8. Religion and Politics

It is rare to find a hopeful view of relations between the religious and secular communities in Israel. Both academic and nonacademic analyses paint a dismal portrait of sharpened conflict, unyielding dogmatism, and impending catastrophe. One observer notes that “far more than the Sephardi/Ashkenazi split, the conflict between the varying demands of religious observance is the most potentially disruptive threat to the unity of Jewish Israel.” ^[1] An academic analyst concludes that the demands of religious parties may be as serious as the Arab threat: “Indeed, the latter groups may be more willing to compromise their demands than the religious parties have ever shown a willingness to do.” ^[2] An Israeli long active in opposing religious demands states that “we are now witnessing the Judgment Day of the State’s domestic affairs.” ^[3]

Opinion surveys seem to indicate that most Israelis may feel the same way. In March 1988—soon after the onset of the Palestinian intifada against Israeli occupation—58 percent of a sample of Jews in Jerusalem considered religious-secular relations to be the most critical problem in the city, while only 23 percent identified Jewish-Arab relations as the most critical.^[4] In 1991 a national sample showed that 71 percent of the Jewish population thought that religious-secular relations were “not so good” or “not good at all.” ^[5]

In some ways religious differences do seem less amenable to resolution than other cleavages in Israeli society. The split between Jews of European and those of African and Asian background, though serious and persistent, is regarded by both sides as a temporary phenomenon, the result of historic accident, that will eventually be erased or at least blurred in the forging of a common Israeli identity. The sharp differences between Israelis and Arabs can at least in theory be settled through compromise on the basis of mutual recognition. But religious differences seem less susceptible to such compromise; they are deeply rooted in opposed ways of life that often deny the legitimacy of coexistence and seek to undermine the enemy. Nor are these divisions a transitional phase; different degrees and definitions of religious observance and competing religious authorities have characterized Jewish life over the centuries.

The social distance between the religious (meaning Orthodox in the Israeli context) and nonreligious publics, reinforced by residential concentration and educational segregation, has been amply documented. One study of eleventh-graders in 1973 found, for example, that 65 percent of nonreligious respondents were unwilling to have a religious friend, and 81 percent did not want a religious neighbor; among religious respondents 68 percent rejected a nonreligious friend and 65 percent a nonreligious neighbor.^[6] Such attitudes reflect not only the inconvenience of conflicting lifestyles in situations of close social proximity but also the fear that one’s own lifestyle might be threatened by changes in the neighborhood (a problem raised, for example, by the expansion of religious neighborhoods in Jerusalem). From the religious side, it seems normal to maintain sharp boundaries protecting the integrity of religious life, since “separation and distinction are characteristic of the halakhic legal system that lies at the heart of the Jewish world view.” ^[7]

Religious-secular relations are of special significance for the political system because of the historic blurring of civil and religious matters in Jewish life and the lack even today of strong support for the principle of separation of religion and state. In Jewish tradition, “religious” and “secular” matters overlapped; in fact, the very distinction would have made little sense to pre-modern generations. The weight of tradition was reinforced, in the Zionist and Israeli experiences, by the practical necessity of compromise on religious demands in order to preserve unity. Ultimately, this developed into ingrained habits of coexistence according to formulas that fit neither side’s worldview squarely but also impinged on neither’s basic way of life unduly.^[8]

Of course this invites constant struggle and uneasy compromise over the role of religion in politics. But that is hardly novel in Jewish history; in fact, the traditional patterns of accommodation help to explain how the Israeli system has coped with religious cleavages and why these cleavages have not torn the system asunder. Religious politics in Israel, as much as any part of the system, reflect the bargaining pattern in Jewish political tradition. This tradition has enabled Israel to deal with religious division more successfully than most observers would credit, and certainly more successfully than those actively engaged in the conflict would concede.

The resemblance of religious-secular politics in Israel to the consociational pattern has been noted by several observers. Sammy Smooha points to the maintenance of separate institutions, the organization of religious Jews to procure a share of the resources and benefits of government, the ability of religious parties to cast a veto on religious issues, and the general pattern of accommodation and negotiation rather than confrontation and decisive outcomes.^[9] Eliezer Don-Yehiya concludes that the consociational democracy model helps to explain, to a large extent, how “the Israeli political system has managed to resolve religious conflicts by peaceful means, while preserving its stability and democratic character.” ^[10]

In order to appreciate these arrangements, we should first look at the relationship of religion to politics in Israel and compare it to other states. Clearly Israel is not among the states committed to the maximum separation between religion and state (recognizing that even these states—for example, the United States—have never achieved total governmental neutrality toward religion). But neither is the modern Jewish state a theocracy, governed by religious clerics or religious laws. Rather, Israel ranks somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, together with European states that have “established,” state-supported religions but strong respect, at the same time, for religious freedom. Actually Israel does not even have a single state religion, as legally Judaism is but one of fourteen established and state-supported religions (together with Islam, Baha’i, the Druze faith, and ten Christian denominations).^[11]

Thus, despite the absence of formal constitutional guarantees, the protection of minority religions is not the major issue; Israeli practice in this regard may even be superior to that of the United States, despite the latter’s written constitution.^[12] The main controversy involves the application of Jewish religious law to the Jewish public. Secular Israelis characterize existing arrangements (such as the rabbinical monopoly over Jewish marriage and divorce) as a form of religious coercion. Non-Orthodox Jewish movements complain that only in Israel, among all democratic states, are they subject to legal discrimination. On the other hand, Orthodox advocates argue that without protection by the state (for example, guarantee of the right not to work on Sabbath), those faithful to religious precepts are effectively denied equal rights and full integration into the nation’s social and cultural life.^[13]

This debate is complicated by the lack of clarity in Jewish law on its relationship to the state and by preexisting patterns of religious governance in the Middle East that carried over into Zionism and the State of Israel. Furthermore, both major groups within the religious population refused in principle to recognize the supremacy of state law over religious commandments: religious Zionists did so because their Zionism was linked to the state’s religious mission, while non-Zionist Orthodoxy disputed the state’s legitimacy from the outset.^[14]

Tension between Zionism and Religion

Observers unfamiliar with Zionism’s inner history are sometimes astonished to learn that the movement was not an expression of religious impulses and that it actually developed in an atmosphere of mutual hostility between Zionists and religious authorities.

This antagonism was part of the larger struggle between those seeking to make Jewish communities part of modern secular European society and those clinging tenaciously to Jewish separatism and particularity. As noted in chapters 2 and 3, the Enlightenment and its Jewish echo (the Haskala) had seriously undermined the autonomy of the traditional Jewish community and the role of religious law in Jewish life. In reaction, much of the rabbinical establishment in Eastern Europe turned inward, rejecting the lures of the outside world and focusing religious law (halacha) increasingly and inflexibly on matters of ritual observance.^[15]

In this context, Zionism was simply another threat to Jewish integrity from an alien and menacing universe. Religious leaders regarded it, with considerable justice, as a continuation of the secularizing Haskala movement; it was no accident that most early Zionist leaders were maskilim by background. Zionism was part and parcel of the Western secular nationalist tradition. It was a movement for Jewish national self-determination in the same mode as other nationalist movements of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, like other nationalist movements of the period, Zionism was anticlerical, opposed to basing public life on religious principle. Just as the nationalists of Europe sought to liberate themselves from all traditionalism, including clerical control of politics, Zionism sought new political paths free of religious restraints.

Consequently, the established religious leadership opposed Zionism with near unanimity, in defense of both their prerogatives and their principles. Naturally they saw it as a threat to their own position within the Jewish community, where their authority had long been accepted on matters both sacred and mundane. They also opposed it on theological grounds because Zionism aspired to create a Jewish state outside the religious framework, as a result of the endeavors of humankind rather than the intervention of God. They opposed such undertakings as the rebirth of Hebrew as a spoken language, preferring that it remain a sacred liturgical tongue. Traditional religious authorities were the most vocal opponents of Zionism within the Jewish community. While a religious version of Zionism did develop in the early twentieth century, it remained a minority both among Zionists and—until much later in the century—among Orthodox Jews as well.

Secularization of public life, it should be recalled, is a Western invention that does not appear even in Western history before the last few centuries, and it has probably been totally achieved only in a handful of avowedly “materialist” regimes (most of which no longer exist). Historically Judaism viewed itself as a way of life and not simply as a religion (originally there was no word for “religion” in Hebrew). Like Islam, it centered on a code of law that encompassed what we would now consider civil or political matters (consider the Ten Commandments). The traditions of Judaism provide little basis for the modern idea of separating religion and politics.

The same can be said about Middle East custom and practice, embodied particularly in Islam. Islam affirms religion (or what the West calls “religion”) as the organizing principle of state and society. In the Ottoman Empire this link between religion and politics was expressed in the millet system, under which each religious community governed itself in certain respects. Even before the British Mandate in Palestine, the rabbinical establishment in the area exercised certain governing powers within the Jewish community (the so-called “old yishuv ”), particularly in matters of personal status such as marriage and divorce.

The old yishuv was divided between a Sephardi community, led by a chief rabbi, and an Ashkenazi community, with its own rabbinical courts, that was supported by outside contributions (haluka) and led a largely isolated existence centered around acts of piety. Though both groups opposed Zionism, the Ashkenazim in the old yishuv were particularly antagonistic to this latest and most insidious challenge to their besieged way of life. It was this group that set the basic patterns for the non-Zionist and anti-Zionist haredi communities in Palestine and Israel.^[16]

In some respects, the division between non- or anti-Zionist haredim and Zionist Jews, religious or nonreligious, was more fundamental than the more common distinction between religious Jews (whether haredi or Zionist) and nonreligious Jews. Apart from a much smaller number on the far left, the haredim were the only Jewish group in Israel outside the “Zionist consensus”; religious Zionists often had more in common with nonreligious Zionists than they did with religious Jews outside the Zionist fold. Despite their shared religiosity, the worldview of those who work fervently for the Jewish state—even one with secular leaders—differs in essence from the worldview of those who view that same state as an alien and illegitimate entity. In contrast to the haredim, religious Zionists stress the national as well as the religious aspect of Judaism, reject separatism as a way of life, and seek in many ways to become part of modern society.

Had members of the old yishuv been the leading element in the expansion of the Jewish settlement in late nineteenth-century Palestine, the governing principles of the new settlement would have been quite different. In fact, the settlers of Petah Tikva, the first settlement outside the old yishuv (1880), drew up regulations making their rabbi sole judicial authority within the settlement, with powers to enforce all religious laws (many of the settlers were from the old yishuv).^[17] But the Zionist settlers of the “new yishuv ” did not adopt this model (nor, eventually, did Petah Tikva itself); they made use of experience with self-government in Eastern Europe and elsewhere to create autonomous, but basically secularized, villages and communes. When the new settlers finally convened a body to represent Palestinian Jewry—the Knesiya of 1903—they excluded from the electorate all those who subsisted on haluka, meaning most of those in the old yishuv, though they still constituted the bulk of the Jewish population.^[18] Jews in the homeland were now sharply divided into two communities, neither of which respected the values or way of life of the other.

The division between old yishuv and new yishuv corresponds roughly to the division between haredi and Zionist, which has reemerged in recent years as a source of increasing trouble for Israeli politics. It is important to understand the depth of this divide. The leading analyst of haredi society, Menachem Friedman, describes its worldview as “a comprehensive historiographic conception which perceived of the central historical processes of the modern era—from the inception of modernization and secularization (i.e., the Haskala or Enlightenment), through the development of the Zionist Movement up to the establishment of the State of Israel—as a totality of a cause and effect expressing the great ‘rebellion’ against the unique essence of religious Judaism. . . .” ^[19]

Haredim are “fundamentalist” according to the definition developed by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby: “a tendency…which manifests itself as a strategy, or set of strategies, by which beleaguered believers attempt to preserve their distinctive identity as a people or group.” This involves the selective retrieval of “fundamentals” from a sacred past and their use as a bulwark against the dislocations of modernization. It is not a simple return to the past, but an innovative recreation of a political and social order characterized by authoritarian leadership, strong discipline, a rigorous moral code, clear boundaries, and an identified enemy.^[20] All of these elements appear in haredi society, whose roots go back over two centuries to Jewish resistance to the Enlightenment and the prospect of integration into European culture.

As noted, most Jewish religious authorities initially saw Zionism as part and parcel of this threat. While religious Zionists came to terms with a largely secular process by ascribing messianic significance to the Jewish state as “the Beginning of Redemption,” anti-Zionists turned this on its head by labeling Zionism a “false Redemption” and promoting a messianism based on its rejection. The return of Jews to the Land of Israel may be a part of the process, but genuine redemption cannot take place in a secular framework. Some even believed that “the great sin which has prevented the coming of the Messiah is none other than Zionism!” ^[21] Cooperation and accommodation with the Zionist state was regarded by many anti-Zionists as a practical or tactical necessity but did not necessarily indicate recognition of its legitimacy.

Roots of Religious-Secular Accommodation

Despite the obvious problems, the Zionist movement from its earliest days made efforts to reach religious Jews, either by enlisting them as Zionists or (in the case of anti-Zionists) by drawing them into practical cooperation in the rebuilding of the homeland. Though religious delegates to the First Zionist Congress, in 1897, were a small minority, Theodor Herzl made an important gesture in their direction by attending services (for the first time in years) at a Basel synagogue on the Sabbath before the Congress opened.^[22] The Zionist movement, which lacked even the slight aura of governmental authority enjoyed by Jewish community leaders, could attract religious Jews only by offering them a sense of participation and a proportional share of influence and benefits. By the early years of the century religious Zionists, or “national-religious” Jews, had organized as the Mizrahi movement and were participating in power-sharing arrangements within the World Zionist Organization. During this period there were acrimonious battles over efforts to establish a secular program of cultural education not controlled, as Jewish education had been historically, by religious authorities. The compromise eventually reached was to establish a dual set of cultural institutions, one Orthodox and one nonreligious. The same patterns carried over into the Mandatory period as Zionist institutions came to dominate there in the post-World War I period. Beginning in the 1930s, the secular leadership of the new yishuv made explicit arrangements with religious Zionist parties on the proportionate division of jobs and other benefits, beginning a forty-year period of partnership between Labor Zionists and religious Zionists.

Following World War I efforts were also made to bring Agudat Yisrael, the party representing what had been the old yishuv, within the purview of the new communal institutions. Zionist officials extended some funding to traditional religious schools (yeshivot) and offered additional assistance if the yeshivot would teach Hebrew as a language (the offer was refused). By late 1918 it became necessary to convene representatives of the entire yishuv, old and new, in order to select Palestinian Jewish delegates to the Paris peace talks and to prepare for the election of a constituent assembly. The gathering convened in Jaffa in December of that year with the participation of the non-Zionist old yishuv, who by that time constituted a minority within the Jewish population. Participation of the old yishuv in election of the assembly remained problematic, however, because of their objection to giving women the rights to vote and to be elected.

When elections for the Assembly of Delegates were finally held in April 1920, non-Zionists in Jerusalem held their own polls from which women were excluded. Nevertheless, the elected non-Zionist delegates were admitted to the Assembly, where they constituted 16 percent of the membership (religious Zionists, still a tiny part of the movement, received only 4 percent of the seats in a strictly proportional system, with the remaining 80 percent divided among non-religious Zionist parties). However, Agudat Yisrael and other groups in the non-Zionist religious community boycotted subsequent elections, and many in that community withdrew their names entirely from the registered Jewish electorate.

The continuation of the Turkish millet system, under which religious communities operated their own court systems, made the continuing separatism of non-Zionist religious Jews easier. The terms of the Mandate actually enjoined Great Britain to retain this arrangement, in order to avoid controversy. In the Jewish case, the office of Sephardi chief rabbi had been established in pre-Zionist days and continued to serve all Sephardi Jews, whatever their position on Zionism. The office of Ashkenazi chief rabbi was only created, however, in the early days of the Mandate, and fell at once under the control of religious Zionists. Consequently the non-Zionist Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox, having previously rejected the authority of the Sephardi chief rabbi, also refused to recognize the new Ashkenazi chief rabbi and continued to maintain their own independent court systems as established under the Ottomans. This basic structure of religious life—unitary among Sephardim, divided along Zionist/haredi lines on the Ashkenazi side—persisted until the rise of Shas(see below).

Throughout the 1920s Chaim Weizmann, as head of the World Zionist Organization, sought to bring Agudat Yisrael into the Assembly of Delegates and the National Council that it elected, exploiting the fact that these bodies controlled the allocation of official funds within the Jewish community. In the first stage this led to a compromise providing for funding of institutions of the old yishuv but no active cooperation; finally, in 1934, an agreement of formal cooperation between Agudat Yisrael and the World Zionist Organization was reached.

The pressures of the Nazi era brought Zionists and non-Zionists into closer cooperation. All factions recognized the importance of Mandatory Palestine as one of the few havens to which European Jews might flee. After the Holocaust, most non-Zionists also came to accept the practical necessity of an independent Jewish state, even if that state (initially) was not religiously correct. Before supporting Zionist goals even on this conditional basis, however, Agudat Yisrael and other haredi groups sought assurance that this “Jewish” state would not publicly desecrate religious law.

David Ben-Gurion provided such assurance in a June 19, 1947, letter to the leadership of Agudat Yisrael; this letter became the basis of complex bargaining in which a status quo acceptable to both sides was defined.^[23] This status quo, serving as a point of reference for future bargaining, included recognizing the Jewish Sabbath as a day of rest, maintaining kashrut (Jewish dietary laws) in governmental institutions, state funding of religious public schools, and leaving jurisdiction over marriage and divorce in the hands of religious authorities. On other matters the status quo meant recognition of anomalous situations that had developed; for example, banning public transportation on the Sabbath in the country as a whole but allowing it to continue in localities where it already existed.

On the basis of this understanding, Agudat Yisrael joined the provisional government of Israel in 1948, even receiving one of thirteen cabinet seats (the Ministry of Welfare). Mizrahi, representing religious Zionists, was allotted two ministries; by this time the relative strength of Zionist and non-Zionist Orthodoxy had been reversed. Furthermore, the two factions of the religious camp managed to form a joint list for elections to the first Israeli Knesset in 1949, and Agudat Yisrael continued to serve in the Israeli government until 1952.

For all this, however, Agudat Yisrael still recognized Israel only on a de facto basis, and other elements in the haredi community did not even go this far. None of them accepted Israel as a legitimate state and government according to Jewish law; the difference lay in the willingness to make practical, temporary accommodations—and thereby receive state funding—while working to transform the secular order into a truly Jewish state based solely on the laws of the Torah as authoritatively interpreted by their own rabbinical establishment. While accepting the validity of Knesset legislation as “temporary” laws, therefore, Agudat Yisrael opposed the drafting of a man-made constitution for Israel (as did, for that matter, the religious Zionists). Unlike the religious Zionists, however, haredi authorities also opposed the celebration of Israeli Independence Day (including the recitation of Psalms—Hallel—on that occasion), use of the Israeli flag or other national symbols, or service (at least by their own youth) in the Israeli army.^[24] By the time of the 1951 elections to the Second Knesset, the fault line between Zionist and non-Zionist religious camps had reasserted itself; the joint list fell apart and has never been restored. A year later Agudat Yisrael left the government over the issue of military conscription of women (even though the religious population was to be exempted), and since then has never again accepted a ministerial post, even when supporting a government in the Knesset. The difference between religious Zionists and haredim is thus basic to Israeli politics, though both are a part—in differing degrees—of the broader religious-secular accommodation on religious issues.

Elements of the Accommodation

There are three major elements in the accommodation that have characterized Israeli secular-religious relations, as identified by Eliezer Don-Yehiya. The principle of proportionality, as implemented through “party key” arrangements, is of primary importance. The party key extends the idea of proportional representation beyond the electoral system and applies it to the division of offices, patronage, public financial support, access to state lands, and so on—in fact to all the “goods” that the political system has at its disposal. In this regard both Zionist and non-Zionist religious parties, as well-organized groups representing distinct subcultures with their own networks of institutions, have been very successful in getting benefits from the political system.^[25]

The religious minority in Israel, more than the Sephardi community or even the Arab minority, has chosen the path of separate party lists to secure its interests. Occasionally there has been debate on this score, within religious circles, from those who argue that making the secular parties compete for an uncommitted religious vote would be more effective in gaining concessions.^[26] It is argued that a comparison of the army to the educational system demonstrates the advantages of integration over separatism: in the integrated army kosher food is served to everyone, while in the divided educational system, the secular schools typically take no account at all of religious sensitivities (for instance, scheduling social events on the Sabbath). But the political system seems designed to reward the separatist strategy, and most religious political activists feel (with some justice) that the strategy of forming religious blocs able to play off the major parties against each other has proven itself over the years.

The second major element of accommodation is the autonomy of religious institutions and culture, which protects the religious subculture from the threat of assimilation by secular society.^[27] This is especially marked in education but extends through a network of institutions designed to preserve the integrity and vitality of religious life within the national-religious community. There is even greater separation of the haredi community, which has its own courts, welfare institutions, religious authorities, and independent schools. This autonomy is not only an expression of Jewish traditions and customs, of course, but is also in some ways a continuation of the millet system of the Ottoman Empire. The existence of these networks gives most parties an additional stake in the status quo, since most of these institutions are state-supported despite their autonomy (even the “independent” schools in the haredi community receive government funding).

From the secular side, autonomy means that religious authorities make little effort in practice to impose their rulings on the secular majority, even when they are committed in principle to doing so. Despite considerable grumbling about secular patterns of entertainment on the Sabbath, for example, there is a de facto tolerance of secular diversions so long as they do not intrude directly on religious neighborhoods (and sometimes even when they do). To some extent, this element of accommodation is achieved by the unwritten practice of not enforcing statutes and regulations on the books. If the government were to enforce to the letter all legal provisions that have been enacted at one time or another as part of bargains with religious parties, the secular public would react strongly. Instead, those laws most likely to cause a backlash are simply ignored: a supposed ban on pork is not enforced, restaurants and places of entertainment defy local bylaws, and work permits for “essential public services” on the Sabbath are issued with a free hand (making possible radio and television broadcasts, for example). This arrangement may damage public respect for the rule of law, but it is also part of the modus vivendi by which secular and religious publics coexist.^[28]

The third element in the basic secular-religious compromise is mutual veto: the recognition by each side that it cannot push the other past a certain point without threatening Jewish unity—which all regard as a supreme value—as well as endangering its own interests. Religious spokesman deny any intention of trying to use state power to regulate citizens’ private lives, while even ardent secularists agree that Israeli state and society should in some way reflect its Jewish roots. In this acceptance of informal limits, the status quo serves an almost sacred role as a “constitution” or “social contract” that forbids basic challenges to the existing order.^[29] It serves as a basic point of reference that both sides respect in its essential features, though this does not rule out efforts to nudge current arrangements slightly in one direction or the other (particularly with new issues not covered clearly in the original understanding).

The veto power of the religious minority does not, contrary to conventional wisdom, rest primarily on its ability to deny a majority to government coalitions. Religious parties (and especially the National Religious Party, the successor to Mizrahi) participated in nearly every government since 1948, but in most cases their participation was not actually necessary for a majority. It is rather the fear of a broad-ranging Kulturkampf that has reinforced the respect for boundaries: “The religious minority’s veto powers in religious matters are not due to coalition politics but rather to their institutional capability to resort to mass dissent and disruption if necessary.” ^[30]

Fear of a strong backlash likewise deters religious leaders from pushing measures that would impinge significantly on the secular public. Being in a minority, religious parties have limited prospects of forcing their will on a recalcitrant majority. In addition they must consider that aggressive demands will undermine efforts to attract votes from the marginally religious or traditional, forfeit concrete gains they could make by cooperating, and create internal conflict when national unity is essential. Therefore religious parties, even the haredim, typically make modest demands and tend to focus on narrow interests (funds and patronage) rather than broader issues of principle.^[31]

The limits to what religious parties can reasonably expect was clearly indicated in the aftermath of the 1988 elections, when haredi parties more than doubled their representation in the Knesset. Trying to make use of their increased leverage, these parties put on the table a new set of demands on Sabbath observance and other religious issues as a condition for helping to form a government. When these demands brought about a backlash in public opinion, Prime-Minister-designate Yitzhak Shamir backed away from a coalition based on their support and returned to a National Unity Government in which religious bargaining power was considerably reduced. And when the National Unity Government finally collapsed in early 1990 and Shamir turned once more to the formation of a narrow, right-religious, government, the haredi and religious parties did not renew their more far-reaching demands.

The reality of these arrangements, then, is that implied or open threats to disrupt the tenor of public life and charges that the other side is encroaching upon or endangering the status quo are built into the bargaining process on secular-religious issues. The constant jockeying for position over the status quo generates heated and noisy debate, and even violence, all of which creates the impression that the existing order may be torn apart at any moment. Both sides express dissatisfaction with the status quo, though neither is in a position to challenge it seriously, and the expressed fear of both is that the other side will challenge it. Nor within the status quo is there expressed any coherent and logical position on the issues in contention, since it simply registers the point beyond which neither side can push the other, given their relative strength (why, for example, should there be public transportation on the Sabbath in Haifa but not in Tel Aviv?) In such a situation, it may be that the mutual and roughly comparable dissatisfaction on both sides is in fact an index of the success of existing arrangements in balancing opposed worldviews.

Other moderating influences also operate on secular-religious relations. For national-religious Jews, at least, there are cross-cutting affiliations, as they are integrated fairly well into the economy, governmental service, the army, and the media (this is, of course, offset by separatism in education, culture, political parties, and to some extent residential patterns). The politicization of religious issues is itself a moderating factor since it means that these issues are threshed out in bargaining between party leaders rather than being worked out directly on the popular level. Also, the very existence of a vociferous debate on religious issues indicates an underlying sense of commonness and shared destiny: neither side is prepared to write off the other.

The Question of Relative Power

The success of religious parties in the consociational politics of Israel has, however, given rise to a widespread perception among secular Israelis that these groups enjoy more-than-proportional power over Israel politics and society and that the role of religion in public life is expanding. Although religious parties have never won more than 19 percent of the Knesset seats, they have won concessions in nearly every coalition agreement since the state was established. The power of the rabbinate in matters of personal status, marriage, and divorce impinges on every Israeli, no matter how secular. In everyday life, the expansion of religious neighborhoods and greater assertiveness in religious demands both reinforce the perception of a rising tide of religiosity. One 1986 poll found that 66 percent of Israelis felt that haredi-religious influence was increasing, and 67 percent characterized the haredim as “unacceptable,” against only 48 percent who put Israeli Arabs in that category.^[32] The visible expansion of haredi presence and influence fed fears among the secular population, since the haredim represent a much more basic challenge to prevailing lifestyles than do modern religious Zionists. Thus the “haredization” of religious life in Israel, as seen in the victory of haredi-favored candidates for both chief rabbi posts in 1993, appears ominous both to the defeated religious Zionists and to the nonreligious public.

In a 1987 poll, 83 percent of those polled said they had little or no confidence in religious parties and the rabbinate—a level of respect below that toward nearly any other public institution.^[33] Clearly the low respect for religious figures is partly a function of their involvement in politics. The aura of spiritual leadership is quickly dissipated by the posturing, electioneering, and bargaining inherent to the political process. Even the elections of the chief rabbis themselves have been politicized, presenting an unedifying spectacle of manipulation and protection of special interests.^[34] This led some members of the religious community—Yeshayahu Leibowitz being the most prominent—to attack organized religion as “a kept woman of the secular power” and to call for a separation of religion and politics that would remove the former from the corrupting influence of the pursuit of power.^[35]

The discontent about the role of religion in Israeli life is real, but it needs to be seen in perspective. The status quo represents no one’s preferred solution but is simply a compromise that most Israelis accept for want of a better option. Clearly the long-term goals of secularists and Orthodox are incompatible, but in the meantime the level of mutual dissatisfaction is in reasonable balance. Despite dissatisfaction, there is little actual challenge to the basic elements of the status quo or to the general division of territory between the secular and religious spheres of life. The only religious arrangement that impinges in a major way on the “freedom of conscience” of a secular Israeli is the monopoly of marriage and divorce matters in the hands of an Orthodox rabbinate; most other pieces of “religious legislation” are either matters of minor inconvenience, or are unenforced, or in practice affect only religious Jews. Furthermore, there is widespread support, or at least tolerance, among secular Israelis for many of the symbolic expressions of religion in public life (as will be seen below).

A close look at the specific issues on the religious-secular front shows that few, if any, of them involved real challenges to the status quo. They are either minor issues where the existing guidelines are murky or efforts to move the line very slightly to one side or the other; they represent border skirmishes rather than full-scale warfare. Typical examples include controversy over bathing suit ads in bus shelters, questions about organ transplants in Jewish law, proposals to include women on local religious councils, decisions on whether newly built facilities should be open on the Sabbath, charges of archeological digs desecrating ancient Jewish cemeteries, and controversy over the right of physicians to conduct autopsies without consent of the family. None of these questions are earthshaking; the only issue with broad significance for religious-secular relations is the “Who is a Jew?” issue: this is the question of recognizing non-Orthodox converts as Jews in immigration policy and legal status. This issue is critical to non-Orthodox religious groups in Israel and elsewhere and acquired wide practical significance with the high number of mixed marriages among immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

On these “border skirmishes” the religious camp was, contrary to secular Israeli belief, seldom victorious. Battles against radio and TV broadcasting on Sabbath and against public swimming pools with mixed bathing were lost long ago. In the area of Sabbath closings, the overwhelming trend has been toward the opening of more restaurants, theaters, and other places of entertainment; even in Jerusalem, dozens of establishments opened on Friday night and Saturday. The haredi community in Jerusalem lost battles to close a road and a swimming pool in Ramot on the Sabbath and to prevent the building of a new soccer stadium in Manahat.^[36] From the religious side, in fact, there have been numerous complaints of “regressions from the status quo” over the years, on matters ranging from the increased number of Sabbath work permits issued by the minister of labor, to the inclusion of women on religious councils, to the continuing failure to resolve the “Who is a Jew?” issue according to Orthodox criteria.^[37] Those few victories that religious forces could claim, in such matters as separate education and exemption from conscription for yeshiva students, came for the most part from Israel’s first few years.

Even the violence of extremists is usually seen by them as defense of the status quo. Only a small fraction of haredim engage in violence, and most of this is in-group, aimed at enforcing community norms on the occasional dissident or deviant. When violence is directed externally, it is also usually at targets seen as threats to the haredi lifestyle: Christian missions, intrusions of what the haredi categorize as pornography, and the like. In this case the militancy may even be a function of the “siege mentality and sense of fighting a perennial uphill battle”; the haredim are surrounded by what they regard as a hostile and secular culture that is stronger politically, economically, and in many other respects.^[38]

Rather strikingly, therefore, there is not even agreement on which side is gaining. Both secular and religious Israelis tend to perceive themselves as losing ground to the other side. Both sides claim defeat. This mutual dread of impending loss undoubtedly helps to account for some of the bitterness and desperation in public rhetoric. For example, in the 1986 poll cited, those opposed to an expansion of haredi-religious influence (59 percent of the total) thought by a 6 to 1 margin that such expansion was nevertheless taking place, while those who welcomed such expanded influence (25 percent) believed by a 3 to 2 margin that it was not taking place.^[39] It is difficult to understand such a gap in basic perceptions, except on the basis of deeply rooted habits of pessimism on all sides. But whose pessimism is more factually correct?

The Reality of Secularization

Modernization has in most societies been associated with secularization and decline of traditional religious practices. If Israel were indeed undergoing a growth of religiosity, it would be exceptional among modernizing states. But there is considerable evidence that Israel is not exceptional. Changes in leisure and recreation patterns have clearly undercut traditional religious practices, and the growth of Sabbath entertainment reflects this.^[40] Challenges to strict observance abound in every sphere of modern life: in the sexuality and escapism of mass culture, in cosmopolitan cuisines that challenge dietary laws, in social and recreational activities that involve travel on the Sabbath, and in the penetration of Western cultural models and values.

There is a basic difference between this kind of secularization and the classical secularism of Labor Zionism. The classical secularism (characterized by Charles Liebman as “nationalist-secularism”) was an ideology: “a program of living and not simply an absence of religious observance.” Religious forms and authority were rejected as a matter of principle, but a strong Jewish consciousness and sense of identity remained.^[41] Though secularism as ideology still exists, particularly in kibbutzim and other socialist strongholds, it has clearly declined along with Labor Zionist ideology generally. The more recent wave of secularism is “universalist-secularism,” which is more of a lifestyle than an ideology and which involves the dilution of Judaism in everyday life as Israel integrates more fully into modern Western society. This secularism as lifestyle, or secularism of “convenience,” is prominent among intellectuals and civic groups such as the Citizens’ Rights Movement; it is also clearly gaining ground as modernization proceeds.^[42]

A closer look at demographic data indicates that religious observance, by Orthodox definition, is at best holding the line. For this purpose the simple division into religious and nonreligious, while having a certain reality in popular perceptions and in political divisions, does not adequately capture the range of practices. Most surveys of Israeli religious observance use a threefold self-categorization of “religious” (dati), “traditional” (masorti), or “secular” (hiloni or lo dati) to describe the population. The label of “traditional” describes a group in the middle, predominantly Sephardi Jews, who follow many time-honored Jewish practices as a matter of custom but are not devout or strict in a religious sense. Some of the data using these definitions are summarized in Table 4.

These figures show remarkable stability in the percentage of Israelis who describe themselves as religious.^[43] Apparently a higher birthrate among religious families and a higher percentage of observance among immigrants have been offset by attrition due to secularization. In addition, there is movement from the “traditional” category to a secular lifestyle, which reflects increased secularization among the Israel-born Sephardi population. In addition, the influx of largely secularized Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union adds large numbers to this category.

Further evidence for a decline in self-identification as religious can be found in surveys carried out among youth. In one poll reported in 1985, only 12.3 percent of fifteen- to eighteen-year-olds described themselves as religious, 27.3 percent as traditional, and fully 59.5 percentas secular.^[44] In 1991, 37 percent of the youths surveyed reported that they were less religious than their parents, 46 percent that they were just as religious, and only 17 percent that they were more religious than their parents.^[45] By 1996 roughly 20 percent of all marriages took place outside the official Orthodox framework, either as unrecognized marriages or as marriages abroad.^[46] Polls among youth cannot be regarded as conclusive, since religiosity may increase with age, but clearly these surveys support the thesis of secularization more than the image of growing religiosity.

Study of voting patterns tells a more complicated story. The total vote for all religious parties together, Zionist and haredi, has never exceeded 19 percent (twenty-three seats of 120) in Knesset elections, and this was only after the changed electoral system in 1996 gave a boost to smaller parties (the previous high was eighteen seats). The real story has been a shift of power within the religious camp, with haredim gaining ground at the expense of religious Zionists. The haredi success has been due, in particular, to unusual success in attracting large numbers of Sephardi voters. At first glance this development seems highly unlikely, given the heavily Eastern European flavor of haredi culture (the use of Yiddish as a spoken language, for example). But in some ways Sephardi religiosity—conservative, traditional, nonideological—was more compatible with this lifestyle than with that of religious Zionists, who were seen as part of the modern Western world. Though Sephardi religious voters had initially supported the National Religious Party in great numbers, over the years a Sephardi-haredi subculture materialized, especially in largely Sephardi development towns and suburbs. In reaction to the dominant Ashkenazi character of Agudat Yisrael, leaders of this constituency established a separate party in the 1984 elections, Sephardi Torah Guardians or Shas, and captured a surprising four seats, the best showing for any explicitly Sephardi party since 1948. Building on this success by developing their own institutional network, Shas made an even stronger showing in 1988 and 1992, winning six seats, and, with the help of the new electoral system, ten seats in 1996.^[47]

Other developments also challenge the notion that the power of the religious establishment is on the rise. One threat perceived by Orthodox circles in Israel is a “softening” toward non-Orthodox (Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative) forms of Judaism. In the past the general public attitude toward these movements, even among secular Israelis, was fairly negative, and only a tiny percentage of the public joined non-Orthodox congregations. This has been changing; a representative survey conducted for the Ministry of Religious Affairs in 1988 (and later leaked to that Ministry’s critics) reportedly showed that 12 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Orthodox, 3 percent as Conservative, and a surprising 9 percent (far beyond the movement’s actual members) as Reform. The selfdescribed Reform even included 19 percent of those who said they observed most of the religious commandments.^[48] In 1991, 79 percent of a national sample favored giving equal status to non-Orthodox movements.^[49]

Furthermore, beginning in 1989 Reform and Conservative Jewish movements won a series of court cases regarding government funding, membership in religious councils, recognition of non-Orthodox conversions, and provision for non-Orthodox burial. Following the success of the religious parties in the 1996 elections, the new coalition government, in which they controlled five ministries, was committed to rolling back some, but not all, of these “changes in the status quo.”

Overall, therefore, the (Orthodox) religious establishment in Israel is justified in feeling threatened from several quarters. But why have these developments not been perceived more clearly by the nonreligious public? The forces of secularization or liberalization have been disguised by a number of factors. First, with the much closer balance between the two major blocs since 1977, the bargaining leverage of the religious parties has actually increased even when (in 1981 and 1984) the number of seats they controlled declined. This has been reinforced by the greater visibility of religious figures, including some from the haredi camp, in positions of responsibility as ministers, deputy ministers, chairmen of key committees in the Knesset, heads of government corporations, and other positions where the religious community was underrepresented (in part by its own choice) in the past.

A second factor is the increased vitality and assertiveness of the religious subculture, as expressed in the scope of its activities, the proliferation of new institutions and publications, and its higher visibility in public life. The new prominence of the haredi community is important in this regard, since the haredim appear to the secular public as more visible and more vocal champions of religious causes viewed as a threat to secular patterns of life.^[50]

A third development that contributes to an appearance of greater religiosity is the growth of what has been labeled a new “civil religion” in Israel, in which traditional religious symbols assume an increasing importance in public life.^[51] This does not indicate a higher level of religious observance as such but, to the contrary, the appropriation and secularization of religious elements as part of national identity. As Liebman and Don-Yehiya put it, “whereas religious symbols play an increasingly important role in Israeli public or collective life, Judaism has no great significance to the individual in terms of spiritual and personal self-definition or his behavior.” ^[52] Holidays once observed mainly in prayer have become national commemorations marked by public ceremonies and events, while holidays that were once only secular (such as Independence Day) have begun to acquire some religious connotations and symbols.^[53] The greater mixture of secular and religious does indeed make religion more visible in public life but at the cost of diluting its religious content—and it is therefore of small comfort to many religious leaders. Israelis are not becoming more religious but simply more traditional in some collective rituals.

The rise of the new civil religion is also made more significant and more visible by the general decline of ideology in Israeli society. The decline of Labor Zionist and “statist” ideologies, which served as competing civil religions, left a vacuum for the reassertion of symbols rooted more deeply in Jewish history and ritual.^[54] Tied to this, and accounting for much of it, has been the growing Sephardi contribution to Israeli culture and politics. Israelis of African and Asian background never engaged in the same revolt against tradition that marked much of European Zionism (especially for Labor Zionists) and thus have clung to traditional Jewish symbols and customs even while undergoing a process of secularization.

This reality is reflected in continuing support for Jewish religious expressions in Israeli public life, going well beyond the community that defines itself as religious. In the 1991 Guttman Institute survey, respondents split almost evenly, 54 percent in favor and 46 percent opposed, on the question of separation of religion and state.^[55] The widespread support for religious symbolism on the national level was also expressed in a 1987 survey that found that only 47.5 percent of the nonobservant supported the idea of making civil marriage available and only 41.1 percent of the same group wanted to end the ban on public transportation on the Sabbath.^[56]

Again, this does not demonstrate the rise of Orthodoxy but rather the broad acceptance of religious symbolism in a civil religion mode. It also shows that customary frameworks for measuring religiosity in Israel do not capture all the dimensions of the subject. The dichotomous division of Israelis into “religious” and “nonreligious” has been superseded by the common, threefold self-classification as “religious,” “traditional,” and “secular” (or “nonreligious”). Even greater definition of actual observance is available in data from the Guttman Institute, which has been tracking religious observance for over two decades; respondents are asked to describe their observance of Jewish religious law on a scale of four categories. Some of the results are summarized in Table 5.

Clearly there are many degrees of religious observance, and important differences in what such observance signifies. Many who observe “to a great extent” think of themselves as “traditional” rather than “religious,” and some who observe religious practices “somewhat” tend to identify themselves as “secular.” In both cases it seems likely that much of this observance would fit the model of civil religion (that is, the appropriation and secularization of religious symbols as part of national identity). As this demonstrates, the threefold division into religious, traditional, and secular does not capture the real complexity of Israeli reality; apart from the division of the religious into national-religious Jews and haredi, the secular category includes different degrees of nonobservance. Kimmerling carried out a survey that identified six different patterns of religious observance (summarized in Table 6).

There is in fact a broad range of religious practice. In an important study published in 1979, Yehuda Ben-Meir and Peri Kedem checked the observance of specific religious practices and found a broad range of responses: only 6 percent went to synagogue every day, but 14 percent put on tefillin every morning, 22 percent refrained from travel on the Sabbath, 44 percent separated milk and meat utensils in their homes, 53 percent lit candles on Sabbath, 79 percent did not eat bread during Passover, and fully 99 percent participated in a Passover Seder. In conclusion: “The results of this study demonstrate that there is no clear-cut dichotomy in Israeli society between religious and non-religious Jews, but that there exists a continuum of religiosity, ranging from the extremely religious through various degrees of religious and traditional behavior, to the completely nonreligious.” ^[57]

It is doubtful that the development of civil religion in itself poses a serious threat to democracy; a recent poll of the Israel Democracy Institute (which surveys public opinion on matters relating to democratic values) found that only 12.6 percent of the respondents would “generally” or “always” give priority to rulings of the rabbinate over acts of the Knesset.^[58] If this is the case, and if the general picture painted here is accurate, what if anything is the threat to the status quo?

The Two Threats

The major threats to the stability of secular-religious relations in Israel at the present time are (1) the rise of haredi influence within the religious camp, and (2) the strong link that has been forged between religious Zionism and uncompromising territorial nationalism.

The significance of the haredi resurgence was apparent in the May 1993 ceremony to install a new Sephardi chief rabbi elected with strong Shas support. Since this was a state occasion, marking the filling of a state office by official electors, the president of Israel was present and the national anthem (Hatikva) was to be sung. A number of those present, however, tried to prevent the singing of the anthem. As a television camera recorded the turbulent scene, Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef—spiritual and political leader of Shas and a former Sephardi chief rabbi himself—ostentatiously hid his face behind a pamphlet.

This refusal to acknowledge the State of Israel, even when one of their number was being inducted into a state office, fed the apprehensions many had about the increasing political leverage of haredi leaders. In the words of one editorial, Shas “treats the state as if it were a foreign entity, and it participates in its government for strictly materialist reasons.” A Labor member of the Knesset put it less elegantly: “The more tightly they are connected to the teat the more they kick the milk bucket.” ^[59]

When the State of Israel was founded, most secular Israelis assumed that the haredi way of life was disappearing and looked on the haredi neighborhoods of Jerusalem and B’nei Brak as living museums to be visited before they vanished entirely. To be sure the birthrate in these communities was very impressive (six to eight children per family on the average), but the experience in Eastern Europe and Palestine before the Holocaust had been one of rampant assimilation. Few of these children, it was felt, would resist the pull of the modern world. In this spirit, it was easy to be tolerant and even generous in granting haredi demands: military exemptions for yeshiva students, funding for their separate educational networks.

It was precisely under these conditions, however, that the haredim managed to halt the demographic erosion and to build the kind of closed community that could shut out unwanted influences. Though appearing to be a continuation of tradition, this “society of scholars” was in some respects a new phenomenon. For the first time, young men were kept in school not only through their childhood and adolescence but long past their marriage, and in an environment from which all secular education and influences were carefully excluded and a fairly complete social and cultural segregation was enforced. For example, ba’alei tshuva—“born-again” Jews—are not accepted into haredi schools because of apprehension that their previous exposure to secular life would be a source of contamination.^[60] What made this isolation possible, paradoxically, was a greater flow of funds from the outside. In the Israeli case, most of these funds came from the state, either through direct subsidy of “independent” haredi schools or through the employment of haredi women as teachers in state religious schools.^[61]

Observers speak of “the apparent retreat of modern Orthodoxy” before the haredi resurgence, noting that “the distinction between an ultraOrthodox and a modern religious person is as basic today as it once was in Eastern Europe.” ^[62] The particularism of the haredi lifestyle, with its hermetic closure to the outside world, has enabled it to withstand assimilative pressures better, while the ranks of the modern Orthodox, being exposed more fully to the inroads of modern secular culture, have been progressively thinned. Some religious Zionists have moved to a more nationalist stance, leading them to desert the National Religious Party (NRP) for Likud and the smaller nationalist parties of the right. As indicated, many Sephardi voters also deserted the NRP for Shas, as well as for secular parties; consequently, the NRP fell from twelve Knesset seats in 1977 to only four in 1984.^[63] Religious Zionists were also being directly challenged by the haredim on a number of fronts, from the employment of haredi teachers in state religious schools to control of rabbinical institutions and the sale of newspapers in religious neighborhoods.

The gap in worldview between the haredi community and the rest of Israel—secular and “modern Orthodox” alike—constitutes a challenge to the nation’s integrative capacities. The haredim do not intend to be integrated. They reject modern Western society (apart from its technology) and proselytize for their own lifestyle as an alternative to secular Israeli culture. From the haredi perspective, there is no validity to a secular Jewish identity; as one of their leading intellects put it, “if they are Jews—they are not free, and if they are free—they are not Jews.” ^[64] Sometimes haredim reserve the label of “Jews” for themselves, as opposed to the “Israelis” who live in the surrounding society; secular Israelis, in other words, are equivalent to the goyim among whom Jews lived in the past.^[65] Nor are haredi political parties committed in principle to democracy, even when playing Israeli politics according to the rules of the game. Agudat Yisrael had initially opposed establishment of a Jewish state based on majority rule, since this would deny the sovereignty of the Torah (in its authoritative rabbinical interpretation) as the only legitimate source of Jewish laws. The haredi parties (Agudat Yisrael, Shas, and Degel Hatorah during its brief existence) have never been operated by democratic procedures but rather have been governed by rabbinical councils whose decisions are final—a rare if not unprecedented situation for a democracy. This in return reflects the reality of haredi society, which makes no pretense of being democratic nor of recognizing a realm of personal freedom: “Though people join the haredi society voluntarily, it is a totalitarian system which does not recognize privacy.” ^[66]

The haredi position on security issues has often been characterized as relatively dovish. Those who rejected the idea of a secular Israeli state were not likely to seek its expansion or promote its aggressive defense; many did not even serve in the army. And indeed, many haredi leaders (Rabbis Schach and Yosef in particular) have decreed that peace and saving lives come before the acquisition or retention of territory. But the complete picture of haredi views on these controversial issues is actually more complex.

Haredim may avoid the use of state symbols, but most of them do relate to Israel as a Jewish society and to the Land of Israel as the sacred and inalienable legacy of the Jewish people. Arab hostility and attacks can also be seen as a continuation of classic patterns of antisemitic persecution, calling for Jewish resistance and defense. In this context haredim can identify with the Jewish struggle against an external enemy, support Jewish control of ancestral lands, and even oppose the withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territories while continuing to challenge the legitimacy of Israel itself.^[67] The late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (the Lubavitcher Rebbe, leader of Habad Hasidism) refused even to visit Israel during his lifetime, but his followers mobilized in vehement opposition to the Israeli-Palestinian agreement of September 1993. Furthermore, rank and file haredim are notably less dovish than leaders like Rabbis Schach and Yosef. In particular, Shas voters (many of them non-haredim) are more hawkish than the party’s leadership.^[68] But even among the haredim alone, a survey in 1992 demonstrated that they were in fact more hawkish than religious Zionists on the issue of exclusive Jewish rights to the Land of Israel.^[69]

Furthermore, while the haredi community is not committed in principle to the political system, it has nevertheless learned how to use it effectively and with increasing skill. In fact this community scores very highly on scales of access to and participation in the political system (even before the 1988 election).^[70] They use the rules of the game to maximize their own benefits and to influence the entire system more in their direction, if only slightly. In playing this game, however, they also become a part of the system, however conditionally, and run the risk of a two-way flow of influences.

There remains the central contradiction in the haredi relationship to Israel: their isolation from secular Israeli society is made possible by the resources they receive from it. The more they impinge on this society, the greater the danger of a backlash that will force them to choose between their principles and their economic viability. Already they have been drawn into more active participation in the public life of Israel; while Agudat Yisrael has refused (since 1952) to become full partners in any Israeli government, ministers from Shas served in all the governments from 1984 to 1993 and again from 1996. Increasingly, pragmatism in pursuing political goals seems to characterize the leadership of all the haredi parties.^[71] On a broader scale, observers also note the subtle ways in which the imprint of modern Israel penetrates into haredi society despite its attempted isolation.^[72]

Other problems also face the haredim: there is no guarantee that the success of the last four decades will continue indefinitely. Particularism and rivalry among different haredi groups, intensified by involvement in politics, is on the rise and threatens the capacity for common action. For example, when Shas established its own Council of Torah Sages, the position of the Sephardi chief rabbi as the recognized rabbinical authority in that community was undercut—as that of the Ashkenazi chief rabbi had been from its inception. Also, despite the infusion of outside funds, economic pressures increase as the haredi community grows. Teaching jobs for haredi women, a major economic prop, have become increasingly hard to find, in part because of growing resistance among religious Zionists to haredi teachers in state religious schools. Women are therefore being prepared for jobs that involve greater contact with the outside world, creating the possibility of a culture gap between working wives and their still-cloistered husbands. Poverty is a serious problem and is getting worse; the chronic housing shortage forces some families to beg in order to provide for their married children. In Jerusalem, particularly, haredi separatism collides head on with the need for territorial expansion into areas where prevailing patterns of land use undermine such separation.^[73]

Finally, success in sealing off the exits from the community also involves certain costs. Previously those who did not fit in could simply pass over to religious or secular Israeli society, but the chasm between the two sides now makes this difficult. For one thing, the lack of general education leaves young haredim with no marketable skills in the secular workplace. Those who are unsuited by temperament or by intellect for a life of Torah study find themselves with no viable options, and they constitute a growing group that strains the harmony of the haredi world.^[74]

In light of these problems, the leading authority on haredi society asks: “Is the existence of a society of scholars that requires all its male members to study in yeshivot…for many years, to the exclusion of general or vocational education, viable in the long term?” ^[75] Its very dependence on outside support makes this society vulnerable to the influences it seeks to keep out, and every success that it achieves raises the level of resentment and opposition among the secular majority. Whether haredim can avoid becoming part of the modern world remains to be seen; as fundamentalists elsewhere over the last two centuries, they may win some battles but ultimately lose the war.

The second major problematic aspect of religion and politics in Israel is tied to broader political issues. Many Israelis have felt threatened by Orthodoxy not because of religious issues per se, but because of the linkage between religious fervor and exclusivist nationalism. The highly charged issues connected with Israeli-Arab relations, including such questions as Jewish settlement in the territories held by Israel after 1967, are widely seen as religious issues since many of the more fervent nationalists come from religious Zionist circles. With the decline in secular ideologies, the crusading commitment of such groups as Gush Emunim filled a spiritual vacuum.

Of course not all religious leaders espouse the sacralizing of territory in the name of religion. As noted many haredi leaders explicitly reject interpretations of tradition that forbid Israel withdrawal from the occupied territories, and some religious Zionists agree with them.^[76] But the dominance of the religious-national view among religious Zionists (in the NRP) contributed to a fundamental shift in the Israeli political system. This development will be studied more closely in chapter 10.

Finally, there are some indications that the two threats to Israeli democracy may be merging. Despite past differences between non-Zionist haredim and religious ultranationalists, a growing number of people describe themselves as “nationalist-haredi. ” Contributing to this are twin processes of nationalization among haredim, as they come to identify with territorial claims, and the haredization of religious Zionists as they turn to stricter standards of religious observance. In the latter case religious Zionists, who in the past showed “an accommodationist rather than a rejectionist orientation toward modernity and secular culture,” have in Charles Liebman’s view come increasingly to show “signs of rejecting modernity and adopting a rather reactionary interpretation of the religious tradition.” ^[77]

What is emerging from this is a new Jewish fundamentalism that transcends old divisions between Zionists and anti-Zionists and which on religious-national grounds preaches a “higher law” that sanctions civil disobedience and threatens the principles of democracy. The two strands together promote an ethnic particularism “which includes suspicion of and hostility toward non-Jews, cultural isolationism including a suspicion of universalist moralist values, and…territorial irredentism.” ^[78] Can the Israeli political system continue to accommodate elements that make use of the existing framework while denying the universalistic premises upon which it is grounded?

The convergence of fundamentalism with nationalism is not surprising since both are “essentially modern constructs” that use similar language to engage in a process of self-definition and self-assertion against a hostile Other.^[79] Like nationalism, fundamentalism is theoretically capable of universal extension as others also establish their sacred communities, but in practice it is “irredeemably particular” as each fundamentalism insists on its own exceptionalism. Thus, in the eyes of haredim and religious nationalists, their claims take precedence over those of others—secular Jews, Palestinian Arabs—because only theirs are authentic. Such a view is in its essence inimical to pluralist democracy, but in the case of Israel this is countered by the finding, among students of comparative fundamentalisms, that fundamentalists operating in democracies typically find it necessary to compromise and to confine their aspirations to the private sphere of life.^[80] Whether this holds true for Israel will depend on its success in contending with the cleavage that traditional power-sharing has not bridged: that between Jew and Arab.

Notes