Abstract

Israel: Church and State

Two questions concerning Israel have been disturbing American liberals: Does Israel guarantee freedom and equality for its non-Jewish minorities? Is it becoming a clerical state? The first can be answered with a simple yes. The new government of Israel gives its minorities complete freedom of worship and education. The answer to the second question is less clear and depends partly on what is understood by "clerical state." There seems to be no danger that Israel will become a clerical state in the Roman Catholic sense, since Judaism has no pope, no centralized structure of power, and no political program for curtailing the jurisdiction of civil governments throughout the world. Yet, Israel does not meet the American criterion of separation between church and state.