What is the Chareidi View of the State of Israel’s Government — Is It Considered a Legitimate Authority?

The Charedi Answer Turns on a Distinction the Question Usually Misses: Between Power and Legitimacy. Charedim Fully Acknowledge That the Government Has Real, De Facto Power — Control Over the Land, the Army, the Law, the Institutions. What They Do Not Grant Is That It Is the Halachically Legitimate Jewish Rule the Torah Envisions — a Malchus Founded on Torah, Appointed Through Torah Authority, Governing by Torah Law. The State's Government Has Power Without That Foundation; and Above All, It Has No Authority Over the Torah. Recognizing Its Power Is Not the Same as Granting It the Legitimacy That Belongs, in the Torah's Vision, Only to Rule Built on Torah

This question strikes at the heart of many misunderstandings between the Charedi community and the broader Israeli society. It is often assumed that the Charedi refusal to celebrate the State, or its opposition to certain state policies, reflects a denial that the government has any standing at all — or, conversely, that Charedi participation in the system implies full acceptance of its legitimacy. Both assumptions miss the actual Charedi position, which rests on a precise distinction.

The distinction is between power and legitimacy — between de facto control and de jure halachic standing. We have addressed the related questions of political participation, of obeying the civil law (dina d'malchusa dina), and of the historical Charedi response to the founding in their own dedicated articles; here the focus is the specific question of legitimacy and authority — whether the government is, in the Torah's terms, a legitimate Jewish rule. We work through it below.

I. Power Is Not Legitimacy

The first and governing point is that the Charedi world fully acknowledges the government's power. This is not in dispute, and Charedim do not pretend otherwise. The State's government exercises real, effective control: over the territory, the army, the legal system, the economy, the public institutions. It governs; its laws are enforced; its decisions have enormous consequences for the lives of millions, including the Charedi community. No serious Charedi voice denies that the government holds power. To deny the obvious would be foolish, and the Charedi world does not do it.

But power and legitimacy are two different things. That an entity has the ability to control does not, by itself, establish that it holds the kind of authority the Torah recognizes as legitimate Jewish rule. Throughout history, many powers have ruled over the Jewish people — some benevolent, some cruel, all real in their power — without any of them being the halachically legitimate rule that the Torah envisions for Am Yisrael. Power is a fact about who controls; legitimacy is a question about whether that control rests on the foundation the Torah requires. The Charedi world acknowledges the first about the State's government and questions the second.

This is the frame for everything that follows. Recognizing that the government has power is not the same as granting that it is the legitimate Jewish rule the Torah describes — and the conflation of these two is the source of most of the misunderstanding.

II. What Makes Rule Legitimate in the Torah's Vision

To understand what the Charedi world means by legitimate Jewish rule, one has to understand what the Torah establishes as the foundation of such rule.

The Torah's model of Jewish governance is built on Torah. When the Torah introduces the possibility of a Jewish king, it sets specific conditions:

"Som tasim alecha melech asher yivchar Hashem Elokecha bo."

"You shall surely set over yourself a king whom Hashem your God shall choose." (Devarim 17:15)

The king is not merely whoever seizes power; he is the one whom Hashem chooses — and the Torah continues that he must be subject to the Torah, writing for himself a Sefer Torah, ruling in fear of Hashem and in fidelity to the Torah's law (Devarim 17:18–20). The Ramban and the other mefarshim develop that legitimate Jewish kingship is rule in full alignment with Torah, under its authority, not above it.

The Rambam codifies the procedural requirements. A Jewish king, he rules, is established "only by a beis din of seventy elders [the Sanhedrin] and by a navi" (Hilchos Melachim 1:3). Legitimate Jewish sovereign rule, in the fullest sense, requires appointment through the recognized institutions of Torah authority — the Sanhedrin and prophecy — and governance according to the Torah. This is the Torah's vision of legitimate Jewish rule: founded on Torah, appointed through Torah authority, governing by Torah law, subordinate to the Torah throughout.

The ultimate fulfillment of this vision is Malchus Beis David — the Davidic monarchy that the Moshiach will restore (Rambam, Hilchos Melachim 11:1), governing a Torah society with the Sanhedrin restored and the Torah as the law of the land. That is what legitimate Jewish rule looks like in the Torah's vision — and it is the standard against which the question of the State's government must be measured.

III. Why the State's Government Does Not Meet This Standard

Measured against the Torah's vision of legitimate Jewish rule, the State's government — whatever its power — does not meet the standard, and the reasons are structural, not incidental.

Its foundation is not Torah. The State was established by a movement that was, in its dominant form, secular — its founders largely non-observant, in significant part programmatically opposed to Torah as the basis of national life. It was not founded to realize the Torah's vision of a Torah society under Torah law; it was founded to realize a secular-nationalist vision of a Jewish state like other states.

Its law is not halacha. The State governs by a modern Western legal system, legislated by a secular parliament, adjudicated by secular courts. Torah law is not the law of the land; halacha is confined to a limited sphere of personal status, and even there it operates under, not over, the secular legal order. A government whose constitution is secular law rather than the Torah is not, in the Torah's terms, a realization of legitimate Jewish rule.

It was not appointed through Torah authority. It was not established by a Sanhedrin and a navi, nor by any recognized Torah process; it was established by secular political institutions and is sustained by secular democratic mechanisms. By the Rambam's criteria (Hilchos Melachim 1:3), it is not a malchus in the halachic sense.

And most fundamentally, it does not rule under the Torah. The defining feature of legitimate Jewish rule is subordination to the Torah — the king who writes his Sefer Torah and rules in fidelity to it. The State's government claims authority independent of the Torah, and in many areas legislates and acts against it. This is the decisive point: a government that does not recognize the Torah as the supreme authority over it cannot be the legitimate Jewish rule the Torah envisions — because submission to the Torah is the very thing that makes Jewish rule legitimate in the first place.

As the principle was expressed by the Lithuanian Torah leadership, including Rav Shach zt"l: the government has control — this is not denied — but it is not granted authority over the Torah. The Torah is not subject to the state; if anything, in the Torah's vision, the state would be subject to the Torah. The government's power is real; its claim to be the legitimate rule of the Jewish people, governing by its own secular authority over and apart from the Torah, is what the Charedi world cannot accept.

IV. Not Legitimacy — but Not Anarchy Either

A crucial clarification, because this is where the position is most often distorted: the denial of halachic legitimacy as the Torah's vision of rule does not mean that Charedim treat the government as nothing, or advocate lawlessness.

Charedim, in the main, comply with the civil law of the State — they pay taxes, obey traffic laws, follow the regulations of civil society. The basis for this compliance is a halachic question in its own right (involving the principle of dina d'malchusa dina and its applicability, the authority of communal governance, and the simple imperatives of civil order), which we have addressed in our dedicated article on dina d'malchusa dina. The point here is only that "not the Torah's legitimate Jewish rule" is not the same as "no standing whatsoever." The Charedi world is not anarchist; it does not deny that an ordered society requires law and that there are Torah-internal reasons to comply with much of the civil order.

What the denial of legitimacy specifically means is narrower and sharper: the government is not the fulfillment of the Torah's vision of Jewish rule, it is not a halachic malchus, and — above all — it has no authority over the Torah. It may govern the practical affairs of civil society; it may not dictate to Torah Jews in matters of Torah and halacha, and it may not claim the religious legitimacy that belongs, in the Torah's vision, only to rule founded on and subordinate to the Torah. Engagement with the system for practical purposes (addressed in our article on political participation) is therefore not a contradiction: one can deal with a power one does not regard as halachically legitimate, exactly as the Jewish people has always dealt with the powers that ruled over it.

V. "The Land Without the God of Israel" — A Telling Moment

A single historical moment captures the Charedi concern with unusual clarity: the drafting of the State's Declaration of Independence in 1948.

As the Declaration was being finalized, there was a sharp dispute over whether to invoke God as the source of the Jewish people's right to the Land. The religious representatives sought an explicit reference; the secular representatives, particularly from the left, objected to naming God at all. The compromise was the phrase "Tzur Yisrael" — "the Rock of Israel" — deliberately ambiguous: the religious signatories could read it as a reference to the Almighty, while the secular signatories could read it as the strength or resilience of the nation, with no theological commitment. An explicit invocation of the God of Israel was traded down to a phrase carefully constructed so that it need not mean Him at all.

The hashkafic point this illustrates was captured in the remark attributed to Rav Reuven Grozovsky zt"l (in the context of his analysis of the challenges of the era, Ba'ayos HaZman): that the secular founders sought the Land of Israel without the God of Israel — but that the two cannot be separated. And this is the heart of the matter. The Jewish people's entire claim to Eretz Yisrael flows from a single source: the promise of Hashem to the Avos, recorded in the Torah. "L'zar'acha etein es ha'aretz hazos" — "To your offspring I will give this Land" (Bereishis 12:7). The right to the Land is a Torah right, sourced in the God of Israel and the covenant. A state that invokes that right while distancing itself from its only source — that wants the Land of Israel without the God of Israel, the inheritance without the Torah that grants it — is standing on a foundation it simultaneously denies. The very legitimacy it claims for its presence in the Land is a legitimacy that exists only within the Torah it sets aside.

This is the deepest sense in which the Charedi world questions the government's legitimacy. It is not that Jews have no right to be in Eretz Yisrael — they have every right, the deepest right, by Divine promise. It is that the right is a Torah right, and a government built on the rejection of Torah cannot be the legitimate bearer of a claim that only the Torah grants.

VI. The Spectrum of Charedi Responses

As with the other questions in this area, the Charedi world is not uniform in how it translates this position into practice, and honesty requires noting the range.

At one end, Neturei Karta and similarly aligned groups reject all engagement with the State — no participation, no funding, no recognition — treating the denial of legitimacy as requiring total practical separation. At the other end of the Charedi spectrum, the mainstream Litvish and Chassidic factions (Agudah, Degel HaTorah, Shas) reject the ideological legitimacy of the secular state while engaging with it practically — voting, sitting in the Knesset, accepting funding for Torah institutions — to protect Torah interests from within the system (a posture we have developed in our article on political participation).

But across this entire spectrum, the foundational position on legitimacy is shared. From Neturei Karta to the most engaged Agudah politician, none regards the secular state as the Torah's legitimate Jewish rule, none grants it religious legitimacy, and none accepts its authority over the Torah. They differ entirely on the practical question of how much to engage or separate — and not at all on the underlying question of legitimacy. The engagement of the mainstream is, in its own self-understanding, exactly that: engagement with a power, not recognition of a legitimate Torah rule. Cooperation for the protection of Torah is not the same as ideological endorsement, and practical dealing is not the same as granting halachic legitimacy.

VII. The Closing Position

Is the State of Israel's government considered a legitimate authority in the Charedi view?

It is acknowledged as a power, and it is not accepted as the Torah's legitimate Jewish rule. The Charedi world does not deny — and has no interest in denying — that the government holds real, effective control over the Land and its institutions. What it does not grant is that this control amounts to the halachic legitimacy the Torah envisions for Jewish rule: a malchus founded on Torah, appointed through Torah authority (a Sanhedrin and a navi, in the Rambam's terms), governing by Torah law, and — above all — subordinate to the Torah rather than claiming authority over it. The secular state, founded on a non-Torah basis, governing by secular law, and asserting its authority independent of and at times against the Torah, does not meet that standard.

This is not anarchism, and it is not rejection for the sake of conflict. Charedim comply with the civil order for Torah-internal reasons; they engage with the system, where they do, to protect Torah; and they bear no animus toward the millions of fellow Jews the State shelters. The position is one of fidelity, not hostility — fidelity to a mesorah thousands of years old that recognizes only one ultimate authority for Am Yisrael: the Torah, and the rule that is founded upon it and subordinate to it.

The deepest expression of this is the recognition that even the Jewish people's right to the Land — the very thing the State invokes — is a Torah right, sourced in the God of Israel. One cannot have the Land of Israel without the God of Israel; one cannot claim the inheritance while setting aside the Torah that grants it. True legitimate authority over Am Yisrael, in the Torah's eternal vision, belongs only to rule that embodies and upholds the Torah — and its complete realization awaits the restoration of Malchus Beis David, when the Jewish people will once again be governed by a legitimate Jewish rule, founded on Torah, under the kingship of Hashem.

Sources

Power vs. legitimacy — the governing distinction

• The acknowledgment of the government's real, de facto power and control; the distinction between de facto power (acknowledged) and de jure halachic legitimacy as the Torah's vision of Jewish rule (questioned)
• Rav Shach zt"l (Michtavim u'Maamarim) — the documented framework that the government has control, which is not denied, but is not granted authority over the Torah

The Torah's vision of legitimate rule

• Devarim 17:15 — "som tasim alecha melech asher yivchar Hashem Elokecha bo" — the king whom Hashem chooses; and Devarim 17:18–20, the king's subordination to the Torah (writing a Sefer Torah, ruling in fidelity to it); with the commentary of the Ramban and the mefarshim on legitimate Jewish kingship as rule in alignment with Torah
• Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Melachim 1:3 — a Jewish king is established only by a beis din of seventy elders (the Sanhedrin) and a navi; the procedural requirements of legitimate Jewish sovereign rule
• Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Melachim 11:1 — the restoration of Malchus Beis David by the Moshiach as the fulfillment of legitimate Jewish rule

Why the State's government does not meet the standard

• Its secular founding (not founded on or for Torah); its secular Western legal system (not halacha); its establishment through secular political institutions rather than through Torah authority; and its claim to authority independent of and at times against the Torah — failing the Rambam's criteria for a halachic malchus and the Torah's requirement of subordination to the Torah

Not legitimacy, but not anarchy

• The compliance of Charedim with the civil order for Torah-internal reasons (the question of dina d'malchusa dina and its applicability, communal governance, and civil order — developed in the dedicated article on dina d'malchusa dina)
• The precise content of the denial: not the Torah's legitimate Jewish rule, not a halachic malchus, and — above all — no authority over the Torah; practical engagement (developed in the article on political participation) as dealing with a power, not recognition of a legitimate Torah rule

"The Land without the God of Israel"

• The 1948 Declaration of Independence dispute over invoking God; the compromise phrase "Tzur Yisrael" ("the Rock of Israel"), deliberately constructed to be readable by religious signatories as a reference to the Almighty and by secular signatories as the strength of the nation
• The remark attributed to Rav Reuven Grozovsky zt"l (Ba'ayos HaZman) — that the secular founders sought the Land of Israel without the God of Israel, but the two cannot be separated
• Bereishis 12:7 — "l'zar'acha etein es ha'aretz hazos" — the Jewish people's right to the Land as a Torah right, sourced in the promise of Hashem (developed in "What Was the Charedi View of the Founding of the State?")

The spectrum of responses

• Neturei Karta and aligned groups (total rejection of engagement) and the mainstream Litvish and Chassidic factions (rejection of ideological legitimacy with practical engagement to protect Torah) — sharing the foundational position on legitimacy while differing on practical engagement (developed in "What Is the Charedi Approach to Political Participation?")

Note on sourcing

• Several quotations attributed in the original draft to individual gedolim (Rav Moshe Feinstein, cited to Igros Moshe Even HaEzer 4:27; Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv; Rav Chaim Kanievsky; Rav Elya Ber Wachtfogel; and the "wild dog" analogy attributed to the Chazon Ish) could not be verified to the cited sources as worded; the documented frameworks — the distinction between power and legitimacy, the denial of authority over the Torah, and the requirement of a Torah foundation for legitimate Jewish rule — are presented here on the basis of the primary Torah sources rather than unverified quotations

The structural relationship to other articles in this series

• "What Is the Charedi Approach to Political Participation?" — the practical engagement question
• "What Is the Torah View on Dina D'malchusa Dina?" — the basis for compliance with civil law
• "What Was the Charedi View of the Founding of the State of Israel?" — the historical reaction and the Land-as-Torah-right point
• "What Do Charedim Believe Will Happen to the State When Moshiach Comes?" — the restoration of Malchus Beis David as legitimate Jewish rule