8. The Limitation of Power

Judaism achieves the limitation of power in several ways:

• Firstly, power is limited by its distribution:
• If the king keeps his household modest, he makes available to others what he denies himself.
• While not a Biblical concept, the modern, democratic principle of returning power to the people through elections is also an example of this principle.
• Another approach is to moralize power:
  The King was required to write a Sefer Torah and keep it by him - not only so that he should be familiar with Torah, Jewish Law, but to oblige him to integrate Torah into his persona. In this way, he would, as a matter of conscience and habit, respond in accordance with the precepts of Judaism.
• Thirdly, political power was to be opposed by spiritual power. Judaism accordingly vested the Prophet with a political function, in addition to the spiritual-moral one. In ancient Jewish society, on issues of social concern, the Prophets was a counterweight to the king. This may have prompted Abraham Joshua Heschel  to write of them:
        The significance of Israel’s Prophets lies not only in what they said but also in what they were.

Two of the above - the distribution of resources and political opposition - are examples of separation of powers in Jewish political leadership. Where the separation of the US government into legislative, executive and judicial powers weakens the centrality of power, this principle also operates in Jewish life.

Review & Programming:

Teaching Heritage. Lesson Plans. In the Days of the Prophets.
www.thirteen.org/edonline/teachingheritage/lessons/lp8/learning.html

Further Reading

Profiting from the Prophets. Sean Gonsalves. Common Dreams. www.commondreams.org/views07/0108-27.htm
Relevance of the Prophets. Time Magazine. 1963 http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,940255,00.html