Tradition, Innovation, Conflict: Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Israel

11. Religious, Ethnic, and Class Divisions in Israel: Convergent or Cross Cutting?

-----11Religious , Ethnic, and Class Divisions in Israel: Convergent or Cross Cutting?* HANNA AYALON, ELIEZER BEN-RAFAEL, ANDSTEPHENSHAROT Within the Jewish populations of Israel, the focus of public attention appears to have moved in recent years from the ethnic division between Jews ofEuropean and African or Asian origins to the division between religious and secular Jews. The mass media has reported numerous conflicts, some involving violent confrontations, between religious and secular Jews over such issues as public transportation on the Sabbath, opening cinemas on the Sabbath eve, burning bus stations displaying advertisements featuring women in swimming costumes or underwear, free movement of private transportation in areas close to religious neighborhoods on the Sabbath, the freedom of archaeologists to excavate ancient sites that might have included Jewish cemeteries, the legitimacy of conversion to Judaism under non-Orthodox auspices, and the question of who is a Jew. Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) rather than modern Orthodox Jews have been involved in these conflicts, but observers have argued that there is a trend within the the religious population toward haredization, a tendency to ultra-Orthodoxy, and that the Jewish population is becoming increasingly polarized with respect to religion. Asociological analysis ofthe religious-secular division or conflict *We wish to thank the Ford Foundation for funding, received through the Israel Foundations Trustees. Authors are in alphabetical order to denote equal contributions. 280 Religiaus, Ethnic, and Class Divisrons in Israel in Israel should not only examine its extent but also its relationship with other divisions, particularly those of ethnic group and class. Sociological discussions of conflict have emphasized that, whereas convergent or overlapping conflicts might lead to acute disruptions of society, crosscutting conflicts might serve to stablize or integrate society (Simmel 1955; Coser, 1956). The religious-secular division might be especially important in Israeli society, but if it crosscuts other significant divisions, there might be little danger that it will prove disruptive. A discussion of this question should focus on the relationships between the religious-secular division and ethnic and class divisions. Other divisions or aspects of stratification, such as gender and age, are less interesting in this respect because unlike religion , ethnicity, and class, whose basic unit ofclassification is generally the family, gender and age cut through the family unit. The relationship of religious divisions to ethnic and class divisions has rarely been investigated within a single theoretical framework in Israel. The pluralist approach (Smooha 1978) has tended to deal with the division between religious and secularJews as a separate dimension from the ethnic divisions ofArabs and Jews and ofAshkenazim (Jews ofmainlyEuropean origin) andedotha 'Mizrah ('communities of the East', referring to Jews from Asia and North Africa). The class or dependency model of ethnicity has emphasized the convergence of ethnic and class divisions in Israel but has paid very little attention to religion (Swirski 1981). Religion has been an important focus of the cultural perspective on ethnicity (Deshen and Shokeid 1974, Shokeid and Deshen, 1982, Ben-Rafael1982), but there has been little probing ofthe relationship between class and religion (see, however , Ayalon, Ben-Rafael, and Sharot 1986; and Ben-Rafael and Sharot 1987). An examination ofthe relationships among religious, ethnic, and class divisions should follow a number ofguidelines. Firstly, objective and subjective dimensions of the divisions should be distinguished. Objective measures ofthe religious division or divisions include membership of different religiosity within a single religion. Ethnic classification might be made simply according to country or area of origin. An appropriate objective measure ofclass is, of course, the subject of an extensive literature, but most empirical analyses have used such measures as wealth, occupation, and education. The categories derived from each of these classifications (religious, ethnic, and class) can then be plotted in terms oftheir cultural distinctions, social distance (such as residential patterns and social networks), and conflicts . Subjective dimensions include levels of self-identification with the religious, ethnic, and class units; perceptions of cultural distinc- Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Israel 281 tions, social distances, and conflict among religious groups, ethnic groups, or classes; feelings ofrelative deprivation regarding the position of one's membership groups in the society; and support for the need to organize politically in order to advance the interests ofone's membership groups. Secondly, the investigation should look at the relative importance ofthe religious, ethnic, and class allegiances, divisions, and conflicts . At the objective level, it might be possible to compare, for example, the residential segregation of religious and secular groups with...