"God's American Israel: Comments on Shoftim"
by Rabbi Lapin
President, American Alliance of Jews and Christians project of
Toward Tradition
The American Alliance of Jews and Christians is a project of Toward Tradition, whose president, Rabbi Lapin, comments each Thursday on the week's Torah reading (parsha), drawing on themes relevant to restoring American greatness and ensuring Israeli security. This week the reading is Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9, called Shoftim.America 's culture is Biblical, an amalgam of Jewish and Christian values, and so is our government. This may sound strange. We are told that the genius of our constitutional government lies precisely in the fact that it separates church from state. That of course is a distortion of the historical reality. Permit me to dispel the myth that sees nothing Biblical in the form of American government.
The historian Robert Bellah wrote that "The Bible was the one book that literate Americans in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries could be expected to know well. Biblical imagery provided the basic framework for imaginative thought in America up until quite recent times; and unconsciously, its control is still formidable." Ezra Stiles (1727-1795), president of Yale University , went farther. He called our country "God's American Israel." In many ways the Founders of American democracy looked for inspiration to the Hebrew Bible.
I find evidence of this in the chapters in Deuteronomy that prescribe the forms of Israelite government, which God ordained. The first sentence of the Torah portion read in synagogues this week, Shoftim, explains how government officials are to be appointed: "Judges and officers shall you appoint in your gates…" ( 16:18 ). The words translated "your gates" (sh'arechah) are explained by Jewish tradition to mean that these officials are to be appointed on a city-by-city basis.
In other words, what the Bible is prescribing is federalism, a system of emphatically local government where officers are drawn from the local populace, not from a far-away capitol. Their perspective will then be local, not national. City customs and manners will be observed and respected, rather than being trampled upon by bureaucrats who think they know better.
Another fascinating indication of how government is to be organized may be found elsewhere in the Bible, in Isaiah's prophecies: "For the Lord is our Judge; the Lord is our Lawgiver; the Lord is our King…" (33:22). Here, I think it's clear to see, is the tripartite system of administration found in the Constitution, with its judicial, legislative, and executive branches.
In Deuteronomy's next chapter, we find the laws pertaining to the chief executive officer of the government - change in Israel 's case, a king. In America our CEO is called the president, but one notes many striking parallels. In choosing our leader, the very first criterion the Bible sets out is that he is to be native-born: "from among your brethren shall you set a king over yourself; you cannot place over yourself a foreign man, who is not your brother" ( 17:15 ).
Other nations have experimented with foreign-born rulers, and have seen for themselves the catastrophes this can lead to. Germany had Hitler, an Austrian. Russia had Stalin, a Georgian. France had Napoleon, a Corsican. The man appointed to rule a country of which is not a native lacks the feeling of brotherhood with its citizens that would restrain the hand and the will of a leader who is native-born. The foreigner takes chances with his adopted country in pursuit of his own glory, or his own twisted ideals.
God knows this and directed Israel to choose wisely. America 's Founders knew it too, and ordained that the American president should be native-born.
Some will argue that the king of Israel could not possibly have provided inspiration to the Founders. After all, not only is there no church-state separation in the form of government described in the Bible: the church, so to speak, is the state.
And yet it's more complicated than that, for Biblical government does provide a kind of parallel to our Constitution's prohibition of a state church. While the king is clearly a religious leader - after all, he carries a scroll of the Torah with him at all times (see Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melachim 3:1) - this monarch is expressly not meant to be a priest, a cohen. The priesthood is drawn from the tribe of Levi, while the king comes from the tribe of Judah (Gen. 49:10). This is a significant division of responsibility.
We have here not any crude "separation" of religious and secular authority, as First Amendment extremists call for today. Rather, God sets up an exquisite tension, a unique balance.
The authority of the king is not priestly, but it is informed by religious precept, symbolized by the Torah scroll the monarch carries. So too, again, with our own American Republic, where the president's authority is separate from that of any particular church, but where the government as a whole is meant to imbued, uplifted, and inspired by the values of faith and tradition.
Please feel free to share Rabbi Lapin's thoughts on the parsha with friends, at your place of worship, or wherever you like.
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