One of the most enduring questions Jews and non-Jews have asked for centuries is why do Jews continue to overachieve in every professional, intellectual, and artistic field?
The answer can be found in just three Aramaic words: Dina d’malchuta dina. Or in English: “The law of the kingdom is the law.”
The phrase is actually an edict Jews have been admonished to uphold as far back as the time of the prophet Nehemiah in the fifth century B.C.E. It basically means that when Jews live outside of Israel and under non-Jewish sovereignty, they must adhere to the secular laws of those non-Jewish countries with the same loyalty as Jewish religious law.
Nehemiah gave this advice in Hebrew to the original diaspora communities exiled to Babylonia, but it was the rabbis of the period after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. who fleshed out the concept and passed it down to their rabbinic heirs from the period of the Talmud all the way through the 20th century.
From a logistical point of view, one can see the wisdom of this policy. Without Jewish sovereignty, the best way to avoid chaos throughout the Jewish world was to find the non-Jewish nations where Jews could thrive as loyal residents of those nations, if not as full citizens.
Why have Muslim communities, which have so vigorously rejected a similar code of basic conduct by insisting on spreading Sharia law, regressed so much by comparison?
Beyond the basic survival mentality of dina d’malchuta dina, there are also just the organizational advantages to consider. As Jews spread out further and further across the globe over the centuries, they didn’t always bring with them a sufficient number of rabbis to answer their communal questions or adjudicate disputes. The often distantly removed rabbis wisely abdicated much of their authority on more secular aspects of life to the non-Jewish leaders of the increasingly further flung areas where Jews were settling.
But here come two essential questions: what does dina d’malchuta dina have to do with Jewish achievement? And why have Muslim communities, which have so vigorously rejected a similar code of basic conduct by insisting on spreading Sharia law, regressed so much by comparison?
To start the process of answering these questions, we must first examine the prevailing explanations for the outsized Jewish achievement in modern world history.
There are a number of theories, but the consensus usually hovers around the idea that the Jewish tradition and requirement of education and lifelong study is the key. Education is the key to success, we’re (rightly) always told, and there’s certainly plenty of evidence for that as long as you don’t confine your definition of “education” to formal book or school learning.
Some of the purveyors of this idea are aware that the rabbis substituted pre-rabbinic Judaism’s focus on sacrifices and Temple rituals with the philosophy that Jews must all strive to study the Torah day and night. Naturally, this requirement produced a highly literate people who upheld a tradition of intellectual development, regardless of how religiously observant individual generations remained over time.
But respect for education and the edict to study Torah day and night can’t possibly be the reason why Jews have simultaneously produced great rabbinic scholars, scientists, philosophers, comedians, technical wizards, and filmmakers.
To achieve all that, you need not only the cherishing of education but a strong tradition of intellectual and cultural exchange between people inside and outside of your community.
Why is this important? Because, throughout human history, there has been no better catalyst for advancement than the exchange of ideas among people. The evidence for this is infinite, but the history of China is perhaps the best macro-geographic example.
Chinese civilization was centuries ahead of Europe and even the Middle East in ancient times, but began a steady decline starting when systematic construction of the Great Wall began in the 15th century during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). After that time, China’s increasing isolation from its neighboring traders and scholars slowly put that country into an intellectual and cultural form of stasis. For example, at exactly the same time the Renaissance began to flower in Florence, China had the largest merchant fleet in the world, whose ports of call stretched from Japan and Indonesia to East Africa. But, in 1434, the emperor Zhu Zhanji banned outbound overseas trade—partially because the government could not exercise absolute control over it. By the time of the Modern Age in Europe—though the Forbidden City was as wealthy and powerful as it had ever been—China was one of the most backward nations on earth.
Now, after fewer than 100 years of renewed full interaction with the rest of the world—and some would say that interaction has consisted mostly of industrial piracy and plagiarism—China is again one of the world’s most modern technological powers, and that’s despite its lack of any modernity in its totalitarian political environment.
Dina d’malchuta dina forced Jews to embrace a cross-cultural, international, and even interfaith openness and awareness that we wouldn’t necessarily have adopted without it.
The awareness aspect was how it started: How can Jews faithfully follow the secular laws of the land if they aren’t even informed about what those laws are? Right away, this created a more engaged Jewish community wherever they lived across history. That increased awareness has almost always led to an evolving level of engagement, depending on the extent of human and political rights Jews have enjoyed in different societies over time.
Dina d’malchuta dina forced Jews to embrace a cross-cultural, international, and even interfaith openness and awareness that we wouldn’t necessarily have adopted without it.
Inevitably, Jews of all religious levels of observance have eventually felt compelled to weigh in on the laws and other aspects of their home countries. Sometimes this led to heavy Jewish involvement in political movements, at others it led to more of a tacit acceptance of things and hopes for something better in the future. This is precisely the reality that produced—in the same country at the same time—Jews joining the Bolsheviks on the one hand, and rabbis who simply prayed for G-d to “bless and keep the tsar far, far away from us!” (with apologies to the Shalom Aleichem) on the other.
But the example of late tsarist Russia should not mislead people into thinking that only more secular Jews have engaged in outward political movements or the affairs of state throughout the history of the diaspora.
The legendary achievements in science and politics that define the life and teachings of Maimonides are perhaps the best example of that. Not as historic, but often quite impressive, are the cultural and political commentary we often get from more publicly engaged ultra-Orthodox leaders from Lubavitch to Aish Hatorah, etc.
Politics and culture don’t even provide us with half of the story. Science and technology’s increasing role in the day-to-day lives of humanity have made them just as important to follow for Jews and everyone else as the rise and fall of kings and empires. Jewish engagement with and contributions to modern scientific advancements absolutely grow from the same tree planted by the dina d’malchuta dina ethos.
It’s also even helped to enhance religious Jewish thought. Instead of being threatened or flummoxed by great non-Jewish thinkers, our most astute rabbis throughout history have been able to bolster Jewish beliefs and observance by showing how powerful non-Jewish thought is still in line with our own ethos. So, too, they have been able to explain why those beliefs may be well-meaning but off the mark. Engaging with and exposing themselves to non-Jewish thought has often resulted in something like intellectual calisthenics for the rabbis since the time of Aristotle.
But this paradigm hasn’t always served the Jewish people well. From a religious standpoint, this very open engagement with the more impressive and enviable aspects of non-Jewish society has often fueled excessive assimilation and a more radical turning away from Jewish life and traditions. It’s a fair question to ask whether persecutions and forced conversions have erased more Jews from the world over the past 2,000 years than has the allure of non-Jewish culture and society. Similarly, it can be argued that the dina d’malchuta dina commitment to pluralism often stunted any hopes for a return to Jewish sovereignty over time.
This especially seems to have been the case during the Napoleonic Era. Napoleon, who was bent on replacing the established monarchy in Europe, saw the Jews as a logical replacement for many of the members of the aristocracies who had mismanaged European society for generations. In return, Napoleon didn’t just give citizenship to Jews everywhere his armies conquered: he also offered the Jews of Europe a chance to establish a continental Sanhedrin, and even a chance to re-establish some kind of sovereignty in Israel.
But there was just one problem: the Jews of France and wider Europe simply weren’t ready for the offer. Nearly 2,000 years of following the dina d’malchuta dina ideal created a people so comfortable in its virtual “second-class” status. Sadly, it would take the extreme persecution of organized Russian pogroms and the Nazi Holocaust to snap most Jews out of it.
On the bright side, the centuries-long tradition of Jewish engagement with the non-Jewish world gave the modern Zionist movement many of the tools and leaders it needed when anti-Semitism woke so many Jews out of that subservient slumber. Zionist thought leaders from the secular Theodor Herzl to the religious Rav Kook to the strong Jewish self-determination icon Ze’ev Jabotinsky used the tools of secular public discourse to advance their variations on Zionist philosophy. To put it in modern terms: Writing about Zionism and Zionist action in the vernacular of modern political discourse and action wasn’t the Jews’ “first rodeo,” and that was partially thanks to dina d’malchuta dina.
The emergence of the state of Israel has provided a good antidote to the failings of dina d’malchuta dina as well. Nevertheless, it’s obvious that we can’t say that Jews in America and other major areas of the diaspora have “snapped out of it.” When we see so many Jews from former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to Senator Bernie Sanders seemingly so eager to show how loyal they are to their presidential employers or secular political movements, it’s hard to deny that the dark side of dina d’malchuta dina is still a formidable problem.
But what about everyone else? Specifically, how has it worked out for those who reject this kind of cross-communal and societal engagement? That’s where that global push for Sharia law by Muslims in every nation where they are found today comes into the conversation.
Like the regressive results China suffered from its quite literal closing off to the rest of the world nearly 600 years ago, Muslim society has gone from holding a position atop the scientific and economic world to a steady decline since the 12th century. The rise in the post-colonial age of the Muslim Brotherhood and its project of subjugating the non-Muslim world has not only exacerbated that regressiveness, but also threatens to plunge the rest of the world into darkness.
As Muslim migrants from Europe to the United States increase in number, there has been little evidence that their communal leaders will change their insistence on dominating every aspect of their lives in a way that is completely the opposite of how dina d’malchuta dina has pushed Jews to getting ahead of the rest of the world time after time.
The good news is that some political and religious Muslim leaders clearly realize this and are doing something about it. In the political realm, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Muhammdd bin Salman is opening up his country to the rest of the world in ways his predecessors would never have imagined. Meanwhile, Indonesian Muslim religious community leader Kyai Haji Yahya Cholil Staquf is a pioneer in the efforts to create a worldwide acceptance of pluralism among Muslims. Not coincidentally, both bin Salman and Staquf basically advocate for their nations’ normalization with Israel.
As Muslim migrants from Europe to the United States increase in number, there has been little evidence that their communal leaders will change their insistence on dominating every aspect of their lives.
But they are still in an extreme minority. From the suburbs of Paris to the streets of Dearborn, Michigan, too many Muslim communities are being kept in the Dark Ages. Worse yet, the economic and cultural disadvantages the demand for Sharia law bring with them also create a fertile ground for violence and crime. This is not because of poverty, but because of the intellectual close-mindedness and a lack of in-person interactions which lead to the dehumanization of others. The Muslim neighborhoods in Europe and increasingly here in the U.S. that have become de facto “no-go zones” for police and other authorities might as well be re-named “no success zones,” too.
Because so many Western societies and their governments are so weak and corrupted, those pushing for Muslims to be allowed to install Sharia law wherever they go feel emboldened to continue in their efforts. But they can’t possibly feel emboldened by the residual results.
Jews got the gift of a key out of the virtual prisons created by overly insular communities. That key was dina d’malchuta dina, and we can only hope Muslims and others learn to embrace it as well.
