Covenantal Authority and Civil Disobedience: Arendt, Heschel, and Non-violent Refusal of the Law

Both Hannah Arendt and Abraham Joshua Heschel are Jewish-American theorists of civil disobedience. One, a full-time academic, the other, a part-time activist. And yet, not only are they experiencing, observing, participating in, and theorizing civil disobedience as a nonviolent way to refuse the law and the state, they are both thinking civil disobedience in profoundly Jewish ways. I take this theoretical intervention a step further to read Heschel's writings about his experience in the civil rights and the anti-war movements with Arendt's essay to extrapolate covenantal authority as a political and communal practice that can illuminate current political conditions and open a path towards an agonistic politics that holds the multiplicity of individuals and ideas as a necessity.