Obligation: A Jewish Jurisprudence of the Social Order

Abstract

Every legal culture has its fundamental words. When we define our subject this weekend as human rights, we also locate ourselves in a normative universe at a particular place. The word “rights” is a highly evocative one for those of us who have grown up in the post-enlightenment secular society of the West. Even those among us who have been graced with a deep and abiding religious background can hardly have escaped the evocations that the terminology of “rights” carries. Indeed, we try in this conference, to take alittle credit here and there for the lustre which the edifice of rights reflects, perhaps suggesting now and again that the fine reflection owes something to some ultimate source of the light.Judaism is, itself, alegal culture of great antiquity. It has hardly led a wholly autonomous existence these past three millennia. Yet, I suppose it can lay as much claim as any of the other great legal cultures to have an integrity to its basic categories. When I am asked to reflect upon Judaism and human rights, therefore, the first thought that comes to mind is that the categories are wrong. I do not mean, of course, that basic ideas of human dignity and worth are not powerfully expressed in the Jewish legal and literary traditions. Rather, I mean that because it is alegal tradition Judaism has its own categories for expressing through law the worth and dignity of each human being. And the categories are not closely analogous to “human rights.” The principal word in Jewish law, which occupies a place equivalent in evocative force to the American legal system's “rights”, is the word “mitzvah” which literally means commandment but has a general meaning closer to “incumbent obligation.”