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Areligion or a culture like Judaism, at least three thousand years old, cannot be expected to be all of one piece, homogeneous, self-contained, consistent, a neatly constructed system of ideas. If Judaism were that, it would have died centuries ago and would be a subject of interest only to the historian and archaeologist. Judaism has been a living force precisely because it is a teeming, thundering, and clamoring phenomenon, full of contrary tendencies and inconsistencies. Although there are no words or phrases in Hebrew Scriptures for \"human rights,\" \"conscience,\" or \"due process of law,\" the ideals and values which these concepts represent were inherent in the earliest Jewish texts.This volume begins with four essays on the concept of man's being born \"free and equal,\" in the image of God. The underpinning of this concept in Jewish law is explored in Section 2, entitled \"The Rule of Law.\" Section 3, \"The Democratic Ideal,\" traces the foundations of democracy in the Jewish teachings in the Bible and the Talmud, which in turn influenced the whole body of Western political thought. Relations between man and man, man and woman, employer and employee, slave and master are all spelled out. Section 4 presents essays analyzing man's freedom of conscience, and his God-given rights to dissent and protest. Section 5 deals with aspects of personal liberty, including the right of privacy. Section 6, entitled \"The Earth is the Lord's,\" deals with the Jewish view of man's transient tenancy on God's earth, his obligations not to destroy anything that lives or grows, and to share the earth's bounty with the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned. Section 7 delivers an analysis of the \"end of days\" vision of Micah and man's continuing need to strive for peace and not for war. The volume concludes with three new essays, dealing with contemporary issues: \"In God's Image: The Religious Imperative of Equality under Law\"; \"The Values of a Jewish and Democratic State: The Task of Reaching a Synthesis\"; and \"Religious Freedom and Religious Coercion in the State of Israel.\"This enlarged edition is accessibly written for a general and scholarly audience and will be of particular interest to political scientists, historians, and constitutional scholars.

A thriving, yet small, liberal component in Israeli society has frequently taken issue with the constraints imposed by religious orthodoxy, largely with limited success. However, Guy Ben-Porat suggests, in recent years, in part because of demographic changes and in part because of the influence of an increasingly consumer-oriented society, dramatic changes have occurred in secularization of significant parts of public and private lives. Even though these fissures often have more to do with lifestyle choices and economics than with political or religious ideology, the demands and choices of a secular public and a burgeoning religious presence in the government are becoming ever more difficult to reconcile. The evidence, which the author has accrued from numerous interviews and a detailed survey, is nowhere more telling than in areas that demand religious sanction such as marriage, burial, the sale of pork, and the operation of businesses on the Sabbath.

Nehemiah's imperial mission consisted solely of establishing stability in the relations between Yehudites and neighbouring elites. The ethnic/cultic colouring, reflected in his reforms in Jerusalem, represented the views of Nehemiah who used Mosaic authority to achieve both his own aims and those of the imperial government.

What is the possibility of secular law in the religious Jewish state? This article will focus this question on the attitude of Zionist halakhic decisors toward the secular law of the land when that land is the State of Israel. Are these decisors willing to recognize Israeli law as falling into the halakhic category of “the King's Law” (mishpat ha-melekh)? Halakhic literature offers various justifications for the king's authority. The first justification is philosophical and jurisprudential; the second is political; and the third is legal in nature. Various justifications for the King's Law yield different models of its force and authority, which contrast in the relationship they posit between the King's Law and Torah Law. This article examines this question from the perspective of the legal discussion of the relationship between competing systems of law (private international law and issues related to the conflict of laws).

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Offers a fresh reevaluation of Yehud in the Persian period, addressing in particular the dynamics of its relationship to the Persian imperial government.

This article explores the ideological underpinnings of the major Jewish political camps in Israel and the Yishuv—the left, the Orthodox, the national right, the bourgeois center—and evaluates the extent to which they are compatible with liberal democracy as commonly understood in the West. It also analyzes quasi-democratic and non-democratic aspects of older Jewish traditions based on the Torah, the Talmud, and the Halakhah. While the history of Zionism and the Zionist movement contained definite democratic components, Israel’s political system was shaped by a range of anti-democratic traditions whose resonance is still felt today.

In David Ben-Gurion and the Foundation of Israeli Democracy , Nir Kedar offers a poignant study of the primary national founder of the State of Israel and the first prime minister of Israel. Kedar provides an explication of the making of Israeli democracy in terms of its institutional-legal structures and social-cultural underpinnings. David Ben-Gurion and the Foundation of Israeli Democracy connects the formal structures of democracy to the fundamental principles that they were constructed to serve-human freedom and dignity.

Among the variety of social-political reconstructions of Persian-period Yehud, one \"consensus\" stands out - one which states that the Jerusalem priesthood enjoyed a prominent level of authority, symbolized in the Jerusalem temple. Unfortunately, this leads easily into conclusions of a theocracy in Yehud. The problem, in part, is due to the immediate association of priests assumed to be authoritative with that of a theocratic governing structure.To address this problem, at least three aspects of Yehud's governing structure(s) require further attention: (1) the social implications of a particular governing structure within a society; (2) the developments of a society leading up to that governing structure; and (3) a clearly articulated definition of the term and concept of theocracy. Since many scholars appear to depend upon a theocratic \"structure\" or \"spirit\" at some point in their discussions of Persian-period Yehud, one would usualy expect to find a clear definition of theocracy. Instead, a hasty and ill-equipped definition that seems to avoid addressing the social and political complexities is often used.The conclusion is that no power or political vacuum appears to have existed allowing the priesthood to claim power in Yehud. The Persian empire did not allow territories to develop autonomous governing structures (Chapter 2). The social, economic, and political realms of Yehud functioned within the framework of Persian imperial administration (Chapter 3). And the term theocracy, when defined according to social-scientific requirements (Chapter 4), does not accurately describe the social-political context of Yehud during the Persian period (Chapter 5).

Israel is a “Jewish state.” What is the meaning of this and how does it align with the democratic nature of the country? These are the questions at the core of a contentious debate that has been raging since the establishment of the state. This volume includes 75 essays on the question of Jewish — Israeli identity, by some of today’s best thinkers — Jews and non-Jews, from Israel and around the world. Its pages include dreams and nightmares, poetic visions and rational analyses, harsh critiques and songs of praise. This collection is a first-of-its-kind nexus of thought on nationality, religion, politics, culture, society, environment, economics, and security. It is essential reading for any future discussion of Israeli identity.