In Theocratic Democracy, Nachman Ben-Yehuda examines more than fifty years of media-reported unconventional and deviant behavior by members of the Haredi community. Ben-Yehuda finds not only that this behavior has happened increasingly often over the years, but also that its most salient feature is violence--a violence not random or precipitated by situational emotional rage, but planned and aimed to achieve a theocratic society in Israel. He shows how the political structure that accommodates the strong theocratic and secular pressures Israel faces is effectively a theocratic democracy, allowing citizens with different worldviews to live under one umbrella of a nation-state without tearing the social fabric apart.

Nachmann Ben-Yehuda is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.