As a student of modern Jewish thought, I cannot help but hear echoes of the eighteenth-century German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn in Lieberman's stump speeches. In his book Jerusalem, Mendelssohn writes that the "aid religion can render to the state consists in teaching and consoling; that is, in imparting to the citizens, through its divine doctrines, such convictions as are conducive to the public weal." For Mendelssohn, as for Lieberman, a Jew learns to be a good citizen by being obedient to Jewish Law.
It was a view that differed sharply from that of the great Dutch Jewish philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, who a century earlier had declared that the early Hebrews required the extensive laws written in the Old Testament only because they were like children. Spinoza--who gained infamy for his vicious critique of the Hebrew Bible--held that mature, enlightened men would receive God's will from their hearts, without the need for religion.
Spinoza was trying to carve a place for Jews, along with other minorities and dissenters, within a Christian-dominated secular society. As the political theorist Leo Strauss wrote: "[Spinoza] makes the Old Testament [Hebrew Bible] against his better knowledge the scapegoat for everything he finds objectionable in actual Christianity. … However bad a Jew he may have been in all other respects, he thought of the liberation of the Jews in the only way in which he could think of it, given his philosophy." So, by attacking a superstitious Judaism, Spinoza tried to advance a rational form of morality, one that nevertheless would protect the Jewish people from the Christian dogmatism of their day--not by upholding them as followers of a divine truth, but by affirming their fundamental rights as rational beings who happened to be in the minority.
Today, you can see Spinoza's spirit still at work in civil-rights advocacy. For instance, lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union fight for the integration of Jews into American life not by lobbying for Jewish interests, but by looking to the Constitution and its safeguards protecting all minorities. Responding to Lieberman's speech in Detroit, the Anti-Defamation League struck a tone reminiscent of Spinoza when they wrote to the senator in protest: "The United States is made up of many different types of people from different backgrounds and different faiths, including individuals who do not believe in any god, and none of our citizens, including atheistic Americans, should be made to feel outside the electoral or political process."
In fact, almost every Jewish public servant that I can think of follows the model of Spinoza. They are dedicated to the Jewish people insofar as they are dedicated to constitutional democracy and the American way of life.
But not Lieberman! He has me walking thirty miles to O'Hare Airport on a frozen Saturday afternoon under the watchful eye of gentile Chicago. If America needs for its Christians to be good Christians, and its Jews to be good Jews, then who will decide who is a good Jew and who is a good Christian? Is Al Gore a good Christian? Is Joe Lieberman a good Jew?
Mendelssohn followed the letter of the Jewish Law, as he understood it, until his dying breath. Spinoza, on the other hand, was banned from all participation in the Jewish community life of Amsterdam for his absolute abandonment of the Jewish Law of the time. Would a Chicago Jew cut from his cloth be a patriot, in Lieberman's America?
Even though the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in December dashed hopes for a Jewish vice president, the Spinoza versus Mendelssohn debate abides. Anytime a minority group is on display for the majority culture, the character and influence of their particular identity are drawn into question. Will Colin Powell make his African American heritage a crucial factor in his decisions as the nation's first black secretary of state? Or, will he seek to protect the interests of African Americans by upholding more generic ideals of respect and equal treatment for minorities? Will white America look scornfully upon those African Americans who do not conform to the conservative, unifying image that Powell portrays?
The general American public will soon forget all that they learned about Shabbat observance and the laws of kashrut while Lieberman was in the news. I will happily continue to work out my own interpretation of what is commanded of me as a Jew, now with little pressure from a largely ignorant public. While I would have liked to have seen a Jew so close to the Oval Office, I must say that I am a bit relieved. Now there is sure to be little public controversy over getting a hekhsher for the White House kitchen.
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Jerusalem
By Moses Mendelssohn
Translated by Allan Arkush
University Press of New England, 1983 (paperback)
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Echoes of the historical Jew