Libertarian Kahanism: Permitting Arabs to Wield Political Authority in Israel Even According to the RambaM

In RambaM's Hilkhot Melakhim u'Milhamot chapter 6, we read (halakhah 2): ולא יתמנו על ישראל, לשום דבר בעולם "They [viz. gentiles] may never be appointed over a Jew, regardless of the position."

Apparently, then, non-Jews may not hold any position of authority at all. But 1:4 and 1:5 respectively forbid converts and women to be kings of Israel, and yet we know that if the people accept their rule, this law does not apply; as Rabbi Benzion Uziel shows (in his teshuva on women's suffrage, here, the prohibition for a convert or women to be king applies only when the beit din must undemocratically select a king itself, but when the people themselves choose, they may choose whomsoever they desire. According to Rabbi Uziel, the people's democratic choice obviates any prohibition for women and converts to wield serarah (authority). Apparently, there is nothing wrong with a woman or convert, but since Judaism is fundamentally democratic in its essence, a woman or convert cannot rule if this is unacceptable to the people. If the people are sexist or racist, then this is unjust and unfair, but nevertheless, if the people, due to their unlawful and unjust sexism and racism, choose to reject the woman or convert as ruler, then democratic Judaism cannot but forbid the woman's or the convert's appointment. But if the people freely choose the women or convert, then there is no problem, ipso facto. The people's very choosing the convert or the woman is itself a sign that the woman's or the convert's rulership is permissible according to the Torah.

The question is, does this ability of the people apply even regarding the prohibition for a non-Jew? Somehow, I suspect not. With a non-Jew, the fear is presumably that his entire outlook and direction and intent will not be in keeping with Torah Judaism, and that his rule will be simply totally improper. For this reason, the Torah explicitly mandates that a king of Israel must be Jewish, whereas there is no express prohibition for a convert or woman to a king. Furthermore, there is an explicit Gemara showing that the people's acceptance of Aggripas as king (saying "You are our brother, you are our brother!") was of no avail, and that he was nevertheless an improper king. On the other hand, Hazal seem to have liked Queen Shlomtzion just fine. We see from history itself that Hazal approved of female Jewish queens but not of non-Jewish male kings.

Nevertheless, it appears to me personally that as long as the ruler is ruling according to a contract, covenant, or constitution written by the corporate Jewish people (`am yisrael), that this itself is a form of subservience to Jews. The government is by the people and for the people, and its officers are servants of the of the people, and thus, government workers are called "public servants". Any Arab - or Jew, for that matter - who holds office in the Knesset or the like is halakhically a slave, an עבד, as long as the constitution is suitably Jewish in character, or at least specifies that the Jewish people is sovereign even if it fails to specify that Judaism as such also is.

Therefore, even according to a Kahanist adherence to the pesaq of RambaM that a non-Jew may not wield serarah (authority) over Jews in Israel, even according to this notion, one may circumvent it by having an explicitly Jewish constitution that, as per authentic federal democracy, stipulates that the country is Jewish and that the government exists only for the good of the people. By this manner, the government's officials and employees would all be public servants, contractually obligated ("social contract") and responsible and accountable to the people and to Judaism, subservient alike to the people and to either the corporate Jewish people (`am yisrael) and/or to Judaism (however that constitution chooses to define something as nebulous and hotly debated as "Judaism"), and so halakhically, any Arab - or Jewish - members of the government would not be wielding serarah (authority), for they would be nothing more than proxies, shelihim, chosen to execute those powers and only those powers granted the government by the people, which the people may enlarge or diminish as they freely choose, the people being the rulers of the land with the government merely the people's proxy by contract. ("Federal" means "covenant" and "democracy" means "rule of the people", and thus, a federal democracy is any government in which the people rule by making a covenant with the government, i.e. electing it their proxy via a contract. In Biblical Israel and in Calvinist societies like Puritan America, for example, the Torah was the constitution which the king or government ruled by, and he or it had no powers save those which the Torah granted him, and he had no power to pass any laws except that somehow served to do nothing more than to enshrine in civil law that which the Torah already mandated anyway. Biblical Israel and Puritan America were - at least, when they lived up to their ideals - were perfect exemplars of constitutional (federal) government.) Thus, even according to RambaM's pesaq forbidding a non-Jew to wield serarah (authority) over Jews in Israel, even according to this pesaq, nothing would be violating halakhah even were Arabs to wield power. Legally and halakhically, the government would be the subordinate to the people - as indeed authentic federal democracy declares - and so even RambaM and Kahanism would be satisfied.

Conversely, however, if one holds by undemocratic absolutist statism in Israel, in which the government has absolute and unlimited undemocratic authority which the people are obligated to obey without right of dispute or disobedience or dissent - this philosophy being held by Israel leftists (Labor, Kadima, etc.) as well as many left-wing Religious-Zionists (such as the sort who opposed the Gaza Expulsion and yet nevertheless counseled soldiers to obey their illegal orders) - according to this undemocratic absolutist philosophy, any government official is a lord, an אדון, with free reign to trample the people without limitation or compunction, and according to this, it would still be prohibited for an Arab to wield authority, as per the plain sense of the RambaM. My proposal only works if the government is liberal and libertarian, if the government is contractually-bound and accountable to the people and subservient to them, as per authentic liberal federal democracy, in which the government is subordinate to the people. But where there is an illiberal statist government, such as in Israel, where democracy is scoffed at and flouted, in such a place, the plain sense of the RambaM stands as it is.

As an aside, Tzipi Hotovely has an interesting suggestion, viz. to grant all Arabs citizenship. She has not yet explained why she advocates such, but as I understand her proposal, based on my own personal thought, her suggestion is this: Making the Arabs into Israeli citizens will allow Israel to use its police and intelligence forces to prosecute terrorist Arabs while neglecting to harm or infringe on peaceful Arabs. If the Arabs are foreigners, then Israel has no choice but to invade with the IDF and unfortunately kill innocents unintentionally. But if the Arabs are made citizens, then Israel can discriminate and precisely target only those specific and peculiar offenders of the law, while keeping the law-abiding and peaceful Arabs safe from any harm.

Civil Marriage and Homosexual Unions

I'll be blunt: civil marriage is just an irrelevant economic arrangement. It ought to be abolished, and marriage ought to be entirely privatized. What concern is it of the government's whether you're married or not?

Everything else with which we associate marriage - such as joining property and inheritance and such - can be done by an ordinary economic contract, and it is irrelevant whether you sign this contract with your lover or with your platonic best friend.

And if so, why shouldn't gays be able to make an economic arrangement between the two of them? Heck, I should be able to make that same economic arrangement with my brother or my best friend or with my parents!!! Marriage should be turned into an ordinary business contract, which anyone and everyone can sign with anyone and everyone else, like any business contract.

And if the gay person can find a religious individual of some religious sect who is wiling to sanctify their union, hey, more power to them. If it's a sin for them to sleep together, then fine, G-d can strike them with lightning. According to the Torah, you need two witnesses to punish a sinner, so if the two homosexuals have sex together outside in broad daylight, then we'll ourselves punish them - sound alright?

As for children and custody, we could have children registered as the property of parents. It shouldn't be relevant whether the people are married. A child can be registered by default to the birth mother and the man who impregnated her, and the child's ownership can be transferred via specified procedures. Of course, the child's owners will have an obligation to feed and clothe the child and send it to school, etc. If you can be charged with cruelty to animals which you own, why not with cruelty to children which you own?

But returning to the subject of homosexuals, I think we'll still allow churches and ministers and religious officials and organizations to refuse to perform the marriage. Even if civil marriage is purely economic and nothing more, a religious official will nevertheless believe that the marriages he himself performs have some sort of religious or theological significance.I am seriously afraid that if we permit homosexual marriage, that we'll also forbid anyone to discriminate against homosexuals. I'd hate to see churches coerced into marrying homosexuals against their wills. So we need to be sure that even if the civil government marries homosexuals, or if civil marriage is abolished and replaced with private non-government-recognized religious marriage, that private organizations and individuals will not be forced to perform marriages against their wills. It'd be a horrible thing if we played a zero-sum game and granted liberty to homosexuals only by denying liberty to religious ministers.

Now, for your viewing pleasure, the YouTube video that inspired all these ruminations from me:

Monarchy is More Democratic than the United States Federal Government

Monarchy is more democratic than the United States Federal Government. At least a monarch has some approval. In order for him to wield power, someone must be approving of him, if only his own soldiers and retinue. But at least someone is approving of him and granting him power. By himself, as one single man, he has no power, and it is only others' approval that grants him power.

By contrast, in Congress today, if 51% outvote 49%, it is only because the 51% is numerically and thus physically larger than the 49%. 51% wants a new tax and 49% opposes it, and so the 51% rams the tax down the others' throats, coercing them. It has nothing to do with approval. The 51% has power not because of others' approval, but only because of their own intrinsic size. It is pure "might makes right", pure and simple. At least the king wields power only because his followers support him. His supporters might only be the wealthy elites, but at least his power is due to something other than his own intrinsic physical power.

(In case anyone misunderstands my point - which many have already - I'm not saying that I prefer monarchy to democracy. Rather, I'm arguing a sort of reductio ad absurdum, a purely conceptual thought-experiment to absurd ends. It's counter-intuitive, and goes against common sense, but theoretically speaking, a king, in some ways, actually comes out ahead of the United States Congress, in terms of degree of democratic nature. It doesn't mean I actually want a king, only that theoretically, according to the empirical measurements of democracy, a king manages to somehow come out as more democratic than today's congress. But I'd still take Congress over a king. If anyone wants, I can give a whole shpiel on why I believe that in the Messianic era, the theocratic Torah-based state will be a democracy and not a monarchy, notwithstanding all the very clear and seemingly-irrefutable reasons why one would obviously think otherwise. In any case, the previous paragraphs were said rather flippantly, quite facetiously, really. But the rest of this blog post is quite serious.)

As Henry David Thoreau says in "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (here),

After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.

Similarly, Cato's Letters say,

It is a mistaken notion of government, that the interest of the majority is only to be consulted...otherwise the greater number may sell the lesser, and divide their estates among themselves; and so, instead of a society, where all peaceable men are protected, become a conspiracy of the many against the minority...

Tyranny of the majority is fundamentally illegitimate, being naught but "might makes right". The majority is numerically superior, and so it wields power, plain and simple. To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Politics" (here),

Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows. My right and my wrong, is their right and their wrong. Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, my neighbour and I shall often agree in our means, and work together for a time to one end. But whenever I find my dominion over myself not sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of him also, I overstep the truth, and come into false relations to him. I may have so much more skill or strength than he, that he cannot express adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, and hurts like a lie both him and me. Love and nature cannot maintain the assumption: it must be executed by a practical lie, namely, by force. This undertaking for another, is the blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the world. It is the same thing in numbers, as in a pair, only not quite so intelligible. I can see well enough a great difference between my setting myself down to a self-control, and my going to make somebody else act after my views: but when a quarter of the human race assume to tell me what I must do, I may be too much disturbed by the circumstances to see so clearly the absurdity of their command. Therefore, all public ends look vague and quixotic beside private ones. For, any laws but those which men make for themselves, are laughable. If I put myself in the place of my child, and we stand in one thought, and see that things are thus or thus, that perception is law for him and me. We are both there, both act. But if, without carrying him into the thought, I look over into his plot, and, guessing how it is with him, ordain this or that, he will never obey me. This is the history of governments, - one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labour shall go to this or that whimsical end, not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts, men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, except for these.

The way the United States Federal Government was originally crafted to avoid this, was to spell out respective sets of rights and obligations for citizens and governments. Within these sets of rights and obligations, there was no leeway. Majority rule and consent-of-the-governed and popular-will and such are completely irrelevant when rights and obligations are considered. As Professors Paul K. Ryu and Helen Silving say in "The Foundations of Democracy: Its Origins and Essential Ingredients" (here and here),

Common to all these [aforementioned] forms of [democratic] government is the assumption that the basic postulate of democracy is the majority rule, whereby the majority of the people in a community makes the decisions that are to govern. On this assumption most scholars trace the origins of 'democracy' to Greece. They disregard democracy's other constituent element, civil liberties. It seems to escape their attention that Socrates was sentenced to death in 'democratic Athens' for teaching dissenting views. In this essay we proceed on a more concise basic assumption, namely, that the essential of democracy is the status of the individual within society, his rights vis-à-vis the State, whereas the majority rule is but a compromise solution in a state of necessity.

Thus, when people believe that democracy means majority rule, they are engaging in cargo-cultism, mistaking the most evident outward sign for the true underlying reality. In democratic societies, we see elections, but that is not what makes them democracies. In fact, a pure democracy would be an elected oligarchy, not very different in kind from tyranny.

So the essence of democracy is not majority rule and elections, but rather, it is individual rights and liberties, responsibilities and obligations. Thus Samuel Adams says in "The Rights of the Colonists" (here),

The supreme power cannot justly take from any man any part of his property, without his consent in person or by his representative. ... Every natural right not expressly given up, or, from the nature of a social compact, necessarily ceded, remains.

Similarly, Cato's Letters say,

The two great laws of human society, from whence all the rest derive their course and obligation, are those of equity and self-preservation: By the first all men are bound alike not to hurt one another; by the second all men have a right alike to defend themselves. ... Government therefore can have no power, but such as men can give...no man can give to another what is none of his own ... Nor has any man in the state of nature power...to take away the life of another, unless to defend his own, or what is as much his own, namely, his property. This power therefore, which no man has, no man can transfer to another. ... Nor could any man in the state of nature have a right to violate the property of another...as long as he himself was not injured by that industry and those enjoyments. No man therefore could transfer to the magistrate that right which he had not himself. ... No man in his senses was ever so wild as to give an unlimited power to another to take away his life, or the means of living... But if any man restrained himself from any part of his pleasures, or parted with any portion of his acquisitions, he did it with the honest purpose of enjoying the rest with greater security, and always in subservience to his own happiness, which no man will or can willingly and intentionally give away to any other whatsoever.

Therefore, most taxation is fundamentally illegal. No one can be taxed without his own personal approval, or the approval of his representative. No, not the majority of his representative's colleagues in Congress. I repeat: his own personal representative. The government has only those powers which men grant it, and no man can grant the government powers which he has not himself. The operative principle here is that of proxy, a delegate. So, since I cannot appropriate my neighbor's property without either his approval or that of his proxy, I cannot grant the government power to appropriate my neighbor's property. Thus, most taxes are unconstitutional. The fact that the majority voted for that tax is irrelevant. Majority rule has no validity or force when a specific and explicit right or obligation or liberty or responsibility in the Constitution has already spoken. For further explanation, see Dr. James A. Dorn's "The Rise of Government and the Decline of Morality" (here).

A King in Israel by Michael Wyschogrod - My Response

My friend Alex S. pointed me to "A King in Israel" by Michael Wyschogrod, here. He said,

Oy vey. Why don't otherwise intelligent people know how to read Tanakh? I really think a large part of the problems of Centrist Modern Orthodoxy would be resolved if they'd learn to read Tanakh.

I replied to my friend, saying:

I don't see any particular misreadings of Tanakh in this article. Could you please elaborate?

But I did see a lot of points by him with which I fundamentally disagree:

There appears to be an unbridgeable gap between three millennia of Jewish religious thought and the exigencies of modern governance.

No. The issue is not three millennia of Jewish thought, but rather, two millennia of absence of Jewish self-rule. In those two millenia, we forgot how to run a Jewish state. It is not Jewish thought that is our obstacle, but rather, Jewish reality. See Rav Kook and Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits.

Yet Judaism’s defining concept, the covenant, is inherently political, ...

Here, he is completely correct. The Calvinists built their entire edifice of political thought on the Biblical idea of the covenant, and the covenant eventually evolved into the familiar social-contract. So all democratic political thought today ultimately derives from the Biblical covenant.

Wyschogrod is also correct that the idea of a constitution relies on the fact that there is a higher power. Now, in one single generation, a constitution and such could be completely secular, because everyone is simply making an ordinary business contract. You can make a contract to buy and sell, and this works whether you are buying and selling products or goods, or liberties and rights and obligations. The problem, however, is how to ensure that future generations will feel obligated to uphold a contract that their ancestors made. The solution was to make the constitution incorporate and exemplify that which was seen as absolutely true and correct. Based on G-d and reason, the Framers of the Constitution formulated what they considered to be indisputable and incontrovertible principles, and based the Constitution on these. Since the principles of the Constitution were seen to be indisputable, there was no fear that future generations would dispute it. Even if the future generations didn't personally have a hand in crafting the Constitution, surely every one of them would agree they lack the ability to dispute the Truth (with a capital "T"). The mechanism to make amendments to the Constitution plugged up any possible remaining holes in the foregoing. But if you eliminate a belief in G-d and reason of the sort the Framers had, as most in America today have today, then the whole edifice collapses, and no one feels any obligation to even make a show at upholding the Constitution. Almost no one in Congress or the Supreme Court seems the slightest bit interested in the fact that almost every federal law today is unconstitutional.

However, Wyschogrod is wrong when he says that "[i]n a republic the people are sovereign". This is a false representation of what democracy is. The truth is that stated by Professors Paul K. Ryu and Helen Silving in their "The Foundations of Democracy: Its Origins and Essential Ingredients" (here and here), viz.

Common to all these [aforementioned] forms of [democratic] government is the assumption that the basic postulate of democracy is the majority rule, whereby the majority of the people in a community makes the decisions that are to govern. On this assumption most scholars trace the origins of 'democracy' to Greece. They disregard democracy's other constituent element, civil liberties. It seems to escape their attention that Socrates was sentenced to death in 'democratic Athens' for teaching dissenting views. In this essay we proceed on a more concise basic assumption, namely, that the essential of democracy is the status of the individual within society, his rights vis-à-vis the State, whereas the majority rule is but a compromise solution in a state of necessity.

What Silving and Ryu present is an example of what I said regarding constitutions. According to the Framers, every man has certain inalienable rights, and these are sacrosanct. Regarding these rights, popular will and consent of the governed are irrelevant. Every man has certain rights, and no one, whether by vote or by fiat, can do anything to infringe on these rights. The government does not grant rights; it respects and protects them. Votes and popular will are relevant only where there is not already a preexisting natural right. The Framers took this for granted, and built the Constitution around this notion. But most people today erroneously believe that voting and popular will per se are the centerpieces of democracy. But the truth is all democracy is, is a system of government by which the government has limited powers and exists only to safeguard the rights of the people and to make sure that man does not swallow his neighbor alive. The government is the proxy of the people, and it has only those powers which the people have granted it, and every man can grant it only those powers which he personally, as an individual, possesses. It is exactly like a business contract, and thus it is called the "social contract"; I cannot grant myself or my business associate any powers which I personally do not possess.

Wyschogrod says that the office of king is divinely sanctioned. I don't know where he gets this from. In the time until King Saul, we had only the zeqeinim, the tribal chiefs. Each tribe was a self-governing political entity, and the Torah tells us nothing about how they were to govern themselves. We know that the Torah was their constitution, and so every law and deed of theirs had to accord with the Torah, but beyond this, they had full freedom to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, however they wanted. All we know from the Torah was that G-d did not want us to have a king, and the book of Samuel confirms this. The Torah tells us very little about politics except that we should avoid kingship. The parallel to American states is uncanny, and this fact did not escape the attention of the Framers of the Constitution, who compared the 13 colonies to the 12 tribes of Israel.

It is probably for this reason that monarchy is so repugnant to secularists.

This is exactly wrong, completely and totally wrong. Historically, it was the secularists who desired kingship, and it was the very religious Calvinists and Puritans, and their intellectual descendants (such as John Locke) who opposed monarchy. For a secularist, might makes right, and if a man happens to win for himself the office of king, there is no reason for him to not do whatever he wants. For a secularist, utilitarianism and pragmatism rule, and self-interest is the only law. But for a religious man, all men are created equally, in G-d's image, and no man has any right to rule over his fellow except according to the terms laid down by G-d. It is for this reason that the men most often charged with incitement to rebellion and regicide were all religious Calvinists and Puritans. It was King James who rejected the Puritans' desire to get rid of bishops, for King James understood that after getting rid of bishops, that the Puritans would next get rid of kings, for the Protestants did not want any hierarchical authority save that of G-d and His Torah. Instead of rex lex ("the king is law"), they said lex rex ("the law is king). Francis Schaeffer's A Christian Manifesto makes it clear that at the heart of secularism is a chauvinism, an arrogance, that derives from the fact that the man in power has no one above him. Might makes right, and there is no reason for the man to curb his own desires. Only a religious man believes that whatever his material station in life, that he remains no greater or more worthy than any of his contemporaries, and that he has no right to lord over them. Wyschogrod says "Since the French Revolution, monarchies have been on the wane and republics, on the rise.", but the truth is that the French Revolution resulted in a king, viz. Napolean, and in truth, the wane of monarchies and the rise of republics began with the Protestant Reformation. In fact, John Calvin held the ideal government to be a democratic republican. He said that monarchies tended to tyranny and pure democracies to sedition, and so he advocated a democratic oligarchy, which he said would balance these two concerns. The Protestant Reformation was primarily a political struggle against the Catholic Church, a hierarchical authority, and it was easy for them to oppose secular authority the same way they opposed religious authority. The structure of the government of the United States was actually largely based on the political structure of the Presbyterian Church in New England.

Jewish sovereignty existed in full measure only during the rule of the kings of ancient Israel.

So the rule by the shofetim and zeqeinim was not real sovereignty? What was it then? The Tanakh presents the Jews' choosing a king as a sin, and so it must be that choosing a king decreased Jewish sovereignty, not increased it. As long as we lacked kings, only G-d and His Torah were king, which means that there is more Jewish sovereignty, not less.

His first choice is the Kingship of God, who, because he does not speak to the people directly, uses a prophet to transmit the word of God to the people. In this form of rule, exemplified by Moses’ rule over Israel, God employs the prophet to communicate not only generalities to the people but also concrete legal judgments, ...

--- This seems false. We learn that lo bashamayim hi, that we do not rule halakhah based on prophecy. Rambam codifies this as an absolute law, that a prophet cannot rule law based on prophecy, and that if he does, his offense is a capital one. According to Rabbi Zadok ha-Kohen of Lublin, the spies feared to enter Israel because they wanted to remain in the desert, where all halakhah was straight from G-d. They knew that upon entering the land of Israel, man would have to rule halakhah based on his own human reason and logic, with only the text of the Torah and the mesorah of the Oral Law to guide him, and this terrified them. But it was G-d's will that His children gain independence from Him and chart their own path, which is why He laughed with joy when they finally defeated Him. The Torah is our constitution, but beyond anything not explicitly stated in it (or in the Oral Law), we have full prerogative and privilege, and this is the glory of the Torah. But because the Torah alone is our guiding light, G-d, its author, remains our king, even if He is a dead and silent one, as it were. But these and those are the words of the living G-d, for even though He is silent, He lives through His Torah, and He reigns through it as well.

...and the authority of the king is not derived from the governed...

The Torah explicitly says otherwise. When discussing the selection of a king, the Torah says the people must select the king. The Torah says nothing of a self-selected elite choosing the king. According to the Yerushalmi, King David was not truly a king as long as he ruled over Judah from Hebron, for during that time, the entire nation had not yet accepted him. (I am indebted to Rabbi Yuval Cherlow at Yeshivat Hesder Petah Tiqwa for revealing this source to me.) Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman discusses this subject at great length.

There never has been a moment in Jewish history, though, when the sovereign Jewish people were ruled by rabbinic scholars. Whether in the Babylonian exile or in medieval Europe, rabbis played an important role in guiding the lives of Jews, but this was always in the context of Jewish subordination to non-Jewish rulers. Jewish sovereignty existed in full measure only with the rule of Jewish kings.

This is partly correct, but partly incorrect. In the Babylonian exile, the Jews ruled themselves via the exilarch, the resh galuta, and in Europe, Jewish communities had parnasim, lay community-leaders, and the rabbi was hired on contract, and wielded no authority except that which the people granted him. (Rabbi S. R. Hirsch's essay "Jewish Community Life" in Judaism Eternal is an excellent source regarding the fundamentally democratic nature of halakhah and the Jewish community.) The reason that in Babylonia and Europe, rabbis failed to wield total power, was not because of non-Jewish rule, but rather, was because of lay-Jewish rule over the rabbis.

The author's final suggestion, however, is interesting. For us to select a regent with almost no powers at all, is an interesting interim solution for us to have until we have a king. I would further suggest that we could even have a bona fide full Jewish king, a descendant of King David, and again, grant him almost no power. We could decide that his only powers are ceremonial, and yet we could call him "king", and so we would have a descendant of King David holding the throne, but exercising no power. Israel would essentially be like England today. Our king would be a king in name but not in power. But this would be fine. The prophets declare that we'll have a king, but they never set down his powers. Lo bashamayim hi, and the permission is granted us to limit the powers of a king until his office is bereft of everything but mere title.

Talk-show Host Gabi Gazit Calls for Expulsion of Haredim from Israel

Radio host: Haredim, settlers are leeches, parasites (Y-Net): "Talk-show host Gabi Gazit draws fire for slamming settlers, calling for expulsion of haredim."

I.

So if you speak this way against Arabs who commit terrorism and detonate cafes, you're a racist, but if you speak this way against Haredim who burn flags and don't teach their children secular studies, you're alright and okay. Hmm....

Right now, the Israeli government panders to the Haredim, giving them school funding even thought they don't teach secular studies, and giving them welfare even though they don't attempt to seek gainful employment. The easiest solution to the Haredi problem, it seems to me, is to simply stop pandering to them, and to remove all the crony-ism and reverse discrimination. Stop pandering to them and offering them a free lunch, and instead hold them responsible and accountable for their actions like all citizens, and the problem is solved!

But Gabi Gazit - and most leftists - instead seek to retain the status quo, to retain all the cronyism and corruption and pandering, and then, when this creates an unbearable problem, they can scream, "Look at how bad things are! We must take drastic and horrific action!". People like Gazit don't want to deny the Haredim funding for their schools, so instead, they want to let things fester until the problem is unbearable so that they can then expel the Haredim from Israel. Disgusting.

This guy ought to get a thousand times what anyone said Rav Kahane deserved.

II.

I've spoken to many Israelis, and nearly all of them have a peculiar belief that one is obligated to obey the elected government without exception, with no right of protest or disobedience. According to them, a democratically-elected government has an ontological significance and is beyond any accusations of wrongdoing, and it lacks any accountability or responsibility. According to them, citizens are only to vote and nothing else.

So if someone believes this, then he is personally and individually complicit in any wrong-doing of the Israeli government. If you believe you cannot protest against the government, and if you believe you must accept the government's actions as legitimate without exception - and many if not most Israelis hold this, according to my conversations with Israelis in Jerusalem and Petah Tiqwa and my reading Israeli newspapers - then one is personally culpable for all wrongdoing by the government.

In other words: every individual Israeli who holds by this statism which I have described, he individually and personally is at fault for the current situation with the Haredim. It is he who says that one cannot protest against a government that panders to the Haredim and practices cronyism, and so he is personally responsible for the wrongs of the Haredim. Whatever wrongs the Haredim do today, the hilonim are largely to blame, because of their tyrannical and statist political ideology.

Obama Takes a Page from the Christian Bible

I just realized that we keep the Constitution so that Obama doesn't have to!

To quote a few idiots from the Washington Post's "Militia movement will be packing heat at gun rally on the Potomac":

Our founders thought they got rid of political violence with the Constitution. That was its point. The basic idea of America is one person, one vote, equality.

So I guess obeying the Constitution isn't important? As long as it sits there, gathering dust in the corner, we're all good? Its mere existence protects us from political violence, without its being actually followed? And since when was "one person, one vote" a principle? If that were so, we could just put everything to referendum and get rid of every branch of the government. What do we need a president, parliament, or judiciary for if all we have to do is vote on referendum? What need have we for the electoral college or the checks and balances, or anything designed to protect against tyranny of the majority?

They are calling health care and taxes that have been duly enacted by a democratically elected Congress tyrannical, and they feel they have a right to confront that individually.

So we're supposed to obey the majority? I thought the Federalist Papers and Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America wrote against tyranny of the majority, but I guess I was mistaken. And according to the classical sources of American political culture, such as the Framers of the Constitution, etc., a man can be taxed only by his own approval or by the approval of his representative. This principle is explicit in Samuel Adams's The Rights of the Colonists, for example. If so, a man who voted Republican cannot be taxed even if the Democratic majority of Congress supports that tax, because the man's own representative did not approve of the tax. A government cannot have any power save those which the people delegated it as their proxy, and no man can grant the government a power which he himself lacks. If I cannot tax my neighbor without my neighbor's approval (or that of his representative), then the government cannot either. But I guess all this old-fashioned American democratic thinking is now obsolete?

John Locke's Commentary on Romans 13

David Kopel has written a fascinating essay about Jonathan Mayhew's famous sermon of 30 January 1750, "A Discourse concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers: With some Reflections on the Resistance made to King Charles I. And on the Anniversary of his Death: In which the Mysterious Doctrine of that Prince's Saintship and Martyrdom is Unriddled": The Catechism of the Revolution

Mayhew's sermon can be found online unabridged here. and several excerpts are available: (1) (2) (3)

But I wish to focus on one remark of Kopel's:

The "Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission" [by Mayhew] presented a popularly accessible form of John Locke's analysis of Paul's epistle to the Romans. Its central idea is that the Christian duty to submit to governments that govern justly creates a correlative duty to resist and overthrow governments that are tyrannical, since unjust government is the very antithesis of true Christian government. Like most other Congregationalist ministers, Mayhew had studied Locke at Harvard, and considered him a Christian intellectual ally.

Given this, I now present John Locke's commentary on Romans 13, concerning the allegiance one owes government:

(Obviously, I myself am more concerned with what Locke says than with what Paul did.)

Judaism, Democracy, and Health-Care Reform: A Reply to Dr. Jonathan Tobin

In the most recent issue of Conversations was published an article by Dr. Jonathan Tobin, "'Am I My Brother's Keeper?' A Tale of Two Brothers and Health Reform" (http://www.jewishideas.org/articles/am-i-my-brothers-keeper-tale-two-brothers-and-healt).

I am sorry to say that not only did I fail to find his article insightful, but that in fact, I found it positively inciteful and insensitive.

I.

Dr. Tobin discusses the contemporary debate over health-care reform, presenting it as epitomized in the paradigmatic dispute between Cain and Joseph. The former asked "Am I my brother's keeper", while the latter saved Egypt from famine. Whereas Cain was selfish and lacked regard for others, Joseph cared about his fellow man. According to Dr. Tobin, this debate continues today. In other words, Dr. Tobin compares the contemporary opponents of health reform to a man who murdered his brother in cold blood. I hope I do not need to explain how horrifically offensive and incendiary such an odious comparison is. The fact is that the opponents of health-care reform are drive by a skepticism of whether the economy can support universal health-care. As my brother has remarked, you cannot get blood from a stone, and the government cannot create wealth from nowhere. If there is not enough money to provide expensive drugs to everyone, then this is an unfortunate reality we must reluctantly accept. But a casual and flippant disregard for human life plays no role, and it is criminal for Dr. Tobin to accuse people like my brother of murder.

II.

As an aside, unrelated to what Dr. Tobin's article states, I have heard that Rabbi Dr. Tendler has "proven" that it is a Torah mandate to provide health care to all, comparing it to standing by while your fellow's blood is shed. Furthermore, we are to suppose that economic considerations are irrelevant, because this is a question of a Torah mitzvah. Based on all this, it is argued that we have an obligation to support socialized health-care. (I apologize to Rabbi Tendler if I have misheard your views.) But there are several flaws with this logic:

1. It assumes that the mitzvah to save another's life is absolute. But Hazal teach that one need not unduly threaten one's own life. For example, if you cannot swim, you need not rescue someone who is drowning, and if someone is being held captive at gunpoint, you need not try to tackle the gun-armed hostage-taker. That's why you don't have to get on a plane and fly to every trouble-spot on earth and save everyone who's in trouble; it costs too much time and money, and one isn't obligated to save someone being raped right now on the other side of the ocean. So why should we have to bankrupt ourselves paying for medical care? Hazal forbid us to pay more than 10% on tzedaqa, and I don't see why paying for others' medical care shouldn't count in this 10%. Imagine you make X number of dollars, and the government taxes 1/3 of your money. Further imagine that your employer is being taxed at 1/3, and so, were there no taxes, he'd make 1.5 times more money, and be willing to pay you 1.5 times more. So without taxes, you'd make 1.5X, but instead, you're making only 2/3*X. You're making 4/9 of what you should be, and 5/9 - more than half - of your money is going to taxes. That is far more than the 10% which Hazal allow!! Now, let's suppose that half of your tax money is benefiting yourself. That still means the other half is benefiting others, and that means that 2.5/9 of your money, approximately 28%, is going towards helping others as tzedaqa. According to Hazal, this is forbidden. So, yes, traditionally, there was universal health care run by each individual Jewish community. But back then, we didn't have the kinds of expensive drugs and equipment we have today. I don't think a few herbal poultices cost the same back then (correcting for inflation) that drugs today do, so it's absurd to say that since they had universal health care back then, then we must today.
   
   
2. A second flaw in this logic is that it has an error of essentialism, of assuming the government has some special intrinsic meaning. They forget that mitzvot are directed to individuals, not to nations. Every individual Noahide has a mitzvah to establish courts, and every individual Jew has a mitzvah to appoint shoftrim v'shotrim (judges and officers). (See Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman's article,"God's Alliance with Man" (http://www.createdequalthebook.com/publications.html) for an explanation.) The obligation to provide health care is on each individual to pay tzedaqa. There is no mitzvah for the government to pay for health care, since in the Torah, there is no such thing as government. The Torah addresses the mitzvot to individuals, not to governments. Governments as such have no existence in the Torah, and they are nothing more than the sum of their individual office-holders. The best argument against this essentialism which I have seen comes from Thomas Paine's "The American Crisis", no. 1 (http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/Paine/Crisis/Crisis-1.html):

   Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER," and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God. ... My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other.

   And since there is no such thing as a nation or a government according to the Torah, except as the sum of its individual office-holders (who are all each nothing more than ordinary citizens with no special powers at all, save those powers which the people have delegated them as their proxies), then, if one claims that we must have universal health-care, then, by this logic, aren't we obligated to pay for everyone's health care, all over the world? What difference is there between the United States and elsewhere? By what logic should universal health-care, as paid for by the American taxpayers, be confined to the borders of America? Are we racists or nationalists, that we believe Americans to be superior to other human beings? According to the Torah, the United States is not a nation, and so if you say there must be universal health care, then we must pay for the entire world's health care. I'd like to see the United States afford that.
   
   On top of all that, every Jewish community paid for its own health care. If there were universal health care mandated by each state or community or county for itself, then I'd be far less critical. A traditional Jewish community - as Professor Menahem Friedman argues ad nauseum in his writings - was geographically-defined, including all of the Jewish individuals who happened to fall within its geographic domain, irrespective of ideology or observance. Such a Jewish community - otherwise known as a kehillah - was governed by parnasim, laymen appointed by the community's residents to govern the community as proxies, shelihim. These parnasim had only the authority granted them by the residents - and not one iota more - and they could be removed at will by the citizens, especially if they were considered to be derelict in their responsibilities toward the community. Rabbis were hired on contract, and they had only the abilities stipulated in their contracts. At the termination of the contract, the citizens could decide not to re-hire the rabbi, and of course, if he violated his contract at any time, he could be dealt with according to the terms of the contract touching on that contingency. Dayanim too were appointed by the citizens of the locale, with similar contractual obligations. In short, what we see is that in a traditional Jewish community, the community was a tightly-interwoven entity, in that it constituted a geographic reality of people living and working together, an objective society with great ontological significance, hardly artificial at all. Furthermore, the officers of that community - rabbi, dayanim, and parnasim - all had contractual obligations towards the governed, and were held accountable to those terms. And irrespective of those contracts, I invite you to imagine for a moment what would happen were that rabbi or those dayanim or those parnasim to abuse their power, even in a way not forbidden by their contracts: they'd face a revolt by the people. If the dayanim made a ruling which was widely seen as unjust, for example, then the people would simply ignore him. On top of all that, if anyone disliked his community or its leaders - or its residents and his neighbors, for that matter - he could relocate himself to a different community. Thus, John Locke declares that a government may assume tacit consent of its citizens, because it can figure that if the citizens haven't moved, they must like the government's policies. But where the citizens cannot move, this assumption cannot be made. For example, the entirety of the American colonists were unable to leave the thirteen British colonies, and thus, the British could not assume tacit tacit, and Locke's theory did not apply in that case. All those conditions are all taken for granted by the halakhah. Given such a community, then one could certainly have coerced the rich to pay for the poor. Given that the community is a social reality, a real objective entity, and given that one's living there entails obligations to one's neighbors and given that a contractual obligation imposed on all residents is adherence to the minhag ha-maqom (i.e. local communal custom), therefore, one may coerce the rich. Realizing this, Moshe Feiglin has said, in his article Judaism and Democracy for Israel

   Israel's Jewish constitution must institute district elections, as is common practice in the vast majority of democracies in the world. In that way, Israel's communities will be revived. (They were all united into one large socialist collective when the state was born). Every community will decide on its Jewish public character. There is no doubt that the absolute majority of communities will choose to preserve their Jewish identity. Even the residents of predominantly secular Ramat Aviv preferred closing their local mall on Shabbat – once they were finally asked.

   But in America, the above conditions are not met. The entirety of the fifty states of America are not one single solitary geographically-defined self-contained community, and so one cannot speak of a minhag ha-maqom (i.e. communal custom) demanding that the rich abide by the communal by-laws demanding support for the poor. One does not have the ability to relocate if he is displeased, because the federal government rules all fifty states equally. Were each state independent, then each state could assume tacit consent to its laws by all citizens, but this is not the case today, because the federal government has usurped so many prerogatives of the states. And presently, the people of America do not have the ability to rise in revolt and ignore the rulings of the government when they become tyrannical. To allow such a revolt, the Bill of Rights included the right to bear arms, guaranteeing that the government did not have a monopoly on force, but today, the people have been stripped of their weapons at the same time that the government has amassed its own.
   
   Some will argue that the concept of dina d'malkhuta dina in Bava Qama 113 shows that we have an obligation to obey the law. According to this concept of dina d'malkhuta dina - literally, "the law of the land is law", a Jew must obey the civil laws of the country in which he lives. But if you check the commentaries on that, you'll see that some (such as the Ran in Drashot ha-Ran, according to Rabbi Emanuel Rackman's One Man's Judaism) say that it applies only in lands where Jews are guests. According to the Ran, the concept therefore doesn't apply in Israel, because Jews are not guests in Israel. Thus, non-Jews similarly in their own lands are not bound by dina d'malkhuta dina, the same way that Jews in Israel are not. The reason is that when someone inhabits his own land, no government has any particular authority over him, except that granted by the individual under the social contract, his consent to be governed. Only when one is a guest in someone else's land must be accept whatever onerous conditions the government places on him. It is for this reason that according to dina d'malkhuta dina, a Jew must pay taxes to the government even if it taxes Jews more than gentiles and passes other discriminatory legislation. Such discrimination s of course unfair and disgusting, but if the Jew doesn't like it, then he can leave. A Jew in Poland is a guest of the Polish people, and he must accept whatever conditions are placed on his habitation, however onerous. But when a Jew lives in Israel, or a gentile lives in whatever place he is a citizen of, then he is not bound to accept whatever the government says merely because the government said. Likewise, I should think, Jews in America are not bound by dina d'malkhuta dina, since Jews are equal citizens just like the non-Jews, the latter of which are of course not bound by dina d'malkhuta dina. Such a concept does not apply in America, whether for Jews or for gentiles, I should hope, because America is a democracy. The government of America has effectively declared the concept of dina d'malkhuta dina null and void, given that democracy (the law of the people is law) and dina d'malkhuta dina (the law of the state is law) contradict.
   
   Some will say that, according to Hazal, no democratic participation is necessary for a government to have the right to tax. Okay then, I am hereby declaring myself the government of your house, and I hereby demand you pay me 50% of your wages as taxes. NOW. I am unilaterally declaring myself the government, and I demand that respect my authority. Acceptance or rejection of my authority is irrelevant. The truth, however, is that according to Rambam (Hilkhot Geziela v'Aveida 5:18 - I am indebted to my friend David Rosenberg for showing me this source).

   In what case is this relevant (regarding the right of a ruler to collect taxes)? When his currency is accepted in those lands (because that indicates that) the residents of those areas accepted his governance and accepted him as their governor.

   In other words, some sort of Locke-ian social contract is at work, and it is only the acceptance of the government's authority by the people which gives it the right to tax.

III.

Dr. Tobin later states, "Informed consent is critical to any health-care treatment decision ... and the consent process (ideally) takes the form of an unpressured conversation, and presumes autonomy ... to make an informed and non-coerced decision ...". It is interesting that Dr. Tobin fails to ever consider the informed-consent and autonomy and right to non-coercion of the taxpayers. Dr. Tobin believes that the opponents of health-care reform are driven by a selfish lack of regard for others, but I believe it is more likely that rather, they simply are skeptical of whether the government has the right to appropriate money without the consent of the taxpayers and distribute that money in ways which the taxpayers do not approve of.

In the Torah, we find the case of the slave who does not wish to leave his master. The Torah prescribes that his ear shall be bored with an awl, and Hazal explain that the man whose ear heard at Sinai, "I am the Lord your God", and yet who nevertheless accepted a new lord upon himself a new lord, his ear shall be bored. We are taught that the same reasoning is behind the dictum that ein shaliah b'davar `averah, that one cannot claim innocence for obeying unjust or immoral orders. The Congregationalist preachers in colonial Massachusetts were fond of teaching that true liberty is found only in observance of G-d's laws, that true freedom is found in obedience to higher law, and that there is no truly free man except he who obeys G-d, and this notion ought to be familiar to Orthodox Jews from Pirqei Avot. As for ein shaliah b'davar `averah, the Calvinists in Scotland and Switzerland founded federalism - which of course is the basis of American politics - on the notion that one must obey G-d when the king's commands contradict G-d's. So we see that the fundamental teachings of the Torah and the Talmud on freedom and liberty are in striking agreement with those of the Calvinists and Congregationalists whose views formed the foundation of federalism in America and whose views still inspire many libertarians. On 16 April 2010, at the Tea Party rally, I saw no small number of banners proclaiming that obedience to G-d comes before obedience to the government (quoting Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson that "Rebellion to Tyrants if Obedience to G-d"), and one banner proclaimed that if 10% charity was good enough for Jesus (I wonder where Jesus got 10% from? - v'ha-meivin yavin), then it ought to be good enough for the government as well.

When the people asked Samuel for a king, God told Samuel that in asking for a king, the people had rejected God as king. In fact, when God first gave us the Torah, He first asked us whether we'd like to accept it, and only when we accepted it, saying "Na'aseh v'nishma", did God hold us accountable and responsibility. The Torah directs the people as a corporate whole to appoint judges and officers, and in the unfortunate event that the people desire a king, the Torah tells us that the people at large shall choose a king. According to the Yerushalmi, King David was not a king as long as he reigned over Judea from Hebron, because the whole nation had not yet accepted him. (I am thankful to Rabbi Yuval Cherlow at Yeshivat Hesder Petah Tiqwa for pointing out this Yerushalmi, during a shiur of his on Tanakh.) In short, we find a consistent desire on the part of the Torah and Hazal to tell us that coercion is to be rejected and autonomy and freedom of choice to be embraced instead. Even God left the acceptance of the Torah up to our choice - can humans then do any less with their own laws?

It would appear that the Torah's and Hazal's democratic concerns have been voiced by more recent Jewish authorities as well. In Rabbi Dr. Marc D. Angel's The Jews of Rhodes, we read (p. 26),

One of the persistent and complex problems associated with haskamoth [communal ordinances, similar to taqanoth, except passed for social or economic reasons rather than religious ones, but with the same binding nature of a religious law as taqanoth] was the question of whether the majority the right to pass an ordinance over the objection of a dissenting minority of the community. Does the majority rule, or is unanimity imperative? Over the centuries this question evoked considerable rabbinic discussion.

It seems the Jews of Rhodes resolved this dilemma by distinguishing between different types of haskamoth. In matters involving an improvement that was needed for the general community, a majority was sufficient to enact a haskamah. But in matters involving taxation, a unanimous decision was required in order to protect individuals from a barrage of levies imposed on them by the majority of the community. In the final analysis, the situation surrounding each haskamah had to be carefully evaluated before determining whether a majority or unanimity was required for its adoption.

Rabbinic law allowed for the institution of herem, excommunication, in order to give communities power to enforce their laws. Yet, herem was more a threat than an actual procedure.

As Rabbi Angel's larger discussion shows, many (if not most) of these haskamoth were regarding tzedaqa to the poor. So the community accepted that it could not pass a new haskamah, even for the poor and for tzedaqa, without unanimous approval by the community. In other words, the Jews of Rhodes were concerned with the tyranny of the majority no less than Alexis de Tocqueville and the Federalist Papers were, even regarding the issue of tzedaqa. We see that the Jews of Rhodes were very reluctant to coerce the minority to pay taxes for the benefit of the poor, even given all that I have discussed above, regarding the nature of a kehillah. It seems the Jews of Rhodes did not want to be navalim birshut ha-torah ("scoundrels with the license of the Torah", according to the RambaN] and take advantage of their technical right to coerce the rich even for the sake of the poor.

According to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the Tower of Babel was a war on God, an invasion of His domain, so to speak, because the state turned its citizens into cogs and make them tools to build a tower for the self-aggrandizement of the state. Statism, says Rabbi Hirsch, is idolatry, because it not only replaces God, but it also turns His children into cogs, so that one cries when a brick falls but not when a man falls. Furthermore, in his essay "Jewish Communal Life", an essay concerned entirely with the democratic nature of Rabbinic Judaism, Rabbi Hirsch criticizes the Reform Jews in Germany for enlisting the government in coercing and oppressing Orthodox Judaism, and then Rabbi Hirsch turns right around and criticizes Orthodox rabbis who enlisted the government to coerce and oppress Reform Judaism! According to Rabbi Hirsch, government intervention in such matters is forbidden, period, regardless of whether the cause is true (in the case of Orthodox Judaism prevailing over Reform) or false (vice versa). Rabbi Hirsch views statism as fundamentally illegitimate. I find it sad that so many Jews have rejected liberalism and have rallied behind illiberal socialism instead, ignoring the tzelem eloqim of every individual, and his right to personal autonomy and individual freedom of choice.

Is it anything but barbaric and inhumane tyranny when 60% of the community presumes to impose its vision and ideals on the other 40%? The Democrats have managed to just barely secure a majority, and they use this to coerce the unwilling minority into accepting their policies. Is there anything more undemocratic? As Henry David Thoreau says in his "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (http://www.panarchy.org/thoreau/disobedience.1848.html),

After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.

And as Ralph Waldo Emerson says in his "Politics (http://www.panarchy.org/emerson/politics.1844.html),

Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows. My right and my wrong, is their right and their wrong. Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, my neighbour and I shall often agree in our means, and work together for a time to one end. But whenever I find my dominion over myself not sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of him also, I overstep the truth, and come into false relations to him. I may have so much more skill or strength than he, that he cannot express adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, and hurts like a lie both him and me. Love and nature cannot maintain the assumption: it must be executed by a practical lie, namely, by force. This undertaking for another, is the blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the world. It is the same thing in numbers, as in a pair, only not quite so intelligible. I can see well enough a great difference between my setting myself down to a self-control, and my going to make somebody else act after my views: but when a quarter of the human race assume to tell me what I must do, I may be too much disturbed by the circumstances to see so clearly the absurdity of their command. Therefore, all public ends look vague and quixotic beside private ones. For, any laws but those which men make for themselves, are laughable. If I put myself in the place of my child, and we stand in one thought, and see that things are thus or thus, that perception is law for him and me. We are both there, both act. But if, without carrying him into the thought, I look over into his plot, and, guessing how it is with him, ordain this or that, he will never obey me. This is the history of governments, - one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labour shall go to this or that whimsical end, not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts, men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, except for these.

According to Samuel Adams's "The Rights of the Colonists" (http://history.hanover.edu/texts/adamss.html), "The supreme power cannot justly take from any man any part of his property, without his consent in person or by his representative." (And no one who voted for a Republican can be presumed to be represented by the Democratic majority in the federal government today. Therefore, it cannot be presumed that his representatives have consented, for in fact, they have not.) Furthermore, he says, "Every natural right not expressly given up, or, from the nature of a social compact, necessarily ceded, remains." In other words, the government has only those powers which the people have granted it, and not one iota more. A man has certain actions which he may permissibly take with his own hands, and he may appoint proxies to take those actions for him. The government is but a proxy, and so the government cannot possibly have any powers which the people do not have themselves. If I may not break into another's home and take his money for the poor, then I cannot grant the government the same power either. And in any case, the people must not only possess this power, but they must explicitly and deliberately delegate this power to the government in their constitution; the government cannot arrogate this power to itself. A similar perspective is evinced by Cato's Letters:

The two great laws of human society, from whence all the rest derive their course and obligation, are those of equity and self-preservation: By the first all men are bound alike not to hurt one another; by the second all men have a right alike to defend themselves. ... Government therefore can have no power, but such as men can give...no man can give to another what is none of his own ... Nor has any man in the state of nature power...to take away the life of another, unless to defend his own, or what is as much his own, namely, his property. This power therefore, which no man has, no man can transfer to another. ... Nor could any man in the state of nature have a right to violate the property of another...as long as he himself was not injured by that industry and those enjoyments. No man therefore could transfer to the magistrate that right which he had not himself. ... No man in his senses was ever so wild as to give an unlimited power to another to take away his life, or the means of living... But if any man restrained himself from any part of his pleasures, or parted with any portion of his acquisitions, he did it with the honest purpose of enjoying the rest with greater security, and always in subservience to his own happiness, which no man will or can willingly and intentionally give away to any other whatsoever.

As Dr. James A. Dorn shows in "The Rise of Government and the Decline of Morality" (http://www.cato.org/pubs/catosletters/cl-12.pdf), taxation and welfare are most likely unconstitutional, and honesty and decency dictate that if the Democrats wish to have a socialistic welfare state, that they hold a new constitutional convention. If they wish to fundamentally alter the basis of our government, then they ought to admit this and hold a new constitutional convention, and admit that our present constitution offers them no basis for their legislation. Allow me to also quote the Constitution itself:

The Congress shall have power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

In other words: taxes, duties, and imposts may be collected to pay for:

1. National debt (in other words, to decrease the debt, but not to provide the money to pay for laws and programs which would otherwise constitute debt were it not for those taxes)
2. General welfare, which of course means only those things that are otherwise already granted to the Federal Government elsewhere in the Constitution, similarly to how "necessary and proper" means only those things otherwise granted to the Federal Government already by the Constitution. It cannot be otherwise, even though others more eminent, authoritative, learned, and wise than myself have interpreted "general welfare" and "necessary and proper" exceedingly broadly. We must interpret these phrases narrowly and no broadly, for otherwise, these two phrases are carte blancs, which would grant Congress a literally unlimited power with no constraints whatsoever. For whatever Congress wanted to do - anything and everything it wanted to do, limited only by human imagination and capability - would be declared by Congress to be "general welfare" and "necessary and proper". To make an extreme example, with apologies to Godwin: one could declare the genocide of the Jews to be in the "general welfare" and "necessary and proper". So if the Framers took all the trouble to delineate very precisely the powers of Congress, for the express purpose of limiting the federal government, why would they erase all their earlier work with a carte blanc? Furthermore, if Congress were granted unlimited power and carte blanc, then how are we to interpret the Tenth Amendment, viz. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."? If we interpret "necessary and proper" and "general welfare" broadly, then the federal government already has every power imaginable to man, and there is literally nothing left not-delegated, to be reserved to the states and people.

In short, then, Congress has the power to tax for two purposes:

1. To pay for debt, which means to pay for already extant debts, not to pay for programs and social-engineering which would create a debt absent taxes;
2. To pay for anything which the Constitution already allows Congress, such as an army or the mint to coin and print money.

Samuel Adams concludes,

In short, it is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.

At the very least, any health-care reform should be initiated and managed by local governments. A local government is more acquainted with its citizens, and the citizens are more able to petition and lobby and present their grievances. But when a faraway federal government engages in ultramontanism (see the last paragraph of Dr. Jacob Katz's essay "DA'AT TORAH - The Unqualified Authority Claimed for Halachists" (http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/Gruss/katz.html) for an explanation), and presumes to legislate for those far beyond its acquaintance and familiarity, and presumes to arrogate itself powers not expressly granted in the constitution (for all such powers, not expressly granted, belong to the states), then any reforms or laws passed by that federal government are fundamentally illegitimate. Furthermore, if a state passes a law which an individual dislikes, he may move to another state, but what is he to do in the case of an entire national government passing a law? According to John Locke, a government may assume tacit consent on the part of its citizens, and assume they approve of its laws. But this assumption of tacit consent relies on the fact that citizens are able to relocate themselves if they dislike the laws. Rousseau's social contract, for example, was intended for a small city-state like Geneva, and Professors Paul K. Ryu and Helen Silving suggest ("The Foundations of Democracy: Its Origins and Essential Ingredients", http://s-space.snu.ac.kr/bitstream/10371/4589/1/law_v33n1_079.pdf) that the French Revolution was so bloody largely because the French attempted to apply Rousseau's theory to the entire country of France. According to Samuel Adams, "All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.", but how today is a man to leave the "society" of the federal government? In the days when the constitution was obeyed and the states were supreme, Locke-ian social contract prevailed, and one could express his rejection of the government and withdraw his consent to be governed under the social contract. But where today do we see this right being honored? According to Locke, the first two steps one should take before rebellion are first lobbying and petitioning the ruler, and second, relocating oneself. By expanding the federal government at the expense of the state governments, the Democrats (and many Republicans) are negating the possibility of relocation by citizens, and they offer no alternative save rebellion, according to John Locke's theory of the social contract. For example, the state governments spent years petitioning the British to redress their grievances, and because there was no possibility of relocating and executing a mass evacuation of the thirteen colonies, the states had no recourse save but to declare war and rebel against Britain. (Everything I've said here is also an excellent reason for us to rely on local city and congregational rabbis and not on roshei ha-yeshiva, but that is another matter.)

IV.

At this point, people usually cry that I am exhibiting what Pirqei Avot calls midat sodom, viz. the man who says "What is mine is mine and what is yours is yours". That is, they say I am cruel, in saying that every man should be for himself. But this is most certainly not what I am saying. I am not saying that the poor should pay for themselves and the rich should have a grand old time. Rather, I am saying that governments should not be concerning themselves with social engineering. But individuals are still perfectly entitled to donate to their chosen causes. The beauty of democracy is that citizens may join factions and private interests and pool their resources for common causes. If every Democrat in America wished to form a private charity to send money to inner-city blacks, for example, then that would be a beautiful and commendable thing. I just don't think this is the government's concern. However, the fact that people criticize me as they do points to a very pernicious happening. For these detractors of mine, if the government does not do something, then it won't get done. These people have despaired of any possibility of man saving himself. Like stereotypical Christians, they believe that they are doomed to sin, and that someone else must vicariously save them. According to them, either the government must save the poor, or the poor will starve. These people have forgotten that private citizens can accomplish the good themselves. This is truly tragic that so many have been so morally enfeebled.

The Constitution has not granted the government these powers of social-engineering, and as we should all be law-abiding citizens, I believe we should really be concerned with what the Constitution says. Furthermore, even if the social causes which the government supports - such as combating pollution and poverty - are truly positive and beneficial, nevertheless, they constitute, in my opinion, a mitzvah ha-ba'ah b`averah, a mitzvah (positive commandment) done via an `averah (a sin). For example, to help the poor by robbing others would be a mitzvah ha-ba'ah b`averah. If you do a mitzvah only via first doing a sin, then your mitzvah is no mitzvah at all. You cannot do a good deed by doing a bad deed. Something is only as strong as its weakest link, and thus, the ends do not justify the means. If the government has no authority to engage in social engineering, then any good it accomplishes was accomplished only by breaking the law and stealing from non-consenting taxpayers, and so the government's mitzvot are not mitzvot at all.

To return to the accusation that I exhibit midat sodom, "What is mine is mine and what is yours is yours", I believe that rather, I am the hasid, the pious one, who says, "What's mine is yours and what's yours is yours". According to me, I can freely give tzedaqa to the poor, and the poor can keep their own money. But those in favor of socialized health-care, I believe they exhibit midat `am ha-aretz, the ignorant fool who says, "What's mine is yours and what's yours is mine." According to Pirqei Avot, those who believe in socialism are simply ignorant fools. They are not evil, but they are foolish. (The evil one, according to Avot, says, "What's yours is mine and what's mine is mine.")

I am not an anarchist; I am not opposed to government per se. I simply wish a government that acts according to classical liberalism and capitalism. As Henry David Thoreau says, "[U]nlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government." If the government would content itself with providing police and roads and other basic essentials, and allow most everything to the private market, then I'd have no complaint. My complaint is not against government per se, but only against government that has overstepped its bounds and arrogated itself authority not granted it by the people's consent to be governed under the social contract.

V.

We should briefly discuss just what are the proper role and purpose of laws in a society.

The 16th-century Swiss Calvinist minister and preacher Heinrich (Henry) Bullinger, one of the fathers of the federal (Latin for "covenant", or brit in Hebrew) tradition in politics which created democracy as we know it today (cf. Fountainhead of Federalism: Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenantal Tradition by Charles S. McCoy and J. Wayne Baker) wrote, (The Decades, second decade, seventh sermon, "Of the Office of the Magistrate, Whether the Care of Religion Appertain to Him or No, and Whether He May Make Laws and Ordinances in Cases of Religion") writes (Parker Society translation, pp. 337f.),

But some there are who think it mere tyranny to lay laws on free man's backs, as it were a yoke upon necks not used to labour; supposing that every one ought rather to be left to his own will and discretion. The apostle indeed did say (1 Tim. i. 9.), "The law is not given for the just, but for the unjust;" but the cause, why the law is not given to the just, is because he is just; for the just worketh justice, and doth of his own accord the thing which the law exacteth of every mortal man. Wherefore the law is not troublesome to the just man, because it is agreeable to the mind and thoughts of upright livers, who do embrace it with all their hearts. But the unjust desireth nothing more than to live as he lusteth; he is not conformable in any point to the law, and therefore must he by the law be kept under, and bridled from marring himself and hurting other. So then, since o good men the laws are no troublesome burden but an acceptable pleasure, which are also necessary for the unjust, as ordained for the bridling of lawless and unruly people; it followeth consequently, that they are good and profitable for all men, and not to be rejected of any man.

Pay careful attention to Bullinger's argument: he argues that laws are no burden for the good man, because he "doth of his own accord the thing which the law exacteth of every mortal man". In other words, he is already doing what is good anyway, with or without the law. It is only the unjust who need the law to force them to do what they ought to do anyway. But this provides us with an excellent litmus test for determining whether a law is good: we must ask only whether good people are already, of their own volition, keeping the potential law. For example, good people naturally, of their own free will, choose to drive their cars carefully, and therefore, the government may rightfully enact speed limits. But are good people already freely choosing to pay tariffs? Of course they are not, and but for the coercion of the government's laws, they never would freely choose to do so. Therefore, according to Bullinger's litmus test, such laws are unjust and are a burden to even the just and righteous individual.

Further in the same sermon, Bullinger discusses the revelatory concept of the rule-of-law, the concept that the government is bound by law. A few decades later, Samuel Rutherford would frame the rule-of-law as meaning that lex rex, "the law is king", opposing the concept of the rule-of-kingship, that rex lex, "the king is law". As Thomas Paine would later say in the influential colonial American pro-Revolution sermon-pamphlet "Common Sense",

But where says some is the king of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.

But Bullinger puts the concept in his own way, saying (op. cit, pp. 339f.),

The magistrate therefore is the living law, and the law is the dumb magistrate. By executing and applying the law, the law is made to live and speak; which the princes do not consider that are wont to say, Wir sind das recht, "We are the right, we are the law." For they suppose that they at their pleasure may command what they list, and that all men by and by must take it for law. But that kind of ruling, without all doubt, is extreme tyranny. The saying of the poet is very well known, which representeth the very words of a tyrant:

I say, and it shall be so;
My lust shall be the law.
[Hoc volo, sic jubeo; sit pro ratione voluntas - Juv. Sat. VI. 223. - P.]

The prince, indeed, is the living law, if his mind obey the written laws, and square not from the law of nature. Power and authority, therefore, is subject unto laws; for unless the prince in his heart agree with the law, in his breast do write the law, and in his words and deeds express the law, he is not worthy to be called a good man, much less a prince. Again, a good prince and magistrate hath power over the law, and is master of the laws, not that they may turn, put out, undo, make and unmake, them as they list at their pleasure; but because he may put them in practice among the people, apply them to the necessity of the stae, and attemper their interpretation to the meaning of the maker.

They therefore are deceived as far as heaven is wide, which think for a few privileges, of emperors and kings granted to the magistrate to add, diminish, or change some point of the law, that therefore they may utterly abolish good laws, and live against all law and seemliness. For, as no emperors or kings are permitted to grant any privileges contrary to justice, goodness, and honesty; so, if they do grant any such privilege, it ought not be received or taken of good subjects for a good turn or benefit, but to be counted rather (as it is indeed) their utter destruction and clean overthrow. Among all men, at all times and of all ages, the meaning and substance of the laws touching honesty, justice, and public pease is kept inviolable; if change be made, it is in circumstances, and the law is interpreted as the case requireth, according to justice and a good.

In short, Bullinger holds that natural law and the laws of reason and goodness and equity are inviolable, and that no man may rule otherwise. If any man legislate contrary to these natural laws, his own human laws are null and void. Centuries later, Martin Luther King, Jr. would say the same, saying ("Letter from a Birmingham Jail"),

One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all." Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

According to Bullinger, every government is bound by natural law. He says that every government-law is legitimate only insofar as it agrees with the higher natural law. So criminals in jail are not victims. They have violated that which is "good", that which would be obligatory and good even were no government to enforce it. Murder and theft are wrong and criminal regardless of whether the government has passed laws against them. The criminals cannot argue that the government has coerced them by incarcerating them. In short, the government and society are bound by natural law. My libertarianism operates only beyond and outside the boundaries of natural rights and liberties. But where those rights and liberties already exist, the government can do anything (within reason) to enforce them, for that is the purpose of government. Since a man has an inalienable right to free speech, the government may ruthlessly punish anyone who violates that right. Since a man has an inalienable right to his property, anyone who steals may be ruthlessly punished (within reason) by the government. It is only where there is no natural right or liberty existing that my libertarianism takes root, demanding that certain types of tyranny-of-the-majority be avoided. But when we are discussing natural law, tyranny-of-the-majority is irrelevant. As RambaM says, truth is truth and falsehood is falsehood no matter how unpopular the truth is or how popular the falsehood is. If the majority of society wants to murder or steal, for example, then they're wrong, simple as that. When one has violated that which reason and the higher natural law declare to be unlawful and wrong, then it is not tyranny when they are punished.

In conclusion, the principles of liberty and freedom of conscience to all without coercion, of limited government accountable to a contract and the will of the people, and the concept of the government being subject to the rule-of-law and natural law and reason, all militate against socialized health care. So I am doubly incensed by Dr. Tobin's words. He equates rejection of government-run health-care reform with cold-blooded murder, and he rejects the most basic principles of democracy and personal autonomy and freedom of choice.

Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz on Women's Semikhah

I've written previously on women's semikhah, and I've just one comment to add now. I quote from Rabbi Jeremy Rosen's "O Temora O Mores" in issue six, Winter 2010/5770 of Conversations:

I can only recall one conversation with Reb Chaim [Shmulevitz]. It was some years after I had left [the Mir yeshiva] and had come back to recharge my batteries. It was over the limits of leniency in halakha and the room for change. I talked about the pressures in the rabbinate for change, particularly on women's issues. He said that in his opinion, though he was not paskening, so long as I could find two Rishonim who agreed with what I wanted to do, I could, within my own community, permit what custom had not.

So regarding women's issues, none other than Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz of the Mir yeshiva said that one could pasqen for his community based on two rishonim, even if normative custom and practice were opposed. This seems like quite ample basis for Rabbi Avi Weiss to ordain women as rabbis. Off the top of my head, he has the support of Tosafot and Rashba's explanation of Devorah's being a judge, and the Sefer ha-Hinukh's discussion of a woman fit to give halakhic rulings. I don't think it is fair to say that Rabbi Shmulevitz would himself approve of ordaining women, but it is incontrovertible, in my opinion, that non-pesaq personal opinion to Rabbi Rosen would allow women's ordination.

Rabbis Holding Political Office

I read with interest Rabbi Jeremy Rosen's "O Temora O Mores" in issue six, Winter 2010/5770 of Conversations. For the most part, reading the author's historical reminisces, I found pleasure and repulsion in whatever he did as well. However, one opinion of the author's did in fact meet with my vehement disagreement.

On page 60, we read, "He [the author's father] was adamantly opposed to religious politics. He believed, correctly with hindsight, that religion would end up, in his words, 'prostituting itself' for political gain." On page 64, we read in like wise, "I was disappointed by the [right-wing messianic Religious-Zionist Merkaz haRav Kook] yeshiva itself because of its heavy involvement in Israeli politics, which I found unsavory and corrupt."

I am reminded of something I read once by the renowned Professor Jacob Katz. In his essay "DA'AT TORAH - The Unqualified Authority Claimed for Halachists" (The Harvard Law School Program in Jewish Studies,The Gruss Lectures: "Jewish Law and Modernity: Five Interpretations", October 26 - November 30, 1994). The entire preceding section of the essay is concerned with pre-Holocaust Hungarian Orthodoxy, of the sort that has lead to much of what would today be called Haredism or Ultra-Orthodoxy. Professor Katz discusses how the Agudat Yisrael political party's machinations eventually lead to what we would today call "Daat Torah", although that term as well did not yet exist either. In short, the Hungarian rabbis ruled according to apodictic and unsourced (and therefore, unfalsifiable) personal opinions rather than according to objective and explicit (and therefore falsifiable) halakhic norms, even though Rabbi Isaac Breuer, the formulator of the Agudat Yisrael, had followed his ancestor, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, in expecting that halakhah alone was to be supreme (as befits an Orthodox Jew).

At the conclusion of the essay, however, Professor Katz offers his own personal opinion, saying, "When the Hungarian rabbis demanded the right to judge the admissibility of any proposition to be discussed in the Congress [to be convened at the behest of the Austrian authorities to represent Jewry as a corporate body], their [non-Orthodox Neolog, i.e. Hungarian Reform] opponents argued that this would be tantamount to ultramontanism. As you may know, the word means `beyond the mountains' and had been used to characterize the Catholic parties who looked for guidance to the Papacy in Rome. The Orthodox laughed off this comparison, saying: we have no one beyond our country to turn to. But their opponents were not misguided in using the term to express their objections. For the critics of the Catholic parties did not resent the intervention of the Papacy in their internal affairs because of its geographic remoteness but because of the apprehension that it would rule according to principles and considerations foreign and external to the issue on the agenda. And that is exactly the objection to be voiced against citizens of Israel who empower their rabbis to rule in their name on political issues. Rabbis by the very nature of their position, are obliged to care for the interests of religion. Whenever religious issues are on the agenda, their voice of course carries its special weight, but when political power is given into their hands, they are led to use this in securing religious interests, thus leading to a double calamity. The process of political decision making is be perverted by allowing religious considerations to influence it. At the same time, religion is discredited by its resorting to means of a secular nature, lending weight to the objection that it cannot stand on the appeal of its inherent values alone. I am afraid that this is at present the situation in my country. It is a result of special historical circumstances, and though a historian should never try to prophesy, he is not prevented from hoping that what emerged in the course of history may also disappear in the course of time."

As an aside, I'll note that Professor Katz's opinion contains a non-sequitur. He criticizes the phenomenon of rabbis serving in politics, but then apparently, he offers no criticism of laymen serving. Would he then offer no objection to a layman, fully learned in Torah but lacking rabbinical ordination, to serve in politics? Does the conferring of ordination suddenly result in an ontological transformation, irrespective of the individual's opinions? As far as I recall, neither the Hafetz Haim nor the Hazon Ish technically had semikhah. Would, then, Professor Katz approve of their occupying office? By contrast, would he be harshly critical were Rabbi Dr. Emanuel Rackman (noted for his outstanding acumen in both Torah and political science) to hold office, merely by virtue of his possessing semikhah? But whatever his answer to my query, Professor Katz would certainly exclude someone from politics, and I must ask then a second question: is this not profoundly undemocratic? Is Professor Katz really suggesting that rabbis and/or religious individuals should be barred from holding political office? Rabbi Benzion Uziel found a way for Arabs in Israel to participate in the political process, and I can only wonder what Professor Katz's reaction would be. But I have merely engaged in casuistry. Let me get to my real point.

As far as I can tell, the opinions of Professor Katz and Rabbi Rosen are quite similar, and both meet equally with my vehement disagreement.

Rabbi Rosen says his father "believed, correctly with hindsight, that religion would end up, in his words, 'prostituting itself' for political gain." And other politicians do not prostitute their own opinions for political gain? Have we really never seen a politician corrupt or betray his ideals or promises for the sake of expedience or gain? Is this phenomenon really unique to rabbis? I would prefer to say that humans tend to prostitute themselves. Rabbis are humans, and perhaps tragically human, but they are no worse than any other humans in this. Perhaps rabbis should be excluded from politics, but then again, perhaps all humans should be. (I am a libertarian, and indeed, I have more contempt than anything else for governments and their laws in general.)

Rabbi Rosen says he found it unsavory that the students and rabbis at the Merkaz ha-Rav Kook yeshiva were involved in Israeli politics. Oh, so we should abandon the field to the secular parties? As Rabbi Yissachar Shlomo Teichtal points out in his Eim ha-Banim Semeikha, when, before the Holocaust, the religious complained that Israel was too secular, they should have instead involved themselves in politics and worked to inject religion into Israel. Instead, they stood aloof, looking on from afar, from beyond the mountains, and complained. Perhaps they should have instead taken responsibility for themselves and worked themselves to make things better. If the religious refused to get their hands dirty in Israel, then they cannot complain that Israel is too secular. I perceive that Rabbi Rosen is guilty of exactly what the Hungarian rabbis were, as depicted by Rabbi Teichtal.

Professor Katz says "Rabbis by the very nature of their position, are obliged to care for the interests of religion. ... [R]eligion is discredited by its resorting to means of a secular nature." I confess that I do not understand what Professor Katz means. To quote Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch's essay "Religion Allied to Progress", perhaps the greatest expression of his Torah im Derekh Eretz philosophy (but see also his essay "Judaism Up-to-Date" / "The Jew and His Time"),

Judaism is not a religion, the synagogue is not a church, and the rabbi is not a priest. Judaism is not a mere adjunct to life: it comprises all of life. To be a Jew is not a mere part, it is the sum total of our task in life. To be a Jew in the synagogue and the kitchen, in the field and the warehouse, in the office and the pulpit, as ... father and mother, as servant and master, as man and as citizen, with one's thoughts, in word and in deed, in enjoyment and privation, with the needle and the graving-tool, with the pen and the chisel--that is what it means to be a Jew. An entire life supported by the Divine Idea and lived and brought to fulfillment according to the Divine Will. The more, indeed, Judaism comprises the whole of man and extends its declared mission to the salvation of the whole of mankind, the less it is possible to confine its outlook to the four cubits of a synagogue and the four walls of a study. The more the Jew is a Jew, the more universalist will his views and aspirations be, the less aloof... will he be from anything that is noble and good, true and upright, in art or science, in culture or education; the more joyfully will he applaud whenever he sees truth and justice and peace and the ennoblement of man prevail and become dominant in human society: the more joyfully will he seize every opportunity to give proof of his mission as a Jew, the task of his Judaism, on new and untrodden ground; the more joyfully will he devote himself to all true progress in civilisation and culture.

Or as Rabbi Soloveitchik says in "Confrontation", "The term 'secular orders' is used here in accordance with its popular semantics. For the man of faith, this term is a misnomer. God claims the whole, not a part of man, and whatever He established as an order within the scheme of creation is sacred."

In other words, there is no such thing as "religious" and "secular"; there is only truth and falsehood. Anything created by G-d in nature is true no less than the Torah is true, and any discoveries man makes in nature are as valid as any Torah hidushim. Any false science is no more or less false than false Torah hidushim. Therefore, it is impossible to divide life into the religious and secular. Life is simply one undivided and indivisible tapestry. In his essay "Sivan I", Rav Hirsch describes the Torah as an anthropological theonomy, a man-centered legal code given by G-d for the sake of teaching not metaphysical or mystical or philosophical truths, but rather, for the sake of guiding man's life here on earth.The purpose of the Torah is not to enlighten man's intellect, but rather, to enlighten his actions.

As such, how can rabbis be expected to keep out of politics? If the Torah is meant to guide all of life, how can we possibly expect the government to be run without the influence of the Torah? Professor Katz says that "[R]eligion is discredited by its resorting to means of a secular nature, lending weight to the objection that it cannot stand on the appeal of its inherent values alone." But given the indisputable notion that in Judaism, there is no distinction between life, religion, and the secular, Professor Katz is essentially saying that life is discredited when life-based values are allowed to play a role, rather than instead letting life stand on its own values. Obviously, this opinion is internally-contradictory and amounts to nothing more than nonsense.

Furthermore, all secular philosophies are "religious" no less than Judaism is. It is an egregious intellectual delusion to believe that secular philosophies are necessarily any more objective than religious philosophies. Capitalism and socialism are both hopelessly at odds, and yet both are secular! Neither one appeals to G-d for its authority, and yet both nevertheless disagree! It is obvious, therefore, that the elimination of G-d does not automatically confer objectivity. (If it were so, then obviously, G-d would never have given the Torah at Sinai! If the secular were objectively true, then G-d wouldn't be so idiotic as to give us religion!) So if we are afraid that rabbis, when involved in politics, will corrupt politics with their own peculiar beliefs, why aren't we afraid that secular politicians will similarly corrupt politics with their own peculiar beliefs? A rabbi will bring his own religious beliefs to bear, true, but then again, so will Ron Paul will bring his libertarian views, and so will Barack Obama will bring his socialistic beliefs to bear. Perhaps Paul and Obama ought to stay out of politics, and we ought to allow only "parve" politicians with no opinions or beliefs whatsoever to serve office?

Perhaps it might be argued that the specific beliefs of the rabbis in question, viz. Hungarian proto-Haredim/Ultra-Orthodox, are specifically disagreeable or harmful. I will fully agree, and I indeed believe that Haredi Judaism is a perversion of authentic historical Judaism. But the fault in this case, then, is not that rabbis qua rabbis must stay out of politics, but rather, only that the specific rabbis in question are unfit for office. Then again, there are many other personalities - religious and secular alike - whom I believe are no less unqualified for office, and I see no reason why we should discriminate against some more than against others.

I have my own personal beliefs regarding politics in Israel. As I said, I am a libertarian, and as such, I hold by the political theories as held by the prominent British and Swiss-type federalists (what we usually erroneously refer to as "democracy"), from John Calvin and Heinrich Bullinger to John Locke and Thomas Jefferson. I am also of the right-wing Merkaz ha-Rav / Gush Emunim "settler" type. As such, I most vehemently support Moshe Feiglin, who combines both philosophies. One of Feiglin's repeated observations has been that the religious parties, both of the Haredim as well as of the Religious-Zionist National Religious Party (NRP / Mafdal), both tacitly allow the secular parties (Likud, Labor, Kadima, etc.) to govern nearly all aspects of the state, and the religious parties content themselves with requesting money for either yeshivot or settlements, besides disputing individual policies and laws ad-hoc. By contrast, Feiglin holds that the religious must present themselves as a viable force for influencing all aspects of politics in Israel, with valid and credible opinions on all matters no differently than the secular parties, on par with the Likud and Labor and such. For too long, he says, the religious have surrendered to the secular. By contrast, he says, Rav Kook held that the Torah must be resurrected in Israel to become Torat Eretz Yisrael, that we must renew those forgotten aspects of the Torah which deal with politics, economy, military, etc. In the Tanakh and in the Talmud, we see that the Torah dealt with all aspects of life. The Talmud declares that after the destruction of the Temple, G-d has only the four cubits of halakhah remain, meaning that only the halakhot pertaining to individuals remain. We still have kashrut and Shabbat, but we have forgotten what the Torah says about statecraft. We must redeem all this, says Rav Kook, and Feiglin follows him in this. For an excellent introductory treatment to Rav Kook's view in this, see Religion Zionism of Rav Kook by Professor Pinchas Polonsky, published by the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. See also "HaRav David Bar-Hayim & His Torah-An Introduction" by Yair haKohen here. One of my fondest memories at Yeshivat Hesder Petah Tiqwa was Rabbi Yuval Cherlow's giving shiurim on how halakhah might be interpreted so as to be enabled to play a definite role in practical law in the state of Israel. As Rabbi Cherlow began his series, "I am absolutely sure that the Torah MUST have SOMETHING to say on EVERYTHING. The question is only where and how to find it." Following Rav Kook, he lamented that so many areas of halakhah have been forgotten, and we must make strides in rediscovering what the halakhah says on issues which troubled our ancestors in the Diaspora. For example, he suggested basing welfare law on whatever lessons might be gleaned from Mesekhet Pe'ah. He said another challenge is to make sure that the law is one which the non-religious will not feel burdened or put-upon by, and which will actually be enforceable and not be trusted to the honor system alone. But all this was said as an aside, so that I am not merely criticizing Rabbi Rosen's views, so that I am instead putting something forward something positive of my own.