Tetzaveh (Exodus 27:20-30:10) February 27, 2021/15 Adar 5781

The ancient world saw a natural connection between temporal and spiritual leadership. In some societies, the roles of king and high priest were one and the same, and even where there was a division, the king still wielded divine authority as either the descendant of the gods or as their personal representative - something which even lasted into the twentieth century, with the Emperor of Japan only repudiating his alleged descent from the goddess Amaterasu in 1946 (the exact meaning of the Humanity Declaration is rather unclear and outside the purview of this blog, but the Showa Emperor did declare that he was not a divine incarnation). This wasn't the case for the Israelites. 

In this week's parashah, Moses is given instruction about making priestly vestments for Aaron and his sons and for the ceremony in which they are to be ordained as the priests. Even with their new office conferring religious power as the administrators of the sacrificial cult, Aaron and his descendants do not have any civil authority either in the desert or after entering the Promised Land. The Jewish understanding of the appropriate separation of powers is that civic/political power is vested in a kings, judges, and chieftains, while the nation's religious leadership is the province of the priestly caste. This is not to say that the regime is not a theocracy (in fact, the word "theocracy" was coined by Josephus precisely to describe the form of government in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea); the king is not the one making the laws, he is only there to enforce laws which come from God. But the king manages the government and the priests manage the Temple.

This idea of separation of powers is important, because the role of the king and that of the priests are necessarily in conflict. The king must be part of the nation. He is a leader, but a leader is not separate from those he leads. He serves the people, and he therefore cannot be set apart from them. On the other hand, the priestly caste is defined by holiness, and therefore is outside the normal society - kohanim are expected to maintain a high level of purity at all times, including avoiding contact with the dead, to marry only natural-born Israelite women (that is, not converts) who is not a divorcée, and to avoid alcohol before performing their ritual duties. Additionally, consolidation of all power in one organ of government, especially when that organ is an individual, leads to conflicts of interest. 

In the second century BCE, the Kingdom of Judea was ruled by the priestly Hasmonean dynasty, after they had led a revolt against the Seleucid rule of Antiochus IV. While the military victory is honored and celebrated every year in the holiday of Hanukkah, the Rabbis were not all that happy with the dynasty, in particular due to their being kohanim and taking the High Priesthood in addition to the throne. Spiritual leadership is important, and temporal leadership is likewise important. However, the two are different, and even if the temporal authority is theocratic, it should not be allowed to become an ecclesiocracy (that is, rule by the religious leaders, in contrast to theocracy in the original sense of the word, where the civil leadership is merely administering the state on behalf of God). When the political power and the religious power rest on the same individual, the institutions of the state have their interests subserviated to the religious establishment and vice versa. This has caused problems nearly every time it has been tried, from Hasmonean Judea, where civil wars surrounding the priesthood and the monarchy led to annexation by Rome and ultimately the destruction of the Second Temple, to WWII Japan, where the state cult of the Emperor was weaponized in a war which ended in a situation where nuclear weapons were the less awful option, to the Islamic Republic of Iran, where the nominally democratic government is really just window dressing for the rule by the clerical elite.

A religious state is not ideal, and it runs contrary to the values which have shaped the West (which is not to say that those values are universally correct, but as a Western writer writing for a primarily Western audience, that is the necessary frame of reference). But even if religion defines laws, civil power has to remain with the laity. When those in power seek to combine the crown of kingship with the crown of priesthood, however, is when things start to be problematic.