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The covenanting episodes at Sinai in Hebrew Bible have served as a model for political life, particularly in its translation to social contract, as we see in Thomas Hobbes鈥檚 Leviathan and Baruch Spinoza鈥檚 Theological-Political Treatise. Returning to covenant in context of the Jewish textual canon shows covenant as a model not of command-obedience authority, but of an alternative conception in which authority circulates and avoids a final arbiter. As such, we can reevaluate not just classical readings of Hobbes and Spinoza but also, think critically about covenant鈥檚 inscription into certain notions of political theology, especially as it emerged in Weimar Germany. Comparing the early-modern engagements with covenant with a reading of Abraham Joshua Heschel as a theorist of covenant in God in Search of Man, we can see how covenant is a way to think across engagements with and critiques of political theology, and question whether it is possible to have a Jewish political theology.

Sarah B.K. Greenberg is a Lecturer on Social Studies at Harvard University, where she teaches courses on religion and politics, social and political thought, and methods for historical and theoretical research. She earned her Ph.D. in Government (Political Thought) from Cornell in 2024. Prior to graduate school, Sarah worked as a policy advocate in Washington, D.C., where she specialized in church-state law.

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