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Against Method 235

authority, these sources presume the existence of a Jewish commonwealth in all its Toraitic accouterments: a king, prophets, priests, Sanhedrin, and ordained judges(shoftim). One might well conclude from these sources that the corpus of Jewish law has nothing to say to the political reality of contemporary statehood. The articles in HTM therefore seek to locate a sufficient source of sovereign power within existing halakhic theories of governance. Some of the authors based their constitutional theories upon the institution of takanot hakahal(community ordinances), the recognized power of local communities to act through representative bodies to adopt regulations and to levy taxes. They reasoned that this theory, which lay at the foundation of Jewish self-government throughout the Middle Ages, could be applied as well to a national commonwealth. Others sought the roots of sovereign power in the doctrine of dina demalkhuta,“the law of the kingdom,” the notion that the government legitimately exercises a range of powers necessary to its existence and proper function. The question here is whether the concept of dina demalkhuta, cited in the Talmudic sources to justify halakhic recognition of certain acts of a gentile government, might apply as well to a Jewish regime in the land of Israel ; several authors in H7M argued that the answer is“yes.” Finally, Rabbi Shaul Yisrael contended that the foundation of sovereign Jewish power lay in the legal tradition of malkhei yisrael, the powers and prerogatives that the Torah grants to a Jewish king in the land of Israel . This theory faced an obvious difficulty: we do not have a Jewish “king” of Davidic lineage, nor do we have the institutions(a prophet and a Sanhedrin) required to invest him in office. Yisraeli responded to these objections by adopting a chidush(a new halakhic idea) offered by Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Hakohen Kook, ” namely that in the absence of a Davidic monarch the powers of kingship(malkhut) do not disappear but rather revert to the people; the people, in turn, may bestow these powers upon any person or governmental institution they choose. Each of these articles displays that mixture of innovation and