I've transcribed a section of a recorded lecture by R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “Religious Definitions of Man and his Social Institutions, Part 3” (1959)
The excerpt below begins at 33:29. For the sake of clarity I've made minor edits, generally indicated by square brackets. A useful historical background, summary, and analysis by Alan Brill can be found here.
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[Judaism] insisted upon full axiological democracy. You see, this is the kind of democracy which modern man does not understand. Modern man understands political democracy and also understands, perhaps, economic democracy – as the socialist countries, so to say, claim to understand; [though] perhaps it isn’t true. He doesn't understand democracy axiologically, as to the worth of the person. That the great scholar, the scientist, and the little person have the same worth, modern man did not understand, I don’t believe I understand, and perhaps no one understands. But Judaism insisted upon it. Judaism was both realistic, at times, and at times it was simply daydreaming, completely caught in the web of fantasy and imagination. But it was a beautiful fantasy, at least.
I will tell you frankly. Now, with the emergence of the State of Israel, I utter one prayer. And simply, many times, my mind is disturbed. We have a beautiful ethic. And, it is hard to say that we were angels but, more or less, the pages of our history are not as stained with blood and tears and injustice and brutality, as are the pages of the history of European society, to take feudal times or medieval times. The simple reason is not, perhaps, because we are superior to them, [but that] we simply did not encounter the challenge. We never had a state. We never had political problems. […]
A private person, a weak person, a persecuted person, a person who [had no] say could not commit the injustices which, for instance, France or Germany or feudal England committed in the middle ages. But, many times I ask, what if our history had been different, had taken a different course? What if we had been a state in the middle ages, how would we have acted? Just like the feudal lords? Or would we have acted differently because of Judaic ethics? I have no answer to that. Who knows? To say hypothetically how we would have acted is ridiculous. Now, with the State of Israel, we are facing the test. Will we behave like any other state, ethically?
Basically, no state is ethical. I believe that statehood itself implies an intrinsic contradiction to ethics; [even] the best one. Will we act differently or will we restrain ourselves from engaging in certain [practices] which are in conflict with basic Judaic ethics? Or will we yield to temptation? Of course, a few experiences are not very [re]assuring, I must tell you. Others, somehow, hold out hope. I don’t know. But, to me, this is the basic problem with which we, the Diaspora Jews, are faced with regard to the State of Israel. [...] The problem is, here we have an opportunity – the Jews are the rulers, they legislate the laws, they are the masters, so to say. We have never been masters, obviously. We have always been the subordinates. Always. Since the destruction of the Second Temple 1900 years ago. It’s quite a long time. Now, we are the masters. Of course, in a small land, on a narrow strip along the eastern Mediterranean. Will we act like masters or will we understand that Judaism does not know the concept of master and slave, victor and vanquished, powerful and weak? This is my problem with regard to the State of Israel.
The whole of Jewish history will be interpreted in terms of what the State of Israel will do in the next fifty years. If the State of Israel will not live up to the great hopes and challenges of Judaic ethics – I am not speaking now of economics and science, this is a secondary problem to me – then the whole of Jewish history will appear in a different light. People will reinterpret Jewish history. So the Jews were nice and decent? This is simply because they didn’t have the opportunity to be wicked. But as soon as they got the opportunity, they proved to the world that they are not better than anybody else.
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