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Politicized Secularism in Israel: Secularists as a Party to Communal Conflict

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Abstract

Most of the attention paid to the religious–secular conflict in Israel has been devoted to the religious side. As a result, secular Israelis remain conceptualized as a residual category, as atomized individuals who share little but a lack of religiosity, and thus as passive subjects in the conflict. Drawing on lessons from identity politics, this article argues that secular fear of the religious, especially the ultra-orthodox, has led segments of the secular Israeli public increasingly to think of themselves as secularists, making their shared ‘non-religious’ identity politically relevant. To the extent that secularist social and political entrepreneurs succeed in bringing this about, the relationship between religious and secular is likely to resemble inter-communal conflict rather than tension between interest groups within a single community.

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Notes

  1. The same is true for gender, though doing so would take this paper too far afield.

  2. Some surveys in Israel eschew the label “secular” in favor of “non-religious”. Others, including the influential Guttman report, label both the “antireligious” and those that “observe no part of the tradition” as “secular”. Unfortunately, this decision obscures the political dynamic between the antireligious and the a-religious implied by the conceptualization of the religious–secular conflict in communal terms.

  3. The self-identification of the religiosity of Jews in Israel has been shown to be relatively consistent with their behavior and beliefs (Yuchtman-Ya’ar and Peres, 2000).

  4. As Yosseph Shilhav has noted, territorial issues are also very significant for the Haredim (Shilhav, 2007).

  5. Respondents were asked to rank themselves on a 7-point scale along the left/right political continuum. Respondents who selected 1-3 were considered as on the right and 5-7 were considered as on the left. Secularists are defined as those who selected 7 or higher on a 10-point scale of identification with Shinui’s position on issues of religion and state.

  6. A “shabbat elevator” is an elevator which operates automatically (e.g., stopping on every floor) to allow observant Jews to use it while still observing the technical prohibition against operating electric switches on Saturday.

  7. By contrast, in the same survey “only” 48% put the Israeli Arabs in the category of “unacceptable”.

  8. Shas is an ultra-Orthodox political party that has successful combines an appeal based on the ethnic exclusion of Sephardi Jews and populist economic policies (Peled, 1998). It runs an autonomous educational system called El Hama’ayan (To the Wellspring).

  9. Before the Supreme Court ruled on the matter, protestors drove in motorcades up and down the disputed street, just to ensure that it remained open for traffic. In fact, there was an unofficial campaign by secularists who drove in from all over the country to participate in this motorcade, honking their horns to aggravate the religious.

  10. The entrance to this Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem is marked with signs that advise people not to enter if they do not conform to their standards of modesty. Those who inadvertently do so, such as the women who work at the Ministry of Education next door, are harassed and, occasionally, physically assaulted.

  11. In 2003, 27% could be categorized as secularist (The Israeli National Elections Studies, 2003).

  12. There is even evidence that the traditional are facing and making such a choice. Levy and Katz found that from 1988 onwards, with the single exception of a 1991 survey, the traditional group has come to more closely resemble the religious in their perception of the quality of relations between religious and secular Jews. The secular group, they concluded, is increasingly left in relatively greater isolation (Levy and Katz 2005).

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  1. Department of Political Science, Harvey M. Meyerhoff Assistant Professor of Modern Israel Studies, University of Wisconsin, 414 North Hall, 1050 Bascom Mall, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Nadav Shelef

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Shelef, N. Politicized Secularism in Israel: Secularists as a Party to Communal Conflict. Cont Jewry 30, 87–104 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-010-9025-8

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