The advent of modern Zionism and, even more so, the creation of an actual Jewish state, raised questions for rabbinic thought that had for centuries been purely hypothetical, if acknowledged at all. Foremost among those who advocated for the creation of a state based on halakhah was Israel’s first Ashkenazi chief rabbi, Isaac Halevy Herzog. In The Invention of Jewish Theocracy, Alexander Kaye argues for the importance of Herzog’s ideas in shaping religious Zionist thought. Shalom Carmy writes in his review:

Where [Kaye] tries to break new theoretical ground is in raising the entire question of “Jewish theocracy,” meaning whether a Jewish state should indeed be governed by the corpus of halakhah. His view is that theocracy was not the only live option for religious Zionists. The prevalent sense that theocracy, as a goal, is taken for granted by religious Zionism, he implies, owes much to Herzog’s prominence and to his awareness of contemporary legal systems, not least to the Irish constitution, about which he was consulted during his tenure [from 1919 to 1936] as chief rabbi of Ireland and as a friend of the Irish leader Eamon de Valera.

While Carmy finds Kaye’s argument “intriguing and attractive,” he argues that Kaye overstates Herzog’s importance:

[B]elief that the way of life upheld by halakhah is the way of life ordained by God for the Jewish people entails that the Jewish people should adopt it in their commonwealth. Whoever advocates an alternative, in which halakhah shares sovereignty, or is subservient to a secular jurisprudence, must justify that alternative.

Such alternatives can be justified in a variety of ways [from within the framework of Orthodoxy].

But whether a mixed system of religious and secular law is inherently desirable from the religious perspective or whether it is the best that can be attained at certain historical junctures, it is the mixed system that requires justification. That is why it seems to me that anyone in Herzog’s position would start from the “theocratic” halakhah-centered default position. He might have to settle for a mixed pluralistic system under the force of circumstances, as indeed happened in the state of Israel, or he might have allowed for a large measure of secular autonomy. . . . But these moves would require argument; they cannot be assumed.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.