How Judaism invented individual rights

Judaism introduced the concept of individual rights, a revolutionary idea that challenged the ancient world's political logic where the collective, embodied by rulers, was supreme. The Genesis statement, "And God created man in His own image," established that every human possesses inherent dignity. This principle was further developed in Ezekiel 18, which rejected inherited guilt, stating, "The soul that sins, it shall die," and in the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 4:5), which declared that "whoever destroys a single life is considered to have destroyed an entire world."

• Unlike the class-stratified Code of Hammurabi or the polis-centric Athens, Jewish law prioritized the individual, influencing Western concepts of natural rights, republican government, and free-market capitalism.
• Seventeenth-century political theorists, including John Locke, drew directly from rabbinic and biblical sources for their arguments on natural equality.
• The article argues that contemporary movements on both the far-left (e.g., intersectional theory, identity politics) and far-right (e.g., postliberalism, certain strains of political Islamism) are attempting to revert to collectivist ideologies, subordinating the individual to the group.
• Antisemitism is presented as an inherent symptom of these counter-revolutionary projects, as Judaism's emphasis on individual dignity directly opposes collectivist frameworks.

Judaism, while communal, maintains a balance between collective obligation and inviolable individual respect, a gift the world continues to struggle to accept.