Human Rights and Judaism: Detailed Project Description

Nearly all of the Jews in Israel, and many of Jews in the modern world, live in a state of cultural duality. As individuals and communities they drink from the wells of both the Jewish tradition and liberal Western thought. They embrace, theoretically and practically, both their Jewish identity (as an expression of national, cultural and even religious uniqueness) and their liberal democratic identity. Many studies have found a widespread desire by Israeli Jews to live in both worlds. This desire is reflected not only in the personal or communal sphere but also in the accepted definition of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Although the Israeli public is divided over the meaning and content of "Jewish and democratic," a majority of the members of the Israeli public accept this definition and cherish their dual identity.

At the same time, tensions stemming from lack of clarity over Israel's national identity have been rising in recent decades. Many Israelis have come to believe that maintaining this cultural duality is difficult to do and hard to justify. Unfortunately, the market of ideas in Israel does not offer persuasive strategies for living in conditions of normative duality. The difficulty is particularly evident in the public sphere, where dueling ideologues exploit the uncertainty over national identity in order to present Israel's "Jewish" and "democratic" cultures as alternative identities that are mutually exclusive and in a perpetual state of conflict. The battle is fought over a broad range of issues, including intellectual influence, political power, and budgetary allocations. Although this conflict has been part of Zionism since the movement's inception, a number of developments have led to its exacerbation during the past generation. Today, both internal factors (such as the state's growing political instability and the tension between religion and state in Israel) and external ones (such as the ascendance of postmodern ideas) combine to fan the flames of controversy.

Perhaps the most serious and persistent point of contention between advocates of a "Jewish state" and advocates of a "democratic state" is the state's attitude towards human rights. The commitment to uphold human rights is a critical constitutive element of a modern liberal democracy. Yet a substantial portion of the Israeli public perceives the doctrine of human rights to be a hostile expression of a foreign culture. They view Israel's commitment to human rights as a genuine threat to the Jewish character of the state, and regard the language of human rights with suspicion.

The goal of the "Human Rights and Judaism" project is to explore the possibility and meaning of living in cultural duality, while focusing on the issue of human rights and duties. Besides the importance of studying the significance of human rights for private and national Jewish life in our generation, it is vital to understand the broader encounter between ‘liberal-universal’ and ‘Jewish-particularistic’ values in the twenty first century.

This is an academic research project of an intellectual nature. It will be undertaken by researchers who will conduct their studies in accordance with the accepted research methods of their respective disciplines within the human sciences. The project does not seek to promote any particular position, but rather to study the phenomenon of cultural duality along parallel lines. We wish to examine the attitude of Judaism in its broadest sense—including law, philosophy, culture, and historic memory—towards human rights. Conversely, we seek to explore the unique rights and duties found within Jewish culture, and their relevance to the Jewish and democratic nation-state, as well as to Jews in the Diaspora.

This dual approach is intended to allow for the cross-fertilization of ideas and to delineate areas of commonality between important aspects of liberal discourse and the language of Judaism. Where the two cultural proposals diverge, we will illuminate the unique value of each so that the liberal and Jewish traditions can be enriched and refined by one another.

In recent months, the development team has consulted experts in various fields for an initial outline and mapping of the field’s intellectual horizons. Following these consultations, we suggest that the project include five complementary spheres of activity. The first two stages of the project will focus on the internal language of each of the intellectual worlds in question: Jewish thought and liberal thought, in the context of human rights and duties. The third stage will focus upon theories related to the encounter between these worlds; the fourth stage will explore specific rights and duties, and the fifth stage will expand the theoretical scope to include other areas of culture and society.

First, we will examine whether the doctrine of human rights is universal, or whether it is rooted in Western culture and inseparable from that culture’s unique set of values. We will also investigate whether there can be flexibility in the formulation, interpretation, and implementation of human rights in diverse cultural settings over the course of time.

Naturally, the question of the universality and flexibility of human rights is a general one that has concerned researchers of human rights over the last decades, and especially those studying multicultural societies or societies where religious norms play a central and defining role. Accordingly, our team-members will utilize existing literature on the subject and apply it to the unique dilemmas surrounding the encounter between human rights and Judaism.

Second, the project researchers, who will represent a variety of disciplines and research methods, will examine the internal Jewish debate on issues associated with human rights. The researchers will work with Jewish sources to detect overt or covert human rights concepts and explore their unique characteristics. They will also examine Judaism’s alternatives to the human rights doctrine, including a community-based perception of societal relations, social solidarity, and interpersonal commitment; a republican approach that emphasizes the individual's obligation to community or state; and a normative-halakhic approach to one's relationship with society. These are among Judaism’s most clearly recognizable alternatives to an emphasis on individual rights.

Third, after we examine each of the two worlds' capacity for inclusion and/or flexibility, we will work to develop a theory concerning the encounter between the liberal and Jewish worlds in the era of human rights. The theory might combine static and dynamic methods: the static method is based on an examination of the existing literature of each one of the worlds (as emerges from the previous two stages). As part of the static discussion, the various issues concerning human rights doctrine and the corresponding Jewish discourse will be mapped out and explored through case studies that compare and contrast cases in which there is a conceptual and practical affinity between the different discourses to cases in which there is a clear divergence. We will explore the possibility of the existence of an overlapping consensus, outline its limitations, and explore a broad variety of related questions.

Alongside the static method, the project will engage a more dynamic methodology as well. The researchers will ask themselves questions regarding the patterns of activity, development, and interpretation that Judaism and the liberal world can employ in order to incorporate one another. The discussion of the theory of dialogue will be based both on a general universal study and a particularistic Jewish one. The general part of the discussion will rely on historic and cultural studies into the encounters between different cultures and societies. These studies document and analyze different dynamics that occur during encounters between cultures—including withdrawal, revival of dormant components of one culture following exposure to the opposing discourse, or use of the opposing culture to enrich one's own. Special attention will be paid to studies of the encounters between liberalism and Western cultures on the one hand and non-liberal cultures on the other. The second element of the discussion has an internal Jewish component: the exploration of halakha and Judaism’s development following encounters with Christianity, Islam and modernity. Special attention will be paid to the dynamic and developing nature of halakha, universal layers that exist in Judaism (such as moral principles), the seven Noahide laws, and the ability of these principles to serve as a practical link to the liberal doctrine of human rights.

A substantial dialogue, or a valuable encounter, has the potential to influence both of its participants. Therefore, this project will test the potential of the liberal principles expressed in the human rights doctrine to influence Jewish thought. Conversely, it will explore potential Jewish influence on liberal thought.

Fourth, we will move from the general and theoretical to the specific and practical. In this section of the project we will address the ‘rights’ themselves. We will consider the possibility of cross-pollination between the accepted doctrines of human rights and those of Judaism in relation to a long list of concrete issues. Research papers will be written with a focus on specific rights—civil, social, and political—and on particular aspects of these rights. These studies will add new material to the Jewish bookshelf. Thus, step by step, a Jewish language of human rights will be developed.

During this phase of the project we will confront complex and challenging aspects of the encounter between human rights and Judaism, including, for example, the rights of non-Jews, women, and homosexuals.

Fifth and finally, we intend to expand the boundaries of the project in a number of ways. If we perceive "human rights" in their broadest sense, they contain not only a legal (or halachic) discussion, but rather elements of numerous other disciplines within the human sciences. Accordingly, the theoretical foundations established through this study are applicable to numerous areas of human existence and should not be reduced to the normative plane only. Similarly, the project's attitude towards "Judaism" embraces not only religious thought (including all participating streams) but also cultural, national, and social perspectives that exhibit Jewish characteristics. We are looking not only at the distant past and classical texts—though they are central to this discussion—but also at recent articulations and current streams of knowledge in order to consider the widest possible variety of Jewish expression. These broad horizons naturally raise questions as to the boundaries of the project. At this stage we cannot draw its precise boundaries for fear of stifling its tremendous potential; however, this task will undoubtedly occupy us as the project progresses. At this point, suffice it to say that we wish to navigate the encounter between human rights and Judaism using a broad approach that can accommodate the many manifestations of both the particular and universal duality in which we exist.