Praying for the welfare of a bad government

Rabbi Chanina, Deputy of the Kohanim, says: “Pray for the welfare (literally 'peace') of the government since, if it were not for fear of it, a man would swallow his neighbour alive" (Avot 3:2). In principle this sounds perfectly sensible. A government that cannot govern is a recipe for a failed state. Its rule generates anarchy, chaos and the often devastating consequences when individuals and communities have to fend for themselves, taking the law -- or more properly the absence of law -- into their own hands.

But things are never as simple as they seem. Does one pray for the peace of the realm when the government is oppressive, corrupt, selfish and immoral? Opinions are divided. Rabbi Marc D. Angel, for example, writes:

"...praying for the welfare of the government is relevant only if the government itself is just. If the government is immoral, one certainly should not pray for its welfare" (The Koren Pirkei Avot, 2015).

Against this, it is worth considering the background to this teaching. Rabbi Chanina lived, and died, at a time of chaos and anarchy, when the Romans occupied the whole of Israel and the Levant; they were therefore the ruling power in Israel itself. Nowhere in Israel was more anarchic than Jerusalem, where the power struggle between different religious and nationalist factions resulted in the great tragedy of Jew-on-Jew murders, these being deaths that the Roman governors had no great interest in preventing. The Jewish authorities too were powerless to stop this carnage. Indeed, it was a sorry reflection of those troubled times that the members of the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish court, absented themselves from the Lishkat HaGazit (the Chamber of Hewn Stone, from which place alone capital cases could be tried) so that they would not be able to pass the death sentence on Jewish murderers. This decision was arguably taken on the basis that, since so many Jewish lives were already being lost and the death penalty was no longer an effective deterrent, it was folly to address the escalating mortality rate among Rome’s Jewish subjects by killing even more of them. If one is to pray for the welfare of only a good government, we may well ask whether Rabbi Chanina was ever able to follow his own advice.

Rabbi Marcus Lehmann (The Lehmann-Prins Pirkei Avoth (Feldheim, 1992) takes the view that Rabbi Chanina's teaching does indeed apply to corrupt governments. One does not pray, of course, that their leaders and functionaries should succeed in their evil, but that they should mend their ways and govern justly. This is reflected in the classic formula of the prayer for the Queen found in the British Authorised Daily Prayer Book:

“May [God] in his mercy put a spirit of wisdom and understanding into her heart, and into the hearts of all her counsellors, that they may uphold the peace of the realm, advance the welfare of the nation, and deal kindly and justly with all the House of Israel.” 

This formulation does not endorse the errors and follies of the government. It does however invoke God's mercy -- and it also acknowledges that wisdom and understanding are gifts from God, gifts of which many governments throughout the world are sorely in need.

The ruling classes

What form of government best suits the Jewish people? Some folk maintain that we must move with the times and ensure that we adopt to fully democratic model; others hanker for a theocracy, in which the principles of the Torah will provide a framework for all civil and public life. Then there are those who point to the monarchy as being most appropriate, recalling the glory days of David and Solomon and the promise that the sceptre will never leave the Tribe of Yehudah.

The Torah does not specify that we adopt any one form of government to the exclusion of others. Rather, it demands that the interests of truth, justice and peace be placed at the helm of whatever regime we operate. This is made plain by Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel (Avot 1:18), who identifies truth, justice and peace as the three qualities on which the world depends for its continued existence.

We can conclude that the nature of any system of governance is less important than its functionality: we judge it by its results. If it is fair, respects truth and delivers peace, that is as much as we can hope for. We can also surmise that, if this is the case, even a bad system of governance that is manned by good people will deliver better results than a good system run by bad people. 

As for taking up leadership roles, Avot advises avoiding public service and governmental matters if one can (see eg Avot 1:10, 3:6). However, the tractate recognises that someone has to do this work: as Hillel says, "In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man" (Avot 2:6). Public positions cannot be shunned where they leave a leadership vacuum -- and they must be filled even if this means putting aside one's commitment to Torah learning.