For three years, Israel has faced one of the deepest internal struggles in its history. At stake is democracy itself, including the role of the Supreme Court, the reach of the government, and the question of whether Israel needs a formal constitution. Can a modern Jewish state endure without a binding legal framework, or has it always had one in the Torah?
Torah as Legacy Document
From its founding, Israel never adopted a Western-style constitution. Instead, it has relied on a patchwork of Basic Laws. Beneath those laws stands something older: the Five Books of Moses—the Torah.
The Torah¹ is more than scripture. For centuries, it has been read, debated, and lived: first transmitted orally, then written on parchment scrolls, and now accessible online (e.g., Sefaria). Jews study it daily, alone, with a partner (hevruta), in yeshivas and synagogues, around kitchen tables, and on Zoom. That endurance has made it a cultural constitution of sorts, shaping Jewish ideas about justice, responsibility, and community.
Deuteronomy’s Voice
The last of the Five Books, Deuteronomy, reads like Moses’ “ethical will”². On the edge of the Promised Land, he reviews forty years of struggle: slavery and liberation, Sinai and commandment, lapses of faith, and leadership crises. He warns of trials still to come, his words reaching all generations.
That message still echoes in our synagogues today, three thousand years later, as if meant for this very season. His insistence on memory, justice, and humility echoes through our synagogues as debates over identity and tradition continue.
Elul 2025: A Season of Reflection
As Israel debates democracy and law, we enter Elul, the month of self-examination before the High Holidays. For forty days, Jews prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur by looking inward, asking how we have treated one another and how we will stand in judgment. It is a season that presses us to consider justice, responsibility, and our future as a people.
At this time of year, synagogue readings turn to Deuteronomy. Week by week, Moses’ words remind us that being a people means more than holding power or land. His calls for justice, memory, and humility speak directly to our present reality.
The Torah may not be a constitution in the modern sense, but it asks the same question Israelis are asking today: how do we live together under laws that are just and that bind leaders as much as citizens?
Abraham’s Covenant and Today’s Politics
If Deuteronomy offers a vision of memory and law, the Torah’s beginning turns to promises and struggles that still shape our politics. The story opens with Abraham: land and descendants, nations to come, and the shadow of both enslavement and redemption.
These themes are not abstract. They have defined Jewish history and continue to shape Israeli politics today. The land remains contested in the ongoing war, yet Jews continue to see it as their sacred legacy. Israel’s population is diverse, with Jews of many backgrounds living alongside Arab citizens and other minorities. On the world stage, the country balances fragile alliances with looming threats. The memory of vulnerability, shaped by slavery, the Holocaust, and now the hostages in Gaza, runs deep.
For many religious Jewish communities, the Torah affirms the Jewish people’s claim to the land through covenantal texts, while also warning that a covenant without justice cannot last. By contrast, secular Jews and much of Israeli society do not base their politics on biblical authority and instead worry that the state is drifting toward autocracy rather than democracy.
The fact that both sides turn to the same text shows the enduring grip of Torah on Israel’s public life.
Torah as a Yardstick
The Torah opens not with Israel but with humanity. Adam and Eve in the garden and Cain and Abel in the field are stories that remind us that in God’s eyes no family or nation is superior to another. From the very beginning, humanity is entrusted with care for the world and with the challenge of choosing between good and evil.
If the Torah begins with universal human responsibility, it also narrows to the question of governance: how should Israel itself be ruled?
From Covenant to Constitution
The Torah speaks urgently about governance: power unchecked is destructive. Every king was required to write out his own copy of the Torah and read from it daily, a constant reminder that his authority was bound by law and humility.
“And it shall be, when the king sits upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this Torah” (Deuteronomy 17:18). A Jewish king is required to write or acquire a Torah scroll and to keep it with him all the days of his reign.
Justice requires social rules and adherence to them. Leadership requires humility and accountability. These lessons were as true in Moses’ wilderness as they are in Israel’s Knesset today.
Some modern thinkers argue that the Torah’s core principles, especially the Ten Commandments, can function as a kind of universal constitution, offering a moral and legal framework for all humanity. Watch Denis Prager’s explanation here.
So, Does Israel Need a Constitution?
Perhaps. But before drafting one, we should remember that we already live with a text that has guided us for millennia. The Torah does not replace modern jurisprudence; it offers something prior to it: a vision of accountability, justice, and human dignity.
In Elul 2025, as Moses’ farewell words fill our synagogues and as Israelis and Jews worldwide approach Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot, the question is not only legal but moral: will we measure our politics, our society, and our choices against the Torah’s yardstick?
If the Torah once bound a scattered people; it can still speak to a divided state. And democracy? Like any covenant, it survives only if we keep it anchored in honesty and shared values.
FOOTNOTES:
- Torah Scroll: For an accessible overview of how the Torah was formalized, see Zvi Ben-Dor Benite’s Lockdown University lecture: www.lockdownuniversity.org
- Ethical Will: An ethical will passes values from one generation to the next; both rabbis and laypeople have written them for centuries.
- Structure of the Five Books: From Rabbi Jonathan Shippel’s Lockdown University classes on the weekly parsha: www.lockdownuniversity.org
- Genesis: creation; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob; descent into Egypt.
- Exodus: slavery, liberation, Sinai, covenant.
- Leviticus: laws of holiness and community.
- Numbers: desert years and leadership struggles.
- Deuteronomy: Moses’ farewell and review.