Hartman, that we actually have to take seriously those values and that they’re not just there for our own particular specific purposes. Now, it seems to me in talking about this topic too, that this is an extraordinary vision, a challenging vision, of what the tradition is holding for us. It seems to me that what we are on about here is a tradition which essentially looks after both ourselves and the broader world. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t see how we can actually ever have long-term social justice for ourselves if there’s a lack there are for anybody else.
How, for example, are we ever going to have just like an illustration, a peaceful world if we’re sitting in a cosy, as I’m sitting here very nicely on the Zambezi River, but meanwhile people in Ukraine are suffering extraordinary bombardings or alternatively, over time in various countries, including in state of Israel, there have been existential threats. You can’t possibly, you can’t possibly seek to, as it were, be an island in that particular context. And that’s the challenge of Judaism. That’s the challenge, which it seems to me, which we’re failing. I despair when I listen to so much, which essentially just jettisons, it moves. It certainly does not in any way embrace the point that Rav Kook made.
Let me, as I conclude the session, let me again emphasise what Rav Kook had to say when he said “That we have four songs, the song of the soul, that’s ourselves, the song of the nation, that’s us, we, Jews. The song of humanity, that’s all of humankind, the song of the world, our responsibility to the creation.” Soloveitchik is right, we are, we are responsible for this world, not God. You can pray as much as you like, but at the end of the day, we are responsible and it’s our response to be creators in partnership. And that means that we’ve got to actually try to sing all four parts of the song. And I’m afraid to say that, that what we’ve got at the moment is a, on the one hand social justice movement that has not been robust enough in dealing with rising anti-Semitism. And we’ve got a particularist movement, which is prepared in many ways to forget the tradition which we are bound to adhere to. And it does seem to me therefore, that what is being lost in all of this is really the most, is the beauty of the tradition.
When I read David Hartman, and I encourage you to read him as well, when I read him, it seems to me a lost world, a world in which I no longer seem to have a place and many of us don’t. A world in which we try to grapple with the tensions of that tradition. We try on the one hand to actually see that four-fold song or we try to reconcile with, “If I’m only for myself, who am I?” That’s really hard. But who said life was easy? And you jettison one part of it, you basically destroy the tradition. And when I read people like Hartman, I think, where are they now? I don’t hear lectures from rabbinical sources of that kind anymore. I do not see that middle ground which Hillel posed for us. I do not see the kind of Soloveitchik argument that we really as creators need to create a world of social justice for all. I do not see a tradition which any longer espouses the it does in the reform and conservative movements, but certainly not in the orthodox, which is Hartman was part of. And since that’s the movement that I come from initially, this saddens me greatly.
So as we move from Pesach to Shavu'ot, we should think about this, that we got physical freedom. And when we got to Sinai, we became the covenantal people, a covenant. A covenant that essentially embraced a moral code for all of humanity. And to the extent that our tradition dictates it, it behoves us to seek that middle ground, which is what our tradition is telling us to do. If you jettison one part or the other, you really extentially debase that which is central to Judaism. And for me, that therefore means a total disappearance of the concept of social justice and Judaism. A remarkable idea. If I can end by saying, in a world of identity politics, how tradition understood a very long time ago that identity is important, but if you seek to promote your identity at the cost of other identities, you ultimately have a world which is so fractured that it cannot be repaired.
And I’ll leave it there and take some questions.
Q&A and Comments
Yes, I’m sorry, Sheri, that I did not mention that over today was Yom HaShoah, which itself is an interesting reflection. You did right, it is significant and it’s significant to think about what the implications of that are within the context of the tradition that I’ve been arguing.
Q: Does the Torah, says Romy, itself envisaged helping non-Jews as well? A: When us the rabbis, I see said, we only give charity to non-Jews to keep the peace and goodwill in general- and our first duties help Jews only. Well, you see that depends. I mean, if you’re going to read in a literal way certain parts of the tradition, yes, that is true. And it is true that to some extent for a considerable period of time, which is why the Talmud and the early sources did not embrace a broader idea was because we were community all on our own, but as we expanded into a more cosmopolitan world, that whole philosophy changed. And the idea of was not a question on repairing the Jewish world in the image of God. It was repairing the whole world. And I failed to understand, I really failed to understand how you can claim to be a covenantal people, which means that you’ve got a covenant which was struck at Sinai, and which ultimately was there to perpetuate a moral code which would- which would basically define law in terms of freedom and say it’s only in the way you suggested.
Yes, I am, Marion, David Hartman died in 2013. And so he wrote tonnes of stuff right through the ‘90s into the early part of the 20th centuries. And I certainly would highly recommend to anybody that they read him. Thank you very much, Sarah, and thank you very much, Sonya. Yes. I think Elon Musk is an embarrassment. Say he’s an embarrassment to me. Yeah, I think rabbi, Ariva, I think Rabbi Sacks did that, do that. And my sadness, my sadness about Rabbi Sacks, his death was, I never thought of him as having got the balance in the same way as Rabbi Hartman did. I have to be honest. And I’m more than happy to actually to engage with you by looking at some of Jonathan Sacks’ texts and David Hartman’s, but I agree, the loss of Jonathan Sacks was the end of an era. It just, for me it was just heart rendering, I agree.
Monty says, I was told growing up and said charity begins in time, Monty, I, yes, that’s why Hillel says “If I’m not for myself, who will be for me?” And you do start there, but you don’t end there. And if you think that we can live in some monastic scenario, where social justice only extend so far as we are concerned and everybody else can starve, well, I’m afraid that’s not great. And let me say this in relation to freedom in South Africa, that the great tragedy of the year 2022 is that to a considerable extent, it’s precisely because we have not addressed the crying for social justice of millions of South Africans who thought they would get a better life after 1994 precisely because they haven’t got it. And that there are those who live astonishingly extravagant lives and that’s no longer necessarily only white people. Because it’s true that in South Africa, the Gini coefficient, which measures inequality is greater between within the Black population than it is between the Black and white, sorry, in the general population. And so the question is, if charity begins at home, you’re just going to, you know, you’re going to live in cent, and have a great time, you won’t have a great time. Eventually what happened in Durban with those rights will occurred to you. So it may start at home and that’s what Hillel was saying. But if you don’t, if you do that alone and you don’t do the other and you don’t do them simultaneously, it’s not a binary, then in fact you run yourself into trouble.
Q: Yeah, Antoinette, in your view, what is the implication of your view for Israel Palestine relations? A: Well, I can’t, I fail to know what the solution to the problem is. Why is the people in here failed? But I do know this, that somewhere along the line, probably long after I shuffled off this mortal coil, there will be, there will be, have to be some reconciliation of some kind. It can’t continue as it is indefinitely. I’m not going to say, this is not a question of blaming the one side or the other, but it is a question of saying you, long-term safety, long-term quite, just can’t continue when you’ve got a scenario where since social justice isn’t extended at all, I mean, God might have had a terrible sense of humour by plunking us where he did, but maybe that was the challenge of the covenantal agreement that we entered into so long ago at Sinai. The we can, if we can finally sort the Palestinian out, issue out, it seem to me that we will be moving very closely towards a messianic age in our time.
Q: Miriam says, would this not be relevant to the fact that so many anti-apartheid activists who risked their lives were Jewish? A: That’s a great question, Miriam. I want to talk a little bit about that tomorrow night when I talk about Isaac Deutscher, “The Non-Jewish Jew,” because it does seem to me, and I think Trudy spoke earlier, unfortunately, I was called away to an event here in Livingstone. So I didn’t hear the lecture on revolution, which I will get a recording of it, listen to, but I do think there’s something there. I remember Rabbi Bernhard, who was the rabbi at the Oxford Synagogue once telling me that despite all my moaning about the fact that the religious community had done too little for apartheid, I had to accept somewhere along the line, the Jewish ethos had inspired a whole bunch of activists in one way or the other. And there is truth in that. And I, and tomorrow night, I’ll try to address that when I talk about Isaac Deutscher.
Steven, do we need to be conscious that is not just pleasure and guilt, that we are not in the shoes of suffering others rather than compassion outside ourselves that suffering, which is the meaning of tzedakah, not as charity, but in Tzedek, the right thing to, absolutely, the word tzedakah as badly translated as charity. It’s all about Tzedek, it’s all about, it’s all about the idea of justice and righteousness Tzedek, Tzedek, why twice? One for us and one for others. But not in a way, as you rightly say, ‘cause I feel guilty. Although quite frankly, you know, speaking personally, I do feel guilty from time to time. This morning I had to get up at some, an earthly hour to get plane, to get to Livingstone from Cape Town. And you drive past those areas to the airport, you know, the areas where people are squatting, and I’m sorry, I don’t want to live in a country like that. I don’t want people to be in that situation. So I do feel, you know, guilty, but I want to, if I, as I hold onto my tradition, I do so because I want to repair the world. I want to be a partner of creation, which is what Soloveitchik said. And you did, right, I couldn’t agree with you more, Steven.
Philip, Rabbi Israel Abrahams’ shortened writings cultural and social justice, even at time when it was headed to me. That’s controversial proposition, Philip, I’m sorry to tell you. Some of Rabbi Abrahams is, but I have to tell you, Rabbi Abrahams was not, history would not show, in my humble opinion, as being in the same league, for example, as Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz, who was the chief rabbi of Johannesburg. Because at that stage, the great Halachah debate in South Africa was, who was the chief rabbi of South Africa, Rabbi Abraham or Rabbi Rabinowitz? But Rabbi Rabinowitz, certainly, was a very, very significant critic of the apartheid system. And as a young person in 1966 when I went on Ulpan, Israel and Rabbi Rabinowitz had made Aliyah and he came to talk to us, it was probably the most inspiring anti-apartheid lecture I’d ever heard, certainly at that stage of my life and even more, I don’t think Rabbi Abrahams were sadly in the same thing. I don’t, I really don’t.
You once, Nechama Leibowitz is my teacher. Louis, that is wonderful. Nechama Leibowitz is one of my great heroes. I do a dossier every shavis for our little shul, and I’ll show you that she’s one of the first sources that I look at. Thank you very much for these compliments. That’s very kind of you all. Debbie, as a Jew has learned to act in this world with social justice well as the strong sense of Jewish community. I’m extremely disheartened with the human rights violations conduct and ongoing based by the IDF, the Israeli government as well as the settlers.
Q: How have you other Jewish people concerned about socialists acted on the human rights violations of Israel? A: That’s a really interesting question. In my case, all I can say is that, that I have been in contact with all sorts of civil rights and human rights groups in Israel and I, and obviously, as a human rights lawyer, I don’t like what’s going on at all. Unfortunately, for most of my time said I’m kind of almost 100% committed to trying to deal with human rights violations in South Africa. That shouldn’t mean that I should not deal with that. And for some time I’ve been wanting to write about some of these issues cause of the sad parallels, which I have seen between the legal systems, which I lived under. And you’re right. And I think we need to be courageous about these issues. If you are really in the belief of Rabbi Hartman, then you’ve got to be courageous enough to say, I understand the question of security, but I certainly don’t understand the fact of the abrogation of the rule of law. So I you know, your point makes me feel that I’ve certainly not done enough. And thank you for reminding me.
Q: Yonna, how does one who follows pursues the balance you espouse deal with individuals, groups, and states of opening powerful, reject, behaving? A: Oh, that’s a really difficult question because that, Yonna, the question is that people, I mean, I agree and that’s why I’m not naive enough not to believe that, you know, to reject the idea, which I accept readily the idea that for example, if you take state of Israel, I do believe that there are those who threaten it existentially. And you can’t talk to them. You can’t, I can’t engage with people who deny the Holocaust. I’m not prepared to have a debate with them. There’s a limit to freedom of speech. And by the way, that’s one of the real worries about the Elon Musk take over of Twitter. ‘Cause if he’s going to allow anything, everything to occur, then ultimately, it’s these particular groups who have no morality, you’re going to have a sounding board all the time. So I can’t talk to them. My own view, however, is that we should defend freedom of speech with the caveat at levels of, you know, I think South Africa got it right when it said that freedom of speech should not extend to hate speech, which incites threats to other communities, et cetera. But broadly, we should also use our speech to out these people and to use every available means to ensure that they’re shown up for what they are. But the truth about it is that unfortunately, thanks to social media and there’s quite lot written about that now we now have a level of hate speech, which is astonishing. And you can’t engage with these people. The only way you can deal with it is to try to put the positive message, which I’ve desperately tried tonight to say is what I think Judaism is all about.
Q: Debbie, can you please speak about the particular ways that you and others take torrid action? A: There’s so many young Jews who are turned away from my Jewish communities because they’re frustrated with learning one thing and seeing another. I think Debbie, in our case, my generation took anti-apartheid struggle very seriously. And there were lots of people who were involved in Jews for Justice and Jews for Social Justice Johannesburg and Cape Town, who were very courageous at the time and who took their Judaism seriously and thought that there was, was, in fact, as I’ve tried to explain it, and certainly, in my life know that I’ve been quite thought amusement by the fact that I’ve quoted the Talmud and other forms of Jewish sources in various judgments, secular judgments of mine. But I mean, as far as I’m concerned, the tragedy for many young Jews is that they aren’t presented with this wonderful image, not my image, the image of tradition. If you’re going to ram down young, intelligent Jews threads, a kind of really particularistic form of Judaism, which assures the universalism, which doesn’t seek the balance, which ultimately, really almost rejects an engagement with secular knowledge and meeting the kind, they’re going to run a mile. And we’re losing them. And I can tell you personally that my own children who went to a Jewish day school, you know, I mean, when I used to read every Friday night every show that’s Jonathan Sacks, “Covenant and Conversation,” they would roll their eyes saying, “Oh, well, give daddy’s five minutes.” But that’s it. Why? Because I don’t think they were presented with the kind of Jewish education, which seems to me which would attract them. And unless, but there are of course, lots of Jewish social justice movements and many of them interesting, as I said. I’m within the reform and the conservative tradition.
Let me see, here’s one, in the Litvak lately, Ozer remarks that the Musar movement is seeking personal, ethical perfection, some of the Yeshiva book has made the jump from the ethical perfection individual to vectoring ethical society and with us enticed by revolutionary socialism. Yes, that’s true. And I’m going to talk a bit about that. I’m going to reserve my comment on that because I’m going to talk about Deutscher tomorrow night.
Q: Do you think that modern conceptual restorative justice helpful? A: Yes, I do. And I and we failed in South Africa to deal with that extent that we are. Rabbi Weiler, the first Reform congression '45, '40. Yes, he did. Rabbi Weiler’s son is Joseph Weiler, one of the most distinguished international lawyers in the world today. And he was Rabbi Weiler’s, Rabbi MC Weiler was an extremely courageous man and thanks to his efforts, he got kicked out of the country. Wonderful at the time.
Thank you very much, Susan. Sonya, Jews have always been at the forefront of liberation. We’ve been seeking justice in Treason Trial. You quite drop-
[Staff Member] Just trying to-
You’re right, it’s not the Treason Trial, it was the, many were in the Treason Trial, but it was very much more the Rivonia Trial. And hopefully, we’re going to talk about the Rivonia Trial when we get to South Africa later in the year. It’s interesting that Rabbi Weiler and Rabbi Rabinowitz, thank you, Reva, I did not know that. Julian, people with no morality currently are on Twitter, they let Iran and Putin speak, but ban people that haven’t killed or threatened anyone. Some people are having, or liking their views, any democracy stood our views he doesn’t like, so long as they don’t threaten or hurt anybody. I agree. So if hypocrisy don’t mind Iran and Putin and Taliban and other banned people no longer on Twitter, truly that’s a good thing. It may be a good thing, but if you’re going to allow all sorts of hate speech to take place, it won’t be a good thing. And I’m not the greatest fan of Elon Musk, but that’s another matter.
Anyway, we’ve come to the end of questions and tomorrow night, I am going to be lecturing on Isaac Deutscher, who is a great biographer of Trotsky, but more important for our purposes, wrote a classic short book called “The Non-Jewish Jew.” And I am going to give some texts about that and talk about that. And we’ll speak about Deutscher and “The Non-Jewish Jew” tomorrow night.
Thank you very much to everybody.