Issur Arkaot and Dina DeMalkhuta Dina

Abstract

Abstract Jewish law comprehensively applies to all aspects of private and public life. Its unique legal literature not only addresses practical rulings but contains profound spiritual and ethical teachings. Judaism’s greatest legal authorities have always been its foremost rabbinic leaders. Consequently, compliance with Judaism’s laws, personal immersion in its texts, and respect for its legal institutions are quintessential religious responsibilities. For most of the past two millennia, however, Jews have lived under the power of Gentile regimes with significantly different legal systems. Tensions between these competing approaches inevitably developed. As Gentile rulers began to consider granting Jews citizenship rights, pressures on Jews to abandon their distinctive legal tradition intensified. Ironically, the 1948 creation of the State of Israel in 1948 similarly threatened to displace Jewish religious law with secular Israeli law. Two Jewish law doctrines, Issur Arkaot (a prohibition against submitting adjudicative matters to non-rabbinic courts) and Dina DeMalkhuta Dina (a rule rendering violations of some types of secular law as Jewish law transgressions), have helped preserve the observance of Jewish law, the vigorous study of its texts, and the respect of its authorities. This chapter explores these doctrines, explains the roles they have played, and foreshadows the prospects for their continued vitality.