GEN55 [Article analyzing employee rights in a situation of dismissal.] We have now examined our guiding principles: the unconditioned value of human beings; and its derivative principle, respect for contract. We have also noted manifestations of these principles in both halakhic and general ethical sources, and we have made two policy proposals which emerge from the guiding principles. Still, an essential question remains: what undergirds the guiding principles themselves in addition to various historical and sociological factors which influence our choices, what convictions constitute the meta-ethical assumptions and foundations of our thought? For us, those meta-ethical stances are fundamentally Jewish, and thereby meta-halakhic as well. The cornerstone of all our thinking is the Jewish conviction that human beings are created
b’tzelem elohim, “in the image of God.” This core conviction, derived from [this and following verses], raise Kant’s claims of human value to a transcendent level. While Kant asserted the unconditional value of human beings, Judaism roots that absolute value in God, the absolute source of all value: human beings possess implicit and unconditional worth because they are created in the image of God. Judaism insists upon the recognition of the transcendent dignity of every human being, no matter what the market conditions, no matter what the effect of profit or productivity. In fact,
b’tzelem elohim, seems to be a guiding assumption of Jewish law itself, the meta-halakhic principle responsible for Jewish law’s protecting the worker’s status in the various circumstances reported above. One might still argue, however, from the classical capitalist perspective, that the free market system provides for the utmost dignity of its participants by providing all with the utmost freedom. Another meta-halakhic principle, however, refutes this classical claim. Unlike classical free-market capitalism, Judaism does not enshrine freedom as an absolute value. The Jewish ethical tradition certainly relies significantly on the experience of and redemption from slavery: “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourself been strangers in the land of Egypt”
Exodus 23:9. Nonetheless,
yetziat mitzrayim, the exodus from Egypt, is the necessary means to an end:
matan torah, the revelation of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. The Israelites were redeemed from slavery not to wander in the desert and make their own rules, but in order to accept the divine obligations presented to them at Sinai. This dual notion that freedom entails responsibility, and that responsibility requires freedom is central to Jewish self-understanding (and corresponds to the more contemporary concept of moral agency); indeed, the acceptance of
mitzvot, of deontological obligations, is the necessary basis for the halakhic system itself. The existence of the Halakhah is evidence that Judaism, while valuing liberty, considers human freedom neither sufficient expression nor sufficient guarantee of human dignity.
Mitzvot constitute an explicit, rigorous, and visible hand of guidance towards individual and collective well-being. Finally, just as God and divinely-inspired obligation are the source and protection of the human being’s unconditional value in Judaism, they also underlie the value of contract. In this case,
brit emerges as a compelling concept. If
brit is the Jewish people’s (and the Jewish individual’s) covenant with God, and human beings are created
b’tzelem elohim, then the core concept of
brit might also suggest the sanctity of commitments between human beings … from a Jewish perspective the divine element in human beings imposes upon human agreements some of the sacred responsibility of
brit. REFJEW 297-8
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