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PDF FormatThis approach, while well grounded in the biblical and rabbinic texts, nonetheless represents a striking rejoinder to the major streams of Jewish philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. While thinkers like Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, and Franz Rosenzweig did not reject the biblical vision of the moral improvement of all peoples, they nonetheless followed the Kantian tradition in pinning their hopes on the thoughts, intentions, or emotions of the individual as the starting point for serious moral discussion. In their view, this emphasis was the natural outcome of Judaism’s universal spirit. If the world is to be redeemed through a universal morality, then we must begin with that which unites mankind, namely, the capacity of individuals for reason or compassion. It was through the individual—at the expense of communities, peoples, or nations—that mankind as a whole would find redemption.
This sentiment is found most vividly in the writings of Hermann Cohen. “What, after all, is social morality, if it is not founded upon the individual?” he wrote in his great work, Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism. “Is not individual morality the precondition for social morality, without which the latter remains an abstraction, from which it cannot be freed even through the relation of man to the state?”18 In Cohen’s view, morality begins with the individual’s recognition that he is part of a single mankind, united under the rubric of ethics guided by reason—a recognition which must ultimately result in the dissolution of peoples into a collective, universal ideal:
Finally it is a consequence of the ethical rigor that national limitations are abandoned for the sake of messianism…. If one disregards the fundamental historical meaning, that through the election the national consciousness was to be substituted for the religious calling, then the election of Israel has only a symbolic significance. From the very outset this higher symbolism presaged Israel’s messianic call, its elevation into one mankind.19
Cohen’s vision of the unification of humanity through the individual’s “ethical rigor,” leading to the dissolution of distinct communities, had a profound impact on the way Jewish philosophy developed in the twentieth century. This effect has been described by Eugene Borowitz, who writes in Renewing the Covenant, “All modernist theories of Judaism uphold the principle of autonomy, that authority ultimately is vested in the individual mind and will.”This view, according to Borowitz, was even more pronounced among existentialist thinkers, such as Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, for whom the individual experience was the starting point for all religious or ethical experience. “Buber and Rosenzweig both considered the [individual’s] relationship with God to be the unchanging core of Judaism…. Like any love, it commanded one only when the self willingly responded to it….” According to Borowitz, for all that thinkers such as these may have disagreed with the rationalism of Cohen, “the existentialists nonetheless shared an important precept of modernity: That all authority, whether exercised in terms of one’s rationality, ethnicity, or relationships, finally resides in the individual self.”20
Such a view, Berkovits countered, misunderstands the nature of human morals. For if the goal of morality is not just to fashion righteous teachings but to bring into being a better human reality, morality must begin with man as he really is: Both an individual and part of a larger collective. And any reasonable evaluation of history will show that for most people most of the time, it is the collective which establishes and reinforces the norms that govern the ethical behavior of individuals. Therefore, if Jewish morality contains within it a vision for mankind—a position Berkovits embraces wholeheartedly—then its realization will depend not on the hope that people will abandon their particular allegiances, but rather on the emergence of a living people that may be “history-making” in its representation of a moral ideal. “The goal of Judaism is accomplished when it is reached by all mankind,” he wrote. “Since, however, the goal is not essentially the teaching of noble ideals—which would indeed be rather easy, and ineffective—but rather their realization in history, one has to start with the smallest unit of living reality within which the deed of Judaism may become history-making; and such a unit is the nation. Individuals may teach; a people is needed in order to do effectively.”21
III
How would such a holy community be constituted? In Berkovits’ view, the limited autonomy granted Jewish communities in foreign lands cannot meet the fundamental demands that the Bible places on the Jews. The effectiveness of the model community requires not simply congregations, or an international association joined by a common religion, but rather the creation of a “holy nation.”
Basing himself on the verse in Exodus, “And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,”22 Berkovits articulates a philosophy of Judaism according to which only on the national level does man possess sufficient independence of spirit and action to have the possibility of representing the divine on earth in the fullest way possible. This idea is expressed by the very term “holy nation.” Holiness (kedusha) means, literally, dedication; Judaism’s concern cannot be restricted to the home, synagogue, house of study, or community center. Holiness means dedicating the whole of our lives to God. But if this is the case, then any Jewish community which is dependent on others in crucial areas of life is forever prevented from fulfilling its task. An exemplary people must first be an independent, fully responsible people. It must have that which distinguishes independent nations from other forms of community. That is, it must be sovereign.
At this stage a crucial distinction must be drawn. While Berkovits insisted on sovereignty as a minimal condition for the fulfillment of Judaism, he did not advocate any sort of totalist ideal, in which every aspect of life is given over to the authority of human rulers. “This kingdom of priests is not a society in which a priestly caste rules over an unpriestly populace in the name of some god,” Berkovits writes. “A holy nation is a realm in which all are priests. But where all are priests, all are servants—and God alone rules.” The point of sovereignty is not to fashion a state that will become the principal conduit of sanctity, but to give the nation sufficient responsibility for its own affairs as to allow it to constitute a viable example for other nations. “A ‘kingdom of priests and a holy nation,’” he writes, “is thus not a theocracy, but a God-centered republic.”23
Berkovits expands on the question of sovereignty in a variety of contexts. In Faith After the Holocaust (1973), he concludes his major statement on the destruction of European Jewry with a discussion of Jewish statehood. While most Zionist writers based their arguments for statehood on a plea for justice or for the necessity of self-defense after centuries of persecution, Berkovits depicts sovereignty as a permanent need, inherent in Judaism’s moral outlook:
While by faith alone a soul may be saved, perhaps, the deed’s raison d’etre is to be effective in the world. For the sake of its effectiveness, the deed will seek for its realization a group that is motivated by a common faith and united by a common cause. The extent of the group depends on the area within which the deed is to be enacted….But what if the fruition of the idea as the deed encompasses the whole of human existence? If the faith seeks realization in economics, morals, politics, in every manifestation of human life? In that case, the group ought to be all-comprehensive. Such a group should be mankind. But mankind is not a group; it is not a historical entity. Mankind itself is an idea, an ideal. The comprehensive group to be created to suit the comprehensive deed as a historical reality is a people in sovereign control of the major areas of its life. The faith of Judaism requires such a comprehensive deed. Realization through and within the all-comprehensive collective, mankind, is the ideal; the instrument of its realization in history is the people.24
The fallacy of political universalism, according to Berkovits, is not its wish for the improvement of mankind, but its belief that mankind as such exists at all, as a human association capable of acting in history. Collectives can be real things, inasmuch as they are made up of individuals acting in concert and united in a common cause; “humanity” may be a useful mental construct, but it does not exist as an actual human collective, so long as all mankind has not united under a common identity or goal. Universal brotherhood is at best a dream; only extant human associations can actually move history, and the form of association most suited to the aims of Judaism is the sovereign nation, which alone contains within it the full contents of human life.
