Previously, I described the major difference between Jewish ethics and Western political concepts of liberty. In the West, the concept of "rights" has become the prism through which we view political morality. This is a 17th century invention; beforehand ethical systems, including Judaism, looked at obligations and not rights - rights are a secondary result of everyone doing their duties.
It may sound sacrilegious to say so, but the modern emphasis on rights has had a negative effect on humanity. Today, people are no longer asking how they can help make the world a better place - what their obligations are - but rather, “What does the world owe me? What are my rights?” And the list of “rights” being claimed as natural has grown to almost absurd extremes. Instead of life, liberty, and property, as John Locke described, now we see demands for rights to free college, abortion, paid vacation, parental leave, Internet access - even the “right not to be offended.”
But it doesn’t take much thought to realize that every right implicitly places responsibility on someone else to provide or protect that right. We have gone from a society of givers to one of demanders.
Jewish ethics is based on the idea of covenant—the agreement between God and the Jewish people, each with responsibilities toward the other. There are very few “rights” in Jewish philosophy. The phrase “all Jews have a portion in the World to Come” is the closest I can think of, and even that is contingent on fulfilling one’s side of the covenant.
Covenant means responsibility.
More recently, I floated the idea of using community as a means to extend this covenantal concept to the secular world. People who belong to communities have an unwritten contract to help everyone else out, to pitch in when needed. When a neighborhood has a natural disaster, everyone helps; whether by offering food or shelter or clothing or equipment.
Community is a necessary component of morality.
Necessary, yes, but not sufficient.
For generations, moral philosophers have searched for a universal code: a framework that could reconcile individual virtue with social justice, particular loyalties with global responsibility, and the needs of today with the obligations to tomorrow. Jewish ethics already has this built in for Jews , with the emphasis on responsibility towards the rest of the Jewish people. The concept of brit, of a covenant, is much more flexible and scalable to make the secular Jewish ethical system I am proposing to be universal.
It turns out that the concept of covenant is scalable. Jewish ethics does not see morality as a flat plane of universal rules. Instead, it is organized as nested spheres of responsibility, each with its own tools, priorities, and forms of moral agency - but all governed by a unified set of core values.
Starting with the individual, Judaism teaches teshuva (repentance) - a difficult and personal journey involving recognizing faults, admitting them, and crucially, making a promise to improve. This is a covenant with oneself. We all experience this in daily life: to lose weight, get healthy, or break a bad habit, we don’t invoke “rights.” We make promises to ourselves, and we try to keep them.
At the personal level, this is the promise you make to yourself: to live by your own highest values, to pursue teshuvah (growth), and to hold yourself accountable.
At the communal level, as we have seen, brit binds families, synagogues, and neighborhoods to mutual responsibility and moral vigilance (areivut).
At the national level, brit grounds the loyalty of citizens and leaders - not just to the state, but to the ideal of just governance and collective purpose.
At the global level, brit is the missing logic behind lasting cooperation: real alliances, not mere treaties - explicit, values-based pledges to uphold humanity’s shared responsibilities, often seen as treaties and conventions.
| Layer | Actor | Ethical Tools | Global Impact |
|---|
| Personal | Individual | Middot (Virtues), Teshuvah (repentance), Core Values | Trustworthiness, moral clarity, role model |
| Communal | Family, School, Synagogue, Local | Areivut (responsibility,) Chesed (kindness), Shalom Bayit (intrafamily peace), Derech Eretz (respect.) | Resilience, ethical micro-networks |
| National | Governments, Corporations, Courts | Political Ethics Matrix, Ethical Sovereignty, Brit | Justice, public trust, national destiny |
| Global | Alliances, NGOs, Faith Networks | Bal Tashchit (not wasting resources), Kavod HaBriyot (respect for all people(, Brit (International) | Climate, AI, migration, pandemics, war |
At every scale, brit - covenantal logic - is what binds actors into genuine communities of trust and obligation.
Rights are not unalienable. They are earned by being a responsible citizen of one's family, community and country.
When rights are divorced from responsibility, they devolve into endless, conflicting entitlements, each demanding priority. A society built on responsibilities, on the other hand, creates an ecosystem of trust, humility, and practical universality.
Modern challenges are not local or simple. Climate change, artificial intelligence, pandemics, migration, economic injustice - none of these can be solved by personal virtue alone, or by well-meaning protest. They require action and trust at the scale of nations and global alliances.
When we are guided by obligations rather than rights, we will want leaders who are guided by the same sense of purpose and responsibility. Without brit, all that remains is transactional agreement, subject to collapse the moment self-interest shifts. With brit, there is a logic of loyalty and shared destiny that can sustain sacrifice, compromise, and aspiration from within us to the entire world.
A core Jewish principle is: Ethical responsibility grows with moral capacity. The more power an individual or group holds, the greater their obligation to others:
| Actor | Unique Obligation |
|---|
| Parent | Shalom Bayit, Mishpacha (peace, family) |
| Local leader | Tzedek (justice), Areivut (mutual responsibility) |
| National leader | Din (law), Pikuach Nefesh (life), Brit (protection) |
| CEO/NGO head | Lifnei Iver (preventing harm), Kavod HaBriyot |
| Global actors | Brit (covenantal pledges), Bal Tashchit (do no harm) |
This isn’t abstract. It means global justice is the sum of all actors keeping their covenants at every scale. Local groups can become national and international groups, and when they get larger they can offer ways to help at a national and international level.
Demanding rights makes people selfish. Demanding covenant makes people better.
Jewish ethics has both personal and political values, but they are interdependent - and they flow in both directions.
Self-improvement leads to demands for institutional accountability, but national laws should also help promote personal ethics. Public servants should exhibit and model humility. Emet, truth, should be the value behind policy and journalism. Corporations must work not to deceive just as people do. Public apologies can model how one should own up to their own interpersonal slights. Saving human lives and promoting human dignity are the most important values for individuals, communities, corporations, governments and international agencies.
Human nature being what it is, one may wonder: what incentive do politicians have to act in a responsible, covenantal way in a secular world? What can stop them from prioritizing partisan politics and personal aggrandizement over the needs of their constituents?
Again, Jewish tradition provides a potential answer.
Politicians, and anyone in a public position of power (journalists, CEOs, NGO leaders) should be encouraged to have a personal, public "Yom Kippur" - we can call it "Covenant Day" On this day, once a year, they should write down or speak in their own words everything they believe they did wrong during the previous year in their official capacities, and what they plan to do in order to improve themselves in the coming year. The message cannot be one of self-congratulation - only confession, regret and asking forgiveness from the people they serve as well as a pledge with specific steps to do better. (This is not a place to confess personal sins.)
This way, the public can see whether they are being honest about their faults, and serious about the future. Because next year the public, the press, and political opponents will have a clear record by which to measure whether the leader lived up to their promises - or failed to follow through. This moves the standard of evaluation from rumor and innuendo to a documented, honest reckoning.
Those who refuse to participate, or who issue only vague or boastful statements, will be judged accordingly - by voters, the media, and history. The absence of confession will itself become a confession of arrogance or avoidance
After the confession, they should renew their oath of office, again publicly, to impress the importance of their covenantal responsibilities to their people, as well as to themselves.
This makes the covenant itself an integral part of their missions, one that they cannot as easily escape. Over time, the most trusted leaders will be those who model humility, candor, and genuine self-correction. Covenant Day, by design, creates positive competition for who can be most honest, not who can cover up best. People naturally forgive those who give heartfelt apologies and distrust those who try to shift responsibility. Any politician who chooses not to engage in this ceremony will automatically be put at a disadvantage. Moreover, the ceremonial part reiterates to both the politician and the people the importance of covenant.
This ceremony mirrors Yom Kippur - admitting mistakes, regretting sin, vowing to improve, and culminating in a public expression of unity and covenant.
We all can take part in building a covenantal world, as long as we know what is appropriate at our level and ensure everyone does their part.
Don’t moralize when organizing is needed: Personal virtue matters, but only policy, law, and shared pledges can meet systemic challenges.
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Don’t despair at the scale of problems: Right action at every level, from self to city to global, sustains the whole.
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Don’t universalize prematurely: Covenantal community precedes universal obligation; belonging is the foundation of trust.
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Forge brit as moral diplomacy: Ethical alliances, rooted in mutual, explicit commitment, are stronger than treaties or markets.
From self, to community, to covenantal nations - ethics scales when responsibility does.
The great promise of Jewish ethics is not that it offers a few interesting rules or rituals, but that it contains the architecture - the universal grammar - for building societies of trust, humility, resilience, and hope. Covenant, rightly understood, is not just for Jews. It is a scalable, practical, and profound solution to the failures of both rights-only liberalism and coercive utopianism.
A world of covenants is a world where rights, dignity, and purpose are generated and protected, not by force or luck but by shared commitment. This is the ethical revolution the 21st century needs.
And it starts not with an abstract ideal, but with a promise.
Sunday, June 08, 2025
Elder of Ziyon
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