Judaism, Pluralism & Public Reason

Jonathan A. Jacobs

Central values of Judaism and the historical experience of Jews are sources of strong
Jewish support for democracy, especially in the United States, where Jews did not have
to wait for citizenship and rights to be conferred on them–and possibly withdrawn.
Judaism is strongly committed to the political order in the United States and to the
pluralistic, dynamic civil society it helps make possible. Jews have the freedoms that
others have, and those freedoms resonate with fundamental Jewish values in ways
that matter even to nonpracticing Jews. Moreover, there are reasons to regard the
Constitution’s nonestablishment neutrality as comparing very favorably with a no-
tion of public reason as a political approach to the question of state and church rela-
tions. Neutrality does not impose upon or require bracketing of individuals’ consti-
tutive commitments and their conceptions of what matters most integrally to them.
Public reason is vulnerable to that troubling possibility.

J ews’ commitment to democracy is strong, especially in the United States.

From a Jewish perspective, the state neutrality toward religion expressed in
the U.S. Constitution compares favorably to conceptions of public reason in
addressing questions about religion in liberal democracy. One of the chief reasons
for this has to do with the ways Jewish identity is important to both religious and
nonreligious Jews and how public reason can be problematic for that identity. Be-
cause of how state neutrality relates to civil society, it enables people to acquire
habits and attitudes of toleration and noninterference with others in ways that
are perhaps more efficacious than (widespread sociopolitical) employment of a
standard of public reason.

Notions of citizens of a democracy as “free and equal” and meriting respect
on the basis of the worth and dignity of all human beings come quite naturally to
Judaism. In some key respects, such notions have their origin in Judaism. Biblical
conceptions of the fellowship of humankind, the worth of the individual, the po-
litical imperative of “justice, justice you shall pursue,” and the moral obligation to
care for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor are anchored in Jewish
sources.1 In addition, much of the early modern theorizing about the liberal state,
especially the arguments of numerous English and Dutch theorists, was shaped
in large part by the ways they regarded the Hebrew Bible as a source of political
ideas.

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Milton, Harrington, Selden, Grotius, Cunaeus, and other English and Dutch
Protestant thinkers–some of them monarchists, some republicans–regarded
reading the Hebrew Bible as a way of connecting directly with the word of God
without corrupting intermediaries.2 They looked to the Hebrew Bible as an au-
thoritative source concerning notions of the rule of law, of people being made
a nation by the rule of law, of the critique of empire, and of a religious authori-
ty having control over political authority. In addition, many of the early modern
Christian Hebraists regarded the Noahide Laws, with their textual basis in Gen-
esis 9, as a model of natural law, and the rabbinic tradition has long regarded the
Noahide Laws as applying universally to all human beings (the children of Noah),
not only the Jewish people. Those laws are as follows: It is forbidden to deny God.
It is forbidden to blaspheme God. Murder, incest, adultery, homosexual relation-
ships, and stealing are prohibited. Eating a part of a live animal is prohibited. Fi-
nally, courts and a legal system must be established. Actually, there is little explic-
it tradition of natural law theorizing in Judaism, and from antiquity until Joseph
Albo (1380–1444), there was no discussion of it by Jewish thinkers. In recent de-
cades, numerous scholars have argued that natural law is implicit in Judaism or
that Jewish law contains resonances of natural law. Whatever our interpretation
of the natural law issue, it is clear that scripture commands each Jew to love the
stranger as oneself, that there is to be one law for the stranger and the Israelite
alike, and that charity in the form of food and clothing should be offered to those
in need.3 Moral notions such as these shaped some of the early modern thinking
about universal rights and obligations to all people.

The period of fascination with Hebraic sources was impactful but short, last-
ing roughly from 1500 to 1650. Enlightenment views of Jewish sources general-
ly were much less generous and much less interested in Judaism, often regard-
ing it as a form of primitive religion. Religious conceptions had a much smaller
role in eighteenth-century political thought, and in some parts of Europe, such
as France, there was fierce anti-clericalism. Still, several among the American
founders were familiar with many of the Hebraists’ works and were influenced
by them.

In more recent history, the United States has not had the legacy of virulent anti-
Semitism found in Europe, and the nonestablishment clause of the U.S. Constitu-
tion has, from the founding of the United States, protected against a state religion
or religious favoritism. Throughout American history, Christianity in various
forms (numerous Protestant denominations, Catholicism, and smaller numbers
of Orthodox Christians) have constituted the majority religion of America. The
overall culture of the United States has been shaped and influenced by Christi-
anity in numerous ways, though the Constitution has been a bulwark against un-
checked religious interests and influences shaping education and other aspects
of civil society. While some state constitutions encouraged religion and morality,

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149 (3) Summer 2020Jonathan A. Jacobs

and some “required oaths of office that only Christians could honestly take,”
the experiences of Jews in the United States, right from the founding of the na-
tion, have differed from Jews’ experiences elsewhere.4 In many European coun-
tries, Jews were not even granted citizenship until the modern era, and then in the
twentieth century, their rights were severely curtailed again.

In some respects, their experience in Europe helped to prepare Jews for the
form of liberal democracy found in the United States. Prior to the Enlightenment
and a key period of Jewish emancipation in Europe between the eighteenth and
twentieth centuries, there had been several centuries of Jewish self-rule: quasi-
democratic government under Christian or Muslim political authority. While
lacking ruling political authority, Jews often had their own courts, and the most
common form of Jewish political association was the kehilla, a council or group
from the community exercising governing functions for the public good. As Yid-
dish literary scholar Ruth Wisse has argued, “unable to rely on coercive power,
Jews had been forced to compete at a severe disadvantage. Like athletes that train
with weights, Jews were more than ready for the competition once their hand-
icaps were lifted.”5 This occurred in France, England, the Netherlands, Austria,
and Hungary in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, though full citizenship
was not available to Jews in Germany until after World War I. Being a minority,
and typically subject to various exclusions, Jews had lengthy practice with certain
forms of self-government and with trying to protect their interests and promote
their welfare without antagonizing non-Jewish majorities.

While those handicaps were lifted, emancipation and integration remained
fraught in many parts of Europe. In Germany, widely popular anti-Semitism de-
veloped rapidly, and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, one of the most infamous and
enduring anti-Semitic works, was first published in Russia in 1905. The removal
of official, legal handicaps did not mean that there would not be vicious populist
anti- Semitism. In some respects, emancipation “freed” Jew-haters in those soci-
eties to indulge in all sorts of popular hatred, humiliation, and caricature of Jews
in the press, in theater, and in politics, even if the state did not officially enforce
anti-Semitic measures. Very swiftly, the notion that “Jews were unworthy of the
legal and social position conferred upon them” became widespread and power-
ful.6 Thus, there were important respects in which the liberal and slowly democ-
ratizing European states still did not regard Jews as full-fledged members and
participants, even once they had citizenship. In “On the Jewish Question,” Marx
maintained that the “emancipation of mankind from Judaism” depended on “the
emancipation of the Jews from Judaism.”7 In Europe, the so-called “Jewish ques-
tion” remained open, whether or not Jews were permitted to address it. A century
later, the answer came in the form of a program of extermination. That program
was broadly popular across much of Europe even if extermination of the Jewish
people was not an official commitment of nations the Nazis invaded. While there

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are many episodes of non-Jews helping and rescuing Jews, in Ukraine, Latvia,
Romania, Hungary, and Poland, for example, local populations often participated
in the expulsions, expropriations, and mass murder.

Jews have regarded the United States with special affection, in part, because
their participation in civil society did not have to wait upon others conferring
rights on them or removing disabilities from them. Jews have experienced anti-
Semitism in the United States, especially in parts of the Midwest and South, but
generally it did not take the more menacing forms it took in Europe. Jews had a
degree of confidence in the ability of political and legal institutions in the United
States to address issues of exclusion and to protect against a majority religion tak-
ing a state-endorsed role. As scholar of Islam Hillel Fradkin has observed, “Given
the liabilities of their premodern circumstances as a disenfranchised and much
persecuted minority, it was natural for Jews to see modern democracy as a great
blessing that promised not only legal and physical security but dignity as well.”8
In the increasingly open and competitive circumstances of American life, as quo-
tas and impediments were eliminated from universities (both regarding admis-
sion and employment), professions, civic organizations, and other institutions,
Jews overall became politically active and prospered.

Many American Jews continued to feel some trepidation about arousing anti-
Semitic sentiment, and even though Jews were not apprehensive about assert-
ing their rights, “profound disagreements existed within the still nascent Jew-
ish leadership over how best to gain their objectives without provoking an anti-
Semitic response from the dominant Christian culture.”9 Regarding the issue of
sectarian religion in public schools, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) main-
tained that

the most effective strategy was to work through community relations channels–alert-
ing school boards to religious practices offensive to Jews, educating school principals
on the cultural and religious traditions of Judaism and encouraging schools to include
Jewish holidays in their seasonal celebrations.10

At the same time, while the ADL, for example, had “begun with the elemen-
tal purpose of giving Jews a public voice in the fight against defamation, the ADL
emerged after World War II as a fully grown and sophisticated political interest
group determined to represent the interests of its constituents in American public
and private life.”11

Overall, the diversity of the Jewish groups that came to America–that is, eth-
nic diversity, economic diversity, diversity in religious practices, and so forth–re-
sulted in a pluralism of Jewish attitudes and organizations to protect and promote
Jewish interests, sharing a commitment to democracy. Many Jews felt that Jews
would be best served by the elimination of discrimination against minorities,
whoever they are.

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149 (3) Summer 2020Jonathan A. Jacobs

O ne way to characterize the uniqueness of the American experience for

Jews is that in the United States, the basic political-legal order did not
need to be revised in order for Jews to be citizens and to have the rights
that others have. Also, civil society in the United States was pluralistic from the
start. Pluralism was not a latter-day, unfamiliar development. Granted, free so-
ciety was basically white and Christian: slavery was not abolished until well into
the second half of the nineteenth century, and there were diverse ways in which
exclusions, quotas, and other impediments to participation and inclusion limited
Jewish participation in civil society (including universities, professions, housing,
fraternal organizations, and so on) for many decades. But the inclusion of Jews did
not come about after a period of official exclusion from citizenship.

A key reason for the distinctiveness of the American experience concerns the
relation between its liberal democratic constitutional order and its dynamic, plu-
ralistic civil society. One of the chief points of the present discussion is that the
relation of mutual reinforcement between the political-legal order and civil soci-
ety in the United States has been crucial to the experience of Jews in U.S. liberal
democracy.

From the Jewish perspective, the political culture of the United States at its
founding contrasted in fundamental ways with the political cultures of Europe-
an nations. The constitutional order in the United States is liberal in recognizing
extensive individual liberties and rights as fundamental elements of the political-
legal order. Also, all Americans are entitled to equal protection of the law and
equal status under the rule of law. It is democratic in having multiple modes of pop-
ular participation in the political process: from voting, running for office, and
campaigning, to forming interest groups to influence legislation, expressing views
in the media, and so forth. Constitutional amendments ended slavery and guar-
anteed fundamental rights for new groups of citizens, rights that were later more
explicitly upheld at the state level. In 1920, through the Nineteenth Amendment,
women achieved suffrage, and while non-white women were still subject to the
same de facto discrimination and disenfranchisement as non-white men, the po-
litical culture in the United States was becoming more democratic and the civil
society more inclusive.

That kind of political order sustains a dynamic, pluralistic civil society, by
which I mean those spheres of action, interaction, and association in which peo-
ple participate in largely voluntarily ways. This includes people’s occupations,
buying and selling goods and services, education, religious life, culture, leisure,
professional organizations, groups formed around all manner of interests, and so
forth. When individuals and groups feel that they are able to pursue their aims
and interests and enjoy extensive freedoms, participation in civil society can be an
important source of support for the political-legal order. Jews have valued very highly
that relation of mutual support and the framework it reflects. Commitment to the

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legal institutions and norms making civil society possible can be motivated by ap-
preciation of the freedoms exercised in participation in civil society. The relevant
sort of civility at issue here is not just a question of manners, but includes dispo-
sitions of trust, trustworthiness, willingness to compromise, honesty, respect for
others, and concern for the dignity of others. Those are key features, making pos-
sible the countless interactions between people, who are often strangers to each
other but interact–as agents–according to norms they implicitly acknowledge.
The diminished civility of society can result in weakened support for the liberal
democratic political order. In conditions of diminished civility, respect for those
values and principles might appear to be unavailing, ineffective, or in some ways
optional. (To an extent, the current situation in the United States, with its polar-
ized politics and open expressions of distrust, shows evidence of this.)

That relation between the constitutional order and the character of civil society
has been especially important to Jews in America.12 They have valued their rights
and liberties as citizens, and they have wanted to be participants in the many aspects
of civil society while, at times, also feeling the need to be somewhat circumspect,
concerned to avoid anti-Jewish backlash. In Europe, many Jews (among those who
did not conclude that the only viable future was a Jewish national homeland) were
politically active on the left as social democrats, socialists, or communists. The left
seemed the only tenable alternative to the forces of reaction and sometimes vicious,
widely popular anti-Semitism. In the United States, liberal democracy was not, as it
were, a transplant, grafted on to what was a significantly different political and na-
tional culture. Liberal democracy in Europe has a very mixed and uneven record of
success. For most of its history, Europe has had few stable, enduring liberal demo-
cratic states, and the character of many European societies developed in quite other
conditions. The character of a society and the prevailing attitudes and perspectives
do not change overnight (or maybe even over a generation) just because a new legal
order has been implemented. In many parts of Europe, the relation between liberal
democracy and genuinely civil society has been fragile.

The relation between the liberal democratic political order and civil society in
the United States has been in some respects more “organic” than in much of Eu-
rope and other parts of the world. Jews could participate in civil society with con-
siderable freedom in the United States in large measure because the state has been
neutral regarding religion since its founding. The United States really did have a
founding constitutional moment, establishing a republic if not quite a liberal de-
mocracy at the start, creating a political order meant to enable and preserve forms
of civil society that were already developing. And as noted above, Jews had prior
experience with forms of basically democratic self-rule and as a minority group
needing to protect its interests. However, by the late-nineteenth century and in
the twentieth century, anti-Semitism in Europe often characterized Jews’ com-
mitment to liberal democracy as part of a diabolical plan to weaken the majority

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149 (3) Summer 2020Jonathan A. Jacobs

(ethno-national/religious) culture. “Every humane value that Jews claimed as an
attribute of their moral achievement is interpreted as a secret means to achieve
world domination, and every aspect of Jewish accommodation is construed as a
stratagem of conquest.”13 Jews’ improved political status was not also accompa-
nied by civil society welcoming their participation as legitimate or natural.

In the United States, Jews have been vocal proponents of democracy and the
basic political order. Their main concerns have not been whether they can be free
to practice their religion, but the extent to which they can participate in civil soci-
ety on equal terms with others.

During the first half of the twentieth century, many Jews were strongly com-
mitted to assimilation. They wanted to participate in American civic culture and
distance themselves from much of what they regarded as a more insular, more
tradition-bound, and socially limiting form of life in “the old country.” In a sense,
Jewish commitment to church-state separation and to limiting the role of religion
in public schools seems to have been motivated by fears of populist oppression
of Jewish culture and identity. The separation was a way to keep whatever faith
happened to be the majority from enlarging the presence and role of its religion in
public education. At the same time, because religious identity was very important
to many Jews, even if religious worship and knowledge of sacred texts were not,
the neutrality of the state toward religion was a way of preserving Jewish cultural
identity, in contrast to Jewish children growing up thinking that being Christian
is “normal.” Many Jews in contemporary American society have a strong sense
of Jewish identity, though they do not practice the religion. Still, it is important
to them to be able to participate in civil society as Jews. As Hillel Fradkin has not-
ed, “Perhaps most Jews today, including many who are not very observant, see a
strong link between democracy and traditional Jewish teachings. They regard this
link so seriously that they believe it may inform their own political actions and
justify their own understanding of what democracy requires.”14

Among American Jews, by now, the tradition they are upholding is secular
with regard to religion, but Jewish with regard to culture.15 For only about one-
third of American Jews is the practice of religion an important part of their lives.
Almost a third seldom or never attend a religious service, and nearly half seldom
or never pray. Less than one-fifth regard religion as a source of moral guidance. It
is among Orthodox Jews that belief in God and religious practice remain central-
ly important, and the Orthodox–though only 10 percent of American Jews–are
more likely than non-Orthodox Jews to marry, to have a Jewish spouse, to have
several children, and to raise their children to be observant Jews. However, there
are differences among the Orthodox: Haredi Jews and Modern Orthodox Jews
have sharply differing views and commitments regarding many issues, including
their relation to non-Jews in society. Still, Orthodoxy is the fastest growing group
of Jews in the United States.

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The Pew Research Center notes, “Jews are among the most strongly liberal,
Democratic groups in U.S. politics. There are more than twice as many self-identi-
fied Jewish liberals as conservatives, while among the general public, this balance
is nearly reversed.”16 Part of what is striking about the firm commitment of Jews
to liberal democracy in the United States is that the most traditional, observant
groups among Jews are generally the most politically conservative, and nearly 57
percent of this group identify with or lean toward the Republican Party. The Pew
survey indicates that on numerous moral issues, Orthodox Jews are aligned with
evangelical Protestants and Mormons. A sizable majority of Jews favor a larger
state role in regard to welfare concerns such as social security and provision for
health care. This is most pronounced among those between eighteen and twenty-
nine years old, followed next by those in the sixty-five-and-older age group. Or-
thodox Jews tend to endorse smaller rather than bigger government: almost 60
percent compared to about one-third of non-Orthodox Jews.17

W hy do Jews favor the neutrality of the U.S. Constitution regarding reli-

gion, and why might a standard of public reason not share its merits?
It will help to distinguish (at least) two ways in which people can be
said to be religiously serious. One of them is that religious commitment, worship,
and practice are important to this group of people and matter to them in funda-
mental ways. A second sense of religious seriousness is having a strong sense of
identity–usually cultural, valuative, and concerning ancestry–that is important
to uphold even if that identification is not also expressed in forms of worship or accep-
tance of religious doctrine. For those who are religiously serious in the first sense,
their commitments could include elements that are illiberal and undemocratic,
and there are reasons a state could consider prohibiting such harmful practices.
But if their commitments shape how they live in civil society without harming or
coercing others, there is at least a prima facie basis for permitting religious prac-
tice based on them. Granted, it will not always be clear and indisputable whether
commitments cause harm to others. Still, in a sense, people are religiously serious
when they regard their religious commitments as substantively constitutive, as
integral to their conception of themselves and their view of the world.

Jews who are religiously serious in the first sense might be expected to strongly
endorse state neutrality and freedom of religion. And while there are overlaps be-
tween religions–especially the Abrahamic monotheisms–many religious people
are committed to one particular tradition, with its distinct concrete elements, and
not to a kind of identikit religious morality. A kind of overlapping consensus can
be acknowledged and valued without also being the focus of commitment. The
meaningfulness of commitment might be rooted in history and culture, not as in-
eliminable sources of irrationality but as crucially important origins, supports,
and grounds of valuative solidarity. For example, the Pew survey reported:

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Overwhelming majorities of both Jews by religion and Jews of no religion say they are
proud to be Jewish (97% and 83%, respectively). Most Jews by religion also say they
have a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people (85%) and that they feel a re-
sponsibility to care for Jews in need (71%).18

Even nonobservant American Jews often have a strong sense of being part of
the Jewish people, regard its history as important, and have active concern for
the current conditions of Jews’ lives. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed
maintained that remembering the Holocaust and leading a morally sound life are
important.19

If these points describe, in either sense of being religiously serious, a plausible
characterization of the way many Jews see their commitment to justice, then it is
understandable that notions of public reason could be problematic for many Jews.
Neutrality permits expression of the fullness of one’s identity, while guarding
against, for example, religious groups influencing education or using educational
institutions in ways that promote sectarian aims. The role of neutrality in the po-
litical culture of the United States has meant that many forms of religious life and
culture have been at home in civil society without blurring the lines between po-
litical order and civil society, especially in regard to education but more broadly
as well. For many Jews, the ability to enjoy the freedoms of civil society without
feeling continuous dread about interactions between state and church is a notable
merit of American democracy.

Many Orthodox Jews are religiously serious in the first sense. Many other,
and perhaps most, American Jews are religiously serious in the second sense. For
many who are serious in the second sense, their concerns extend beyond their own
sense of identity and relate more to respecting the dignity of others and guarding
against demeaning, exclusionary, derisive treatment and other forms of enforc-
ing second-class citizenship. For example, the mission of the Anti-Defamation
League, founded in 1913, is “To stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to
secure justice and fair treatment to all.”20 Thus, opposing terrorism, bigotry, bul-
lying, bias, and cyber-hatred are now part of the organization’s mission, which is
strongly supported by American Jews. The Pew Research Center found that nearly
70 percent of Jews said that leading a morally good life is essential to their sense of
Jewishness, and nearly 60 percent said that working for social justice and equality
is part of their sense of their own Jewishness.21

For many people who are religiously serious in the second sense, their motiva-
tions might be largely secular, but the roots of their values are religious/cultural and
they may have developed commitment to those values through upbringing framed
in a particular religious tradition, even if without worship and ritual. They might
find it difficult, even in their own case, to fully disentangle certain commitments
from the traditions, images, historical narratives, and valuative examples through

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which they were first introduced. There can be a strong sense of religiously anchored
identity and value commitment even without religious practice. For many nonreli-
gious Jews, leading a morally sound life is understood as what the religion requires.
Given the fact that many Jews do not practice Judaism, and given the central
place that freedom and equality have in the religion, it might seem natural to sup-
pose that something like a Rawlsian conception of public reason would appeal
strongly to Jews. Yet neutrality could have much stronger appeal. The key points
here apply to both senses of religious seriousness.

Rawls writes, “The idea of public reason specifies at the deepest level the ba-
sic moral and political values that are to determine a constitutional democratic
government’s relation to its citizens and their relation to one another.”22 Further,

A citizen engages in public reason, then, when he or she deliberates within a frame-
work of what he or she sincerely regards as the most reasonable political conception
of justice, a conception that expresses political values that others, as free and equal cit-
izens might also reasonably be expected reasonably to endorse.23

Public reason requires that “we assume that, in an ideal overlapping consen-
sus, each citizen affirms both a comprehensive doctrine and the focal political
conception.”24

Since the political conception is shared by everyone while the reasonable doctrines
are not, we must distinguish between a public basis of justification generally accept-
able to citizens on fundamental political questions and the many nonpublic bases of
justification belonging to the many comprehensive doctrines and acceptable only to
those who affirm them.25

Grounds for apprehension about public reason concern the way that the rel-
evant consensus involves disentangling grounds of commitment and bracketing
elements felt to be constitutive. The disentangling might be regarded as either ar-
tificial, threatening, or both.

Robert Audi has elaborated a view of the relation between democracy and re-
ligion that reflects the important fact that religious rationales often figure in ways
that people are (reasonably, not just dogmatically) reluctant to give up and should
be encouraged to express; though he also maintains that in a liberal democracy it
is appropriate to expect of people a secular motivation for their views. Regarding
the first point, he articulates “the principle of religious rationale”:

Religious citizens in a democratic society have a prima facie obligation not to advocate
or support any law or public policy that restricts human conduct, unless they have, and
are willing to offer, adequate religious reason for this advocacy or support.26

This acknowledges the importance of religious commitments to many people
and urges them to be honest in how they represent their commitments. Unlike a

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149 (3) Summer 2020Jonathan A. Jacobs

conception of public reason, this does not require a bracketing of religious consid-
erations, concealment of them, or worse, acquisition of a habit of hypocrisy about
them. Regarding the second point–that a secular motivation can be called for–
Audi formulates “the principle of secular motivation.” He writes, “Citizens in a
democracy have a (prima facie) obligation to abstain from advocacy or support of
a law or public policy that restricts human conduct, unless in advocating or sup-
porting it they are sufficiently motivated by adequate secular reasons.”27 This ap-
proach does not prohibit religious considerations from having a justificatory role
and it does not separate out comprehensive views in a systematic way.

Those who are religiously serious in the second sense might find that it is not
very difficult to fulfill the principle of secular motivation (though it does not pre-
clude religious reasons also being sufficient). However, as mentioned, disentan-
gling the elements of one’s view from the ways that one has come to have them
can be very difficult. It can be challenging to know, even in one’s own case, how
important religious ideas have been to the formation of one’s ethical commit-
ments. While it is appropriate to ask that fellow citizens articulate reasons that
are accessible, what actually constitutes accessibility is not a simple matter. Nor
is the issue of how much justificatory and motivational efficacy any given con-
siderations have. Many political matters can be resolved eventually on the basis
of good faith bargaining, the presentation of facts, and the willingness to listen
genuinely to views other than one’s own. But even someone able to articulate a
secular rationale for certain moral commitments might actually have them as the
result of inculcation of a religious tradition, and may also regard the tradition as
valuatively illuminating. I suspect that this is the case for many Americans: that it
is through religious education, even if informal, that they first learn certain moral
values, though they come to hold those values as adults on the basis of secular rea-
sons or also on the basis of secular reasons.

It will not do to insist that religious ideas, images, and practices be excluded
from moral education, whether formal or informal. That would be a significant
imposition. Those values and commitments often have a constitutive role in one’s
conceptions of themselves and of what is fundamental in their lives. I do not mean
this in the sense of thoughtless zealotry or mere dogmatic insistence without re-
flective, informed, and critical awareness. People who are religiously serious in
the first sense would be skeptical of there being any exclusively secular rationality
or motivation, even if they can recognize ways of articulating their values in secu-
lar terms; and that is not necessarily an unreasonable view.

Those considerations might be a potential difficulty for Audi’s motivation
principle, though that view is much more plausible–with a more realistic appre-
ciation of how religion figures in people’s lives–than a Rawlsian conception of
public reason as guidance for fundamental political conceptions and the expres-
sion of basic political values. In any case, it is reasonable to understand many Jew-

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ish persons’ concern for justice as rooted in religious commitments and values in
ways that are clearly compatible with state neutrality but not so clearly compati-
ble with a standard of public reason. State neutrality allows for the flourishing of
diverse forms of religious seriousness and religious life in civil society, and with-
out state-privileging of any religion. In the United States, that has been especially
welcome to Jews because it meant that, right from the founding of the state, civil
society did not include a role for the state in religion, and the political order has
not required Jews to suspend or disavow religious seriousness for their participa-
tion in political life.

One of the most striking impacts of Jews’ emancipation from second-class
status–or worse–in Europe was that Judaism, for the first time, had become vol-
untary. That changed the character of Jewish community and, in numerous ways,
how one led a Jewish life. It led to many Jews giving up tradition and worship and
community life, but not necessarily in ways that dissolved bonds of solidarity.
That voluntariness and the way even nonobservant Jews see the importance of
membership in a historical community are not inconsistent. For many Jews, it re-
mains important that they are members of a historically continuous (if spatial-
ly scattered) people to whom covenant is integral to their relation to God and to
each other. Thinking of oneself as a member of a people, even if one does not mark
that by regular performances of ritual or by worship, is often a part of one’s Jew-
ishness. Many Jews have chosen not to accept the responsibility to fulfill the com-
mandments–that is, the fullness of the covenant–while still identifying strongly
as Jews, as members of the Jewish people, committed to democratic values.

T he wisdom of neutrality, in contrast to an endorsement of public reason,

is that it does not disturb the diverse sources that underwrite the valua-
tive commitments crucial to liberal democracy. Granted, neutrality can
encounter plenty of difficulties on account of contested interpretations. But neu-
trality does not require participants to bracket, suspend, or otherwise disengage
from values and commitments that might be basic to how people understand
themselves and others, and how they understand what justice requires. Neutrali-
ty and public reason make different sorts of demands on people. For neutrality to
succeed, it is important that people acquire habits and attitudes of toleration, and
for those to be realized efficaciously in the ways people interact. That is different
from requiring a standard of or criterion of admissibility in the manner of pub-
lic reason. The latter can require people to reconstruct their values or at least the
articulation of them, to a certain extent, to make them presentable. The required
reconstruction can be interpreted as a form of disqualification of one’s commit-
ments and even the culture to which they are integral. From the perspective of
public reason, it can seem that the source and support of one’s commitments is, in
a sense, politically illegitimate or at least inappropriate.

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To be sure, Rawls is careful to formulate his conception of public reason so that
it does not condemn as unreasonable values and commitments that do not sat-
isfy its requirements. Still, for persons who value liberal democracy in part be-
cause of how it does not burden or judge such commitments, the standard can
seem to require setting aside some of what matters most. Rawls writes, “the el-
ements of the political conception of justice must be separated from the analo-
gous elements within comprehensive doctrines. We must keep track of where we
are.”28 Neutrality requires habits of respectful toleration rather than an analytical
deconstruction of one’s comprehensive view, separating out only some contents
as suitable, and only in certain terms, for inclusion in politics. Public reason has
considerable merit because it is meant to protect politics against illiberal views
and uncivil attitudes and commitments. But if there is a serious deficit of civility,
it is hardly likely that politics will remain an untainted preserve of public reason.
Given the realities of history, Jews are fully alert to the ways that serious deficits
of civility can be as menacing and lethal as discriminatory laws. That is one rea-
son to regard the habits and attitudes people acquire and how they are exhibited
in social relations as vitally important to politics. Greater, rather than less, mutu-
al acknowledgment and mutual comprehension is crucial to a pluralism in which
people effectively regard each other as free and equal in the fullness of their com-
mitments. (Of course, there are limits; not just anything goes.)

The American form of liberal democracy involving state neutrality with re-
spect to religion protects Jews’ sense of what matters to them about their Jew-
ishness. They do not feel required to give up aspects of their identity or practices
to participate in civil society and in the political process. Neutrality is a political
form that enables and protects pluralism while being responsive to the reality of
the diverse ways that people regard their religious commitments. It does not im-
pose any form of religious life, and it does not require separating oneself from as-
pects of religious life. That has been of primary importance to Jews’ commitment
to democracy, especially in the United States.

author’s note

I would like to thank Robert Audi for his instructive, supportive editing. I am respon-
sible for any faults or weaknesses in the essay, but Robert’s efforts–and friendly
insistence–improved it in numerous respects.

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about the author

Jonathan A. Jacobs is Professor, Presidential Scholar, Chair of Philosophy, and
Director of the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics at John Jay College at the City
University of New York. He is the author of The Liberal State and Criminal Sanction:
Seeking Justice and Civility (2020), Law, Reason, and Morality in Medieval Jewish Philosophy
(2010), Ethics A–Z, (2005), and Dimensions of Moral Theory: An Introduction to Metaethics
and Moral Psychology (2002).

endnotes

1 The passage quoted is Deut. 16:18 from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: The Jew-

ish Publication Society, 1985).

2 For scholarship on Political Hebraism, see Fania Oz-Salzberger, “The Jewish Roots of
Western Freedom,” Azure 13 (5762) (2002): 88–132; Frank Manuel, The Broken Staff:
Judaism Through Christian Eyes (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002); and
Jonathan Jacobs, “Return to the Sources: Political Hebraism and the Making of Mod-
ern Politics,” Hebraic Political Studies 1 (3) (2006): 328–342.

3 For a fuller discussion of this point and relevant Scriptural passages, see Suzanne Last
Stone, “Judaism and Civil Society,” in Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism, ed. Michael
Walzer (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), 17.

4 Walter Berns, Democracy and the Constitution (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 2006), 161.

5 Ruth R. Wisse, Jews and Power (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 91.

6 Quoting sociologist Jacob Katz in ibid., 87.

7 Marx’s On the Jewish Question was written in 1843 and published in 1844. Italics in original.
8 Hillel Fradkin, “Judaism and Political Life,” Journal of Democracy 15 (3) (2004): 122–136,

128.

9 Gregg Ivers, To Build a Wall: American Jews and the Separation of Church and State (Charlottes-

ville: University of Virginia Press, 1995), 33.

10 Ibid., 63.
11 Ibid., 62.
12 For a discussion of Jewish values and perspectives in relation to important currents of
political theorizing in the contemporary world, see, for example, Lenn Goodman,
Religious Pluralism and Values in the Public Sphere (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2014). See also Daniel H. Frank, On Liberty: Jewish Philosophical Perspectives (Richmond,
United Kingdom: Curzon Press, 1999).

13 Wisse, Jews and Power, 93.
14 Fradkin, “Judaism and Political Life,” 131.
15 See Pew Research Center, A Portrait of Jewish Americans: Findings from a Pew Research Center
Survey of U.S. Jews (Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center, 2013), 54, https://www
.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2013/10/jewish-american-full-report
-for-web.pdf.

16 Ibid., 95.

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149 (3) Summer 2020Jonathan A. Jacobs

17 Ibid., 102
18 Ibid., 52.
19 Ibid., 54–55.
20 See Anti-Defamation League, “Our Mission,” https://www.adl.org/who-we-are/our

-mission.

21 Pew Research Center, A Portrait of Jewish Americans, 14.
22 John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 441–442.
23 Ibid., 450.
24 Ibid., xix.
25 Ibid.
26 Robert Audi, Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2011), 69.

27 Ibid., 143.
28 Rawls, Political Liberalism, xix.

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