BOOK REVIEW:
Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory. By David Novak. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. xii + 240 pages. ISBN: 0691026807. 

In this book David Novak, who holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto, brings the rich insights of Jewish tradition to bear upon contemporary debates about rights. Central to these debates are questions about the origin of rights, the relation of rights to duties, how individual rights relate to group rights, and whether rights-based political theories and the polities they inspire are philosophically and practically viable. Since the Enlightenment, political liberalism, with its strong emphasis upon autonomy and individual rights, has been the prevailing view in western philosophy and polity. Recently communitarians have challenged the individualism of the liberal view, and related notions of rights based on that individualism. Alasdair MacIntyre, for example, says rights as understood today are like unicorns; they simply do not exist (p. 12). Among othert hings, communitarians call for renewed emphasis upon tradition, common goods, and group relations in political theory and practice. The debates are lively and profound, reaching into foundational questions concerning the nature, purpose, and meaning of human life.

Novak believes that to eliminate rights from modern political discourse is to risk elimination from the discourse altogether. He instead embraces rights talk, in part because rights-based political theories and polities have helped Jewish people move from an at best tolerated alien minority community to amore full entry into modern political life. The deeper reason for his embrace is his conviction that rights have their “true origin” in a largely forgotten Jewish context. The burden of his book is to articulate a theory of rights from within the Jewish tradition, and to do so in dialogue with western political philosophy. He says the “legacy of Athens is not the only alternative to the individualistic or collectivist excesses of modernity. The voice from Jerusalem makes its own alternative claims, claims that I am convinced are in truth superior” (p. 25).

According to this voice, rights have their origin in neither personal autonomy, nor social contract, nor creative capacity, but in God’s rightful claim upon human beings. By making human beings in the divine image, and giving them commandments to provide moral structure to the divine-human relationship, God establishes a covenant relation with all human beings. The commands are mediated in a general way by the legitimate moral claims people make upon each other; additional commandments and promises are revealed to the Jewish people in scripture. Novak claims that the Jewish tradition, “with its attendant legal system of Halakhah, is the best example of a historical community where the correlation of rights and duties and duties and rights seems to be without exception” (p. 25). As the one who establishes and structures the covenantal relationship, God is entitled to worship and obedience. God’s rights “are the foundation of all other rights and duties,” and contemplation—even contemplation of God—is for the sake of the practice of the commandments” (p. 53). God’s rights give rise to human duties, which correlate with rights to the goods necessary to do one’s duties.

Because God created persons in the divine image, and has established a covenant relationship with them, humans have rights to claim against God. Novak identifies three types: that God listen to our cry for an answer to our needs, that God give commandments for life with God in the world, and that God finally judge our acts in the world. Though it sounds odd to modern ears, but perhaps not to Calvinist ones, saying that one has a “right” to God’s commandments fits naturally in a Jewish context where “God is for us through his “commandments” (p. 41),and the “ultimate indignity” of death is to be “free from the commandments” (p. 43). Each commandment, says Novak, is given for a reason that relates to some human need and good. They are not arbitrary. Commandments specify rights, and rights depend upon, and correlate with, commandments.

If God is the ultimate source of rights, the penultimate source is the responses and claims of persons in community as these are formed by God’s promises and commandments. In Jewish tradition, the primary good is the good of the community. Novak distinguishes community from society, in that the institutions of society must be instrumental to the welfare of the community. The community has “original rights.” Society has “derived rights,” insofar as these rights depend upon the community society serves. Contrary to liberal individualism, in Jewish tradition community takes priority over the individual. A person’s authentic communal needs take precedence over her or his individual needs. Even an individual’s relationship with God depends upon the covenanted community, for we “can be whole persons before God only when we stand together with. . . others”(p. 157).

Novak is as concerned to avoid the excesses of collectivist ideologies, whose regimes have savagely victimized Jews, as he is to avoid those of individualism. He avoids them in two ways. The first is by insisting that individuals are “never to be the instruments of the community in the same way that the community is at times to be the instrument of individual persons” (p. 154). Even the redistribution of wealth called for in the Torah is not for the community as a collective entity. It is for the individuals who will benefit from it. The second is by insisting that “the very life of the community must be for the One who is beyond her own grasp” (p. 156). Like Pope John Paul II in Centissimus Annus, Novak argues that when this transcendent aspect is forgotten, totalitarianism and other related social pathologies result. The collective becomes of ultimate and absolute importance, and so uses individuals as mere means to its ends.

Novak demonstrates an impressive grasp of both rabbinic tradition and western political philosophy. He moves freely between Aristotle, Kant, Mill, and Rawls, on the one hand, and Torah, Mishneh, Sanhedrin, and Maimonides, on the other. The insights are mutually illuminating. In addition to setting the groundwork for political philosophy, Novak treats issues, such as the rights to retaliation, protection, social assistance, social inclusion, and private property; the relation of self-love to neighbor love, homosexual rights to recognized unions, and women’s participation in religious leadership. Though many will disagree with Novak’s claims—on grounds from inside and outside the Jewish tradition—they would do well to consider seriously what he says about these matters. The book is rich and dense, not an easy read. But it repays careful study. At its November, 2000 annual meeting, the American Academy of Religion gave this book its award for “Excellence in the Study of Religion” in the category “Constructive-Reflective Studies.” Since the AAR is the major society for the academic study of religion in the hemisphere, this is a high honor.

It is also an honor that is richly deserved. 

Douglas J. Schuurman
Professor of Religion
St. Olaf College

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, WINTER 2002, VOL. 2, #3.