Waskow II: What the Late Radical Rabbi Thought a New U.S. Constitution Should Look Like

Thomas Paine "In America the Law is King" Lawn Signs

 

I suppose everyone (or at least everyone residing in a "blue state") and I has seen these signs. Being fond of Paine myself, but not liking this quote, I had to check if that line really could be found somewhere. And I want to quickly disclose that I didn't rush off to my copies of his books and papers and start hunting around: I used google.  

But before getting into what Paine said, what do I have against that quote anyhow? What's wrong with the idea of the law being king? Well...think about it: what if this law was put in place by one of the awful monarchs whose authority American revolutionaries wanted to cast off? Or, considering a more contemporary objection, what if  the currently effective laws were put in place by a  merely sham democracy? I mean, Russia and North Korea have lots of laws. Many of Orban's are still around in Hungary. Should those codes be "crowned" and celebrated?

No doubt it will be objected that it sounds like I think I should be able to obey only those laws I happen to agree with. What a mess that type of arrangement would be! Am I saying that everyone should be able to pick and choose what laws they think should be authoritative, or do I really think that only Walter Horn should be able to pick the legitimate ones? 

Actually, I'm not saying either of those things. It's my view that all and only those laws that have been democratically enacted (via an actually decent process) are the ones that should be exalted (though we will likely want to obey lots of others for our own safety). And this is because legal codes should not be thought of as kings any more than a monarch or president. Only the people as a whole should get the crown. If they are the ones appropriately enacting laws, such laws should be revered. Otherwise, meh.

It's interesting -- and will be unsurprising to those with much familiarity with his writings -- that Paine took much the same position that I am advocating. Here's the essence of what google provided to me on that matter: 

In Paine's view, the law could only be "king" if it was directly crafted by the people, rather than handed down by a monarch. 

In the very same paragraph of Common Sense (1776) where he says "the law is king," Paine describes a hypothetical ceremony where a crown is placed on the charter of laws. He then immediately states that the crown should be destroyed and "scattered among the people whose right it is." To Paine, any royal authority was just stolen people-power. 

In his later masterpiece, Rights of Man (1791), Paine directly argued that no past generation has the right to bind future generations to its laws. He believed: 

• Government is a contract among the living.
• The people retain the perpetual right to change, alter, or completely abolish their laws and constitution whenever they see fit.
• A law is only valid if it originates from the "consent of the governed." 

Paine explicitly rejected the idea that any government or legal system has authority over the population. In Rights of Man, he wrote:

"The nation is always sovereign, and has an inherent, unalienable, right to abolish any form of government it finds inconvenient, and to establish such as accords with its interest, disposition, and happiness."

So, When modern signs quote Paine's "the law is king," they are usually highlighting the principle of the rule of law—meaning nobody, not even a president, is above the law. But for Paine, "the law" was not a tool of control; it was a protective shield created by the people, for the people, which they could redesign at any time.

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I find this discussion generally congenial, both in substance and as representative of Paine's views, although the "consent of the governed" part is not something I would endorse without alteration. I won't go into that matter here, because I have discussed it in a bunch of other blog posts (most recently with respect to the views of Willmoore Kendall), but for those who would like more on Paine, see this.

Waskow I: What could cause an irreligious and bellicose left-wing agitator to become a rabbi?

 

The name Arthur Waskow meant nothing to me until my friend Joan Soble, in one of her lyrical Substack pieces, mentioned that someone with that name had recently written a pamphlet called The New Constitution, an item that is freely available online. I took a look at this work, which has a dedication signed 'By Shir Hashirim Rabbi Pesach-Lev / Dr. Paul Zeitz' — one person with two names, or two people with one slash? — containing remarks like "Love is not the absence of awe" and "The name of God is not a word at all but a breath — Yahh — the breath we share with every tree, every neighbor, every stranger." There are also a lot of Hebrew words in this introductory material, and it may be obvious to those familiar with my writings that I am not the ideal reader here.  But, whoever's fault it may be, this (possibly co-authored?) dedication includes a lot of the kind of writing that I can live without, so I skipped through it and jumped ahead to get some sort of picture of what the late Reb Waskow's idea of a better U.S. Constitution might have been. When I saw that his proposals seemed pretty sensible, I began to wonder whether Waskow had a background in politics or government, which led me to check his Wikipedia page. I discovered there that Waskow was not only a well-known Rabbi who was closely involved with something called "The Jewish Renewal Movement," but had also been a lifelong progressive protester who, after obtaining a Ph.D. in American history, worked as an aide to Congressman Kastenmeier of Wisconsin for a couple of years. Then, Wikipedia goes on to say Waskow helped found the Institute for Policy Studies where he was a resident fellow until 1977. 

Waskow was a frequent anti-Vietnam War protester and was also involved in agitation against global warming and racial discrimination as well as for a two-state Palestinian solution, women's and LGBTQ rights, and other progressive positions. In a word, if I had been following the news instead of engaging in odd, time-consuming activities as a young adult, things like reading the entire output of two different George Moores (G.E., the early analytic philosopher, in addition to the Irish novelist/essayist/iconoclast), I'd have surely known who Waskow was. In fact, I'll bet my older brother Dick, who was an active Vietnam War protester himself (while I was mostly just scared of being drafted), would have known Waskow's name--in spite of being as indifferent to Judaism as both of the other Horn boys. It may even be the case that Dick actually chanted with Waskow at a now-famous (Daniel Berrigan-attended) event at Cornell once.

Nevertheless, I do share some things in common with Waskow (eventually "Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow"). While I never had the slightest interest in my "Jewish heritage," I did once write a book on the psychology of mysticism and religious experience. And, while my government employment was on the state rather than the more exalted Federal level, Waskow and I both spent several years in legislative chambers and committee rooms. Most importantly, it's clear that we share a devout interest in getting a new and quite different U.S. Constitution. 

When I found out that shortly before his death last year at 92 (in Philadelphia, where my aforementioned 82-year-old brother Dick now resides in a nursing home, stricken with Parkinson's), Waskow had published some autobiographical writings, I thought I might read those along with his Constitution pamphlet and write something on the life as well as the thought. Hence, this blog.

Perhaps some of my readers will remember the beautiful death made by Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited even after a life of complete apostasy. Cordelia suggests (following Chesterton) that God has us on a long fishing line and has twitched her father back into his final sign of the cross on his deathbed. Like Waugh's religious hero, Waskow spent most of his life caring little about his religious background — he says he was only "nominally Jewish" as a kid — until his "Freedom Seder," written in the aftermath of Martin Luther King's assassination.#  In any case, by the time Waskow has gotten to writing his autobiography, he is regularly mentioning "The Spirit" [referred to by "they/them"] as being present and rising or falling during various events in his life. But I'm afraid that the non-believers among us are likely to translate those references into something like "This occurrence made me happy; this other one saddened me." It can't just be a coincidence that when Waskow is uncertain or confused, The Spirit is as well.

The book jumps around in time, and there are several gaps concerning matters readers are sure to be interested in -- like the author's early love (and break-up) life. Waskow mentions his first wife only to say that they have split.  His relationship with his second wife, Rabbi Phyllis, is understandably given much more space, but I was a bit disconcerted by how much of his description of their quite deep and multifaceted relationship is related to her baldness. I was also put off by how much of the first telling of his second marriage ceremony (there's more about this event near the end of the book) is devoted to a story about how it provided the backdrop for Waskow to sufficiently make up with his nearly estranged brother: the importance of that reconciliation being that it made it possible for the two men to collaborate on a book. 

Most of the early pages here are spent on Waskow's secular political advocacy, and some of it, like his description of his role as a delegate for D.C. at the sad and violent 1968 Democratic convention, is absolutely riveting. We learn here that his delegation put forward the first-ever black candidate for President at a large party convention in the U.S., and the discussions of Eugene McCarthy and Paul O'Dwyer are likely to make readers hate them and cheer their losses in the races that followed. Nevertheless, one is likely to want more. For example, Waskow tells us that he testified for the Chicago Eight. But while he mentions his nervousness (and The Spirit's similar take), he tells us nothing of what he had to say at that famous trial. 

More touching than the rapprochement with his brother is Waskow's discussion of his falling out with fellow agitator, Marc Raskin (Rep. Jamie Raskin's father). In this case, the dispute -- over a pay reduction for staff at their co-founded Institute for Policy Studies -- came after collaboration on their 1962 book, the anti-nuke Limits of Defense. Raskin was the Director of the Institute at the time, and Waskow, along with the rest of the staff, was surprised by a dramatic salary cut forced by asset reductions. Waskow (who at one time used lawsuit damages in a successful First Amendment case to offer $3000 to each of his two children if they'd care to spend a year protesting various evils), found he didn't care for this unexpected alteration in the terms of his employment and promptly quit the Institute. The two men had been close allies for years after meeting on Capitol Hill right after college, but were entirely estranged for a couple of decades following Waskow's departure from IPS. The narrative here shows Waskow to be at least dimly aware that the beef might have been his fault. Their final meeting during Raskin's cognitive decline makes for a poignant passage in the autobiography.

Also quite moving are the passages regarding the fear and pain connected with the physical deterioration often produced by living into one's 90s. Waskow sadly notes how many dear younger friends and colleagues have already passed. From around the time of his Freedom Seder, he seems to have sought to make every kind of political advocacy he undertook to be some sort of midrash -- a kind of modern, religious palimpsest. It's as if no defiance, effective or otherwise, would satisfy him if he couldn't find something in the experience to connect with his beloved Torah or Talmud. Naturally, a hunt in ancient religious texts for concerns about oil spills in the Pacific is likely to seem strange to those with different worldviews. But Waskow's dedication and persistence is sure to be impressive to every sort of activist. He repeatedly "fought the power that be," even  with respect to advocating a two-state solution in Palestine, often at significant personal or professional risk. 

So, I think the main thing one is likely to take from this little book is how fearless and tireless Waskow was. He spends only a bit of time trying to explain why his version of the Torah, and Judaism generally, is so much farther left than that of so many of his ancestors, but his "turn a new page" approach to age-old views is inspiring. For example, his recounting of a classroom discussion of the rape of the Biblical Dina (I had always seen "Dinah") is moving and instructive. I suppose, however, that whatever the particular reasons may have been, either for the liberality of his views or for his consistent need to associate them with religious faith, it is quite clear that Rabbi Waskow spent much of his life fighting ferociously for those progressive beliefs. He must have gone to at least a thousand protests, spoken at ten times as many meetings, and even went to prison a couple of dozen times. The regrets he mentions in the book generally have to do with his not blocking even more streets or arguing with even more police than he actually did. I mean, he's still sorry he wasn't more belligerent to a teacher who didn't show sufficient awe for Waskow's test-taking strategies when he was seven. It's hard not to admire -- or at least wonder at -- the persistent feistiness of such a chutzpahdik mensch.

In Waskow II, I will take a look at the firebrand's proposals for a new and better U.S. Constitution. 

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# However, I have seen an on-line interview with Waskow in which he mentions that he grew up in a nearly all-Jewish neighborhood in Baltimore and went to a Jewish camp each summer. Couldn't it be that Marchmain's magnificent chapel  (which produced the famous "Golly" from Charles Ryder) as well as his always having a priest at his beck and call made it hard for him to fully abandon Catholicism, and that Waskow's childhood associations might have made it equally difficult for his Judaism to stay merely 'nominal'? I note further that if God (Waskow's 'Spirit') really does have an interest in tugging those born Jewish back to Judaism, and those born Catholic back to Catholicism, that's not merely a conservative theology — it's a reactionary one, treating religious identity as a matter of blood and birth rather than choice. That's the kind of thinking I'd expect to be more at home with white supremacists and Christian nationalists than with egalitarian progressives like Waskow.