Orthodox Judaism’s Concept of the Political

Abstract

Guided by concepts advanced in Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political, this article attempts to formulate Orthodox Judaism’s concept of the political. While it is evident that different Orthodox groups hold different and sometimes opposing political views, the question remains whether Orthodoxy as such possesses a foundational conceptualization of the sphere of the political that might be also be framed as “Orthodox.” The article presents three possible internal Orthodox conceptualizations of “the political,” yet highlights each of these positions’ failure to integrate Orthodox commitment to halakha within a truly political framework. The first conceptualization negates the political in a manner that subsumes this realm under the purview of halakha. The second acknowledges the political as a secular realm standing outside the boundaries of halakha. The third possesses a religious understanding of the political that is nonetheless non-halakhic. In order to present an Orthodox concept of the political, the article turns to two thinkers who offered a critique of the epistemological regime of modernity (which is responsible for the existence of the political as a distinct sphere) from an Orthodox stance: Isaac Breuer and the young Leo Strauss. Their reflection on the political as such led them to call for a politicization of Orthodoxy’s very commitment to halakha. Retrieving Breuer’s and Strauss’s truly Orthodox concept of the political enables the formulation of a novel, hitherto underdeveloped Orthodox critique of Zionism. Whereas Zionist voices tend to comprehend the exilic stance of Orthodoxy as apolitical compared to their own attempt to politicize Jewish existence, Breuer and Strauss argue that it is precisely Zionism that fails to offer a concept of the political that is truly Jewish.