It has become a commonplace to reserve for Greek philosophy the field of nature and politics, while the thought of Israel would be uniquely attuned to the divine Word… Yet an unprejudiced reading of the Torah reveals the coherent nature of the biblical approach to politics. This book endeavors to articulate the major axes of Israel’s political thought: the Covenant, the Passage, the “Hiding”, the Strangeness… through a philosophical questioning of the biblical text. For Hebrew politics is the fruit of a demand that engages man’s freedom. When Flavius Josephus invented the concept of theocracy to define the State of Moses, he committed an absolute misunderstanding because he implied that a relationship of power with no human stakes founded the city of the law. In fact, something quite different is at work. The Alliance is not a “social contract”, but it does induce a politics that bears comparison… When nihilism remains a temptation, even in the political arena, has the time not come to contemplate modes of social bonding tested in the desert crossing? Jerusalem still retains the resources to rethink politics at the dawn of the 20th century…
Translations of Philosophy of Law
In English, Shalem Press, 2011
Philosophy of the Law, The political in the Torah