Authority, Power and Leadership in the Jewish Polity: Cases and Issues
Introduction
Daniel J. Elazar
Jewish Political Studies as a Field
Jewish political studies is one of the most recent fields to be
separately articulated within the framework of the social
scientific study of the Jews. It should be noted at the very
beginning that one of the characteristics of Jewish political
studies is that, while there is a very strong contemporary and
empirical dimension to it, it is historical and textual as well.
To study the political phenomenon of the Jewish people -- at any
time, at any place, under any circumstances -- requires a
combination of empirical research and reference to historical
documentation and the classic texts of the Jewish tradition.1
This is not the place for a review of the development of the
field, even though its intellectual history is interesting in its
own right. As with most intellectual phenomena, the academic
discipline owes a substantial debt to events in the development
of its own self-articulation. Just as sociology grew out of
attempts to systematize and analyze events of the nineteenth
century, so Jewish political studies in great measure stands in
debt to Zionism, to the re-establishment of the State of Israel,
to the conscious decision on the part of Jews to restore their
own polity.
The work that has been done in the field to date demonstrates
that the Jews continued to exist as a polity throughout the years
of exile and dispersion. Nevertheless, in terms of conscious
perceptions of matters political, the field emerged because of
the decision on the part of large numbers of Jews to become
political as Jews, and not just as individuals, in their
respective societies. The Zionist revolution, the establishment
of the State of Israel and the carry-over in the Diaspora,
particularly the United States, some 15 or 20 years after the
establishment of the State of Israel, gave all this an additional
impetus.
Indeed, we see this reflected in Jewish historiography. The work
of the Zionist historians such as Yitzhak Baer and Ben-Zion Dinur
was part of the prologue to this perception.2 They turned the
study of Jewish history in a Zionist direction by focusing on the
ways in which Jews functioned in communities and maintained them
as polities under the various conditions of exile and dispersion,
thereby reinforcing Zionist aspirations from their respective
points of view.
The systematic and comprehensive study of the Jewish experience
from a political science perspective began in the late 1950s. A
group of interested political scientists was formed in 1968 and
organized together into what ultimately became the Center for
Jewish Community Studies in 1972. The first course in the field
was a graduate seminar that Gerald Blidstein and this writer
offered at Temple University in 1970. Charles Liebman, Eliezer
Don-Yehiya, and this writer began the development of a
substantial program at Bar-Ilan University shortly thereafter,
offering the first advanced degrees in the field including the
Ph.D. Subsequently, course offerings spread to over 20
universities on three continents.
There followed two other intellectual turning points. One was
the convening of a seminar at Kibbutz Lavi in Israel in 1975
under the auspices of the Institute for Judaism and Contemporary
Thought and with the cooperation of the Center for Jewish
Community Studies, which examined the Jewish political tradition
and its contemporary manifestations. That seminar produced a
volume entitled Kinship and Consent, the Jewish Political
Tradition and its Contemporary Uses, the first to attempt to
delineate the field.3 It was followed by a second seminar a year
later, under the same auspices, exploring Israel as a Jewish
state.
In the summer of 1981 the Center for Jewish Community Studies, by
then part of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, inaugurated
the Workshop on the Study and Teaching of the Jewish Political
Tradition. It led to the writing and publication of The Jewish
Polity and to the introduction of new courses in the field.4 In
1983, the Workshop became an annual event under the auspices of
the International Center for the University Teaching of Jewish
Civilization in cooperation with the Jerusalem Center for Public
Affairs.
One other factor of importance is that at the beginning of this
decade Jewish political studies as a discipline found a
profession with which to relate and interact, the emergent
profession of Jewish communal service, particularly but not
exclusively in the United States. While Jewish political studies
was being articulated as a separate discipline in Jewish studies,
the social workers in the communal agencies of the United States
who staffed the Jewish community federations, rather than, say,
the Jewish community centers or Jewish family service agencies,
began to detach themselves from their social work colleagues, at
least to the extent of defining themselves as a sub-field of
Jewish communal service. They created a professional
association, the Association of Jewish Communal Organization
Professionals (AJCOP), and several professional schools to
provide training for people planning to enter the field, some of
which were tied closely to social work, but others of which
sought a new direction. In the process of doing this, Jewish
communal organization became a profession which increasingly
found that it was drawing intellectually upon the resources of
Jewish political studies. That offered another set of
opportunities for teaching, one which required a the development
of professional school courses.5
The Theoretical Framework of This Book
Jewish political studies as a field of inquiry has developed a
theoretical framework of its own within which to operate. That
theoretical framework gives teaching and research in the field a
coherence of its own, not as some kind of "party line," but in
the way that proper theory does, by creating a dialogue among
people who are concerned with the problem of system and coherence
in a particular intellectual activity.
An outline of that theoretical framework will be of help to the
reader of this book since the chapters in it are built on that
framework or in reference to it. First of all, we can define the
field in the simplest way as that sub-field of political science,
on one hand, and of Jewish studies, on the other hand, which
deals with the Jewish people as a corporate entity functioning as
a body politic in any place where Jews are organized for public
purposes, even for limited ones, and in some places, as in the
State of Israel, where they are organized in a comprehensive way.
It is not only concerned with contemporary Jewry, but with the
phenomenon of the Jewish collectivity at any time and in any
place.
This approach to the field rests upon certain assumptions. The
first is that the Jewish people is a corporate entity, hence by
definition it must find some way to function as a polity under
difference circumstances in order for it to pursue its normative
aspirations, whether these be defined as survivalism, as seems to
be the case for much of contemporary Jewry, or whether they be
defined in the traditional terms of Jewish religion as the
pursuit of malkhut shamayim (the Kingdom of Heaven), or anything
in between.6 Jews sooner or later -- usually sooner rather than
later -- come to the conclusion that the Jewish people must
function as a polity in order to pursue their normative ends.
Therefore, the Jewish people will always seek ways to function as
a polity.
Central to the Jewish political tradition is the idea of covenant
(brit in Hebrew) and its application to the world of action. The
constitution of the Jewish people as a whole reflects a mixture
of kinship and consent. In other words, people born into a
particular set of tribes consented through covenant to function
as a community. One can read the Sinai Covenant from a political
point of view as the establishment of Israel as both Am (people)
and edah (congregation or assembled community). In Jewish
political terminology harking back to the Bible, an Am is a
nation (goy) with a God-given vocation. For Jews, that vocation
was established by covenant. The Am becomes the kin consenting
while the edah is the organized product of that consent -- the
polity.7
The second assumption is that exploration of the Jewish polity
can be undertaken with the tools of political science. We are
not merely reviewing Jewish history, philosophy, or sociology
under another "hat," however much we draw upon these sister
disciplines. Rather, we are bringing our own tools and
perspectives, and therefore, adding another dimension to
understanding Jewish phenomena.
The third assumption is that Jews have continued to function as a
polity throughout their history. One of the most intellectually
interesting aspects of the discipline is the study of the
adaptation of what is, after all, the oldest extant polity in the
Western world to a great variety of circumstances. Its closest
rival in longevity is the Catholic Church, some 1500 years
younger at least. Interestingly, these two oldest polities of
the Western world operate on diametrically different principles
of organization with regard to the allocation of authority and
the organization of power. The Catholic church is hierarchical;
the Jewish people, covenantal or federal (based on the Latin
foedus=covenant). The intellectual opportunities for exploring
the adaptation of two long-lasting political frameworks operating
on such diametrically opposed principles is in itself a
contribution to the study of political science.
Working then, with those definitions and assumptions, we have
developed certain propositions for research and teaching in the
field. One is that the Jewish people is organized in several
arenas. The people as a whole constitutes itself as an edah --
in principle the assembly of all citizens of the polity -- the
entire population for constitutional matters -- which, of course,
had to be adapted once the Jews were no longer in the desert, to
something other than the literal assembly of the entire
citizenry. In classic political language, edah is the Hebrew
equivalent of the democratic republic because it is based on the
consent of its citizens. The way in which Jews have periodically
reconstituted themselves as an edah in response to changing
circumstances is a major issue for both study and teaching, one
that is addressed in this volume over the entire range of Jewish
history and in the present.
Within the framework of the edah there is an intermediate arena
of organization. Initially it was composed of the tribes
(shevatim in Hebrew) and subsequently, territorial jurisdictions
(medinot -- jurisdictions -- or aratzot -- lands). All three of
these terms are used in Jewish political language.
The local arena is the smallest arena of Jewish political
organization. At one time, prior to permanent settlement, it was
the extended family (bet av). After settlement in Eretz Israel
it became the township (ir) and, in the diaspora, the community
(kehillah).
These three arenas are constants in Jewish political
organization. There is never a time when there is not an effort
to organize simultaneously in all three arenas, though the
character of the organization has varied tremendously from the
time when the edah was a concentrated population in a state in
Eretz Israel to the situation -- at certain times during the
Middle Ages -- in which the edah was no more than a
communications network of posekim (rabbinic decisors). Some of
the chapters in this volume address themselves to the edah as a
whole while others focus on the intermediate and smaller arenas.
The second proposition is that the Jews organize or constitute
themselves in their respective political frameworks through
covenants or covenant-like arrangements, whether they are called
britot as they are a good part of the time, amanot (compacts) or
haskamot (articles of agreement), following the same principle.
This is not merely a terminological matter but often involves an
actual covenanting when a constitutional change takes place.
The third proposition is that the polity is one of separated but
shared powers. It can be said that it is so built that power is
never concentrated in a single human authority.8 Because the
Jewish polity embraces a complete civilization including its
religious dimension, even prior to the classic separation of
powers into executive, legislative, and judicial, the edah
separated spheres of authority, known classically in Hebrew as
the three ketarim (literally: crowns). The clearest expression
of that separation is in Pirkei Avot (Sayings of the Fathers),
Chapter 4, which mentions keter torah (the Crown of Torah), keter
kehunah (the Crown of Priesthood), and keter malkhut (the Crown
of Kingship or civil rule), and then goes on to claim that keter
shem tov (the crown of a good name) is greater than all three.
That verse assumes that Jews in the time of the Second
Commonwealth understood that authority and power in their polity
were divided among these three ketarim.9
The keter torah is responsible for the communication of God's
will to the edah. Torah was communicated to the edah first
through the Eved Adonai (God's Chief Minister, a title bestowed
only on Moses and Joshua), then through the ro'eh (seer) and the
neviim (prophets -- singular, navi), and ultimately through the
hakhamim (sages) and rabbanim (rabbis).
Understood from a political perspective, the keter kehunah is
responsible for enabling the edah to communicate with God,
whether through sacrifices, prayer, or whatever. This domain is
explicitly separated from the keter torah by a separate covenant.
The keter torah was transmitted through Moses; the keter kehunah
was transmitted through Aaron. After the destruction of the
Temple and the disappearance of the kohanim (priests) as an
active political force, the keter ceased to have institutional
embodiment for the edah as a whole, but new institutions were
developed in the kehillot, such as the hazan (originally the
governor of the synagogue, now the reader or cantor) and the
modern congregational rabbi, to carry out those purposes and to
exercise authority in that domain.
Finally, there is the keter malkhut, which deals with the civil
dimension of the edah and which is responsible for the tasks of
normal governance. Its first separately articulated
representatives were the zekenim (elders), an institution that
dates back at least to the Egyptian bondage, and their principal
officers, the nesiei haedah (the magistrates) and continues
through the shofetim (judges), melakhim (kings), nesiim
(patriarchs) and parnasim (officers) down to the present time.
Each of these offices is recognized in the Bible and the separate
legitimacy of keter is a whole is manifested in God's covenant
with David (this though there is a controversy in Jewish
political thought regarding kingship itself). Thus each of these
ketarim is independent of the others, drawing its authority
directly from Divine mandate, though in practice the bearers of
each keter must work with the others in order to govern the edah.
The fourth proposition is that the edah has undergone periodic
reconstitutions because of changing circumstances. Those
reconstitutions have recurred at regular intervals which can be
mapped out. Consequently, Jewish history can be studied as
political history, indeed as constitutional history, through a
number of epochs. We have identified fourteen epochs of Jewish
history, each of which involves a constitution or reconstitution
which brought with it reorganization in all three arenas, within
each keter, and in the power relationships among the ketarim.
Each of these epochs follows a reasonably regular pattern of
political and constitutional development.10 Table 1 lists the
epochs and their principle characteristics.
- Ha-Avot/The Forefathers c. 1850-c. 1570 BCE
- Avdut Mizrayim/Egyptian Bondage c. 1570-c. 1280 BCE
- Adat Bnei Yisrael/The Congregation
of Israelites c. 1280-1004 BCE
- Brit ha-Melukhah/The Federal Monarchy 1004-721 BCE
- Malkhut Yehudah/The Kingdom of Judah 721-440 BCE
- Knesset ha-Gedolah/The Great Assembly 440-145 BCE
- Hever ha-Yehudim/The Jewish
Commonwealth 145 BCE-140 CE
- Sanhedrin u-Nesi'ut/The Sanhedrin
and the Patriarchate 140-429 CE
- Ha-Yeshivot ve Rashei ha-Golah/The
Yeshivot and Exilarchs 429-748 CE
- Yeshivot ve-Geonim/Yeshivot and the
Geonim 748-1038 CE
- Ha-Kehillot/The Kehillot 1038-1348 CE
- Ha-Va'adim/Federations of the Kehillot 1348-1648 CE
- Hitagduyot/Voluntary Associations 1648-1948 CE
- Medinah ve-Am/State and People 1948- CE
A fifth proposition is that there is a Jewish political tradition
that has emerged out of all this, with a language of politics and
a way of thinking and acting politically that has shown great
persistence and continuity and continues to inform Jewish public
life. In a sense, the identification of this political tradition,
the language of politics, the modes of thought and the modes of
action, constitute the substance of the field. That tradition,
despite its continuities, is not monolithic. It is like a river
full of currents and eddies. That is why we talk about a
"tradition" and not an ideology or doctrine. We need not look
for uniformity past a certain point to be able to identify the
tradition, its implications and manifestations. What holds the
tradition together are shared questions, issues, and concerns.
The Reassertion of Jewish Political Expression Today
In our time the expression of the Jewish political tradition,
whether consciously or not, is growing, because the mode of
Jewish collective expression today is becoming increasingly
political. The mode of Jewish expression in pre-modern times was
comprehensive in the sense that Jews expressed themselves as Jews
in every facet of their lives. They had a complete civilization.
Modernity tried to transform that mode of expression into
religious expression alone because those were the terms for
entering Western society. The end of modernity came with the
revival of the search for political expression in Zionism and a
little later, in renewed expressions of Jewish ethnicity in the
West.
Outside of Israel, most Jews no longer live within a
comprehensive Jewish environment, and even only those who live in
Israel are subject to the pervasive influences of contemporary
culture. At the same time, most Jews do not find a sufficient
basis for full expression of their Jewishness through what was
defined as "religion" in the modern epoch. Indeed, many Jews are
finding that they express themselves Jewishly through political
means, if at all, whether that entails support of Israel or other
causes which then become "Jewish" causes, or through working
within the political and communal organizations of the Jewish
people, which increasingly are perceived for what they are,
namely, means of organizing power.
Israelis have always understood this since Zionism was avowedly
political from the first. By the late 1960s, diaspora Jewish
leaders began to perceive that their Jewish activities were not
simply philanthropy. By the early 1980s, the most perceptive of
them understood that what they were doing was a form of
governing. The result was a reversal of the modernist dictum of
Y.L. Gordon, the great poet of the Eastern European Hebrew
Enlightenment, that one should be a Jew in his tent and a man
outside. People who do not know how to be Jews in their tents
anymore, want to be Jews outside -- in the political arena. Thus
the study of the Jews as a body politic takes on an added
contemporary importance. Moreover, the traditional foundations of
the Jewish polity remain the bases for Jewish political and
communal organization.
Issues of Leadership, Domain and Representation in the
Contemporary Jewish Polity
The most accurate and intrinsically most Jewish way to understand
the divisions in Jewish public life today remains the division
into the three ketarim. This classic model tells us more about
Jewish public affairs than any other model we might choose, just
as understanding the Jewish community as an edah and its leaders
as nesi'ei ha-edah is a more useful way of conceptualizing the
Jewish polity than any other.11 Once we understand that authority
and power in the community are shared among the representatives
of these three ketarim, the discussion shifts from the
conventional question of who is entitled to do what in the Jewish
community -- rabbis or laymen, professionals or volunteers,
synagogues or community federations -- to one of how each of
these institutions is to be understood and what its role and
functions are to be in the overall scheme of things.12
The leaders in the communal-welfare, Israel-overseas, and
external relations spheres of contemporary Jewish life, both
voluntary and professional, have assumed the mantle of keter
malkhut. This is not to say that there are not other actors in
the community who play some role, but it is essentially a
residual one. In the United States, for example, the federations
gained this mantle in the post-World War II generation after
turning back a challenge by synagogues. In France, the
Consistoire had more or less absorbed the functions of that keter
in the nineteenth century, but lost to the FSJU and the CRIF
during that same generation. In Britain, on the other hand, the
keter has been firmly in the hands of the Board of Deputies since
the eighteenth century, while in Israel it is unquestionably
vested in the state institutions.
What are the issues what have developed to this domain? Most have
to do with intra-ketaric competitions, such as the conflict
between the federations and the community relations organizations
in various diaspora communities. Some echoes of such earlier
contests remain but only in relation to specific functions, not
overall role. No doubt there will continue to be controversies
of this kind between these various spheres, and there will never
be a time without controversy, but there is a difference -- it is
not now a struggle for the keter malkhut as such.
Today the keter kehunah is mostly in the hands of rabbis and
hazanim. Indeed, the major change that has taken place in the
rabbinate as a result of the modern epoch was to give rabbis
responsibility for the functions of the priesthood, the
sacerdotal functions of the edah, especially the rites of
passage, functions previously performed by baalei-batim while
rabbis functioned within the keter torah as dayanim and posekim,
(halakhic jurists). Indeed, although there are some
authoritative personalities in other spheres of Jewish life who
play something of a sacerdotal role on the symbolic level for the
edah as a whole, this function is basically a local one in
rabbinic hands, assisted by the hazanim.
The question of who is a rabbi has reemerged within the last
decade as a major issue around the questions of ordination of
women and Orthodox recognition of non-Orthodox rabbis, both
schismatic issues in the public life of the Jewish community. A
similar issue confronted Western Jewry one hundred years ago and
more when non-Orthodox movements emerged that required rabbis who
functioned in other than the traditional pattern and were trained
accordingly. The result at that time was that the edah (although
not all its parts) recognized non-Orthodox rabbis but, in the
process, shifted the rabbinate as a whole from the keter torah to
the keter kehunah, de facto if not de jure.
An even more important question is whether rabbis' functions are
a matter of private right or are they public responsibilities?
This is an issue that is perhaps most strongly manifested in the
Reform movement, where every rabbi is entitled to personally
decide whether or not to perform a marriage between a Jew and a
non-Jew and under what conditions. The movement has expressed a
negative view of such an act (and others of similar import, such
as the question of patrilineal descent), but sees it as a private
decision in which every rabbi is sovereign. Yet the question is
not as easily disposed of. Is every rabbi authorized to decide
who is a Jew without being responsible to any system? Are these
public responsibilities? Is this part of the privatization of
Jewish life, and is it going to have a great effect on the
definition of citizenship within the Jewish polity? In its
essentials, this is a question of citizenship, of who is eligible
to be part of the Jewish people. The notion that any person may
privately decide who is eligible to be part of the Jewish people
is a very problematic one from the perspective of the polity no
less than from a traditional religious perspective.
One of the major contemporary issues which has emerged with
regard to the keter torah grows out of the question of who
represents this keter. There is a certain contest between the
various claimants for prime roles as its representatives. Rabbis,
for example, have not easily conceded the function. The studies
indicate that congregational rabbis continue to define themselves
first and foremost as teachers but that their congregants do not
because they expect ritual, pastoral, or counseling services from
their rabbis first and foremos
Today, authoritative scholarly personalities, most but not all of
whom hold rabbinical ordination (semikha: literally, a grant of
authority) are the principal bearers of keter torah. Few, if
any, hold pulpits. Most are Torah scholars at yeshivot,
seminaries, or universities, who possess the personal ability to
reach out. It is not the fact that they are rabbis that makes
them authoritative. The title may add to their status, but it
does not define it. A few are professors whose scholarly
attainments are less traditional in character but who play a
similar role. Finally, there are the rebbes and "gurus" who, for
their own personal followers, are seen as bearing the keter
torah.
The second issue is more critical than ever before, and that is
the question of what constitutes "Torah"? Between the time of
the Karaite schism in the eighth century of the common era and
the nineteenth century, common traditional understanding of Torah
prevailed. Even those who rejected Judaism shared in that common
understanding. Since the rise of Reform, that understanding has
faced one challenge after another. Today we are seeing even
greater competition for the definition of what Torah is,
including some very strange definitions. In one sense, this is a
tribute to the strong hold that the principle of Torah retains on
Jews of all kinds, so much so that every ideological claim on
Jews as Jews must find its link with Torah. On the other hand,
some of the claims attack the very foundations of reasonable
understanding of what is expressed in the Torah and its
tradition.
A third issue, growing out of the second, is how do Jews see
themselves bound by Torah. For both the am and the edah, Torah
is constitutional. However much room there may be for
interpretation and choice within the tradition, it is not merely
a nice set of ideas and traditions to be taken or left as one
pleases. Contemporary Jewry has recognized the truth of this in
at least one modest way, by introducing certain standards of
Jewish observance such as kashrut, motzi, and birkat hamazon, or
kiddush and havdalah where appropriate in Jewish public
institutions (including those of the State of Israel) and at
public functions. On a private level, the issue is nowhere
nearly as resolved. Moreover, Jewish public institutions have
not really grappled with the constitutional character of Torah
outside of the ritual sphere, all too often reducing its role to
questions of ritual observance.
All of these are issues which will continue to confront the
institutions of the Jewish polity since there are practical
decisions to be made in the community with regard to each.
Sooner or later every one of these institutions confronts the
necessity to make such decisions, must decide who will
participate in them, and will be called to account for them by
one constituency or another.
In a sense, these institutions have addressed themselves to these
issues in two ways. One is by providing funds to help educate
the next generation, including the future bearers of the keter
torah. Beyond that, the institutions of the keter malkhut, to a
great extent, have been the legitimizers of the new authoritative
personalities who have challenged the congregational rabbis for
more major roles within the keter torah. This is a reflection of
how, in the postmodern epoch, the keter malkhut has become a
major source of authoritative recognition for most Jews. This is
true not only in the case of the professors who are featured at
their functions from time to time; only a few of whom are brought
to teach Torah. To a certain extent even major figures in the
traditional rabbinate have acquired authority beyond their
immediate circles because of recognition by the keter malkhut and
its leadership, whether by election as chief rabbis in Israel and
those diaspora communities which maintain that institution and
place it within the jurisdiction of the keter malkhut, or by
common consent.
Note, for example, the role which that leadership has played in
the rise to universal prominence of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (who
certainly does not see their recognition as in any way
authoritative) and his Chabad movement and the expansion of its
influence in contemporary Jewish life -- through their
contributions as private individuals, through opening doors to
community institutions, and simply by lending Chabad their
prestige. The same thing occurred in connection with the Rav
(Rabbi Joseph) Soleveichik, in a more subtle way. Jewish
institutions began to seek his counsel. No board or executive
meeting decided that he was the new authoritative personality.
Rather, it happened within the informal dimensions of the keter
malkhut.
What this suggests is that in the perennial competition among the
three ketarim, today the keter malkhut has the upper hand,
marking the end of a period of one thousand years or more in
which the keter torah had the upper hand. The breakdown of the
traditional community, the secularization of Jewish life, and the
reestablishment of the Jewish state, have all led in that
direction but it is only in this generation that Jews are
beginning to feel its consequences.
In no small measure, the increasingly dominant role of the keter
malkhut comes from its function as the only domain where Jewish
unity can be maintained under current conditions. Thus the
Orthodox camp refuses to sit together with representatives of
non-Orthodox movements within the framework of the keter torah
since that would mean recognition of the legitimacy of those
movements within that keter. (In truth, the ultra-Orthodox will
not sit with the mainstream Orthodox either.) Much the same is
true for the keter kehunah, although there the record is mixed in
certain diaspora communities, especially in the United States.
Yet all camps and their subdivisions will sit together within the
institutions of the keter malkhut, whether the World Zionist
Organization, the World Jewish Congress, the Knesset and
government of Israel, countrywide boards of deputies, or local
federations, since it is only in the other domains that the
Orthodox camp insists on maintaining its monopoly. That
strengthens the role of the keter malkhut immeasurably.
Another issue with regard to keter malkhut is the role of Israeli
leadership. In the course of the first postmodern generation,
the Israeli leadership was given a major role in the keter
malkhut by virtue of Israel's status as the Jewish state. They
will continue to play a major role but they will not necessarily
be accepted in as uncritical a manner as was true in the first
generation, because of the changes which have taken place in
Israel and in Israel-diaspora relations in the past decade.
During that decade, a new intimacy was established between Israel
and the diaspora and, as is always the case where intimacy is
involved, familiarity removes pedestals. To the extent that
Israeli leaders gained status because of those pedestals, their
standing has been altered. While this had a temporary deflating
effect, in the long run it should create a new and stronger basis
upon which Israelis can play a leadership role, rooted in mutual
acquaintance and understanding.
Finally, the 1970s witnessed the emergence of a world Jewish
leadership. The catalyst for this division was the
reconstitution of the Jewish Agency in 1970. The reconstituted
Agency offered a forum for leaders of the diaspora communities to
become involved in Israel and world Jewish affairs in other than
philanthropic ways. Once tasted, this became a very attractive
opportunity indeed. Moreover, as a forum, it brought together
Jewish leaders from various parts of the world and from various
modes of Jewish involvement, creating bonds among them whose
implications are just beginni
In sum, when we look at the classic Jewish model of the three
ketarim, we see that the issues of Jewish leadership have been
conceptualized incorrectly for many years. That question was all
too often phrased as "Who will lead the Jewish community?" -- as
if there were to be one leader, one institution, or one narrow
group that was to do so. But the Jewish community classically is
governed through the kind of mixed system of checks and balances,
represented by the division of authority and power among the
three ketarim.
The problem of the contemporary Jewish polity is no longer one of
addressing that old question, but rather that of addressing the
new issues that are derived from the new balance of power among
the ketarim. One of the issues is the question of how new issues
are raised and placed on the Jewish agenda. In a polity based on
trusteeship, it is not possible to rely upon the trustees to look
for all the new issues. All that can be expected from the
trustees is that they will be willing to respond to issues raised
elsewhere. The trustees are busy dealing with existing issues and
maintaining consensus, such as it is.
When the new issues which well up are major ones, of critical
import, they are most likely to gain recognition through at least
a modicum of confrontation. That is part of the natural history
of such things and it is not a bad thing. Not every
confrontation need lead to change. What can be expected is that
the trustees will be brought to respond in some appropriate way
because of the values which they and their colleagues share. What
is bad is when there is polarization which cannot be bridged.
Generally speaking, contemporary Jewry has not done badly in that
regard. As a result there is general consent, at worse
grudgingly given, to the present system, even on the part of its
declared critics. In the last analysis, however, it is necessary
to make a constant effort to keep the edah from simply becoming a
new kind of oligarchy, either of the interested volunteers or the
professionals. The Jewish civil service must be encouraged to
regulate themselves (and one of the virtues of professionals is
that they emphasize self-regulation; they do set standards for
themselves and their members). That is necessary but not
sufficient, because no person or group can be the judge of his or
its own cause. Hence all segments of the polity must work
together to create the appropriate relationship between the
bearers of the three ketarim and between the various leadership
circles and the Jewish public such as it is, as appropriate
manifestations of the continuing yet reconstituted edah.
The keter malkhut itself has developed more elaborate and
intricate governance structures as it has increased in power
within the Jewish polity. What is important to note, however, is
the degree to which those structures resemble each other, whether
in Israel or the diaspora, and within the various community
structures that exist.
This common governance structure can be described as
congressional in character (as distinct from parliamentary,
presidential, or separation-of-powers, or any nonrepublican
system), in the sense that it is based on assemblies, congresses
or trustees or delegates who come together to constitute a common
body without surrendering their responsibilities as trustees or
delegates; i.e., do not become collective bodies with a sense of
collective responsibility. The structure includes two or three
planes, serving the edah, its medinah and artzot, and their
kehillot. Governance in each plane begins with a large forum
designated as the principal decision-making body, in which all
the elements federated together to form the entity are
represented. This large body will meet relatively infrequently,
either annually or only every several years if it serves the edah
as a whole or some major segment of it; quarterly or annually for
countrywide communities; and monthly or quarterly if it serves a
local kehillah. It elects a smaller board to handle continuing
policy-making responsibilities on a regular basis, which meets
more frequently, usually once a month or more. Either the
assembly or the board chooses an executive committee which
handles the daily business of governance. The executive
committee which handles the daily business of governance. The
executive committee usually functions on the basis of community
and collective agreement (without a sense of collective
responsibility) although the chairman or president may have some
special status as its convener and spokesman.13
The congressional principle of representation of the federated
bodies usually continues to be of some importance in both the
board and executive committee as well as the assembly, although
the smaller the body, the more the element of collective
responsibility is present. At the same time, while, in theory
the larger bodies are superior to the smaller, in fact, as in
parliamentary systems, the smaller tend to direct the larger. At
best the larger exercise veto powers over policy proposals
generated by the smaller ones or, where there are three planes,
perhaps the largest two have something of a check and balance
relationship with one another.
Representative Government Within the Edah
From the first, three principal strands have shaped the edah. It
is federal in the fundamental sense of being grounded in covenant
as well as in its structure. It is republican in the fundamental
sense of being a res public, belonging to its public and the
private preserve of no one. It is theocratic in the fundamental
sense that it strives for the holy commonwealth on earth
(theos=God, cratos=rule). The combination of these strands means
that within the framework of its constitution, its government
must be participatory and representative of its people and their
communities.
Representative government within the edah subsequent to the
period of the Exodus and conquest of the land is, in many
respects, a continuing effort to maintain ancient forms of
participation in new guises, forms which have disappeared in
other modern polities and which are only now beginning to change
for the edah as a whole.14 At least formally, the basis of
governance in the original edah (ca 1280- 1000 BCE) was the
assembly of all its citizens for covenanting and other
fundamental constitutional questions, all adult males for
deciding basic policy questions (e.g., declarations of
constitutionally permitted wars), and the tribally selected
nesi'im on an ad hoc basis for special tasks and a permanent
basis for continuing ones. Governance in the periods between the
increasingly less fragmented edah-wide assemblies was in the
hands of notables, apparently designated by some form of
consensus, based upon the recognition of certain families as
leading ones.
By the time of the institution of kingship (1000-722 BCE), it was
already apparent that the edah no longer attempted to assemble as
a whole, although there were still assemblies of notables drawn
from all of the functioning tribes to play the role of the
assembly of the whole. This system may have persisted in Judah
after the fall of the northern kingdom ca. 721-440 BCE) --
evidence is scanty -- with assemblies of the Am Ha-aretz,
consisting of local notables replacing assemblies of tribal
leaders.
When Ezra and Nehemiah reconstituted the Jewish polity (ca. 440
BCE), a majority of world Jewry continued to live outside of
Eretz Israel, hence assembly of the entire edah was impossible
even in theory. It was then that a system of virtual
representation was formally introduced through the establishment
of the Anshei Knesset haGedolah, which assembled in Jerusalem.
This new body was made of 120 members symbolically representing a
minyan (quorum of ten men) from each of the twelve tribes and,
hence, the edah as a whole, a sign that virtual representation
was the intent behind its establishment. In fact, it was
composed of people who lived in Judah plus one or two olim from
the various communities of the exile who came to settle in Judah
and could be added to the body, who spoke, at least nominally,
for the whole diaspora. The nature of the transportation
technology at the time made any other system impossible.
This system of virtual representation continued through the next
nine hundred years of Jewish history, even after the diaspora
Jewish communities developed fully articulated governing
institutions of their own. The only changes were that in certain
periods there was regularized representation from the diaspora in
the edah's sitting decision-making body located in Jerusalem
until 70 CE and subsequently in other parts of Eretz Israel. It
came to an end only with the abolition of the Nesiut
(Patriarchate) by the Romans, ca. 429 CE.
The yeshivot in Babylonia continued this pattern when power
passed to them. They became the virtual representatives of the
edah in its rule-making and adjudication functions, paralleling
the Rosh HaGolah (Exilarch) who was the edah's chief magistrate.
The yeshivot continued the tradition of bringing in people from
around the Jewish world to the extent possible on a voluntary,
personal choice basis, consisting of those who decided to come,
study, and stay. This arrangement persisted for six hundred
years, until the system was disrupted by the abolition of the
office of Rosh HaGolah in 1042 CE.
After that, the edah was unable to sustain equivalent common
institutions, surviving as a communications network for halakhic
decision making through correspondence rather than an assembly.
Political organization was confined to local, countrywide, or in
rare cases, multicountry regions. Hence, the system of virtual
representation existed in principle rather than practice as the
structure of the edah changed over the next nine hundred years,
being expressed through a handful of notable halakhic figures
whose decisions gained edah-wide acceptance or a handful of
shtadlanim whose influential services were recognized edah-wide.
The problems of transportation and communication encountered by
Ezra and Nehemiah in the fifth century BCE remained unchanged
until well into the nineteenth century CE. Indeed, at times,
deterioration of conditions made them even greater. It was not
until the development of the steamboat, railroad and telegraph
that a new technology made continental and intercontinental links
feasible.
The World Zionist Congress convened in 1897 was the first
effort made to establish a body representative of the edah in
modern terms, namely, through constituency elections of delegates
to a worldwide congress in which all communities were potentially
if not actually to be represented. Since that time, there has
been a striving to establish such institutions. The WZO was and
is a membership organization. It did become worldwide in scope
but never embraced a majority of the edah as members. The World
Jewish Congress, established in 1936, tried to overcome that
problem by being based on country affiliates, the major
representative bodies from each countrywide Jewish community, but
its strength was and is concentrated in Europe and Latin America
with no real presence in the world's largest Jewish communities
-- the U.S.A., Israel, the USSR, and France.
Framing organizations were established in the local and
countrywide arenas by the end of the modern epoch or during the
first generation of the postmodern epoch as a culmination of the
modernization process. They were accompanied by a general
revolution in transportation and communications based on air
travel and the airwaves. Jews are now engaged in the
reestablishment of effective, continuing edah-wide framing
institutions, principally through the reconstitution of the
Jewish Agency and the WZO. Since transportation and
communication technologies now permit this, it is likely that
something serious will come out of the effort. Nevertheless,
this will not be the whole story since there are structural
limitations to the degree to which formal representatives of all
segments of the edah can assemble on a regular basis. Thus we
are returning to the situation of ancient Israel, only on a
worldwide scale, when leading figures representing the various
elements of the edah come together at regular intervals, are
involved in consultations in between, but the day-to-day business
is still conducted by virtual representatives, including people
co-opted into the governing circles who might not be formally
chosen through the standard processes, because of their proximity
or their wealth.
It should be noted that the effort to reconstitute the Jewish
Agency for Israel (JAFI) as an edah-wide instrument was not
initiated without a struggle. Initially, the reestablished State
of Israel was viewed by many, especially Israelis, as the sole
institutional embodiment of the edah, hence, the Israeli Knesset
was established with 120 members in imitation of Anshei Knesset
HaGedolah and with the clear intention of being the virtual
representative of all of world Jewry because of its constituent
position as the center of authority in the Jewish state. This did
not happen because the diaspora would not -- indeed, could not --
accept the Israeli legislative body as its spokesman, hence the
need to go back to the WZO/Jewish Agency to develop a more
broadly representative body, albeit one in which Israel would
play the leading role.
This pattern is carried over to the other arenas as well. The
growth of Jewish population and its concentration in larger
metropolitan centers means that, except in the smallest
communities, even the local arena cannot function on the basis of
the assembly of all citizens. The congressional model, then,
serves as a substitute similar to that of the limited town
meeting in New England. The advantage is that in the local
arenas, there can be real representation of different
constituencies, not only virtual representation. The governance
structure that has emerged reflects this pattern.
The other dimension of representation in the Jewish polity is
that Jewish leaders tend to wear many different hats, hence both
the representatives and the represented appear simultaneously in
many forms and either represent or need to be represented in many
different forms. Not only are there so many different bodies but
Jews, if active at all, tend to be members and even active in
many overlapping organizations and institutions. It is well to
remember how many Jews belong to more than one synagogue, not to
speak of membership in a number of different Zionist
organizations or Zionist and other organizations, in addition to
contributing to the Magbit or paying taxes to the Israeli
government or whatever.
This is not simply a contemporary phenomenon; it was always true
to a greater or lesser extent. Even in the small medieval
community, Jews who were members of a common kahal were also
members of different hevrot. They sought to express themselves
through the kahal as a whole and through the special interests of
the hevrut.
Given the somewhat amorphous nature of the community's boundaries
and the inability to decide on one comprehensive set of
institutions or instruments of governance, this weaving of many
nets serves to strengthen Jewish unity and make more intensive
use of Jewish talent. Hence it is accepted as inevitable and
necessary, in Israel as well as in the diaspora. There is every
reason to believe that, like the congressional system, it is part
and parcel of Jewish political culture.
Both of these dimensions reflect the way in which the Jewish
polity is one of those which is built from the ground up, that is
to say, from the smallest arena to the largest rather than
vice-versa. In this respect it is like the Swiss and American
polities, whose origins were simultaneously to be found in the
Landesgemeinde and the town meeting, respectively, as well as in
larger arenas. The result of this ground-up construction is that
political life begins with all citizens expecting to participate
as equals in some respect, an expectation which they retain even
after larger arenas have been established, and which they seek to
transfer to these larger arenas in some appropriate, if lessened,
way. Like the Americans and the Swiss, the Jewish polity has had
to maintain some kind of primary citizen involvement through
appropriate mechanisms applied to its very different and unusual
situation. The vulnerability of these systems to large scale
public reactions, whether in the form of demonstrations, as in
the State of Israel, or in some other way, is a constant reminder
of where the locus of power lies.
All this stands in sharp contrast to polities organized from the
top down in which citizens do not expect to participate on a
continuous basis, merely to be consulted, or to ratify, or to
choose which elites will govern them -- all of which leads to a
very different approach to representation. This is the
difference between the parliamentary and the congressional
systems, despite their external structural similarities.
Parliaments developed within hierarchical polities to modify the
control exercised by those on the top (usually monarchs), by
requiring them to secure the approval of representatives of the
people or the various estates of the realm before pursuing their
policy ends, whereas congressional systems developed from the
bottom up or, more accurately, from smaller to larger arenas. A
full examination of the representative institutions of the Jewish
polity as examples of congressional government is yet to be
undertaken.
The Focus and Contents of This Book
This book is divided into three parts. The first deals with the
historical polity. It begins with a chapter by Daniel J. Elazar
on "The Polity in Biblical Israel." In it, this writer
delineates the political organization of ancient Israel in
biblical times utilizing the models outlines above. In addition
to describing the various political regimes of biblical Israel,
the chapter shows how the main institutions and relationships of
the Jewish polity were established in the biblical period and
serve as a paradigm for what comes later, this despite the
changes in the specifics of regime, office and locale.
In the second chapter, Stuart A. Cohen focuses on "Continuities
and Convulsions: The Three Ketarim During the Second Jewish
Commonwealth." In it he provides a comprehensive treatment of
the functioning of the threefold division of political authority
in the critical epochs of the formation of rabbinic Judaism. He
reveals the political dimension of the struggle of the Pharisees
for control of the edah.
Chaim Milikowsky continues this discussion in "Authority and
Conflict in Post-Destruction Roman Judea; The Patriarchate, the
Rabbis, the People, and the Romans." Milikowsky traces out the
history of the conflict over authority in the centuries following
the destruction of the Second Commonwealth, showing how the
principles of politics established in the biblical period were
adapted to a new set of relationships between rulers and ruled.
These three chapters, which cover a period of nearly 1800 years,
are followed by one by Ivan G. Marcus on "The Political Dynamics
of the Medieval German Jewish Community" that focuses on the
medieval Jewish community in Ashkenaz (France and Germany of
today). The period that he treats is known as the classic age of
the kehillah, when circumstances fragmented the Jewish polity
among myriad separate local communities. While Dr. Marcus does
not use the terminology of Jewish political studies in his
analysis, his article should be read with that terminology in
mind since it demonstrates the continuity of the original
biblical model in a very different setting.
In Part II, we confront the contemporary polity after the Jewish
people lost both its autonomy in the diaspora and its homogeneity
as a faith community and, with one exception, after the Holocaust
and the reestablishment of the State of Israel. While the focus
of Part II is on the diaspora, Israel and the diaspora are part
of the same continuing political tradition in which the elements
identified at its very beginning emerged after another
readaptation to shape and direct Jewish affairs.
One of the classic models of modern Jewish communal organization
is the Board of Deputies of British Jews whose origins go back to
1760 and hence is the oldest continuing governing institution of
any functioning diaspora community today. While the Board of
Deputies is structured as an institution of the keter malkhut, it
is organized so as to maintain an established relationship with
the keter torah as well. David Cesarani examines the workings of
the Board in the early twentieth century in "The Politics of
Anglo-Jewry Between the Wars." Cesarani's chapter focuses on the
struggle between Zionists, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists for
control of the keter malkhut from the Balfour Declaration to the
Holocaust. While Cesarani does not use the political models and
terminology upon which this volume is anchored, it is relatively
easy to apply both as one reads his case study.
In Chapter Six, Jonathan S. Woocher looks at "The Democratization
of the American Jewish Polity." He traces the emergence of a
structured American Jewish community after World War II and how
the governance of that community moved from the hands of a group
of self-selected notables to a broader set of constituencies
which more or less represent all the segments of American Jewry.
Woocher sees the American Jewish community as solidly within the
Jewish political tradition even though it represents such a
radical departure from premodern Jewish tradition in so many
other respects. Hence he examines community organization within
French Jewry is usually hailed as the first formally emancipated
community, but in fact the population of French Jewry has been
transformed at least twice since the revolution. The French
Jewish community today with its majority of Sephardim from North
Africa is a far different community from the one of the interwar
period or the Jewish community of nineteenth century France. In
Chapter Seven, Ilan Grielsammer examines "The Democratization of
a Community: The Case of French Jewry." Grielsammer's article
parallels Woocher's, since he looks at the process of movement
from control by a handful of notables to a more popular model, a
process which has not gone as far in France as it has in the
United States. In "The Dynamics of the Three Ketarim in the
Political Transformation of Contemporary French Jewry," Shmuel
Trigano examines the patterns of power in the contemporary French
Jewish community in terms of the classical model.
In Part III, four distinguished scholars examine four of the
continuing issues that have confront the Jewish polity since its
beginning and which continue to do so. In "Leadership in the
Jewish Polity: Early Rabbinic Views," Stuart A. Cohen examines
the overall question of leadership within the context of the
models and terminology presented here. Reuven Kimmelman focuses
on "The Ethics of National Power: Government and War in the
Jewish Tradition," with an eye to the problems confronting the
renewed independent Jewish state in Eretz Israel. Gerald J.
Blidstein probes a minor but real note in the Jewish political
tradition in his chapter "On Political Revolution in the Jewish
Tradition," in which he examines the biblical and halakhic
treatment of the problem of resisting illegal or unjust
authority. Finally, Morton Weinfeld and Phyllis
Zelkowitz examine the most important continuing task of any
Jewish community, but particularly the diaspora Jewish
communities of today, namely the education of the next generation
in "Reflections on the Jewish Polity and Jewish Education," using
the Canadian experience as a case study of the problematics of
universal Jewish education under contemporary conditions.
Needless to say, a collection of this kind cannot be
comprehensive. At most, it dips into a rich history and
tradition at certain critical points and in relation to some
important topics. In doing so, it serves students of the subject
the way in which geological mapping does the oil industry -- a
generalized map is prepared on the basis of a series of test
bores. This volume concentrates on the empirical dynamics of the
Jewish polity. As such, it is a companion volume to Kinship and
Consent: The Jewish Political Tradition and its Contemporary
Manifestations, which provides an outline of the theory of the
Jewish political tradition and The Jewish Polity: Jewish
Political Organization from Biblical Times to the Present, which
outlines the constitutional and institutional structure of the
Jewish polity.
Notes
1. For an overview of the field, see Daniel J. Elazar and Stuart
A. Cohen, "A Framework and Model for Studying and Teaching the
Jewish Political Tradition," Jewish Political Studies Review
1:3-4 (Fall 1989).
2. Yitzchak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961); Ben
Zion Dinur, The Historical Foundations of the Rebirth of Israel
(New York: Harper and Row, 1955) and Jewish History; Its
Uniqueness and Continuity (Neuchatel: Editions de la Baconniere,
1968).
3. Daniel J. Elazar, ed., Kinship and Consent: The Jewish
Political Tradition and Its Contemporary Uses (Ramat Gan:
Turtledove, 1981).
4. Daniel J. Elazar and Stuart A. Cohen, eds., The Jewish Polity:
Jewish Political Organization from Biblical Times to the Present
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985).
5. Cf. Daniel J. Elazar, Participation and Accountability in the
Jewish Community (New York: Council of Jewish Federations, 1981).
6. Cf. Jonathan Woocher, Sacred Survival (Bloomington, Ind.:
Indiana University Press, 1986); and Ella Belfer, "The Jewish
People and the Kingdom of Heaven: A Study of Jewish Theocracy,"
Jewish Political Studies Review 1:1-2 (Spring 1989).
7. Cf. Daniel J. Elazar, "Covenant as the Basis of the Jewish
Political Tradition" in Kinship and Consent.
8. Obviously, from a traditional point of view there is a single
Divine authority. Indeed, the first mention in the literature of
what later became the classic Montesquieuian formulation of the
three branches of government is in Isaiah Chapter 33, verse 22,
which reads: "Adonai shofteinu, Adonai mechokikeinu, Adonai
malkeinu; Hu oshi'ainu" (God is our judge, God is our legislator,
God is our king; He will save us.) It both acknowledges the
reality of the three branches of government and their ultimate
concentration in Divine Hands.
9. Cf. Stuart A. Cohen, "The Concept of the Three Ketarim: Its
Place in Jewish Political Thought and Its Implications for a
Study of Jewish Constitutional History," AJS Review IX:1 (Spring
1984).
10. Cf. Daniel J. Elazar and Stuart A. Cohen, The Jewish Polity.
11. Stuart A. Cohen, The Concept of the Three Ketarim.
12. Cf. Daniel J. Elazar and Stuart A. Cohen, The Jewish Polity,
Epoch 14.
13. For the definition of congress, see the Oxford English
Dictionary. On forms of representative government, see Edmund
Burke, A Letter to the Sherriffs of Bristol (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1936); Alfred de Grazia, Public and Republic:
Political Representation in America (New York: Knopf, 1951) and
Apportionment and Representative Government (New York: Praeger,
1963); John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative
Government (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1958); Carl J.
Friedrich, Man and His Government: An Empirical Theory of
Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963); Lewis Anthony Dexter,
"The Representative and His District," Human Organization, no.
16, pp. 2-13; and "Representation," in David Sillo, ed.,
International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 18 vols. (New
York: Macmillan, 1968-1979), pp. 461-479.
14. Cf. Elazar and Cohen, The Jewish Polity.
