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

Introduction

Introduction BENJAMIN BEIT-HALLAHMI AND ZVI SOBEL From the beginning ofthe Zionist enterprise in the nineteenth century, the role ofreligion and the place ofreligion in a Jewish polityhas persisted as a central question and continues to elude easy defmition, to saynothing ofresolution. Most Zionist thinkers ofthe "classical" period at the turn ofthe century and in the early decades ofthe present century at least in some measure viewed Zionism as an escape from the dead hand ofreligious obscurantism and as a wayofeasingthe Jewish masses into the mainstream of Western civilization. In some sense, and with respect to the Jewish masses ofEastern Europe, Zionism was a kind of nondeistic reform movement that some observers viewed as an effort to keep the bath water and throw out the baby. Be that as it may, the major thrust-both ideological and practical (in its settlement expression)-was of a secularizing character, but with a strong buttressing of the enterprise by traditions, acts, and rituals drawn from the religious context. These served a twofold function: they provided a web offamiliarity, a skein ofcontinuityto ease passage into an uncharted and indeed revolutionary situation, while providing a baseline or at least vocabulary for the evolvement of new societal forms; and secondly, they provided a matrix of legitimation for a possiblyillegitimate act-the displacement ofthe native Arab population . (This second factor is only now beginning to function in a heightened fashion.) Thus we confront an interesting and rather confusing situation in contemporary Israel where to all intents and purposes-ideationally , behaviorally, even electorally-the majority of the population is nonobservant ifnot fully secular, while the national symbols, rhetoric, framework are all heavily influenced and interlaced by traditional 2 Introduction Jewish (European) religion. Even though Israelcannotbesaidtobe a particularly "religious" country, it tends to be seen as such by outsiders and, we would aver, increasinglybyIsraelis themselves. Furthermore, and to add to the seeming contradiction, while basically nonobservant , it tends to be "Orthodox" in this nonobservance, rather than tied to or tending to anyofthe less taxing, less rigid forms prevalent, let us say, in the largest Jewish Diaspora of our times, the United States of America. Thus those who see a possibly rosy future for the Reform or Conservative movements transplanted to Israel are, we feel, bound to be disappointed. Insofar as a religious system took root in Israel, it was that system that emerged from the Eastern European context even to the point where in its more extreme manifestations it has overtaken and absorbed similarly inclined groupings coming from a totally different environment-the Sepharadim of the Middle East and North Africa. In effect, both ideological systems undergirding Israeli society-the religious and the secular-are overwhelmingly Eastern European in derivation. Until the 1967 Six-DayWar, the relationship between the secular majority and the religiously observant minority stayed on a more or less even keelsymbolized bywhat has come to be called the "status quo agreement". Basic religious needs would be respected and indeed supported by the state-a sort of a minimalist agreement from the viewpoint of the religious-while loyalty to the Zionist state-also rather minimalist-would be returned bythe religious. Religion would supply a sort of ceremonial continuity to the enterprise while recognizing that its "divisions" and "armor"were thin and unlikelyto carrythe day. At the same time, the state would make it possible for at least basic identification on the part of the observant with a broader societal consensus. Since 1967, the status quo has been violated by both camps. Inroads into public religious observances have been made by the nonreligious majority, and increasing demands for financial support and stricter observance in the public and even personal arena have been made bysegments ofthe religious minority. The battle has increasingly been joined with the additional complication of the "national" element , which is associated more and more with a religious stance, playing a role. Although the country's political and intellectual elite is overwhelmingly secular or nonobservant, one sees signs of religious symbols being increasingly used for the purposes ofpolitical legitimation and as a unifying theme. One reason for this utilization of religious themes is that ofall the ideologicalcamps for prestate and early state Israel-the socialist, the militantlysecular, the generalZionist- Introduction 3 only the religious sector appears to retain a sense of continuing dynamism and commitment. Thus at the same time as every life in Israel is marked increasingly by a secular encasement, the religious...