Public administration and the Jewish ethic

Judaism, Summer-Fall, 2003 by Dvora Yanow

THE ADMINISTRATIVE ETHIC INFORMED BY THE VALUES of Judaism and Jewish practices, as seen in and through its foundational texts, is different from the understanding of "public administration" that is dominant in the U.S. Jewish communal orientation and its deliberative mode of public discourse present a strong contrast with an American public administration that is individualistic in its orientation. In practice, they intertwine in ways that are mutually reinforcing. And yet, there are contradictions. Where the Protestant-capitalist ethic, and Lockean liberalism, produce an American administrative practice built on the individual (property-owner, etc.), Jewish values lead in a different direction. Jews were without a state for 1,878 years, yet developed administrative apparatuses to govern communal affairs and to interface with monarchies and state governments. My focus is on that Jewish ethic of administrative activity and what I perceive to be an erroneous and misleading conflation in the U.S. of the values inherent in Judaism and those of Christianity.

In this increasingly globalized world, terminological boundary--crossings are becoming more widespread, and we are--or should be--becoming more reflective about our tendencies to assume uniformity of meaning when we talk about, research, and teach public administration, projecting a "Western" heritage onto non-Western practices. In his Democracy in Translation, (1) Frederic Schaffer argues that political theorists and political scientists are wrong to assume that when other countries adopt or develop democratic forms of government, "democracy" means the same thing to them as it does to Americans. Drawing on extensive field research in Senegal, he shows that democratie (in Senegalese French) and demokaraasi (in Wolof, the most prevalent indigenous language) mean different things for governmental practices, as seen in administrative institutions. Mark Rutgers made a parallel argument about "administration," comparing the Dutch and German, French, and English-U.S. traditions. (2) He showed that we should proceed with caution about assuming that the concept has similar meanings across these traditions, due to their own particular cultural values concerning government and management. We might well follow suit in considering different traditions of administration within the U.S. (3)

Judaism as a Practice

Judaism is not a "religion," as that concept is understood in the United States, informed largely by Protestantism. It is, rather, a practice, in a very Deweyanpragmatist sense of that concept. (4) The foundation "document" for that practice is the talmud (the "teaching-learning"). Jewish "law" provides an "operating manual" for living life; Jewish ritual is an integral part of that living (one might even say, lifeworld); what is law and what is ritual are not entirely separable. Halakha itself--the word customarily translated as "Jewish law"--comes from the root meaning "walking" or "going"; so halakha is the way (the path) along which a Jew should "walk" or act in living life properly. (5) This "going" governs everything from the conduct of business to the construction of a house (to safeguard against accidents), from farming practices to animal husbandry, from parental relations to spousal ones. It establishes appropriate and inappropriate intimate relations by kinship patterns, and it tells the Jew not to kill two generations of the same animal at the same time for food--specifically, to send the mother bird away when taking eggs from its nest, and not to boil the kid goat in its mother's milk.

Much of the ritual is home-based, from marking the start of the sabbath and holidays, to funerals, and including food preparation for both. Those and other elements taking place outside of the home--such as synagogue architecture and rabbinical roles--typically show the influence of the cultural values of the larger society within which Jews live (the influence of American Protestantism, for example, can be seen in the arrangement of "pews" or in the Reform and even Conservative rabbi's expanding role as officiator at weddings, funerals, and sabbath and holiday services, none of which is required by Jewish law). As a living practice, then, Judaism has been, and continues to be, constantly evolving. Part of this evolution has occurred as Jews have moved from exile to exile over more than 2,000 years, setting up communal institutions in each new location and also respondingto modernization.

Governing these changes are two organizing principles: Judaism is communal in its structure and orientation; and it is built on a model of discourse that is both conserving of established ways and facilitative of change. Its fundamental communal organization may be seen in the stipulation that key prayers and scriptural readings may be done only in the presence of a quorum (a minyan) of ten (traditionally, males over the age of 13), as well as in the injunction, "Do not separate yourself from the collective" (al tifrosh min hatsibur, Pirkei Avotc. 2, v. 5, my translation). The model of discourse is evident in the pages of the talmud, in which points of halakha are discussed and debated, with the different viewpoints and interpretations made by different rabbis and/or schools of thought presented on the page, surrounded by even more commentaries and interpretations, later glossed through responsa. The deliberations, in other words, are made public through the written record; anyone who makes the time to learn how to follow the debating style can have access to them. One might argue that these two operative organizational and action principles--community and public debate--constitute two of Judaism's core values, as they have been passed on over time despite changes in location and adaptation--and one might even claim that the latter has been facilitated by the deliberative style which accommodates change.