Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig – Israel: NOstalgia for the Monarchy?
On the face of it, “Judicial Reform” seems to be the main goal of Israel’s present government
(at least its Messianic wing). For its far-Right wing parties, not really. Their ultimate goal is a
complete return to the biblical regime of yesteryear.
In a 2019 radio interview reported by the Israeli newspaper Yisrael Hayom
(https://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/662795), Bezalel Smotrich (today, Israel’s Finance
Minister; back then Minister of Transportation and religious-Zionist Chairman of the National
Union party) stated that his party is slowly working to re-establish the Jewish Monarchy: "…the
state of the Jewish people will return to being conducted as in the days of King David and King
Solomon, according to the Torah's law."
There are two basic problems with this – beyond the fact that one can’t turn back the clock to a
far-off regime from a completely different age. The first problem is “personal”; the second,
“philosophical.” Both, however, show how “nostalgia” for the past can blind even highly
intelligent people (which Smotrich certainly is).
The “personal” error relates to the two kings that Smotrich mentioned – by all accounts the two
most honored in the Jewish tradition. But who were David and Solomon? How did they
behave? In a word: abominably.
David slaughtered two southern tribes (down to the last man, woman, and child; there’s a
modern word for that) who did not threaten him. So why the slaughter? To convince the
Philistines (!) that they can trust him when he was residing in their midst (Samuel 1, 27: 7-11),
escaping from King Saul’s wrath (another unsuited king). The reaction of the Philistine leader
for what David did? “He hath made his people Israel utterly abhor him” (verse 12).
OK, maybe we can “forgive” David for that as he was “young” then. But what about the
outrageous sin of committing adultery with a married woman (Bat Sheva), and then sending off
her husband Uriah to the very front of the battlefield to die in war so that he could marry the
now-widow? There is no doubt that David was a great warrior and perhaps an even greater
poet and musician, but what we need from a monarch is moral fiber and a sense of fair play. On
those scores, King David failed miserably.
King Solomon? Supposedly, the wisest man of all, but then again how smart could he have been
to marry 300 women and take on another 700 concubines?!? Marital fidelity is not the main
issue, however. The Torah specifically forbids kings from having too many wives (Deut. 17: 17) –
so where does Smotrich find in Solomon any “accordance with Torah’s law”?
The second failure of anyone wishing to return to the Bible’s “glorious monarchy” is that the
Bible directly and indirectly shows over and over again that monarchy is NOT the preferred
form of political regime. This is most clearly stated by the Prophet Samuel who tried to dissuade
the Israelites from their demand of him to anoint a king, explaining (with extreme prophetic
correctness) the really bad things the king will do to them. When they persisted, Samuel turned
to the Almighty who told him (Samuel 1, 8: 7): “'Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that
they say unto you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not
be king over them.” So Saul was made king – as noted above, a disastrous choice. (One can only
recall Oscar Wilde’s famous aphorism: “when the Gods want to punish us, they grant our
wishes…”).
The rest, as they say, is history (but not one the present day Smotrich and the rest of his
Messianic brethen want to recall): a litany of bad kings. The first appeared immediately:
Rehoboam, Solomon’s son whose onerous policies led to the breakup of the Israelite state into
two separate “kingdoms” – idolatrous “Israel” in the north, and the rump “Judah” in the south.
This points up another problem with monarchy: successors are usually not succesful! In any
case, several truly evil kings followed (e.g., Ahab, Manasseh), interspersed with the very
occasional saintly monarch (e.g., Josiah).
Indeed, Israel’s monarchical rule was so uniformly bad – morally, religiously, and also politically
– that the monarchy basically ended (thankfully) with the destruction of the First Temple and
exile to Babylon and Egypt. Yes, there was one final attempt to restore the monarchy (a few
centuries later) by the Maccabees, but that too ended catastrophically because of their
descendants’ hubris. The result? When it came time to designate Hanukkah as a religious
holiday the Rabbis’ focused exclusively on the “miracle of lights” and not the Maccabees’
military victories. Even the Books of Maccabees were not included in the biblical canon – and
there were two to choose from. And as if to reinforce the point, the Haftorah reading for the
sabbath of Hanukkah ends with the verse “not with force nor with military might, but rather
with God’s spirit….”
In short, there’s a good reason why the first two letters in the word “nostalgia” are “NO”! If
that’s a general rule, then we can turn to one of the all-time greatest aphorists on politics –
Winston Churchill – who noted: “Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all
the others that have been tried from time to time.” One can add to this, even more pithily, the
lesson of Jewish history: “Monarchy is the worst form of government. Period.”
