Alexander Kaye, "The Invention of Jewish Theocracy: The Struggle for Legal Authority in Modern Israel" (Oxford UP, 2020)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Sep 9, 2020 · 52m

The tension between secular politics and religious fundamentalism is a problem shared by many modern states. This is certainly true of the State of Israel, where the religious-secular schism provokes conflict at every level of society. Driving this schism is the idea of the halakhic state, the demand by many religious Jews that Israel should be governed by the law of the Torah as interpreted by Orthodox rabbis. The Invention of Jewish Theocracy: The Struggle for Legal Authority in Modern Israel (Oxford University Press) traces the origins of the idea, its development, and its crucial…