| n a hot Philadelphia boarding house, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence that still reverberates 250 years later: “We hold these truths to be self-evident….” If truths were self-evident in 1776, then we can expect to find them long before, including in Jewish wisdom many centuries earlier. |
During this 250th anniversary of our country’s founding, the U.S. faces a pitched battle over power and values. Whatever our beliefs or politics, all of us are affected.
When societal going gets tough, I try to get going by aspiring to a long view of history. History, after all, has seen so much more than even the most impactful singular moment, however all-encompassing it seems.
In that spirit, I dedicate this month’s column (far longer than usual) to this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a secular masterpiece whose “self-evident” truths animated Judaism long before and animate it still.
I do so not with a political bent, nor to claim 1776 wisdom for Jewish (or even Judeo-Christian) life, but to uplift values that these perilous times urgently need us to reaffirm with all we are. That, I believe, is the most fitting tribute we can offer our community, country and posterity.
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As a constitutional lawyer and public servant, I view the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution as wholly secular documents. Their views of power, and its rightful limits, echo across time and culture. Their principles reshaped the world. Dozens of nations, diverse in almost every way, looked to these founding documents as models for their own. To this day, children learn them and memorize them.
To be sure, the secular Declaration and Constitution both allude to divinity. The framers, while deeply skeptical of politicizing religion into uncheckable power, nevertheless viewed these documents and their own public service in spiritual terms. Most of the framers were Christian, many were Freemasons (as am I), and a keystone of both systems is moral rectitude animated by a Great Architect of the Universe.
As a rabbi and community servant-leader, I view Judaism (and all wisdom traditions) as specific expressions of ultimate truths that transcend the particularities of time and culture. Religions might express these truths differently, deriving them from different theologies and symbolic contexts, but the ultimate truths themselves are much the same.
There’s a reason why, and perhaps we sense it in our own life experience. Perhaps we have experienced for ourselves there is no such thing as “Jewish love” or “Christian love” or “Muslim love” or “Buddhist love”: there is only love refracted through different conceptual and symbolic systems. So too for grace, compassion, integrity, humility, gratitude, resilience, charity, discipline, wisdom, balance, beauty and most everything else of enduring value.
Put another way, universal teachings are just that – universal, independently arising across times and cultures, and withstanding the test of time. Therefore, it is dubious for any system – by definition borne of its own originating time and context – to insist that it alone can corner the global market on ultimate truth.
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If so, then we should expect that the Declaration’s “truths” should find parallels in Jewish wisdom dating back many centuries earlier.
This observation is not to claim the Declaration to be a “Judeo-Christian” document, or claim it “for” Judaism (either on its own terms or as Christianity’s elder sibling). It is essential to me, and to our nation’s best future, to view this nation’s founding documents through an existentially secular lens.
We also must not view the Declaration or Constitution as a perfect document, or imagine that the framers were demigods. They embedded slavery and structural racism as national cancers. Women would not win a constitutional right to vote for nearly 150 years after Philadelphia. And no system can be better than its leaders.
Instead, I mean this: If the Declaration – lofty but imperfect – rightly could claim “truths to be self-evident,” then we should be able to find those truths expressed long before 1776. If not, then those “truths” could not be fully true much less “self-evident.”
Indeed so. Many centuries before Jefferson put quill to parchment, Judaism expressed the Declaration’s core themes in terms both quintessentially Jewish and, by their nature, also universal. Like the framers, Judaism also did not perfectly live those principles, and today there remains a long journey ahead. Even so, those “truths” shape the Jewish birthright:
| We hold these truths to be self-evident: | The Declaration’s claim of core truth without authority – by reason from first principles – was radical but not unprecedented. It harkens all the way back to Abraham, who heeded a Voice telling him to “Go forth from [his] land” (Gen. 12:1) only after discerning for himself the Oneness we call God (Sefer HaYashar, Noah 19). Aristotle‘s “unmoved mover” idea held similarly in 350 BCE (Metaphysics, Book 12), but the Abraham of Jewish tradition got there 1,500 years earlier. |
| That all men (people) are created equal; | Equality is baked into Judaism. Torah’s very first chapter recites that every human is created in the divine image (Genesis 1:27) and thus are fundamentally equal. Torah requires one law for all equally (Ex. 12:49). By the time the framers railed against the inequality of noble birth, Talmud had taught 1,500 years earlier that superior ancestry cannot exist because all share one common spiritual ancestry (B.T. Sanhedrin 38a). |
| That they are endowed by their Creator | The Creator breathed life into humanity (Gen. 2:7), made just a little lower than the angels (Ps. 8:6). In Jewish wisdom, all human skill, wisdom, splendor and salvation is the result of divine endowment (Ex. 28:3 Ex. 35:31, Ex. 36:1, Ps. 18:33-36, Isa. 61:10, Ezek. 16:14). |
| With certain inalienable rights; | Torah does not speak of “rights” (the expression arose far later) but rather duties (mitzvot) and prohibitions that protect core human interests to the same effect. Much of Torah commands equal justice, charity (such as leaving field corners ungleaned), and other bases for individual and collective justice. |
| That among these are Life, | “Choose life,” pleads Torah, “so that you may live” (Deut. 30:19). Torah bans murder, the first of the Ten Commandments’ prohibitions (Ex. 20:13). Someone who destroys a single life is like one who destroys a whole world (M. Sanhedrin 4:5). Jewish wisdom functionally banned capital punishment 2,000 years ago (B.T. Sanhedrin 71a). |
| Liberty, | Judaism’s north star is liberation from bondage – ancient slavery and modern subjugation. Torah reminds us so 36 times, lest we be lured back to inhumanity’s shackles (B.T. Bava Metzia 59b). While the language of political “liberty” (like “rights”) came later, Torah calls us to “[p]roclaim liberty throughout the land for all its inhabitants” (Lev. 25:10). |
| And the pursuit of Happiness; | By just living, “You will enjoy the fruit of your labors, be happy and prosper” (Ps. 128:2). Joy is a core Jewish good: it arises in gratitude for our lot (Pirkei Avot 4:1) and festivals of religious liberty (Deut. 16:14). |
| That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among (humanity), | In Jewish wisdom, government is a necessity to enforce duties and responsibilities (B.T. Sanhedrin 56a), and protect against the worst impulses lest the strong swallow the weak like fish (Pirkei Avot 3:2, B.T. Avodah Zara 4a). |
| Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…. | Democracy is such a core Jewish concept that, in Jewish lore, even God consulted the angels before creation (Gen. Rabbah 8:1) and had Moses consult the people before selecting a builder for the Mishkan: “a community leader cannot stand without being selected by the community” (B.T. Berakhot 55a). Once Jews were allowed to collect taxes, only a public election by universal suffrage could select the tax collector (Shulhan Arukh, C.M. 163:1). And government must be just: government that itself acts as the strong to swallow the weak, that defies the public good (Nachmanides, Gen. 34:13), cannot stand. |
* * *On this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we can find its core principles in Jewish tradition – and, I believe, in the heart of cousin wisdom traditions. We can “hold these truths to be self-evident” only because they inhere in the fabric of Western civilization and morality itself.These truths might be “self-evident” but they are not self-executing. As this nation’s flaws and foibles painfully prove, they need us – all of us – to reaffirm these truths and reclaim them. They need us to dig deep for the wisdom, strength, resilience and courage to breathe life into them – to bind this nation’s wounds, and thereby also our own.
David Evan Markus 