Jewish Monarchy in Israel

Will S. asked these questions:

I’m Canadian, and an ardent monarchist myself; to me, it ties in with my patriotism, and my faith as a Christian (of the Protestant variety), and my disposition as a Canadian.

Monarchy, though, is always at least outwardly religious; whether the Christian monarchs of Europe, or the Islamic kingdoms like Morocco, or Japan, almost all monarchies, if not all, either credit their authority to govern to God, and are seen to at least outwardly conform to a particular faith. And most of the most ardent monarchists one encounters online tend to be religious, and particularly, Roman Catholic.

As a Jew, but not a religious one, would you welcome a religious monarchy for Israel, a return to (what I call) the Old Testament monarchies? How comfortable could you, as a modern, non-observant type, fit into such a society?

Just curious.

To clarify, could you envision an Israeli monarchy without theocracy?

Also, IHTG asked in my Open Thread:

You’ve expressed sympathies for monarchism in the past.

Looking at Jewish history, we have two examples of monarchic rule – the revered biblical Davidic kingdom of Judah, and the oft-overlooked* Hasmonean Judea.

So, what sort of monarchism did you have in mind, and how would it compare to those two examples?

*I’m of the opinion that the annals of the Maccabim are ignored to our detriment. For example, their policy of conversion of non-Jews, which would seem bizarre to modern Jews, but could conceivably have been a useful tool for the reborn Israel.

I thought this merited a full treatment rather than just specific response only to the questions raised. So I’ll try to do that here.

Monarchy

When I speak and think about monarchy, I’m referring to a system of government in which one man owns the government in the name of his family. He inherited the government from his father and grandfather and he will pass it to his son and grandson. There is no “politics” in the sense that it exists now, because the opinions of the general public are irrelevant to, and not solicited by, the few who rule, and because the barriers to entry into the government are so high as to be nearly insurmountable. But there is “politics” in the sense of politics as a branch of philosophy, which will always be consulted by people with power.

A dictatorship is not a monarchy, whether it’s a single guy who seized power, or a party, or the military or a faction in the military, no matter in whose name the dictatorship rules. Dictatorships have rather low barriers to entry – any schmuck can grow up one day to be a dictator – and in a dictatorship it’s never clear who the next dictator will be, with huge internal power struggles that are just more violent and byzantine versions of the democratic politics we know. I’m leaving aside constitutional monarchies as not relevant since, as we can see when we look around the world at them, a constitutional monarchy is just a premature republic.

I agree that monarchies are religious by nature. It’s not an accident that so many different religious traditions like to compare their gods to kings, and their kings to gods. A god implies order. We’re taught to love and fear a god, to request humbly from a god and to give thanks to a god. A king’s power can seem godlike and, for a religious tradition like Judaism that makes it so hard to conceive of God because God isn’t supposed to have human attributes, we can think that God is kinglike and at least have some sense of godliness. A king must concern himself with his domain’s religion.

Jewish Monarchy

The United Monarchy lasted for about a century and it’s the basis for what a Jewish monarchy should be, especially the second and third monarchs, David and his son Solomon. Hundreds of years later, the Hashmonaim also claimed the title “king,” but this is generally considered to have been illegitimate because they were also high priests, and as cohanim they were from the tribe of Levi and not from the house of David. Moreover, Israel was not really independent at that time, so it would be a stretch to consider them fully kings. It’s hard to say whether the Jews had more sovereignty then (under mainly the Romans) than we have now (under the Americans), but in any case the “kings” were something like vassals. An earlier title that the Hashmonaim used before king, ethnarch, describes their position well.

Jewish Messianism

The Jewish messiah is a living human male Jew in the future who will be anointed (משיח) king. That’s all. You don’t have to believe in anything supernatural to believe in the Jewish messiah. You can even believe in the Jewish messiah without believing in God. In order to be an anointed Jewish king, he’ll have to be a true descendant of David. The Rambam helpfully gave us some handy tools for figuring out if a certain person is or is not the messiah.

How we can be pretty sure someone is the messiah:

• He’s a king.
• He’s from the House of David.
• He studies the Torah intensely and observes the mitzvot (written and oral) in David’s style.
• He compels some sort of Torah lifestyle for the whole nation.
• He corrects or clarifies the issues that are unclear about the law.
• He fights what is basically the Jewish notion of holy war, a war of conquest over the land of Israel and to defend Jews.

And here’s how we can be certain that someone is the messiah:

• He successfully does all the above things.
• He builds the Temple on the Temple Mount, in the actual spot where it stood before.
• He gathers together the Jewish people (and identifies who is whom vis a vis tribes and lineage).

Note that I don’t exactly hold by the Rambam’s interpretation or his rulings, or necessarily by what any rabbi says. But I find his wisdom very instructive and I like to cite it on this topic. Of course, I don’t believe the “oral law” is binding and I certainly don’t think King David had any idea that, 1000 years after he lived, some people called “rabbis” would develop the concept of an “oral law” that he is supposed to have followed. But that’s beside the point. One of my favorite parts about the Rambam’s brief lists of qualifying traits is that he’s also clear that the messiah must be living. Another thing I like about it is that he basically says that the messiah will not change supernatural into natural. Life will still go on, in all its infinite intricacies. Nothing scientifically incomprehensible will happen. Again, I do not believe that Jews are required to agree with the Rambam’s opinions on this matter, or even that Jews are required to believe in a messiah.

Why do I mention Jewish messianism in this context? Only because that will be the vehicle for restoring Jewish monarchy in Israel. No other type of Jewish king besides a Davidic one will ever have the legitimacy that was lacking when the Hashmonaim tried to usurp it.

How a Jewish monarchy in Israel will happen

Unlike many Haredim, I don’t believe the third Temple is going to fall out of the sky one day onto the Temple Mount, already built. Nor do I believe it’s going to happen in the way that most people think it probably would happen: the situation in Israel gets intolerably bad, then it gets even worse, then we all figure that we may as well just give power to some guy, and that guy solves our problems and we live happily ever after with him wearing a crown.

I actually believe that we’re going to have to be somewhat advanced in solving our own problems before the stage will even be set for a monarch to enter. Some things that will need to happen in preparation:

• The country’s Muslim population will need to be expelled. It doesn’t mean that Muslims can’t be living here, but it does mean that they can’t be living here as a population, a national minority with group rights. As families and as individuals, they’ll have to accept a different status than the one they have now. This can either transpire in war, as the local Muslim population is shown to be openly and actively supporting our external enemies, or it can happen when there’s no war being fought. Israel already has the precise legal mechanism for effecting an expulsion of civilians under non-conflict conditions: it’s the 2005 Evacuation-Compensation Law that was used to expel the Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria. In that case, expulsion was absolute, down to every last man, woman and child, every animal, and they even demolished the synagogues and dug up the corpses from the ground and expelled them to different cemeteries.
• Construction of the Temple will need to begin. Preparation for the construction is already underway and it depends on things like whether they do have, or are getting, a red heifer, and/or whether they’re in fact successfully raising some children of cohanim in isolation so as to keep them ritually pure. Of course the mosques will need to be removed. I consider the Dome of the Rock to be of sublime beauty and I hope it can be taken apart carefully and reconstructed somewhere else in the world. I don’t think the Temple will need to be completed; perhaps that’s something that the messiah will do.
• The Sanhedrin will need to be strengthened. I’m not sure that the nascent Sanhedrin established six years ago will be the actual body that serves in the role, but I have a lot of respect for their initiative. Already they are hearing civil cases and there are people accused of political crimes by the state who have refused to be judged except by the Sanhedrin. In the future, these trends can grow and, if the state’s value system alienates the majority of traditional Jews, they may gradually shift their allegiance to the Sanhedrin if the Sanhedrin makes itself worthy. Of course, the Sanhedrin itself will have to evolve. It will need to make rulings that manage to satisfy groups of people with fundamentally opposed worldviews. I expect the Sanhedrin to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of ironing out differences in liturgy and interpretation of halacha for the different Jewish communities.
• Some internal divisions will need to be overcome. Some will never be overcome, but I’m optimistic about the most superficial ones. I’d like to see the further growth of a true “Eretz-Yisraeli” Jewish identity that manages to supersede identities based on where our ancestors lived approximately 1000 years ago. When a majority of Jews in Israel can not easily explain whether they are Ashkenazi, Mizrachi or Sfaradi, this will have been achieved.

I don’t doubt that, if these things actually do happen, they will not happen in a vacuum. Instead, they will all be tied in with one another and with other of what I once called historical-redemptive processes (I was trying to bridge a group of religious people and Marxists). Moreover, the progress will not be straightforward, but will take a very long time, and there will be setbacks along the way. But that’s what needs to happen.

Features of a Jewish Monarchy

I expect a Jewish monarchy to be fully monarchical and fully Jewish. There will be no give-and-take between Judaism and monarchy like there is today when Israel calls itself “a Jewish and democratic state” and finds that Judaism is essentially anti-democratic and democracy is essentially anti-Jewish. I do not expect the king to sit around and learn Torah all day long to try to figure out how he should rule. The Torah doesn’t tell a king much about which policies he should pursue. In his personal life, the king is not going to approach life like a “yeshiva bochur” does. He will not spend a moment wondering whether to put his right shoe or his left shoe on first, and once they’re on, he will not spend a moment wondering which to tie first. He will be “religious” in the sense that he observes the mitzvot as he understands them. But the terms “religious” and even “religion” that I know from growing up in America aren’t easily translatable into Judaism. Perhaps his personal observance will be more like what we now call “traditional.”

Potential problems facing a Jewish monarchy before it exists

There’s only one main problem: America doesn’t want it. Israel is in America’s camp, and while we’re free to govern ourselves with much autonomy, no country in America’s camp gets to make its own decisions on every issue. The bottom line is that if America continues as is or gets stronger, it will remain impossibly difficult for countries to become independent, and nearly as difficult for countries to stay independent, as it is now. But if America gets weaker or somehow manages to break apart, many additional countries will experience real independence.

I am a former card-carrying Libertarian and I could certainly justify a more isolated America and/or an America that’s broken up into 50 independent or semi-independent states in pro-American terms, but it would be disingenuous of me now to do that. I don’t give a damn how Americans govern themselves except that everyone else has to fall in line. I favor a return to sovereignty of more than just a handful of countries, with most countries being led by America.

Challenges to Israeli monarchy

Kings are not really well equipped to deal with presidents. Democratic politicians are (self) selected for their cunning and their lack of scruples, while kings are educated to be wise and temperate. So a monarchic Israel, which will obviously face major challenges diplomatically, may find itself at a further setback trying to address them.

Secession is obviously a prime concern. If Israel establishes itself as a sovereign monarchy some day by seceding from the established world order (American hegemony), what’s to stop Tel Aviv from seceding from Israel, Ramat Aviv from then seceding from Tel Aviv, Ramat Aviv Gimel from seceding from Ramat Aviv, and so on, down to the individual who can’t decide whether or not to secede from his own brain? In short: nothing much, and any substantial change to the world order is a recipe for war between the people who don’t like it and the people who like it a little too much. Sometimes things just need to be fought out.

Another worry is that we could get a king in charge who simply doesn’t care about Judaism and Zionism. Maybe he’ll trade Jerusalem in exchange for Beirut; maybe he’ll bring in Chinese administrators to run everything. Maybe he’ll ban Hebrew and circumcision. We have to assume, though, that a king’s family will derive its rule’s legitimacy from Judaism and that the king’s own religious beliefs will prevent him from flushing it all down the toilet. In cases where he tries to do so, the family can always step in to remove him and put his son or brother on the throne.

Other comments

I believe Hillel Weiss has written about this extensively. I haven’t consulted his work because I don’t have the patience to read it all in Hebrew.

Mencius Muldbug’s idea of a modern substitute for absolute monarchy is called neo-cameralism. I’m intrigued by it, but also concerned that it would be plagued by legitimacy problems. Also, it’s a little too high tech science fictiony for my taste.

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