One of the outstanding features of the modern world is the multitude of identities of individuals, communities, and sometimes even states— a situation that is both enriching and challenging. In many cases, this profusion of identities surrounds the relationship between religious identity and a commitment to the values of Western liberalism, in particular to human rights discourse. The relationship of Jews in Israel and worldwide to their Jewish identity, on the one hand, and their dedication to Western liberal values, on the other, exemplifies the rich potential, as well as the tension and challenges, of the encounter between religion and modernity. Many Jews in the modern world live in a state of cultural duality. As individuals and communities, they draw from the wellsprings of both Jewish tradition and Western liberal thought. In theory and in practice, they embrace both their Jewish identity (as an expression of national, cultural, and religious uniqueness) and their liberal democratic identity. Yet the Jewish religious and political traditions, by their very nature, often contain elements of particularity and exclusion.
This tension has a profound influence on the identity of the State of Israel. Numerous studies conducted in Israel have found a universal desire by Jews to live in both worlds. This desire is reflected not only in the individual and communal sphere but also in the accepted definition of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Yet in contemporary Israel, where questions of human rights and exclusion of minorities are more existential and less theoretical than in many other Western nations, the question of the complex relationship between human rights and Jewish tradition is especially timely. Some observers have come to believe that maintaining the primacy of human rights in what is, in many ways, a particularist state is too difficult to justify. Others, relying on Jewish tradition, believe that human rights should be a supreme value in a Jewish nation.
The Human Rights and Judaism panel will explore the challenges and opportunities of living in a culture, and a nation, in which there is a synergy between what would appear to be the mutually exclusive goals of a particularistic vision and a humanist, liberal worldview. The goal of this encounter is not to promote a particular position but to study the phenomenon of cultural duality from different vantage points. The panel will examine the attitude of Judaism in its broadest sense—law, philosophy, culture, and historical memory—toward the concept of human rights. At the same time, it will 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.