New Jersey Jewish News Story

Governance by majority
Vayikra

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin
the chief rabbi of the city of Efrat and dean of Ohr Torah Institutes in Israel.

To what extent if at all, does our rabbinic tradition believe in democracy? A careful study of our foremost theologian, jurist, philosopher — Maimonides — proves that we do look to the will of the majority of our citizenry for guidance, and that the source for his belief in democracy is a verse in this week’s portion.

Maimonides deals with many critical matters of governance, especially in his Laws of Kings. The first mishna in the Tractate Sanhedrin (Great Jewish Court) ordains that bestowal of rabbinic ordination is effectuated by three sages; this ordination harks back to God’s emanation of a portion of His divine spirit upon Moses, who then ordained the elders. This chain of Jewish leadership came to a tragic end under the Roman rule in the third century, when it was decreed that anyone who ordained and anyone who received ordination would be killed.

Maimonides, in his Interpretation to the Mishnah, writes: “…[W]hen there will be agreement from all the sages of Jerusalem and their disciples to raise up someone to precede them [in greatness] and make him their head, and on the condition that this is in the Land of Israel, this agreed-upon person shall be the central pillar of the academy and shall become ordained; afterward, he will ordain whomever he deems worthy.” In accordance with accepted rules of talmudic law, the agreement need not be unanimous; a majority is considered a unanimous decision.

In effect Maimonides has ruled that the biblical — and divinely originated — ordination, which empowered judges to issue decrees and interpret Jewish law, could be resuscitated by a majority vote of the population in Israel.

The rationale for Maimonides’ position is clear: “If you do not take such a stand [for such a democratic vote],” he writes, “a Great Sanhedrin will never again exist, since the members of such a court must be ordained. And the Holy One blessed be He testifies that the Sanhedrin will be restored, as it is written: ‘And I shall restore your judges as they were originally and your legal advisers as they were in the beginning….” (Isaiah 1:26).

The necessity for such a democratic procedure is clear to Maimonides, because he insisted that the messianic era — with a reinstated Sanhedrin and a City of Jerusalem featuring the Third Holy Temple — must come about through natural, not supernatural, means.

It must be remembered that Judaism never entertained any kind of “papal” infallibility; our Bible records that even Moses sinned by striking the rock, and our high priest began the Yom Kippur Holy Temple service by publicly requesting forgiveness from God for his transgressions. Leviticus teaches: “If the entire congregation of Israel shall err, and a matter [of proper conduct] become obscured from the eyes of the assembly…and they become guilty…the assembly shall offer a young bull as a sin offering….” (Leviticus 4: 13, 14).

Our sages conclude that “the entire nation” committing a transgression must be the result of a mistaken ruling permitting the prohibited that emerged from the Sanhedrin. This conclusion demands that the biblical phrase “entire congregation of Israel” (adat Yisrael) must mean the Sanhedrin. If, then, the Great Sanhedrin is biblically equated with the congregation of Israel, the way of reinstituting the ordination necessary to the formation of the Sanhedrin must be by agreement of a majority of the nation.

Maimonides further rules that in the absence of the Sanhedrin or prophet, it is the people who must elect the king or prime minister of Israel. The first chief rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Avraham Isaac HaCohen Kook, agreed with this position, declaring that an elected prime minister has all the laws ascribed to a king of Israel. Indeed, our biblical source seems to confirm that in the absence of a Sanhedrin, the national opinion should be considered authoritative.

It is no wonder that throughout the Middle Ages, Jewish communities were run in a purely democratic fashion. This fundamental acceptance of government for and by the majority of the people — as well as the Jewish principle of human freedom emanating from the biblical doctrine of all human beings having been created by God in His image and underscored by our freedom from Egyptian bondage — made Judaism the model for the democratic governance established by the founding fathers of the United States.

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