Every summer, for four days, the picturesque Gush Etzion community of Alon Shvut becomes Israel’s capital of Bible study, as thousands of Bible buffs converge to explore and expand their knowledge of the Bible at “Yemei Iyun B’Tanakh,” the Bible Study Days, which is sponsored by Herzog College on the campus it shares with Yeshivat Har Etzion.
The event, founded initially 33 years ago by Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun and others as a summer professional development program for teachers, has grown into a major annual gathering that is open to the public. According to Herzog representatives, this year 5,000 people participated in 160 lectures that were delivered in Hebrew, English, French, and Russian.
Of particular interest to attendees this year was the English lecture track on “Politics and Elections in Tanakh,” which focused on episodes in the Bible that addressed politics and electoral issues.
On Sunday, July 12, Prof. Mira Morgenstern, Rabbi Menachem Leibtag, Rabbi Alex Israel, Rabbi Reuven Spolter, and Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot addressed the issues of conflict resolution, Jewish redemption, clashes between politics and religion, and who rules in a Jewish and democratic state.
The following day, Rabbi Doron Perez, executive chairman of the Mizrachi World movement and the president of the World Zionist Organization, discussed Machiavellian politics and the Jewish ideals of political discourse.
Twenty lectures curated by Rabbi Reuven Spolter
The timing of the subject was especially appropriate, given that official television and radio election advertisements will begin in mid-October and culminate in the election on October 27.
The English-language track of lectures, consisting of 20 lectures, was curated by Rabbi Reuven Spolter from Herzog College’s Global Jewish teacher education division.
“Tanakh is not just a record of the past,” he said. “It is a guide for understanding the questions we face today.
“These English-language tracks were designed to help participants engage with enduring biblical ideas that speak directly to contemporary Jewish life.
“One track explored what Tanakh can teach us about power, leadership, politics, and the responsibilities of a Jewish state, while the other examined how Tanakh serves as the foundation of our prayers.
“Our goal was not to advocate for particular political positions, but to create a space where participants could wrestle with complex issues through the lens of Tanakh and discover how its teachings continue to shape Jewish thought, values, and identity.”
Spolter’s lecture on why King David was not allowed to build the Temple in Jerusalem focused on whether Jews are proud or embarrassed by warriors with blood on their hands.
“We find a fascinating dichotomy between the way Jews in Israel see the importance of defending our land, and how Jews living outside Israel understand our existence. Modern Orthodox Jews in the Diaspora ask: ‘How should Jews use power?’ whereas religious Zionists wonder: How should Jews preserve and exercise power?
“The ‘church and state’ combination of Jewish exercising power and interpreting Torah law makes many Jews living outside of Israel feel uncomfortable. Some even consider it to be dangerous.
“This could be why the rabbis minimized the importance of King David and left him out of the central Amida prayer, and why the author of the biblical book of Chronicles chose to highlight David’s warrior character as the reason he was prevented from building the Temple in Jerusalem.”
One of the most moving lectures on politics and the Bible was delivered by Rabbi Doron Perez, who, at the outset of his presentation, noted that in recent years there has been greater emphasis on Bible study in the Jewish world.
“As we gradually return to Jewish sovereignty and the fullness of Jewish civilization,” he said, “we have the tremendous privilege of slowly returning to the grandeur of the sweep of Jewish life....
“Tanakh, through biblical prophecy, provides the sweep of Jewish life - the macro view of what Jewish civilization is about, of living with the collective return to the Land of Israel with all of its tremendous opportunities and challenges.”
Perez contrasted two models of political leadership - the point of view espoused by Machiavelli, which views gaining, retaining, and exercising power as the overriding objective, with that of King David.
“There is one end that Machiavelli justifies - getting into power, maintaining power, and exercising power.” The Machiavellian model, he explained, permits deception, manipulation, and the destruction of political rivals when these serve that goal.
This, he said, is not the Jewish ideal of politics. “Somebody said, ‘I expect my politicians to lie to me.’ Do we? Is that what it’s come to? Somebody says, ‘I expect them to look me in the face and lie to me.’ Really? Is that what we expect from our leaders?”
By contrast, Davidic politics, modeled on King David, said Perez, regards political authority as a form of service and responsibility.
King David accepted responsibility for his failures and refused to eliminate political opponents such as King Saul, even when doing so might have been justified or politically advantageous. Moreover, he took full responsibility for his improprieties.
Political goal of a Jewish leader is not power, but unity
The political goal of a Jewish leader, Perez suggested, is not about power. Rather, it is to act as a unifier.
“The aim of a Jewish leader is to bring together the tribes of Israel, bring together the different ideologies of Israel, and weave them into one cohesive people.
“King David believed that the success of the Jewish people would be not how strong he was, but to what extent he could represent all of them and bring them together.”
Perez developed the theme further, relating it to the death of his son Daniel on October 7 and the eventual return of his body for burial.
“We may indeed be the smallest nation in the world, but we are the largest family. Our greatest advantage we have as a people is we really are so small. We’re not a nation of 15 million people. We’re a family of a few million family members.”
Jewish identity, he said, rests on the concept of mishpaha - family. This explains the extraordinary lengths Israel will go to in order to recover hostages: Israelis see them not merely as fellow citizens but as brothers and sisters.
According to Perez, the biblical ideal is not domination but partnership. Man and woman were originally created as two sides of a single being - equal in worth and intended to become one. The subsequent statement that the man would rule over the woman describes a curse resulting from sin rather than an ideal social arrangement. Human beings should work to overcome relationships based on control, beginning within marriage and the family.
Perez then applied this idea to contemporary Israeli politics. Political opponents within Israel must not be treated as enemies; Israel’s enemies are Hamas and others who seek the country’s destruction. The right, left, religious, and secular communities may disagree profoundly, but each has something to contribute to the Jewish collective.
Calling for a broad national-unity government - a “government of healing” - capable of representing the country’s mainstream Zionist consensus, Perez said that major questions, including military or national service and the allocation of state resources, cannot be resolved through coercion by a narrow partisan majority.
Genuine reform must be “revolutionary in its goals but evolutionary in its implementation,” grounded in broad agreement, fairness, and national priorities.
Neither families nor nations can be healed through power struggles, he concluded. Lasting change will occur only through responsibility, consensus, and recognition that unity - not victory over one’s internal opponents - is the true purpose of Jewish leadership.
While the lectures on politics and elections in Tanakh offered no endorsements of particular candidates or parties, they did provide insight into the Jewish perspective on the relationship between politics and religion - and how the two can best work together.