" תמים תהיה" מול אימת השלטון וה" חרם": עיון במחשבה הפוליטית של הרמב" ן

Nahmanides' religious ideal of "wholehearted" devotion to God produces a unique mode of tension between such devotion and loyalty to any human authority. It is therefore striking that in his classical Mishpat ha-Herem Nahmanides provides a novel grounding for the authority of the medieval kahal, endowing it with legislative powers greater in crucial respects from those of the ancient Rabbis. This seeming anomaly should be explained, I argue, in terms of his conception of the Israelite collective as the main conduit for the individual's religious and existential connection to the deity. From the perspective of democratic theory, Nahmanides' theology thus offers significant support for veneration of the "general will", but hardly of individual or minority rights.