In a very interesting article in the most recent issue of Tehumin, R. Yitshak Geiger (a teacher in Israeli high schools) discusses the question of Judaism’s attitude towards current Israeli democracy. His survey of the issue has important insights that seemed worth reviewing in this forum. First, he discusses the question of monarchy. The Torah apparently obligates Jews to establish a monarchy in Israel, and (pursuant to a subsequent promise from Hashem to Dovid haMelekh) that king must be from the Davidic line. In those terms, then, democracy would seem to be an inappropriate form of government for a Jewish state.

The word apparently is, however, crucial to that discussion. While Rambam rules that the Torah intended to obligate the Jews to establish a monarch, other medieval writers (most notably Abravanel) interpreted the Torah’s words as allowing the establishment of the monarch, but allowed other forms of government as well. It has often been noted that Abravanel’s views of monarchy may easily have been affected by his repeated experiences of their fickleness, since he rose to prominence and lost his position in several different monarchies.

Even assuming that halakhah follows Rambam on this issue-- a reasonable assumption-- there are still several reasons that we need not concern ourselves with that ruling here, some practical and some theoretical. R. Herzog (who was the Chief Rabbi around the time of the establishment of the State) pointed out that the first appointment of a king (meaning, in his view, any time that the king is not simply taking over from his father) requires a rabbinic court and a prophet, neither of which currently obtain. Since we cannot, for technical halakhic reasons, have a king, we can, hopefully temporarily, ignore the Torah’s requirement (ones rahmana patreh—the Torah never expects us to perform mitsvot that are completely out of our control).

Aside from the technical, several rabbinic authorities, of both the 19^th and 20^th centuries, took positions that were rather more positive on democracy than previously. Most famously, Netsiv (R. Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin) interpreted the commandment to appoint a king as only applying when the people are capable of obeying a king in the proper vein. In his view, proper obedience to a king requires a certain level of excellence in the people, and it is pointless (or worse) to try to impose monarchial rule where the people are not ready for it.

Along the same lines, others point out that to serve as king requires a particularly special individual, one who can fulfill the role of national leader without simply using his office for his own advantage. Going even farther, still others suggested that the monarchy was a concession to human weakness, and that in the ideal system there would be no government but God’s. In varying degrees, then, there are theories of the religion that explain, either in a positive or negative way, why monarchy is not fully relevant to today.

In the absence of monarchy, R. Geiger finds some indications within Judaism of the value of democracy, such as its recognition of the people as the source of governmental power (although, again, in a monarchy that would not be true), its focus on majority rule with respect for minority rights, and the separation of powers incorporated in the system. I would note that many of these elements could be incorporated in other systems as well-- in the Torah's version of monarchy, for example, the Kohen Gadol had absolute authority over the Temple (with the other priests as his administration), the Sanhedrin had absolute authority over rulings of Torah law, and the prophet was the direct messenger for extraordinary messages from God. The system assumed, then, that no one person controlled all of society, even the king.

A problem with democracy, of course, is that the majority does not necessarily decide in the same way as the Torah might. By ceding decisions to the general populace, we are forced to follow a will that may not reflect the wisest course of action (think, for a moment, about the numbers of Americans who could not figure out how to correctly fill out a ballot-- can we have any confidence in their decision making about issues of significance?). In general in Jewish history, the locus of correct decision making was never the general populace-- they were seen as too uneducated, too caught up in their own interests, or too unsophisticated to make important decisions. Instead the will of the people was expressed by their rabbinic leadership, or by the 7 tuvei ha`ir, a sort of town council that made decisions in the presence of the town, but without formally consulting them for a decision. Democracy's granting such sweeping powers to people who may not have a good grasp of central religious issues is one significant worry.

Perhaps more problematic is a point R. Geiger points out as to the shift in the nature of democracy in recent decades. As we have discussed it thus far, democracy is a technical method of selecting government officials, one in which all citizens have a vote and a share in those decisions. It is still possible, at least in theory, for such a system to nonetheless impose a certain unity of vision upon its people. In the early stages of the State of Israel, R. Geiger claims, broad segments of the populace agreed that it was a Jewish state, and that the values of Judaism and the Jewish people ought to be part and parcel of the State and its actions.

With the shift (in America too) to a democracy that stresses the individual's interests and right to actualize those interests, a new and disturbing element has been added to this form of government. Since Judaism only accepts the individual's wants and goals as ultimate ends to the extent that those ends match God's Will, a form of government that encourages its citizens to think in that way-- to focus on themselves, to raise their wants and needs to the level of an independent value-- is not a Jewishly acceptable one. R. Geiger thus believes that we can certainly make peace with the notion of democracy, but that we should resist or object to a democracy that encourages the kind of focus on individuals' wants, rights, and needs to the exclusion of society's that we see today. Shabbat Shalom.