As I’ve written previously in this space there are good reasons that liberalism in politics and religion most often go hand in hand among Jews and they aren’t necessarily the ones that seem most obvious such as shared views on morality or religion in the public sphere. There are deeper linkages between political ideology and theology.
I often say with tongue only partially in cheek that wherever possible — in discussions with those new to Judaism — I try to discuss life rather than religion. Ultimately a discussion of religion if it is to get to the essence of things must be about how to view life and human nature because that is what religion exists to teach us about. As Dr. Isaac Breuer put it Judaism is anthropology much more than it is theology which is just a pithier version of something his grandfather Rav Hirsch said: that in the main Torah comes to teach a Jew not about how things look in Heaven but how they ought to look in his heart and in his home.
And the same is true albeit on a far more mundane level of politics which at the end of the day isn’t really just about this policy or that one but about the nature of human societies and their citizens. Arguments that on the surface appear to be about theology are thus often really about something deeper albeit unexpressed; and the same is true of political discourse.
Let’s apply this understanding to the question of why the heterodox Jewish movements are as the old bon mot has it just the left wing of the Democratic Party with holidays added. First an axiom: To be a modern liberal (as opposed to a classical one) is to be unabashedly utopian.
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