MICHAEL WALZER'S SECULAR JEWISH THOUGHT

Abstract

Although he has never assumed the mantle of a “Jewish thinker,” Michael Walzer has over a period of several decades articulated a comprehensive teaching rooted in philosophical reflection on the sources of Judaism and focused on the most important issues facing both Israel and the diaspora. At the core of his teaching lies a reiteration of what he takes to be the Jewish idea of justice, which he derives from the Bible and other ancient and medieval texts. He also places strong emphasis on liberalism, which he sees not as a product of the Jews' ancient heritage but as “a product of emancipation,” yet no less authentically Jewish for that. On a practical level, his writings are concerned with the implementation of justice and liberal values in both Jewish communities and the Jewish state, in their internal affairs as well as in their relations with others. He has devoted special efforts to showing that a Jewish state is, as such, fully compatible with the promotion of both justice and liberalism, properly understood.

Notes

In the only substantial study of Walzer as a Jewish thinker with which I am familiar, Pierre Birnbaum has described the situation in France: “Walzer openly claims his Jewish identity, which is spread throughout his entire work. That makes it hard to see why the few books that are devoted to him, in France for example, ignore this essential dimension of his life.” See Birnbaum, Geography of Hope, 291.

In a revealing essay, Walzer informs us that his mind is “theologically blank.” See Walzer, “A Particularism of My Own,” 195.

Walzer, Politics and Passion, 2.

Walzer, Politics and Passion, 3.

See, for instance, Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 3–32.

Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 17.

Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 17.

Walzer, “A Particularism of My Own,” 193–4.

Walzer, What It Means to be an American, 44.

Walzer, What It Means to be an American, 48.

See Birnbaum, Geography of Hope, 292–7 for details concerning his family and his Jewish upbringing. Additional details can be found in Micha Odenheimer's interview of Walzer in Eretz Aheret.

Walzer, Politics and Passion, 11.

Walzer, Politics and Passion, 12.

Walzer, “A Particularism of My Own,” 196.

Walzer, “A Particularism of My Own,” 193–4.

Walzer, “A Particularism of My Own,” 196.

Walzer, “Liberalism and the Jews,” 3.

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 28.

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 30.

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 32.

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 133.

Edward Said willfully overlooks this point and attempts to saddle Walzer with responsibility for absolutely everything in the biblical narrative. He accuses Walzer of cutting “out from consideration all of the material in Numbers and Leviticus (extensions of Exodus) in which we find Jahweh urging revoltingly detailed punishments for offenders against His Law.” According to Said, “it seems unlikely to expect that the kind of secular and decent politics Walzer salvages from Exodus could co-exist with the authority of the sole Divinity plus the derivative but far more actual authority of His designated human representatives. But that,” Said falsely asserts, “is what Walzer alleges.” Said similarly stresses that “the text of Exodus does categorically enjoin victorious Jews to deal unforgivingly with their enemies, the prior native inhabitants of the Promised Land.” See Said, “Michael Walzer's ‘Exodus and Revolution’,” 92–3. Citing this evidence against Walzer, Said simply throws aside his insistence in Exodus and Revolution that the people who cite these passages approvingly “are practicing a kind of fundamentalism that is entirely at odds with the Jewish tradition. For Judaism, like Exodus politics itself, is not found in the text so much as in the interpretations of the text.” And the commandment to destroy the Canaanites “does not survive the interpretation; it was effectively rescinded by Talmudic and medieval commentaries arguing over its future applications” (“An Exchange: Michael Walzer and Edward Said,” 143–4).

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 82.

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 90.

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 96.

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 91.

Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 84–5.

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 105.

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 120.

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 129, 123.

Walzer, “A Particularism of My Own,” 196.

Walzer, “A Particularism of My Own,” 197.

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 129.

Walzer, “Liberalism and the Jews,” 7.

Walzer, “Liberalism and the Jews,” 4.

Walzer, “Liberalism and the Jews,” 4.

Walzer, “Liberalism and the Jews,” 5.

Walzer, “Liberalism and the Jews,” 6. Walzer is not entirely consistent in his unusual use of the term “exile” to describe the contemporary situation of the Jews. See his Exilpolitik in der Hebräischen Bibel, 10, where he flatly states that “[t]he establishment of a genuinely liberal and pluralist society in the United States and of a Jewish state in the land of Israel mark the end of the exile.”

Walzer, “Multiculturalism and the Politics of Interest,” 90.

Walzer, “Multiculturalism and the Politics of Interest,” 91.

Walzer, “Multiculturalism and the Politics of Interest,” 94

Walzer, “Liberalism and the Jews,” 8.

Walzer, “Liberalism and the Jews,” 9.

Walzer, “Liberalism and the Jews,” 9–10.

Walzer, What it Means to be an American, 66.

Walzer, “Comments in Symposium,” 46.

Walzer, “Exiles and Citizens,” 519.

“Growing up in an American Zionist household,” he writes, “I was raised on stories of the Maccabees and Bar-Kokhba, stories that gave the lives of these ancient figures immediate political relevance. Judah Maccabee was a fighter for national liberation and (since we were also Reform Jews) for toleration and religious freedom.” Joseph Trumpeldor is someone whom he has always imagined “alongside Nathan Hale, a hero of the American Revolution, who, standing on the gallows, regretted that he had only one life to give for his country.” “In my youth,” he continues, “Hannah Senesh was the great woman, and Marie Syrkin's popular history Blessed is the Match was the crucial text; the book worked its magic: the first time I brought my daughters to Israel, I took them to visit Hannah Senesh's grave on Mt. Herzl. I dread the revisionist assaults on Syrkin and Senesh.” Walzer, “History and National Liberation,” 1–3.

Walzer, “Zionism at 100,” 21.

Howe and Gershman, Israel, the Arabs, and the Middle East, 187.

Ibid.

Dworkin and Silvers, The Legacy, 197.

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 136.

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 138.

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 139.

Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 140.

Howe and Gershman, Israel, the Arabs, and the Middle East, 193.

Walzer and Said, “An Exchange,” 248.

See Walzer, Arguing about War, 113–29.

Walzer, The Company of Critics, 71.

Walzer, Review in New York Times Sunday Book Review.

Judt, “Israel.”

Walzer, “An Alternative Future.”

Ibid.

Walzer, “Comment,” 99.

Dworkin and Silvers, The Legacy, 191.

Dworkin and Silvers, The Legacy, 192.

Dworkin and Silvers, The Legacy, 195–6. It is worth noting that Nagel, Dworkin and Walzer have known each other for a long time. “I spent much of the sixties and early seventies,” Walzer reported in a 2003 interview, “learning to ‘do’ political philosophy rather than doing it, and Rawls and Nozick were two of my teachers. There was a discussion group that met every month in those years, in Cambridge and New York, that included those two and Ronnie Dworkin, Tom Nagel, Tim Scanlon, Judy Thomson, Charles Fried, Marshall Cohen, and a few others: a peer group for most of them, a school for me.” See “The United States in the World.”

Walzer, “Zionism and Judaism,” 320.

Walzer, “Zionism and Judaism,” 318.

Walzer, “Zionism and Judaism,” 319.

Walzer, “Zionism and Judaism,” 320.

Gottlieb, “An Interview with Michael Walzer,” 11–12.

Walzer does, to be sure, express the hope that his compendium will have a similar effect on political life in the diaspora, but this seems to be a matter of secondary concern to him.

As the author of one of the commentaries in the second volume, I can attest to this from personal experience.

This is not to say that the Jews were not on his mind when he wrote this book. The front matter includes a lengthy quotation from an inscription at Yad Vashem in memory of the martyrs of the Holocaust and the fighters against the Nazis. Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars includes two separate discussions of Israeli military actions (81–5, 216–20). What he says here and elsewhere regarding Israel's conduct has led over the years to many accusations that he engages in special pleading on behalf of the Jewish state and holds it to unreasonably low standards. His column in The New Republic on 31 July 2006 (“War Fair”) evoked an especially large outpouring of criticism in newspapers and on the internet. On this subject see the exchange between Walzer and Jerome Slater in the Winter 2007 issue of Dissent is especially worthy of note. A detailed consideration of these issues is beyond the scope of this essay.

Walzer, “Commanded and Prohibited Wars,” 158–9.

Walzer, “Commanded and Prohibited Wars,” 167.

Walzer, “Commanded and Prohibited Wars,” 164.

Walzer, “Commanded and Prohibited Wars,” 164–5.

Walzer, “Commanded and Prohibited Wars,” 166–7.

Walzer, “A Particularism of My Own,” 198.

Birnbaum, “The Missing Link,” 69.

For Kaplan's relationship to Ahad Ha'am see Zipperstein, “On Reading Ahad Ha'am,” 30–8. For Walzer's view of Ahad Ha'am see “Zionism and Judaism,” 314–17 and Exodus and Revolution, 137.

Kaplan, Judaism as a Civilization, 394.

Kaplan, Judaism as a Civilization, 389.

Gottlieb, “An Interview with Michael Walzer,” 11. For his admiring assessment of Hartman's religious engagement with secular Zionism, see Walzer, “Zionism and Judaism,” 322.

Walzer, “Comments,” 602–3.

Walzer, “Morality and Politics,” 687–92.

Walzer, “Morality and Politics,” 688.

This is noted by Galston, “Community, Democracy, Philosophy,” 120.

Walzer, “Morality and Politics,” 120.

Birenbaum endeavours to do so in Geography of Hope, 288–333.

Galston, “Community, Democracy, Philosophy,” 126.

Galston, “Community, Democracy, Philosophy,” 122.

Galston, “Community, Democracy, Philosophy,” 123.

Kautz, Liberalism and Community, 214.