Did the Sinn Féin Influence an Israeli Chief Rabbi’s Vision of Jewish Politics?

The advent of modern Zionism and, even more so, the creation of an actual Jewish state, raised questions for rabbinic thought that had for centuries been purely hypothetical, if acknowledged at all. Foremost among those who advocated for the creation of a state based on halakhah was Israel’s first Ashkenazi chief rabbi, Isaac Halevy Herzog. In The Invention of Jewish Theocracy, Alexander Kaye argues for the importance of Herzog’s ideas in shaping religious Zionist thought. Shalom Carmy writes in his review:

Where [Kaye] tries to break new theoretical ground is in raising the entire question of “Jewish theocracy,” meaning whether a Jewish state should indeed be governed by the corpus of halakhah. His view is that theocracy was not the only live option for religious Zionists. The prevalent sense that theocracy, as a goal, is taken for granted by religious Zionism, he implies, owes much to Herzog’s prominence and to his awareness of contemporary legal systems, not least to the Irish constitution, about which he was consulted during his tenure [from 1919 to 1936] as chief rabbi of Ireland and as a friend of the Irish leader Eamon de Valera.

While Carmy finds Kaye’s argument “intriguing and attractive,” he argues that Kaye overstates Herzog’s importance:

[B]elief that the way of life upheld by halakhah is the way of life ordained by God for the Jewish people entails that the Jewish people should adopt it in their commonwealth. Whoever advocates an alternative, in which halakhah shares sovereignty, or is subservient to a secular jurisprudence, must justify that alternative.

Such alternatives can be justified in a variety of ways [from within the framework of Orthodoxy].

But whether a mixed system of religious and secular law is inherently desirable from the religious perspective or whether it is the best that can be attained at certain historical junctures, it is the mixed system that requires justification. That is why it seems to me that anyone in Herzog’s position would start from the “theocratic” halakhah-centered default position. He might have to settle for a mixed pluralistic system under the force of circumstances, as indeed happened in the state of Israel, or he might have allowed for a large measure of secular autonomy. . . . But these moves would require argument; they cannot be assumed.

Read more at Lehrhaus

More about: Ireland, Jewish political tradition, Judaism in Israel, Religious Zionism

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF