Law and Judaism

In his book called Islamic Exceptionalism, Shadi Hamid points that the nation of Israel has shown very little interested in implementing God’s law in the political sphere.

After the second Jewish temple was destroyed in 70 AD at the hands of the Romans, Jews would, for more than eighteen hundred years, find themselves living as minorities under the rule of largely Christians and Muslim powers. This meant that Jewish law could not be implemented by the state. Judaism had to make its peace, to the extent that it could, with non-Jewish rule. Delineating between the political religious realms became necessary, sometimes even a matter of life and death. Legal thinkers had to adapt their understanding of the laws accordingly. In exile, rabbinic Judaism, particular in the Talmud and subsequent commentaries, became preoccupied with personal and communal responsibilities rather than political rule.

With the founding of the state of Israel, Jewish law and its relationship to the state became relevant once again. By the time, the Jewish states earliest citizens were just as much of product of European concepts of religion and state as they were their own. The new state, being democratic was a reflection of the preference of its citizens, and these had now been indelibly marked by secularism. Religion would play an important role in public life, just as it did in the Untied States, but few questioned the mostly secular, foundations of the Israeli state. On this there was a wide-ranging consensus, even if it has eroded somewhat with time. Meanwhile, Ultra Orthodox movements, as illiberal as they may be, have little interest in re-creating or returning to an invented past. They seek to guard, rather than dismantle, the long, rich tradition of rabbinic Judaism, a tradition that had, for nearly two years, little to say about law and governance (p.44).

Instead, Israel has copied America’s democratic militarism.