CLAIM: Judaism Doesn’t Speak of Libertarian ‘Rights’, Only Obligations (Mitzvos)
Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits of Britain is quoted saying:
Now in Judaism, we know of no intrinsic rights. Indeed there is no word for rights in the very language of the Hebrew Bible and of the classic sources of Jewish law. In the moral vocabulary of the Jewish discipline of life we speak of human duties, not of human rights, of obligations, not entitlement. The Decalogue is a list of Ten Commandments, not a Bill of Human Rights.
Gross misunderstanding!
The libertarian Non-Aggression Principle is a negative commandment against initiating unjust aggression against person or property. (There, I said “commandment“. Are you happy now?)
The idea (progressively weakened) of “rights” is the lack of any GOVERNMENT right to impinge on human rights, or so-called “Negative liberty” (actually a tautology, since Isaiah Berlin’s “Positive liberty” means enslaving some to provide for others). For example, the “Right of Return” is theoretically just an attempt by the state to limit its own “right” to offend against immigrants (אכמ”ל).
Of course, Judaism is not practically libertarian-anarchist, but libertarian-leaning, which means freedom is the default position, with many religious exceptions and qualifications. And we are merely reclaiming the Torah idea they first borrowed from us in the Hebraist movement.
Point is, “Anochi Hashem Elokecha”, and religious duties are always curtailed by secular, coercive institutions, no matter the content.
