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.