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(JTA) — “Though I used to be born in Germany, my childhood have been spent within the early, idealistic days of the cooperative Jewish settlements, in pre-Israel, Palestine,” wrote Amitai Etzioni in his 2003 memoir, “My Brother’s Keeper.”
In writing about his early years in a cooperative settlement referred to as Kfar Shmaryahu, the Israeli-American sociologist and polymath offered the origin story for the massive concept that made him well-known: communitarianism.
When Etzioni died Could 31 at age 94, the obituaries famous how he got here to Israel as a younger refugee from Nazi Germany and fought in Israel’s warfare for independence. However few famous his formative years in Israel formed his life’s work. Nor did they be aware how far Israel had come — for higher and for worse — within the years since he lived on a kibbutz, battled as a Palmach commando and studied on the Hebrew College.
Communitarianism is a social philosophy that emphasizes the significance of society, versus the person, in articulating the nice.”[W]hile particular person rights certainly matter, these rights should be balanced with commitments to the widespread good — as an example, by defending the setting and public well being,” Etzioni defined.
He additionally held that the varied liberation actions of the Nineteen Sixties went too far in undermining authority figures and what he referred to as “the accepted requirements of upright conduct.”
As a result of it proposed a “third means” between liberalism and conservatism, communitarianism was additionally embraced — and ridiculed — on each side of the aisle. Invoice Clinton and Tony Blair have been followers. Some labeled George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” communitarian.
Etzioni left Israel in his mid-twenties for a educating job at Columbia College. He opposed the Vietnam Warfare and the nuclear arms race, activism that propelled him past the academy and into the position as a “public mental.” He taught ethics for 2 years on the Harvard Enterprise College earlier than launching right into a hybrid self-discipline he referred to as “socio-economics.” Employed by the Carter administration in 1979 as a senior adviser, he joined the college at George Washington College, the place he taught worldwide affairs for greater than 30 years.
The theories behind communitarianism weren’t new, however Etzioni’s articulation got here to huge public consideration on the eve of the Clinton presidency, when, in keeping with one profile, it was “speculated to be the Large Thought of the ‘90s, the antidote to ‘Me Technology’ greed and the remedy for America’s cynicism, alienation and despair.”
“We want an awakening of values, of caring and dedication,” Etzioni advised an interviewer in 1992. “The Communitarians are saying that is attainable; in truth, it’s inevitable.”
“It was as if I have been rising up in a highschool of communitarian principle and observe,” wrote Etzioni about his youth spent on an agricultural cooperative in Israel. (Courtesy of Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi)
Though communitarianism by no means did stay as much as the hype, Etzioni turned a dependable commentator and theorist in a bunch of fields and causes, together with simply warfare, bioethics, nationwide safety and privateness.
Though he often wrote about Israel, his roots there have been not often entrance and heart in his work or public picture. In his memoir he notes that a whole lot of readers thought he was Italian. (“Amitai” comes from the Hebrew phrase for fact; he took “Etzioni” from a people story a few boy who learns to guard nature from a tree – “etz” in Hebrew.)
In his memoir, nevertheless, he delves deeply into his youth in Israel. “In these days, the nation was fairly completely different from what it has since change into,” he writes. “[I]t was strongly imbued with the spirit of group (from which the time period communitarian arises); most individuals have been devoted to serving the widespread good and to erecting a house for Jews escaping Nazi-dominated Europe. It was in that pre-Israel that I first knew the excessive that one positive factors when serving a trigger better than oneself.”
His mother and father have been among the many founders of the small farming group; a younger Etzioni would attend co-op conferences along with his father, the place members would debate how cooperative they wanted to be – a query, he writes, that was by no means settled.
“It was as if I have been rising up in a highschool of communitarian principle and observe,” wrote Etzioni.
He additionally found the boundaries of that observe after a yr as a teen on Kibbutz Tel Joseph. He discovered the kibbutz “excessively communal,” with little tolerance for individuality or privateness. Communitarianism itself would typically be attacked on the identical grounds: Etzioni would later have a fierce antagonist within the American Civil Liberties Union, which felt a few of his requires limiting privateness and suspending particular person rights within the identify of the widespread good went too far.
Etzioni wrote movingly about watching pals die within the preventing for Israel’s independence. Though he by no means wavered in feeling the warfare was justified, he lamented that the Jews and Arabs might need averted the bloodshed had they agreed to the two-state partition that, in 2003, he nonetheless felt was inevitable. Nor did he remorse Israel’s founding: “The Jewish folks require a homeland to guard them not merely from bodily annihilation, but in addition from cultural devastation,” he wrote in 1999.
However maybe essentially the most fascinating affect on Etzioni’s considering was the yr he spent in a Jerusalem institute arrange by Martin Buber, the Vienna-born social thinker. The formidable school included Gershom Scholem on Kabbalah, Yeshayahu Leibowitz on biology and Nechama Leibowitz on Bible.
Etzioni imbibed Buber’s concepts about “I and Thou” relationships – the “never-ending wrestle between the forces that pushed us to narrate to different human beings as objects, as Its, fairly than as fellow people, as Thous.”
Etzioni would name this “ethical dialogue,” as in his definition of democracy: “[O]ur conception of proper and mistaken are encountered by means of ethical dialogues which are open and inclusive. It’s a persuasive morality, not a coercive one.”
Etzioni’s memoir and his obituaries recall a extra hopeful political local weather, when proper and left may briefly think about widespread floor across the widespread good. Additionally they recall a distinct Israel, earlier than it largely embraced the free-market economics of the West and let go of a lot of its communitarian values.
In 2013 Etzioni wrote about his personal seeming irrelevance – he referred to as it his “gradual lack of a megaphone” — after his temporary flurry of affect. He had no regrets, nor lack of confidence: “Till I’m proven that my predictions or prescriptions are ill-founded, or not of service, I’ll attempt to get out what should be stated. I’ll hold pulling on the oars, nevertheless small my boat, nevertheless massive or uneven the ocean.”
is editor at giant of the New York Jewish Week and managing editor for Concepts for the Jewish Telegraphic Company.
The views and opinions expressed on this article are these of the writer and don’t essentially mirror the views of JTA or its guardian firm, 70 Faces Media.
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