30 October 2010

The fount of creativity

When a group within a society comes to be understood as exceptional and as favored by special treatment it is easy for that group to come to be resented by the society at large and for the society to develop an image of the group as being unproductive leeches on the body politic. 
Being cut off from civil society almost by necessity cuts a people off from productive opportunities. To be cut off is to be excluded from the possibilities of creativity. For the Jewish people, exile meant karet from the host culture. An entire people suffered the burdens of excommunication. They were put in herem by their host populations all over the world. 
That ChZL failed to understand karet as exclusion from productive and creative enterprise testifies to ChZL's failure to comprehend the character of the biblical regime as being about the civil society, which is the fountain of creativity. To fail to see the bibilical regime as being about civil society is to believe the biblical regime is about the politics of authority rather than about the politics of legitimacy. 

No comments:

Post a Comment