YYA> The current Chief Justice of the SC was appointed through a highly questionable process, and despite having a problematic track record that would never have passed had he stood before a fair and representative committee. In the US the Senate must directly confirm appointments at this level.
You are probably right here. Israeli democracy has weak points that are hard to fix. But, as the numbers I quoted above show, Israeli democracy is in a reasonable state overall and is improving over time.
Somehow, halakhists spent centuries discussing fine points of kashrus, but did not develop good theories of democracy. R Gamliel has 1000 people in his household learning Torah and 1000 learning Greek. We lost that skill to balance things. Maybe it will come back … for example, according to a historian who studied Jewish Poland during Vaad Arba Artzos, Jewish political and business structures mostly mirrored Polish ones (that were pretty advanced and democratic by those times, until Poland missed out on industrialization)
Someone published a letter during WW2, being surprised at watching German Jews in British internment camps – they were learning about wars of Talmudic times, but totally ignored Normandy and such, even if those were to determine their fate. The author was frustrated with this Jewish disinterest to real life. Someone else forwarded this letter to R Soloveitchik asking him to respond publicly. He did not, but 10 years later, he recalled this letter saying: I hope the author is still alive and can see Israeli politics and observe that Jews are still able to be participants …