In recent decades, the West has become accustomed to thinking of itself as a secular space. Religion is seen as a private matter, sometimes even as an embarrassing relic of a pre-modern past. Values like human rights, equality, and liberty are presented as universal principles independent of any religious belief. But this perception misses a fundamental point: these values did not emerge from nothing. They grew within a specific cultural context, and that context is Jewish to a much greater extent than the West is willing to admit.
The idea that every human being has inherent value, independent of status, power, or utility, is not self-evident. In the ancient world, human worth was derived from status, citizenship, or power. The Bible offered a different concept: man is created in the image of God. Even those who do not believe in God live in a moral world born from these ideas. The concept of human dignity is not culturally neutral; it is the product of a particular tradition.
The Western understanding of law also owes a deep debt to Judaism. Law is not merely a tool of power, but a framework that limits it. The king is not above the law, but subject to it. This was a revolutionary idea in its time, and it forms the basis of modern concepts of the rule of law and separation of powers. Without the assumption of a moral truth above power, law loses its bite and becomes mere management of interests.
The modern West sometimes seeks to preserve these values while disconnecting them from their source. But values do not survive long as abstract consensus. When detached from the cultural and narrative framework that created them, they become vulnerable. Concepts like justice, liberty, and compassion lose their meaning and become rhetorical tools that can be filled with any content.
Judaism is not required here as a missionary religion, but as a cultural foundation. It offers a moral language that acknowledges boundaries, responsibility, and complexity. It does not promise redemption through politics, nor does it equate morality with emotion. It demands discipline, discernment, and the ability to say no. Precisely in a secular world, this is an essential balance.
When the West shakes off its Jewish roots, it does not become neutral, it becomes empty. That emptiness is sometimes filled by new ideologies offering meaning, identity, and absolute morality, but without the restraints and caution that Jewish tradition developed over generations. The result is rigid moral discourse lacking tolerance for disagreement, and sometimes even genuine compassion.
The intention is not that every person in the West should become Jewish or believe in God. The intention is to recognize that the secular world does not stand on its own. It rests on a tradition that teaches how to hold values over time, even when they are difficult, even when they are unpopular. Without this context, morality becomes a slogan, and liberty a means of power.
In this sense, Judaism is not a relic of the past but the infrastructure of the present. Even those who do not believe live within a moral story that began long before them. The question is not whether to believe, but whether to remember where the values came from, and what is required to preserve them in a rapidly changing world.
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