Parashat Shoftim: On Monarchy and Mental Health

Hebrew

כִּי תָבֹא אֶל הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר ה’ אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לָךְ וִירִשְׁתָּהּ וְיָשַׁבְתָּה בָּהּ וְאָמַרְתָּ אָשִׂימָה עָלַי מֶלֶךְ כְּכָל הַגּוֹיִם אֲשֶׁר סְבִיבֹתָי… שׂוֹם תָּשִׂים עָלֶיךָ מֶלֶךְ… (דברים יז:יד-טו_א(.

If, after you have entered the land that the Eternal your God has assigned to you, and taken possession of it and settled in it, you decide, “I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me… set a king over yourself.... (Deuteronomy 17:14-15a; trans. JPS 2023 on Sefaria)

These verses are a classic example of the multivalence of verb tenses in Biblical Hebrew. Is there a commandment to appoint a king or is there permission to appoint one, if the people insist? The question arises already in the days of the judges, when the people indeed ask for a king, and God agrees with frustration and sadness: “The Eternal replied to Samuel, “Heed the demand of the people in everything they say to you. For it is not you that they have rejected; it is Me they have rejected to rule over them” (I Samuel 8:7; trans. JPS 2023 on Sefaria).

This is the beginning of a controversy that continues in rabbinic literature and to this day.

Instead of reviewing the development of the debate over the generations, I will present several modern sources that examine the question in a world in which most countries in the world are not ruled by monarchs, even if they have a royal house with symbolic powers.

Rabbi Hayim David Halevi (1924-1998), Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and recipient of the Israel Prize for Torah Literature, saw the openness of the Torah’s text as positive and appropriate:

There is a particular realm in the Torah in which matters are deliberately presented ambiguously and vaguely. In no way can one find in the Torah a clear political or economic regime. Even the section on kings is presented so ambiguously as to have caused disagreement amongst our Sages in the Talmud about whether or not it is a commandment at all, or merely something permitted.…. In my opinion, this is a great strength of the Torah -- that it does not have a clearly defined regime, neither political nor economic. There are two reasons for this:  a) By the very nature of these domains of life, they are given to change from era to era, and God’s Torah is eternal, and thus intentionally refrained from determining these areas in too fixed and defined a way. b) The Torah did not want to force the nation to conduct itself, in its secular life, according to a particular regime; it left that decision up to the nation’s free will in these areas (Aseh Lekha Rav, vol. 3; trans. Rabbi Shai Held).[1]

Rabbi She’ar-Yashuv Cohen (1927-2016), the Chief Rabbi of Haifa, went a step further, warning that any effort to implement previous models in a changing world would not end well:

Anyone who thinks it is possible to take the paragraphs from Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah and turn them into state law as they are, without taking circumstances into account, is not only an ignoramus but has gone astray and is leading others astray too.… It is impossible to make rulings today based on ancient formulations, without taking into account the changes that hav
e taken place between then and now” (Bein Demokratiyah Le-Yahadut: Diyyun; trans. Rabbi Shai Held).

Rabbi Yehuda Shaviv (1941-2018), of Yeshivat Har Etzion, emphasized the words “as do all the nations,” when he wrote:

If the nation wants to adapt for itself an institutional system of government as is accepted in other nations, it may do so; and this permission receives the heavenly seal of approval and becomes a commandment…. In modern times, when humanity believes it more appropriate to govern by direct representation, then this will be the commandment… (Democracy and Judaism; trans. Rabbi Shai Held).

First Knesset session in its permanent building, Aug. 1966.

Who knows better than Israelis of the 2020s that democracy has many challenges? Therefore, I would like to conclude with the words of Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn (Safed, 1857–Hoboken, New Jersey, 1935). Hirschensohn was among the founders of religious Zionism in the Land of Israel but was forced to emigrate when he was placed under a ban due to his radical views (e.g., he supported teaching secular subjects, like mathematics in Hebrew, and women’s suffrage). In response to discussions at the Zionist Congress in 1918, he began to develop a halachic framework for a Jewish democratic state.[2]  He categorically rejected the possibility of crowning a human king over the people in the twentieth century. If there is no king, there must be a legislature, and it is necessary to prevent it from passing unreasonable laws that the public cannot abide. Therefore, he made a very original suggestion:

It is surely appropriate for the legislature to have special psychiatrists on staff to monitor the mental state of legislators. Each time a new law is passed but before it takes effect, it will not be published unless the doctors examine the legislators leaving the plenum and agree that they were of healthy mind (Eilu Divrei HaBrit, vol. 3, p. 63; trans: SMZ).

What would we do with a little governmental sanity?

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[1] Similar Ideas have been expressed by Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Neria, Rabbi Naftali Rothenberg and others. For a broader perspective on these issues, see Rabbi Shai Held, Judaism and Democracy: Encounters, Obstacles, Possibilities. 

[2] Malki BaKodesh, in 6 volumes.