Jewish Perspectives

Keith Kahn-Harris from the Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths College has written a very interesting article in Ekklesia. It begins:

Jews rarely use the term ‘faith’ amongst themselves. Judaism is a practice-based religion in which action is foregrounded rather than belief. While of course Judaism has a core of beliefs and faith in God is part of Jewish theology, faiths and belief tend not to be emphasised when Jews talk about Judaism – even amongst orthodox Jews.

Plenty of religiously practicing Jews have no or only a hazy belief in God. Jewishness is a complex nexus of ethnicity, nationhood and religion and different types of Jews place different levels of emphasis on each of these elements.

For this reason, I, like many other Jews, feel profoundly alienated from debates about atheism and religion – Richard Dawkins and his ilk’s definition of religion fails to capture much of what Judaism is about. But I also feel quite alienated from much faith-based discourse, liberal or conservative.

In order to understand Jews’ relationship to ideas of liberty, it is important to understand that Judaism has both universalist and particularist strands. It is both concerned with humanity as a whole and with Jews in particular.

However, for most of Jewish history it is the particular that has dominated. Jews have generally lived in self-governing communities, often under constant threat of persecution, often second-class citizens. Jews had little ability to influence the wider societies in which they were living, let alone work for social justice.

This situation changed gradually following the dawn of European modernity in the eighteenth century. The gradual emancipation of Jews in European and ‘western’ countries in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, albeit that it was an uneven process with many reverses, allowed Jews to become part of the world as citizens. Jews have adapted and responded to the possibilities of modernity in both particularist and universalist ways:

Read on at Jewish perspectives on life and liberty | Ekklesia

Comments

[Chris P]

Dawkins and the like only pick on people who believe in a god that affects their lives. People who think they know what their god wants.

A relative of mine is engaged to a person with a Jewish upbringing and is finding that in the USA many aspects of the "religion" don't require a belief in a god. Kosher has come to represent the elimination of contamination from food and living in an environmentally friendly way. Being Jewish has become more about personal responsibility and morality.

Now if only the other religions would move in that direction.