privacy-“the more general right of the individual to be let alone” that encompasses those various but differing common law rules. Similarly, Rakover argues that all of the specific halakhic provisions, whether“ritual” or“monetary,” share a common theme: the concern for protecting one’s person from an act of intrusion. The halakhah seeks to prevent“the violation of individual privacy(hap’giyvah b fratiyut ha’'adam), for every human being is sensitive to trespass against his private life, and none would want the details of his personal affairs to become public knowledge.” Privacy has now become a self-standing legal concern, a value worthy of protection in and of itself, quite apart from consideration of damage to any other interest.
The obvious objection to this conclusion, of course, would parallel that of Prosser and the other“reductionists” to the WarrenBrandeis thesis: Rakover’s“individual privacy” value is merely a construct of his own devising, a label that denotes the commonalities he has identified among several existing provisions of the halakhah but that adds nothing of substance to the previously-existing law. Rakover seems sensitive to this possible criticism, and he takes pains to argue the opposite: Jewish law in fact recognizes“privacy” as a“protected value,” and the existing provisions serve as evidence of that value’s substantive existence. He bases this claim upon a set of fundamental principles of Jewish law that, he contends, lie behind the existing provisions, providing them with a legal-ethical rationale and supplying them with theoretical coherence.
The right to privacy, which modern law has recently been recognized as worthy of protection, is founded upon a worldview not generally accepted in the past, that holds that one’s personality and way of life, in addition to his body and his property, are worthy of protection.