What Is a Jewish State?
- Elon Gilad
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
When Israel’s Declaration of Independence proclaimed “the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz Israel,” it did more than announce sovereignty – it asserted that Jewish nationhood, long denied, had returned to history. Yet ever since, there’s been debate about what it actually means to be both Jewish and democratic.
The term “Jewish state” has become a lightning rod – celebrated as the embodiment of Jewish self-determination, denounced as proof of ethnic exclusivity, and endlessly dissected in law, philosophy, and international politics. It signifies a homeland for a persecuted people.
Israel’s Jewish identity is embedded in its laws, institutions, and symbols. The 1950 Law of Return grants every Jew the right to immigrate and gain citizenship. In practice, it serves as a collective guarantee of safety – an answer to centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust.
To understand what Israel means by calling itself a Jewish state, we must begin with how that idea evolved, from dream to doctrine, from moral claim to constitutional principle.
From Zionist vision to statehood
The phrase “Jewish state” entered modern vocabulary through Theodor Herzl’s 1896 book "Der Judenstaat." For Herzl, it meant sovereignty and normalcy: a modern, democratic state that would give Jews control over their own destiny. Religion played little role in his vision. What mattered was political recognition – first by world powers, then by the Jewish people themselves.
Ahad Ha’am, Herzl’s rival, imagined something different: “a Jewish state, not merely a state of Jews.” He believed the revival of Hebrew culture, ethics, and learning – not borders and armies – defined the true meaning of Jewish national rebirth.
Between these poles – Herzl’s diplomacy and Ahad Ha’am’s spirituality – Zionism unfolded. Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s Revisionists added the language of defense and self-reliance: a Jewish state “behind an iron wall.” Labor Zionism under Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, brought pragmatism – settlement, state-building, and compromise.
When independence was declared in 1948, Israel’s founders deliberately balanced ideals. The Declaration of Independence affirmed the “self-evident right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate,” while promising “complete equality of social and political rights to all inhabitants.” Its authors invoked both Herzl and Isaiah – national revival and moral universalism intertwined.
That difference – between particular identity and universal equality – has animated Israeli democracy ever since.
Israel’s Jewish State
Ruth Gavison, a leading constitutional scholar, argued that the Law of Return is not a discriminatory privilege but a legitimate legal expression of collective self-determination.
Just as postcolonial nations enshrined indigenous return clauses, Israel’s immigration law ensures the continuity of a people who once lacked sovereignty. Within this framework, equality and particularism coexist: the state is Jewish in identity but democratic in its decision-making.
Sammy Smooha’s model of “ethnic democracy” situates Israel among states like Latvia or Armenia, where a majority ethnicity anchors national identity while minorities enjoy political rights. He argues that such systems are stable precisely because they allow contestation: citizens can challenge the boundaries of identity through the same democratic institutions that define it.
Amnon Rubinstein and Alexander Yakobson similarly contend that Israel’s Jewish identity is compatible with democracy as long as it preserves universal suffrage, freedom of expression, and judicial oversight – all of which remain intact. Discrimination exists, they concede, but it can be remedied through democratic evolution rather than constitutional overhaul.
Why a Jewish State still matters
For Israel’s supporters, the concept of a Jewish state remains not an anachronism but a moral necessity. The Holocaust revealed the peril of statelessness; the Law of Return ensures that Jews will never again depend on the mercy of others for refuge.
Unlike colonial ventures, Zionism was a movement of return to the land where Jewish identity first took shape. The Jewish people are indigenous to Judea, no less than Greeks to Greece or Armenians to Armenia. The establishment of Israel in 1948 restored sovereignty to a people long dispersed, rather than imposing it upon others.
The accusation that a “Jewish state” is inherently racist misconstrues the modern principle of national self-determination, which underlies the very structure of the international system. The United Nations recognized both a “Jewish state” and an “Arab state” in its 1947 Partition Plan. Dozens of countries – from Ireland to Poland – define themselves by ethnicity or faith. Israel’s challenge is not the existence of a dominant national identity, but the ongoing responsibility to reconcile it with full civic equality.
A balancing act
Israel’s democratic institutions remain robust, though strained at times. Arab and Jewish parties share the Knesset. The Supreme Court continues to exercise judicial review. Civil society and the press remain vibrant. Yet polarization has deepened over the years: religious and secular Jews need to find a middle ground; judicial reforms test institutions; and socioeconomic gaps widen.
The question before Israel is not whether it can remain a Jewish state – it will. The question is whether it can stay a democratic one that embodies the values invoked in its founding document: “freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.”
That ideal demands a constant recalibration between collective identity and individual rights, between history and universality. Israel’s vitality lies precisely in that argument – endless, impassioned, and unresolved.
Conclusion: Between memory and future
To be a Jewish state is not simply to have a Jewish majority or Hebrew symbols. It is to shoulder a moral responsibility rooted in memory: to prove that national revival need not come at the expense of equality, and that the Jewish story – once defined by exile and persecution – can coexist with democratic self-rule.
Israel was not founded to dominate others but to ensure that Jews would never again be dominated. Its survival as both Jewish and democratic is based on serving as the homeland of the Jewish people and a state that grants full dignity to all its citizens.
The “Jewish state” is a living argument – one that mirrors the complexity of Jewish history itself, balancing belonging with justice, memory with moral responsibility.
Sources
Rabea Eghbariah, Jewishness as Property Under Israeli Law, Law and Political Economy Project (2024).
Ruth Gavison, Jewish and Democratic? A Rejoinder to the "Ethnic Democracy" Debate, Israel Studies Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring, 1999), pp. 44-72.
Pnina Lahav, A “Jewish State…to Be Known as the State of Israel”: Notes on Israeli Legal Historiography, Law and History Review, Vol. 19, Issue 2 (2011), pp. 387-433.
Jerry Z. Muller, What Americans Don’t Get About Zionism and Israel: Jewish Nationalism in Comparative Perspective, Society, Vol. 62 (2025), pp. 378–386.
Nadim Rouhana, Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict (Yale University Press: 1997).
Yaniv Roznai, Populist Constitutionalism and the Judicial Overhaul in Israel, Israel Law Review, Vol. 56, Issue 3 (2023), pp. 502-520.
Amnon Rubinstein and Alexander Yakobson, Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish Nation-State and Human Rights (Routledge: 2009).
Sammy Smooha, The Model of Ethnic Democracy: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State, Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 8, Issue 4 (2002), pp. 475-503.
Elon Gilad is an Israeli author, journalist, and linguist. His work focuses on uncovering the historical roots of contemporary issues, particularly in current affairs, Jewish history, and the Hebrew language. Gilad is the author of "The Secret History of Judaism." His analytical pieces draw on his diverse background to provide unique insights into complex issues.