60 Mark Washofsky
Zionist Organization , 1975); Yosef Tirosh, Hatziyonut Hadatit VehameDinah: Kovetz Ma‘amarim(Jerusalem : World Zionist Organization , 1978); Dov Schwartz , Hatziyonut Hadatit Bein Higayon Lemeshichiyut(Tel Aviv : Am Oved, 1999); and S. Almog , Y. Reinharz, and A Shapira, eds., Tzivonut Vedat(Jerusalem : Mercaz Zalman Shazar , 1994)
10. For an argument that the halakhah as fashioned by the Rabbis is“anti-political” at its core and was therefore never intended to serve as the legal or constitutional basis for a Jewish state, see Gershon Weiler, Teokratiah Yehudit(Tel Aviv : Am Oved, 1976), especially at 143-160.
11. To take Maimonides ’ Mishneh Torah as tool of measurement, four out of the fourteen books that compose that code are devoted to dinei mamonot, that is, to property law, penal law, court procedure, and the structures of government
12. By the“disappearance of Jewish juridical autonomy,” I mean the practice that developed with the rise of the modern nation-state for the citizens of a state, Jews as well as Gentiles, to adjudicate their legal disputes in the state courts. This practice, writes Menachem Elon , brought about serious consequences for Jewish law.“Since Jewish law no longer operated within a functional legal system, its organic development was severely stunted. The harm was compounded by the fact that this historically crucial development in the evolution of Jewish law occurred at the dawn of the nineteenth century, when social, economic, and industrial revolutions were profoundly affecting the law in many fields, especially commercial and public law”, Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles(Philadelphia : Jewish Publication Society , 1994), 1586
13. See, for example, the plea that“our Rabbis instruct us”(velamdenu rabbeinu), along with a detailed agenda of the halakhic problems awaiting resolution, offered by the Mizrachi theoretician S. Z. Shragai before the Tenth National Conference of Hapo'el Hamizrachi, Din Vecheshbon(Jerusalem . 1950), 45-55.
14. Mishpat ivri encompasses two broad, related-but-not-identical trends. The more“purely” academic trend applies the scholarly canons of contemporary jurisprudence and legal history (Rechtswissenschaft and the various theories that have succeeded it) to the study of Jewish law. The second trend reflects the desire among many, though not all, mishpat ivri scholars that the state of Israel adopt Jewish law to the greatest extent possible as the foundation of its legal system. See, in general, Elon, Jewish Law(note 12. above), as well as the essays collected in Ya'akov Bazak, Hamishpat Ha'ivri Umedinat Yisrael(Jerusalem : Mosad Harav Kook, 1969). For a critical,“postmodernist” reassessment of the mishpat ivri movement, see Assaf Likhovski , “The Invention of‘Hebrew Law’ in Mandatory Palestine, ’
* American Journal of Comparative Law 46(1998), 339-373.