The Ethics of Public Administration: The Challenges of Global Governance

7 Ethics in the Judaic Tradition

163 Ethics in the Judaic Tradition Chapter 7 Judaism is among the oldest monotheistic traditions in the world and one that has been most concerned with the importance of political community to the tradition itself. As a result of dynamics within Judaism itself, as well as the diverse responses by the Jewish community to the loss of its state and its time in exile, Judaism has long concerned itself with the relation of the community to the government (whichever government that happened to be at the time). In this chapter, we will discuss the guidance that the legal discourse of Judaism (halakah) provides to public administrators. However, this concern does not necessarily reveal itself in a concerted focus on ethics for civil servants. As Daniel J. Elazar writes, the Jewish tradition of political thought “. . . is less concerned with determining the best form of government (in Aristotelian terms, the best constitution) than with establishing the proper relationship between the governors and the governed, power and justice, God and man” (1983a, 4). Three factors explain this situation. First, the specific structure of government in the early history of the Jews focused more on kingship, emphasizing the situation of war and generalship, and not as much on institutions and their officers. Second , the specific history of the Jewish people in the time of exile, where non-Jewish rulers were in control, limited the applicability of public administration ethics, although there are some indications of such an ethic in Jewish communal life during the medieval 164 The Ethics of Public Administration period, discussed below. Finally, the structure of halakah in Judaism addresses moral quandaries through the language and principles of law and obligation rather than through abstract theoretical models and institutional examinations, and thus ethical/moral arguments have a specific religious/legal element to them. We will address the elements below.1 Government in Judaism The cornerstone for ethics in Judaism is divine law, specifically the Torah and the Talmud. Through the covenant at Mount Sinai (Exod 19:7–20:18; 24:1-18), God gave to the Jews and all of their descendents the revealed law and, according to the rabbinical tradition, the rules for interpreting the laws throughout the ages, in such things as the Talmud and beyond. Unlike the founding of a modern secular state, where the law sets down the institutions and structures of the state apparatus, the laws brought down by Moses did not set up any particular system of government, or indeed any real set of governing institutions at all with the exceptions of the institution of the Levite priesthood and the possible creation of a kingship. Rather, the law sets down the obligations and rituals by which the community will live and remain under the rulership of God, effectively under God’s sovereignty as his chosen people, a “kingdom of priests, and an holy nation” (Exod 19:6).2 In the period after Moses died, the Jewish nation lacked the institutions associated with governance. Instead, there was the rule of the “judges” (shoftim) or individuals chosen by God to protect his people when the need would arise (such as Joshua, Gideon, Deborah, Samson, and others). Generally speaking, these judges would appear when the threat of invasion or other military conflicts would arise, making the judges more like spontaneous generals who would form an army and prevent the destruction or enslavement of the Jewish community. In times of peace, when no exceptional threat arose, no government per se existed in the Jewish community, but “every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judg 21:25, emphasis removed). As God was the only king of the Jewish nation, so the idea went, no other government or officials were needed except in times of major emergency (cf. Buber 2000, 119–20). Or, as Gideon responded when the Jews offered to make him king, “I will not rule over you, Ethics in the Judaic Tradition 165 neither shall my son rule over you: the Lord shall rule over you” (Judg 8:23). This type of theo-anarchism ended with the final judge, the prophet Samuel. At that time, the elders asked Samuel to anoint a king, so that the Jews could have one “like all other nations” (1 Sam 8:20). It remains a major debate whether this request represented a fulfillment of God’s orders in the time of Moses or instead indicated a rejection...