Jewish-Israeli Political Thought

Jewish thought and rhetoric may have dominated the Jewish people's way of life for years, but what happens when a Jewish state is established, whose laws and authorities are not necessarily based on that same Jewish tradition?

Jewish-Israeli Political Thought is a collection of studies exploring the tension between Israeli and Jewish political philosophy, the relationship between the Jewish people's collective and personal past and present, individual identity and its place in the traditional Jewish collectiveness, and the intermediary role of the ancient Hebrew language in the dialogue between the past and the present.

The chapters in this book were written by young scholars of different religious, and sometimes cultural and lingual backgrounds; however, they all live in modern-day Israel, and they all question the relation between traditional-Jewish and modern-Israeli political thought. The diversity of the writers enables a broad and unique perspective on the status of Jewish tradition in contemporary political thought in Israel.

The book provides a window into various spatial and temporal horizons in the course of a Jewish tradition that is constantly being re-examined and re-discovered.