This is a horrible idea for so many reasons.
A nascent effort to re-establish the ancient rabbinical body of the Sanhedrin received a significant boost Monday when world-renowned scholar Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz agreed to serve as the body’s president.
The original Sanhedrin, the supreme legislative body in ancient Israel, comprised 71 leading scholars who issued rulings on a wide array of ritual and policy matters. Its members claimed to have received ordination from an unbroken chain of religious authorities dating back to Moses.
The institution is a highly charged symbol of biblical Jewish sovereignty, and its restoration has been controversial for decades, carrying an explicit challenge to the secular basis of the modern Israeli state. Some groups associated with the Sanhedrin restoration project have met in recent months to discuss the additional goal of restoring a Jewish monarchy and the building of a Third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
And yes, I know they've come out against the "disengagement." But so what? If you were looking for a way to create dissension and strife among Jews today -- religious and secular, religious and more religious, left and right, Zionist and non-Zionist -- it would be hard to beat re-constituting the Sanhedrin. ('Though "disengagement" itself is already doing a passable job....)
