Getting It Right

Chanukah has arrived, and with it, there will likely appear the standard media pieces describing the holiday as a commemoration of a long-ago Jewish struggle for religious liberty. There is some truth to such a description, since the faithful Jews of that time were indeed being prevented from keeping the Torah. But framing the battles of the Chanukah era in that way has the effect of obscuring an important truth, one that has relevance for Jews today as well.

In his book The Informed Soul, Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb delineates a crucial distinction between the American political system and Judaism in regard to individual rights. Whereas the American Declaration of Independence declares the sole function of government to be the securing of certain inalienable rights, Rabbi Gottlieb writes that when we turn to Jewish sources,

we find something fascinating: Classical Jewish sources lack the very concept of rights! Indeed, there is no classical Hebrew or Aramaic word for rights…. Apparently, the system of Jewish morality has no place for rights… Ultimately the differences are rooted in a fundamentally different worldview. G-d as Creator and Sustainer of all existence, and communion with Him as the goal of life — these ideas are the ground of the Jewish morality of obligation.

The American legal system is based on rights, while the Torah speaks of obligations. In the Torah view of things, we are Hashem’s creations, recipients of His benevolence, and hopefully, His servants. He owes us nothing, and we have an inherent right to neither our possessions or bodies nor even to our very lives.