The USSR After the Summer of 1991: Some Lessons
The Jewish Community of São Paulo, Brazil
The Jewish Community of Sao Paulo, Brazil
The Jewish Community of Sao Paulo, Brazil
The city of Sao Paulo in southern Brazil is a megalopolis with 17.4 million inhabitants in a country of 144 million people. Sao Paulo is unique in Brazil because of its size, economic power, and variety of cultures. While the city is known for its widely dispersed neighborhoods, intense traffic and smog problems, its reputation rests on being the largest industrial, commercial and financial city and state in Brazil.
Syria and Terrorism
[Editor’s Note: After Syria’s appearance at the Madrid Peace Conference, we must remind ourselves with whom Israel must deal. The U.S. needs to be reminded, too; hence, this Special Report.]
Israel and the Diaspora: A Dialogue Between “Gola” (Exile) and Geula (Redemption)
Syria and Terrorism
The Israeli Paradigm for a Capitalist Soviet Union
Is There a Practical Way to Bridge the Gap Between Traditional Jewish and Modern Expectations of Rights and Obligations?
In looking for a bridge between traditional Jewish and modern views of obligations and rights, we can turn to the tradition of federal liberty? the liberty to live in accordance with the covenant to which one has consented? as developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Reformed Protestant theo-political revolutionaries. Taking the biblical paradigm as the starting point, it is possible to suggest reconstruction of the modern rights model in line with ideas of federal liberty as follows: All human beings are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ? e.g., life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.
Two Orthodox Jewish Theories of Rights: Sol Roth and Isaac Breuer
Modern theories of rights assume the existence of autonomous individual persons who possess rights by the mere force of their personhood alone. Orthodox Jewish thinkers Sol Roth and Isaac Breuer contest the primitive original character of personhood in this sense. They assert that neither rights nor persons precede a social reality constituted by duties and obligations seeking to ground personhood in moral relationality rather than autonomy. Both thereby negate the modern project of ascribing rights.
Haredi Conceptions of Obligations and Rights: Polish Jewry, c.1900-1939
In their speeches and articles, Orthodox politicians and publicists in Eastern Europe devoted scant attention to the issue of individual rights. The author theorizes that, beyond a predilection in Jewish tradition for obligations rather than rights, the specific historical context of East European Jewry played the major role in shaping Orthodox concepts of oli garchic rabbinic leadership. Long-term institutional factors, such as the nature of the Jewish communal structure and the strong influence of Hasidism in Eastern Europe, plus more immediate historical factors, such as the rise of secularist Jewish political parties, led to the development of the ideology of daat Torah.
Individual and Community: Rights and Obligations as Reflected in Two Nineteenth Century Responsa
This essay examines the relevance of the responsa literature to the investigation of the issue of “individual and community” in modern times. It does so through an analysis of two nineteenth century Hungarian responsa, written by Rabbis Moses Sofer and Moses Schick. The analysis indicates that exrra-halakhic considerations were introduced into the halakhic discourse in both cases. The ultimate decision in both responsa was largely determined by these exfra-halakhic factors.
The Political and the Sacred: Political Obligation and the Book of Deuteronomy
The central puzzle of Israeli politics is how democracy has been maintained at all, given the lack of democracy in countries of origin, the deep internal divisions, and the
permanent state of war. At least part of the answer lies in understanding Jewish political traditions. The Zionist movement was, in large degree, a revolt against Jewish history. But inevitably Zionists were influenced by an extensive Jewish experience of self-government in the East European shtetl. This experience involved political institutions that were voluntary, inclusive, pluralistic, and contentious. It was also a closed system, facing a hostile external world and not equipped to deal with non-Jews as a group.
Obligations and Rights in the Jewish Political Tradition: Some Preliminary Observations
In the modern concept of rights developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, variously formulated as life, liberty and property” or “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” rights transcend civil society, which then translates them into constitutional, civil, criminal, and property rights. In contrast, the traditional Jewish view on rights is derived from the biblical sense of the obligation of all humans to God as their creator, sovereign, and covenant partner. Fundamental to the Jewish conception is the
principle that God is the creator and sovereign of the universe, all of which ultimately belongs to Him including all life within it. What emerges out of the biblical approach are a series of protections and limitations which can roughly be translated into rights and obligations.
