Equal Rights versus Equal Value

Rabbi Gil Student has an interesting post over here titled Equal Rights.  He quotes from a compilation called Otzar Ma'amarei Chazal, and cites a number of sources indicating that the Torah views as equal various groups: Men, women, children, Jews, non-Jews.

I think his post is very important.   Though it would seem obvious, sometimes, as Mesillat Yesharim points out, the obvious can be forgotten for lack of attention.

Here's why:

The sources, with the exception of the source he quotes from Bereishit Rabbah, do not really speak about rights, they speak about existential value.   In other words, they all seem to say that God views the Jew, the gentile, the man, the woman, as equal in His eyes.    But that doesn't mean everyone is treated the same way.

Now, it has become part of the orthodoxy of American thought to affirm Brown vs. Board of Education's rejection of Plessy v. Ferguson's "Separate but Equal" doctrine, stating that separate is never equal.   And indeed, I think we can all agree that "separate but equal" in American racial relations was never equal.

However, that doesn't mean that the principle must always be true.   Thus, we accept that men and women, Jews and non-Jews, are all equal before God.   But Jewish male Kohanim have a few more mitzvot than non-Kohanim, Jewish men in general have several more mitzvot than Jewish women, and Jewish people in general have more mitzvot than non-Jewish people.    While mitzvot are obligations, not rights, the fact that some groups might be excluded from a particular mitzvah (non-Kohanim from the priestly blessing, women from putting on tefillin or counting in a prayer quorum) can make one feel like he or she does not have equal rights.

In other words, while there isn't really an inequality of rights, it can certainly feel that way, especially when Jewish society adds layers of honor to mitzvot that relate to certain groups.

It is at that point that we need a spiritual redirection to the sources that Rabbi Student collects in his post. If we (men) come to disregard the needs, rights and value of women, if we (Jews) come to disregard the needs, rights and values of non-Jews, then perhaps we have come to confuse differing levels of obligation (approved by the Torah) with different levels of value (disapproved by the Torah).   We have taken the Torah's different obligations (separate but truly equal in value), and turned it, in our small-mindedness, into a "separate but unequal", the kind rightly condemned in American law by Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka.

Since we are learning Sefer Yehoshua, the question arises:  What about the Canaanites?  Are they not equal in value in the eyes of God?  And if so, why did God command their annihilation?

It just so happens that a new edition of the journal Tradition came out (online here, subscription required), featuring a critique by Dr. Alan Jotkowitz of the theology of Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of Britain (who with this mention makes his second appearance on this blog, in almost so many days).  He discusses Rabbi Sacks' universalist theology, quoting Rabbi Sacks' The Dignity of Difference:

"[T]he truth at the beating heart of monotheism is that God is greater than religion: that he is only partially comprehended by any faith.  He is my God, but also your God.  he is on my side but also on your side.  he exists not only in my faith but also in yours."

In the revised edition, this was softened to:

"the truth at the beating heart of monotheism is that God transcends the particularities of culture and the limits of human understanding.  He is my God but also the God of all mankind, even of those whose customs and way of life are unlike mine."

Rabbi Jotkowitz offers this critique:  How did Rabbi Sacks get this idea?   It seems, Rabbi Jotkowitz says, that Rabbi Sacks derives his theology from a close reading of the Bible.  However,  he notes, it's true you can do a close reading of the Bible and get this idea, but you can also derive the opposite from a close reading of other parts of the Bible.  It must be that a Bible-based theology, without regard for the Oral Torah, is methodologically improper, even if its conclusions are correct:

"It is hard to see how reading the story of the divine sanctioned conquest of the land of Israel in Joshua and Judges can lead one to a theology of 'the dignity of difference.'  One can just as easily conclude that the mission of the Jewish People is to destroy those who differ from them.  That this is obviously not the case is demonstrated by reading these narratives through the spectacles of the Oral Law." (Tradition, Vol. 44, No. 3, Fall 2011, p.61).

Thus far, this leaves us with a number of questions:

1.  To what extent is it legitimate to learn texts of the Bible without the insights of Chazal?

2.  Is the structure of Written Torah/Oral Torah such 

A)  that the Written Torah contains a particular set of theological data, {A-L}, for example, and the Oral Torah contains another set of theological data, {M-Z}, for example, and the sum total of Torah can only be seen when they are held together?  (as implied by Dr. Jotkowitz)  OR

B) is it such that the Written Torah and Oral Torah ultimately say the same thing, and each contain the complete set of theological data {A-Z}, but rather complement each other not in terms of message and content, but in terms of the spiritual dynamic between the individual, community and God?

3.  What about the Canaanites?   Dr. Jotkowitz leaves us, along with Rabbi Sacks, with the notion that annihilation of the Canaanites is not the goal of the Jewish people.  What remains to be seen is how the mission of conquering the land of Israel is indeed consistent with the sources brought by Rabbi Gil Student that assert the equal value of all humans before God.     I intend to address this issue in a post in the near future.