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Article: Rights and Jewish tradition: claiming the higher and middle grounds. (Reviews).(Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Judaism
- Article date:
- June 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 American Jewish Congress. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory. By DAVID NOVAK. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
David Novak's Covenantal Rights is a bold effort to reshape Jewish political theory and political theory in general. Novak seeks to reconcile modernity and Jewish tradition by demonstrating that the concept and language of rights is an integral part of Jewish tradition. He argues that the liberal conception of rights, embraced by most Jews today, is fundamentally non-Jewish because it presupposes an anthropocentric universe with human autonomy as its highest value. Traditionalist Jews reject rights talk precisely because it is secular and stress ...