According to Judaism, are there fundamental human rights?

Independent

According to Judaism, all of God’s creations have the fundamental right to exist, to thrive and to enjoy their divinely ordained life. This is not true only of humans. You must violate the Sabbath by milking your cow if her udder is full and she is in agony. You may not muzzle your ox while plowing your field because animals have the fundamental right to eat while working. You have the right to challenge authority and to question the teachings of those more learned than you. You have the right to opt out of going to war if you’re too afraid or if you just met someone at a Jewish singles weekend. Laborers must be compensated the day of their labor, not 30 to 60 days later. Creditors are forbidden from harassing debtors or confiscating their property in lieu of debts. You must violate every commandment in the Torah to save a life, even if there is so much as the possibility of endangerment to mental or physical health. You must set aside a religious Thou Shalt Not if human dignity is at stake. You must take in escaped slaves and protect them. I could go on, but Moment has the fundamental right to limit my response to 225 words.

Rabbi Gershon Winkler
Walking Stick Foundation
Thousand Oaks, CA

Humanist
It is relatively easy to identify fundamental human rights in Judaism; regrettably, it is also easy to identify contradictory messages.

On the one hand, we have teachings that extol a basic reverence for life and require that humans be granted a basic dignity. All humans, we are taught, are minted alike, and one may not claim that “one’s blood is redder than another’s.” In practice this means caring for the poor and the disenfranchised and making no distinction between men and women, straight and gay, rich and poor. But we also have teachings—and certainly practices—that do not treat men and women equally, that shun, if not condemn, those who are homosexual, and that provide for the institution of slavery (albeit with a built-in method for manumission).

We have teachings that extol equality between Jews and non-Jews and oblige us, according to Maimonides, to “maintain the poor of idolators, attend to their sick and bury their dead, as we do with those of our own community.” But in practice, how caring and welcoming are we to the stranger and the outsider?

Or consider the concept of religious freedom. We extol the Maccabees as champions of this basic right, yet once they came to power they were no less despotic than those they had overthrown. In fact, Jewish history is rife with intolerance of alternative movements within Judaism.

Basic human rights depend on more than rhetoric and selectively chosen prooftexts. What really matters is how we put these ideals into practice.

Rabbi Peter Schweitzer
The City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism
New York, NY

Renewal

The notion that each person has innate human rights is relatively new. Torah doesn’t use this language, but it does offer the radical notion that each of us is made b’tzelem Elohim, in the divine image. Later tradition expands this into a strong sense of the centrality, and universality, of human dignity. Rabbi Eliezer said, “Other people’s dignity should be as precious to you as your own.” (Pirkei Avot)

The verse most often repeated in Torah is “Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Love of the stranger is not a right but an obligation. We owe it to one another, to the widow and orphan, to those who are powerless, and to the stranger who shares with us the human condition of being far from home.

Hasidic tradition speaks of the nefesh elohut, the spark of divinity, which enlivens each Jew. In this post-triumphalist era, we understand that each human being contains a nefesh elohut and is therefore infinitely precious. When anyone anywhere is denied basic human rights, that spark of divinity isn’t able to shine. Our connection with God demands that we treat God’s children with care.

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
Congregation Beth Israel
North Adams, MA

Reconstructionist

As American Jews, at the intersection of traditional Jewish and modern Western values, we hold these truths to be self-evident: All are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27) and are thus of equally infinite worth. All are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them:

Life: Our creator bade us to “choose life, that you and your descendants may live” (Deut. 30:19). Beyond the obvious “Do not murder,” this makes life an intergenerational right. Even indirect limitations on others’ lives (e.g., our warming the world for future generations) may violate Jewish human rights.

Liberty: Our creator is also our redeemer, the God of liberation; we “must not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger, having been strangers yourselves in Egypt” (Ex. 23:9). Cherut (freedom) and charut (engraved, as in the commandments) are linked. Therefore, with liberty comes responsibility.

Pursuit of Happiness: Happiness is not a right (though it’s strongly recommended), but pursuing it is. One must never infringe on another’s reasonable attempts to be happy. Basics like clean water, food, shelter, health care and education should therefore be universal human rights (as in the U.N. declaration thereof). Jewish ethics support this, as elucidated by a whole galaxy of groups engaged in tikkun olam who base their commitment on Jewish texts.

Indeed, then, as we said in that other, modern scripture, “With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, let us mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb
Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation
Bethesda, MD

Reform

As slaves in Egypt, we were denied our fundamental human right to freedom. We lived under the yoke of slavery, unable to lead lives according to ancient Israelite laws and practice. When our redemption came, it was not only a political one, in which we gained back our civil rights, but a theological one, in which we gained back the freedom to worship in our own manner. We gained freedom from tyranny and oppression as well as freedom to serve God and follow God’s teachings in the Torah.

Torah quite frequently reminds us that we were once slaves in the land of Egypt. The repetition of this phrase is an indication of its significance in our collective understanding of what it means to be a Jew. Our liberation from Egypt comes with an obligation never to forget that experience. We are reminded of it daily in our tefillot (prayers) and at moments in our annual holiday cycle, especially during Passover. Our collective memory of our slavery is the foundation for understanding how we should treat those around us. We were once slaves in the land of Egypt—this is the underlying principle for why we as Jews have an obligation to fight for the freedom of the oppressed and the civil rights of those who are treated inequitably.

Rabbi Laura Novak Winer
Union for Reform Judaism
Fresno, CA

Conservative

All obligations toward our fellow human beings are rooted in the biblical teaching that the human being is created in the divine image with the sacred right to life, freedom and dignity. Each person’s right to life obliges us to come to his or her aid when threatened. From Talmudic sources it is possible to infer that the individual is not only entitled to life but to health, security from harm and the ability to make a living. Another human right is encapsulated in the principle that in the eyes of the law all people are equal (Lev. 19:15). Finally, in the Book of Exodus we learn that people are entitled to be free. As rabbinic law developed, it came to protect fundamental human rights by prohibiting people who have more strength, money and status from oppressing those who have less. Judaism does not limit human rights to the avoidance of exploiting people; it also mandates positive action to take care of people. The laws of supporting the poor are examples of this. What is phrased as an obligation on the giver became a right on the part of the receiver.

Rabbi Amy Wallk Katz
Temple Beth El
Springfield, MA

Modern Orthodox

There is a standard gambit in response to this question: Judaism does not talk about rights (that is, it does not use the language of entitlement); instead, it focuses on duties (what we owe to God and to fellow human beings). I believe that this conventional wisdom is mistaken.

Traditional sources do not use the language of rights because such concepts were unknown in ancient times. However, the Torah and Talmud speak of fundamental dignities which confer the equivalent of rights. These biblical and post-biblical sources strongly influenced the early modern thinkers who shaped the emergence of democracy and constitutional rights.

Specifically, the Torah states that every human being, male and female, is “created in the image of God” (Gen. 1:27). The Talmud derives three fundamental dignities of every human being in the divine image: Infinite value (“Saving one life is equivalent to saving a whole world”), equality, and uniqueness (Sanhedrin 37a). Honoring these dignities involves granting all the rights and ethical treatment that constitute the sum total of democratic rights. Equality yields equal treatment before the law and prohibition of discrimination, tyranny and slavery. It implies the right to be treated respectfully and to have equal access to education and information. Infinite value brings with it the right to economic justice and economic security, access to adequate medical treatment and the obligation to provide welfare and tzedakah for the poor. Uniqueness implies the right to education and freedom of speech. In the end, the Messianic vision—a world of no poverty, hunger, war or oppression—is the (projected) universal actualization in the real world of the rights conferred by these intrinsic dignities.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg
New York, NY

Sephardi

Judaism has always placed greater emphasis on the commitment and responsibility requested from human beings than on the rights or entitlements granted to human beings. Even when it comes to protecting the ostensible “rights” of citizens of the world, the Torah speaks the language of obligation and commandment rather than divine “endowment.” It seems to me, then, that the notion of “rights” is not especially compatible with Jewish theology. The notion of “rights” elevates the individual’s significance and influence to heights of which he or she, as mere creatures of a benevolent creator, may not realistically be worthy. Instead of focusing on the empowerment of persons, our concern should be with the health, success, progress and welfare of creation in general. Of course, crafting a harmonious and peaceful—not to mention enlightened—society entails respecting the just claims to life, liberty and property made by all human beings. But such respect should not be surrendered by society to each person because we feel compelled to submit to any and all demands made in the name of individual “rights”; rather, it should be freely and generously given—out of a sense of moral duty to promote the happiness, growth and spiritual advancement of all of God’s creations.

Rabbi Joshua Maroof
Magen David Sephardic Congregation
Rockville, MD

Chabad

Judaism believes that every human being is endowed with the right to be and feel of infinite value. No human being is better or less than another, and there is no source for the absolute equality of all humankind outside of the biblical verse that states, at the very beginning of Genesis, that God Almighty created every human being in His image. Without that verse, what seems evident to us is the blatant inequality of man. Some are taller than others; some are prettier than others; some are brighter than others. Some are rich, some are poor. Yet the Bible says that none of that matters because we are all equal in the eyes of God.

Another right involves human uniqueness. There is no one in the world quite like me, and there never will be. This does not make me better than anyone else; it simply asserts that I am essential. My being is not a contingent existence but a necessary one. The same is true of every other person.

The core of Judaism is its insistence on freedom of choice. Each and every one of us is born without our lives previously scripted. There is no fate, no astrological chart. What we will become in our life is dependent entirely on what we will do and how we will behave.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
Englewood, NJ