A Critique

The Jewish State: A Century Later, by Alan Dowty (University of California Press, 1998), xiv + 337 pp.

Religion ineluctably gravitates to center-stage as a determining issue, perhaps the determining issue, in the delineation of Israeli national identity. Herzl's "Jewish State" was intended and was understood to mean the state of the Jews; that is, of Jewry, not of Judaism. Ever since the emotional "Uganda" debate in the Zionist Congress of 1903 allowed the religious impulse into play by an ideological back door, Zionism has lived as a marriage of incompatibles. Israel itself inherited this fate through its ideological legacy. Secularist and universalist in origin and purpose, the ideology must also be religious and particularist at the same time. This is not accomplished through synthesis, since there is none available--it is not possible to synthesize democracy and theocracy (unless there is an overwhelming religious majority, conceivable only in a far distant future). Nor, as the brief career of Canaanism suggests, can a divorce be negotiated between the two opposites. They are in fact tethered in dynamic matrimony, the very discordance of which constitutes, rather than merely characterizes, the Israeli identity.

Dowty's important book investigates the evolving Jewish dimension of modern Israel's personality, assessing its implications and reviewing the problems, ideological and practical, surrounding it. The compatibility or otherwise of the Jewish and the democratic aspects of the state are singled out for special treatment. What is a Jewish state, and can it be both Jewish and democratic? Dowty seeks the answers to these questions through empirical observation rather than by deduction from first principles or definitions of terms. This enables him to accommodate the reality of infinite gradations of Jewishness, from the extremes of Judaic religious commitment to those of ethnic-national belonging, that are typical of Jewishness in Israel, as it seems, no less than in the Diaspora. The quality of equilibrium that is established between the Judaic-religious and Israeli-national values at the core of national and personal identity may, in the long-run, prove to be the very test of society's ideological integrity and viability.

To answer the question whether a state can be both democratic and Jewish, Dowty begins with an analytical sketch of democracy in Israel. He points out (pp. 8-10) that a host of obstacles to democracy in the inheritance and circumstances of the Zionist movement render it surprising that democracy became an entrenched feature of the new society of Israel: no more than ten percent of immigrants to Palestine/Israel this century, whether Zionists or refugees, came from countries with any semblance of democracy; the chronic conflicts with the Arabs have necessitated a permanent state of mobilization and militarization of the population; deep cleavages within the society have constantly undermined internal cohesion; the rapid absorption of mass immigration and the heavy defense burden have led to exceptionally large active state presence in economic life; the small size of the country has brought about high levels of centralization; the prevalent ideologies of the settlers, both left and right, included many influential counter-democratic doctrines, as did the religious legal inheritance; and, finally, since 1967, the military administration of the Occupied Territories threatened to undermine democratic standards within the Green Line.

Measuring Israeli attitudes to democratic politics in the light of this unfavorable background, Dowty presents survey research showing that public sentiment is strong, but that there are some "spots," such as the relatively low-esteem in which politicians and parties are held, and the relatively low regard for democracy held by the less-educated and more religiously observant. Concern for security, including a willingness to limit freedom of information and diminish minority rights in the interest of the state, also tend to weaken democratic commitment. But on examination of democratic practice, it is nevertheless found to be vigorous and relatively robust, in comparison with other democracies, all of which have their weaknesses.

The universalistic and particularistic world-views seized in chronic tension are seen by Dowty as polarization between "traditional Israel...