“On the Political Stupidity of the Jews” Assignment Two Prompt
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THE TIKVAH FUND Tikvah Campus Fellowship, 2015-2016 Irving Kristol, “On the Political Stupidity of the Jews” Assignment Two Prompt One: When trying to develop an economic or foreign policy, should modern Jews look to ancient Jewish sources? Why or why not? THE TIKVAH FUND Moshe Beiser Writing Assignment Two Prompt One “Jews still have no idea what statecraft is,” writes Irving Kristol in the opening line of his astute article On the Political Stupidity of the Jews, in which he explains his beliefs on why Jews seem to be so foolish, nearly “suicidal,” politically. His main argument seems to involve two premises. First, that political wisdom and experience are the most important factors in determining good political policy; greater even, Kristol posits, “than any theory.” The second leg of his argument is that one would be hard-pressed to find moments where the Jewish people possessed authentic political power during their history, in fact this person would most probably be overwhelmed by the recurring “powerlessness and victimization.” This history, concludes Kristol, is not one which could possibly lead to political wisdom, and what is worse is that neither the rabbinic nor prophetic traditions do anything to fill this gapping hole that history has left in the hope for Jewish policy. For Kristol, the solution is a simple one: “Translate the classics of Western political conservatism into Hebrew,” and in this cause a true understanding of conservative politics to permeate Israeli culture and and perhaps even develop into a certain flavor of political wisdom. In my humble opinion, a better result may be achieved by utilizing one of the elements that Kristol all too readily rejected. Kristol may be right in claiming that a conservative history and/or political tradition is necessary for the development of proper economic and foreign policy, but his rejection of the ancient Jewish sources takes away some of the potency from his proposed solution. The Torah, the oldest of the “ancient Jewish texts,” contains within it the foundations of structure which the modern mind could present as political thought. Professor Joshua Berman in his book Created Equal argues that along with the new theology that was introduced to the world by the Torah came a “blueprint”1 for a political and economic system. While I do not believe that the specific structure that Professor Berman proposes would work in the modern era I believe the method he used to find it in within the Torah itself deserves attention. I think a similar approach could be used to reveal the underpinnings of a Jewish national foreign policy as it appears throughout the stories of chazal and the plethora of economic policies which make up a large portion of rabbinic literature. So while ancient Jewish texts do not delineate specific instructions for running a modern country, they do develop values in, though not limited to, the realms of economics and even foreign policy that one could incorporate into an existing modern model to convert it into something that would be both implementable and comfortably Jewish. Joining Biblical or Rabbinic values with a modern political structure would relieve another tension mention by Kristol. He observes that, historically speaking, the conservativism 1 The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures “In Conversation with Joshua A. Berman, Created Equal: how the bible broke with ancient political thought.” 2008. <http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_137.pdf. Accessed 12/23/2015 THE TIKVAH FUND that he is a proponent of is the same political thought which has led the European Right to view Jews through a less-than-favorable lens. One could alleviate this negative context, however, by modifying conservative ideology with Jewish values found in ancient texts and in doing so make this type of thought more appealing to the modern Jew. In other words, the development of foreign and economic policies for the modern Jew should definitely refer back to ancient Jewish sources in order to “jewisize” an already successful political tradition which will fulfill both Irving Kristol’s requirement for a historical, political tradition and additionally enhance it by sticking to our Mesorah, i.e. the Jewish tradition. THE TIKVAH FUND Jonathan Deluty Writing Assignment Two Prompt One The Zionist experiment has run into a very serious problem: trying to pull two thousand year old legal systems out of storage and putting them to work today hasn’t gone quite as smoothly as planned. In looking for ways to run the state, Israel has to look beyond exclusively Jewish sources. After all, Israel is a modern liberal democracy, with separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. It is not a Bible-based constitutional monarchy with separation of powers between the king, prophet, and priest. The question of the relevance of sources that deal with previous Jewish commonwealths and legal frameworks seems to have been settled in Israeli law: they are not relevant to a modern society. This outlook is consistent with a typical secular Israeli shame regarding “the old Jew,” and an embarrassment about the ostensibly primitive, backwards nature of the Jewish religion. Because of this outlook, Israeli lawmakers have put on blinders to avoid a potential rich, coherent source of laws for running the state. If one visits the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem, one will find an impressive library of sources of legal wisdom that Israeli justices use in decision-making. There are sources from the Greek tradition, the British tradition, and more, with an obvious compendium missing: the Talmud. It is remarkable that the Jewish State should voluntarily be governed more by British law than by Jewish law. Why is British law regarding damages more coherent or enlightened than Seder Nezikin in the Babylonian Talmud? Is it not worth at least attempting to incorporate Jewish law into civil law? Without contaminating the essence of the laws, Talmudic law could certainly be adaptable to modern courts. The actual mechanics of such an adaptation would be contentious, but some changes would be obvious. Testimony from women and gamblers would be legalized. The development of modern technologies would render various standards of evidence, such as the migo (see Tractate Bava Batra, particularly Ch. 3), obsolete. But fundamentally, the laws would stay the same. The discussion of squatters in in Bava Kama, for example, is still as relevant as it was when the great Jewish academies in Fallujah flourished centuries ago. The central problem with such an arrangement is that most of Israeli society would dismiss it immediately as theocratic; an unconscionable violation of the separation between synagogue and state. The rabbinate already has too much power, and its corruption disgusts secular (as well as many religious) Israelis. Using Jewish law to formulate an economic or other legal policy would be another excuse for corrupt theocrats to grab power. In order to deal with this problem, Irving Kristol, in his essay, “On the Political Stupidity of the Jews,” cites Edmund Burke. As Kristol notes, Burke was the type of thinker desperately needed in contemporary Israel: “a secular political theorist who could explain, to a critical mind, why a religious orthodoxy (like a political orthodoxy) can make intellectual sense” (Kristol 4). The most important thing secular Israelis miss on this point is that Talmudic law is not just an THE TIKVAH FUND abstract religious law. It is also a “political concept” (4) essential to the conduct of a good society. It may stem from a religious background, but it only does so because the Jews lacked sovereignty for thousands of years. If a country such as Israel deems its own traditions as bereft of political value, it necessarily looks to other sources and submits itself to those traditions against its own, in the name of anti-theocracy. But no secularism is totally bereft of tradition. Burke understood that markets alone are not enough, but knew how to make this idea palatable to secularists. Although he lost that argument to Thomas Paine in America, perhaps he can win it in Israel. Although it will undoubtedly be difficult, the Jewish tradition must come out of storage and take center stage in Israeli courts. Jewish law is more organically Israeli than any law based on British or Ottoman law, and Israel should start acting like it. THE TIKVAH FUND Elijah Diamond Writing Assignment Two Prompt One Should the Jews consult ancient Biblical sources when formulating an economic or foreign policy? In any practical sense, of course not. It could be argued, though, in specific cases, that the Jewish Canon does provide some framework for dealing with political problems. Examples of these abound in the Bible and require no exploration here. It would, nevertheless, be both naïve and irresponsible for policymakers, Jewish or otherwise, to consistently rely on examples so few and far between. What the Jewish Canon does offer—something that the Western political tradition surely does not—is a fresh way of looking at the purpose of policy and politics. Of course, this “fresh” way of looking at the purpose of policy, that of homo religiosus, is nothing new: it predates the advent of a cohesive Western political tradition by nearly two millennia. But this fact should be irrelevant when talking about the often-stark realities of modern policymaking. What works, works. Faithful obeisance to ancient dogmas cannot prevent foreign armies from crossing your border and bleeding your citizens. Consequently, Realism and Realpolitik have become, by such historical necessities, the theory and practice of the modern statesman. If one agrees that the ultimate goals of statesmanship are most basically national security and most optimally the maximization of the state’s material well-being, both of which fall under that nebulous term, the national interest, then Realpolitik—if not publicly affirmed, then in practice exercised—becomes the natural means of achieving those ends.