The Vision of the Jerusalem Center
Daniel J. Elazar
New Times - New Institutions
The far-reaching changes taking place in the world in general,
and the Jewish world in particular, require a new model Jewish
organization structure for our times. That new model is to be
found in the development of institutions that combine academic
excellence and community involvement, that draw directly from the
historic sources of Jewish civilization and apply the ideas and
insights of those sources in concrete ways to the problems of our
time. A handful of such institutions have developed in recent
years. What is common to them all is their emphasis on the
re-Judaization of the individual Jew, principally through drawing
upon the Jewish religious heritage and making it more relevant to
contemporary Jews.
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs offers a new model
of a different kind - one whose emphasis is on the public affairs
of the Jewish people, of Adat Bnei Yisrael - the
organized assembly of Israelites. In an era in which Jews have
returned to the political arena in full strength through the
reestablishment of the Jewish state and the development of
politically influential diaspora communities, our commitment to
exploring the Jewish political tradition and applying it to
contemporary Jewish affairs is of special importance. Since
Sinai, the Jewish people has sought to be a kahal kadosh
- a good commonwealth, as the means to achieve tikun
olam - the reformation of the world. Without denigrating
the spiritual needs of individual Jews, this collective effort is
the preeminent task of Judaism. It is the effort to which the
Jerusalem Center, alone among the new model institutions, is
fully committed.
The work of the Jerusalem Center is based upon two
fundamental premises: 1) Today people active in Jewish public
affairs want to understand and be involved, not merely to be
passive recipients or sideline supporters. 2) Today the
solutions to our problems are very much in our own hands; we
cannot blame external factors for our difficulties and
deficiencies. In the immortal words of Pogo, "we have met the
enemy and they is us." Or, to put it more positively, in a
democratic age, every people gets the polity and society it
deserves.
The Principal Concerns of Contemporary Jewry
With that in mind, the Jerusalem Center shares the four principal
concerns of contemporary Jewry - for 1) the survival of
the Jewish people, 2) the security of the Jewish people
and the Jewish state, 3) the unity of the Jewish people,
4) articulation of the eternal Jewish vision for our
times. These four concerns - survival, security, unity and
vision - animate our work.
1. Survival
We at the Jerusalem Center understand that Jews are bound by both
kinship and consent, a common ethnicity which is only meaningful
when Jews are consciously committed to their common covenant.
The combination of kinship and consent is the essence of the
Jewish genius for survival. Jews must keep the two factors in
balance, something that cannot be done by merely relying either
upon Jewish ethnicity or religious affiliation alone for Jewish
identification. We must foster a common sense of edah
(assembled congregation), that combines both. We are fully aware
of the dangers to Jewish survival in our time, which are
principally demographic and cultural; again, problems whose
solution lies very much in our own hands. Thus we have argued
for Jewish public policies that will foster a demographic
turnaround, that will view intermarriage as an opportunity
whereby conversion to Judaism becomes a matter of citizenship and
not merely religious affiliation, yet will insist on maintaining
halakhic standards in marriage and conversion.
We are centered in Israel because we see Israel as the
principal motivating force for contemporary Jews and the only
place for Jews to encounter and participate in the development
of a fully authentic Jewish civilization, from pop culture to
spiritual expression, from cleaning the streets to Jewish
self-government; in the words of Oliver Cromwell, "warts and
all."
Finally we see survival as very much other than passive. In
human as well as physical matters, it is motion which generates
existence. Thus we are dedicated to fostering Jewish activism,
since Jews will survive only by acting as Jews in all the myriad
ways it is possible to do so. The very motion of activity
generates additional survival capabilities.
2. Security
The Holocaust was a manifestation of Jews at their most insecure
- naked and exposed to murderous enemies. That is why so much of
the Jewish response to the Holocaust has been to seek political
and military means to attain greater security. To do so, Jews
have returned to the political arena in full force. We have
reestablished our state to give us both the political and
military means to protect ourselves, and led by American Jewry,
diaspora Jewries have come to engage in collective political
activity on a level unprecedented since the early days of the
Roman Empire.
The Jerusalem Center is on top of day-to-day developments in
the political arena as they affect Jews and is itself an actor in
that arena on behalf of common Jewish interests. We seek to
build wall-to-wall coalitions on the vital issues affecting
Israel and the Jewish people so as to encourage solutions for
Jewish problems that strengthen Jewish unity as well as security.
The return to the political arena has brought with it a
certain intoxication with politics on the part of many Jewish
activists, leading in turn to the need to seriously consider the
responsible use of political and military power. The Jerusalem
Center is committed to politics, but is aware that politics, like
fire, is useful only if controlled and used responsibly. In our
exploration and teaching about the responsible use of power we
draw heavily upon the Jewish political tradition, a tradition
which combines both a messianic vision and a prudential concern
for political realities.
3. Unity
The Jerusalem Center, beginning from the covenantal basis of the
edah, works to foster an understanding of Jewish unity
as federal unity, a unity that is based upon multiple versions of
the covenantal vision within a common consensus and bound by a
common constitution. Federalism is the operational application
of the covenant idea. The very word "federal" is based
upon foedus - the Latin word for covenant. We Jews have
recognized this in our political and communal organization since
the days of the ancient Israelite federation of the twelve
tribes.
Today this kind of federal unity is embodied in the Jewish
federation movement in the United States and in the emerging
institutional framework for Israel-diaspora relations through the
Jewish Agency and its network. The Jerusalem Center prides
itself on its contribution to understanding and fostering both
and other examples of federal unity in the contemporary Jewish
world, and in exploring their roots in the Jewish political
tradition.
Federalism is more than simple pluralism. First of all,
pluralism alone is not enough to protect diversity. Diversity
can only be protected through appropriate constitutional and
institutional mechanisms of the kind embodied in federalism.
Moreover, pluralism unrestricted by covenant is simply an
ideological justification for "anything goes,"
something which the Jewish worldview cannot accept. Hence we are
concerned with developing proper pluralism for the Jewish people
today.
We are also concerned with the development of proper forms
of pluralism in Israel, avoiding the monolithic, monocentric
approach dominant in many Israeli circles, on one hand, and the
"anything goes" approach often advocated by those who would
change it, on the other. In other words, we seek what Jews have
always sought, the establishment of basic rules equally
administered for a people noted for having a variety of messianic
visions, within a framework of federal liberty, that is
to say, liberty to live up to the terms and principles of our
common constitution.
4. Vision
We Jews remain a covenant people, which means we have taken upon
ourselves special obligations toward God and humanity, as well as
mutual obligations to one another. In order to understand those
obligations and fulfill them, we need a sense of mitzvah
and of being mitzuvim - commanded, under the terms of
the covenant, to live a life of mitzvot. It is not
enough to feel Jewish for reasons of guilt that we did not do
enough during the Holocaust or that we are not living in Israel
or that we are not sufficiently religious, or nostalgia for a
mythic, lost Jewish life in the Eastern European Jewish
shtetl, in the ghetto, or in the mellah.
Since most Jews today do not live according to the
traditional halakhic understanding of mitzvot,
we need to consider how the sense of mitzvah and
mitzuvim can be appropriately fostered among
contemporary Jews. To do so we must go back to our heritage and
draw from it in a manner consistent with it, yet in line with
contemporary needs. This is, of necessity, a matter of voluntary
commitment. Classical Hebrew has no word for "obey." In the
Bible, even when God commanded, Jews were called to "hearken"
(l'shmoa) to those commandments; that is to say, to hear
them and to consent to them. That is the sense of
mitzvah which needs fostering today and ultimately needs
to be included in a new sense of Jewish constitutionalism
recognizing the Torah as our constitution even as we interpret it
in a variety of ways.
A second element of the Jewish vision is the recognition
that Jewish civilization is a world civilization - one of the
handful that transcend time and space to have an impact on the
entire world, far beyond their own members. As a civilization it
plays a major historic role on the world scene. That role must
be played by the Jewish people collectively as well as by
individual Jews. Humanity is now in the post-modern epoch, one
of the founding events of which was the reestablishment of the
State of Israel. This epoch offers us exciting new opportunities
to enrich our civilization and play our proper role on the world
scene. The Jewish people may possess the smallest world
civilization in quantitative terms, but qualitatively we have
always been among the most important and we must continue to
be.
The third element of a contemporary Jewish vision must focus
on Israel as the best, indeed the only, opportunity to fully test
Judaism as a way of life. Since the goal of Judaism is the
building of the holy commonwealth as a major step toward the
redemption of humankind, it provides a total way of life,
regardless of whether one sees that total way of life as embodied
in halakhah or embodied in some other way of applying
the principles of Judaism to polity and society. The real test
for Judaism lies in how well it can shape the Jews' own polity
and society. That is the opportunity which Israel provides.
We are in the midst of a great experiment based on
that opportunity, an experiment compounded by the fact that
Israel also brings out the hard reality of Jewish character - Jewish
contentiousness, stiff-neckedness, even vulgarity - all of
which have been noted in our sacred writings since the days of
Jacob. It is both the privilege and the task of postmodern Jewry
to be engaged in that experiment, to have Israel as its great
project, to try to build the holy commonwealth despite the
hard realities of the Jewish character.
The fourth element in a contemporary Jewish vision focuses
on the diaspora as the first great experiment in Jewish history
of Jews living freely immersed in the surrounding world, yet
retaining their Jewishness and Judaism. This, too, is a great
experiment - to see whether Jews can live in freedom outside of
their own polity and remain Jewish. Conversely, the
assimilationist aspect of the diaspora brings out the hard
reality of perpetuating any civilization - how quickly a culture
disappears if it is not taught and lived, and how fragile
Jewishness is unless a proper Jewish environment is maintained.
The Jerusalem Center is committed to participating actively
in both experiments and develops its program accordingly. In
pursuing the elements in this vision we seek to foster a
contemporary version of the biblical vision of a free people
living in community with each other and with their neighbors
throughout the world in conditions of peace and prosperity,
liberty and justice under God's sovereignty.
Being Jewish Today
In our time, four factors provide the reasons for being Jewish
for most Jews - guilt, nostalgia, a sense of ain breira
(that there is no alternative), and the sense of being commanded
(mitzuvim). Indeed the Jewish world divides into two
groups: those whose Jewishness is basically built around guilt
and nostalgia and those whose Jewishness is basically built
around some combination of feeling commanded and feeling that
there is no alternative. Beyond these there are those few Jews
who are Jewish out of love for Jewishness, Judaism and Jewish
civilization.
The Jerusalem Center, recognizing the severe limits of
building a Jewish life on guilt and nostalgia alone,
realistically assessing the validity of ain breira in a
post-Holocaust age and feeling commanded under the terms of the
covenant, seeks to foster a Jewish civilization resting upon love
of things Jewish.
Responding to the Power Shift in Contemporary Jewish Life
In pursuing these great tasks, the Jerusalem Center recognizes a
new operational reality in Jewish life, namely the major shift of
power that has taken place within the Jewish leadership in the
past century. Throughout Jewish history, authority and power
have been divided among three domains, known in Jewish tradition
as ketarim (crowns). They are the keter torah,
the domain of Torah, traditionally understood as the way in which
God has communicated His commandments and their meaning to His
people; keter kehunah, the domain of priesthood, through
which the people have a channel to communicate their needs and
desires to God - to connect with the transcendant, as it were;
and the keter malkhut, the domain of civil authority,
through which Jews have governed themselves.
According to Jewish tradition, all three of these domains
are equally empowered by God through the Torah and were so
empowered from the earliest epochs of Jewish history. Throughout
history they have lived in both balance and tension with one
another with the advance of real powershifting among them. Thus
in the days of the First Commonwealth, after the institution of
kingship, the keter malkhut was in the ascendancy.
Throughout much of the period of the Second Commonwealth, the
keter kehunah occupied an ascendant position. After the
destruction of the Second Temple and the Bar Kochba revolt,
ascendant power passed into the hands of the keter torah
which retained it until our times.
In the twentieth century, however, there has been a shift of
power back to the keter malkhut, which is now the senior
domain by virtue of the reestablishment of the State of Israel
and the development of diaspora Jewish communities headed by
bearers of that keter. It is this shift among the
ketarim which is the most prominent feature of organized
Jewish life in the twentieth century. With the new empowerment
of the bearers of the keter malkhut come new obligations
- to be mitzuvim, to be Jewishly educated so that they
can play their role and be leaders, that is to say, be willing to
take the initiatives and risks that come with leadership, but to
do so from a perspective grounded in Jewish civilization. The
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs was the first to identify
this shift for what it is. We have built our program on this new
reality and in the years since our founding have striven to
strengthen the leadership of the keter malkhut in just those
ways.