Utopia and authority: Rabbinic authority in the movement for progressive Judaism in Israel

Through a study of the efforts of the rabbis of the Movement for Progressive Judaism in Israel to build and lead value-based and participatory communities, this dissertation attempts to expand our theoretical understanding of authority. It attempts to develop Weber's elusive fourth type of authority that would be compatible with a value-rational orientation to social action.;From Kant to Buber and beyond, normative social theory has focused on value-rationality (in Kant's terminology, practical rationality and in Buber's, I-Thou) as a needed alternative to the dominant instrumentally rational social orders in which we live. Through practicing value rationality in "community," it is hoped that humans will become increasingly emancipated. Yet, the path toward community and emancipation is politically and epistemologically paradoxical. If all positive descriptions and social constructions of emancipation are viewed suspiciously as ideological forms of subjugation, then what compels belief and belonging? How is this alternative type of authority possible, and what is its nature?;Theoretical chapters on Weber and Ricoeur set the stage for the empirically based development of two ideal type models of authority---ideological and utopian. Through the close analysis of extensive interviews conducted with the Movement's eight congregational rabbis, informed by participant-observation, dissemination of questionnaires, and interviews with over thirty professional and lay members of the Movement (during fieldwork in 1991--92), a "grounded theory" of authority is developed.;In the ideological model of authority, rabbis (and other leaders) articulate a claim to authority in which, through a process of reification and estrangement, the congregants come to view their own abilities as the extra-ordinary abilities of the rabbi. In contrast, in the utopian model of authority rabbis (and other leaders) secure their authority paradoxically through a total critique of authority that reveals their exemplary abilities as a path toward emancipation for the congregants. The utopian model proffers the possibility of belief and belonging being compelling without being subjugatory.