French and German halakhic writings from the Middle Ages make frequent mention of the use of professional matchmakers, consider the breaking-off of an engagement a source of embarrassment for which one family may seek damages from the other, and encourage parents to wait until girls reach majority before letting them be betrothed, so that they can consent to the union. By contrast, Spanish rabbis of the same era make scant mention of matchmakers, see the breaking of an engagement as an insignificant thing, and have few qualms about betrothing children. Surveying and analyzing these differing approaches, Efraim Kanarfogel argues they reflect fundamentally different views of marriage:

Spanish rabbinic authorities, going back to the [early] Muslim period and [drawing on the attitudes of] several Babylonian authorities as well, maintained that the divine role in bringing husband and wife together was the predominant factor in determining the existence of a marriage. The task of the parents and grandparents was to arrange the marriage within the earthly realm, of which they were quite capable. However, it was ultimately divine agency that allowed the marriage to move forward.

Since the parents and family were charged with [realizing God’s plan], the bride and groom themselves had little input. Thus, it was expected that a daughter would always agree to the choice of her father (or grandfather). . . . [I]f a commitment to marry was broken, there was no cause for regret or embarrassment. This was a matter of the heavenly fate of the bride and groom.

Ashkenazi rabbinic authorities, however, believed that the driving force behind marriage consisted of the will and efforts of the bride and groom, along with those of others (parents and family members, as well as matchmakers) who acted on their behalf. The Almighty obviously played a crucial if inscrutable role in this process, but it was up to the human participants to expend whatever efforts and means available to bring about a marriage that was appropriate in their view. The cancellation of a marriage commitment was seen as a source of deep disappointment and embarrassment, and was to be avoided at almost any cost.

Since the bride and groom were the key actors on their own behalf, the bride had to agree explicitly to her ritual betrothal. . . . Although Sefer Ḥasidim [an influential 13th-century German rabbinic work] advised fathers to marry off their children at a relatively young age so that they would accept the choice of a mate presented to them, it also strongly supported the concept of a marriage entered into on the basis of love or at least on the desire of the couple to marry one another.

Contributing to the Jewish state’s current controversy over efforts to reform its judicial system, observes Peter Berkowitz, is its lack of a written constitution. Berkowitz encourages Israelis to seek a way out of the present crisis by looking to the founding document they do have: the Declaration of Independence.

The document does not explicitly mention “democracy.” But it commits Israel to democratic institutions not only by insisting on the equality of rights for all citizens and the establishment of representative government but also by stressing that Arab inhabitants would enjoy “full and equal citizenship.”

The Israeli Declaration of Independence no more provides a constitution for Israel than does the U.S. Declaration of Independence furnish a constitution for America. Both documents, however, announced a universal standard. In 1859, as civil war loomed, Abraham Lincoln wrote in a letter, “All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”

Something similar could be said about Ben Gurion’s . . . affirmation that Israel would be based on, ensure, and guarantee basic rights and fundamental freedoms because they are inseparable from our humanity.

Perhaps reconsideration of the precious inheritance enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence could assist both sides in assuaging the rage roiling the country. Bold and conciliatory, the nation’s founding document promises not merely a Jewish state, or a free state, or a democratic state, but that Israel will combine and reconcile its diverse elements to form a Jewish and free and democratic state.