|
Leon's No News Bulletin (41)
Friday, October 20, 2006
(News Bulletin Archive)
Shalom everyone,
I have pleasure in presenting you with a short
statement on Judaism, humanitarianism and universalism taken from Moses Hess' famous book "Rome
and Jerusalem".
As you have probably gathered from many things
I've said I believe that Judaism is not just the religion of one nation, the Jews. But it is the way to a humanitarian approach
to the universe.
Judaism isn't the exclusive domain of the Jewish People, just as it wasn't the
exclusive domain of the family of Abraham. The thing that makes Judaism appear to be like this is in fact, a basic principle
of anti coercion; the determination of Judaism not to find converts to the belief in the idea of one universal God made it
appear to be exclusivist.
The non coerciveness of Judaism, however is vital to the success of its universal
humanitarian mission.
Christianity and Islam didn't understand this, and so set out to convince the world
(sometimes by force) of the need for a universal humanitarianism.
The result has been disastrous for the world and has lead to never ending war.
Judaism remained the religion of the few because it's based on the principle that
man is a free thinking, freedom loving creature and therefore cannot be coerced to join its ranks.
Humanitarianism can only be practiced by a person who makes a free will decision
to follow humanitarian principles, like those set out in the Torah.
Wishing you a good no news day.
Leon
JEWISH
NATIONALISM AND UNIVERSALISM *
by MOSES HESS.
I believe that not only does the national essence
of Judaism not exclude civilization and humanitarianism, but that the latter really follow from it, as necessarily as the
result follows from the cause. If, in spite of this, I emphasize the national side of Judaism, which is the root, rather than
the humanitarian aspect, which is the bloom and flower, it is because in our time people are prone to decorate themselves
with the flowers of culture rather than cultivate them again in the soil on which they grew. It is out of Judaism that our
humanitarian view of life sprang. There is not a phase in Christian morality, nor in the scholastic philosophy of the
Middle Ages, nor in modern philanthropy, and, if we add the latest manifestation of Judaism, Spinozism, not even in modern
philosophy, which does not have its roots in Judaism. Until the French Revolution, the Jewish people were the only people
in the world which had, simultaneously, a national as well as a humanitarian religion. It is through Judaism that the history
of humanity became a sacred history. I mean by that, that process of unified organic development which has its origin in the
love of the family and which will not be completed until the whole of humanity becomes one family, the members of which will
be united by the holy spirit, the creative genius of history, as strongly as the organs of a body are united by the creative
natural forces. As long as no other people possessed such a national, humanitarian cult, the Jews alone were the people of
God. Since the French Revolution, the French, as well as the other peoples which followed them, have become our noble rivals
and faithful allies.
* From "Rome and Jerusalem" by Moses Hess.
|
