The inhumanity of twentieth-century European ideologies and myths of racial supremacy were major historical reasons for the establishment of the modern state of Israel in the light of the curse of the Holocaust. This history reminds us of the difficult task that has befallen Europe ever since, and that has not necessarily found a clear answer yet in certain European countries: what defines the cohesion of societies today? Is it political philosophy or religious or racial identity? This book attempts to apply and answer that question in the context of the state of Israel itself rather than Europe. The articles come from the perspective of scholars of civil and Jewish religious law, including former High Court Chief Justices. They provide extensive reflections on the meaning and purpose of two Basic Laws that were passed in the Knesset in 1992: Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty and Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation.

The Basic Laws define Israel as both Jewish and democratic. As the former Chief Justice Aharon Barak declares, they put ‘legal scaffolding’ on the human rights guarantees in Israel's Declaration of Independence, which on its own was not a legally binding document (p 26). The book elaborates on the legal and political challenges facing discrepancy between religious identity and political democracy – specifically, the extent to which religious law, halakhah, can inform the political definition of the state. Although the contributors agree that it is possible in principle for Israel to be both Jewish and democratic, they differ on the place of secular interpretations of human rights in Israel as a Jewish state. In terms of the classic division between Israeli centre-right and centre-left political views, the monograph becomes increasingly religiously sensitive; the more religiously sensitive the articles, the more ‘left-wing’ they sound.

Following Justice Barak's short reflection on the values of the state of Israel, Haim Cohn elaborates on the values of the Jewish and democratic state. Both speak of Jewish values in abstract terms, ‘outside the parameters of binding religious halakhah’ (p 34). Cohn identifies the practical uncertainty about what degree of accommodation the law can and should give to religious communities with their own strongly entrenched legal and moral codes: ‘when there is a clash between Judaism and Zionism, the democratic values must prevail’ (p 38). Later he supports the idea of concession in the sense of ‘social contract’ (pp 57–58). This suggests that he is in favour of human rights as stop-gap notions to avoid complete relativism in public morality. Like many Western liberal secular thinkers, he is also inclined to speak of rights as based on the individual's will and dignity.

Ruth Gavison elaborates on different meanings of ‘Jewish’ and ‘democratic’, with interesting insights on the uniqueness of the modern state of Israel, but again at a high level of abstraction. For her, universal suffrage is the basis of a thin formal understanding of democracy, which, if stripped of other structures, could give unlimited freedom to the governing authority to do what it chooses. She favours setting limits to possible ‘bad’ political policies (without defining ‘bad’) but not including them in the very definition of democracy (pp 124–127).

Gavison raises the key question of who is sovereign in a democracy, but, as Asher Maoz says later, ‘democracy does not develop in a greenhouse’ (p 174). This argument has a history, not so much as an abstract ideal about where ultimate political legitimacy lies but in challenges to a set of claims to ultimate legitimacy – claims that in a new historical situation are being questioned as unjustifiable. Menachem Elon (pp 106–109) and more convincingly Aiel Rozen-Zvi (pp 276–281) show how a significant part of that history is about the role of law in society and the relation of the political executive to a law that is not at the disposal of any executive power. The perception that a parliamentary sovereignty may do as it pleases is a bad reflection on this, but, although Gavison alludes to the issue, she avoids discussing any challenge to such a positivist and monopolistic account of sovereignty (p 128).

The most extensive response to some of the abstractions above is in the lengthy article by Asher Maoz, editor of the book. Maoz speaks of an alternative antique version of social contract in the Mosaic Covenant and provides a corrective to Cohn (pp 202–203). He poses the important question: ‘If what is meant here is that the values of Judaism encompass the values of democracy, why did the Knesset need to complete the reference to the values of a Jewish state by referring to the values of democracy as well?’ (p 171). Cohn associates human dignity with a particular set of capacities but Maoz reminds us that the language of human rights is not a neutral language and has become more rather than less problematic in recent years. Thus there is the danger of human dignity being identified with criteria according to which full claims to rights may be granted or withheld – children, the mentally disabled, the unborn. The foundation for a discourse of non-negotiable rights is not one that lends itself to simple resolution in secular terms. Cohn, on this point, rightly emphasises the radical Jewish insistence on the rights of everyone. Rights belong not to the person who can demonstrate capacity or rationality but to any human organism that can be recognised as a human body.

This leads to the book's main thesis: in contrast to what is sometimes assumed, in discussing Jewish law and civil law there is no simple stand-off between two rival legal systems. This is partly because Jewish law does not ultimately depend on any human decision or votes of preferences but on the conviction that it represents the will of God. Maoz points out (pp 213–214) that Jewish law is to some extent unfinished business, so far as codified and precise provisions are concerned. It changes in accordance with broader Jewish values. To recognise halakhah, therefore, is to recognise a method of jurisprudence governed by revealed texts, rather than a single system (not unlike classical understandings of sharia in Islam).

This allows Maoz to talk about citizenship as a concept that is not identical with belonging to the Jewish people. While recognising the privileged status of Judaism in the state of Israel, he appreciates that Israel cannot guarantee that the country is religiously homogenous; the relationship in which the individual stands and which defines him or her is not exclusively with other Jews. Maoz also acknowledges that the clash of values is within society itself. Part of the modern political story in Israel is the urgent requirement to make connections between communal identities, religious or otherwise, and the newly established loyalty in the Holy Land as political affiliation, especially from minorities. Here the Jewish character, in its broad meaning, can be helpful, with a religiously formed ethic of self-giving carrying across the wider political realm a sense of mutual investment, knowing that the good of one depends on the good of others.

The book raises other issues. Both Maoz and Rozen-Zvi seem to suggest a deep gulf between the Christian view of politics and that of Judaism. Their view of the alleged separation between Church and State seems rather simplistic: Maoz limits his discussion to the USA (p 175). Some of the Jewish commentators on secularism in this book would have found support from a number of Christian philosophers, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, who famously suggested in his After Virtue that the question of rights in the secular context is no more than an assertion. Moreover, Maoz's understanding of citizenship as distinct from religious loyalty implies that in the predominantly Jewish state there is a dual identity as citizen and as religious believer within the community of other believers, with some separation between religion and politics: ‘interpretation of this very general phrase, “the values of the state of Israel” was entrusted to the judges of Israel, and not to its rabbis’.Footnote ⁶ Gary Burge's important study Whose Land? Whose Promise? What Christians are not being told about Israel and the Palestinian refers to biblical principles to define what makes the people of Israel distinctive in its history of revealed law, wisdom and covenant with numerous prophetic warnings. This book attempts to provide a justification for the dual nature of the state on the basis of that inherited wisdom. But it lacks a certain level of self-criticism. Little is said about actual practice in today's state of Israel.

The discussions in the book seldom touch on the reality of non-Jewish citizens and cultures in the state of Israel today (p 118). While no-one ought to deny the right of Israel to exist, especially in the light of recent history, very few seem to help it to work out how to sustain its calling, in particular in relationship with its neighbours. Fear and instability erode law. Without stable and agreed borders, neither stability nor the universal witness to justice in accordance with Jewish heritage would be sustainable. It would be an irony if Israel subverts its own moral essence inherited in the biblical heritage in order to survive: not a light to enlighten the nations, but a nation trapped in the same problems and self-interests that affect many other states today. The broader vision of a Jewish state ought to try to show what a society looks like when it refuses to see its unity and cohesion in abstract terms – ideology or mere race – but allows for mature argumentation, change and adult citizens in their embodiment of wisdom and justice.