Importantly, this loyalty requires a sense of identity among people. But this identity need not be all-consuming. Sacks describes it as “relational” in that a person can have many relations of identity and feel part of several covenants. This means that covenant does not destroy diversity and difference within a society, but instead preserves it.
While Sacks establishes that covenants allow other covenants to exist, he also makes clear that some covenants need to sit above others. Indeed, the highest covenant is a universal one. In his book The Dignity of Difference, he wrote that, “God has spoken to mankind in many languages: through Judaism to Jews, Christianity to Christians, Islam to Muslims.” This line was interpreted as implying that other religions are not only tolerable but even contain divine truth.
(Image: Getty Images)
This pluralist interpretation appears wrong given that he also made clear that “God is the God of all humanity” and emphasised in the second edition that any relationship with God among non-Jews must be “within the framework of the Noahide laws,” making clear that the seven laws Judaism believes to be universal remain the basis for toleration. This is of course very close to the mainstream Orthodox position in establishing a degree of universality for Judaism rather than open pluralism.
Indeed, Sacks extends the universality of both Jewish and moral law beyond the scope of the Noahide law by seeking to promote aspects of the Mosaic law as applicable to non-Jews. Drawing on the long tradition of seeing reason and revelation as pointing to the same truths, Sacks can claim that aspects of the Jewish tradition point to things that would be universally good.
The most significant such universal good is covenant itself, which he positions as an idea that could be used to evaluate societies more helpfully than the concept of autonomy – for Sacks, covenant is an alternative to individual autonomy.
This is important because one common form of liberalism imputes to individuals a capacity for rational and independent choice, and for such liberals it is necessary to treat individuals as having that capacity and therefore to permit them autonomy. Sacks attacks these assumptions, claiming that we both are not independent and ought not to be considered as such.
Instead, he argues that people need to recognise their loyalty and obligations to others. We need to be responsible for those around us and work to common goods. For Sacks, this entails respecting the covenantal obligations others have that we don’t, while also expecting them to fulfil the covenantal obligations that we share.
Paradoxically this creates room for a form of liberalism. In a society with greater moral unity, it would also be possible for law to be less of an intrusion. If individual conduct is regulated by shared morals, it no longer becomes necessary to regulate conduct by law.
This allows the state to be more liberal and to avoid enforcing covenants that are not common. Moreover, our common feeling towards each other would ameliorate the loneliness of our increasingly atomic society and give reason to develop a more equitable economy.
Sacks’s theory explicitly draws on existing critiques of liberalism and liberal societies offered by a diverse range of authors such as Roger Scruton, Michael Walzer, Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel and Charles Taylor. Their focus is broadly on the particularity of specific societies and social practices.
However, the concept of covenant offers something they don’t: a concrete universal. For Sacks, some version of the Noahide covenant exists among all peoples. As such, it provides obligations and moral community with all humans and compels us to go beyond our social groups.
While this theory offers reasons to criticise our existing society and a way of conceiving of an alternative, it is also itself problematic. The biggest flaw is the question of the covenant’s origin.
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Sacks tries to claim that covenants are a result of mutual agreement and rejects the idea of society based entirely on its own traditions. These claims are necessary to his claim that covenant can be compatible with freedom, but he also states that we “have a duty” to sustain what already exists around us.
This might suggest that our covenantal obligations are inherently conservative and rooted in traditions, not consent. Indeed, Sacks’s record in office might reveal such a philosophical position. In theory, an unobtrusive state, which allows a society to construct its covenants, ought to be able to permit same-sex marriages or indeed allow any other moral choice.
Even so, in 2012 Sacks’s office wrote to the UK equal marriage consultation that such a change in the law would contradict Orthodox Judaism, which suggests that Sacks saw Jewish tradition as having an important status that overrode any societal values.
This suggests that Sacks’s conception of moral covenants remains problematic. It may be useful in pointing out the flaws of liberalism, but doesn’t give a clear origin point for alternative moral values. Even while Sacks seems to argue that morality is consensual and comes out of society, his actions while in office suggest an enduring belief that covenant comes from tradition rather than consent.
Ultimately it seems we can only conclude that the contradiction at the heart of Sacks’s political thought remains unresolved.
This is an abridged version of the winning entry for the 2024 Robert Silver Prize, awarded by Cambridge University’s history department for an outstanding contribution to British Jewish political history, in memory of the journalist Robert Silver (1955-2019). Jacob Hougie graduated from Cambridge in human, political and social sciences last summer and is now doing an MPhil in political theory at Oxford University
