The Challenges of Sovereignty

Essays on Israel and Zionism

Key essays by a notable scholar address some of the most pressing questions facing Israel today.

Over the course of his rich career, David Ellensonone of the most outstanding Jewish scholars, intellectuals, and thinkers of our timeprobed the tension between tradition and modernity, especially as reflected in the ceaseless reinterpretation of liturgical and halakhic texts. Alongside that scholarly interest, largely centered on European Jewry, Ellenson produced an impressive body of work on Zionism and Israel.

This volume follows the arc of this body of work from Ellensons early articles on the Zionism of American rabbis to his last essay on the struggle between Jewish and democratic impulses in Israeli society. He draws on familiar sources of inquiryJewish prayers and legal sourcesto chart changes in Israeli religious life and to excavate its theological-political foundation. What emerges is