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PDF FormatEVELYN GORDON RESPONDS:
My thanks to Menachem Mautner for taking the trouble to respond to my article in such detail. I will try to address the main points he raises.
Mautner is of course correct that Israel’s diverse population includes many different cultures, with secular Jews, religious Jews, and Arabs being the principal three. I also agree that, in practice, lawmakers and courts must take this reality into account. However, there is a difference between accommodating cultural differences and formally enshrining them as part of the state’s self-definition.
The former does not contradict Israel’s existence as a Jewish state (however the country’s Jewish majority chooses to define that term). It requires Israel to give competing cultures a great deal of space, but not to the extent that they threaten its Jewish character. Hence, Israel currently bans Arab parties that deny its right to exist as a Jewish state (or that advocate terrorism) but otherwise allows Arab schools, newspapers, and political parties to operate freely.
In contrast, formally defining the state as “Jewish, democratic, multicultural” puts “multicultural” on a par with “Jewish.” This, pace Mautner, is indeed a logical impossibility: No state can simultaneously allow the Jewish people to express its culture at a national level, as “Jewish” implies, while also affording all cultures equal opportunities for self-realization, as “multicultural” implies. And indeed, as I showed in my article, there is precious little about Mautner’s Israel that would be Jewish in practice; he would not even allow it to have a “Jewish” flag and a “Jewish” national anthem.
Incidentally, this truth about multiculturalism is not unique to Israel: European countries that have experimented with multiculturalism are also increasingly discovering that it threatens the majority culture. This has provoked a backlash in several countries, expressed in significantly tougher immigration laws (since, as Mautner noted, multiculturalism in Europe has primarily been a response to immigration). To cite just a few examples: In France, the courts denied citizenship to a French citizen’s French-speaking wife last year because her “radical” practice of Islam was incompatible with French values. In Holland, the Dutch Labour Party issued a position paper last December proposing an end to the famous Dutch “tolerance,” charging that the government has ignored Dutchmen’s feelings of “loss and estrangement” in the face of immigrants with different languages, laws, and customs. Germany enacted new rules in 2007 that bar spouses of foreign residents from immigrating unless they can prove knowledge of German—but, to make it crystal clear that this was about culture rather than language, exempted citizens of Western countries such as the United States and Canada. Denmark has enacted the toughest immigration law in Europe: Aside from imposing stringent age, income, and housing requirements, the law bars foreign spouses of Danes from immigrating unless the couple can prove a greater connection to Denmark than to any other country.
Contrary to Mautner’s claim, however, I did not ignore the fact that he recommends leaving “Jewish” as part of the state’s definition; I acknowledged this repeatedly. I merely pointed out that in practice, a state cannot be both “Jewish” and “multicultural.”
As for his suggestion that Israeli law “rely extensively on Jewish law... [and] serve as an important platform for its continued development,” I would welcome this proposal if it meant requiring our courts to seriously engage with Jewish legal sources. However, as I showed in my article, Mautner repeatedly insists that he wants the courts to remain a bastion of Western liberalism. Hence, like “Jewish and multicultural,” what we have here is an oxymoron: The courts cannot remain a bastion of Western liberalism if they are going to engage seriously with the Jewish legal tradition, since serious engagement would require a synthesis of the two. In his book, however, Mautner comes down clearly on the side of preserving the courts’ liberalism, and his letter reiterates that he wants the courts to engage with Jewish law strictly “as part of the advancement of state law in its democratic-liberal format.” Thus the implication is that by reviving Jewish law, he means no more than encouraging the courts to include quotes from rabbinic sources in verdicts already reached on the basis of Western liberal values—something in which I see little worth.
Mautner also takes issue with my claim that his doctrines of “human rights” and “human dignity” are ways of subordinating Israelis to court-imposed liberal values. Since, as he says in his book and repeats in his letter, he believes these terms should be interpreted according to doctrines that will “be developed in the coming decades in all courts around the world,” and since he himself acknowledges in his book that courts both in Israel and abroad are bastions of Western liberalism, I fail to see how this proposal could not result in Israelis’ being subordinated to court-imposed liberal values. Yes, “human rights” and “respect for humanity” are concepts found in every culture, but their interpretation in practice varies widely. Mautner’s proposal would choose one particular interpretation—the Western liberal one favored by the courts—and impose it on every subculture in Israel.
