Law without Nations
Contents
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I. Introduction I. Introduction
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II. The Return of the Repressed: From the Bible to the State of Israel II. The Return of the Repressed: From the Bible to the State of Israel
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III. Three Contemporary Models of Halakha III. Three Contemporary Models of Halakha
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The Cosmopolitan Halakha The Cosmopolitan Halakha
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A. The Jewish King in the Halakhic Imagination A. The Jewish King in the Halakhic Imagination
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B. The Global Community in the Halakhic Imagination B. The Global Community in the Halakhic Imagination
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IV. Transnational versus Cosmopolitan Law IV. Transnational versus Cosmopolitan Law
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Conclusion Conclusion
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Notes Notes
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Law Without Nation? The Ongoing Jewish Discussion
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Published:10 December 2010
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Abstract
This chapter offers a conceptual history of Halakha, the elaborate body of Jewish law adumbrated in the wake of the destruction of the Second Temple. In contrast to the usual depiction of halakha today as comprehensive, self-sufficient, and unified—aspiring to create a total, sacred society—it provides an alternative picture of halakha as the coexistence of universal and particular legal systems within a complex legal order. These systems are conceptually and normatively distinct, although they interact within the overarching halakhic framework. The universal is not the domain of the transcendent, however, as moderns have come to think. Instead, the universal is that part of halakha shared with all conventional societies. The particular is over and above the universal; it is the domain of true justice or the sacred and, to the extent it is embedded in civil society, is available to critique and counter the dominant law of the nation-state. The chapter begins with some necessary historical background by tracing the transformation of the biblical view of a national, collective law to the classical rabbinic transnational model, and then outlining the tensions inaugurated within Jewish legal thought with the rise of the modern nation-state and especially the State of Israel.
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