Critique of Democracy in Contemporary Jewish Political Thought

Abstract

This study discusses the critique of democracy in contemporary Jewish political thought, and it is based on the ideas and political theses produced by contemporary Jewish political thought. Democracy as an idea and a means of governance has been subjected to continuous critique by Jewish thinkers and rabbis of various political orientations, starting with denying the origin of democracy in Judaism and the dialectic of the relationship between democracy and Judaism. It reaches the critique of its form and the intellectual flaws that afflict it, and its conflict with liberal democracy, thus forming an imperfect model for the system of government in Israel. The fundamental intellectual contradiction and tension between defining Israel as a Jewish and democratic state at the same time also appeared. This contradiction took on a critical dimension between contemporary thinkers and Zionist thinkers in a dialectical intellectual context to find a solution to this contradiction. It goes between a trend that seeks to find an intellectual way out by adopting a special model for this democracy called ethnic democracy, and a trend that seeks to remove (Israel) from the circle of democracy. Many intellectual justifications are presented for this by thinkers from both trends in an attempt to overcome the state of contradiction between Judaism as a religion and democracy as a system of government