Judge Dennis Davis
The Jewish Concept of Freedom and Reconciliation
Judge Dennis Davis - The Jewish Concept of Freedom and Reconciliation
- Welcome everybody. This is we fabulous to have everybody back. And Dennis, I think let’s give everybody just another probably couple of–
- No, no, that’s fine. I’m happy to do that, Wendy.
Slides are displayed throughout the presentation.
All right. So we, we’ve already got a lot of people on, we’re already well over a thousand, but it is two minutes past the hour, so maybe–
No, no, no, I’m happy to.
So you know what I think jump in now because we are having, you know, because LV Sachs is coming on very soon after you. What’s the time now in South Africa.
It’s just gone to 6:30.
6:30, 7:30, okay, good. So we’ll have a, a full hour in between, right? Is that right, Judy? I’ll try to finish shortly shortly so that people could–
Okay, great. Sorry, I’m so confused with this time change and I’m trying to accommodate all the different time zones. So that’s why we’re juggling a little bit because of, you know, Israel is one hour ahead of us. Okay, good. Over to you Dennis. Thanks.
Okay, well thank you very much Wendy. Thank you Judy and thank so much to everybody and I hope that everybody who had a Seder had a wonderful set of Seders and that all went extremely well. I tonight want to probe with you the idea of freedom and I’ll tuck in reconciliation towards the end, but my main concentration’s going to be on freedom. But in order to get you into the mood and partly because it seems to me this is quite a heavy topic in its own way, I am going to reverse the order of what the missioner tells us. The missioner tells us, and this is central to the, to the structure of the Haggadah, is you start with the tragedy and you end with the triumphs. That’s the conceit of the Jewish narrative.
That is probably the conceit of our prayers. So the idea is of course you start off with reflecting on either we were pagans, that’s the one side of the story and the other side of the story is that it all started because of AHR-DEE-MUH. You knew that we were slaves in Egypt and these two narratives intertwined and we finally end with a whole range of rousing songs, and go up after four glasses of wine and having in a very fine mood. In my case, I’d like to reverse the order by starting with something joyous and then moving onto something serious. And I’m going to play you a two minute clip of somebody else’s conception of Pesach.
- I’m talking about the time Moses said to Pharaoh, Let my people go and Pharaoh went, In your dreams. And Moses called the God going, God, I need some help. And France fell from the sky. Maybe they fell from the sky or maybe they were Jews with catapults going, now. And thank God it was the Egyptians and not the French, ‘cause the French would go lunch. Why should we let you go? You are great caterers. I can’t let you go, you crazy people. But frogs fell from the sky. But that’s what they dropped in, and even then Pharaoh was nonplussed. Oh, please David Copperfield, no. And then boils and then firstborn dies. That’s it. Hebrews, get out, and everybody banished, everybody, hello, let’s not wait for the bread to rise, take the crackers, we’re going through the desert. And then they get the 10 commandments, would be adjusted by certain precedents. That happens later. And they get to the Red Sea there to see the sea, and they go, what now, Mr. Magic, what do we do now?
And he calls to God again and the sea parts, and even the most doubting Jew is going, You are good. Let’s go everybody, come on everybody, let’s move. Don’t eat the shellfish. I’ll tell you why later. Let’s go. And then the Pharaoh comes with a sea closes and he calls to his cat-like god, but his cat-like God’s afraid of water. And people say to me, they say Jesus wasn’t Jewish. I said, of course he was Jewish. 30 years old, single, living at home with his parents. Come on, working in his father’s business. His mother thought he was God’s gift. He’s Jewish, give it up. It’s an old tradition. And if he was Jewish and many of his disciples were Jewish, for the last supper, would they have not have gone out for Chinese? I think so.
- That’s the incomparable Robin Williams at a wonderful standup event at Carnegie Hall many years ago. But now let us move to the Jewish concept of freedom, a slightly different context. So you may notice that when we do the Seder, we say, We say, And God gave us on this day the festival of Matzot, the time of our freedom. But interestingly enough, in what is perhaps equally important, in HAHR-TIK-VUH, we say, . We want to be a free people in our own land. It is a central, it seems to me, to the great Jewish vision of the world as is z'man herutanyu. But what you’ve observed already is two different words used for freedom. The word used for Pesach is . But when we do the national anthem of HAHR-TIK-VUH and we talk about a free nation, we talk about . So we have a different word for it. And so what is going on here? And do these words have significance for us in this, the 21st century? And I want to suggest to you that they have the most profound implications for us in the 21st century, and let me tell you why. So Judy, if you could put the sheet on now, now in a sense, I suppose doing something which those of you who study with any Talmudic situation would probably know about, namely we always have a sheet. Now this sheet, which I’ve got here basically gives you three different words that are used in our tradition for the purposes of freedom.
As I say, the first is Chofesh, as I said in the HAHR-TIK-VUH. And as I say, this is the lowest form of freedom. In modern Hebrew, this word means vacation. It says when you’re in Israel, you say we’re going on chofesh. We’re going on holiday. The Torah uses the word to mean a stoppage of physical work, a break from the routine of daily work. When a servant went free, the Torah called it chofesh. The word is also connected to the word KAH-PESH, which connects searching as a person freed from slavery has the freedom to pursue other ideas. Chofesh implies a cessation of physical toil. There’s nothing moral or spiritual about it. So that’s the one conception of freedom, that we essentially are allowed to pursue our own desires in our own land. But the Torah uses a second word, Dror, and following on my sheets to you, this word is also the name for a bird. Like a bird who is free in it migrates to a warmer climate in winter and returns in summer. This type of freedom refers to a return to a freer status. That is why the context of this type of freedom is the jubilee.
When Jews in the land of Israel returned to their land at the end of the 50 year period and Jews had sold their land, now get a chance to start over, it’s a valuable type of freedom that many in today’s society envy. It’s the start again, and this is a word used in the Torah. And if you wish, the idea of the 50 year period, which is coupled of course with the seven year period where slaves are free, is in fact, a deeper conception of freedom to simply the negative conception of freedom which is used in the word, chofesh. So dror, which we do find in the Torah is inextricably linked to a particular vision of society, not fully, but a far more nuanced conception of freedom then would be evident from the word, chofesh. And now we come to the third thing. If we could scroll down Judy, or it might be there, sorry, oh no, not there. It was, they may have it. I don’t, I didn’t see on my screen the word herut, the third one.
I don’t see that either on here. I dunno what’s happened Dennis. I’m sorry.
Oh god. Alright, I’ll have to read this out. I’m sorry.
Sorry, I dunno what’s happened.
That’s okay. No problem. The third word is herut, And this is spiritual freedom. It’s not merely a cessation from work or a chance to start over, but it’s a feeling of freedom. It’s a higher purpose in life. This is a psychological concept that it implies a certain attitude to life and its activities. There’s a sense of spirituality that goes beyond just the cessation of work, just beyond the cessation of physical toil. And it’s why Pesach, Passover is called It’s not merely the freedom from the bondage of Egypt, but we can infer from the Passover it refers to the Jewish people becoming a nation. Now the interesting thing about this word, which clearly is indicative of a more nuanced attitude to the notion of freedom within Judaism, is that this is the word that we use on It’s not a word that appears in the Torah except in one context and that’s in a different DY-UH. So the phrase in Habit, that God took us out from the bondage to freedom, it’s . Now that’s true that the word herut is used in the Haggadah but when Moses uttered the phrase, Let my people go, he did not mean to go on a vacation from slavery, but to a form of nation with its own culture and religion. And what is particularly interesting about this is that the word herut is not actually used at all in the Torah.
The word that is used is HEH-RUUT and the missioner talks about the word, herut, which is used in the idea that when Moses came down with the tablets from Sinai, the words were engraved. And that’s why the word herut is used. And the missioner says that the Hebrew word herut should be read to mean herut and not merely hewn out of the stone, which is a simple meaning of HAH-RUUT. So what are we on about here with the word herut? The missioner gives us the answer and the TOH-MAH gives us the answer. When people engrave ideas and laws unto their hearts and they internalise these concepts, this is true freedom. Unlike laws that are obeyed because they’re written on paper internally engraved laws show true freedom and a belief system that is integrated into the very being of a human being. Now I’ve gone quite quickly through this, so let me recap. I wanted to suggest to you that the strange aspect about being called that we read in the Habit or we read the words that God took our son AB-DUU from slavery to freedom, to HAH-RUUT doesn’t appear in the Torah. The only word which has a similar source is HAH-RUUT, which is basically used to describe that the stones which Moses brought down from Sinai, the words were hewn out of the stone, they were carved out of the stone. And the missioner says don’t use the word, carved out of the stone. Use the word HAH-RUUT to mean this, that that you have to internalise a set of laws which came down in Sinai. And once you’ve done that, this is a far more nuanced conception of freedom then otherwise would be the case with a negative freedom or even the the middle range one of dror.
Here the idea is of something which has to be internalised and therefore conceptualised within the context of a community in which we engrave into each, into ourselves the idea of law, and we are committed to a social practise of law. And that is of course why everybody knows that Pesach culminates in seven weeks later with the giving of the Torah where we effectively link the two to say that the concept of herut, of freedom is not just physical but spiritual, is the internalisation of law itself. Now it’s curious that there is one other concept of herut I need to share with you because herut also comes from the same sense as achrayut. Achrayut and herut were again, , also has the source of achrayut, which means responsibility. And this is particularly important that the idea of freedom connotes a notion of responsibility. And so from the idea of herut, albeit that it only appears in the Torah in the instance I’ve said and nowhere else in the Torah, it’s a word that takes our concept of freedom into a far higher plane. And it essentially argues that freedom in that sense, in the deepest sense has to be as it were, coupled to a social practise of law internalised in the hearts of people. If you don’t have that, you don’t have a community of laws and you ultimately will not have a community of freedom. Why? Because there will be anarchy and one will simply look after himself or herself and not bother about the balance of the community, which is where the word achrayut comes in. The notion that we are responsible for each other and that effectively the notion of freedom is inextricably linked to the idea of responsibility, one for the other.
And in fact we have a saying in Hebrew called , “Each Jew is responsible one for the other.” And I’d want to suggest it goes way beyond just being responsible for Jews. I’ll come to the broader implications in a moment, but what I’m really saying is that how many of us have puzzled out when we look at the concept of freedom as we speak over the Haggadah, that actually we are talking about three different conceptions of which the highest is the highest is z'man herutanyu, the highest is the idea of responsibility being engraved in law and ultimately essentially the construction of a broader vision than simply looking after ourselves, which is inherent in the idea of chofesh. And have you considered this then? If I’m right, and I want to argue that I am, 'cause after all that’s what the word says, then in fact the Jewish tradition is not in favour of a purely libertarian idea. It is not in favour of I’m just for myself and for nobody else. It is, 'cause of course, Hillel went on to say, For only for myself, what am I? And the point that I’m simply making is that there’s a deep philosophical political set of ideas here that we need to unpack. Now, curiously, if we go on, if I can get the next slide, Judy, and I’m hopeful that we’ve got that one, of Isaiah Berlin.
Yes. Isn’t it interesting that one of our great thinkers of the 20th century, Isaiah Berlin, spoke about all of these particular issues in a very famous lecture that he gave in, it was in an lecture in 1958 at the University of Oxford, in a lecture entitled Two Concepts of Freedom. And what Berlin was speaking about in this particular regard was the idea that in fact freedom consisted of both negative and positive freedom. And his argument was that the idea of chofesh, the negative freedom, was vitally important, negative conception of liberty to the wellbeing of human beings. He was deeply suspicious however of any positive idea of liberty, any idea that liberty could be combined to the notion of responsibility. Now a Isaiah Berlin deserves a lecture, if not more, all on his own, which is a really important thing to give because he was so important a figure. And I am going to do no more this evening than read to you a passage from Two Concepts of Liberty, in which when he’s talking about the idea of positive liberty, this is what he’s saying.
“This dominant self”, he talks about, “is variously identified with reason, with my higher nature, "with the self which calculates and aims "at what will satisfy it in the long run, "with my real or ideal or autonomous self, "with myself in its best.” So in other words, he’s talking about the idea not of simply negative, but the idea when I conceive of some positive idea of liberty that works towards a particular goal that I might have. And this has contrasted the rational impulse, uncontrolled desires, my lower nature, the pursuit of immediate pleasures, my empirical hit minus self, sweat by every gust of Zion passion needing to be rigidly disciplined if it’s ever to rise to the full height of its real nature. So what are he’s saying here is that the idea of this kind of herutanyu, of the responsibility, of the internalisation, is in a sense something which is positive because, positive in, not in a positive sense, but in a descriptive sense because what it’s trying to show is that I am have, not only should I have freedom, which essentially prevents people from interfering with any of my impulses or what I want to do, but in fact is a form of liberty designed to in fact promote me to a higher being, to a being in terms of a particular ideal. And then he goes on to say, Presently the two cells may be represented as divided by an even larger gap. The real self may be conceived as something wider than the individual, as the term is normally understood, as a social whole of which the individuals is an elemental aspect, a tribe, a race, a church, a state, the great society of the living and the dead and the yet unborn.
This entity is then identified as being the true self, which by imposing its collective or organic single rule upon its recalcitrant members, achieves its own and therefore their higher freedom. The perils of using organic metaphors to justify the coercion of some men by others in order to raise them to a higher level of freedom has been pointed out. What is Berlin saying? Berlin is saying that the only conception of freedom that we should hold onto in an unqualified and clear fashion is negative freedom. It is negative freedom, which ultimately says, no, you cannot interfere with the way I go about the business. In fairness, Berlin was not a libertarian, but he was certainly pushing the idea of negative freedom. And I’ll tell you why. Because Berlin was a product of his era. Remember he was writing this in 1958. He had seen the Nazi period, he had seen the Stalinist period. Stalin died in '53 and in fact Soviet Union was hardly, was hardly on the way at that point to democratic centralism as they called it, which I might add as a term used by some here in this country, certainly not constitutionalists, but be that as it may, that he was worried that the idea of a positive freedom meant that you had to aspire to some goal, that positive freedom meant that that left to your own devices wasn’t enough. You had to be something more than your own devices.
And that therefore led to a kind of project where you became to use his words, part of a tribe, a race, a church, a state, the great society of the living and the dead and the yet unborn, and you lost individuality, and ultimately this led to a totalitarian notion. This led to a notion of, in effect, not of liberty in a real sense of the word, but ultimately some anonymous group assuming that they knew what was best for you and dictated to you. And in a sense you could therefore argue that Berlin’s article was a railing against the idea of us, even of a social democracy in which too much was told to people and therefore they lost their negative freedom in pursuit of positive freedom, positive liberty. I want to argue a couple of things on this. I want to argue, I do this with some reticence because Berlin was a giant and I certainly regard him as a vitally important figure for all sorts of reasons. But I want to suggest that that is not the Jewish way. I understand perfectly that when Berlin was concerned about Nazism and Stalinism and any form of totalitarian view, any view which suggested that there was a higher self other than that which we were, and that we, to claim an idea of positive liberty meant nothing more thAn ultimately, ultimately pursuing the notion that there was some greater good to which we had to aspire and therefore the positive was connoted by that.
I want to suggest to you that the Jewish tradition, the Jewish conception of freedom does in fact include the idea of responsibility. We South Africans have a word for it, and I’ll ask Justice Sachs who’s much more to qualified than I to talk about this to do so when we have a discussion later this evening, which I can’t wait to have. But what I am saying is, is is that the idea of the fact of community, that there is inherently a positive liberty not to promote a totalitarian vision, not to promote a fundamentalist. Inherently Judaism as I’ll indicate in a moment, is a pluralistic approach, but the reality of life is that it understood that negative liberty on its own wasn’t sufficient and that it had to negotiate a conception of actually trying to get us to be a higher self and could only do that by creating conditions in which that was applicable. Now let me explain that because that’s equally important. And I’m going to do this in two ways if I may. I want to suggest to you that the Jewish conception of freedom as I have tried to outline it by taking you through the three words that are used for freedom, is utterly compatible with the notion of democracy as we understand it now, and therefore the two are linked. Let me explain why I say that. Democracy, and I’m, again, if I’m simplifying Berlin, I apologise for trying to reduce a massive literature into three sentences.
But if democracy has any real value, it has two dimensions. Self-government, by which I mean the meaningful participation of individual citizens in the establishment of the polity in which they live and in a subsequent governance, and pluralism, the right of every individual to develop for himself or herself a way of life and a set of belief and opinions appropriated, consistent with the agreed common norms and to live accordingly with the minimum interference on the part of others including and especially in the part of government. Now if you watch that, if you follow that, one, meaningful participation of individual citizens in the establishment of the polity in which they live. You can’t have meaningful participation when you’re living on the margins. You can’t be meaningful participation when you don’t have a roof over. You can’t have meaningful participation when you dunno where your next meal’s going to come from or where you’re brutalised by all forms of social and other conditions which can actually be changed. So the idea of self-government, of meaningful participation does in effect impose certain obligations upon society as a whole, a responsibility of Jewish, an achrayut, to use my word, to ensure conditions in which we can all live in circumstances where we can all have a decent crack at participation. But the second component of any democracy is pluralism. The right of every individual to develop himself or herself a way of life, the set of beliefs and opinions appropriate with an agreed set of common norms.
Of course, we’ve got to agree on certain norms. We can’t go around killing each other, we shouldn’t be going around as it were degrading each other. We shouldn’t be going around in circumstances whereby certain others, and others are in. And we certainly shouldn’t be going, if you want a pluralistic life with a form of closure of a cancel culture, whether it be on the right or whether it be on the left. And I want to emphasise it because they are equally apparent on both sides of the political aisle. Now why am I telling you this and what on earth does this have to do with freedom? Well, let me tell you why it has a huge amount to do with freedom and why, why it has a huge amount to do with what I have been referring to, and in order to give you the answer to that, I want, if I may, to refer you to a remarkable book by Eric Nelson and it’s, the book is called, the book is called, let me just get it out of my notes 'cause I’m so useless at this. The book is called “The Hebrew Republic: "Jewish Sources and the Transformation "of European Political Thought”. I want to repeat that 'cause it’s really a book I can strongly recommend to you all. Eric Nelson, “The Hebrew Republic: "Jewish Sources and the Transformation "of European Political Thought.” And let me tell you why this book’s important, because what in effect, Nelson has argued, by the way he’s not Jewish, but it’s a fantastically erudite understanding of Jewish sources.
Nelson says that actually European political thought emerged not from the Greeks, not from the Romans, not from our traditional sources of thinking, but actually came from the Jewish tradition, from the Davidian monarchy and even slightly earlier than that, in which the foundational principles of European political tradition emerged and which therefore are not borrowed from the Greeks, not borrowed from the Romans, but actually is sourced directly in our tradition. This is Nelson. And he says, why does he argue that? Because he argues that the conditions which gave rise to any form of liberal democracy, and I’d like you to hold in your mind now, my definition of democracy, of the two parts that I spoke about, the citizenship and the pluralism part, he argues that within our tradition there was a rejection of monarchy. Unquestionably, there was uncertainty with regard to the embrace of a monarch, as we know from the book of Samuel and from the time of Saul. So we did not embrace monarchy in the way others did. Secondly, I’ve indicated to you particularly by word of dror, the second of my concepts of freedom, that in effect there we believed in redistribution of wealth. We certainly believed through the jubilee year and the year of the Sabbath, the seventh year, that slaves should be set free, that debts should be expunged, that property should be returned, that we could not carry on with a status quo which would reproduce inequality year and year out. What a remarkable principle that in order to build community, we could not continue to have a sort of self-aggrandizement for property and wealth. And that’s central to the idea of the Jewish tradition, was a form of redistribution, which of course as I’ve indicated earlier, is there to be found in the word dror and much more importantly in the whole concept of the Sabbath and Jubilee years.
And thirdly, Judaism actually was, believed in religious toleration. Judaism did not think that the only way to salvation was by being Jewish. It did not believe that ultimately the Jewish approach to life was that everybody had to become Jewish or fit into one particular paradigm. The notion of religious toleration, and Nelson would say as a result of that, political tolerance, was central to the European tradition, sorry, a central source in the Hebrew tradition. Now I think there’s a really plausible case to be made up and if you think about that when we’ve spoken about the Jewish conception of freedom and what presents itself as a result of Pesach, all of this seems to me to be particularly plausible. And it’s very interesting, if I may quote, Jonathan Sachs, when he says, said, “Ultimately Judaism said "that every human being, regardless of colour, culture, "class or creed was in the image and likeness of God. "The supreme power interview intervened in history "to liberate the supremely powerless. I want to emphasise that again, "The supreme power intervened in history "to liberate the supremely powerless. "Abraham monotheists entered the world as a rejection "of imperialism and the use of force "to make some men masters and other slaves.”
That’s Rabbi Sachs. And if you take that in terms of what I’ve said, that it does seem to me that when we talk about freedom, we go beyond the notion of negative liberty, which was made so famous by Isaiah Berlin. We understand perfectly that there is a danger that you can impose your conception of positive liberty on all and that is wrong. But when you are committed to the idea that no one person can assert authority by being a monarch, when you committed to the notion that at some particular period you have to believe in some level of redistribution of wealth and you’re committed to the idea of toleration and tolerance and the the notion that there are different ways of ultimately coming to the truth, albeit that you should comport yourself by way of common norms, you can see in my definition of democracy and Nelson’s analysis of European thought, how the Jewish tradition informs so much of this. And so what I’m really saying to you friends is that I think that the concept of freedom in Judaism is enormously rich. And it saddens me to a large extent that so often at the Seder we go through this without reflecting on this extraordinary ability to say, when we talk about , then actually we are talking about a really nuanced conception of freedom, which is almost too modern for us today, but which should inform our approach to the way in which we deal with political conflict and differences in society. Indeed, it seems to me that the tradition is so to the left of us under our present condition that it’s almost frightening.
Now, I could go on a great length, but I don’t want to because I want to spend just a few minutes before we end, I’m happy to take questions, by just talking a little briefly about reconciliation. Now under the concept of Pesach, of Passover, the only point I want to make is one which was made in a wonderful lecture that Rabbi Jeremy Rosen gave last week and certainly enriched for me so much of my own Seder experience when he spoke about the fact that the songs of praise, the Hallel prayer that we say on festivals that we only say half of it on Pesach 'cause of the the mid rush, which seems to suggest that when the Jews were saved through the Red Sea and the Egyptians were drowned and the angels wished to rejoice, God stopped them singing and said, Why do you think it proper to actually sing when my own creatures are destroyed? There is a serious appreciation and there always has to be as there is when we shed a little bit of wine over the 10 plagues in the Haggadah, that the other has to be treated with respect no matter how much or little respect they might have treated us within the past. But there is another aspect of reconciliation, which seems to me so inherent in our tradition that it’s worth talking about at this time. When we come to Yom Kippur, we have the concept of teshuvah, which of course is badly translated as repentance. It isn’t. It is a question of returning, returning to a pristine condition from which we have departed.
And the idea being that whereas previously we would’ve committed, a sin under certain conditions, thanks to this idea of existential reflection over Yom Kippur, we ultimately come to a situation that will only perform a mitzvah. And the source of that seems to me in the whole idea that God forgave the Jewish people at Sinai thanks to the golden calf. And what it means is that there’s something divine about the idea that one can actually change and that somebody watching this who has actually been the subject of the earliest sin should therefore embrace the person who has returned. In fact, it’s probably one of the highest statuses that you can have. Judaism inherently believes in that idea of reconciliation because it believes it is divine, right, divine quality of every person to change. It has an incredibly optimistic view of the human psyche. Maybe naive in some ways, but that at points in time we should recognise that reconciliation is inextricably linked to this entire narrative, for after all, if there hadn’t been forgiveness by God and a belief that we would change our ways so that we wouldn’t effectively in future pray to a golden calf, well then surely as human beings we should be able to ape the same as it were divine quality.
And so it seems to me in conclusion that both the idea of freedom and everything that it stands for went far beyond what Isaiah Berlin had to say, is very much in keeping with modern constitutional frameworks which believe that democracy has to, in a sense, create conditions for people to participate as citizens in the body politic, and at the same time to be able to choose their own lifestyles provided they adhere to a common norm, which we can agree to. And that is a wondrous tradition, which I think Nelson is right to point to, may well be the source of the European political tradition in which he links in his book, shows why in fact many of these sources were known to the early thinkers who developed modern European tradition. And at the same time, when we behave in an intolerant and unforgiving fashion, we should also understand that deeply embedded within the Jewish tradition is the idea of reconciliation and the reluctance to rejoice at the fall of our enemies one way or the other. And so in conclusion, what I want to say is, is it not remarkable that from the Haggadah, from a festival of Passover, we can derive insights which really should inform the way we not only treat others, but the way in which we develop a broader political small P view of the world, which hues closer to our tradition than I fear many of us do one way or the other. I’m happy to take questions.
Dennis, thanks very much for that outstanding presentation. I’d just like to, just to make one comment and then ask, ask you please to slowly repeat the name of the book because you did say a number of times and you said it very quickly. I didn’t, I know that you repeated it twice–
I’m sorry. I shall say very slowly after listening to you.
Okay, so Eric Nelson. Alright, so let’s just do Eric Nelson.
“The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources "and the Transformation of European Political Thought”. “Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought”, published in 2019.
Okay, thank you. Thank you. So the other, I just wanted to make a comment that I, that the inability to forgive or the refusal to give, I think, one should hold up the mirror to oneself and examine oneself and see what’s going on internally because you’re carrying that baggage around, you know, with one and it slowly, you know, accumulates, it eventually begins to weigh one down and creates an internal unpleasant chatter.
I agree with that and I think that the idea of the kind of Jewish conception of teshuvah, of returning to a pristine quality is precisely that process of self-examination. You know, there’s that wonderful quality custom that we have over the where we’re supposed to go to people who we’ve really done wrong over that period and ask for forgiveness. And you know what, they’re pretty much obliged to give it to us if you have was a sincere heart. There’s a wonderful recalibration within our tradition precisely of that. And you’re right, the attempt to actually just get it out so that you don’t keep on holding on grimly to your hatreds of the past.
I used to, when I worked for YP, when I used to run the seminars for YPO, especially with the young ones, with the young adults, they used to have fantastic exercise where they used to bring us a knapsack and then we used to walk around the mountains and they used to pick up rocks and fill their rocks with grievances or issues that they had with family members, with siblings. And then, you know, we used to walk in the hot sun for about, I used to walk about 45 minutes carrying this heavy load and then we used to get together around the fire and then we used to unpack it, we’d, we’d unpack it. It was very, very, it was a very useful exercise and very meaningful. So, alright, over to you for questions. Thank you. Thank you Dennis. Thanks everyone for being with us.
Q&A and Comments:
Judy, I can’t see them on my board, that’s my problem. It’s all gone funny.
They’re all right at the bottom, Dennis. Yeah, they’re right at the bottom.
Hang on, I just want to see if I can get them back. Hold up. Oh God, I dunno what I’m doing here.
Don’t worry, we can help you.
Wait a minute. I might be able to, yeah, sorry. It’s all gone. Yeah, carry on. I dunno why I’ve…
Judy do you want to help Dennis? I mean I can help–
My dogs, my dogs are starting to bark, so gimme one second to move them. Sorry.
I can help.
Q: Okay, let me read this for you, to you, can you explain the difference between freedom from and freedom to?
A: Well, I think that’s exactly, it’s a great question and that’s the point, that the idea of, sorry, of is a freedom from, a freedom from oppression that the Jews suffered throughout the vicissitudes of Jewish history. And that’s why we say, that we should be free from interference, that we should be able to cure our own world in our own land. But the idea of herutanyu, the idea that there’s some notion of responsibility here is a freedom to. It’s the idea that we want to create conditions that we can live in a community where all are treated with dignity or as Rabbi Sachs said in the quote to which I, which I cited to you, the idea that when the Abrahamic monotheism entered the world as a rejection of imperialism and the use of force to make some men masters and other slaves, the freedom to was to actually eradicate those conditions. It was to ensure that all could, could in fact be free in circumstances whereby there are conditions which inherently prevent us from being free. Poverty is one. Why did we want the jubilee year? Because we wanted to be able at some point to recalibrate our society in the knowledge that if you didn’t do that, you would create such massive disparities in the society that some would never be free.
So the freedom to was a freedom, it is true, to explore your own desires and your own objectives, but certain conditions prevent you from doing that, and that is where there’s an obligation or a responsibility of the society in which we live, the Achrayut, of all of us to ensure that all are able to enjoy freedom in a meaningful way. And let’s be frank about it, millions and millions of people in this world do not live in any level of freedom, and I think the one thing that the vaccine story has shown us is that we do need some notion of intervention to ensure the conditions under which we can be free. So the provision of a vaccine by the state to individuals will ensure that one day, please God, we can all meet and we can all have a cup of tea or a whiskey, whatever it is you want to have. So I think that the idea of freedom to is in a sense the Jewish idea of the vision of a society which has certain board objectives in mind. The South African constitution has that vision of a freedom to, that is a South Africa built on freedom, dignity, and equality for all. We don’t have that now. And so we are seeking to move in that direction. My dear and belated colleague IH-TAN MEH-REH-NEE, one of the great constitutional and administrative lawyers South Africa ever produced who died tragically at 42 years old, and think about him almost every day when I talk about these matters, he once wrote an article about precisely the fact that the Constitution was a bridge, a bridge from an authoritarian past to a democratic future. I think that basically gives a a really good indication of what I was trying to talk about.
Q: Dennis, another question, is it correct that the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended reparations be made for the sins of apartheid, and if so, why that has not been done?
A: It’s one of the great questions and I can’t answer. I think that’s a terrible mistake. I think that the, my own view about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was that, as I’ve indicated previously in a previous lecture, seems a very long time ago on our Lockdown University. It was vital for us to have it to, as it were, move into democracy. But I think that certain elements of it were terribly flawed. And it is absolutely correct that the reparations were never really implemented in the way they should have been. It was very interesting. There was a debate in, you know, there’s a real big debate still about a wealth tax in South Africa, but back in '94 when South Africa merged into a democratic state, there was quite a big debate. I remember being part of it because, because treasury were thinking about this, about having a tax then, what was called a reconstruction development tax in which people over a certain income would pay for the reconstruction of our society. It was essentially a broad idea of reparations. Never happened. And I think that’s been a fatal flaw in that particular architecture, albeit as I say that the URC was so important to getting us through the awful period from autocracy to democracy.
Q: Thank you. Just having a look here. I seem to be losing this question too. Dennis, your letter on the truth and reconciliation was absolutely brilliant. I think maybe we should–
A: Oh, I’m happy to, I’m happy to repeat it if that’s what you want, pleasure at some point because it really is interesting, isn’t it? I mean it applies to other countries as well. There’s a huge literature about it now.
Q: Oh, I think maybe we should actually, and soon because it was absolutely brilliant and that stayed with me. Okay, another question. Where has South African fallen in this democracy?
A: I’ll tell you where. I mean it’s because it’s strictly disadvantaged people, which is our euphemism for black people remain presently disadvantaged by and large. Now let me make the point absolutely clear. Part of this, or a large part of this has to do with the inability to have spent the taxpayers money prudently and allowed corruption to run rife and allow promotion of a whole bunch of rent seekers really have created havoc in our society. But I am absolutely of the view, and that’s why I say the concept of freedom, that, you know, you don’t have to be religious to believe this. I mean, that’s why, you know, I think sort of social democratic literature and the Jewish tradition are so compatible in so many ways because the idea that the, you know, this idea of redistribution, this idea of, of the jubilee year was the notion of creating conditions of an economic kind that would allow, as it were, for a harmony in society. And I’m afraid to say that whilst millions and millions of people really have not benefited at all from democracy, that is a terrible tragedy, that is not to say that we aren’t in a fantastically better position than we were back in 1990.
I’m sorry, you know, this is unforgivable to suggest that things haven’t been improved in all sorts of ways. But the truth about, and I just want to, well I’ll talk about that later, but the one point I did want to make about this was that, for me, until such time as we don’t have these astronomical figures of unemployment, that figures came out, you know, today, we’re still over 40% unemployment in South Africa. Now we’re rife for populous politics in that sort of condition. And it pains me to say this. So I do think that our biggest task now is really take seriously the charge of inclusive economic growth to track away the ideological of the past and to get on with the work of ensuring that the economy works for all. And we failed ignominiously to do that in the past 25 years, and certainly over the last 10.
Sorry, Dennis, Wendy, are you there?
I’m here, but my computer’s also playing up–
I dunno what happened to my–
It’s unbelievable. Hold on one sec. There were two–
Been a day of lousy, lousy computers.
Q: Okay, isn’t it ironic that in this time of freedom of speech we find it so difficult to discern what is true and what is false? Absolutely.
A: Yeah, I suppose that’s correct. But the truth is, I think, you know, we’ve, I’ve said this many times before on many lectures, we’ve not come to grips with the challenges of social media. We have not come to grips with the idea of our, you know, internet communications. And as I indicated earlier, I know people criticised the BBC and public broadcasting and I understand that lots of criticism about them. But the truth was in the 1920s and thirties when Goebbels and Mussolini ultimately commanded the radio, which was the new invention, and at least some form of public broadcasting was established as a countervailing to that, we’ve not done the same. And I accept readily that it’s, I mean, I don’t watch Twitter, et cetera, but it’s frightening to me the level of nonsense that is spewed out and talking to scientists who are dealing with the vaccines, it’s a nightmare for them, apart from the fact that everybody’s now an epidemiologist. But the truth about it is more important than that is, I think we are going to have to have a serious debate how we actually democratise the sources of information so that we start getting information, which at least we can regard as relatively reliable then as completely skewed, correct.
You know, Dennis, I watched two, two weeks ago a documentary, a two-part documentary on QAnon. I’m going to ask my son what the name of the documentary is. It was actually unbelievable and I would recommend, it’s very dark, but it’ll be interesting for you to watch this, have a look and then let’s, and have a discussion about it.
Sure, absolutely.
Okay, let’s do two more questions. Two more questions. Have you got time?
Yes, of course.
Q: Okay, is the difference between freedom and licence, is the difference between freedom and licence a mirror of positive and negative liberties?
A: Yeah, that’s a good point. You see, I think the negative liberty is the idea that nobody should interfere with my choices. And I think that’s correct and I’ve indicated we do not, Judaism does not disagree with that at all. The problem is it becomes licence when to a large extent, you are really intruding on other people’s freedom in a way that they can’t have it. And I do think, you know, if I could take the simple way, yeah, you have a licence not to wear a mask. I accept that perhaps in countries where, like my own, where everybody crowds around without mask when they should. But it does seem to me that by you are not wearing a mask and coming into contact with me, particularly somebody like myself with comorbidities, you are really impairing my freedom. And so there has to be, the idea of negative liberty, even under Berlin was not that everything goes. Isaiah Berlin did not think that we shouldn’t regulate the way traffic should be driven, whether it be in the left or the right, depending on which country you’re in, didn’t believe that there shouldn’t be controls on medicines and a whole range of other issues.
Look, the question is what he was on about was the idea that you didn’t, that profoundly important was to have a society which maximised the individual choices that people had. And I agree with that, save for the fact that I think, 'cause I keep on saying that, I think his fear of the totalitarian spectre absolutely justified, clouded out for him the notion of the idea that you’ve got to create the material conditions in which people actually are free. But the idea of licence, that everything goes, that there’s nothing that should be regulated and that you should be free to do anything is obviously preposterous. Otherwise you wouldn’t even have laws such as Thou shall not kill, et cetera. So he wasn’t into that at all. He was trying to maximise in the grand tradition of John Stuart Mill, the freedom of the individual to basically carve out for himself or herself a life which comported with their choices.
Q: Thank you. Is orthodox controlling Israel I impeding freedom of the Jewish religion?
A: Yeah, I think it is actually, frankly, to the extent that it actually cuts where, sorry, where it impedes upon the choices of reform and conservative and other believers. I really do think so. I think when it, you know, when I hear things like, I won’t mention who, but a very prominent member, a rabbinic figure says, you know, about reform and conservative, you know, if you want to play rugby, then you play rugby. If you, if you want to handle the ball, you play rugby. If you don’t want to handle the ball, then you play soccer. And what he was trying to suggest by that was that reform and conservative were not therefore Jewish, that they fell outside of the realm. And I think once you do that, once you do that, then you’re in a situation of very serious imposition of a particular worldview. Let me add, and I’m more than happy to talk at length about this, that orthodoxy are very fond of telling us that the 13 principles of faith by the Rambam, which we say in Yigdal every Friday night, right, is really the lodestone. Well Rambam never really believed that either, by the way. He had that because he was worried about sort of Catholic catechisms and he produced it. So what is in fact, you know, chords with the tradition is seriously contested. And if, for example, certain forms and not all forms of orthodoxy I might add, but if fundamentalist orthodoxy imposes its vision that other Jews cannot live in the style to which they choose for me, yes, that is a problem.
Here’s a comment, Dennis, thank you. I was 13 years old when I was liberated by the Russian army on the 5th of May, 1945 in , after five years of suffering under the Nazis. When I saw the local population and the army persecuting and chasing the Germans settled by women and babies, I felt enormous empathy towards these human beings. That comes from Pia HERST.
That’s so wonderful.
Thank you for sharing Pia HERST.
Yeah, thank you very much. I mean, in a sense that eloquently summarise everything I’ve been trying to say for an hour.
Exactly, precisely. So two more and then I don’t, we must jump off, Dennis, just to give you a chance to have a cup of tea.
Yeah.
Q: How does the search for freedom reconcile with Israeli governments approach by vaccinating Palestinians in the occupied land?
A: I was hoping nobody was going to ask that question. Look, I think, again, my point about this is that, that you’ve got to, you’ve got to respond, well, let me make two points. I think there’s a legitimate debate, which of course in terms of the tradition, if you follow the tradition that I believe in, which leaves you with a great deal of disquiet about all this. This is notwithstanding the fact that on that the other side might not adhere to particular norms, common norms either. But I do think this, that if you’re going to conduct a debate, Wendy, you’ve got to start from a fundamental proposition, which is that what is non-negotiable is the inextricable right of the Jewish people to live in . Once you accept that, then the means by which that is done is certainly subject to debate. And it worries me, really worries me that if somebody does believe and many people do, that in fact the tradition would indicate that some of the treatment of Palestinians is deeply offensive to that tradition. If they believe, notwithstanding, that Israel is central to Jewish existence and must be defended at all costs against any kind of attack to its existential core, then I’m really worried when those people are regarded, are classified as Jew haters and as people who are not deeply committed to a project of . And I think we need to think about this very carefully.
I think this terrible amounts of cancel culture on the left, but I think if we accept that our tradition does dictate really difficult choices for us, and why would God not in fact have imposed difficult choices on us if we believe that, because that’s the challenge. Whoever thought that the challenge which we read every year in the every day in our prayer, the , that we should actually purify the world in the image of God. That that’s easy and therefore painful decisions and debates have to take place. So my view is that, that I think we should debate those questions sensitively, provided you accept the common norm, which I’ve articulated that is non-negotiable for me. If you want to have a debate about it in circumstances, you say Israel has no right to exist, sorry, then, then I’m out of that, then I can’t accept that 'cause it’s not part of my belief system. And I don’t think it should be, we shouldn’t participate in it. I mean, why should you have debate about whether you should be allowed to live? That’s rubbish, that’s nonsense. But I think the tradition definitely indicates that we should be having very difficult debates about this. And by the way, people in Israel do that too. Now I know people will say, well in the diaspora we shouldn’t be doing that because we , and I think that’s fair enough to an extent. But again, I’d want to urge that more debate is better than less debate on this particular issue, provided you adhere to the common norm.
Absolutely. And win with respect. So Dennis, actually I am going to be going to, I think I’d like to close now. There are so many excellent, excellent questions that we haven’t, that you know, I haven’t put to you. I’d like, maybe we could just have, maybe we could just have a, for those who’d like to listen a two hour, an hour and a half session of just questions, just responding to this lecture.
Yeah.
Because this is what we debating on a continual basis. Yeah.
Lovely. Well, we’ll see you at 8:30.
See you just now, looking forward. Thanks everybody. Thanks for joining us. Bye.
Bye.