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(C. Jardin) #1
A HOME HAUNTED BY STRANGERS

the religious leadership and religiously identified citizenry to the suffering of innocent
people seen as the enemy,’’^19 RHR chose from the beginning to present itself under a
‘‘human rights’’ label. This was partly due to the narrow scope of its original intentions,
which were to bring human rights violations against Palestinians to the attention of the
Israeli public, in close partnership with B’tselem, one of the leading (secular) human
rights institutions in the country. The human rights label also signaled a desire not to
take a ‘‘political’’ stance, because it was felt that this would reduce the power of RHR’s
ethical message and its ability to reach people at different ends of the political spectrum.
Over the years, however, the scope of RHR’s work has gradually expanded to include
activities that are not only testimonial or documentary, nor solely focused on Palestinians,
but rather cover a broad spectrum of issues including social and economic justice in
Israeli society, health care and housing rights, trafficking in women, and more.^20 Accord-
ing to a flier describing a recently initiated study program, the ‘‘Rabbis for Human Rights
Yeshiva,’’ issues of relevance to the group now include the crisis of the welfare state in
Israel, gender (in)equality, domestic violence, the environment, and the rights of foreign
workers. The Yeshiva program also draws upon a broad spectrum of sources, including
conventional human rights literature, humanistic philosophy, theHalakha(Jewish law),
and miscellaneous sources on the religious imperatives of justice andtikkun ha olam, that
is, ‘‘repair’’ or ‘‘care’’ of the world.^21
Despite the human rights label, it is clear from an analysis of RHR publications,
statements, and activities that the group is concerned with something that goes beyond
internationally codified principles concerning such rights, particularly if these are inter-
preted in individualistic, liberal terms. Indeed, as was apparent from various interviews I
conducted with member rabbis, their understanding of the relationship between the work
of RHR and the specific content of human rights discourse is far from rigid.^22 For one
thing, human rights appear to them to be a relatively nonthreatening, supposedly ‘‘non-
political’’ (in the sense of nonpartisan) kind of public discourse, which can be embraced
across religious divisions and even span the religious-secular divide without the need to
engage political (i.e., party) affiliations. Moreover, the discourse of human rights both is
relatively ‘‘soft’’ and draws upon the power of the hegemonic liberal discourse in an
Anglo-American West, to which Israel feels very close.^23 Essentially, however, human
rights are first and foremost a way to translate the biblical call to justice (‘‘Justice, justice,
you shall pursue’’; Deuteronomy 16:20) into a set of principles with practical relevance to
the present Israeli-Palestinian situation, suggesting concrete ways to focus one’s moral
malaise in a context in which posing political questions of ‘‘who is right’’ and ‘‘who is
wrong’’ can otherwise have paralyzing effects.
The translation of biblical calls to justice into human rights discourse is not a self-
evident move in Judaism. Indeed, one of the most authoritative voices in Israeli public
discourse, the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz, stated that no notion of rights can be derived
from Jewish religious foundations. This is a common claim among Jewish critics of ethical
doctrines based on rights, and even those who believe in an essential identity of human


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