NOTES TO PAGES 563–67- Emmanuel Levinas,Alterity and Transcendence(New York: Columbia University Press,
1999), 145, 146. - Ibid., 149.
- Peter Jones, ‘‘Human Rights and Diverse Cultures: Continuity or Discontinuity?’’Critical
Review of International Social and Political Philosophy3, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 38. For an example of
the literature that challenges the universality of Western notions of human rights, see Daniel Bell,
‘‘The Limits of Liberal Justice,’’Political Theory26, no. 4 (1998). - See, e.g., the liberal debate on tolerance and multiculturalism in contemporary Western
democracies. - Quoted from a flier distributed by the group and entitled ‘‘Who Are Rabbis for Human
Rights?’’ - This aspect of their work has become more prominent in the past couple of years (2004–
5), given increasing poverty and the erosion of social security programs in Israel. - The notion oftikkun olam(ortikkun ha olam) derives from a mystical legend in the
Lurianic Kabbalah (named after the sixteenth-century rabbi Isaac Luria), telling how God made the
world by pouring a holy light into all things. The light was so intense, however, that it broke the
vessels that were to contain it, filling the world with shards. The task of human beings is to put
back together whatever they find ‘‘broken,’’ so as to ‘‘repair’’ the divine beauty and wholeness of
creation. - In this regard, it is important to note that RHR members have different interpretations of
the meaning of the principle of justice or of any other values that are central to the group. Only
recently has RHR tried to produce a detailed exposition of its textual and religious bases. In relation
to specific issues and events, members are often divided among themselves. One notable exception
has been the issue of Israeli demolitions of Palestinian houses built or enlarged without legal per-
mits, which has also been at the center of Arik Ascherman’s recently concluded trial in Jerusalem.
In support of his position at the trial, Ascherman was able to collect the signatures of over five
hundred rabbis from different strands of Judaism and different countries, notably the U.S. - In this regard, it is also not coincidental that most members of RHR are originally
American. - Yeshayahu Leibowitz,Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State(Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1992), 241. - Ibid., 207.
- Ibid., 88.
- Lenn E. Goodman,Judaism, Human Rights, and Human Values(New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1998), 55. - Another possible radical reading of Jewish humanism is the one offered by Levinas, for
whom ‘‘the man whose rights must be defended is in the first place the other man, it is not initially
myself. It is not the concept ‘man’ which is at the basis of this humanism, it is the other man’’
(Emmanuel Levinas,Nine Talmudic Readings[Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990], 98).
Of course, and especially considering the empirical orientation of the present essay, we must keep
in mind that Levinas explicitly denied that Palestinians and Jews or Israelis were mutual ‘‘others’’
linked by ethical relations of ‘‘responsibility’’ in the specific sense he gave to the term. - David Novak, ‘‘Religious Human Rights in the Judaic Tradition,’’ available on-line at
http://www.law.emory.edu/EILR/volumes/spring96/novak.html. - This literature includes primarily theRHR Newsletter, weekly biblical commentaries (Para-
shat haShavua), and Noam Zohar,Life, Freedom, and Equality in the Jewish Tradition(Jerusalem,
2003).
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