Chapter Three: Existing Strategies for Coping with Cultural Duality

How is it possible to function in a reality of dual cultural loyalties[10] sometimes perceived as disharmonious? Although the question is not new, in recent years it has recurred more frequently and acrimoniously.[11] It is hurled with increasing force at all Israeli Jews. It touches, spiritually, the very essence of some of us, and practically, the cohesion of Israeli society and its ability to survive.

I will characterize three strategies of behavior adopted by three key groups facing this threatening duality. The common denominator of the three strategies is that none of them offers a substantive ideological option for grappling with the reality of existence in circumstances of cultural duality. None offers contemporary Israeli Jews the practical option of being “Jews” and “human beings” simultaneously. The existing strategies are concrete, practical coping options that a frantic reality has allowed to develop and survive over time, but which are obviously incapable of providing personal or national solace.

The religious-Zionist community (also called Orthodox) has adopted and perfected with exceptional success a technique of compartmentalization and evasiveness.[12] For this community, dual loyalty is not harmonious.[13] The Orthodox person is made up of different drawers, each opening up at the appropriate time and place in order to be filled with contents and norms from one of the two cultures. When the Orthodox person is studying at a yeshivah, poring over a page of Talmud, involved in education, thinking of ideas or engaged by moral dilemmas and existential questions, s/he is loading the “Judaism drawer.” When training for a profession, working, reading literature, having fun, consuming goods, and sustaining bourgeois life, s/he closes the first drawer, sometimes hermetically, and opens up the “liberal-Western drawer” to load it with other contents and norms.[14] The dresser (and its drawers) is both the private individual and the Orthodox community. Compartmentalization and evasiveness ensue from the partitions separating the drawers, precluding integration between the worlds.[15] As double security doors, with one programmed to open only after the other closes, so the world of the Orthodox, who beware of mingling the two parts of their identity.[16] Note that Orthodox ethos and ideology resort to a language of renaissance and renewal, intended to discover the modern facets latent in tradition. The actual attempt to cope with duality, however, both individually and communally, is based on compartmentalization and evasiveness.[17] Rather than a harmonious solution, this is a technique of survival in a world of multiple identities perceived as contradictory.[18]

The strategy of the ultra-Orthodox (haredi) community is relatively easy to discover. Alienation replaces compartmentalization, and retreat supplants evasiveness. Faced with cultural duality, members of the haredi community adopt the mentality of the vanquished. They define their immediate surroundings as their “little piece of Heaven.”[19] In despair, they renounce “Klal Yisrael” (the community of Israel), who have sinned, and mourn the cultural death of all other Jews. Having adopted this perspective, they can cooperate in civic matters, although cooperation is minimal and instrumental,[20] not at the experiential level, and certainly not at the level of values.[21] The haredi strategy, therefore, does not promote shared responsibility.

What does the secular public do? Against compartmentalization and alienation, it endorses abdication.[22] Instead of evasiveness and retreat, we find oblivion. In fact, the secular public generally draws away from intimacy with its heritage.[23] Although a deliberate call for full abandonment of the Jewish heritage resonates at present only within limited (though prestigious) circles, this idea has gained a large, and far broader, concrete following among Israelis. First, replacing national identity with neutral individualism is a project attuned to the zeitgeist, which courts the idea of normalcy and integration into the family of nations. Second, and most significant for my argument, many are interested in a Jewish identity steeped in the historical legacy, but do not act upon their wishes. General Israeli culture—as manifest in the educational system, the arts and local creativity, philosophy, ethics, the economy, the law, the language, the media, politics, symbols, and role models, and in the complex of life-cycle social practices—bears hardly any trace of the Jewish cultural legacy. Direct involvement in Jewish studies is also gradually decreasing.[24] This means renouncing current experiential applications of the wealth of knowledge, memory, and meaning of Jewish existence throughout the ages, as preserved in the cultural heritage. In Gadamer’s terms, this is a renunciation of the vital fusion between the horizon of the past and the horizon of the present.[25]

The loss of cultural and national identity and the severance of historical continuity are easily evident in an area where Jewish culture was for long highly prominent, and will be the focus of my discussion in the rest of this paper: the law. When Knesset legislation did occasionally enable a meaningful use of elements of Jewish culture to interpret modern norms, the courts charged with the implementation and interpretation of this legislation chose to ignore this option. Examples are well-known: the section in the Foundations of Law Statute, 1980, stating that the court will resort to “the principles of freedom, justice, equity, and peace in Jewish tradition” as complementary sources in cases of legal lacunae, remains a dead letter.[26] For over twenty years, the court has not sought inspiration in these principles of Jewish heritage. Even more significantly, when a Basic Law in the early 1990s coined the phrase “the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” it was suggested that those values be interpreted as values addressed at their level of universalist abstraction, suited to the democratic character of the state.[27] In other words, the values of a Jewish state will assume normative meaning in state law if they are compatible with the values of a democratic state, not necessarily Jewish.[28] The values of Judaism are subject to judicial review according to criteria set by democratic values. When cultural duality exposes an intractable discrepancy between these two cultural systems, the judge will decide according to the views of the “enlightened public.”[29]

Judges making hermeneutical choices of this kind[30] are not adopting a personal judicial policy. They are conveying an attitude widespread in Israeli society, accepting Jewish outlooks when compatible with a general weltanschauung and renouncing deeper layers of traditional Jewish culture when they convey unique values and priorities incompatible with Western-liberal culture. This signals a renunciation of “Judaism” in its traditional-halakhic sense as a relevant factor in a value decision unacceptable in the universal marketplace of ideas.

10. For a general discussion of various aspects of dual loyalty, see Ruth Gavison, Can Israel Be Both Jewish and Democratic? Tensions and Prospects [Hebrew] (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Van Leer Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1999), 21-45; Gershon Weiler, Jewish Theocracy [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1976); Ariel Rosen-Zvi, “‘A Jewish and Democratic State’: Spiritual Parenthood, Alienation, and Symbiosis - Can We Square the Circle?” [Hebrew], Tel Aviv University Law Review 19 (1995): 479; Uzzi Ornan, Asmodeus’ Claws: Eight Chapters on Secularism [Hebrew] (Kiryiat Tiv’on: Einam, 1999); Levontin, “A Riddle of Twin Worlds.”
 
11. Thus, for instance, the issue of dual loyalty among the religious (and in recent years among the ultra-Orthodox as well) assumes specific meanings in the context of the controversy over the peace process. As early as the mid-seventies, Gush Emunim [Bloc of the Faithful] leaders anchored their a-legalism not only in the pragmatic secular context of the political dispute about the value of settlements, but also in the theoretical religious context of a religious commitment, which may sometimes contradict democratic allegiances. To justify their illegal action, they relied not only on Yitzhak Tabenkin (1887-1971), a Labor leader who had championed the cause of “Greater Israel” after the Six Day War, but also on Maimonides. See Ehud Shprinzak, Every Man Did Whatsoever Is Right in His Own Eyes: Illegalism in Israeli Society [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1986), 126-145, and references. Halakhic rulings issued at the time of the Oslo Accords forbidding territorial concessions and stating an obligation to disobey orders to vacate IDF bases in Judea and Samaria sharpened the question of dual loyalty. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin also adduced religious motives. The question, however, arises in other contexts as well. For instance, the validity of laws and judicial rulings regulating matters of religion and state (such as the character of the public space on the Sabbath); the status and authority of state courts defined as “Gentile courts,” etc. The “Der’i is innocent” campaign also exhibits religious characteristics. When Shas minister Aryeh Der’i was convicted for misuse and misappropriation of public funds, his supporters claimed he was innocent in the heavenly court, further illustrating the strains resulting from dual loyalties.
 
12. For an up to date description of religious-Zionist society see Yair Sheleg, The New Religious Jews: Recent Developments among Observant Jews in Israel [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Keter, 2000), Part 1. Several periodicals document the complexities of self-definition in the religious-Zionist community and the painful soul-searching that many of its members experience in contending with cultural duality. Among them are Meimad (issued by a religious-Zionist movement supportive of peace initiatives rejected by mainstream religious-Zionism); De’ot (issued by Ne’emanei Torah va-Avodah [Torah and Labor Followers], who urge a return to the founding principles of religious Zionism); the ten volumes of Akdamot (a journal issued by the Jerusalem Beth Morashah Center for Advanced Jewish Studies), and Hadas Goldberg, ed., Ke-Lavi Yakum: A Reappraisal of the Principles of Religious-Zionism and Modern Orthodoxy [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Modan, 2000). Many of the articles in these publications call for renewal and for a philosophical revolution, motivated by the strain of contending with duality.
 
13. The tension between tradition and modernity is a primary experience and an existential challenge for the religious-Zionist public. Many rabbis presently leading this public are clearly inclined towards an anti-modernist stance. Some of them adopt the ultra-Orthodox model, which negates modernity in principle. These findings are surprising, given the vast philosophical and educational efforts that the spiritual historical leadership of neo-Orthodoxy invested in the intellectual and spiritual integration of tradition and modernity. The three outstanding thinkers in this area are Samson Raphael Hirsch, founder of the Torah Im Derekh-Eretz movement in nineteenth century Germany (see, for instance, Eliezer Stern, The Educational Ideal of Torah Im Derekh-Eretz [Hebrew] [Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1987]); Abraham Yitzhak Kook, the first Chief Rabbi in the Land of Israel (see, for instance, Nachum Arieli, “Integration in the Philosophy of Rav Kook,” in The World of Rav Kook’s Thought, ed. Benjamin-Ish-Shalom and Shalom Rosenberg, trans. Shalom Carmy and Bernard Casper [New York: Avi Chai, 1991], 156-186), and Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, who was the spiritual inspiration and the leader of twentieth century North-American Orthodoxy (see, for instance, Avi Sagi, ed., Faith in Changing Times: On the Doctrine of R. Joseph Dov Soloveitchik [Hebrew] [Jerusalem: WZO, 1996], particularly Part 4). The approaches of these thinkers have been classified into models of co-existence (Hirsch), harmony (Kook), or dialectics (Soloveitchik). See Aviezer Ravitzky, Freedom Inscribed: Diverse Voices of the Jewish Religious Thought [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1999), 161, 167. Others offer a classification of models as rationalist (Maimonides), cultural (Hirsch), mystical (Kook), instrumental, and others. See Norman Lamm, Torah Umadda: The Encounter of Religious Learning and Worldly Knowledge in the Jewish Tradition (Northvale, N.J.: J. Aronson, 1990). Although these philosophical efforts have had some impact on sections of the religious public, none of these options enjoys wide following among contemporary religious-Zionists. My concern here is not with the reasons for this failure, but only with its detection.
 
14. “The religious public, faithful to the Torah on one hand and a collaborator in the various communal life arrangements on the other, is at the impasse of inner contradiction. It no longer says that the world is not important, given that Zionism took upon itself to re-emerge on the stage of history and, until the last crisis, had even done so with considerable success. Yet, the traditional frameworks to which it is committed continue to view this world as a marginal place. The result is a sharp dichotomy: all values related to the world—from honest government and an efficient army to the public’s level of education—are considered part of the secular dimension of life, while religiosity is limited to areas within its exclusive purview: the religious community, rituals and proscriptions.” Yoav Shorek (Schlesinger), “The Unbearable Irrelevance of the Torah” [Hebrew], Tkhelet: A Journal of Israeli Thought 2 (1997): 56, 78.
 
15. Sociologists of religious societies have recognized and analyzed the phenomenon of compartmentalization. See, generally, Peter L. Berger, The Heretical Imperative (Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor Press, 1979). For the phenomenon of compartmentalization in Jewish religious society, see Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don Yehiyah, Civil Religion in Israel (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1983), 191-194; Charles S. Liebman, “The Rise of Neo-Traditionalism among Moderate Religious Circles in Israel” [Hebrew], Megamot 27 (1982): 231, 234-235; Zeev Safrai, “Religion, Halakhah, Tradition, and Modernity” [Hebrew], in A Good Eye: Dialogue and Polemic in Jewish Culture, ed. Nakhem Ilan (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1999), 582, 591-592. Some scholars place the roots of the compartmentalization strategy in the Orthodox community in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, led by Samson Raphael Hirsch. See Ismar Schorsch, Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism 1870-1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 10.
 
16. But see Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s early thinking in Aryei Fishman, “The Search for Existential-Religious Unity: The Early Writings of Yeshayahu Leibowitz” [Hebrew], in Yeshayahu Leibowitz: His World and Philosophy, ed. Avi Sagi (Jerusalem: Keter, 1995), 121.
 
17. “In modern Orthodoxy today, ideology tends toward synthesis or dialectic, but consciousness tends more strongly toward compartmentalization and a separation of roles and powers.” Ravitzky, Freedom Inscribed, 175.
 
18. Compartmentalization is certainly not the only technique. For instance, religious-Zionism successfully resorted to hermeneutical mechanisms to contend with the cognitive dissonance resulting from the gap between the ethos and consciousness of religious-Zionism, which are traditional, and the ways of life of religious-Zionism, which are modern. On this issue see Avi Sagi, “Religious-Zionism: Between Closure and Openness” [Hebrew], in Judaism: A Dialogue between Cultures, ed. Avi Sagi, Dudi Schwartz, and Yedidia Z. Stern (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999), 124.
 
19. On this issue, see Menachem Friedman, The Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Society: Sources, Trends and Processes (Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 1991), 144-161.
 
20. Generally, the ultra-Orthodox reject the cultural-ethical dimension of modernity while accepting its instrumental dimension. In daily life, however, it is hard to sift out one dimension from the other, and alienation is inevitable. In other words, unlike the compartmentalization that characterizes religious-Zionists, the alienation of the ultra-Orthodox is essential to the character of haredi religiosity.
 
21. See Eliezer Schweid, “Is Judaism a ‘Separate Domain’ or a Culture?” [Hebrew], in Judaism: A Dialogue between Cultures, 407.
 
22. Defining their identity through a conscious renunciation of the legacy of Judaism is not widespread among secularists. The usual stance is that Jewish secularism “has been nurtured by Hebrew and Jewish culture throughout Jewish history. It includes the Hebrew language, its culture and literature - sacred as well as mundane - which has been part of our literature since its inception. Secular Jewish culture also includes the principles of Jewish faith as one of the important cultural values of Judaism; the Jewish way of life, including the rich religious literature; Jewish philosophy through the ages, religious and non-religious; and the Jewish culture that has emerged over the last generations and is still unfolding at present, in Hebrew and in other languages. All these and many others belong to our national culture, on which we base our Jewish identity. Our vast cultural legacy is the foundation of our Jewish identity.” See Yedidia Yitzhaki, Principles of Jewish Secularity [Hebrew] (Haifa: Haifa University Press and Zmora-Bitan, 1999). Others view secular Judaism in shallower terms: “A common language, a common history, a few basic shared myths, and ownership of a share in the organization called ‘state’ are enough for a citizen of Israel to feel that he belongs to the Jewish nation. The existence of a national feeling, which is a subjective essence, is a patently objective fact.” Yaron London, “Religious and Freethinkers” [Hebrew], in We Secular Jews, ed. Dedi Zucker (Tel Aviv: Yedioth Aharonoth, 1999), 23, 30. Another shallow approach holds: “The Bible is the only basis common to the culture of all movements in Judaism.” See Yaakov Malkin, What Do Secular Jews Believe [Hebrew], (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 2000). As we know, many secular leaders and thinkers, including Ben-Gurion and Ahad Ha’am, preferred the Bible and its heroes and ignored the subsequent rich tradition and culture that developed in Judaism. The extraordinary leap into biblical romanticism enables secular Judaism to thrust aside the huge and amazing endeavor called “the Oral Law.” Secular culture dismisses the sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud, the geonim, the early [rishonim] and later [aharonim] authorities, as well as halakhists and Jewish thinkers throughout the ages. As Sagi notes, by choosing the romantic track and “skipping back to the ‘clean’ beginning,” secular culture can shape a new myth and a new ethos that deliberately reject those of traditional halakhic Judaism. Avi Sagi, Society and Law in Israel: Between a Rights Discourse and an Identity Discourse (Ramat Gan: Zivion-Bar Ilan University, 2001). For additional views see Weiler, Jewish Theocracy; Abraham B. Yehoshua, Between Right and Right [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1980); Joseph Agassi, Religion and Nationality: Towards an Israeli National Identity [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Papyrus, 1984); “Pratt” (Avigdor Levontin), Dawn and Dusk [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Shashar, 1991). At the end of the spectrum is a view holding that Israeli culture must be detached from any link to Judaism and its heritage: “There is a need to move ahead to a more Western, more pluralistic, less ‘ideological’ form of patriotism and citizenship. One looks with envy at the United States, where patriotism is centered on the Constitution; naturalization is conferred by a judge in a court of law; identity is defined politically and is based on law, not on history, culture, race, religion, nationality or language.” Amos Elon, “Israel and the End of Zionism,” The New York Review of Books, 19 December 1966, 27-28.
 
23. Eliezer Schweid analyzes the concern surrounding the place of religious content in Israeli secular culture: “A categorical and total rejection of religious content, then, implies a rupture of the cultural-historical continuity and the loss of the cultural-national identity. Zionism also brought with it remarkable spiritual creativity, but its attainments failed to fill the void that the rejection of halakhic religious content had left behind. Nor has the effort to create a national secular “equivalent” of this content … proven successful, despite its many achievements. Although the foundation was laid in the course of the twentieth century for a Hebrew Israeli culture, this culture is lacking in two regards: it reached neither the depths nor the heights of religion, which answers questions about the meaning of human existence, and it lacked compelling normative validity. The feeling soon began to surface that a vacuum had opened up, that Hebrew education remained trivial and superficial, that intellectual life was slack and shallow, that a comprehensive worldview touching not only on political life but also on questions of personal and interpersonal relationships was missing, and that the social and cultural achievements of Zionism are taken for granted by the second generation rather than as an ideal still to be pursued.” See Eliezer Schweid, Judaism and Secular Culture [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1981), 221-222. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who rests the cultural controversy not on differences of concepts and beliefs but on different ways of life that convey acceptance or refutation of the commandments’ validity, states unequivocally: “Scraps falling off the table of Jewish history and tradition even now reach a large segment of the secular population, and through the power of these scraps, most of them still view themselves as links in the chain of Jewish history. This continuity, however, remains only an aim, openly contradicting the actual rupture that characterizes reality for the secular public, and for the state and the society whose profile this public determines…. The unconscious, and at times even the conscious aim of the secular public is to create a synthetic “Jewish People.” Membership in this people will not be determined by Judaism but by an identity card signed by a clerk working at Israel’s Ministry of Interior.” Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Judaism, the Jewish People, and the State of Israel [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1976), 268.
 
24. Particularly touching are the words of Yosef Dan, an Israel Prize laureate, on receiving the award: “Today, the only group in the universe casting doubts on the legitimacy, the dynamism, and the relevance of Jewish studies is the secular public in Israel, to which I belong. When I began my studies in this field, most teachers and most of my fellow students were avowed secularists, who had no trouble integrating Jewish and Western culture, and felt at home in both. Not so today. The extreme radicalization process that developed among both ultra-Orthodox and secularists has largely worn down anyone found in the middle…. The result is that today, more books on Jewish studies are printed abroad and in other languages than here and in Hebrew. The number of students and of scholars is dropping in Israel and rising abroad. The gap between the secular majority in Israel and everything related - even slightly and indirectly - to the Jewish legacy is progressively widening. The secular scholar and the secular student of Jewish studies have become increasingly rare figures…. All this is driven by the mistaken belief that only a repudiation of all Jewish culture (which is perceived essentially as ultra-Orthodox) will draw us closer to the big world beyond.” See Yosef Dan, “The Liberation of Ultra-Orthodoxy: A Product of Secular Israel” [Hebrew], Alpayim 15 (1998): 234, 236-237.
 
25. Gadamer explains the concept of “horizon” as follows: “… an essential part of the concept of situation is the concept of ‘horizon.’ The horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point. Applying this to the thinking mind, we speak of narrowness of horizon, of the possible expansion of horizon, of the opening up of new horizon etc.… A person who has no horizon is a man who does not see far enough and hence overvalues what is nearest to him. Contrariwise, to have an horizon means not to be limited to what is nearest, but to be able to see beyond it. A person who has an horizon knows the relative significance of everything within this horizon, as near as far, great or small.” Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 269. This is the basis for understanding the concept of the “fusion of horizons” and its link to the present discussion on the value of tradition: “In fact, the horizon of the present is being continually formed, in that we have continually to test all our prejudices. An important part of this testing is the encounter with the past and the understanding of the tradition from which we come. Hence, the horizon of the present cannot be formed without the past. There is no more an isolated horizon of the present than there are historical horizons. Understanding rather, is always the fusion of these horizons which we imagine to exist by themselves. We know the power of this kind of fusion chiefly from earlier times and their naive attitude to themselves and their origin. In a tradition, this process of fusion is continually going on, for there old and new continually grow together to make something of living value, without either being explicitly distinguished from the other.” Ibid., 273. See also, at length, Menachem Mautner, “Gadamer and the Law” [Hebrew], Tel Aviv University Law Review 23 (2000): 367.
 
26. This legislation was accompanied by great controversy. See Aaron Kirschenbaum, “The Foundations of Law, 1980: Today and Tomorrow” [Hebrew], Tel Aviv University Law Review 2 (1985): 117-126; Menachem Elon, “More about the Foundations of Law Act” [Hebrew], Shenaton ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri 13 (1987): 227-256; Hanina ben-Menachem, “The Foundations of Law Act: How Much of a Duty?” [Hebrew], Shenaton ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri 13 (1987): 257-264; Aharon Barak, “The Foundations of Law Act and the Heritage of Israel” [Hebrew], Shenaton ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri 13 (1987): 265-284; Eliav Schochetman, “On Analogy in Decision Making in Jewish Law and The Foundations of Law Act” [Hebrew], Shenaton ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri 13 (1987): 307-350; Shmuel Shiloh, “Comments and Some New Light on the Foundations of Law Act” [Hebrew], Shenaton ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri 13 (1987): 351-370; Leon Sheleff, “On Criminal Law and Jewish Law: Toward Legal Foundations for the Jewish Heritage” [Hebrew], Plilim: Israeli Journal of Criminal Justice 3 (1992): 102-146.
 
27. See Aharon Barak, “The Constitutional Revolution: Protected Basic Rights” [Hebrew], Mishpat Umimshal 1 (1992-1993): 9, 31.
 
28. Elon criticizes this position based on the discriminatory approach he identifies in Barak’s treatment of the twin concepts of a “democratic state” and a “Jewish state.” See Menachem Elon, “The Values of a Jewish Democratic State in Light of the Basic Law: Human Liberty and Dignity” [Hebrew], Tel Aviv University Law Review 17 (1993): 659, 686. Barak rejects this interpretation of his outlook. He clarifies that his intention refers to a neutral and reciprocal stance, whereby each of these terms will be interpreted, as far as possible, in a way compatible with the inner content of the other. In other words, the term “democratic state” should also be interpreted at a level of abstraction that allows for a content that is also suitable to the values of a Jewish state. See Aharon Barak, Constitutional Interpretation [Hebrew], vol. 3 of Interpretation in Law (Jerusalem: Nevo, 1994), 343-344.
 
29. Ibid., 345-347.

30. One of the more enraged responses to this approach came from the Shas Party, in a document that Attorney Yaakov Weinrot submitted on 28 December 1992 to Minister of Justice David Libai, entitled The Position of Shas on Basic Law: Basic Human Rights. Shas viewed this hermeneutical move as a hostile act, analogous to the one Jean Paul Sartre claims is embedded in the thinking of the liberal democrat in his attitude to the Jew “who insists on remaining Jewish.” Jean-Paul Sartre ascribes “a tinge of anti-Semitism” to the liberal democrat on these grounds: “He wants to separate the Jew from his religion, from his family, from his ethnic community, in order to plunge him into the democratic crucible whence he will emerge naked and alone, an individual and solitary particle like all the other particles.… For a Jew, conscious and proud of being Jewish, asserting his claim to be a member of the Jewish community without ignoring on that account the bonds which unite him to the national community, there may not be so much difference between the anti-Semite and the democrat. The former wishes to destroy him as a man and leave nothing in him but the Jew, the pariah, the untouchable; the latter wishes to destroy him as a Jew and leave nothing in him but the man, the abstract and universal subject of the rights of man and the rights of the citizen.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, trans. George J. Becker (New York: Grove Press, 1962), 57; originally published as Réflexions sur la question juive (Paris: Paul Morihein, 1946).