The Role of Religion in Public Life (2006)

Abstract

'Ein Tzaddik Ela Memaheh' 'no-one can pretend to be a Tzaddik righteous unless one is ready and willing to intervene in the affairs of the world'. I open with this particular Talmudic phrase because I believe that in many respects this teaching is key to the role of religion in society. In the Talmud, in order to have the desire and expectation to be a righteous individual, one also has to have the courage to intervene in the affairs of the world and, therefore, in the public arena. From this very simple and yet central concept, it appears that religion does play a vital role in the public arena. In fact, if that role is not played, one can possibly wonder what the purpose and role of the religion then is. My understanding of religions and of Judaism in particular is that it is not just about 'me and myself' as in a self-centred spiritual search or not even about 'me and God'. Most of the mitzvoth (Commandments) of our tradition are in fact dealing with the relationship between individuals, what we call in Hebrew, ' mitzvoth bein adam lechavero' commandments between a man and his neighbour. As such, there is quite clearly a Jewish religious duty to be involved in the affairs of others and in the affairs of the world. I suppose we could deduce from this statement that religion is essentially about getting involved in politics because otherwise we tend to fall into a very selfish definition of religion, which I do not believe has its place in traditional Jewish thinking. In order to make that point stronger, let me turn to a few biblical examples. In the book of Genesis, when the story of the flood is told, we learn that 'Noah was righteous in his generation'. The words 'his generation' have generated many rabbinic interpretations, all of them attempting to address one simple question, namely 'was Noah really righteous?'. Clearly the view taken by certain rabbis is that 'in his generation', Noah was a righteous man, but compared to what a real righteous man should be, he was not. This argument is supported with a very good reason: throughout the many years it took to build the ark as God had commanded him, Noah did not try to intervene in order to save anyone else. In other words, during all the years Noah was building the Ark in the middle of the mountains, he did not save a soul, simply because he did not seem to be bothered by the catastrophe that was about to