The Center for Israel Studies and the Jewish Studies Program
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
Religion and Society in Israel
Selected Papers from the Conference, October 28, 2014
Conference Chairs:
Michael Brenner, Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel
Studies, American University; Chair of Jewish History and Culture,
Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich
Pamela Nadell, Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender
History, American University
Israel as a Jewish State
Israel was established in 1948 as a Jewish state, a fact that is not only stated in its Declaration of
Independence, but one that has also been confirmed by every single government since its founding. According to the former President of the Israeli Supreme Court, Justice Aharon Barak, “A Jewish state is
a state whose history is bound up with the history of the Jewish people, whose principal language is
Hebrew, and whose main holidays reflect its national mission.” Yet, Barak insists that “the values of the
State of Israel as a Jewish State cannot be identified with Jewish Law.” Many Orthodox Israelis disagree.
What is the meaning of a Jewish state and what place do Judaism and other religions play in such a
state? With panelists from Israel, Europe, and the United States, the conference explored the separation of state and religion in Israel, and looks at the treatment and the internal structure of Israel’s
other religious and ethnic groups, as well as the question of religious pluralism in the Jewish state.
Table of Contents
I. Separation Between State and Religion
2 Religion and State in Israel in Comparative Perspective: Law in the Books versus Law in Action
-Eli Salzberger (University of Haifa)
8 Orthodox Monopoly over Religion in Israel: The Trojan Horse Effect?
-Kimmy Caplan (Bar Ilan University)
II. Non-Jews in the Jewish State
13 Evangelical Christians in Israel
-Yaakov Ariel (University of North Carolina)
17 What are the Attitudes of Religious Jews in Israel Towards Non-Jews?
-Nurit Novis-Deutsch (University of Haifa)
III. Jewish Pluralism
23 Progressive Judaism, Israeli Style
-Michael A. Meyer (Hebrew Union College)
28 Religion Amongst American Settlers
-Sara Yael Hirschhorn (Oxford University)
31 Haredi Attitudes Toward the State
-Gershon Greenberg (American University)
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Eli Salzberger
Religion and State in Israel in Comparative Perspective: Law in the Books versus Law in Action
Any serious attempt to say something meaningful about the relations between state and religion in Israel has to be done in a comparative perspective, either against an ideal model of such
relations (normative analysis) or in comparison to other countries (positive analysis). Normative
analysis, which evaluates the existing legal arrangements and reality, has to be derived from a
more general theory of the state and moral theory. My comments will not address this complicated realm and will rather focus on the positive level – the description of Israeli law vis-à-vis the
relations between state and religion (without which one cannot conduct a normative analysis).
Surprisingly, even the mere description of the legal framework of state-religion relationship is controversial. The characterization of such relationship will be different through
the lenses of different legal theories or concepts of “the law” (a Natural Law approach will
characterize Israel differently from a Positivist-Formalist approach which will be different from a Realist approach, the later examining not only law in the books, but primarily law
in action). In this condensed framework I will not be able to cover all theories and will say a
few words on the view of a Positivist-formalist theory as opposed to a Realist theory of law.
1. The formal status of religion in Israel
Legal Positivists (Hans Kelsen style) will characterize state-religion relationship according to provisions in the constitution and in relevant laws explicitly addressing this issue. They
distinguish between three grand modes of state-religion relationship, which can be refined into
six models. On the one extreme there is a model of separation between state and religion, which
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can be further divided into sub-categories of neutral states vis-à-vis religion and hostile states towards religion. The most notable contemporary examples are the US and France, but Turkey, for
example, also belongs to this category.
On the other extreme we can find countries that have one official religion, and they can be
divided again to two sub-categories of theocracies, in which the authority of the state derives from
religion, such as contemporary Iran and the Vatican, and countries, which are not theocracies but
nevertheless have only one official religion. In the latter group we can find the UK where the head
of state is by definition the head of the official religion – the Anglican Church. I, or any other Jew,
cannot become the head of state in the UK. A similar model exists in some of the Scandinavian
countries (in which interesting debates and some constitutional and legal changes have taken
place in recent years), Greece and Saudi Arabia.
The third model is the multi-religion state, a model that is common in many European
countries. According to this model the state is not neutral to religion. It recognizes several official
religions, to which certain rights, benefits and status are granted. Israel, according to this Positivist
approach belongs to this group.
One may ask: how can the “Jewish state” be classified as a multi-religion state? This is a
crucial point, which is usually overlooked by those who use the term “Jewish state”. It is not an
accurate term. Judaism (or Jewishness) in this context refers to nationhood rather to religion. The
founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, titled his 1896 book Der Judenstaat, which should be translated to the “State of the Jews”. He certainly did not envisage a theocracy or a state with one formal
religion, but rather a liberal democracy, European style, which is the homeland for the Jewish
people. This is also apparent in the declaration of independence, which emphasizes the right of the
Jewish people for self-determination and guarantees freedom of religion to all Israeli citizens, Jews
and non-Jews. In this spirit one should also read the Israeli Supreme Court interpretation of “Jew”
in the “Law of Return” which adopted a nationhood-based interpretation, rather than a religious
one (a key case is the Rufeisen decision from 1962).
Indeed, according to Israeli law, Israel is a multi-religion state with currently 14 recognized religions, a few of which were officially recognized by the Israeli government only in the last
decades. Among the official religions are Islam, Druze, Bahai and 10 Christian denominations.
Israel has more official religions that in most other countries adopting this model (for example,
in Germany Islam has only been recognized in the last few years but only by some of the states.
In Germany the government collects religion tax of 8-9 percent allocated according to the selfdeclaration of the taxpayer, making the official recognition in religion not only symbolic, but of
significant practical effect; about two-thirds of Germans pay this tax, i.e. identify themselves with
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one of the official religions).
The Positivist-formalist approach entails at least three intrinsic problems, which are not sui-generis to the case of Israel:
(1) The definition of “religion”: This is a complicated philosophical question, which will
only be mentioned here briefly. We tend to view only the monotheistic or Abrahamic faiths as
“religions”, but why not recognize other sets of beliefs, from non-monotheistic religions such as
Buddhism, through other faiths that resemble traditional religions, such as the Church of Scientology (which was not only denied recognition in Germany, but also banned to some degree), to
other sets of comprehensive beliefs such as Communism, Capitalism or Secularism. This problem
has a significant effect also on countries, which declare themselves as states adopting a separation
between state and religion. Persecution of anti-Communists in the Soviet-Union and of Communists in the US resembles past persecution of Jews in Christian Europe.
In the Israeli case this question boils down to recognition of Jewish non-orthodox denominations and the lack of recognition of Secularity as a religion, two steps that would have solved the
contentious tensions in this field like a touch of a magic flute.
(2) The scope of powers, rights and benefits granted to the recognized religions: The
classification of a country to one of the three models of state-religion relationship does not tell us
much on the actual religious freedoms and the de-facto role religion plays in society. The UK, a
country of one official religion, is one of the world champions in freedom of religion and tolerance
towards all faiths; Greece, which formally separates state and religion, is one of the least tolerant European countries towards non-Greek Orthodox religions. In Switzerland, which adopts the
multi-religion model, a ban on constructing minarets was approved recently by referendum.
In Israel, the crucial point in this regard is the delegation to religious authorities of the exclusive power to decide issues of personal status – marriages and divorces. Both substantive law
and adjudication institutions in these matters are in the hand of religious authorities, an Ottoman
heritage that at the time created might have been considered a liberal approach, but today, turns
out to be extensively anti-liberal.
(3) The actual role religion plays in society, culture and politics: While the latter point
can remedy the formalist view by adding to it relevant legislation which can fine-tune the three
basic models of state-religion relations, the actual role religion plays in society might not be reflected by any legal instruments but by social norms, culture and actual practices that can point
to a minor role religion plays in society as opposed to very significant role. As other insights of
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this paper, the framework does not allow to elaborate, and I leave it to individual reflections of the
reader into her or his own society regarding the importance of religious practices and affiliations
in the private and public spheres (e.g. The US President visits to Church, the American Supreme
Court practice to open every session, including those that find various practices as violating the
Non-Establishment clause with “God save the United States and this honorable Court”) and their
potential influence on collective decisions and actions.
2. A Realist view of state-religion relationship
A Realist take on state-religion relations will be totally different. It will focus not on the
declared constitutional or legal framework but on the actual effect of religion on state matters, on
politics, on the public sphere and, most importantly, on individuals’ freedoms. A Realist will look
not only at the law in the books to evaluate the role of religion, but also at political and general
culture, social norms and the ways law is actually enforced: law in action. A Realist may argue, for
example, that the US is far from a model of separation between religion and state despite the key
constitutional “Non Establishment” clause and numerous Supreme Court decisions. “In God we
trust” is an American national ethos, a slogan appearing on every dollar note. Likewise, religion
plays an important part in American politics, affecting many laws, public rhetoric and conduct.
How can we describe the actual religion-state relations in Israel in comparative perspective according to this broader approach? A possible reply will look at three main realms – freedom of
religion, freedom from religion, and the most problematic realm - the role religion plays in state
matters or in the public sphere.
Freedom of religion is the right of individuals and groups to practice their religion. It can
be divided to negative freedom – the state must not prohibit the free exercise of religion, and positive freedom – the state should actively provide or support such exercise. Even in an utopian state
freedom of religion cannot be absolute; it may be curtailed when exercising one’s religion conflicts
either with such exercise of another religion or when exercising one’s religion conflicts with other
legitimate values in a (democratic) society. Conflicts of the first category can be conflicts over
space, such as the conflict between Jews and Moslems over the Temple Mount or between different
Christian churches over the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (The Israeli Supreme Court was called
not once to decide inner-Christian disputes over the control of the Church), or conflicts between
different Jewish denominations over the Wailing Wall. Similarly, conflicts can arise in the dimension of time, such as dates of national holidays, Sunday or Saturday laws, the resolution of which
cannot satisfy all religions.
Freedom of religion might conflict also with other legitimate values in society, such as gender equality, ban on polygamy, and other potential violation of law justified by religious practices.
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I think that on the front of freedom of religion Israel fares fairly high, possibly better than many
Western counterparts. Saturday laws, for example, exempt non-Jews, which can opt for an alternative weekly day of rest; veils and other religious attires are not banned, as in many other countries
(compare to the 1986 Goldman v. Weinberger decision of the American Supreme Court which on
behalf of separation of state and religion approved a prohibition on orthodox Jewish soldiers to
wear a yamulke during service).
Freedom from religion is the freedom to conduct one’s own affairs in a way not dictated by
religious beliefs. There is an in-built tension between freedom of religion and freedom from religion (materializing freedom of religion might curtail freedom from religion). In general, I think
that, while Israel fares fairly high on the freedom of religion scale, its main deficiencies are with
regards to freedom from religion, while the US scores better on the freedom from religion scale
but has deficiencies with regards to freedom of religion.
As I said, the more problematic category in a Realist assessment of the relation between
state and religion is the role religion plays in politics, state affairs and the public sphere. In the US
it is expected from the President to attend church from time to time. Although there are no parties
whose raison-de’tare is religious affiliation, the actual effect of religious beliefs on party politics
is immense, and in a way it is much more hidden and subversive than in Israel, where religious
politics are explicit and apparent, the result of Israel’s different representation system. In general,
the actual effect of religion on state matter will be a consequence of various social and cultural
features, including the structure of the political system.
The most notable violation in Israel of freedom of religion is the monopoly of religious
courts and law over matter of personal status (marriage and especially divorces). It is indeed an
arrangement not found in most liberal democracies. However, the monopoly brought about some
unintended consequences, which are no less significant from a Realistic point of view: For example: the US is going through a revolution regarding same-sex marriages. In Israel, paradoxically,
because of the delegation of personal status matters to religious establishments, the revolution
began already in the 1950s with the recognition by the Supreme Court of partnerships or common
law marriages, the natural extension of which was the recognition of same-sex partnership for any
instrumental purposes already in the 1980s, long before the developments in this area in the US.
More generally, one of the unintended consequences of lack of constitutional separation
between state and church in Israel and the perception of enforcement of religion and religious
practices on non-religious (and the main problem here is within each religion rather than enforcement of one religion on people who believe in a different one. Thus within Jewish Israelies,
violation of freedom of religion relates to the political power of Jewish orthodoxy vis-a-via other
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streams of Judaism) might explain the relatively high percentage of Israel’s public declaring itself
not religious, or seculars.
From the map and statistics of self-reported religious affiliation it can be concluded that
the case of Israel is not sui-generis: not only that there is no correlation whatsoever between the
formal models of the relations between state and religion and the actual role religion plays in the
political and the public sphere, but also that the latter is not really related to the degree of religiosity of the population.
To sum-up, assessing the relation between state and religion in Israel can be done only in
comparative perspective and such a comparison is contingent upon an adoption of a specific scientific paradigm as to what is law. It is a rather tricky exercise.
---Eli Salzberger is the director of the Haifa Center for German and European Studies, the director of the Minerva
Center for the Study of the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions and the co-director of the International
Academy for Judges at the University of Haifa, where he was formerly dean. His research and teaching areas are
legal theory and philosophy, economic analysis of law, legal ethics, cyberspace and the Israeli Supreme Court.
His latest book (co-authored with Niva Elkin-Koren) is The Law and Economics of Intellectual Property in the
Digital Age: The Limits of Analysis (Routledge 2012), preceded by Law, Economic and Cyberspace (Edward Elgar
2004). He has been a member of the board of directors of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the public
council of the Israeli Democracy Institute and a state commission for reform of performers’ rights in Israel.
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Kimmy Caplan
Orthodox Monopoly over Religion in Israel: The
Trojan Horse Effect?
In 1996 Samuel Huntington published his book entitled The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of World Order, and, following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United
States, it was applied to understand this earth-shattering event.1 In 2005, Emmanuel Sivan responded to this thesis in a book Clashes within Islam, in which he suggested that this event, as well
as other developments within contemporary Islam, indicate internal Islamic encounters between
liberals, conservatives, and religious radicals, rather than a clash between civilizations.2
Eli Salzberger
Although certain parts of the popular discourse in Israel compare and refer to the Orthodox monopoly in state-institutionalized religion as similar to certain countries that are ruled by
Islamic law, this is not the reason for this opening. The ties between religion and state in Israel are
rather obvious and have been documented and analyzed by historians, political scientists, sociologists of politics, students of religion and law, and scholars representing other disciplines.3 Identifying the religion part in this equation with Orthodoxy is also somewhat of a commonplace by now;
notwithstanding certain inroads into Israeli society as well as rulings of Israeli courts, Reform
and Conservative have not struck a great breakthrough or success in the sense of gaining official
recognition as legitimate expressions of “Jewish religion” in Israel. Indeed, the Orthodox rule over
the monopoly.
Along the lines of Emmanuel Sivan’s suggestion, I submit that while we have paid attention to the struggles of the Orthodox with surrounding society and within the political system, in
order to sustain its monopoly, we have virtually overlooked the internal Orthodox scene in Israel
and the role it plays in weakening this monopoly. In this sense, this internal Orthodox struggle is
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somewhat of a Trojan horse. To be sure, the effects of this is internal struggle are long term and not
nearly as fast as a horse charging into a fortress. Furthermore, sometimes these effects touch upon
those who have nothing to do with this struggle and have no interest in it, just like the internal
struggles within Islam. Granted, the level of violence in our case is nowhere near that we evidence
in the Islamic case.
Another related context that might serve us well is that of West, Central, and East European
Orthodoxy during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Numerous studies over
the last several decades point, time and again, explicitly or implicitly, to the fact that internal Orthodox rivalries led many times to weakening the Orthodox camp’s stand vis-à-vis the surrounding Jewish or non-Jewish societies.4 My proposal is therefore to observe the Orthodox monopoly
over religion in Israel from within the Orthodox lines.
When looking from within, we learn very quickly that Orthodoxy is a family name, not
a surname. The Orthodox camp in Israel is compiled of two major camps, Haredim, otherwise
known as Ultra-Orthodox, and Religious Zionists or National Religious. Each one of these camps
includes numerous groups and sub-groups which have much less in common than we tend to assume. In addition, the internal struggles between them are many times far more intense that those
they hold with other groups that compile Israel’s tribal map. For example, for close to two decades
now, the Religious Zionists are divided into several groups along numerous lines, and aside from
possibly sharing a general theological appreciation for the State of Israel, they have very little in
common. They were split politically for years, their children learn in different schooling systems
that educate along very different values, and attend different youth movements, and many will
not eat in the other’s house as their norms regarding dietary laws are far from being agreed upon.
Externally, these differences reflect in clear distinctions in dress code.
Running the risk of stating the obvious, it should nevertheless be clarified that the Chief
Rabbinate holds much of the official power that reinforces the Orthodox monopoly over religion
in Israel. It was set up in the early years of British Mandate, with a view to serving the religious
and traditional sectors of the Jewish-Zionist yishuv, a point that we will return to later.5 For decades the chief rabbis who led this institution, a treasure-trove of official and well-paid jobs, were
for the most part pro-Zionist, in line with the National Religious parties who held the keys to the
Ministry of Religions. But in the last two decades or so it is ruled by Haredi rabbis, following the
growing political power of Haredi parties and the simultaneous decline of the National Religious.
Now let’s follow a few footsteps of the Trojan horse: In his book on secularization in Israel,
Guy Ben-Porat challenges those who argue that Israeli society is becoming more religious in many
ways over time.6 One of the cases he raises is the growing number of Israelis who opt for civil mar-
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riage. Most of them go to Cyprus, less so to other countries, since civil marriage of Jews is not fully
recognized in the Jewish State. Ironically, the marriage certificate from Cyprus will open more options for these couples in Israel. We are looking at a few thousand a year that chose to walk down
this ceremonial path, rather than the path that leads to the offices of the Rabbinate in Israel.
But at the same time we evidence a somewhat different trend: Couples who want the sacred
canopy but opt to conduct their marriage registry in alternative Haredi courts, including that of
the Eda Haredit, the extreme anti-Zionist Haredi conglomerate that represents no more than two
percent of Israeli Haredi society. The number of couples who chose this path to married life is
unclear but from partial data and additional internal information, we are looking at numbers that
are not much less than those who opt for civil marriage.
Their motives for doing so are multiple: These Haredi courts charge less money for registering the marriage, the process of validating that the couple are eligible to marry according to Orthodox legal standards is by far more efficient and does not add on additional requirements which
are un-necessary according to the same Orthodox standards, and the Haredi courts do not force
females to go through the experience of classes given by female missionaries in the rabbinate in
which the speakers attempt to persuade their audience to observe family purity laws. Since these
Haredi courts are ipso-facto recognized by the state rabbinate they are recognized for all intensive
purposes by the state authorities – mortgages and everything else.
This phenomenon is interesting for several reasons, and one of them relevant to us is that it
illustrates how internal Orthodox rivalries created alternatives that over time weaken the stronghold of the Chief Rabbinate over registering marriages. The same can be said for divorces, although the numbers seem to be significantly lower. Indeed, nevertheless an Orthodox monopoly
overall, but the official institution, authorized by the state to reinforce this monopoly, is losing
power internally.
Another area in which the Chief Rabbinate has lost considerable power due to internal Orthodox dynamics is the policy and supervision regarding fruit and vegetables during the shmitah
year. This is a seven-year cycle, during the last of which the Holy Land should not be worked according to the Bible. It is impossible to go into the history of the encounters with this issue since
the early 1880s, many chapters of which have been addressed by several historians.7 The point I
would like to emphasize is that since the Mandate period, the Chief Rabbinate ruled that fruits and
vegetables that grew in holy soil that was owned by a non-Jew are allowed to be consumed during
this year. This led to selling the lands to non-Jews for this year.
This ruling was acceptable among rank-and-file Religious Zionists, but in recent decades
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this is not the case anymore. Their majority joined the Haredim in rejecting this ruling. Consequently, yet again, the Chief Rabbinate’s authority is over-ruled, in this case by those who presumably are considered its biggest supporters. Here we have an added value as it offers a fine illustration of the irony of history: As mentioned above, the Chief Rabbinate was founded with a view to
providing the needs of traditional and religious Jews, and within eighty years or so it has become,
at least in this area, the Rabbinate of all those but the religious, who for the most part don’t seem
to be troubled by the source of their fruit and vegetables nearly as much as their prices, that tend
to inflate during the shmitah year.
I cannot relate to three other areas in which the Orthodox monopoly in general and the rabbinate specifically, are losing some of their power and authority in recent years due to internal Orthodox rivalries. These are conversions, burials, and the supervision over dietary laws (i.e. kosher
food) in the public sphere. In recent years we evidenced ongoing internal Orthodox encounters
with regard too defining the parameters of acceptable conversions according to Orthodox standards, and keeping in mind the Trojan horse image, this is a somewhat different case. Here, Haredi
and religious Zionist rabbis and leaders are engaged simultaneously in two battlefields, one within
their respective camps and the other between the two camps. This seems to have an un-expected
weakening effect on Orthodox conversions in Israel, which is seemingly in contrast with the interests of both Haredi and religious Zionist rabbis.
This presentation attempted to offer no more than a few preliminary thoughts and observations, and to raise an aspect that, to the best of my knowledge, has not been adequately addressed
thus far in the scholarly discourse regarding religion and state in Israel, and thus to add another
point of view on this somewhat complex issue. I hope that it succeeded to convince that this avenue is worth documenting and observing, with a view to analyzing its possible long-term effects
on the Orthodox monopoly over religion in Israel.
Notes:
1 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1996).
2 Emmanuel Sivan, Clashes within Islam [Hebrew] (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 2005).
3 For example, Benjamin Nueberger, Religion and Democracy in Israel [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: The
Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies, 1997); Aviezer Ravitzky and Yedidia Z.Stern (eds.), The
Jewishness of Israel [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: The Israel Democracy Institute, 2007).
4 A Few of many examples include Jacob Katz, A House Divided: Orthodoxy and Schism in Nineteenth-Century Central European Jewry (Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 1998);
Idem, Divine Law in Human Hands: Case Studies in Halakhic Flexibility (Jerusalem: Magnes,
1998); Rachel Manekin, Religion, Politics and the Constitutional Monarchy: The Struggle Over the
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Control of the Jewish Communities in Galicia, 1848-1883 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar
Center, forthcoming); Yosef Salmon, Aviezer Ravitzky, and Adam Ferziger (eds.), Orthodox Judaism: New Perspectives [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2006); Michael K. Silber, “The Emergence
of Ultra-Orthodoxy: The Invention of Tradition,” Jack Wertheimer (ed.), The Uses of Tradition:
Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era (New York and London: the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, 1992), pp. 23-85.
5 Menachem Friedman, Society and Religion: The Non-Zionist Orthodox in Eretz-Israel – 19181936 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1977), pp. 110-129.
6 Guy Ben-Porat, Between State and Synagogue: The Secularization of Modern Israel (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013).
7 For example, Yosef Salmon, Religion and Zionism: First Encounters (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2002),
pp. 89-90, 123-137, 156-159, 182-184, 205-208.
---Kimmy Caplan teaches in the Kushitzky Department of Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University. His field of
scholarly interest is Jewish religious history in the 19th and 20th centuries, including topics such as popular religion, preaching and homiletics, and the dynamics within religious trends. In recent years he has
focused on Israeli Haredi society in the 20th century, and he recently completed writing a biography of
Amram Blau, one of the founders and first leader of Neturei Karta, an extreme Haredi anti-Zionist group.
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Yaakov Ariel
Evangelical Christians in Israel
Evangelical attitudes toward Israel, their attachment to that country and their presence in the
state reflect the tenets of faith, cultural attributes and political agenda of this segment of Christianity.
Evangelicals, however, are not made out of one cloth. There are numerous denominations that are
mostly or partially evangelical and there are thousands of independent evangelical congregations.
One can detect a variety of liturgies, languages, ecclesiastical structures and theological differences,
at the same time that there are some creeds and cultural attitudes that almost all evangelicals share.
As a rule, evangelicals hold the Christian Bible to be God’s message to humanity, and have tended to
read the sacred Christian scriptures more literally. Their mode of reading the Bible has colored their
involvement in the land. In their eyes, both the country and the people carry special significance.
Israel looms large in evangelical millennial visions. Many evangelicals expect the country to
serve as an End Times ground zero, the focal point of the apocalyptic era. It will be in Jerusalem
that Antichrist will reign and reestablish the temple and its sacrifices and it will be in the Valley
of Megiddo, in Northern Israel, that the battle of Gog and Magog will take place. Jesus’ arrival to
earth will be on the Mount of Olives. Likewise, Jesus will reign from Jerusalem, David’s eternal
capital, over a global millennial kingdom, with Jews serving as his assistants. Beginning in the
nineteenth century, evangelicals have come up with a series of initiatives intended to bring about
the national restoration of the Jews in Palestine. Evangelicals showed interest in the Zionist movement and offered support. The nineteenth century also saw the beginnings of evangelical presence in the country and a renewed interest in its terrain, populations, and history. A number of
evangelical groups and individuals settled in the country, often representing missions, establishing
churches, schools and hospitals, or exploring the land.
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Evangelicals took active role in convincing the British government and the American president to issue the Balfour Declaration in 1917. They interpreted the developments
and turmoil that befell the Jewish nation in the period between and during the world wars in
light of their eschatological beliefs. Evangelical groups, such as the Southern Baptists, took advantage of the welcoming British policies and established new congregations and enterprises.
Evangelical responses to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 were welcoming although many were unhappy with the secular character of Israeli culture and resented the non-separation of church and state in a country that they considered a democracy. Contrary to a common
perception evangelical missions could continue their activities unhindered, but, at least formally,
they could not send additional staff members to the country. Orthodox Jewish groups have occasionally protested the missionary presence, but Israeli governments have continued to protect the
missions. Encouraged by the mass Jewish immigration to the country, evangelicals have nonetheless showed concern over the fate of Palestinian Arabs who lost their homes in 1948. Although they
supported Israel, they expressed a belief that the Land of Israel could maintain an Arab population
alongside its Jewish inhabitants and that Israel had an obligation to treat the Arabs with fairness.
Most evangelical Arabs did not become supporters of Israel and, while most congregations in Israel
are supportive of the state, this is hardly the case among evangelical Palestinians or their supporters.
The Arab-Jewish war in 1967, in which Israel took over the historical parts of Jerusalem,
strengthened the evangelical conviction that Israel was to play an important role in the developments that were to precede the arrival of the Messiah. During the 1970s-2010s, conservative evangelicals become ardent supporters of Israel, a reality which demonstrated itself strikingly in the American public arena. Likewise, the growth of evangelical populations, in Latin
America and other parts of the world, has often affected favorable positions toward Israel. A
friendly attitude toward Israel has often been part of the evangelical vision for global policies.
In the 1970s to 2010s, dozens of pro-Israeli evangelical organizations operated in the United States and other nations with evangelical presence. Their leaders have lectured, distributed
printed and electronic material, convened pro-Israel conferences, and organized tours to the Holy
Land. The last decades also saw an increase in the actual presence and activity of evangelicals in
Israel. Tours of evangelical groups increased, as did the numbers of field-study seminars and
of volunteers coming to kibbutzim. Likewise, evangelical Christians established institutions of
higher education in the country. The most visible evangelical organization in Israel has been the
International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem (ICEJ), which has seen its aim in mustering support
for Israel in the Christian world. Embassies around the globe distribute printed and electronic
materials, recruit pilgrims for annual Tabernacles gatherings the ICEJ organizes and collect money for extensive philanthropic enterprises in Israel. Orthodox Rabbi Yehiel Eckstein established
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the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which promotes support for Israel as a common basis for cooperation and understanding between evangelicals and Jews. Like the ICEJ, the
International Fellowship has collected hundreds of millions of dollars, which subsidized immigration and absorption of Jews in Israel, as well as financed social programs in the country. Ironically,
many of the allies of conservative evangelicals are in the nationalist-religious wing of Israeli society.
Evangelical support for Israel has rubbed liberal Christians and supporters of the Palestinian cause the wrong way. They consider the conservative evangelical interpretation of the Bible to
be erroneous and the political support conservative evangelicals render Israel to be unjust. The often negative opinions of liberal and Middle Eastern churches towards Israel have contributed to a
growing willingness on the part of Jewish leaders to cooperate with conservative Christians. Likewise, the Israeli leadership has increasingly opened its arms to welcome its unexpected evangelical
allies. They were not always aware that messianic hopes encouraged not only support for Israel,
but also missionary activity among the Jews. Often, the same persons are active on two fronts:
promoting support for Israel and evangelism of Jews. In line with such policies, the largest and
best-known mission of our time, Jews for Jesus, works to promote pro-Israeli sentiments, calling
its music band the Liberated Wailing Wall. A movement of Jewish converts to evangelical Christianity, Messianic Judaism, which amalgamates evangelical theology and personal morality with
Jewish customs, symbols and identity has also come on the scene in the 1970s-2010s. Thousands of
Messianic Jews immigrated to Israel, building a growing number of communities there. The movement has also made headways into Israeli society attracting thousands of born and raised Israelis.
A number of evangelical Christians and Israelis have cooperated, in mutual attempt
at building of the Temple. One of the outcomes of the Six-Day War for evangelical Christians expecting the Second Coming of Jesus has been the prospect of rebuilding the Temple.
A number of evangelical groups and individuals in the 1970s-2010s have promoted the building of the holy Jewish shrine through a variety of activities, mostly intended to facilitate Jews
preparation for the building of the Temple. Most of the Jews they have come to associate with
were Orthodox, some connected with the settlers’ movement. The cooperation between evangelicals and Jews affected the opinions of each group on the other. Evangelical Christians have
modified their End Times scenarios in order to reassure their Jewish friends that they considered them positive players in the scenarios of the End Times. In evangelical publications of
the 1990s-2010s authors have either ceased presenting the rebuilt temple as a temporary institution or gave up on the idea that Antichrist would be a Jew, coming up with other options.
The peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the Oslo peace agreement have caused some apprehension among evangelical Christians, who expect Israel to play a
role in the events that precede the second coming of Jesus to earth. However, at this stage, most
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
15
Christians expecting the Second Coming of Jesus maintained their interest in Israel. The nature of
the relation of evangelical Christians towards Israel carries paradoxical elements which includes
the evangelization of a people they see as chosen and whose country they support. It also points
to the nature of Israeli real politik: receiving extensive support from Christians whose values and
agendas do not always agree with their own.
---Yaakov Ariel, a graduate of the Hebrew University and the University of Chicago, is a professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses on Christian-Jewish relations in the modern era, on Christian attitudes towards Palestine and Israel and on
the Jewish movements of modernity and post-modernity. His book, Evangelizing the Chosen People, won the Outler Prize of the American Society of Church History. His latest book, An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews, was published by New York University Press (2013).
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
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Nurit NovisDeutsch
What are the Attitudes of Religious Jews in
Israel Towards Non-Jews?
Although the human brain has a built-in preference for generalizations, any answer to the
question posed in the title will need to take into account three factors: How are these attitudes
expressed, who are the “religious Jews”, and who are the “non-Jews” we are referring to?
We should first distinguish between atittudes expressed in sacred texts, those expressed by
religious leaders, and attitudes of lay people. As a psychologst of religion, I will limit myself to the
latter group, while noting that the corpus of Jewish sacred texts and their ensuing interpretations
contain more than enough variance to ground the most exclusionist and the most inclusivist of attitudes. So the question I’ll be asking really is, what do people choose to read in these sacred texts
and why.
When assessing attitudes of individuals, an important distinction to make is between what
people say they believe, what they think they believe, what they really believe and how they put
these attitudes into action through behavior. Today, I will only refer to what people say they believe, but in religious Israeli circles, this is usually enough. There is less of a need for sophisticated
Implicit Attitudes Testing used in the U.S. when assessing religious prejudice, and this is, in fact,
part of the issue: religious exclusionist attitudes are just out there and not hidden. I remember
once speaking to a small group of Haredi women and hearing from them their beliefs that nonJews should not share the same hospitals as Jews, and that any knowledge imparted by a non-Jew
is not worth acquiring. I guess at some point my professional neutrality wore thin and I asked:
“Are you aware that what you are expressing are racist attitudes?” “What do you mean by racism?”
one of them asked in all sincerity, and I did my best to explain. After thinking it over, the women
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
17
said: “Well, if that’s racism, than I’m a proud racist!”
These attitudes may not be easy to digest, but the issue cannot be analyzed unless we face
them. However, an important caveat to keep in mind, is that Israel is a democratic nation with
an independent judiciary which holds in check much of the negative opinions expressed by individuals. Thus, the attitudes we’ll be looking at are quite a bit more extreme than their behavioral
expressions. The patterns of religious violence in Israel are very different from those of attitudes.
For example, Haredim who consistently express some of the most extreme exclusionist attitudes,
exhibit, on the whole, very low levels of religious violence.
Moving on, the term “Jewish religious” is a place-holder too.
Many religious Jews in Israel would never consider believing in the kinds of attitudes I have
just described. 19 percent of the Jewish Israeli population self-defines as religious, but they subdivide into multiple subgroups including the Haredi, the National-Haredi, the Religious Zionist
and a small group of liberal religious Jews. Each of these groups sub-divides further. Attitudes in
each group towards non-Jews differ significantly. For example, in a study I once conducted using
Schwartz’s Value Survey, liberal religious Jews in Israel expressed higher levels of tolerance and
universalism than both secular and other religious groups. Thus, as many researchers have shown
in the U.S. and as Daphna Cannetti and her collegues1 recently found in Israel when looking at
attitudes of Jewish religious settlers, when controlling for everything else, religiosity per se is not
the factor which predicts exclusionism. Certain types of traits – namely authoritarianism - and
certain social contexts - namely ones of high conflict levels - do so, and other studies have found
that certain types of religiosity-namely conservative and fundamentalist-have a predictive value as
well in this equation.
We are all too familiar with acts of religious violence and extremism in Israel, but we should
also note organizations led or run by religious Jews which foster dialogue, interfaith and which
battle racism in Israel. Among therm are Rabbis for Human Rights, Tag Meir organization, the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, and the Kiryat Ono Academic College Law program,
which operates the only program in the world where religious leaders from Druze, Christian,
Muslim and Jewish communities all study law together in one classroom.
Finally, we should note that in Israel’s multicultural society there are representatives of over
100 large, small and new denominations and religions (other than the majority Judaism), and
there is no reason to believe that attitudes towards all of these non-Jewish groups are the same.
There are many ways of parsing out these attitudes towards different religious groups, and I will
mention only one concept which distinguishes between attitudes towards people of different reli-
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
18
gions: the level of each religion’s perceived threat, which is considered to be the single best grouplevel predictor of exclusionism and intolerance.
“Perceived threat” is a cognitive evaluation of how dangerous an outgroup may be to the
goals of the in-group. It can be either realistic or symbolic. A realistic threat in the context of
religion would be the belief that people of another religion threaten the life of Jews or the land
of Israel. A symbolic threat would be the belief that a particular religion is threatening to Jewish
values or identity. While Muslims are viewed as high in terms of realistic threat, Messianic and
other missionary groups are considered high in terms of symbolic threat because - A. They try to
change our identity, and B. They are too similar to us for comfort; therefore they must be beyond
the pale. Other groups, such as the Druze who are both loyal to Israel and will not allow others
into their religion, have a much lower level of perceived threat.
To sum up this first point, there is no single attitude of Judaism, of Jews or even of Israeli
religious Orthodox Jews towards non-Jews.
Next, a huge obstacle that we need to overcome in trying to determine attitudes towards
non-Jews stems from the fact that the largest religious minority in Israel by far are the Sunni
Muslims who are also, for the most part, Palestinian Arab. It is virtually impossible to distinguish
between attitudes towards Arabs as an ethnic group involved in the conflict, and attitudes towards
Arabs as Muslims. It’s impossible because for many, the two are perceived as deeply intertwined.
There is a joke told2 of the conflict in Northern Ireland which makes this point: An armed man
jumps out of the entrance to a house, holds a gun to the head of a passerby and asks: “Catholic or
Protestant?”, “Well, actually” says the man, “I’m an atheist”. “Fine”, replies the gunman, “but what
kind of atheist are you, Catholic or Protestant?”
So my second point is that the way to look at the attitudes of religious Jews towards non-Jews
is sort of like a layered cake: There is an underlying level of anxiety which Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi
aptly called “Zakhor”3 – a collective injunction to remember persecution. This level is shared by
most Israeli Jews, but is probably more salient for religious Jews who fulfil the commandment to
remember persecution on various religious occasions. One of the recent musical hits in the religious world4 set a very catchy tune to the classic Hagaddah lyrics: “Not only one arose and tried
to destroy us, rather in every generation they try to destroy us, and the Holy One, blessed be He,
saves us from their hands”. Next comes the level of perceived socio-political threat which Daniel
Bar-Tal calls the “protracted conflict” frame of mind5 leading to a shared level of high “stranger
anxiety”. On top of that come the religious attitudes towards non-Jews and a case could be made
for these attitudes forming the base of the cake as well. In any case, when you take a bite of this
cake, you’re biting into all of these layers at once.
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
19
Now that I’ve made these qualifying statements, let’s look at some data.6 A look at survey
results of numerous large representative samples of Israelis tells a clear story of correlations, although the causality behind it is murkier. The Israel Democracy Index for 2013 shows that the
more religiously conservative a person, the less they are willing to grant equal rights to non-Jews.
Similarly in the same survey, when people were asked whom they would not like for neighbors the
same pattern emerged: the more religious the group, the more rejecting of non-Jews they are.7
When we look at another survey from 2014, the Beit Hillel survey of religious Jews,8 breaking down only the religious Zionist groups, we see that the National Haredi group holds similar
attitudes to the Haredi in this matter. We also see that the Modern Orthodox sector are far less
exclusionist than the other religious ones.
We have multiple sources of data showing that the more religious a person, the less he or she
actually associates with people of other religions, and the more negative stereotypes that person
will hold against people of that group. This may lead us to a hypothesis that unfamiliarity with the
other may have something to do with religious prejudice.
In a survey by the Tel Aviv University school of Education, 536 teenagers were asked if they
would be willing to have a friend of the same age and gender who is Arab. While 23 percent of
secular and traditional Jews refused, a full 81 percent of Haredi and Religious Zionist teenagers
said they would not. This may explain the fact that in the same survey, an astounding 82 percent of
religious teenagers (versus 39 percent of secular and traditional ones) believed that Arabs in Israel
should not be granted equal rights.
Finally, a survey of 500 Jews conducted in 2008 by the Jerusalem Insitute for Israel Studies,
found much higher levels of ignorance and of prejudice towards Christians in Israel by religious
Jews than by traditional or secular ones. For example, 85 percent said they did not know a single
Christian person either in Israel or abroad (compared to 34 percent of non religious Jews). 67
percent did not believe that Jersualem is a central city for Christians (versus 31 percent of nonreligious Jews), and 73 percent believed that Israeli students should not be taught about Christianity (compared to 32 percent of non-religious Jews).
To support my argument about the price of ignorance I will note that in this survey respondents from an Ashkenazi background were more accepting of Christians in Israel than those of
Mizrachi background, not despite the fact but rather, I would argue, because of the fact that historically, they were the ones exposed to Christians in Europe. I would argue that while religious
seperatism, by choice or by force, in ghettos or in the Pale of Settlement, was often a feature of
Judaism, Jews in the past knew. They knew who Jesus was even if they called him “that man”. But
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
20
I am not sure this is still the case.
There are many kinds of ignorance. I am referring here to two: not knowing people and not
knowing ideas. This last one can be called elective ignorance: a choice not to know anything of
other people’s world views. When it becomes extreme, people don’t even know what it is they don’t
know.
I will describe one anecdote of what elective religious ignorance looks like: When I taught
Haredi students in a higher education track for Haredi students, I once brought some children’s
books to analyze for moral psychology content. We looked at some books, comparing the Haredi
to the general children’s books, but as I showed one cover, I heard a collective gasp. I looked at
the book I was holding up - “Olivia” - and realized that the protagonist was a pig. Embarrassed, I
mumbled an apology and set the book aside. But after class I thought that I should probably apologize in person to a small group of especially conservative Haredi students who were in this class.
I came up to them and said: “I really want to apologize for showing you that book in class” and
one of them replied: “Oh yes, what was that all about? We had no idea why some students were so
shocked”. I said” “Well, you know, Olivia is a… pig”. They looked at me in astonishment and finally
one of them said: “So that’s what a pig looks like?” They had never even seen a picture of a pig in
their lives.
Peter Berger recently noted that modernity by nature is not a force of secularization.9 It has
that effect at times but what it really does is foster diversity. Modernity creates a climate of many
beliefs, attitudes, and world-views, within a single geographical space or cyber-space. What religions do with this diversity, with this plethora of others, depends. American religions for example,
have turned this situation into a free-market of religions, with incredible numbers of people currently shopping among religions, switching and trying out new religious identities. In this climate,
knowledge of the other is a commodity worth having. And one of its results is a weakening of religious prejudice, as Putnam and Campbell have shown in their 2010 book “American Grace.”10 Jews
in the U.S., by the way, are consistently among the most religiously tolerant groups, and in one
study at least, Orthodox Jews actually top that list. However, in many other places in the world,
Israel being one of them, the need to face so many “others” juxtaposed with the search for a single
unified truth in a confusing modern world, all in the context of political conflict, has led to a reaction of closing inwards and choosing not to know. In Israel today, there is a virtual lack of studies
about other religious traditions in all educational frameworks, least of all in the religious sector.
When the other is unknown, he is threatening, but when he becomes unknowable, our imagination can turn him into a nightmare of the ultimate threat.
In sum, to argue that religion per se facilitates exclusionism is to simplify a complex story.
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
21
I t is more the choice of how one holds on to one’s religion as well as the cultural and sociopolitical context that dictates how the link between religiosity and exclusionism will play out.
Notes:
1 Canetti, D., Halperin, E., Hobfoll, S. E., Shapira, O., & Hirsch-Hoefler, S. (2009). “Authoritarianism, Perceived Threat and Exclusionism on the Eve of the Disengagement: Evidence from
Gaza”. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 33(6), 463-474.
2 Berger, P. (2008). Secularization Falsified, First things.
3 Yerushalmi, Y. H. (2012). Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory. University of Washington
Press.
4 Yaakov Shwekey and Yonatan Razel (2009) “Vehi She’amda”.
5 Bar Tal, D. (2000). “From Intractable Conflict Through Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation:
Psychological Analysis”. Political Psychology, 21(2), 351-365.
6 The following part of the talk closely followed data slides demonstrating the statements
7 Hermann, T., Heller, E., Atmor, N., & Lebel, Y. (2013). The Israeli Democracy Index 2013. Jerusalem: The Israel Democracy Institute.
8 See preliminary results (in Hebrew) at: http://www.beithillel.org.il/show.asp?id=65534#.VFunpfmsVdN
9 Berger, P. (2008). Secularization Falsified, First things.
10 Putnam, R. D., & Campbell, D. E. (2010). American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.
Simon and Schuster.
---Dr. Nurit Novis-Deutsch is a social and clinical psychologist, and a lecturer and researcher at the department for
Counseling and Human Development in Haifa University and at the Psychology department at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Dr. Novis-Deutsch was a Goldman Visiting Professor and a Fulbright scholar at UC Berkeley
in 2010-2012. Her current studies and publications explore interactions between religious identity and pluralism in the U.S. and in Israel, psychological aspects of Israeli identities, God concepts and their link to prejudice,
and Haredi Jews in Israel, including theologies of marriage and Haredi women’s experience of higher education.
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
22
Michael A.
Meyer
Progressive Judaism: Israeli Style
A few years ago the prominent Israeli writer, A. B. Yehoshua wrote the following:
“What [Israel needs] is a religious reform…. Had Ben-Gurion at the height of his power, intellectual influence, and enormous authority gone to pray on Yom Kippur in an Israeli-style Reform synagogue, instead of shutting himself up in his house for the day to pore over Spinoza
or Aristotle, he would have endowed reformist thought with a decisive measure of legitimacy.”
That did not happen. Progressive Judaism in Israel has had an uphill struggle.
1. History
A. Phase One: German-Jewish immigrants in 1930s: Haifa, Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem. German-
Liberal style: no mehitza but separate seating, decorum, Sulzer and Lewandowski music.
Rabbi Max (Meir) Elk: established congregation in Haifa, plus Leo Baeck School
Rabbi Kurt Wilhelm, Emet ve-emunah congregation in Jerusalem: attending: Hugo
Bergmann, Ernst Simon, even occasionally Shai Agnon and Else Lasker Schüler.
B. Phase Two: After hiatus: Har El Congregation in Jerusalem in 1958. Then proliferation
of congregations and other institutions that continues today.
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
23
2. Statistics
A. 35 congregations: City--largest Bet Daniel in Tel Aviv; and in small towns (Nahariya in
the north) and kibbutzim: Yahel and Lotan in the Arava. Some additional for High Holidays. None in the West Bank.
B. Many kindergartens; full school in Jerusalem; youth movement: No’ar Telem.
C. About 100 rabbis, many trained at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem.
3. Discrimination
A. Only Orthodox rabbis can be military chaplains.
B. Only weddings conducted by Orthodox rabbis can be registered.
C. Reform conversions conducted in Israel, though done fully in accord with halakhah, are
not recognized by the chief rabbinate.
D. Periodic acts of vandalism against Reform synagogues.
E. Recent improvements (two examples):
1. 2007: for the first time, the state funded some land and a few buildings for Reform
synagogues
2. 2012: state funding for 15 non-Orthodox rabbis.
4. The Religious Service
A. Fully egalitarian. Women rabbis. Mention of matriarchs.
B. Liturgy elimination of prayers to rebuild the Temple, but retention of prayers for return
to Zion, inclusion of appropriate poems and religious thoughts from contemporary
Israeli poets and intellectuals.
5. The emphasis on social justice and religious pluralism.
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
24
A. IRAC (Israel Religious Action Center) Deals through the courts with issues of discrimination: against the Reform movement, against women, against new immigrants, against Israeli Arabs. This is the central manifestation of the movement’s religious concern
with social justice.
B. Keren be-khavod. Expresses the movement’s concern with gemilut hasadim (acts of
compassion). Projects like summer camps for disadvantaged children, mixed summer
camps for Jewish and Arab children, going to Sederot to entertain the children in shel- ters. 6. Emphasis on study (not unique to Progressive Judaism, but different):
Bate Midrash where sacred texts, Bible, Midrash, Talmud are treated neither as purely secular, historical texts as in secular Judaism, nor as literal revelation as in Orthodox Judaism,
but as texts which have both historical and religious value.
7. The situation at present:
If one counts membership, both Reform and the Conservative movement remain very small. (The Masorti movement claims about 50 synagogues and that it reaches 50,000 per
sons.)
There continues to be Orthodox opposition to any public expression of Judaism that is not
Orthodox and there continue to be secular Israelis who believe that Orthodox Judaism is
the only “authentic” Judaism.
HOWEVER:
If one uses other criteria of measurement, a different story emerges:
1. According to a 2014 poll: 66 percent of Israeli Jews (74 percent if you take out the UltraOrthodox) support recognition of civil marriage and non-Orthodox marriage.
2. A recent survey showed that 34 percent of Israeli Jews said that the Progressive movement is
the Jewish movement with which they most identify.
3. Progressive Judaism is becoming more indigenous. Almost all of the new Israel-trained
Reform rabbis are born in Israel.
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
25
4. The secular press is becoming more favorably inclined to non-Othodox Judaism. Militant secularism is decreasing.
5. While few secular Israelis become members of Reform or Conservative synagogues, a far
larger number now participates in the movement in other ways. For example:
A. Kabbalat Shubbat services in public parks, on the Tel Aviv waterfront and in other places draw in secular Jews.
B. Simhat Torah and Hanukkah celebrations draw large numbers to the non-Orthodox
synagogues.
C. More and more Israelis, including high government officials and celebrities, turn to
Reform and Conservative synagogues to give their life-cycle events religious
meaning.
It is not unusual for Kehilat Ra-anan in Ra-ananah to celebrate as many as five b’nai mitzvah
in a week.
Although weddings conducted by non-Orthodox rabbis are not recognized, requiring a trip
to Cyprus or Romania, Reform rabbis find that more secular Israelis are turning to them than they
can manage to serve as wedding officiants.
Why? Perhaps for the sake of the grandparents? But perhaps also because they want a religious ceremony that is meaningful for them, that brings something of sacred Jewish tradition to
crucial events in their lives.
Thus Progressive Judaism does fill a felt gap in the spiritual lives of many Israelis. To be
sure the need to fill it is for most occasional rather than regular, celebratory rather than ritualistic.
But in terms of the question in the title of this symposium--“How Jewish Is the Jewish State?”--it
seems clear that Progressive Judaism in Israel is adding to the Jewishness of the state by providing
a link to Jewish religious tradition for an increasing number of Jewish Israelis who are alienated
from it.
---Michael A. Meyer is the Adolph S. Ochs Professor of Jewish History Emeritus at Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati. Professor Meyer’s books have won three National Jewish Book Awards. They include The Origins of
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
26
the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749-1824; Response to Modernity: A
History of the Reform Movement in Judaism; Jewish Identity in the Modern World; and a collection of essays
entitled Judaism Within Modernity. From 1978 to 1980 Professor Meyer was president of the Association
for Jewish Studies and from 2003 to 2006 chaired the Academic Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish
History in New York. From 1991 to 2013 he was international president of the Leo Baeck Institute.
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
27
Sara Yael
Hirschhorn
Religion Amongst American Settlers
This paper joined a broader panel on diversity of observance and the role of religion amongst
several Jewish communities in Israel. The focus on this presentation was to highlight the constituency of Jewish-American immigrants within the Israeli settler enterprise, a group that has largely
been overlooked in the scholarly literature and will be the topic of my forthcoming book “City
on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement Since 1967” (Harvard University
Press). The pivotal positioning of this community between the United States and Israel/Palestine
and their mobilization of religion — both as Americans and as Jews — across two continents
makes this case a unique contribution to the understanding of “how Jewish is the Jewish state”
today.
The paper is framed by anthropologist Kevin Avruch’s observation that the identity of
Jewish-American immigrants to Israel is “half about Jewishness in contemporary America and
half about Americanness in contemporary Israel.”1 The transition from the hyphenated identity
of Jewish-American to American-Israeli stands at the center of this study. Further, as sociologist
Gerald Berman emphasized, “the question of why people migrate is not so easily distinguishable
from who migrates.”2 As demographic and statistical profiles of Jewish-American immigrants to
Israel — especially when narrowed to the specific constituency that settled in the occupied territories which compromise approximately 15 percent of the Israeli settler population today — indicate
that markers of both Jewishness and ritual observance (religiosity) were highly prevalent amongst
this group in manifestations such as denominational affiliation, participation in holidays and Jewish dietary law, Jewish education, Jewish and Zionist organizational activity, youth movement
enrollment, and socialization amongst other Jews in comparison to both their peers in the United
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
28
S tates and Israel.3 In fact, this constituted the core of their identity in the United States and quest
to more fully realize their Jewishness helped propel their immigration to Israel. As Avruch noted,
instead of the “classic Zionist ‘problem of the Jews’ or ‘problem of Judaism,’ [for this group] it was
‘my problem as a Jew’”4 — or as one Jewish-American migrant put succinctly, “by coming to Israel,
I solved my problem as Jew.”5 This research problematizes the traditional ‘push-pull’ dynamic of
migration6 seeing this process as intertwined and syncretic when applied to the case of AmericanIsraeli settlers in the occupied territories.
The second half of this paper takes up questions of religion post-migration to Israel. My
research features three case studies of settlements built by and for Jewish-American immigrants
to the occupied territories — Efrat, Tekoa, and Yamit — examining both their historical narrative
and surrounding discourses. My findings suggest a profound difference with native Israeli settler
peers in their attitudes toward messianism, a hallmark of the premier settler group Gush Emunim
that is not predominant or even particularly prevalent amongst this group.7 More generally, these
American-Israeli communities tend to be more open and innovative in regards to halakhic teaching and daily practice. However, religious pluralism has not gone in hand-in-hand with political
progressivism.
The new discourses that Jewish-American settlers have introduced and integrated within
the Israeli settler movement reflect this tension. As Avruch suggested, their American identities
intensified as immigrants. In fact, they draw heavily upon their American backgrounds and both
the ideology and tactics of the social movements of the 1960s in the United States in which they
were involved to inform their political activism within the Israeli settler project, mobilizing liberal
progressivism in service of their religio-political philosophy of living in the whole of the land of
Israel. Further, they have developed a unique rights discourse harmonizing universalism and Jewish particularism which, as English-language spokespeople, they have deployed to normalize and
justify the settlement agenda to the international community. The cognitive dissonance inherent
in the application of liberal values to illiberal projects amongst American settlers can been seen in
comparative perspective with a larger trend in the Middle East since the Second World War.
As this paper suggests, both the identification and instrumentalization of religion amongst
American settlers lends an important new dimension to our understanding of “how Jewish is the
Jewish state” as these debates continue into the future.
Notes:
1 Kevin Avruch, American Immigrants in Israel – Social Identities and Change (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1981), 5.
2 Gerald S. Berman, “Why North Americans Migrate to Israel.” Jewish Journal of Sociology 21,
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
29
o. 2 (December 1979): 135-144.
N
3 See, for example, Calvin Goldscheider, “American Aliya: Sociological and Demographic Perspectives,” in Marshall Sklare (ed.), The Jew in American Society, (New York: Behrman House
Inc., 1974), 335-384, Aaron Antonovsky and Abraham David Katz, From the Golden Land to the
Promised Land (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Academic Press, 1979), Harry Leib Jubas, “The Adjustment
Process of Americans and Canadians in Israel and their Integration into Israeli Society” (PhD
Diss., Michigan State University, 1974), and Chaim I. Waxman, American Aliya: Portrait of an Innovative Migration Movement (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989).
4 Avruch, American Immigrants in Israel, 93.
5 Harold Isaacs, American Jews in Israel (New York: John Day, 1967), 89.
6 See, for example, William Petersen, “A General Typology of Migration,” American Sociological
Review 23, No. 3 (June 1958): 256-266.
7 See also Chaim I. Waxman, “Political and Social Attitudes of Americans Among the Settlers
In the Territories, ” in David Newman (ed.), The Impact of Gush Emunim – Politics and Settlement
in the West Bank ( New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 200-220.
---Sara Hirschhorn is the University Research Lecturer and Sidney Brichto Fellow in Israel Studies in the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Oxford. She was previously a postdoctoral
fellow at the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. Her research focuses on the
Israeli settler movement, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the relationship between the U.S./American Jewry
and Israel. Her work has been published in the Journal of Religion, Middle Eastern Studies, the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and Israel Studies and she is currently working on a book manuscript entitled “City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement Since 1967” forthcoming from Harvard University Press. She received her Ph.D. in History (2012) at the University of Chicago.
Her recent honors include being awarded the John Fell Fund Award at the University of Oxford (2014).
How Jewish is the Jewish State?
30
Gershon
Greenberg
Haredi Attitudes Toward the State
Intra-Haredi tensions emerged out of the Holocaust. The tension related to the ingredients
of a triad: Torah, Holocaust, statehood and to the correlation between historical reality and myth
(or metahistory or metanarrative)
While religious nationalist thinkers drew positive implications between the triad of Torah,
Holocaust, and restoration towards statehood, this was not so for Haredi thinkers. Rather the
three elements were contingent upon, or exclusive of, one another, and they differed about which
contingency and which exclusivity. While they all rejected congruence between myth and historical activity, they differed about alternatives. There were four positions.
One: The State Is Demonic
This goes back to the Maharal’s 1600 Netsah yisrael—in which he wrote that the nation of
Israel, chosen by God to possess His Torah, belonged to a realm beyond historical time and space,
in which exile and redemption interconnected mysteriously—leaving exiled Israel estranged from
the temporal world below. To enforce Israel’s estrangement from the world below in the face of
persecution (itself a bi-product of the alienation) God threatened to abandon the people, should
they turn to history and attempt to affect the exile-redemption relationship (whether through rebelling against the nations, or massive Aliyah). God also assured the people that He would never
let the Gentile nations overly subjugate and oppress them on the other (as per Babylonian Talmud
Tractate Ketuvot 111a).
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In the 1930s, Hayim Elazar Shapira of Munkacz, Hungary, wrote that until God brings
redemption, the Land of Israel, filled as it was with divine presence (Shekhinah), was to be used
solely for prayer and sacred study. By seeking to intervene in what was above through restoring the
Land, Zionists violated this principle and even released satanic forces. Following the Holocaust,
Grand Rabbi Yoel Taytlboym (1887-1979) of Satu mare, Transylvania, having escaped Europe for
America, emphasized that the Land was to be used solely to lead a full life of Torah—and he called
upon his supporters in America to strengthen the Yereim (those with awe before God) and Haredim in the Land. Instead, Zionists were intervening into the trans-natural relationship between
dispersion and redemption. They violated the oaths of Ketuvot 111a, and God carried out His
threat to abandon the people as the “hinds and the deer” of the field: “In our generation we need
not seek into anything hidden, for the crime which brought [the Holocaust] about. The crime is
clearly revealed: The violation of Ketuvot 111a.”
This stream of thought, where historical activity and metanarrative were mutually exclusive; and according to which restoration of the Land for statehood violated Torah and meant Holocaust, has been identified politically with the Edah haharedit, Naturei karta, Toledot aharon and
Satmar Hasidim.
Two: If The State Is Without Torah, There Will Be A Holocaust
The term “Da‘at torah,” refers to the wisdom of Torah as it constituted the very foundation of
the world and also the essence of the Jew, such that everything one needed to know could be found
in Scripture as interpreted by the rabbis over the generations. Insofar as the order of the universe
was grounded in Torah, Torah’s absence meant chaos—although the chaos necessarily functioned
as an instrument for pushing Israel back to its Torah-true self.
In his 1938 treatise on the onset of the messiah, Elhanan Wasserman (1875-1941), the Head
of the Baranowicz, yeshiva in Poland, condemned secular nationalists for creating an Amalek
(the paradigm of Israel’s evil “other”) within Judaism itself. The internal Amalek projected itself
outward with Nazi persecution (All reality was a function of Torah). In the measure-for-measure
punishment administered by God, Jewish nationalism and socialism evoked National Socialism
(Nazism). This, in turn, would force Israel back to its Da‘at torah-grounded existence. For Wasserman, secular nationalism removed Torah, and left Israel to the chaos of the unfolding disaster in
Europe. While restoration of the Land per se was not a crime, without Torah, it implied Holocaust.
Any restoration, let alone state-building, without Torah, meant disaster of apocalyptic proportion.
The Land had no other purpose than to serve Da‘at torah.
Thus: First the higher Torah-chaos myth and historical events on the ground set off one an-
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ther. Second, although the Land was not inherently instilled with Torah (religious nationalism),
o
and a secular land meant disaster, the Land of Israel could theoretically be built in Torah.
The tie between a Torah-less Land and the Holocaust was expressed after the war by Elazar
Menahem Shakh of Benei Berak, de facto head of the Litvishe Haredim in Israel, and the founder
in 1988 of the Degel hatorah party—the non-Hasidic wing of Agudat yisrael. Da‘at torah was the
source for Israel’s existence for two millennia when the people had neither state nor territory,
and the people would survive again with Torah alone. The only purpose of a Jewish state was to
enhance Torah, while a Torah-violating state meant not only ongoing exile, but disaster. Hitler
himself could not have perpetrated the Holocaust, God alone had such power and God brought it
about to call Israel into account for its many sins. Continued Torah-violation in the Land of Israel
would bring more disaster.
As for Wasserman and Shakh, Israel’s historical activities had metahistorical ramifications
and vice versa, and metanarrative about God and Israel correlated with actions on the ground as to
the triad: Land and Torah were of themselves mutually exclusive, while a secularized state would
bring another Holocaust.
Three: The Joining of Torah and State Under the Impact of the Holocaust
For the leaders of the Agudat Yisrael world-wide rabbinical organization dedicated to Halakhah the historical events of the Holocaust reordered the Torah-Land relationship; they supported restoration towards statehood in tandem with Torah development in the Land, even development of the former before the latter.
At the 1937 Agudat Yisrael conference held in response to the Peel Commission’s partition plan where Wasserman attacked secular Zionists for starting a new exile, the Agudat Yisrael
president Jakob Rosenheim took the position that “It was the hallowed duty of Agudat Yisrael to
cooperate to the best of its ability to the upbuilding of a stable Jewish commonwealth in the Holy
Land.” That is, Torah was not the sine qua non for supporting the upbuilding; the upbuilding and
Torah-development could take place in tandem. At the same time, Rosenheim warned against
getting caught up in the “insane deadly vortex of idolatrous national sovereignty.” In the face of
“Germany’s unrestrained quest for sovereignty and murderous instinct for power”, however, the
upbuilding could not wait.
Yitshak Meir Levin, who headed Agudat Yisrael in the Land of Israel, agreed to serve as a
member of the Keneset, stipulating that he would leave if any laws contrary to Torah were enacted.
He explained that his goal was to work to advance Torah to its maximum place, i.e., for a Torah
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state (Medinat torah); as if the Medinah were an empty space to be filled with Torah. But given the
realities after the catastrophe he would accept its minimum place as a point of departure.
For Rosenheim and Levin, the historical reality of the Holocaust moved Torah into a synchronic relationship of restoring the Land and establishing statehood, given the historical reality of the Holocaust. The Holocaust moved them to displace a priori mutual exclusivity between
Torah and state, with a developing bond between them. The historical fact of the Holocaust was
determinative in the metahistory-history relationship.
Four: Divine Authority and Democracy
In the first stream, space-time history and the metahistorical chosenness of Israel in Torah
were alien to one another. On the second (Da‘at torah), the relationship between the two was dialogical. In the third, the historical reality of the Holocaust determined the relationship between
Torah and the people of Israel.
Isaac Breuer (1883-1946), who founded the workers Agudat Yisrael movement (Poalei agudat yisrael), looked to the Land of Israel as an historical context for metahistory, where history
could be transformed into metahistory. The people of Israel, the nation of Torah, dwelled in a sacred metahistorical realm, beyond the time and space of visible history. They were exiled to bring
the rest of the world out of history which was composed as it was of political sovereignties and
profane. Instead, beginning with the Emancipation in Western Europe, the nation entered profane
history, this was just when political, humanly autonomous nationalism, based in racism, was turning extreme. The Holocaust was the outcome. In its wake, the Land of Israel, the only refuge for the
sacred people, provided an historical context which for metahistory – for partnering the divine
authority of state law, which included religious law, with a democratic structure. Here, as with the
third stream, the Holocaust induced reconciling Torah and statehood.
Conclusion
First: Haredi thinkers set aside religious nationalism’s structural congruity between history
and metanarrative. They spoke of history and metanarrative as alienated, as correlated dialogically;
Holocaust reality determined the relationship; metahistory and history were seen as structurally
opposed but potentially reconciled in the Land of Israel. Second: while they set aside the religious
nationalists’ positive interconnection of Torah, Holocaust and statehood, they differed about the
inter-relations. For Taytlboym, Zionism, religious and secular, was demonic, and brought about
the Holocaust; for Shakh, it need not have brought about the Holocaust, but it did; for Levin, the
Holocaust mandated synchronic development of state and Torah. Finally, for Breuer it left the peo-
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ple of Israel with the opportunity to fruitfully reconcile profane history with sacred metahistory.
The jury is still out as to whether or not these streams will ever find a modus vivendi. On an
ideological basis, as long as there was a Holocaust, they will remain opposed to one another.
---Gershon Greenberg is a Professor of Philosophy and Religion at American University and has been a
Visiting Professor in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His
field is the history of Jewish thought in modern times, with publications in the areas of real-time Holocaust religious thought, and of nineteenth century Jewish thought. He participated in Moshe Davis’ America-Holy Land Project, with The Holy Land in American Religious Thought, 1640-1948.
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AU’s Center for Israel Studies presents the creative and intellectural contributions of the modern state of Israel in the arts, sciences, social sciences, and humanities. As a university center in Washington, DC it is uniquely positioned to be a national and international hub for the examination and
interpretation of Israel’s achievements and complex geopolitical challenges.
At American University, Jewish studies, an interdisciplinary program, enables students to analyze the civilization of the Jews and its various cultural and religious expressions from the patriarchal period to the present.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Knapp
Family Foundation, which made this conference possible.
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