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Victimization and the Jews
| Article
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10124 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1993 |
4,513 Words |
| Author
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David Novak
David Novak is the Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern
Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia. During 1992-93,
he is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars in Washington, D.C. |
In our day there is increasing debate about the issue of victimization. In order to appreciate the significance of this current debate, one must recognize that the new discussion of victimization is essentially different from the old discussion of criminals and their victims. Without this recognition of the difference between crime and victimization, one cannot even begin to understand the current debate about victimization, much less intelligently participate in it.
Crime is the act whereby one party cause undeserved suffering to another party. The fact of undeserved suffering defines the subject of the act as a criminal and the object of the act as a victim. The natural desire of a victim for revenge is transferred to society, which then becomes the agent for retribution. The act of society mediated retribution is easier when the suffering of the victim involves something tangible like loss of damage to personal property; it is harder when it involves the loss of time, physical capacity, or life itself. In all cases, however, the victim's retribution is considered to be finite, for example, after payment is made, the victim is restored (as much as possible) to his or her status quo ante. In anything less than capital punishment or life imprisonment, the criminal, too, is restored to his or her status quo ante once retribution has been satisfactorily paid. In other words, the essential factor of a finite act, and its finite reaction, enables the victim and even the criminal to eventually transcend the crime in which they were both involved. No one remains a victim or a criminal indefinitely.
The new concept of victimization has, however, essentially changed all of that. In a situation of victimization, one group is defined as the object of the power of another group. Here we have a relationship between the powerful victimizers and the powerless victimized. Because this relationship of victimization is considered unjust, the task of social policy is to empower the victimized so that they can no longer be victimized. This empowerment, as it is so often called today, is taken to be rightful transfer of power from the victimizers to their victims in the ultimate interest of creating a new state of political equality between them.
At this point, we can begin to see the fundamental difference between the new concept of empowerment and the old concept of retribution. In the old concept of retribution, there is a standard and a limitation of what is being transferred. This standard is the status quo ante, namely, what existed before the crime took place. That is why retribution is finite; there is something that defines in
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