Q&A: Separation of Religion and State
Separation of Religion and State
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Is the desire to separate religion and state not sometimes in tension with a religious person? Take the example of public transportation on the Sabbath: when, as a religious person, I hope that people will be able to take buses on the Sabbath, isn’t that a real conflict? Meaning, I’m not supposed to hope for or support Jews desecrating the Sabbath. So how do you answer that? Because in practice it still sounds right to me to separate religion and state, but maybe that’s just because of liberalism, and Judaism doesn’t always take liberalism into account… Thank you very much, and happy holiday 🙂
Answer
It has nothing to do with the question of what you hope for. You are not supposed to hope that Jews will desecrate the Sabbath. Pray that they won’t do so. The question is whether it is the state’s role to ensure this, especially for people who do not believe in any of it. In my opinion, it is not. That is true both essentially and in terms of consequences: if a state starts seeing to the implementation of the religious or other values of the majority, that is a double-edged sword that can also end up being used against you. In short, I can be committed both to religious values and to democratic values, even though conflicts between them may arise (I discussed this at length in the third book of the trilogy). And beyond all that, coercion will not increase love of Torah, so it has no religious value either, regardless of democratic values.