Milk and Other Estates
In England, the monarch is Defender of the Faith. In Israel, the President of the State should be the Chief Rabbi.
Tel Aviv, Israel
Friday, July 17th, 1998
At the time the state was established we had no expectations whatsoever,” remembers Yitzhak Shamir in a New York Times article. In the same piece, Shimon Peres says, “The dream, in total, is greater than we had, and the details are more imperfect than we thought.” If neither of these two men were planning the future nature of the state, who exactly was?
One of the chief pleasures of having a state is entertaining then realizing political ideas, but Israelis characteristically and institutionally avoid the subject; the Israeli education system does not even try to teach its citizens how to govern themselves. In order to stop treating every day as another tiring crisis, the country must learn to appreciate the power of intelligently crafted political institutions, its ability to craft them, and the importance of abiding by them.
One important example — and perhaps even cause — of this reluctance is the role of the Jewish religion within Israel. In the US, a religion is no more than an organization entitled to a certain set of tax advantages. Israelis fearfully assume that if religious power is curtailed even slightly by the state, it will become no more than what it is in the United States. This would be an anathema for Israelis both religious and secular, as it would be tantamount to accepting that a Jewish state is impossible, undermining Israel’s raison d’etre. But due to Israelis’ fear and ignorance of shaping their own political institutions, they will not even try to conceive of a middle ground for Judaism within Israel, and so remain in thrall to a misshapen system. If only they received a proper education in political theory in school, they would be less afraid to sculpt a state in ways that would best serve them.
Once the War of Independence was won, why didn’t the country’s leadership turn its attention to the crucial political puzzle of forging a constitution? If this was to be the Jewish State, why did the leaders not even seek, let alone find, the rightful place for Judaism within Israel? About the writing of the Declaration of Independence, Gideon Rafael remembers, “One major discussion was whether to explicitly mention God Almighty. The secular representatives were not in favor of introducing a religious connotation. The compromise was found through [Moshe] Sharett’s extraordinary knowledge of the language — the Almighty is also called ‘Rock of Israel’ in Hebrew, and that proved acceptable.” But why should this term, which means nothing else but the Hebrew God, be more acceptable than the word God? Writers of constitutions should object not to a word, but rather to the precise meaning of what a word refers to and its relationship with the other bodies being constituted by the document. Is it possible that the country’s founding documents were treated merely as yet more trappings of statehood, like the post office, rather than blueprints to be revered and studied by future generations? Apalling as it may be to Americans, particularly Jewish Americans, the answer it seems is yes. Perhaps the founders mused that Judaism has plenty such texts and no need for more. Exactly how intimidated by Judaism were the state’s socialist founders?
Today’s Orthodox Jewish institutions, with no properly defined status vis a vis the state, are merely another self-interested faction, but one better-educated, more clannish, and able to retain the special status of the state’s official religion. Who can blame them for using the political system to gain disproportionate influence? These too are merely men, and it is not fair to expect that they will voluntarily stay above the profane fray of parliamentary politics. But religious political parties undermine the state by their very existence because they recognize authorities other than the very entity which gives them existence, namely, the state. They recognize the authority not just of God, who can tolerate being pushed out of day-to-day affairs, but of the religious Jewish heirarchy, so that there are in effect two governments of Israel, one of which is not accountable to the people.
And yet, even the most secular Israelis yearn for Judaism to have influence over Israel. They just don’t want it like it is now. One solution would be to absorb the Jewish heirarchy into the Israeli governmental system. The religious Jewish establishment should speak often and directly to the entire people of Israel, which understands and trusts that the priesthood needs nothing from the government — indeed, is legally barred from having any role in government whatsoever — and that its function is merely to advise and teach the people, who have ultimate say by voting for their parliamentary representatives. Nobody affiliated in any way to a religious institution should have any judicial, legislative or executive power. By forbidding relations between the church and the state even more strongly than in other western countries, Judaism can be granted the status of official state religion, so that Israel can at last become constitutionally a Jewish state. Only one office is exempt from the ban, and it is ceremonial, if profoundly important. In England, the monarch is Defender of the Faith. In Israel, the President of the State should be the Chief Rabbi.