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General News    H3'ed 10/22/20

Who Is Looking Out for the Common Good? (REVIEW ESSAY)

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As he explains, the idea of covenant has a historical place in American history: "As for politics, covenant, the key concept of the Hebrew Bible, has been part of American political culture since the first Puritan settlers. Their first formal act was the Mayflower Pact of 1620: 'We whose names are underwritten . . . solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and of one another, covenant and combine our selves together in a civill body politick.' Aboard the Arbella in 1630, John Winthrop similarly declared, 'We are entered into covenant with Him [God] for this work.'

"Covenant has been an underlying strand of American political thought ever since. Its most famous expression is the opening phrase of the preamble to the American Constitution: 'We, the people.' That phrase - used five times in Barack Obama's second inaugural address - is pure covenant terminology. It speaks of sovereignty lying in the hands not of a ruler or government but of the people themselves, conceived as a community of equals who have accepted collective responsibility for their common destiny and fate" (page 283; ellipsis in Sacks' book; material in square brackets in Sacks' book; Sacks has quoted the spelling in the historical document).

In addition, Rabbi Sacks says, "unprecedentedly, in the Hebrew Bible the human person as such became God's 'significant other.' Each individual was 'in the image and likeness' of God. The intimacy of this relationship gave rise to a new kind of morality - based not on justice only but also on love: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might,' 'Love your neighbor as yourself,' and 'Love the stranger, because you know what it feels like to be a stranger'" (page 281).

Rabbi Sacks also says, "This vision [of the social order] gave rise to the unique world of the Hebrew prophets - figures like Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah - who spoke truth to power, criticized kings, and told the people endlessly to practice justice and compassion, righteousness and love" (page 282).

That much is true enough about the ancient Hebrew prophets. However, I would argue that when you subscribe to their vision of the social order, you will tend to catastrophize (in Albert Ellis' well-known terminology).

In summary, not one of Rabbi Sacks' multi-directional critiques of historical or more recent developments prompted me to want to respond to it in detail. In my estimate, he has called attention to a host of contemporary problems that should concern people of good will, as Pope Francis might put it.

(Article changed on October 22, 2020 at 21:11)

(Article changed on October 23, 2020 at 13:18)

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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

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