Leibowitz on State and Religion

Yeshayahu Leiwowitz interprets the role of the Torah in the sovereign State of Israel in a controversial way, contrary to the status quo which he sees as “hypocrite”. He supports separation of Religion and State for the benefit and truthful development of both. ¨

I agree with most of his comments, yet I believe that separation of Religion and State would develop into the creation of a “secular” State inhabited by “citizens”, without religious identification. As much as it necessary to re-evaluate the role of the Rabbinate in Israel and the consequences of its current actions(as well as the State’s), I doubt a State of Israel deprived of its Jewish content, legally speaking, would be beneficial for Israelis or for the Jewish people in general. While to de- politicize religion seems necessary, the effect of completely eliminating religion from the State should be carefully evaluated due to the particularity and centrality of Israel as a Jewish State.

According to Leibowitz there are three possibilities of viewing the role of the Torah and its place in society in the State of Israel:

- Are the laws of the Torah given to create a sociopolitical system?
-Are they given to be applied within an existing system?
-Should they be discarded (since they were given to a past society) and create a new social order with the required “justice and righteousness”?

For Leibowitz religious Jews have not been able to explain the role of the Torah in the Modern Israel, or provide an answer to which is the sociopolitical system based in the Torah by which the State should be ruled. The Torah, as currently conceived by the State and its religious authorities, is limited to the Shulchan Aruch. There has been no further creation from the part of religious authorities of Halachic rulings that would apply to the current situation in the Jewish’ people history, that is, the Jewish people being politically sovereign in their own State; nowhere in Rabbinic writings was this envisioned; social questions of an independent Jewish society were not relevant for ancient or Middle Ages’ rabbis who did not live under political sovereignty, and there has not been a clear interpretation of this topics by Orthodox groups living in the State of Israel.
As mentioned, there are no Halachic rulings in this regard, but only those related to Jewish life under foreign political rule. Instead of presenting new Laws that would abide to the current state of affairs, the Rabbinate has tried to ‘adapt’ already existing Halachic rulings to fit the new situation with little success. Actually the religious establishment in Israel is highly politicized and as a consequence is viewed by many within society (religious and non-religious as well) as being coercive and abusive of their power (primarily regarding the laws of marriage, divorce, conversion and kashrut), thus creating a largely polarized society.
The ideal would be to understand the judicial and moral ideas derived from Halacha and the way to institute them into a new social order, a guide to the religious man to society, nation, country, etc. New rulings are needed to deal with the present conditions, Jews living under Jewish sovereignty; but most of all, is the belief of Leibowitz, there needs to be a separation of Religion and State for religion to achieve its true, honorable place in society and thus, begin a process of education and formation in Jewish values.

The following are excerpts from Lebowitz’ STATE AND RELIGION (translated by David Landau); First appeared in Tradition vol. 12,No.3-4(Winter/Spring 1972) ¨
“
….. The dualism "national religious" is not a maintainable one unless one or both of the terms are falsified, i.e. either "national" must be distorted from its purely secular meaning, widespread at least since the French Revolution, and must be given a meaning directed at the traditional term "the Community of Israel”—in which case it becomes synonymous with "religious" and is superfluous; or else "religious must be distorted from its true meaning denoting the system of the Halakhah –and must be made to mean merely an accessory of national-political life –in which case it is valueless.

Religion and the State of Israel

The problem of "state and religion"—which is in fact the problem of the future character of the Jewish Nation and Judaism—is not raised by the official existence of the State of Israel, but by the administrative and legal disputes between the various partners in the executive and judicial apparatus of the state. The two great states of values, the religious and the humanist, the open conflict between which moulds the character of the individual and his society, are not represented by two camps fighting for these values. The "religious" camp does not fight for the Torah, the "secular" camp does not fight for man: 'they both fight for the state; the nationalist passion which is common to both sides leads to the situation wherein the state—which is only the external trappings of some content of intrinsic value—takes the place of that content itself.

The State of Israel was established in 1948 by the common actions, common efforts and common sacrifices of both religious and irreligious Jews as a state of secular character.
The secularism of this state is not the product of any conscious intent but of its essential reality: it was riot established on the strength of the Torah, nor from any impetus of the Torah, nor by the guidance of the Torah or by its commands, nor is it run according to the Torah.
Whether we define ourselves as "religious" or as "irreligious," all of us set up together this state as Jewish patriots, and Jewish patriotism—like all patriotism—is a secular human trait with no religious or holy content.

The Religious Need for Separation of Religion from the State

A religion whose standing in the state is similar to that of the police, the sanitation authorities, the post office or the customs… there could be no worse abasement of religion; nothing weakens the strength and influence and persuasiveness of religion and prevents the winning of hearts more than religious institutions which are kept by a secular state, more than investing secular with an official religious aura, than religious laws included like aberrations in a code of secular legislation; than a secular government which imposes an arbitrary selection of religious practices on the public without obliging itself or the public to recognize the authority of religion; than religion not for holy motives but for political convenience.
(Religion)..makes its demands only with regard to particular details within the general framework of the secular law and the secular life of the State and of society; these demands are divorced from the overall programme of life which the Torah lays down, and they seem strange, illogical and unjust against the background of the totality of secular life. To the majority of the people, these demands are uncomprehended and incomprehensible, since they are put forward within the framework of the laws and regulations of a secular regime, and therefore they produce only mockery and anger. The form which religion has taken on in the reality of the Israeli State and society gives it the appearance of petty interferences, hindrances and pinpricks against the "normal"—i.e. secular—fabric of life, and not that of an alternative way of life. Therefore it is both hated and despised.
The truth is that religion lacks all power in the State of Israel land in its society and lacks all real influence in shaping their character. Yet there are large segments of the public who feel that they are subject to "religious coercion." The "religious laws" in the State are enacted by a secular authority in the form which suits it best (out of governmental interests). They lack all religious meaning, and in most cases their content.
. The truth is that they constitute secular governmental coercion of religion, and at the same time they provide ammunition for anti-religious elements to arouse irritation and ire against religion—
The prohibition which the secular regime imposes in certain places (only in those places, and not in others) on public transport on Shabbat is no more than a bribe to Orthodox Jews to look the other way. This prohibition also lacks all religious meaning: the Halakhot of Shabbat contain no such ridiculous commandment which permits Jews to travel on Shabbat, but forbids buses to operate on Shabbat. The hypocrisy of this arrangement, which is insisted upon by the religious establishment, denigrates the honour of religion and makes the religious stand laughable.

Releasing Religion from its Subservience to the Political Regime

Who is to maintain the religious institutions which the religious community needs?
The religious community itself,……. , as it did in all ages and in all places for as long as organized religious Jewish communities have existed on earth without the help of the United Jewish Appeal or contributions from the Imam or the Sultan—its rabbis, its shochtim, its synagogues, its graveyards, etc., and never complained. Only in the State of Israel, which has turned religion into a departmental service of the secular government, has the Orthodox community become corrupted and become used to receiving funds for maintaining its religious institutions from the secular authority, and in this way making its very existence dependent on this authority.
The separation of religion from the state would not entail pushing religion into a corner of the state and of society, or the truncation of Orthodox Judaism from political reality. On the contrary: the separation of religion from the state means the beginning of the great confrontation between Judaism and secularism within the Jewish Nation and within its state and the beginning of the struggle between them for the conquest of the nation. Religion, which serves today as one of the administrative functions of the secular state, has no say except in those sectors of public life which the secular authority permits it to deal with. A religion which was independent would be the fundamental opposition to the secular regime in the state, an opposition which demands a clear and explicit alternative—in all fields of life in the state and in its society”.