6
Contested Boundaries: Visions of a Shared World
NOAM J. ZOHAR
THE TASK of producing, from within the Jewish tradition, significant responses to a specific set of questions regarding territorial boundaries calls for extensive reexamination—and sometimes, imaginative extension—of traditional sources. Because of the character of Judaism as a religious tradition focused on one particular people, the analysis often appears to deal exclusively with Jewish or Israeli experience. But my intent, paralleling that of David Novak in the preceding chapter, is to draw in-sights from this experience that may be applied to a more general con-text. My remarks below—even where they take issue with Novak’s position—are deeply indebted to his original analyses and insights.
Broadly speaking, I endorse the view expressed by Novak, which accords priority to the definition of communal boundaries over the definition of territorial boundaries. In terms of the Jewish tradition, however, I wish to emphasize the contrasting vision of a world shared by all humanity together, contesting the rigidity of political boundaries, territorial and communal alike.
Territorial Boundaries and World Community
Novak begins by positing that “human life is inconceivable outside of a finite community”; then in the next sentence, he speaks of a “defined community” (emphases added). But “defined” need not be “finite,” at least not in Novak’s sense of a community which is one of many into which the human race is divided. Why not a world community? This question is raised in the next paragraph, which cites a “version of the Jewish messianic vision that sees one world polity as the goal of all human history.” But I find Novak’s answer to this insufficient, for he only stresses that even the future world polity is seen as “oriented around Zion as the axis mundi.”
What is the nature of this “orientation”? It might be spiritual, akin to the Catholic Church’s orientation around Rome; this does not require maintaining territorial boundaries between communities worldwide. But suppose it is meant in a more strongly political sense, as in the famous prophetic vision of world peace (Isaiah 2:1–4) which Novak cites. In that vision, Zion’s spiritual centrality facilitates resolution of disputes by the messianic king: “Thus he will judge among the nations and arbitrate for the many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,” and so on. On a minimalist reading, Jerusalem is depicted here simply as the site of the world court. But it is hard to imagine effective adjudication of international disputes without some form of world polity. Indeed, the language of the biblical vision—and certainly its elaboration in post-biblical Judaism—points clearly to Jerusalem as the capi-tal of a world state.1
It is true that in traditional messianic visions, the world’s peoples are normally seen as retaining their distinct identities. But within the framework of a worldwide polity, this does not imply that the nations will continue to be divided by firm political boundaries. The suggestion seems rather to be one of a federation under which peoples maintain their ethnic and cultural diversity.
Moreover, according to the biblical account, even the division of humanity into separate communities is not part of the original scene. In the Bible, human history begins without inter-communal boundaries, and some versions of the messianic vision include elimination of even linguistic boundaries between the world’s nations.
Throughout the first ten chapters of Genesis, humanity is one family. The rabbis stressed the anti-racist significance of this common origin: “That is why Adam was created only one—so that none should say to his fellow, ‘My forefather was greater than your forefather’ ” (Mishnah San. 4:5). Only at the Tower of Babel does God decide to frustrate human unity and inflict on humans a division of languages (Gen. 11:1–9). The nature of the human trespass which supposedly called for this punishment is far from clear. In any case, latter-day prophetic visions clearly express the hope of a reunited humanity (cf., e.g., Zeph. 3:9).
In actual history, however, humanity is divided into disparate communities. Novak’s analysis rightly stresses the primacy of communities over territorial states. It is not that the world is first divided by territorial boundaries and then the human aggregate within each area forms a community; rather, humanity is divided into communities who then in fact maintain territorial boundaries between their distinct living spaces. It is worth adding that this too is illustrated nicely in the Tower of Babel story: it was mutual incomprehension that reduced humanity to many different tongues, causing them to scatter “over the face of the whole earth” (Gen. 11:7–9).
The primacy of communities leaves room for wondering whether they must necessarily be coextensive with particular territories. Here the Jewish people seems to furnish a classic counterexample: a community that has maintained its identity over millennia without territorial integrity or continuity. Against this, Novak points to the Jewish aspiration to return to Zion. But toward the end of his chapter (under “Autonomy”), he seems to relegate this return to a point beyond history, connecting it to the resurrection of the dead, and asserts that denying the significance of Jewish existence in the Diaspora is “bad theology,” as it suggests that access to God is restricted to one land. Similarly, at the end of the section on “Ownership,” he writes that “the people could survive with her identity intact even when exiled from the land.”
Thus the Jewish people do seem to illustrate that a community can exist in dispersion. And Novak apparently holds that there is no inherent deficiency in such existence, as long as Jews preserve a utopian dream of return to their land. Against this, it is worth citing the Zionist counterclaim that such existence was always more or less precarious and, in the era of the modern nation-state, was destined to produce catastrophe, as it did most infamously in the Holocaust.
On another level, we might ask whether the community’s existence in dispersion and without sovereignty was in fact viewed as satisfactory in terms of the Jewish religious tradition itself. If we look to rabbinic records from the years following the fall of the Second Commonwealth (70 C.E.), it is possible to reconstruct a debate on whether there was any sense at all in continued observance of the Torah’s commandments in exile.2
The upshot of rabbinic discussions on this point was that outside the land of Israel, an entire class of commandments do not, in fact, apply. These include, first and foremost, the laws relating to agriculture and to the earth’s yield—the very same laws that embody most of the Torah’s instruction pertaining to social justice. The concern for social justice continued to find partial expression in the communal institutions of tzedakah (welfare); but as a minority in foreign lands, Jews could not aspire to mold the shape of economic life around them.
It is perhaps possible that in modern democracies, Jewish communities will be able to flourish and even to extend their commitments to impact society at large, while respecting the traditions and commitments of other communities. If this proves viable, then the long Jewish experience of diaspora life will have yielded a striking example of full communal existence without a territory. Against this, some religious Zionists have argued that the vitality of Judaism in the modern world can be sustained only through life in a Jewish land.3
Ownership, Exclusionary Rights, and Violence
Even if people must exist in distinct communities, and even if each community has to exist in some specific place, it does not follow that any local community has a “right to be in a certain place” in the exclusionary sense intended by Novak. The “territorial imperative” on the collective level (Novak’s usage—to my mind a dubious extension of the term) is grounded in the fact that control over land is indispensable for producing and maintaining property, to be passed on from one generation to the next. Novak compellingly connects this with ancient agricultural society and its urban centers, pointing to humanity’s first child (Cain), who calls the first city by the name of his own child, linking “The perpetuity of the city and the perpetuity of the family/clan.”
There is, however, a “missing link” in this narrative, namely, preagricultural society. There were—and, indeed, still are—human groups who do not settle down in one place, from the prehistoric hunters and gatherers to various nomadic tribes. The Bible posits the selfsame Cain as the first “tiller of the soil,” in juxtaposition to his brother Abel—whom he murdered—the first “keeper of sheep” (Gen. 4:2).
In their classical midrashic commentary, the rabbis describe the altercation which led to the first murder (fratricide): “The one [i.e., Cain] said, ‘The land upon which you are standing is mine!’ while the other [i.e., Abel] said, ‘The garment you are wearing is mine!’ ”4 From the perspective of Novak’s analysis we might add that the landowner may be able to survive without the wool garment, while no place at all is left for the nomad if title to the entire land is claimed by others. This re-veals the inherent connection between agricultural communities, exclusive ownership, and lethal violence. Thus, besides recognizing the territorial forms of social organization covered in Novak’s discussion, the Judaic tradition also echoes the moral rebuke implicit in the conception of a nomadic mode of communal existence.
This moral rebuke may be extended to form a critique of certain contemporary theories of political obligation. Specifically, it seems to apply to Locke’s grounding of commitment to local laws in “tacit con-sent,” given through one’s continued residence within a polity—and particularly one’s possession of land therein.5 After all, Locke was a primary exponent—in modern political philosophy—of the biblical teaching (emphasized by Novak) regarding divine ownership of the world and all its resources. God had given over these resources to humanity collectively, and individuals are permitted to assert ownership only if sufficient similar resources remain for others to take. This seems to imply a significant qualification of Locke’s “tacit consent” argument. Locke posits, in effect, that the initial members of the commonwealth make acceptance of its laws a condition for possessing land therein. Now, they can rightly require such a condition only if they may legitimately bar a prospective dweller from taking possession of land in their midst. Their own initial right of (exclusive) possession, how-ever, holds only insofar as the supply of free land is not exhausted. Hence the “tacit consent” grounding of political obligation is valid only if there is land elsewhere, free for the taking—or at least if per-sons are permitted to reside in a land without incurring the full duties of citizens.6
The emphasis on divine ownership of the land—indeed, of the entire world—is certainly a central motif in both biblical and rabbinic Judaism. Minimally, this implies—as Novak notes—that human “domicile is conditional”; God may expel a people from His land because of their “abominations.” But (pace Novak) in the Hebrew Bible these “abominations” seem not to include idolatry: the Canaanites are expelled because of various forms of incest, or particularly heinous modes of idolatrous worship, such as child sacrifices.7
While the Israelites too might be expelled for similar iniquities, their tenancy is dependent on living up to various additional demands. Regarding the nature of these crucial demands, the several books of the Bible do not speak in one voice. While some focus on idolatry,8 others emphasize social injustice as the prime cause of the downfall of Israel and Judea.9 This latter emphasis is perhaps closer to the strictures of Leviticus 25, where divine ownership of both land and persons is invoked as a principle of freedom.
The laws of Leviticus 25 forbid the full alienation through sale of either an individual’s personal freedom or his inherited portion of the ancestral land. As a piece of “utopian legislation,” this probably expressed a revolutionary voice against the supremacy of a landed gentry—corresponding to the prophetic critique: “Ah, those who add house to house and join field to field, till there is room for none but you to dwell in the land!” (Isaiah 5:8).10 Nevertheless, this notion of unalterable, male-inherited ownership can also become a conservative or even reactionary force.
Similarly, on the collective level, the notion of a holy land allotted by God is liable to produce opposition to pragmatic compromises over internationally disputed boundaries. Such opposition is by no means a necessary implication of the idea of a holy land itself;11 still, it is voiced by more than a few speakers in contemporary Israeli politics.
Distribution: Boundaries and Commons
Novak, focusing on the internal boundaries between the holdings of tribes, clans, and individuals in ancient Israel, shows how the ownership of land first gave access to status and to (an ancient form of ) “citizenship,” and then was eventually superseded by the valuation of Torah. This is, then, a story of gradual erosion in the importance of territorial boundaries. Insofar as status came to depend on Torah learning and observance, its attainment became independent of holding land or even of living within the boundaries of the Holy Land.
This does not address, however, the question of what territorial boundaries do serve to distribute. Specifically, do they—or should they—function in distributing (1) living space and (2) access to natural resources? The first of these questions will be discussed below, in connection with the issue of diversity. Here I shall touch on the second question, that of natural resources.
It is hard to find anything in traditional Jewish sources about (re)distribution of natural resources across international boundaries. The common assumption in these sources seems to be that inhabitants of each land rightly control whatever it yields: for example, there is mention of international trade, or of Hiram, King of Tyre, offering to sup-ply cedars from Lebanon (1 Kings 5:15–25). I, too, will seek, therefore, to extrapolate from discussions concerning the boundaries established within the land of Israel, between the territories of the several tribes, or even between individuals.
The Talmud (B. Bava Kama 80b–81a) cites a list of ten stipulations attributed to Joshua, the leader who divided the land among the tribes. The idea seems to be that the initial title to discrete tribal territories was qualified by these stipulations. They include, for example, fishing rights in the Sea of Galilee (whose shores touch more that one tribal territory); collective rights to a water source that emerges in private land; rights of pasture in untilled open spaces (although they are privately owned); certain rights to free passage; and use of another’s land for particular emergencies.
Thus, even though the tribal boundaries distribute living space and main title to the land as agricultural means of production, they are not taken to distribute rights to all uses of the territory or of the resources therein. Particular areas (like the Sea of Galilee) or scarce resources (like water) are retained for common access.
Now the Talmud (B. Bava Kama 81b) also appears to hold that these stipulations apply not only in the land of Israel, but also in other locations. This implies that they are seen not as idiosyncratic rules fashioned by a particular ruler, but rather as universal limitations upon land ownership by both individuals and tribes. There thus seems little reason not to extend a similar approach to international boundaries.
The particular details of these “ten stipulations,” contained in a text composed roughly two thousand years ago, cannot conceivably serve, of course, as a recipe for industrial (or post-industrial) societies. But they can yield meaningful insights into a Jewish traditional stance favoring “universal commons” as qualifying—both spatially and functionally—the effects of territorial boundaries.
It is worth adding that another rabbinic tradition affirms that Jerusalem “was not included in the distribution to the tribes” (B. Yoma 12a), that is to say, it remained the holding of all in common. This may imply a conception that, insofar as a holy place is deemed crucial for access to spiritual fulfillment, it must not be owned by any particular group.12
Diversity: From Community to Nation
With the demise of the First Commonwealth and the exile to Babylon, the territorial boundaries of the Israelite people were dissolved. This eventually produced two opposite responses. Novak mentions one response, that of Ezra the scribe, who fiercely struggled against the as-similation of “the holy stock with the people of the lands.” But this view, which may well be characterized as racist, was not universally shared. The postexilic Isaiah prophesied: “Let not the foreigner say, who has attached himself to the Lord, ‘The Lord will keep me apart from his people.’ . . . For My House shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isa. 56:3, 7).13
Eventually, the Jews established what we might call a social boundary, in lieu of a spatial boundary, to retain their identity as a distinct people. As Novak indicates, this was the setting in which the institution of giyyur (Novak: gerut) was born: a formal procedure deemed both necessary and sufficient for a non-Jew to become a Jew. To the extent that non-sovereign Jewish communities were political units, the giyyur procedure—conferring membership in the community—can be seen as akin to naturalization. But given the political and geographic conditions of Jewish existence, attaining such membership did not often carry significant material advantages.14 Thus the “social boundary” that defined the Jewish community, permitting scarce internal diversity, excluded outsiders from little other than membership in the community itself.
All of the above cannot be applied in any straightforward way to a sovereign state. Novak rightly notes the extreme novelty of contemporary Israeli concerns over diversity and pluralism; but I believe he is wrong in attributing the novelty solely to the emergence of a secular Jewish state.15
The significant transformation in Jews’ self-understanding with regard to the nature of their collectivity preceded the founding of the Jewish state and even the rise of the Zionist movement. The political emancipation of Jews in the various European countries, which proceeded throughout the nineteenth century—combined with the cultural effects of “enlightenment” and secularization—greatly undermined the definition of the Jewish collectivity in exclusively religious terms16 (in-deed, it was mostly secular Jews who opted for Zionism, essentially a modern national movement).
Hence, the Jewish internal problems of accommodating diversity derive from the contrast between the narrowness of the traditional social-cultural boundaries on the one hand, and the actual diversity amongst modern Jews on the other hand. In the late nineteenth century, (Jewish) Orthodoxy defined itself by splitting away from the wider Jewish society, founding separate communities. All this has yielded a duality in contemporary conceptions of the Jewish collective: Is it a religious community or a nation?
At a crucial point in Novak’s discussion, these two conceptions are insufficiently distinguished. He states that
if the state of Israel is a secular, democratic polity, then there should be no ethnic or religious distinctions made between one group of Israelis or another. However, were this to be, the essentially Jewish character of the state . . . would no doubt be lost. . . . On the other hand, if the state of Israel is to be a state for Jews governed by traditional Jewish law, then the only full citizens should be those Jews willing to live under the rule of this law. As for secular Jews, or liberal religious Jews, let alone non-Jews, their obviously second-class status would have to be determined by the rabbinical interpreters of that law.17
This assumes that “Jewish” must imply adherence to the Jewish religion and to its rabbinic laws. Those who would “like to see Israel as a state for Israelis in the same way, let us say, that Canada is a state for Canadians” are accordingly described as “radically secularist.”
What this leaves out is the possibility of Israel as a Jewish state in the same way, let us say, that France is a French state: a national home to the Jewish people. Surely for most Israelis, and for many Jews world-wide, Jewish identity is a matter of national identity rather than religious faith or praxis. I will turn shortly to the implications of such nationalism for non-Jewish minorities in Israel; at this point, I wish to emphasize that secular Israelis do not see themselves as less Jewish—and certainly not as enjoying a diminished citizenship in the “Jewish state”—on ac-count of their rejection of religious traditions.18 This has implications for both the question of joining the Jewish people and the status of non-Jewish citizens in Israel. Let us briefly address each in turn.
The struggle (which has recently received some notoriety) over the procedure for joining the Jewish collective is also not best understood in terms of the difficulties that Israel, as a Jewish-hence-religious state, has with democratic egalitarian ideals. Rather, this struggle reflects the same opposition noted above between two rival conceptions of the Jewish collective.
Those Orthodox Jews who adhere to a narrow definition of Judaism as a religious community have struggled to define the procedure of giyyur as the formal expression of a religious conversion. Novak’s discussion appears to echo this understanding of giyyur in terms of a “prior commitment” to adopt “the full regimen of Jewish law.” But others have argued that this understanding of giyyur is a modern innovation; classically, it was primarily a mode of joining the Jewish peo-ple. True, as long as the Jewish people as a whole adhered to religious faith and praxis, choosing to join them involved a willingness to share their religion. But the primary character of the procedure lies in being symbolically “reborn” into the people, joining an ethnic collective rather than a religious community.19
I believe that it is such an understanding of giyyur that has facilitated its retention as the only mode of joining the Jewish people recognized by Israeli law. Yet coalition politics leaves the control of the procedure in the hands of rabbinic courts whose members commonly subscribe to the Orthodox, narrow conception of the Jewish collective, and there-fore prevent the “conversion” of the great number of persons who would want to do so without making a deep commitment to the Jewish religion.
This gap between popular sentiment and institutional behavior has resulted in a change in the Law of Return, which now grants the right of immigration to Israel, and of immediate conferral of Israeli citizen-ship, to (so-called) “non-Jewish” relatives of (legally recognized) “Jews.” In effect, this gives legal expression to widespread support for an ethnic-national conception of Jewish identity.
That non-Orthodox Israelis have failed, to date, to remold giyyur in light of their own intuitive self-understanding is a fact that may have more general significance for theories of nationalism, beyond this specifically Jewish quandary. Insofar as a national state may adopt selective immigration laws, it gives preference to the repatriation of members of the nation living abroad. Such immigration rights would require formal criteria, and the question might easily arise: Who is a (legitimate) member of the nation? Can anyone join (and thereby gain a right to “repatriation”)—and if so, how?
In the foregoing discussion I have assumed that if a nation-state, with regard to repatriation, distinguishes between would-be immigrants on the basis of their national affiliation, this does not constitute illicit discrimination. This does not apply, of course, to the treatment of the state’s own residents. If “Jewish state” is understood, as I suggested above, as a political home to the Jewish nation, then the status of non-Jewish citizens should be addressed in terms of the normal discourse on the rights of ethnic and national minorities in a democratic nation-state. 20
The particularly Jewish character of this nation is of concern here mainly to the extent that Jewish national culture, including the strong influence of biblical and post-biblical traditions, produces special obstacles (or, conversely, enhancements) to the toleration of some forms of diversity. Among such obstacles, surely the most serious is the strong Jewish tradition of uncompromising battle against “idolatry.”
Novak properly cites here the teaching of ha-Me’iri, who excludes adherents of other monotheistic religions from the strictures against idolaters. Ha-Meiri taught that, unlike the barbarian pagans of old, these are civilized people and must be treated with full respect. It is worth emphasizing that, with regard to such people, ha-Me’iri stipulates that they are “[to be treated] exactly like Jews . . . without any dis-tinction.” 21 This is not, however, because they adhere to “religiously ac-ceptable” law (Novak’s translation, imprecise in my view), but rather because they are subject to the civilizing force of religion. It is not that social norms require religious scrutiny; quite the contrary, the quality of particular religions may be known by their (civilizing) fruits. The problem with the ancient idolaters was not, according to ha-Me’iri, in their religion per se, but in its barbaric moral import.
This difference in translation has great importance for contemporary issues. Ha-Me’iri certainly did not imagine that people could be civilized without any religion, and he would perhaps be greatly perplexed by the phenomenon of, say, civilized (and polytheistic) Hindu society. But since the importance he accords to religion in this context is only as (what he took to be) an indispensable force for inculcating civilized norms, his position paves the way for adherents of the Jewish religion to abandon traditions which allow (or even invite) discrimination against heretics or “idolaters.”22
Mobility
Here I have little to add, except one consideration pertaining to re-source allocation. Redistributive taxation is an integral part of the Jewish tradition: this is called tzedakah, sometimes imprecisely translated as “charity.” Now the scope of tzedakah collection and distribution alike includes first of all the residents of a particular polity. Thus the funds collected in the communal tzedakah chest are meant primarily for meeting the needs of local indigent persons. The needs of persons in transit are to be met to a far lesser degree.23
Hence the halakic tradition may well endorse making it known that the right to move within a group’s territorial boundaries does not en-tail claim-rights (above a certain minimum) to services offered to indigent residents.
Autonomy: The Jewish Traditions of Rabbinic and Political Authority
Novak’s emphasis on subordination to God is valid insofar as its intent is a moral-spiritual constraint on politics. But those voices within the Judaic tradition that give greater weight to human autonomy are underrepresented in his exposition in two important senses.
First, it is true that the Torah’s underlying premise is a commitment to live by God’s law. But this does not confine rabbinic interpretation and implementation of that law to a mode of “discovery” as opposed to “creation” of norms. On the contrary, rabbinic midrash is markedly bold in its (re)interpretations of God’s “written Torah.”24
A second point has greater direct bearing upon Novak’s proposal of how to deal with aspirations for autonomy by non-Jewish communities within the boundaries of a Jewish polity. Novak claims that if non-Jewish communities are able to have their own autonomous courts of law, they will suffer no political deprivation. This is because, from a traditional point of view, the Jews themselves wield no more than “essentially juridical” sovereignty.
This seems to me a vast understatement of the role of politics and of the autonomy of political authority in Jewish law. True, when the people turned to Samuel seeking a king, God perceived this as a rejection of divine kingship (1 Sam. 8, 12). But much has transpired since then in the Jewish political tradition. Eventually, Nissim Gerondi (fourteenth century, Spain) formulated a doctrine of parallel authority, virtually secularizing politics. Torah law reflects ideal justice, but the requirements of social order call for something else, which the king provides, guided not by Torah but by prudential considerations. And this was not mere speculation about a kingdom long lost, but a reflection of the autonomous powers of the berurim (selectmen) who acted as legislators and judges in medieval Jewish communities.25
There are many who view the ultimate grounds for such nonrabbinic authority as residing in the consent of the governed, and there-fore extend the same recognition to democratically elected legislatures and governments.26 Non-Jewish citizens of a Jewish state are subject to the authority of such bodies insofar as they too consent and partici-pate in electing them (as well as being elected to them). And if they insist instead on a significant degree of self-government, their claim has prima facie merit—subject, of course, to whatever valid constraints there are on a right to full or partial secession; but that is for another essay.
Notes
1. Novak himself, toward the end of his chapter (in the section on “Autonomy”), writes that “Zion is meant to be the capital of a united humankind liv-ing under the explicit kingship of God.”
2. See Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy, trans. R. Hammer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), secs. 43–44.
3. For example, David Hartman has at one point argued that “The circumstances of Diaspora existence prevent the development of Judaism as a total way of life,” suggesting that even the viability of diaspora communities may depend on the Israeli reality. See David Hartman, “Israel and the Rebirth of Judaism,” in his Joy and Responsibility (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi–Posner, 1978), 276–86 (quote from p. 285).
4. Genesis Rabbah 22:7 (the text here is in my own translation).
5. John Locke, Two Treatises on Government, 2nd ed., ed. Peter Laslett (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967), Second Treatise, secs. 116–19.
6. See the discussion by Harry Beran, The Consent Theory of Political Obligation (London: Croom Helm, 1987).
7. This is clear from the specific sins enumerated in Lev. 18 and from numerous other biblical passages.
8. Notably the books of Deuteronomy (e.g., 11:17) and Kings (e.g., 2 Kings 17:7–23).
9. Notably the so-called classical prophets, e.g., Micah 3:1–12. On all this, see Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, from Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).
10. Or also as protection against usurpation by a monarch; cf. the story of Navot in 1 Kings 22.
11. See Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, ed. and trans. Eliezer Goldman et al. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 223–28.
12. See the discussion in S. Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-Fshuta: A Comprehensive Commentary on the Tosefta, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: JTS, 1992), Order Zera’im, pt. II, pp. 722–23 (in Hebrew).
13. See M. Weinfeld, “The Universalistic Trend and the Isolationist Trend in the Period of the Return to Zion,” Tarbitz 33 (1964): 228–42 (in Hebrew), and Noam Zohar, “From Lineage to Sexual Mores: Examining Jewish Eugenics,”Science in Context 11 (3–4), 1998, 575–85.
14. On the contrary; the traditional response to persons seeking to join the Jewish fold was the warning: “Do you not know that Israel at the present time are persecuted and oppressed?” (B. Yevamot 47a).
15. Indeed, the very conception of a state as both “Jewish” and “secular” appears, in Novak’s account, to be a definite oxymoron. Against this, we should recognize a distinction between the realm of Torah and the realm of politics, a point to which I shall return below.
16. See, e.g., Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. and with an afterword and bibliography by Bernard Dov Cooperman (New York: New York University Press, 1993).
17. See Novak in the preceeding chapter, under “Diversity.”
18. As noted by Novak, instances in which state mechanisms are harnessed to enforce religiously inspired norms are experienced by such persons as unjust intrusions, extracted by an Orthodox minority through a lamentable process of coalition politics—not as proper expressions of the state’s “Jewish” character.
19. See A. Sagi and Z. Zohar, “The Halakhic Ritual of Giyyur and Its Symbolic Meaning,” Journal of Ritual Studies 9:1 (1995): 1–13; and more fully in their Conversion to Judaism and the Meaning of Jewish Identity (Jerusalem: Bialik Insti-tute and Shalom Hartman Institute, 1994) (in Hebrew).
20. On the notion of a democratic—and liberal—nation-state, see Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); and David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
21. Meiri’s novellae to tractate Bava Kama 113b; for a discussion, see Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 114–28.
22. Should anything at all be retained from the old war against idolatry? Is there any creed today which should be opposed with the zeal of the biblical prophets? For an illuminating discussion, see Avishai Margalit and Moshe Halbertal, Idola-try, trans. Naomi Goldblum (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).
23. See The Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah), trans. Isaac Klein (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), bk. 7 (Agriculture), pt. X, “Laws of Gifts to the Poor,” chap. 7.
24. See David Hartman, A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism (New York: Free Press, 1985), 21–108; and Noam Zohar, “Midrash:Amendment through the Molding of Meaning,” in Responding to Imperfection:New Approaches to the Problem of Constitutional Amendment, ed. Sanford Levin-son (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 307–18.
25. For a discussion and analysis of Gerondi’s views, see Menachem Lorberbaum, Politics and the Limits of Law: Secularizing the Political in Medieval Jewish Thought (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001).
26. For detailed sources (in translation) and commentaries, see Michael Walzer et al., eds., The Jewish Political Tradition, Vol. I: Authority (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), esp. chaps. 8–10.