October 4, 2004
The Social Affairs Unit is a UK think tank "famous for driving its coach and horses through the liberal consensus scattering intellectual picket lines as it goes [and] for raising questions which strike most people most of the time as too dangerous or too difficult to think about.” (The [London] Times)
The SAU has released Wealth And Poverty, A Jewish Analysis, a 1985 essay by Jonathan Sacks, now Chief Rabbi of the [British] Commonwealth.
What I have tried to show is the way in which a religion can be the effective context of debate, by cultivating open argument and valuing it as such, by seeing the argument itself as the religious experience, rather than the passion or the persuasion. I have described a particular model of the interaction between secular expertise and religious judgement, and the way in which that judgement might have authority. We have seen the range of ways in which a religion might attempt to alleviate poverty; not least of which was the enriching of its cultural possibilities. And I hope we have seen some of the dangers of extrapolating from Biblical sources to changed economic circumstance.... / It is an impartial tradition - not a side-taking tradition. "…the one thing Judaism rules out ab initio, by specific Biblical command, is a bias to the poor." Digby Anderson, 1985 [some typos resolved]
Renouncing automatic bias, toward the rich or toward the poor. Acknowledging those positions neither as fixed, nor signifying more or less humanity.
...The emphasis of so many Christian pronouncements has been exhortatory, perhaps they would prefer "prophetic", a call to care and conscience for those in need. The virtues of that approach are obvious but so are the vices - it can and has led to a simplistic and even a one-sided representation of complex issues....the aim of this report and others in the series Taking Thought for the Poor, is more constructive, to show what positive thinking would be like.
Its fresh air, kindness, and clarity commend the essay to the policy afficionado as well as to students of the beauty, pleasure, and universal necessity of intelligent generosity.
And the possibility of removing from discussions of economic welfare even some of the seemingly automatic accusation, frustration, partisanship, and class warfare:
Priceless.
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