Rights and Jewish tradition: claiming the higher and middle grounds. . - Reviews - Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory - book review

Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory. By DAVID NOVAK. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

David Novak's Covenantal Rights is a bold effort to reshape Jewish political theory and political theory in general. Novak seeks to reconcile modernity and Jewish tradition by demonstrating that the concept and language of rights is an integral part of Jewish tradition. He argues that the liberal conception of rights, embraced by most Jews today, is fundamentally non-Jewish because it presupposes an anthropocentric universe with human autonomy as its highest value. Traditionalist Jews reject rights talk precisely because it is secular and stress instead the community's claims on the individual. Novak's task is to show that an authentically jewish political theory is a political theology that contains a sophisticated framework of correlative rights and duties.

In addressing this Jewish issue, Novak also aims to contribute to political theory in general by offering a theory that illuminates and overcomes the shortcomings of both liberal and conservative perspectives. Liberals have emphasized rights at the expense of duties, while conservatives have taken the inverse tack. The former leads to a fragmented social world driven by selfish interests, the latter invites authoritarianism. Novak proposes a balance of rights and duties.

Novak argues that rights and duties are correlative: every duty presupposes a prior right. For example, my duty to help the poor is created by the poor's prior claim to my help. The community and God, as well as individuals, have rights and duties. Of course, individuals, the community, and God, are not equal. God's claims on humans, as individuals and as a collective, are primary. Rights, for Jewish political theory, must be "grounded in the prior covenantal relationship between God and Israel" (116). Novak uses Torah to understand the rights and duties obtaining between God and individuals, between individuals and covenanted community, and among individuals. What appears to differentiate Novak from many other political theorists is his claim that rights and duties only become properly ordered within the covenant between God and Israel: "[O]nly when God's authority is presented in the covenant do the lesser authority of society and the lesser authority of the individual person find their rightful places resp ectively and their rightful correlation one with the other" (11).

God's creation of humans in God's image is the primary act of rights-creation: God as creator is entitled to command our response. Our duty to fulfill the commandments is the response required by God's creation of humans. The fact that God created us also generates a set of claims that we can make on God. These are prayer (the right to be heard by God, not to be confused with the right for God to grant us what we wish), the commandments (which Novak describes as God's response to our needs), and the right to God's justice.

Individuals' relationship to God, however, is of secondary importance to the relationship of God to the covenanted community, Israel. The core of the covenant, after all, is with the community, not with the individual. Novak is careful to argue that the covenant does not diminish a person's relationship to God; rather, the covenant enhances that relationship. God makes claims on the community to practice justice, act compassionately, and worship publicly; God also demands martyrdom in certain circumstances.

In return, the covenanted community makes claims on God that demand a response. The most immediate claim is survival as a people, "a claim that is justified by Jewish affirmation of the purposes of the covenant" (102). Just as God is faithful to the covenant, so should the Jews be faithful to the covenant- although our claim, just like our election, is ultimately not dependent on our virtue. We also have a claim on God related to fulfilling the commandments. Following Maimonides, Novak argues that we are entitled to physical benefits from God in so far as those benefits enable us to uphold the commandments; the benefits are not to be seen as a reward for fulfilling the commandments. Finally, the authority to interpret Torah as binding law is "Israel's claim on God for the sake of the covenant" (110). Because direct revelation no longer occurs, humans' access to God's will is through interpreting Torah. Any interpretation must be based on the purpose of Torah, namely, for the sake of God, either directly or in directly.

Relations between individuals are governed by the closely related injunctions "what is hateful to yourself, do not do to someone else," and "you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Novak's subtle discussion of the meaning of these commandments and their implications for humans' rights are grounded in God's love for Israel: "Because the Lord loves Israel, individual Jews are able to share that love with others in the covenant," as well as with non-Jews (152). Novak confronts liberal political theory directly by arguing that self-interest is one starting point for the exercise of rights, but that it should not be its terminus. Ultimately, self-interest is action taken for the sake of those we love; it is instrumental rather than an end in itself. As such, self-interest has a legitimate role in exercising rights, but it is less important than rights that are means to a "dutiful end" (132).