Judaism and politics

The relationship between Judaism and politics is a historically complex subject and a frequent source of disagreement among Jews.

There are many models for political leadership in the Hebrew Bible. Stuart Cohen has pointed out that there are three separate power centers depicted in the Hebrew Bible: the priesthood, the royal throne, and the prophets.

One model of Biblical politics is the model of the tribal federation, where power is shared among different tribes and institutions. Another is the model of limited constitutional monarchy.

The Bible appears to command appointing a king in the Book of Deuteronomy with the following command: “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is about to give you, and you take hold of it and dwell in it, and you say, ‘Let me put a king over me like all the nations that are around me,’ you shall surely put over you a king whom the Lord your God chooses…” (Deut. 17:14-15).

The Hebrew Bible contains a complex chronicle of the Kings of Israel and Judah, written over the course of many generations by authors whose relationships and intimacy with the rulers of the several kingdoms fluctuated widely in both intimacy and respect. Some historical passages of the Hebrew Bible contain intimate portrayals of the inner workings of the royal households of Saul, David, and Solomon; the accounts of subsequent monarchs are frequently more distanced and less detailed, and frequently begin with the judgment that the monarch "did evil in the sight of the Lord."

Daniel Elazar has argued that the concept of covenant is the fundamental concept in the Biblical political tradition and in the later Jewish thought that emerges from the Bible.

A statement by Rabbi Judah in the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 20b) depicts kingship as the ideal form of Jewish governance, following the Book of Deuteronomy's statement that “when you come into the land that the Lord your God is about to give you, and you take hold of it and dwell in it, and you say, ‘Let me put a king over me like all the nations that are around me,’ you shall surely put over you a king whom the Lord your God chooses…” (Deut. 17:14-15).

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