Jewish Left - Jewish Religious Values and Social Justice

Jewish Religious Values and Social Justice

Main article: Judaism and politics See also: Anarchism and Orthodox Judaism

A range of left-wing values vis-à-vis social justice can be traced to Jewish religious texts, including the Tanakh and later texts, which include a strong endorsement of hospitality to "the stranger" and the principle of redistribution of wealth in the Biblical idea of Jubilee — as well as a tradition of challenging authority, as exemplified by the Biblical Prophets.

In the twentieth century, Jewish theologians — notably Abraham Joshua Heschel, Arnold Jacob Wolf, Arthur Waskow and Mordecai Kaplan, more recently Michael Lerner and Daniel Boyarin — have emphasised these social justice aspects of the religion.

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