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A Jewish Public Theology
 A Jewish Public Theology

God and the Global City

By Abraham Unger

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I dedicate this book to
Rabbi Jay Miller, may his memory be for a blessing
My Rebbe, who taught me how to think

Ari and Rafi Unger

My sons, whose intelligence, empathy, and thirst for Torah
continuously amaze me
 Preface

I recall some years ago walking along Broadway on Manhattan’s Upper

West Side with a good friend who had just begun her studies at Union
Theological Seminary, the famed Protestant seminary that once hosted on
its faculty the seminal public theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich.
I was studying for ordination as an Orthodox Rabbi, and I was curious what
my Christian friend was studying in her graduate program. She told me,
“systematic theology.” I asked her what that was. I did not have a full grasp
of what a theology and its contents might entail, let alone an
understanding of its doctrinal structure. Then my friend asked what
material I was covering. I replied, “law.” Law? That was it? No theology? No
philosophy? No. Just the casuistry of Talmudic law, reasoning out how to
think through a piece of torts or a complex ritual matter. She asked me
where G-d was in all this. I was caught off guard. This was not a question I
had considered before.
I was firmly convinced, and still am, that G-d gave Israel, meaning the
Jewish body politic, a divine body of Biblical statutes and the exegetical
principles underlying their Rabbinic expansion, the proverbial “fence
around the law” (Avot 1:1). I further believed that this revelation occurred
in a historic Divine-human encounter at Mt. Sinai, as Exodus records (19:1–
20). But I could not articulate the presence of G-d in my Talmudic
curriculum, while all that my friend was doing, it seemed, was reading and
writing about G-d. Her academic path certainly seemed a reasonable
course of study for someone at a seminary.
Afterwards, I tried to figure out what the underlying message of my
Talmudic studies might actually be. I delved into the work of Rabbi Joseph
Soloveitchik. Soloveitchik suggested an attractive apologetic for Jewish
Orthodoxy, passionately arguing that any authentic Jewish philosophy must
emanate from the Halakhah, the Jewish legal tradition (1986). His
reasoning seemed iron clad to a student of Rabbinics. Halakhic material
provided the foundational literature of the Jewish corpus until the advent
of modernity and alternative, extra-legal expressions of Jewish thought
such as academic Jewish studies and Zionism. Soloveitchik put it bluntly
when he wrote, “Rabbinic legalism, so derided by theologians, is nothing
but an exact method of objectification” (1986, p. 85). I realized that the
practicalities of the Law offered source material on what the contours of an
authentic Jewish theology might be. The project that Soloveitchik outlined
was to let theory emerge from the raw data in order to build a Jewish
religious philosophy out of the lived experience of the covenantal
Halakhah.
I went on to graduate training at Fordham University in political
science. This great Jesuit bulwark taught me to think rigorously and
exposed me to both practical philosophy and metaphysics. But this tight
methodology, insisting on taking text on its own terms, meaning seeing the
words in the context of the hermeneutic that generated them rather than
taking a behavioralist stance, fit with my Rabbinic background. It was a
new literature, but the same casuistic method of close parsing out of
formative texts.
Each tradition has its missing pieces. Soloveitchik’s call to build a
genuine Jewish philosophy has not yet been realized. Except for one slim
work in Western philosophic language defending the intellectual integrity
of his neo-Orthodox polemical stance (1986), Soloveitchik’s oeuvre was
overwhelmingly homiletical, not philosophical. In the end, he was a master
exegete of Talmudic text within the yeshiva, but the promise of
Soloveitchik’s early claim towards generating a Rabbinic approach to the
existential issues surrounding the human condition was not fulfilled.
Even considering Heschel and his more sustained theological
reflection, there has not been a classically grounded Jewish text along the
lines of what many non-Jewish theologians have attempted. Christian
teaching is not my bailiwick in terms of my own dual tracks of scholarship
in public policy and Judaism, but I am aware of a varied and nuanced
Christian tradition of reflection on the theological implications of
twentieth- and twenty-first-
century public life, ranging from Niebuhr to Stackhouse and Volf. Christian
public theologians have long demonstrated how a faith tradition may speak
both prophetically and practically to the range of contemporary public
policy issues. Over the past two decades, since I began my Rabbinic and
academic careers, those issues have become even more urgent due to
globalization. Jewish thought is rich in law and somewhat in philosophy,
but it does not yet provide any fully sustained public theology volume.
Given my work as a political scientist trained by Orthodox Talmudists and
Jesuits, still thinking about that walk with my friend in a Protestant
seminary, I thought that a systematized Jewish public theology might one
day be my contribution.
That project was placed on hold as others got underway. A life in the
pulpit and in research ensued. But then, there was Brexit followed by the
US election cycle of 2016, culminating in a presidency still unfolding in its
pushing at the boundaries of what had once been the accepted norms of
public rhetoric and policy making. The American, indeed global, world in
which I had come of age a generation before, seemed not merely to break.
Our public life in the democratic West quickly became, and continues to
be, a relentless torrent of piercing civic anger and divisiveness.
The time to develop a clear statement of Jewish public theology,
based on Biblical and Rabbinic sources, has arrived. Classical Judaism may
not lend itself to the kind of systematization of theology that my friend was
acquiring in seminary. It is weak on absolutism in doctrine on the nature of
G-d Itself. But, it is strong on case law due to the Halakhic tradition, and
provides a wealth of raw material upon which a cohesive social vision can
be built. The Talmudic sages elected to stay away from Hellenistic
metaphysics. The Rabbinic tradition presumes that G-d is ultimately
unknowable and wholly other from humankind, as Maimonides exquisitely
recapitulates in his Guide for the Perplexed. In opting out of a serious
metaphysics, the Rabbis chose to focus on the nitty gritty of just what an
earthly existence should look like, in all of its detail, ranging from the
niceties of human behavior to the structure of local government.
Judaism cannot be pigeon holed as populist, leftist, or rightist. It was
born in antiquity and therefore predates by millennia these current
ideological biases. Classical Jewish thought sits on a perch outside of the
defining parameters of most current global political discourse. That
intellectual distance, both due to the longer arc of Jewish history, and
outsider minority status as a tradition, allows for a critical distance. It
opens the possibility of genuinely new ideas for inclusion within the
American and broader global conversation on ingredients for more
effective public policy to relieve the political and economic tensions on full
public display since 2016.
 Judaism offers a wholly other way to organize society. Its overriding
principle of governance is based on the ultimate value of human dignity
within a local community of networked citizens as the engine of public
policy, rather than prioritizing an economic perspective within the context
of a broader impersonal state, as both capitalists and Marxists do.
Halakhah proscribes letting economic considerations drive governmental
decision-making. Jewish law reminds its students at every turn that the
self-worth of the individual made in G-d’s image, as Genesis recounts, is
the final metric underpinning any attempt at sewing the fabric of a good
society.
I set out to write a volume that would cogently and succinctly speak
to the needs of the hour, while also serving as an inaugural reference work
for those who might come after me to continue this project of building an
authentic Jewish theology. By authentic I intend what Soloveitchik meant:
a normative theoretical literature built upon the Halakhic tradition.
This is not an academic study in the field of Rabbinics or modern
Judaism by a Judaic studies faculty member. Nor is this a pluralistic Jewish
document evaluating the variegated breadth of contemporary Jewish
thought as it speaks to social justice. That is a rich academic field unto
itself, but not the reason for this particular study combining a theological
rendering of classical Halakhah and public policy. The purpose of this
volume is to bring Halakhic values to bear on the most urgent issues of our
time, such as the growing global income gap between rich and poor,
security, and immigration.
Each work proceeds from a certain theoretical vantage point on the
literature and tradition it marshals. Just as Berrigan and Tillich wrote
respectively as a progressive Catholic and Lutheran, my starting point is
Jewish Orthodoxy. I am wary of the label on a practical level due to the
rancorous denominational partisanship within the Jewish community of
which it is a congregational part. It is used here only insofar as a descriptive
term that references three fundamental theological variables underpinning
the work of this study: (1) belief in Divine revelation of the Pentateuch and
sources of Rabbinic exposition of Biblical law, (2) an unswerving
commitment to Halakhah as the primary expression of Jewish
commitment, and that (3) while Halakhah certainly engages with
contemporary issues as we do here, it is unbound from having to reconcile
with temporal concerns such as current secular readings of ethics or policy
if there is a values conflict (Waxman, 1992).
I begin from this ahistorical revelatory starting point, just as any
scholar offers his or her analysis as seen through a particular theoretical
lens. Within political science, we have, for example, pluralists and
structuralists. Each is allowed their due. Theologically, it is the Orthodox
approach to Halakhah that I understand to be closest to how the Law sees
itself, as a legal system established upon the revealing of G-d’s will to a
specific people operating within its own culturally singular textual
hermeneutic. The secondary sources I cite within Rabbinic scholarship are
therefore often, though not always, from the traditionalist literature within
Jewish law and philosophy.
While rooted traditionally in its theological reading of Jewish sources,
this study is also a work of political science, located between the subfields
of public administration and political theory, while making use of Talmudic
categories. Hence, it is a public theology in that it draws from theological
premises to inform the design and implementation of more effective public
policy.
As an urbanist in terms of my research field within political science, I
am particularly concerned with the life of the global city, the kind of city
found in the developed world, such as London or New York, which drives
the world economy (Sassen, 1991). As will be seen, Judaism has much to
say about how cities and their political economies should operate.
Globalization itself is a reality that has its advocates and its detractors.
Some argue its primary result has been a massive increase in economic
inequalities, while others suggest it offers the greatest possibility for
democracy yet known. The Halakhah takes no predictable sides in this
debate. Rather, it posits theological categories that offer policy alternatives
of meaning in our current heated political climate. Because all Halakhic
legislation was based upon the idea of local community as a reflection of
revelation lived out in the lives of grassroots social structures and their
human constituents, Jewish law offers a vision of the ideal city operating in
a global system that prioritizes the justice-seeking municipality over
national government or international agency.
Judaism presents a public theology that deals directly with the core
components of globalization, such as the social responsibility of the
transnational corporation and local service delivery, to name but two of
the issues under consideration in this book. This book tells the story of how
the Jewish tradition compels the living out of a public policy framework
through the forging of equitable communities. In this socially fragile era,
even just the remembering of that message is a worthy one to transmit.
In the end, by asking me where G-d was in my Talmudic studies, my
Christian colleague was really asking me how I would implement the values
of the Law I held sacred. This study is my response. Given the politically
searing times in which we live, that question resonates more with me
today than ever before. The following is a public theology underlying
Halakhic values relevant to globalization.
 Acknowledgments

Though this book took just a bit more than two years to reach its final
version, it is the product of training and reflection starting with my
initiation as a child into the world of Jewish law and philosophy under the
tutelage of a master teacher, and perhaps the most powerful mind I’ve yet
known, the late Rabbi Jay Miller. His was a life fiercely dedicated to the
integrity of the primary text, and the questions one should ask about it.
Rabbi Miller’s favorites were Talmud and Freud. My favorites include
Talmud, not necessarily Freud, but Rabbi Miller’s relentless demand that
whatever volume we take up must be read as the text sees itself, not as we
each may wish to see it, sticks with me. His partisanship extended only to
the reflection of revelation he would find in distilling a hermeneutic
minefield down to its core principles. As a “Rebbe,” a traditional teacher of
Talmud, his utter rhapsody in seeing a glimpse of Sinai on a page of
Rabbinic literature was transmitted to me. He was, as Jewish law presumes
of teachers, another parent in his love and mentorship. I miss him every
day and could not have coherently synthesized divergent literatures,
ranging from theology to public administration, if not for his overarching
message that the human project is for each individual to be a “mehadesh,”
a creative and conceptual thinker.
I thank Wagner College, especially its President, Dr. Richard Guarasci,
and just departed Provost Dr. Lily McNair, now President of Tuskegee
University, for their commitment to the paths of my scholarship. I thank my
colleagues in the Department of Government and Politics, Dr. Cyril Ghosh,
Dr. Shaohua Hu, provost Dr. Jeffrey Kraus, Dr. Patricia Moynagh, Dr. Steve
Snow, and the synagogue I serve as Rabbi, Congregation Ohav Zedek. I
offer thanks to my early co-founding members of the Faith and Public
Policy Roundtable, which, when we established it back in 2008, allowed a
forum for me to first explore a conversation about the issues that might
comprise a meaningful current public theology. Thanks to Dr. Paul Kantor
of Fordham University, who continues to offer sage counsel regarding my
work. I am grateful to Sarah Craig, Judith Lakamper, and Michael Gibson,
my editors, for seeing this book through to completion with care and
understanding of its purpose and contribution.
I express here my daily wonder at the depth of questions and
“hiddushim,” original commentary, my sons Ari and Rafi share with me
each day regarding their studies and observations. This is a trait Rabbi
Miller would thoroughly enjoy. I offer appreciation to my stepchildren
Rebecca and Sam for their ongoing support and always insightful
conversation. I thank my parents Myra and Sherwood Unger for their
unwavering belief in me, and my wife, Deborah, who is, as always, my
muse.
—Abraham Unger
New York City
 Chapter 1
Is There a Jewish Public Theology?
Though there is much Jewish theology, there is no Jewish public theology.
There is not yet a contemporary work that draws upon the corpus of
classical Jewish thought in order to generate a systematic discussion of
justice and the polis. Heschel may be the most well-known and venerated
of contemporary Jewish theologians, and he certainly wrote on the social
justice issues of his time. But he did not develop a thorough practical
philosophy to the same degree that he worked through a kind of Rabbinic
metaphysics on revelation typified in his classic study of Jewish faith G-d in
Search of Man (Heschel, 1955).
The Jewish tradition is fundamentally prophetic. It is, in its earliest
Biblical and Talmudic formulations, a public theology. Judaism speaks of
justice through the deed, the “mitzvah.” It is in fact a practical philosophy
(Unger and Hyman, 2013). While one has to tease out from Rabbinic
teaching clear positions on the events of our time, that raw material able
to address the most pressing policy issues is extant within both classical
and modern Jewish writings, because practically the whole of the Jewish
project is concerned with the material world and its perfection.
In classical Judaism there is only secondary emphasis on eschatology
compared to endless debate about right individual and communal
behavior. Indeed, the central thrust of the Jewish tradition is to shy away
from spiritual speculation (Soloveitchik, 1983). The central texts of Judaism
stress what to do in the here and now, rather than advocate for a life of
interiority and theoretical reflection. Boman states unequivocally, “Hebrew
thought is directed toward events, living, and history in which the question
of truth is of another sort than in natural science” (1970, p. 202).
Rabbinic lore surrounding the coming of the Messiah brings home this
point. According to tradition, before any form of supernatural salvation can
come through the person of a Messiah, all members of the Jewish
community must first correctly observe at least one full Sabbath, since “the
Sabbath is equivalent to all the commandments” (Shemot Rabba 25:12).
Sabbath represents a utopia here on earth, offering the cessation of all
labor and a day of complete peace within the Jewish body politic. It is the
Jewish mission to focus on proper conduct within the context of
community, culminating in the forging of a perfect social experience
represented by this ideal shared collective Sabbath. Only then, once that
has been achieved, can the Kingdom of Heaven arrive. It is hard to imagine
a clearer statement of a religious tradition primed for a public theology
than one that, like Judaism, unabashedly states that the goal of faith is to
make whole the material, temporal world in which imperfect humans toil
everyday.
Judaism’s root concern with the corporeal, as opposed to the other-
worldly, compels a statement of its stance vis-à-vis the world in which it
resides as a living practice (Unger, 2010). The classic Biblical statement
referencing Jewish involvement in deep and ongoing application to the
material world, invoked by the Rabbinic legists of the Talmud, is that the
Torah is “not in heaven” (Deuteronomy 30:12, B.T. Baba Metzia, 59b). Once
revealed, its mission is to be sorted out here in the world of flesh and
blood human beings (Berkovits, 1983).
What then are the questions that a meaningful Jewish public theology
must address? Any current Jewish response to immediate political, social,
and economic inequities must take into account the massive disruptions
caused by globalization. We are living in a world in crisis. The dislocations
are enormous. Over four million refugees have migrated from East to West.
Major European cities such as Paris and Brussels are essentially a theatre
of war. Globalization—a smaller, more connected world—has resulted not
in a coming together, but in a deeply fragmented international system. One
can argue that we are even entering a post-global era, in which the
upheavals of globalization have created a social backlash in the West, with
electorates attempting to retreat from globalizing trends such as free trade
and porous borders. This study will take that possibility into strong account
as the contours of its policy frameworks emerge in subsequent chapters.
On the level of Diaspora Jewish identity, Judaism is at once a more
globally competitive and accepted identity, as seen by the huge number of
converts entering its fold each year, while also in massive decline through
rampant assimilation. Nothing less than an overhaul of Jewish identity is in
order, one that takes into account the primary sources of Jewish tradition
and puts forth a relevant statement of just what Judaism can mean today.
Globalization is defined by the highest volume in history of worldwide
movement of capital and labor (Kantor and Savitch, 2002). It is primarily an
economic trend linking markets more freely and closely than ever before.
Kantor and Savitch describe this recent transformation as a “new
revolution” that “has already remade the economic fabric of society,
radically altered the behavior of capital, broken down national boundaries,
and is remodeling government” (2002, p. 1). Over the past three decades
rural areas have speedily emptied as agriculture and small trade has
withered in favor of rapidly expanding urban areas housing financial and
culture hubs relying upon technology, skilled labor, and agglomerations of
smaller industries, such as food service, that have grown up around larger
urban white collar service and technology industries.
The social justice problems of our time, such as the widening gap
between rich and poor, seemingly intractable ethnic and religious conflict,
treatment of immigrants, environmental sustainability, healthcare, and
urban planning that takes into account social equity regarding space and
services, have accelerated due to globalization. Furthermore, these
injustices are most salient in cities because that is where the largest
number of people have migrated to in recent decades (United Nations,
2014). Urban density has always been a source of tension. City residents
come from a diversity of social, ethnic, and economic backgrounds. Those
natural tensions have only become more profound due to the velocity of
population growth and disparate wealth accumulation in urban areas.
(Kantor and Savitch, 2002; Abrahamson, 2005; Spencer, 2014).
Those cities that have become international financial and lifestyle
centers are known as “global cities” (Sassen, 1991). Cities such as New York
or London operate not as agents of their countries, but as nation states of
their own competing for investment and labor on a global scale.
Transnational firms are not bound by their national origins but, in today’s
world of quick travel and instant communication, companies locate where
they feel it is most prudent, regardless of border. In short, when it comes
to the global economy, cities matter most, countries matter less and less,
and small towns are quickly disappearing (United Nations, 2014). Spencer’s
axiom that “Globalization is urbanization” captures this reality (2014, p.
26). He writes that “If globalization is an economic, social, political, and
cultural phenomenon, then it must have a physical form . . . this form is the
city” (2014, p. 26). Urban planning studies have emerged that take into
account the spatial ramifications of the global city, which usually place the
privileged in downtown enclaves surrounded by migrant workers and a
middle class dealing with rising housing costs and questionable municipal
services (Marcuse and van Kempen, 2000).
Kantor and Savitch capture Spencer’s succinct characterization of
globalization with their term “glocal” (2002, p. 19). They frame an
exploration of the issues raised by globalization by looking at “global
challenge and local response” (Ibid., p. 19). Indeed, globalization
frequently lands on a local scale. In the realm of public policy, it often
comes down to concerns over delivery of local services such as healthcare
and education stemming from polarizing group interests due to vast
differences in income between those who live in enclave communities such
as a gated housing development, and those on the outside of that
development on the urban periphery.
Political theorist Michael Walzer states unequivocally that inequality
rising from the impact of globalization must first be dealt with on the local
level of community (Walzer, 2011). Kantor and Savitch make clear that
“leaders and citizens” have to make decisions about “what kind of
community they want” (2002, p. 19). If cities are the new nation states,
then their residents, thrown together in a laboratory of global proportions,
have to strategically think about how to confront and resolve the inequities
in their midst.
The portrait painted above suggests that globalization is essentially a
funnel-shaped problematic, pouring international social justice concerns
about inequalities down to municipalities. We are then in the realm of
nothing less than a discussion of democracy. Democracy starts locally, and
currently, due to the rise of the global city, it has been made fragile across
the world. Judaism has something to say about this, because the Hebrew
Bible, the Talmud, and the ongoing chain of Rabbinic literature in all its
diversity, from the ancient and medieval canon to its post-War incarnations
encompassing philosophers such as Berkovits and Levinas, is
overwhelmingly concerned with, to borrow Walzer’s term, “justice-right-
now” (Walzer, 2011).
Judaism is organically poised to put forth a theoretical and practical
set of possibilities that can present a systematic resource in thinking
through the “glocal” inequalities before us daily in urban centers. If
globalization means that we are living together more connectedly than in
previous eras, then this study ought to have value not just for Jews
wondering about the relevance of their own texts to the problems of the
day. A Jewish public theology means exactly what those words indicate in
the fullness of their realization: a Jewish theology for the broader public
that speaks directly and practically to public concerns. This is especially
possible because of Judaism’s own innate this-worldliness in its overriding
concern with our social lives rather than, as pointed out earlier, abstract
spiritual contemplation. In a global international community claiming belief
in the equal legitimacy of diverse religious and cultural traditions, Judaism
offers an alternative prism through which to best understand how to
strengthen local democracy under global pressures.
The central theme of this study threaded throughout all subsequent
chapters is community. By this is meant community in the formal sense of
prescribed civic responsibilities within a polis that the Hebrew Bible and
Rabbinic literature put forth as givens. The Jewish canon offers richly
textured descriptions of a theocentric communal organization, down to the
structures of taxation and social programs emerging out of its prophetic
tradition.
The normative lessons to be drawn from those ancient policies relate
to the most recent political and economic concerns. Jewish community
institutions in particular were historic global networks, linked on a
grassroots level to each other and to their clients in ways similar to current
NGOs, across diverse regions and population sectors. They raised funds
privately and distributed them according to a combination of local and
universal regulation. They were also largely urban. Therefore, a Jewish
public theology that accounts for the overriding role of community in
Jewish text and tradition speaks directly, in terms of practical thinking on
the levels of local, regional, and global policy, to the economic and political
dislocations of our time. Towards that end, we now move to the first step
of this project as we lay out the four essential theological features of a
stance towards the currents of our time as seen through the lens of
traditional Jewish thought.

THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF A JEWISH PUBLIC THEOLOGY

Revelation
Any authentic approach to figuring out Judaism’s moral claim on
humankind starts with revelation. The giving of the Torah, the
quintessential “teaching” or “law” (Jastrow, 1985, p. 1657), inextricably
links humanity and G-d the Lawgiver (Gillman, 1990). This Divine-human
bindedness compels the resultant commandment of imitatio dei, acting as
G-d acts, which means balancing the needs of justice and mercy to achieve
the most refined concept of justice. The harmonious marriage of those two
virtues comprise the character of G-d Himself (Rashi, Genesis 1:1).
The mandate to behave like G-d is made explicit in the Hebrew Bible
through various permutations of the catchphrase “and you shall walk in His
ways” (Deuteronomy 28:9). This scriptural formula insists that the only
path to becoming G-dlike is to observe His commandments as refracted
through the Halakhah, the corpus of Biblical and Rabbinic law. It is in this
way that the Bible asserts the Jewish people can be holy, which means
distinct through becoming an exemplary national community. The
observant life is therefore seen as collectively transformative; a nation that
was once as mundane as any other can become uniquely Divine in its
character by adopting the body of law put forth by the Torah and its
expositors.
Halakhah is therefore seen as not just another priestly code just like
any other in the ancient world, nor can it be fairly recast as a modern social
contract regardless of its covenantal origin. Rather, the Biblical tradition is
viewed through its own lens, and by its Rabbinic progenitors, as a package
of behaviors that radically alters both the individual and polis’ very essence
through the Law’s mere fulfillment. One may be unholy one day, and then
the next day instantly holy, simply through maintaining such practices as
the Sabbath and agricultural tithes.
On the communal level, the individual thereby literally becomes
overnight a just citizen of a just state so long as all residents are
maintaining the Halakhah together. As will be explored later in this study,
behavior matters more than theory in a social system founded upon the
Sinaitic revelation. This means that policy, with all the prosaic details and
practicalities that entails, inclusive of a discourse of negotiation and
containing an intrinsic stress on proactive legislation, overrides
metaphysical reflection and any tendency towards religious monasticism.
That is an important fundamental tendency to bear in mind as we expand
upon the premises of a realizable Jewish public theology. Jewish tradition
posits that, while we may never know the mysterious essence of the Divine
(Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, Part One, Chapter 52), we do know
what He demands of us: to put forth a compassionate justice which is lived
out daily through the franchise of His Law. As Wurzburger succinctly puts it,
“Jewish ethics is, in the final analysis, grounded in the religious imperative
of imitating the ways of G-d” (1994, p. 113). That imperative to be like G-d,
which Wurzburger acknowledges means following the prescriptive “ought”
captured by classical Judaism in “halakhic categories,” (Ibid., p. 113) is a
Mitzvah specifically commanded at the Sinaitic revelation.
For the purpose of constructing a contemporary public theology, it is
the idea of revelation that matters, and what that experiential collective
tradition bequeaths to us in terms of guiding principles in the development
of a policy framework. Modern Jewish Rabbinic polemics around the
historicity of the event, which underlie distinctions between Orthodox and
liberal doctrinal positions, are irrelevant when deciding broader stances on
issues that reach beyond parochial denominational concerns. Buber puts it
best when he writes:

There can be no certainty at arriving . . . at “what really happened.” . .

. However, even if it is impossible to reconstitute the course of events
themselves, it is nevertheless possible to recover much of the manner
in which the participating people experienced those events.” (Buber
1958, p. 16)

The idea of a constitutive text provided by a Divine lawgiver,

analogous to a Court’s Judgment from the mythologized Rabbinic “Bet Din
shel Ma’alah”—Rabbinic high court metaphorically in the Heavens,
demands that humankind act in a just fashion, indicating an involuntary
sort of social justice with a thick spiritual dimension. The commanded
aspect of sustaining an equitable community within a theocentric religious
culture founded upon conviction in a personal G-d signifies that outward
behavior towards others is married to the interiority of faith. This places
Judaism at odds from its very inception with an American constitutional
politics.
This study is not concerned with a continuous comparing of Judaism
with liberal thought. Rather, it is a project that elicits from classical Jewish
courses a Jewish public theology taken on its own terms. It serves to note
here that Judaism is certainly not just a replica of liberalism, focused solely
on the individual as a political, self-centered material creature, with
government the arbiter of interests and keeper of the social peace.
Judaism proposes that there is a dialectic between individual and
community, with the community typically the more salient focus of any
policy making. Government is not merely a preventive measure, but a
Divinely ordained good in and of itself, intended to implement and develop
a set of laws designed to bring on an eventual perfect social state of affairs.
Heschel concludes that “The claim of Judaism that religion and law
are inseparable is difficult for many of us to comprehend” (1955, p. 293).
That is because post-enlightenment culture looks at religion as an inward
matter of the individual’s spirit as a “feeling rather than obedience . . .
spiritual rather than concrete” (Ibid., p. 293). But the Sinaitic tradition
requires of its adherents “an answer [italics author’s own] to Him who is
asking us to live in a certain way” (Ibid., p. 293).
This means that classical Judaism recognizes no personal sense of
communion with G-d free of public obligation. That is why Torah and its
legal evolution into the Talmud never mark, nor even notice, the possibility
of separation of church and state. In fact, these elemental aspects of the
human condition are purposely bound up with each other in Jewish
thought. The parishioner’s heart and the physical life of the broader
community are intertwined to the degree that they cascade into each
other in a continuous dialogue that must relate the recipient of revelation
to his or her collective existence. In Judaism, the spirit has no value when
taken out of its religious manifestation in the daily street by following the
Halakhic regimen. This is the break between Judaism and Christianity.
Though we are not here dealing in a text of comparative religion, this
is significant to state here at the outset when working on theological
rudiments stemming organically from the core texts of Judaism. That
schism is important because it is Christianity that eventually sets up the
liberal Western notion of the State and its policy apparatus, and which
ultimately stands in direct opposition to the way Judaism would govern if
given the opportunity.
From hereon it is critical to understand that Judaism’s position is a
critique of the foundation of the modern liberal State, not in its ideas
about liberty as actually practiced, but rather, from the Torah’s point of
view, in its seemingly primitive divorcing of the personal from the public.
The Torah specifically wants to fuse, rather than diminish, that connection,
and sees the separation of the personal and public as leading towards
exactly what the Biblical tradition wishes to avoid: an unjust social order.
As Heschel exclaimed, “Defining the good by the motive alone, equalizing
the good with the good intention and ignoring the purpose and substance
of the good action, is a half-truth” (1955, p. 294).
Christianity decided that the living out of faith was largely voluntary.
In so doing it set up the individual as the final choice-making creature he
fully becomes in the liberal secular State. For example, the Christian
concept of charity posits that giving alms is a matter of grace. One elects to
give to an individual in distress. In Jewish law, one gives because Halakhah
demands it. It is a matter of coercive legislation, not a grace-inspired
volunteerism. Judaism, while not abrogating central tenets found in the
capitalist system, such as private enterprise, still has nothing to do with
capitalism per se. The term Judeo-Christian may represent a certain turn of
spirit that favors the Western tradition, but these two traditions are starkly
different. They share no fundamentally common ethos.
According to its own perspective, the Torah, if taken straightforwardly
according to its own viewpoint, orders a leap of the spirit that compels a
subordination of the adherent’s personal will to scriptural demands. There
is no covenant of the heart—personal choice-making—that supersedes the
behavioral commandments revealed at Sinai. In this way, Paul decidedly
took Christianity out of Judaism, and the two traditions parted ways.
Because of its emphasis on the redemptive personalization of Scripture,
rather than its ritually communal manifestation, “theology has been less
central to Judaism” (Ryan 2009, p. 5, 2011, p. 9).
From the Rabbinic perspective, the individual’s challenge is to
internalize the utter giving over of his or her will to the G-d of Sinai in
seeking out justice as a communal prerogative, rather than as a chosen
personal quest. This is the practical outcome of revelation. That is why
monasticism is not recommended by the Halakhah; neither has it ever
been more than a fringe movement within mainstream Rabbinic Judaism.
Social justice is not reserved for members of any religious order. Judaism
has no religious orders the way, for example, the Catholic Church does.
There is one universal mandate to engage in creating social equity,
applicable to all Jews anytime and anyplace, and it is neither a voluntary
nor a spiritual act. It is sheer command. Individual autonomy has no role to
play if one looks at human conduct from the point of the view of the Torah
itself.
Classical Judaism does not see itself as a personal matter. Traditional
renderings of Halakhah do not take account of the “autonomous human
conscience” as the “highest court of appeals in all ethical matters”
(Wurzburger 1994, p. 5). Heschel’s point is that the Sinaitic revelation
compels the Jew to ask himself, “What does the law demand of me right
now?” (1955, p. 293). There is no particular musing or spiritual interiority
within this behavioral framework. A situation is confronted, and one
responds viscerally through a Halakhically conditioned ethical sensibility
founded upon a regulated daily system of conduct. When one sees food,
one eats a certain way. When one plans one’s weekly schedule, one breaks
for Sabbath. There is no question of personal acceptance of this prima
facie spiritual regimen. Rather, they are communal regulations just as
Western citizens of any country might follow their roadways’ speed limits
and traffic regulations.
It is the same with laws of social equity. Wurzburger note that
“Christianity focuses upon the individual soul in relation to G-d” while
“Judaism stresses personal responsibility for helping the people of Israel
carry out its divine mission” (1994, p. 93). Any human experience of
injustice demands a formal communal response rather than Whitehead’s
contemplative stance of rumination in spiritual “solitariness” (Ibid., p. 93).
There is no voluntariness in Jewish law. One is either obligated or not. In
the case of injustice, there is no exemption. Wurzburger states without
equivocation that “the Jewish legal system represents a quest for justice”
(Ibid., p. 98). All Israel is bound by this overarching systemic demand.

Covenant
 If the first building block of a Jewish public theology is the Sinaitic
revelation, the second is its manifestation, or living out, under the rubric of
covenant. Covenant stemming from Sinai is multi-faceted. At its most basic,
the covenantal framing of Sinai indicates that Biblical and Rabbinic
legislation is founded upon an understanding between the Jews and G-d
that each shall keep its due share of the Torah: Israel its commandments
and G-d His promises. However, this mutual understanding is weighted
towards the Divine in that the Jews promise to keep the laws even before
trying to make sense of their reasons, hearkening to that subordination of
will marking Judaism as distinct from a liberal point of view placing the
citizen’s choice-making, or selective access to rights, at the core of the polis
(Sokol, 1992).
Exodus records that Moses “took the Book of the Covenant and read
it in the ears of the people, and they said, ‘All that G-d has said we will do
and will listen’” (24:7). The Book of the Covenant traditionally refers to the
sections of the Torah that had been written until the revelation. Not only
did the Jews place observance of the Torah before the listening, which verb
in the Hebrew indicates understanding. The primary medieval Biblical
exegete Rashi, basing himself on the classic Aramaic translation of the text,
strains to demonstrate that even the listening means acceptance of the law
on its own terms, rather than a fathoming of its reasons (Onkelos, Exodus
24:7, Rashi, Genesis 37:27).
The covenantal relationship is consensual, but one in which an
overriding Divine sovereignty is willingly accepted by Israel without
condition or even preliminary understanding. There is no social contract
here in the sense “that political society is a human construct” (Walzer
1995, p. 164). The community solely exists by virtue of the Divine
revelation and is sustained solely through Divine ordinance. This has far
reaching consequences beyond theological axiom. It speaks directly to the
Biblical covenant’s purpose, and how it is reflected throughout the text of
the Torah to give rise to a set of premises that support a uniquely Jewish
public theology. It is the covenant that suddenly refashions through
revelation the Children of Israel into a communal body that unwaveringly
seeks justice through the observance of G-d’s laws, and thereby an
emulation of His ways.
 This is not intellectual speculation; it is the explicitly stated purpose of
the covenantal moment embodied by the revelation at Sinai. The
revelatory experience was designed specifically to transform Israel
overnight from a group of refugees into “a Kingdom of priests and a holy
nation” (Exodus 19:6). Priests here means “ministers” in terms of just
leaders such as King David (Rashi, Exodus 19:6). “Holy” is derived from the
Hebrew word for separate, meaning in this instance a nation apart from
the non-godly, seemingly unjust universe of peoples without Torah
surrounding Israel.
Therefore the whole purpose of the revelation and its manifestation in
the covenant is a communal effort at justice through the sheer keeping of
the Sinaitic law. Before a deeper discussion of the implications of that
doctrine for Halakhic public policy in the realm of social justice, it is
illuminating to delineate a second dimension of the covenantal relationship
beyond that of presenting the subordinate role of man to G-d as its
essential component towards achieving a just society.
On Moses’ last day of life he replaces the original Sinaitic covenant
with one expanded in meaning and implication. The Children of Israel are
gathered for his final exhortation. Moses curiously lists each sector of
society, ranging from tribal chieftains to children, as he reestablishes
Jewish loyalty to Torah. This listing of all portions of the population
indicates that this covenant adds to the original Sinaitic commitment the
premise of mutual responsibility across all members of the polis regardless
of social strata (Kli Yakar, Deuteronomy 29:9). Citizens are bound to ensure
that each fulfill his or her set of commanded responsibilities. There is now
public oversight over each subgroup’s keeping of its particular code.
The covenant therefore has a dual nature from its Biblical origin. First,
as in Exodus at the revelatory event, it is a law that details obligations
intended to forge a people dedicated to the pursuit of justice in this world.
Later, after a generation has passed, Deuteronomy develops this covenant
into a legal compact of social responsibility, whereby each population
group reviews another to determine compliance.
What is missing here is any notion of rights. The Hebrew Bible and
whole of Rabbinic literature do not have a word for “right” in its liberal
connotation. Judaism is a legal system based squarely on the concept of
obligation. Of course, rights come as a corollary to responsibility. For
example, if I am obligated to support through taxation the delivery of
municipal services such as food to the poor from a publicly funded soup
kitchen (Maimonides, Matanot Aniyim 9:1-3), then clearly those in need
have a right to state-subsidized meals. However, rather than explore the
idea of concurrent rights vis-à-vis their relevant obligations, the Halakahah
does not share that focus. Rather, it emphasizes that even the poor,
including those who attend the soup kitchen, are strongly recommended
(thought not required) to try to pay the communal tax for municipal
services such as one they utilize (Ibid. 9:19). Social responsibility is the
metric by which the justness of the polis is measured within the Halakhic
system.
While a constitutional republic such as the United States might
showcase rights as the centerpiece of its protection of liberty, in language
such as the Declaration of Independence’s “inalienable rights” held up as
“self-evident truths” (Jefferson et al., 1776), Judaism harbors no need for a
declaratory statement of rights policy. Rather than grandiose statements of
broad rights beyond the overall Biblical command to observe the Torah,
the Rabbinic method of highly specific and casuistic discussion of individual
and group conduct produces a plethora of detailed regulations, intended to
commit each adherent to ritualized obligations.
These continuous public responsibilities intrinsically guarantee the
rights of their subjects. For example, the Talmud engages in a discussion of
privacy on one’s own property. The Rabbis put forth the case of two
adjoining householders. Their homes each have flat roofs in Near Eastern
style, and are next to each other, but one roof is higher than its neighbor’s.
Halakhah decides that the adjoining neighbor with the higher roof must
erect a partition to protect his fellow from experiencing “damage by
seeing” into his conduct on his own property (B.T. Bava Batra 2b).
Obviously, the neighbor with the lower roof is enjoying what in
contemporary legal parlance would be known as the right to privacy. But,
classical Judaism places the onus of responsibility on the party who might
violate that right to take preventive steps under the aegis of Halakhic
obligation. This creates a very different kind of political understanding of
justice than a system that starts with a vocabulary of rights as
entitlements, rather than as unstated presumptions under the aegis of
clearly prescribed duties imposed upon members of the Halakhic
community.
Novak posits that in fact Judaism does argue for entitlements, since
the covenantal relationship offers promises to be kept by the Divine
lawgiver to his people Israel (2009). He suggests that no duty can actually
take precedent over a right, because one is automatically a corollary to the
other (2009). Freund also believes that the Rabbinic tradition presumes
some independent understanding of human rights as standing on a par
with Halakhic prescription. He invokes the core term of justice: tzedek, as
just such a possibility, since he reads a right to its corollary “tzedaka,”
public funds received by the poor, as an entitlement (1994, p. 57). However
tenuous this reading, given it could just as easily fit with our own
understanding above as tzedaka flowing as a corollary of the polis’
responsibility to promote tzedek (justice) itself, Freund does ultimately
cede that “no ancient or classical text systematically and consistently
makes an assertion of universal and unconditioned human rights” (1994, p.
66).
Louis Henkin, perhaps the most of noted contemporary international
human rights jurists, and steeped in Talmud, bluntly wrote that “Judaism
knows no rights, but duties, and at bottom, all duties are to G-d” (1976, p.
133). This is the most succinct summation of the link between the Sinaitic
revelation and the Jewish approach to a just polis. This prioritizing of
obligation over entitlement is how the Rabbinic system sees its own
progress, and the mission behind its own expansion of the covenantal
mandate. The question then becomes one of “ma’aseh” in the Rabbinic
lexicon, or how this hierarchy of values gets lived out by the citizenry. What
does a system that emphasizes duties over rights structurally look like in
terms of public policy?

Law
The Talmud is a labyrinth of legal minutiae, so for an overarching
variable that indicates a structural framework for covenant, we need to
hearken back to Scripture to uncover the central value underlying the
Sinaitic moment itself. Once the underlying feature of the revelation is
recovered, it can be applied as the defining characteristic of a Jewish public
theology.
The fundamental notion from the creation narrative is that each
human being is created “B’tzelem Elokim,” in the image of G-d (Genesis
1:26). This does not only mean that all individuals are equal from G-d’s
perspective. It also implies that each human being, according to his own
capacity, is a creative creature with unique individual potential, just as G-d
is the Creator of the Universe and willed it into being. The whole premise
then of Halakhah, of the revealed Law embedded in the covenant from
Sinai, must be to realize the individual’s utmost creativity according to his
uniquely ordained Divine image.
Bedzow sums up this possibility in ruminating upon Halakhist Joseph
Soloveitchik’s theology by stating, “G-d, in revealing Himself to man, gave
man the ability to comprehend his meaning and purpose . . . through
Halakhah” (2009, p. 24). The Law, revealed by G-d to His human imprint,
informs its recipients that “Man achieves an understanding of his essential
being and attains dignity by applying Halakhah to his life” (Bedzow, 2009,
pps. 24–25). The purpose of the Biblically imagined Halakhic community is
to provide the means whereby an individual may best understand his own
nature and realize its most beneficent fruition. In this way, Judaism
maintains a democratic aspect, since it prioritizes the citizen’s fundamental
human worth manifested in individual equality and the ideal of personal
realization.
Given this personal emphasis, how can this foundational value be
reconciled with total subordination of the person’s autonomy to Halakhah,
and the overriding primacy of the community’s quest for justice to become
a “Kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6) over the individual himself? While the
individual’s pursuit of his own best self may facially come secondary to
Halakhic observance, it is certainly implicit in the Biblical promotion of this
quest that the individual’s willfulness has intrinsic value, and even
grandeur.
It is precisely at this seemingly inexorable theological impasse that the
Rabbinic hand leverages its systemic weight. Halakhic legists have the dual
advantage of both the classical tradition’s investment by G-d in their
authority, and the parallel legitimacy of their governance over the Jewish
body politic by Israel. The Torah itself unwaveringly asserts “It is not in
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BEHRING
Being
beings
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Beit
Bel
Bela
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Belfast
BELGIAN
Belgians
Belgica
Belgium
Belgrade
belief
beliefs
believable
believe
believed
believer
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belittle
Bell
Bellaire
Bellamy
Bellevue
belligerence
belligerency
belligerent
Belligerents
Bellinghausen
bells
bellum
Belly
BELMONT
belong
belonged
belonging
belongings
belongs
beloved
below
belt
Bench
benches
bend
Bendigo
bending
beneath
Benedictines
benediction
benefactions
benefactor
benefactors
beneficent
beneficial
benefit
benefiting
benefits
benevolence
benevolent
Bengal
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Benguet
Bengula
benignity
benignly
BENIN
BENJAMIN
Bennet
Bennett
Benson
Bent
Bentley
Bentwich
Benué
bequeath
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bequests
Berar
Berber
Berda
Berdrow
Beresford
BERGENDAL
BERING
Berkeley
BERLIN
Bermuda
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Bernadottes
Bernadou
Bernard
Bernhard
Bernier
Berovitch
Berry
Berthelot
berths
beryls
Besançon
beseech
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beset
Beside
Besides
besieged
besiegers
bespattered
Bessemer