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- Title
JUDAISM AND (OR?) DEMOCRACY: THE RELEVANCE OF IRRELEVANCE.
- Authors
Shafir, Michael
- Abstract
The first part of this article shows that it is irrelevant to seek to demonstrate that Judaism and democracy are compatible, as they emerged and developed in radically different social environments. Ancient Judaism functioned as a theocracy that had little in common with the Greek polis, while the latter has few commonalities with modern democracy, which sharply distinguishes between the private and the social spheres. Attempts to demonstrate the contrary are echoes of American political culture, from which their proponents stem. The second part examines the links between the political culture of the early Labor Zionist leaders, which overwhelmingly impacted that of the State-in-the Making and of post-1948 Israel. While some claim that these links lead to Jewish "civil society" nuclei, as they existed in the European Diaspora, others differentiate between the Western and the East Central European perceptions of democracy. Belonging, as it did, to the latter category, the early Zionist leadership embraced the Herderian thought, in which the individual is conceived as organically part and parcel of the nation and as relevant only insofar as he/she serves its destiny. As such, and in spite of the secularism originally promoted by the early Labor Zionists, religion came to occupy an important role in the attempt to inculcate the values of nation- and statebuilding. In this paligenetic argument the former irrelevance of Judaism becomes a highly relevant factor, particularly after Israel's 1967 victory in the Six Day War, hindering the separation of religion and politics and the autonomy of the individual.
- Subjects
ISRAEL; JUDAISM &; politics; DEMOCRACY; POLITICAL autonomy; LABOR Zionism; POLITICS &; culture; THEOCRACY; JUDAISM
- Publication
Europolis, 2014, Vol 8, Issue 1, p175
- ISSN
1582-4969
- Publication type
Article