Introductory remarks

Abstract

This volume offers a threefold intellectual juncture. It counterpoises the political traditions of republicanism and liberalism, tracing tensionfields old and new. It solicits early modern political thought to meet with present-day political concerns. It also brings together Israeli political and legal culture with its European and American counterparts, point­ ing to their common origins and comparing their current topographies and concerns. A major assumption in this book is that Israeli politics and law are derivatives of early modern European thought in ways that are both fa­ miliar and challenging to other descendants of the same tradition. The frequent stretching of the concept of Zionism to an analytical catch­all for all matters Israeli has obfuscated the country's basic political and legal structures that were aimed to steer clear of ideology. Alongside the heated rhetoric of nineteenth­century nationalism (some would say colonialism), Israel's founders deployed the cool scaffolding of a mod­ ern republic. Insofar as it imbibed major political legacies of modern Europe, many of Israel's current predicaments are more akin to those of other political societies than many scholars have previously surmised. Modern Israel hails from a founding generation that was largely secular, an offspring of the Enlightenment (particularly the German Enlightenment), and steeped in European intellectual history. Many founders of Israel were educated in the high schools and universities of Eastern, Central and Western Europe. Most of them had strong Euro­ pean identities, often tragically destroyed before or during World War II. Whether socialist, liberal, or "revisionist"­nationalist, their European political compass was deeply relevant to the Jewish national awaken­ ing and state building. Zionism itself was a European movement first and foremost, deeply embedded in the broad education of its founders. Theodore Herzl and Ze'ev Jabotinsky were erudite liberals. David Ben Gurion proudly considered himself a self­taught democrat. Consequently, the young state's main institutions were those of a