Jeremy Rosen
Is Israel a Theocracy?
Summary
What is a theocracy? Are religions necessarily theocratic? Is it a valid form of government?
Jeremy Rosen
Manchester-born Jeremy Rosen was educated at Cambridge University England and Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He has practiced as an orthodox rabbi, as principal of Carmel College in the UK, and as professor at the Faculty for Comparative Religion in Antwerp, Belgium. He has written and lectured extensively in the UK and the US, where he now resides and was the rabbi of the Persian-Jewish community in Manhattan.
Yes, throughout history they were either directly saying they were the leaders thanks to a particular God, a pagan God or to the gods. But this was the norm until you get to the sort of monotheism we know of today. So even, for example, when in Egypt there was a revolution at a particular moment, and the Pharaoh at the time tried to limit all the number of gods and bring them round to one sun god, it was still the sun god that they were worshipping.
Yes, I would, if you define it that way, I would be against it, but nobody is saying that. What they are saying at the moment is they want those aspects of Israeli life that impinge on the religious, they want those to go according to religious rules. But only those that impinge on the religious, and only insofar as the religious. So here’s a good case, I don’t want the rabbis to say, “You cannot eat kosher.” I can accept rabbis saying, “If you want to eat kosher, "we have to define what kosher is.” Now, I don’t like the way they define, I wish they didn’t define it in the way they did, I wish they’d be more tolerant of other forms of kashrut supervision. But there’s nothing wrong with religious rules, it depends how they’re applied and to what extent.
I don’t think for one moment it is, and I don’t think it is because first of all, there are differences in the states between state and state. Secondly, because there are so many different minorities and interests who do not get on with each other, the Latinos don’t get on with the Blacks, who don’t get on with the Asians, and let’s leave out the Jews for the moment ‘cause they’re relatively small. So I don’t think there is a chance of America heading towards a dictatorship. I may not like either the Democratic party, I may not like the Republican party, I don’t like almost any party you can think of, I wouldn’t vote for a politician unless I had no other option. But there’s no way I think America, however much of a mess it’s in and however much it’s eating itself up and destroying itself by not being able to deal with issues such as immigration, taxation, finance, bureaucracy, and so forth and so on, is not heading towards a dictatorship.