Biblical Politics

Michael Walzer is a pivotal figure in the recovery of the Jewish political tradition.  From his early book, Exodus and Revolution, which traced the impact of the Exodus story on Western politics, through his editorship, with Israeli colleagues, of the projected four-volume Jewish Political Tradition, Walzer is almost unrivalled as a scholar of Jewish political thought.  

I say "almost" because another figure, the late Bar Ilan University professor Daniel J. Elazar, provided the major arguments on behalf of the view that there was a Jewish political tradition in the first place.  Elazar was a maximalist.  He believed that the Torah was a kind of ancient constitution that bespoke both an institutional design for politics and a value-rich political culture. Furthermore, he held that the Bible's political constitution and values were replicated, albeit transformed, by subsequent expressions of Jewish political life down through the ages.  Walzer, by contrast, is a minimalist.  He believes that the Bible, although it takes political life into account, is pervasively unconcerned with politics as a thematic field of human endeavor. Furthermore, the subsequent Jewish political tradition is largely bookish; it is an ongoing conversation about political things, not an actual history of institutions struggling to hold the Jews together politically after the loss of sovereignty.  The publication of Walzer's most recent book, In God's Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible, a judicious and authoritative account of its subject, gives us an occasion to contrast his view with Elazar's.

Elazar, in works such as Kinship and Consent: The Jewish Political Tradition and Its Contemporary Uses and Covenant and Polity in Biblical Israel, argued that the biblical motif of covenant is the organizing principle of biblical and of all subsequent Jewish political life and thought.  Covenant entails a voluntary agreement by a group to keep faith with one another and with a central, transcendent authority.  Consent to God's law and fidelity (ḥesed) to God and to one another found a political community (edah).  A decent politics begins in agreements—with consent, not coercion.  Furthermore, the transcendent authority of God relativizes the authority of human expressions of power.  Elazar believed that biblical and subsequent Jewish politics always checked power against power; classically kings, priests, and prophets were all expressions of legitimate authority.  Their contestation and negotiation with one another evoked the original rough equality and consent of the covenantal founding.  Covenant as an organizing principle is flexible enough to survive the demise of statehood.  It continued to animate a sense of nationhood, legitimate authority, political obligation, and sacred community through centuries of exile.

Walzer believes that Elazar has greatly overstated his case.  He grants that the biblical practice of covenanting is much more than a theological trope, but he denies that it grounds a full-fledged political principle or theory.  Thus, "Daniel J. Elazar constructs full-scale biblical political doctrine on the basis of the covenantal model, but it is very much a construction, not a finding.  The covenant is there, in the texts; the doctrine, it seems to me, isn't."  Like Elazar, Walzer sees covenant as nation-founding.  Israel as a "genealogical collective" already exists, but it takes on a heightened form of belonging through covenant. The mix of "kinship and covenant, descent and consent, are simultaneously at work."  But what the consenting people, now rising to the level of nationhood, agree to is obedience to a sacred, divinely given law, which, far from enabling them to have a political life, nips it in the bud. The law (or, more accurately, laws; Walzer has a chapter on the discrepant law codes of the Bible) places Israel's action into a register where politics is scanted and legal reasoning rules.  The leitmotif of Walzer's book is that politics, understood as a wholly immanent, practical, quintessentially human activity, cannot flourish "in God's shadow."  Thus, where Elazar reads biblical texts as evidences of a kind of politics in a religious world, Walzer reads them as evidence of religious considerations constraining or aborting politics.

For Walzer, the Bible is "the record of a nation whose God did not leave much room for independent decision making."  Thus, "the political activity of ordinary people is not a biblical subject; nor is there any explicit recognition of political space, an agora or forum, where people congregate to argue about and decide on the policies of the community."  The gates of the city—the biblical equivalent of a public square—are places of legal adjudication, not political discussion.  The elders who assemble there and who, in many texts, seem to have a truly political role—consider the episode in which they go to Samuel and demand a king "like all the other nations"—are never adequately described or explored by the biblical authors.  We never see the elders deliberating, arguing, or negotiating with one another, as political men must.  They seem to represent the people, but we don't know how; there is no biblical discussion of their function as representatives or the basis of their legitimacy.  The biblical texts did not take an interest in politics in this sense:

Who makes decisions and how decisions are made: these are questions in which the biblical writers take no sustained or critical interest.  The central concerns of political philosophy as the Greeks understood it—ruling and being ruled, the best regime, the meaning of citizenship, the deliberative process, civic virtue, political obligation—were never central in Israelite thought.

We can tease out perspectives and positions that are relevant, Walzer notes, but we can't find arguments. The light that politics needs to flourish cannot be found in God's shadow.

Walzer's book carefully analyzes the topics germane to political life as they emerge, however obliquely, in the Bible.  Matters such as the interpretation of law, conquest and holy war, models of kingship, the public aspects of prophecy, the public role of the priesthood, the endurance of the nation in exile, the courtly, practical rationality of the Wisdom literature, and the messianic hope for a national restoration are all treated to close study, enriched by academic scholarship.  Walzer is no less indefatigable than Elazar in pursuing the political content of biblical texts.  But in almost every instance, Walzer finds a red light where Elazar found a green one.  

There are several ways to parse this debate.  One could say that Walzer is the more austere reader; that Elazar, as an engaged intellectual in the Israeli context, was searching for a usable past and was willing to press the texts into service.  There is some truth in that.  Elazar wanted to see Zionism and the restoration of statehood not as an absolute break with diasporic political quiescence but as spectacular successes within an ongoing political tradition, rooted in the Bible.  Elazar was so focused on an argument for the continuity of a political tradition, the vast disruptions of history notwithstanding, that he needed to see the Bible as its first stage.  Walzer, by contrast, takes the Bible fully on its own terms, alert to its contexts and voices.  He is not concerned with the Bible's effects on subsequent Jewish or Western tradition, at least in this book.  His is a highly disciplined stance and, I say this as a disciple and friend of the late Dan Elazar, a compelling one.  I think that, as a project of textual interpretation, Walzer makes the better case.

Another way to see what is at stake here is to consider the two authors’ discrepant understandings of politics.  For Walzer, politics is human, all too human.  For Elazar, politics can indeed flourish in God's shadow.  For Walzer, "The people consent, but they do not rule.  Only when God is conceived to withdraw, to stand at some distance from the world of nations, to give up his political interventions, is there room for human politics."  Politics needs a God-free space in which to flourish.  For Elazar, God enables human beings, through granting them liberty, to work out their own destinies under His law.  As a political philosopher of a conservative bent, Elazar was suspicious of a purely modern version of liberty; he inclined toward the positive liberty of the covenant, rather than the negative liberty of the social contract.  What is ultimately at stake here—the comparative sagacity of biblical interpretation aside—is the status of secularism vis-à-vis the possibility of a good politics.  Elazar eschewed a purely secular politics; Walzer seems to endorse it.  The stakes of this debate could not be higher.          

Alan Mittleman teaches at the Jewish Theological Seminary. His last book was A Short History of Jewish Ethics.

Alan Mittleman on October 23, 2012 at 12:07 pm (Reply)
Ben Tzur writes: "I even wonder if Mittleman's agreement with Walzer does not flow from his own liberal progressive religious/political views, now so ironically dominant in the "Conservative Movement." But I would urge Mittleman to rethink his understanding of covenantal politics."

Those who know me might be surprised to learn that I have "liberal progressive religious/political views." At any rate, this is not how scholars should assess scholarly work. Walzer's book is no left wing screed. It is a cautious, judicious, well argued work of scholarship. I simply judged it on its merits. As someone who has done a lot over the years to keep Dan Elazar's work on Jewish political thought in the conversation--as at a Bar Ilan conference a few months ago--it did not please me to disagree with him. But I think Walzer made the better case.

As to my own thinking about covenantal politics, Ben Tzur might consult my chapter in the Oz-Salzberger, Schochet, Jones book to which he makes reference, as well my book on (biblical) hope in a democratic age.
Ben Tzur on October 24, 2012 at 1:25 am (Reply)
I have done as Alan Mittleman has suggested, and consulted his chapter in the Oz-Salzberger et al. book. It is generally excellent and enlightening. It chiefly concerns "Thoughts on the Covenantal Politics of Althusius" as the title states. Althusius' Politica "is a classic of Reformed Protestant political theory," according to the first sentence of the article. But in this article, too, in its concluding section "Althusius and Jewish, Democratic Thought," devoted to implications "for us" of Althusius' covenantal theory (he defines "us" as Jews and non-Jews seeking "to discern and rehabilitate elements of the Jewish political tradition" -- so the present-day liberal agenda again intrudes itself, this time explicitly) Mittleman again polemicises explicitly against Elazar's view of "covenantal politics" on behalf of what he terms a more modern and liberal individual-rights oriented viewpoint. According to Mittleman, covenant theory produces a too centrist and "statist" model of society. "Contemporary political thought has sought a good for the liberal soul, a deeper account of individuality than classical liberalism provided. Althusian thought forecloses on this possibility" (p. 84 of the cited book). (I notice parenthetically that despite his disclaimer in his post above, Mittleman would seem to be identifying himself here as a secularizing left-liberal in the generally accepted political sense of that term today, that is, as a person opposed to more conservative "classical liberal" thought.) In any case, the criticisms of Althusius may or may not be true; I leave that to those familiar with all his writings.

But is it true of Biblical Judaism? Several objections arise. The first is the primary role of the assent of the community to community leadership, an assent that can be withdrawn if that leadership arrogates too much power to itself (as notably occurred with King Rehoboam, causing the defection of the Northern Tribes: I Kings 11-12). The second is the acknowledgement of individual uniqueness and indeed the high status given the individual in Biblical Judaism. It may even be suggested (as many have done) that the modern concept of the individual first emerges in Biblical Israel. It has its root in the idea that each of us is created in the divine image, and that each person's uniqueness is a kind of signature pointing to the uniqueness of the one God. The basic equality of all human beings, despite and even via their diversity, flows from this. Berman's book, already mentioned, provides a good path into this aspect of Biblical political theory. The third is the stress on separation of powers or functions in the polity, which Elazar also points to: this helps to counter excessive power over the community and gives social space for diversity, and ultimately via voluntary associations (so noticeable in later Jewish societies) even for individual diversity. There are many other elements of Biblical political thought that could be drawn upon to round out this portrait, but in summary it would appear that Elazar was not off-base. A good overview of Biblical views is provided by Lenn E. Goodman, "The Individual and the Community in the Normative Traditions of Judaism," in Autonomy and Judaism: The Individual and the Community in Jewish Philosophical Thought, ed. Daniel H. Frank (1992), pp. 69-119.

It is therefore not coincidental that later Rabbinic thought stressed the status of the individual both in the general sense of political theory and in terms of Jewish law. It was faithful, that is, to Biblical values in this. See other contributions to the just-mentioned book, and also Louis Jacobs, Religion and the Individual: A Jewish Perspective (1992).

None of this means that Biblical or post-Biblical Judaism political philosophy was uniform in itself or was identical to modern secularist hyper-individualist values. Nevertheless, there were deeply liberal political views, in the sense of classical liberalism, already in Biblical and later Judaism which not only helped to create modern liberal democracy as such, but also today can provide a principled critique of its increasingly obvious excesses.
Alan Mittleman on October 25, 2012 at 7:54 am (Reply)
Ben Tzur persists in identifying advocacy of liberal democracy with a "secularizing left liberal" stance. Not true. We have to be careful with our words here. When I use the word liberal, I am thinking of the political theory of people such as John Locke and of the constitutional arrangement of nations such as, and most particularly, the United States. I am not thinking of the welfare state, the Great Society, and so on. There is a real problem here. For covenantal thinkers, like Althusius among the early Protestants, or moderns like Rabbi Shimon Federbush (see his Mishpat Melukha b'Yisrael), individual rights are problematic. For liberal democracy individual rights are basic. Most of us are denizens of modern liberal democracies and would look askance at political orders that diminish our rights. Anyone that takes the Jewish political tradition and covenantal thought seriously must honestly face this. Appeals to biblical equality or individuality or whatever are not enough. The full force of the problem at the level of political theory must be engaged.

Elazar did this well. He dedicated an issue of "The Jewish Political Studies Review," to the contrast, conflict, and possible reconciliation of what he called "liberal democracy" and "communal democracy." These, in turn, tracked what his beloved Puritans called "natural" and "federal" (i.e. covenantal) liberty. He saw the Jewish political tradition as tending toward communal democracy, today best represented by the Swiss, and the modern tradition expressing itself in liberal democracy, with the US as the "first new nation." He wanted to bridge these forms in order to energize the Jewish political tradition. (His article may be found here: http://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles/commdem-jpt.htm) My point is that Elazar was deeply aware of the clash between liberal and other, more communal or covenantal expressions of democratic republicanism and that he was committed to the best of both of them, as am I. But bringing them together is a real and an unsolved problem and merely making pejorative illusions to left-liberalism doesn't come close to grasping or addressing it. Ben Tzur's further exploration of individualism within a Jewish context--and he has adduced two fine studies that help with this--is much more promising. But it would be best to read these works within the horizon of political theory mapped by Elazar in his article.
Ben Tzur on October 25, 2012 at 10:48 pm
Thank your for your informative and helpful response, Dr. Mittleman. Indeed, it is true: we must be careful about the words we use. I apologize if I have misunderstood or have been over-hasty. But I must confess to feeling some confusion still about what your terminology applies to. For example, in regard to John Locke, we certainly have to do with classical liberalism (as I believe just about all specialists in the history of modern political thought agree). Although of course Locke was very concerned with individual freedoms and is often used as a starting-point for modern defenses of rights-oriented political theory, that starting-point is then modified considerably by modern apologists for the contemporary purely secular, relativistic and what I would call hyper-individualistic and indeed left liberalism you apparently define as "liberal democracy" tout court (in this usage, "liberal democracy" as such is apparently assumed to be different from the democracy formulated in any of the classical liberal political theorists of the Sixteenth through to the late Eighteenth centuries: they do not rise to actual "liberal democracy"). I would take issue with these understandings of John Locke, of classical liberalism, and of "liberal democracy" itself. For example, going back to the Oz-Salzberger et al. volume in which your article on Althusius appears, there is another article there by Fania Oz-Salzberger herself entitled "John Locke and Political Hebraism," in which she reviews the debate about whether Locke was the pure secularist Leo Strauss insisted he was, or was deeply indebted to the New Testament tradition and the political Hebraists such as Selden and Grotius whom he often cited in his works, as John Dunn and Jeremy Waldron have argued, and comes down on the side of the latter. She even goes beyond Dunn and Waldron by showing that not only was belief in the Biblical God crucial for Locke, but that in terms of the consequences of this for political theory Locke based himself more on "OId Testamental" sources than New Testamental ones.

I am particularly grateful to you for directing my attention to the article by Daniel Elazar in the Jewish Political Studies Review, which as you say is available on-line. I did not know of this on-line resource, and shall have to set aside time to read more deeply into it. The Elazar article is a personal reflective overview of his views, and shows how much we have lost with his passing. However, I find that some of the problematic definitions of "liberal democracy" (and the "communal democracy" allegedly characteristic of Jewish political traditions and classical liberalism) that troubled me in your article are already there in Elazar's. They still remain dubious. It may even be the case that the faulty definitions give rise to false dichotomies and contradictions between classical liberalism based on "political Hebraism" and "liberal democracy" that has freed itself from Hebraism per se, between religious and secular understandings of society, etc., that make it certain that Elazar's -- and your -- quest to overcome the gulf between these two traditions, Jewish and "liberal democratic" thought, can never be found. It would be like squaring the circle, with these definitions. Perhaps the terms need re-working?

It is not just a matter of European classical liberalism being deeply indebted to covenantal thinking and political Hebraisms. Historians now accept that it was. Nor is it a matter even of the Puritans, which you mention. The Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution both frankly posit and even emphasize covenantal Biblically grounded assumptions. Elazar himself acknowledges this, but does not pursue the matter further (he cites William Everett, God's Federal Republic, in footnote 9). After all, the founding figures of the American nation, deeply influenced by the pietists who had fled from Europe, had also read the works of the political Hebraists of the previous two centuries or at least were influenced by their assumptions. Those assumptions had become part of the general cultural framework of life in the colonies, affecting even the less pietistic sectors of the population, giving axiomatic force to the formulation, "One nation, indivisible, under God!" So there is no contradiction in these founding documents between American liberty and a God-centered polity. The Exodus analogy of escape from Europe/Egypt so often invoked by the American colonists was crowned, for the founders of the United States, with a semi-secular equivalent of the Sinai revelation which created the Jewish nation, namely the newly covenanted nation of the United States itself. The Biblical covenantal conceptions both in its Sinai form and in terms of the Noahite Covenant are even used as models. This is entirely within the world of classical liberalism. If we apply the terms used by Elazar, and again by you above, the US is not "in the modern tradition of liberal democracy."

I will quite readily grant that the cultural tendencies of American democracy today are far more secularist, individualistic and "pluralistic" than at its founding -- or that was envisaged by its founding fathers. Whether, however, that is a good thing or a bad thing is something else altogether. Leo Strauss has a point when he argues that there is a kind of irresistible logic leading to meaninglessness, relativist nihilism and amoralism rooted at the heart of the egalitarian Enlightenment democratic dream, which has grown in the course of the last century to constitute a fundamental crisis and possible breakdown of Western civilization. Edmund Burke was on to something.

Ben Tzur on October 23, 2012 at 8:40 pm (Reply)
Yes, I am very proud of the Jewish tradition, that is true, and I certainly support Joshua Berman's findings, which were the actual focus of the highly emotive and personal slurs "chaldean periphast" says wrongly were directed to me. Apparently contrary to "chaldean periphast," I believe that the Jewish tradition has made an enormous difference for the better in Western history.

As for Elazar and Walzer, I believe that Elazar wrote much less on Biblical literature than Walzer did. His focus was on the long-term themes of Jewish political thinking. Nevertheless, his points were well-taken, and the covenant theme is indeed basic to Biblical Judaism, and affected all aspects of its outlook. As for Walzer's writings being a left-wing screed, that is not what I said. That is far too dismissive. I said those writings, which are in my opinion very valuable and important contributions to our knowledge of Biblical Judaism, nevertheless betray their own agenda, which is indeed left-wing and which demonstrate a desire to attribute to Biblical Judaism emphases that are useful in modern political advocacy. There is no contradiction between the two points.

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