The Horizontal Society

Ideas, evergreen

The Horizontal Society

Every other society was built on hierarchy. Israel was organized along horizontal lines, under a Law above every king.

This is the idea I keep coming back to, and I learned it from R. José Faur. Most human societies are pyramids: a king, a priesthood, a caste, or an empire, with the law flowing down from the top. Faur argued that Israel was organized along horizontal lines instead, because every human being is created in the image of God, and because the covenant at Sinai put the Law above every king. No ruler can break it, and every member is equally bound by it and freed by it.

In my own words from a few years ago: a nation of just laws, not powerful men. Flawed, a divine work in progress, often seduced by the allure of power over others, but horizontal at its root. Much of what I write about Zionism is an attempt to take that seriously, as a covenant that has to work horizontally between Jews and everyone else who lives here too.

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