Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism

Michael Walzer

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780691125084
  9780691125077
• eBook ISBN:
  9781400827206
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Jewish legal and political thought developed in conditions of exile, where Jews had neither a state of their own nor citizenship in any other. What use, then, can this body of thought be today to Jews living in Israel or as emancipated citizens in secular democratic states? Can a culture of exile be adapted to help Jews find ways of being at home politically today? These questions are central in Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism, a collection of essays by contemporary political theorists, philosophers, and lawyers.


How does Jewish law accommodate--or fail to accommodate--the practice of democratic citizenship? What range of religious toleration and pluralism is compatible with traditional Judaism? What forms of coexistence between Jews and non-Jews are required by shared citizenship? How should Jews operating within halakha (Jewish law) and Jewish history judge the use of force by modern states?


The authors assembled here by prominent political theorist Michael Walzer come from different points on the religious-secular spectrum, and they differ greatly in their answers to such questions. But they all enact the relationship at issue since their answers, while based on critical Jewish texts, also reflect their commitments as democratic citizens.


The contributors are Michael Walzer, David Biale, the late Robert M. Cover, Menachem Fisch, Geoffrey B. Levey, David Novak, Aviezer Ravitzky, Adam B. Seligman, Suzanne Last Stone, and Noam J. Zohar.

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• Part I POLITICAL ORDER AND CIVIL SOCIETY
• Chapter 1 Obligation: A Jewish Jurisprudence of the Social Order
• Chapter 2 Judaism and Civil Society
• Chapter 3 Civil Society and Government
• Chapter 4 Autonomy and Modernity
• Part II TERRITORY, SOVEREIGNTY, AND
• Chapter 5 Land and People
• Chapter 6 Contested Boundaries: Visions of a Shared World
• Chapter 7 Diversity, Tolerance, and Sovereignty
• Chapter 8 Responses to Modernity
• Chapter 9 Judaism and Cosmopolitanism
• Part III WAR AND PEACE
• Chapter 10 Commanded and Permitted Wars
• Chapter 11 Prohibited Wars
• Chapter 12 Judaism and the Obligation to Die for the State
• Contributors