Democracy and the Halakhah

(Paperback)

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Eliezer Schweid in Democracy and the Halakhah analyzes the writings of Rabbi Haim Hirschensohn, one of the early Hebrew cultural pioneers who laid the foundation for the Zionist enterprise. Born in Safed Eretz Israel in 1857, Hirschensohn was pushed out of the fanatic Ashkenazi religious community and ended up as an Orthodox rabbi in Hoboken, New Jersey. His writings focus on finding a philosophic basis that could reconcile the Torah with the transformation forced upon the Jewish people by modernity so as to come out with a coherent systematic system of political thought that could encompass both. Co-published with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Reviews

Hirschensohn undertook one of the most comprehensive efforts of anyone to demonstrate how the traditional Torah and modern democracy went hand-in-hand, and as such could, and indeed must, serve as the foundation for the restored Jewish national home. In this rich little volume, Professor Schweid indicates how Rabbi Hirschensohn was not afraid to tackle the most difficult questions posed by modernity, nor did he fail to provide bold and daring responses to them from inside the system of Jewish law. -- Daniel J. Elazar

Author Bio

Eliezer Schweid is Full Professor of Jewish Philosophy at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem.