Prof. Uriel Reichman, founding president and chairman of the Board of Reichman University, warned that Israel's upcoming October elections represent a fundamental choice between competing visions of the Jewish state — one rooted in the democratic principles of the Declaration of Independence, the other in a theocratic model that would subordinate state authority to religious law. Writing ahead of the 2026 Herzliya Conference, Reichman argued that the judicial overhaul initiated in 2023 isn't merely a policy dispute. It's a constitutional struggle over whether Israel remains a Jewish and democratic state or transforms into something fundamentally different.
Reichman traced the ideological roots of this divide to currents that emerged after the Six-Day War 59 years ago. As a paratrooper officer, he recalled hearing Motta Gur announce, "The Temple Mount is in our hands." Most Israelis, he wrote, saw the war as an extraordinary military achievement won through blood, courage, sacrifice and comradeship. They didn't regard settlement throughout the territories as a religious obligation. But another current, inspired by Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook and developed by his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, saw the war as a decisive stage in the divine process of redemption. This worldview gave rise to Gush Emunim, which regarded settlement throughout the biblical Land of Israel as a religious commandment and viewed the Six-Day War and the settlement enterprise as expressions of divine will.
The Ideological Transformation
Reichman wrote that this outlook raised the question of the limits of obedience to the state when its decisions conflicted with the commandment to settle the Land. Over time, part of the movement underwent a deeper transformation. Increasingly some held the state lacked legitimate authority whenever it conflicted with the redemptive vision. Following the disengagement from Gaza 21 years ago, this evolution accelerated. For some, the evacuation violated a divine commandment to "inherit the Land." Among influential religious educators, particularly within the Bnei David pre-military academy and circles associated with the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, a new constitutional vision gained ground. Their objective wasn't merely to influence public policy but to reshape the state itself, replacing a Jewish and democratic state with one whose constitution is the Torah, while building the political, educational and public power needed to advance this goal.
In this conception, democracy is understood primarily as majority rule. Judicial independence, checks and balances, and the protection of minority rights aren't regarded as essential features of democratic government but as obstacles to establishing a halachic state. The judicial overhaul proposed in 2023 must be understood against this background, Reichman argued. It reflects a much deeper debate over the source of Israel's authority: whether it should remain faithful to the vision embodied in the Declaration of Independence or move toward a fundamentally different, religious model.
The Unexamined Assassination
Reichman said the country never fully confronted the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin 31 years ago. He recalled the morning after Rabin was murdered, when hundreds of students gathered outside the university's administration building, their eyes red from tears and a sleepless night, to light memorial candles. He spoke to them about the Rabin he had known and about the stain the assassination would leave on Israel's history. It would be a mistake to focus solely on the assassin, Yigal Amir, he wrote. Israel had to examine the ideological environment that made the murder possible. Under the banner of national unity, Israel largely avoided that reckoning, leaving the ideological roots of the assassination largely unexamined.
The Oslo Accords were the subject of legitimate public debate, Reichman acknowledged. But among some extremist elements within the religious settlement movement, opposition went beyond politics. Certain rabbis invoked the halachic doctrine of moser, "a Jew who informs on fellow Jews or delivers their lives or property into the hands of hostile authorities." Under halachic law, a moser may be killed, and a Jew who kills him is considered to have performed a mitzvah. Amir later stated that he had received rabbinic authorization to regard Rabin as a moser. Leading rabbinic authorities, including the Chazon Ish and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, had ruled that the moser doctrine had no place in the sovereign State of Israel.
The Zionist Vision
Reichman wrote that political theory continues to rest on Aristotle's foundational insight that it's not the role of the state to enforce ideological or social unity. The purpose of the state is to enable people with different beliefs and convictions to live together while promoting stability, openness and moderation as guiding values. The architects of modern Zionism — from Theodor Herzl and Ze'ev Jabotinsky to David Ben-Gurion — rejected the idea of a theocratic state. They envisioned a Jewish state that would be democratic, committed to liberty, equality and the rule of law.
The Declaration of Independence captured that synthesis, establishing Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people while pledging to "ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex" and guaranteeing "freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture." The judicial overhaul seeks to alter the very essence of the State of Israel and depart from the vision of Zionism embodied in the Declaration of Independence, Reichman argued. The coming elections offer Israelis an opportunity not merely to choose another government but to reaffirm the national commitment to the values on which the state was founded and finally provide them with the constitutional framework they deserve. Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state depends on it, he concluded.
Reichman cited Jewish history's warning about internal division, recalling the death of King Solomon and the split of the kingdom under his son Rehoboam, after which the rival kingdoms weakened and were destroyed. The lesson, that internal division leads to national catastrophe, remains painfully relevant.
Why This Matters:
The struggle Reichman describes isn't academic — it's playing out in Israel's courts, classrooms and settlement councils. A state that abandons the principle of judicial independence and minority rights protection doesn't become more secure. It becomes more brittle. Israel's strength has always rested on its ability to balance Jewish identity with democratic governance, to be both a homeland for the Jewish people and a state governed by law rather than theology. The judicial overhaul initiated in 2023 represents the most serious challenge to that balance since the state's founding. If Israel's democracy is weakened in the name of religious authority, the country risks losing not just its international legitimacy but the internal cohesion that has allowed it to survive in a hostile region. The October elections will determine whether Israel remains faithful to the vision of Herzl, Jabotinsky and Ben-Gurion — or embarks on a path that subordinates democratic principles to a messianic political theology that even leading rabbinic authorities have rejected as incompatible with sovereignty.