What do you mean by the term spirit of conservatism 0?
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Defining things by what they aren’t is almost always unsatisfying. Negative definitions can be useful in distancing us from what we need to reject, but they don’t tell us much about the alternatives.
Applied to G-d Himself, the Rambam tells us in Moreh Nevuchim that we have no alternative to negative statements. The shortcomings of our comprehension and of human language do not allow us to speak of what He is, only of what He is not. If we wish to grow close to Him, we will have to focus on manifestations of His essence – Torah and Creation – rather than His essence itself.
For too many Jews who cannot agree on any affirmative set of principles of Judaism, the one definition that works for them is a negative one. Jews don’t believe in Jesus. The spectacular failure of such a belief system needs no elaboration; it is evident in the growing debris from the self-destruction of the non-Orthodox communities of the Diaspora, which too often could come up with no more compelling a definition of Jewishness than a statement of what it isn’t.
It should be vastly unsatisfying, then, that a growing number of Jews have broken with the assumed identity of liberalism and Judaism, yet cannot tell anyone just what they believe in and why. They, too, are stuck with a negative definition: conservatives are liberals who have been mugged.
This could have worked when Jewish conservatives were a small bunch who could cynically laugh at themselves. But this is no longer the case. Whereas just a short time ago, “neo-con” was an “N-word” regarded as odious as the other, the failing popularity of the President and his party have breathed life and respectability into conservatism. William Kristol, son of the founder of neo-conservatism, has even been cited – without derision – on the front page of the New York Times.
Who would have thought? And while some may be able to explain why, fewer can explain exactly what Jewish conservatives ought to be thinking. Eric Cohen, the executive director of the Tikvah Fund, offers a thoughtful and useful door-opener to discussion in the last month’s lead article in Mosaic. (Full disclosure: this is the same Tikvah that runs the summer program with which I am associated.)
Applied to G-d Himself, the Rambam tells us in Moreh Nevuchim that we have no alternative to negative statements. The shortcomings of our comprehension and of human language do not allow us to speak of what He is, only of what He is not. If we wish to grow close to Him, we will have to focus on manifestations of His essence – Torah and Creation – rather than His essence itself.
For too many Jews who cannot agree on any affirmative set of principles of Judaism, the one definition that works for them is a negative one. Jews don’t believe in Jesus. The spectacular failure of such a belief system needs no elaboration; it is evident in the growing debris from the self-destruction of the non-Orthodox communities of the Diaspora, which too often could come up with no more compelling a definition of Jewishness than a statement of what it isn’t.
It should be vastly unsatisfying, then, that a growing number of Jews have broken with the assumed identity of liberalism and Judaism, yet cannot tell anyone just what they believe in and why. They, too, are stuck with a negative definition: conservatives are liberals who have been mugged.
This could have worked when Jewish conservatives were a small bunch who could cynically laugh at themselves. But this is no longer the case. Whereas just a short time ago, “neo-con” was an “N-word” regarded as odious as the other, the failing popularity of the President and his party have breathed life and respectability into conservatism. William Kristol, son of the founder of neo-conservatism, has even been cited – without derision – on the front page of the New York Times.
Who would have thought? And while some may be able to explain why, fewer can explain exactly what Jewish conservatives ought to be thinking. Eric Cohen, the executive director of the Tikvah Fund, offers a thoughtful and useful door-opener to discussion in the last month’s lead article in Mosaic. (Full disclosure: this is the same Tikvah that runs the summer program with which I am associated.)
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