Democracy in Israel is relegated to secondary status with increasing frequency. It is, we are told, not a Jewish value and we should use it with care. If it serves Jewish purposes, then it is all to the good. If not, then it is dispensable.

To correct a misconception, democracy is a Jewish value. It is not so because the Jewish people gave birth to the idea - they did not - nor because our tradition of internal rule was overwhelmingly democratic - it was not. Rather, democracy is Jewish because there is no other system of government which so embraces values and goals we consider quintessentially Jewish.

Democracy best befits two of the deepest and most important claims that Judaism makes about people - their tremendous value and their equality as individuals with all others.

Our texts are unique among ancient works in isolating and articulating the place of humans in God's world as His junior partners, the highest of creatures. Thus humans are created last in the order of things, to oversee and care for the Garden of Eden.

Humans are made just "a little lower, than the angels," crowned "with glory and honor" by God (Psalms 8:7). Their responsibilities are commensurate with their status, so everyone is told to act with the understanding that, "For me the world was created" (Sanhedrin IV:5).

Yet, each individual must take care against self-aggrandizement vis-?-vis his or her neighbor. The same section of Sanhedrin teaches that we were all descended from Adam, so no person may say to any other, "My parent was greater than yours."

The Bible already warns that the Land of Israel will spew the Jews out as it did other peoples if they do not keep God's laws. Indeed, Amos reminds the people of Israel that they are no different than any other nation before God - He has taken them out of Egypt as He has freed others from slavery (Amos 9:7).

Is there a system of government that better reflects the value of humankind and the equality of each individual than democracy? With all its shortcomings, this foreign import best expresses the very ideals Jews have sought so long to teach the world.

However, democracy does not only reflect Jewish values. Its primary service is its gift of opportunity to the citizen to realize values in one's life, and Judaism clearly imposes such an obligation upon each individual.

We are told in the Bible that we are to be a holy people. This responsibility is spelled out in a long series of obligations, primarily regarding interaction with our peers. We are to be just, support the downtrodden, care for the stranger, etc. - all principles detailed into specific requirements.

Later, Judaism was to find a beautiful phrase for such acts, tikkun olam - man, as God's partner, putting the world back in order.

The basic requirement for all such activity is the freedom to act, to influence one's environment and to improve it. The guarantor of that freedom is the democracy which preserves the individual from slavery to the state.

There are those who believe the Jewish people in exile needed such protection when their minority status left them defenseless under systems of government. In Israel, they claim, there is no such need.

How wrong they are and how far removed from the Zionist dream! If the return home has achieved anything, it has given us the chance to struggle with challenges that any living nation faces.

In Israel, we are building a national culture anew; we are creating our ethic of war and peace: we are developing our relationship to territory and our concern for minorities. If the individual is to take part, he must be able to participate in national decision-making. The Zionist revolution, in short, requires a full democracy - nothing less.

To cite Jewish precedents of undemocratic rule is no more relevant than to cite ancient means of transportation as binding. Government is a means, and we can easily see that a developing Jewish state requires democracy to survive as a Jewish entity.

A word is due on another misrepresentation. There are those who see Judaism as only a set of prescribed acts. If a state could impose those acts, "dayenu "- it would be sufficient for them. This is a basic misunderstanding of the mitzvot. From the time that Moses was instructed to tell the children of Israel to obey God's laws, such obedience was a matter of the individual's decision. God determines everything, except man's relation to God (Brachot 33b).

The hope of the tradition for the individual is kabbalat 'ol mitzvoth - the "acceptance of the yoke of the commandments," which implies the freedom to choose. Democracy is its best guarantor.

However, can Judaism survive in a democratic society? This question itself implies a rejection either of the inherent worth of the tradition or of the inherent ability of the Jewish people to maintain it. In terms of the latter, the record is spotty. Nevertheless, conviction in the eternity of the Torah is sufficient to warrant education, and not coercion, as the means of building the Jewishness of the state in the future.

Can democracy survive in a Jewish Society? In theory, it could even thrive and grow. Jewish values - the worth of humankind, equality, each person's responsibility for the world and the obligation to make it a better place - are the very values necessary to balance democracy. They prevent it from slipping into the deviations that have allowed slavery, limitation of freedom, and voting restrictions, in societies said to be "democratic." Judaism might well be the ideal complement to democracy.

Still, if democracy can survive in a Jewish society theoretically, can it survive in practice? The question is real. If we recognize that Judaism and democracy are not at odds, but are one, and that a Jewish state is impossible without democracy, we will guarantee democracy's survival by our convictions.

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