I would recommend The Case for Israel, by Alan Dershowitz. Even though his politics are different than the JTF's for the most part, the book is very thorough and detailed.
It is more than just politics. Dershowitz, like many secular American Jews, is a liberal who has great difficulty with Judaism, a liberal who wants to make God in his image, rather than conform to God's image as described in the Torah, a liberal who rejects the very foundation of Judeo-Christian culture.
Read on.
http://www.rosenblit.com/TEN_COMMANDMENTS.htmMY RESPONSE TO HARVARD LAW PROFESSOR ALAN DERSHOWITZ'S CONDEMNATION OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS:IN DEFENSE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS--------------------
Nothing American About The Ten Commandments
--------------------
Alan Dershowitz
September 19, 2003
During the debate over removing a 2-ton monument featuring the Ten Commandments from the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court, it has been repeatedly asserted that "America was built on the principles of the Ten Commandments" and that our system of government is based on the Decalogue. The opposite is much closer to the historical truth. As Thomas Jefferson -- who rejected the divine origin of the Ten Commandments and found them to be "defective and doubtful" -- recognized, our nation was founded on a rejection of much of what is in the actual content of the commandments.
Most Americans are unaware of what is included in the nearly 300 words that make up the Ten Commandments as set out in Exodus and Deuteronomy and translated in the King James (and other) versions of the Bible. They know only the Cliff's Notes version: "Thou shalt not kill" (or "murder," depending on which translation one accepts); "Thou shalt not commit adultery," which, in its time applied only to married women, not married men, who were free to have sex with unmarried women; and "Thou shalt not steal" or "bear false witness."
In theory at least, all civilized societies recognize those ancient principles, which aren't original to Mosaic law. They are based on earlier laws, such as the Code of Hammurabi and the Code of Lipit-Ishtar. Can it be said then that the United States is based on pagan codes?
The complete text of the Ten Commandments, regardless of the translation, is much more controversial. It includes God's assertion that he is "a jealous God" and his threat to visit "the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation" - that is, to punish children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren for the sins of their ancestors.
Can anything be more un-American? Jefferson agreed with Thomas Paine that this commandment is "contrary to every principle of moral judgment." As my 13-year-old daughter has observed, how can a child be expected to "honor thy father and thy mother" if her evil parents are responsible for punishment she and her innocent children and grandchildren will suffer? The principle of intergenerational collective accountability is particularly unsuited to a nation that proclaimed itself a land of individual opportunity and rejected the European tradition of class based on parentage.
Nor does the United States accept the notion of having "no other gods" except the Judeo-Christian god. We have always welcomed people who have other gods, or no god. And we constantly take God's name in vain by invoking it at sporting events, on our money, in political campaigns and with all-American curses.
The full text of the commandments seems to accept slavery, given that in the original Hebrew it condemns coveting your neighbor's "slave" - usually mistranslated as "servant" or "manservant." Moreover, coveting is as American as apple pie. Our entire market system encourages us to covet our neighbor's wealth.
The commandments also provide for a day of rest for "thy slave." And speaking of a day of rest, the commandments are unambiguous about which day is mandated, as well as the reason for it:
It is the "seventh day" -- Saturday -- because God "rested the seventh day." It is not Sunday, the day selected centuries later by Christians because it is the day on which Jesus was resurrected. That choice was rejected by Jews and Seventh-day Adventists, while Muslims selected Friday as their day of rest.
Finally, there is the prohibition of "graven images" -- a phrase that seems to describe the large monument in Alabama before which so many people prostrated themselves in recent weeks.
So what is so American about the Ten Commandments? Nothing, I submit.
The rules we accept actually precede the Ten Commandments and are accepted by all civilized nations. The remaining provisions -- which call for punishing children for the sins of parents, acknowledge slavery, mark Saturday as the exclusive day of rest and were read as exempting married men from the prohibition against adultery -- the United States has generally rejected.
Not only do the Ten Commandments not belong in public courthouses or classrooms, they do not even belong -- at least without some amendments and explanatory footnotes -- in the hearts and minds of contemporary Americans.
Alan Dershowitz is a law professor at Harvard University. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.
Copyright 2003, Hartford Courant
Subject: Aseret HaDevarim (The Ten Utterances)
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 11:32:59 -0400
From: mark rosenblit <
[email protected]>
To:
[email protected]Professor Dershowitz:
I met you after a lecture at the West Hartford, CT JCC to promote your book on terrorism (-- we talked about our divergent views of the Altalena affair).
I applaud you for your eloquent support of Israel, but I have to take you to task for your views on Aseret HaDevarim (The Ten Utterances). Here is the article that I submitted to our local paper last week. L'Shana Tova!
-- Mark Rosenblit
Subject: In Defense Of The Ten Commandments
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 22:55:46 -0400
From: mark rosenblit <
[email protected]>
To: Hartford Courant <
[email protected]>
The Ten Commandments, as declared by the God of Israel in Ex. 20:2-14 and as recounted, with slight modifications, by Moses in Deut. 5:6-18, were originally bestowed upon the nomadic Jewish people some 3,300 years ago to govern their prospective behavior, especially but not exclusively, in the Land of Israel. The fact that, millennia later, much of the rest of the World also deems the Ten Commandments to be a fount of high morality has evidently offended noted law professor Alan Dershowitz (Hartford Courant, Sept. 19, 2003, "Nothing American About The Ten Commandments").
In support of his screed that the Decalogue is deserving of our repugnance rather than our reverence, Dershowitz charges, inter alia, that the Decalogue is unclear whether all killing or only murder is prohibited, that it condones slavery, that it winks at male licentiousness, and that it lauds intergenerational collective punishment.
Variant translations notwithstanding, "Lo Tirtzach", the words employed in the Decalogue, precisely mean "Do not murder", while "Lo Taharog" would mean "Do not kill". Moreover, the Torah elsewhere makes it clear that under the proper circumstances -- such as participating in a just war or punishing a murderer -- taking a human life is, not only permissible, but obligatory.
Although the Decalogue prohibits coveting that which one's neighbor enjoys, including wife, servants and animals, this hardly constitutes a condonation of the type of servitude that later came to define the American institution of slavery. A biblical Jew might indeed acquire a slave, but, as the Torah elsewhere declares, a Jewish master would be put to death if he murdered his slave; a Jewish slave was to be freed, depending upon his status, at either the next Sabbatical Year or the next Jubilee Year; and a gentile slave who escaped to the Land of Israel was not to be returned to his pagan master, but rather "he shall dwell with you in your midst, in whatever place he will choose in one of your cities, which is beneficial to him; you shall not taunt him." (Deut. 23:17). Although the concept may sound oxymoronic to modern ears, biblical slaves were to be treated with respect; and, already several hundred years before the issuance of the Decalogue, Abraham's slave, Eliezer of Damascus, was so respected by his master that he became "the elder of his [Abraham's] household who controlled all that was his." (Gen. 24:2).
Hypocritically, while Dershowitz argues for rejecting the Decalogue because it acquiesced to the existence of slavery in its time, he has never exhibited any similar compulsion to repudiate the United States Constitution because it acquiesced to the existence of a much more virulent form of slavery in its time (see U.S. Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 2, Par. 3; Art. I, Sec. 9, Par. 1; and Art. IV, Sec. 2, Par. 3).
Dershowitz ridicules the Decalogue's prohibition of adultery, claiming that it hypocritically permitted adultery by "married men who were free to have sex with unmarried women". This claim is as disingenuous as it is inaccurate. Since polygamy was then a societal norm, a Jewish man was permitted to have more than one wife. Accordingly, the free sex of which Dershowitz complains was actually that between a husband and his (additional) wife.
Dershowitz also misconstrues the Decalogue's declaration that the God of Israel will visit "the iniquity of fathers upon children unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate Me" (Ex. 20:5). This is indeed a declaration of intergenerational collective punishment but not in the way that Dershowitz presumes, namely, that an innocent offspring will be punished for the individual sin of his ancestor. On the contrary, as the Torah elsewhere declares, "Fathers shall not be put to death because of sons, and sons shall not be put to death because of fathers; a man should be put to death for his own sin." (Deut. 24:16). Rather, the Decalogue speaks of a society whose leadership and acolytes have perpetuated such Evil that their entire nation becomes collectively liable for punishment. Nazi Germany and the justified fire-bombing of its civilian population comes to mind.
Finally, Dershowitz insists that, anyway, the precepts of the Decalogue are derived from -- and, consequently, the American ethos is actually based upon -- earlier pagan codes, such as the Code of Hammurabi. That legal code is indeed remarkable (although often draconian), regulating many aspects of the business, marriage, adoption, inheritance, and judicial systems of 18th Century BCE Babylon. Yet, as that code's self-adulatory prologue makes clear, its legitimizing source was not the Ruler of commoner and monarch alike but rather a megalomaniacal despot -- Hammurabi -- who believed that he had been chosen by his gods to rule the Earth. And, as that code's maledictory epilogue makes clear, the narcissistic and paranoid Hammurabi greatly feared that his successor might alter or even abrogate his code.
The Decalogue is of a different character. Its overriding message is that every human being, from the most downtrodden soul to the most powerful king or enlightened elected leader, is subject to a higher transcendent law which cannot be altered or abrogated. It is a message which resonated well with the authors of America's Declaration of Independence, and it is a message which resonates still with the vast majority of the American people.
© Mark Rosenblit
[Note: Professor Dershowitz has not yet replied to my riposte. If and when he does, I will post his reply. -- Mark Rosenblit]
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