This recent monograph—at least five years in preparation—might better be described as a doubleheader. While professing to be an original tract of communitarian political theory, it happens to utilize three communities in Israel to illustrate its multiple theses. This is the twenty-first publication in the interdisciplinary “Law, Meaning and Violence” series edited by Martha Minow, Austin Sarat, and Elaine Scarry, which explores how law's narratives, practices, and institutions embody and give voice to power and violence. The volume recently won the Yonathan Shapiro Prize for the best book in Israel Studies from the Association of Israel Studies. But instead of concentrating on the otherwise ubiquitous topic of Israel's national security vis-à-vis the occupied territories, it highlights the social and political rights and identities of insular, internal minority groups that choose between legal action and violence when confronted with state power.

Given its dualistic foci, Communities and Law is inevitably composed of two parts: In the first, author Gad Barzilai lays out his theoretical framework, expounds his philosophy of critical communitarianism, and theorizes in fairly abstract terms on the legal and political culture of nonruling communities (Chap. 1), as well as the domination and identity politics inherent in state law (Chap. 2). In the second part of the book, he devotes separate chapters to three examples of subordinate subcultures: Arab-Palestinian citizens living within the original borders of Israel (Chap. 3); various feminist groups, including Arab-Palestinian women (Chap. 4); and fundamentalist ultra-Orthodox Jews (Chap. 5).

The first part offers a seemingly repetitive, jargon-filled elucidation of what the author calls “critical communitarianism,” a revision of communitarianism's rebuke of liberal individualism, which not only emphasizes the political culture of communities but, in particular, how “nonruling” or subordinate communities use their own communal versions of legal culture to resist the state's domination-through-legal-ideology. As Barzilai himself summarizes this conceptual material: “Communal practices include alternative hermeneutics, legal mobilization (i.e., utilization of state law, mainly in legislation and litigation), demobilization (rejection of state law), and countermobilization (action against state law by means of communal law or agents of state law)” (p. 281). Of the sections devoted to particular nonruling communities, Chapter 4 is the least cohesive of the three case studies, probably due to the fragmented nature of wide-ranging groups Barzilai broadly labels as “feminist.” Although the ultra-Orthodox also consist of an array of subidentities—ranging from participants in the ruling government coalition to outright rejectionists who refuse to cooperate with state functions—the numerous lawsuits challenging Orthodox religious monopolies provide the author with concrete cases with which to examine ultra-Orthodox attitudes to legal institutions, particularly the High Court of Justice. Many ultra-Orthodox respect the court but scorn its justices and their decisions. Finally, the Arab-Palestinian chapter relies heavily on a person-to-person opinion survey that Barzilai conducted in July 1998 of attitudes toward legal and illegal political actions, perceptions of discrimination, and other aspects of their legal culture. Yet such a limited temporal snapshot (dated over two years before the start of the second Intifada in the occupied territories) can hardly do justice to the evolving and conflicted identity of such a distinctively situated ethnic minority.

By far, the most significant contribution of Communities and Law is found in the conclusion (Chap. 6), where the author compares how the three nonruling communities, respectively, mobilize the Israeli legal system in behalf of their political objectives, usually attaining only minor, if any, legal reforms but in so striving, legitimize the very hegemonic ideology that is contrary to their own nationalistic, gender, or fundamentalist religious identities. In some cases, the state has co-opted the group's acceptance for its own purposes. For instance, “[t]he founding of Israel as a Jewish state was grounded in the legitimacy acquired from those Jews who aspired to take an active part in the Zionist enterprise, including Zionist Orthodox Jews. The legitimacy conferred by Jews who matched the prototype of the ‘original’ [authentic] Jew … was considered to be vital to the Zionist cause” (p. 233). By contrast, while some Orthodox communities have made a utilitarian choice to participate in national politics, Arab-Palestinians have been reluctant to use a legal tool, law reform litigation, which implicitly recognizes a state structure they prefer autonomy from. Yet paradoxically, “Palestinian feminists wish to see more (not less) state legal intervention in the religious autonomy of the Sharia courts in order to attain more gender equality” (p. 108).

Conspicuously absent, however, is any sustained comparison to states other than Israel. At best, stray references to other countries are mentioned without analysis of the particulars. This is problematic because, in many respects, Israel is a unique case. No other country is a self-proclaimed democratic “state of the Jewish people.” Indeed, there are few other countries purporting to be both democratic and formally religious, in the sense that religious values and injunctions are embodied in the national legal system, from the constitution on down. (Ireland qualifies but Turkey and India do not, being avowedly secular. Democratic states with an “established church” do not usually maintain separate religious courts or employ religious definitions in their immigration law.) But Barzilai does not analyze Israel's unique features in relation to similar phenomena elsewhere (such as Germany's immigration law), nor does he indicate which characteristics are common to other states. This would all be fine if his book were simply a contribution to Israel studies. However, its nonspecific title betrays the author's ambition to transcend that particular niche. He cannot establish the viability of his critical communitarian theory through such a limited application.

A further problem is the failure to provide sufficient background so as to accommodate the reader who is relatively unfamiliar with Israeli society and government and/or with general legal procedure and institutions. For instance, despite the numerous discussions of cases (usually undated) decided by the High Court, Barzilai never clarifies the court's structure and special role in a legal system without a comprehensive written constitution. Similarly, unexplained historical references to peculiarly Israeli traditions such as “the Orthodox and secular status quo” presume a predominantly Israeli audience. Such editorial oversights are perhaps the inevitable feature of such a dual-directed tome.