As Israel continues to teeter on the edge of a “constitutional crisis” (or maybe has already slipped into one), wherein the difference branches of government refuse to recognize each other’s authority, it is interesting to consider a historical perspective.

As Jews established themselves in communities throughout the diaspora in the middle ages, a bipartite structure became virtually universal: each community was governed by two leaders or leadership elites: lay leadership, generally expressing power based on wealth and/or relations with gentile rulers (which generally went together); and rabbis, whose authority was based on their knowledge of Torah.  (This might be seen as a continuation of the concept described a few posts ago – the political/professional dichotomy of kings and priests; and today we have synagogue presidents and rabbis, federation presidents and professional staff.)  In order to maintain a balance between internal autonomy and external security within the gentile environment, the two authorities had to function together: the lay leaders dealt with external relations, negotiating the community’s privileges and obligations to the state; the rabbis were responsible for halakha, the Jewish law that governed the people’s everyday lives within the community.  Often they managed to work in harmony.  Sometimes not.  For example:

In about 930 CE, the lay leader of the Babylonian Jewish community, David ben Zakkai, asked the leading rabbi of the community,........

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