[Avodah] What would a Torah government look like?

[Michael Makovi]

>From Areivim:

>After all, much of halachah bein adam l'chaveiro is some idealistic
>(in that it reflects an ideal, and is not always pragmatic), and, as
>has often been noted, does not necessarily lend itself as a complete
>solution to modern problems of enforcement. What would happen if the
>government could not prosecute a murder who chases his victim into an
>empty cave and emerges with a bloody knife?
>The power granted to a melech to add addition legal powers serve to
 >fill in the gaps, but we can ask, if in the absence of a melech +
>sanhedrin, if we wouldn't be better off remaining under the authority
>of a moral and just secular government who is allowed to create these
>laws on their own without a formal halachic process.
>* iff from comp sci; "if and only if"
>Mike Miller

Your points are quite valid.

But chas v'shalom that we should have to remain under a secular
government in order to ensure a proper society! Can one truly imagine
that ratzon haTorah is that we remain under an explicitly non-Torah
government? Can one imagine that the Torah does not have provision for
just this case? As Ben Bag Bag says, everything is in it.

Besides, according to the opinion that a king is optional (minority
though it may be, it is still a valid opinion, and had to account for
all the situations and details for it to be even considered), there
could be a complete Torah-government without a king. How then would we
take care of the man with the bloody knife?

There are at least two answers I know of
1) Put him in a prison-cell with barley-bread till he bursts
2) Punish in ways that are not strictly warranted (i.e.
extrajudicial), but enforced so as to prevent criminals from ignoring
the Torah.

To explain number two: If you can execute someone who violates the
d'rabanan of riding an animal on Shabbat, surely there is a way to
execute someone who didn't technically fulfill the requirements for a
witness!

(Of course, if either of these solutions works, then it begs the
question, what good are the judicial laws? If we can ignore the
requirement for two witnesses with non-circumstancial-evidence and
with warning, etc. etc., either by using a dungeon and barley bread or
extrajudicial punishment, then what are these laws for? I am not an
expert, and perhaps one of these does not apply here, and/or perhaps
there is a third solution. But in any case, it is absolutely
positively unthinkable for their not to be provision in the Torah for
this. It simply cannot be.)

As an aside, I was just studying Sforno on Avot, and he interprets
making a sayag to the Torah not as making gezerot and takkanot, but
rather as enforcing punishments not provided for in the technical law
(number two above). The reason is still the same as making a gezera or
takkana, viz. to protect the integrity of the Torah from those who
would scoff at it, etc. His basis is the Gemara elsewhere on making a
sayag, where it says this.

Mikha'el Makovi