David Novak of New Republic called The Jewish Political Tradition, one of the most ambitious Jewish intellectual efforts of recent years when it was published some eight years ago. Now, with two out of its four volumes – Authority and Membership – already published in English by Yale University Press, Shalom Hartman Institute’s Yahaduyot series presents the Authority volume in Hebrew.
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The project, which culminates in a four-volume work, grew out of the annual Philosophy Conference organized by Shalom Hartman Institute. Alongside the present volumes on "Authority" (English and Hebrew) and "Membership" (English), volumes on "Community" and Politics" and "History" are scheduled to be published.
The series is edited by Michael Walzer, Menachem Lorberbaum , and Noam J. Zohar . Walzer, from the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, is one of the foremost political theorists living today. Lorberbaum and Zohar teach political philosophy and are faculty members at Tel-Aviv and Bar-Ilan universities respectively and senior fellows at Hartman Institute.
The Jewish Political Tradition explores the political thought of the Jewish people from biblical times to the present. The texts and commentaries in Volume I address the basic question of who ought to rule the community.
The contributors – philosophers, lawyers, political theorists, and other Jewish studies scholars – discuss the authority of God, the claims of kings, priests, prophets, rabbis, lay leaders, and Gentile rulers during the years of the exile, and issues of authority in the modern State of Israel. The book presents 30 topics reproducing a range of primary and secondary sources, and offering eminent thinkers’ commentaries on each topic.
This comprehensive work is already used by scholars in universities worldwide as an invaluable resource for Jewish, political and philosophical thought. The publication of the Hebrew edition offers an easy access to the original texts of the most pertinent sources on the theme of "Authority" concentrated in one volume.
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