Introduction

Classical thinkers see merits in democratic freedoms but perils in democratic governance, which inevitably breaks down and leads to imposed sovereignty. At the same time, Aristotle offers a positive portrayal of an agricultural democracy, which finds parallels in the Hebrew Republic, the system of governance described in the Old Testament. The Hebrew Republic came to an end after the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple in 70 ce. Over the course of the next millennium, an anti-Hebrew Republic emerged in the Spanish divine-right monarchy, in which the unification of civil and religious authority inverted the source (the Torah) of supreme authority in the Hebrew Republic. Each iteration of the divine-right monarchy intensified pressure on Spain’s longstanding Jewish community, many of whom ultimately succumbed to pressure and converted to Roman Catholicism during the period from 1391 until 1492. These converts, or conversos, never achieved assimilation and were instead considered inferior Spaniards and Portuguese whose religious sincerity was closely policed by Inquisitions that served as extensions of divine-right royal authority. Inquisitorial discrimination drew conversos to more tolerant Amsterdam, where they could practice Judaism without fear of persecution, which they learned to do under the supervision of their chief rabbi, Saul Levi Morteira (b. ca. 1590–d. 1660). It was in this milieu that democratic Zionism was conceived through the writings of Morteira and two of his ‘disciples,’ Baruch Spinoza (b. 1632–d. 1677) and Miguel de Barrios (b. ca. 1625–d. 1701).