Tension of Religion and State

In 2001, Alabama's Chief Justice Roy Moore installed a 5,300-pound granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the state judicial building, arguing that American law itself is unintelligible without its divine source. Federal courts ordered its removal, insisting law must stand independent of religion. Moore refused to comply and was ultimately removed from the bench — but his underlying claim endures: a legal system severed from G-d is a legal system without a foundation. About half a century earlier, there was a different but similar controversy behind the drafting of the Declaration of Independence for the modern State of Israel. As the document was finalized in May 1948, religious Zionist leader Rabbi Yehuda Leib Maimon insisted that the birth of the Jewish state could not be declared without invoking G-d — "Tzur Yisrael v'Go'alo," the Rock of Israel and its Redeemer. Secular leaders resisted, but even they could not bring themselves to found the state on man's authority alone. David Ben Gurion proposed a compromise that only the words of "Tzur Yisrael" be cited in the document. It may have been a compromise in wording. Still, it was not a compromise in substance: even Israel's most secular founders recognized that a Jewish state proclaiming its own legitimacy needed some anchor beyond itself. And Rabbi Maimon, unwilling to let the moment pass without full acknowledgment, added "b'ezrat Hashem" beside his own signature, and stood trembling to recite Shehecheyanu — making certain that G-d was present at Israel's founding in fact, if not fully in the text. Two modern stories — one American, one Israeli — show societies grappling with this very truth, each in its own way insisting that a nation's laws cannot stand on a purely secular foundation. This week's parsha, Shoftim, lays out the blueprint for Jewish governance — judges, officers, and even a king. But buried in the laws of monarchy is a striking requirement: before a king may rule, he must write his own sefer Torah and keep it with him "kol yemei chayav" — all the days of his life — reading from it constantly "l'vilti rum levavo me'echav," so that his heart does not grow haughty above his brethren (Devarim 17:18-20). The message is unmistakable: government cannot be divorced from faith. A king is not permitted to rule by pure political power, military strength, or personal will. His authority is only legitimate when it flows from, and remains bound to, the word of God. Remove the Torah scroll from his side, and what remains is not a king — just a man with an army. Shoftim's requirement that the king carry his own sefer Torah teaches the same lesson these two stories illustrate from opposite ends of history and geography: leadership untethered from Torah, from G-d, inevitably drifts toward self-worship. Whether through a monument in a courthouse or a phrase etched into a declaration of statehood, both stories reflect an enduring instinct — one the Torah codified thousands of years earlier — that no government, no society, and no leader can sustain justice, humility, or true authority while divorced from faith in Hashem. ​ Have a Peaceful Shabbos, ​ Rabbi Yaakov Fisch