The importance derives from the fact that Israel has created a form of Jewish life, which was not known to the world and to Jews for thousands of years. I will suggest that this new form of Jewish life makes Judaism and Jewish identities both more solid and stable and more vulnerable.
1. The unique characteristics of Jewish life in Israel
Israel is the only place in the world in which Jews control a state: they are a majority in the state, and the state was established as their nation-state. Israel is therefore the only place in the world where the public culture of the state (not just of given neighborhoods and even towns) is Jewish-Hebrew. Israel is the only place in the world where Judaism and Hebrew are the default public culture. Where Jews control immigration and defence, and are responsible for all the tasks of sovereignty. They have the responsibility for everything that is done by the state, including the establishment of laws to govern personal status, and the welfare of non-Jews in it. The Jewish state is where Jews will finally become a people like all people – a people with its own nation-state, territory and public culture. It was supposed to be a haven for Jews who used to be persecuted by the peoples within whom they lived. At present, it does serve as a haven in this way – but it is also the target of persistent challenges, many of them violent, by Arab neighbors.
Statehood is also crucial for another of the major achievements of the Zionist movement – the revival of Hebrew. While Hebrew was revived by those who made statehood their dream, the project would not have succeeded and flourished without the necessity to master the language in order to succeed and integrate into Israeli market and society. Hebrew is the most powerful assimilating factor in Israel for both local Arabs and new immigrants. But while Arabs usually keep their own language, for many others in Israel Hebrew is their one and only mother tongue.
These well-known facts are the background against which I want to analyze the significance of Israel for contemporary Jewish identities.
2. Public need to define Jewish identity and affiliations
Jewish communities all over the world and at all times have been preoccupied with drawing their borderlines. Others, communities and authorities, have also at times sought to identify individuals and groups as Jewish. The holocaust is the paradigmatic case of a Nazi government defining Jewishness, and drawing the most radical implications from this labeling. The Nazis also stressed blood relations, and ignored self-identification or cultural affiliations. The USSR gave individuals the permission to define themselves in ethnic terms, but their ‘cultural’ definition of Jewishness, by both Jews and Gentiles, was often quite different.
So the question of ‘Who is a Jew’ is eternal and universal. In fact, the special characteristics of the question, and the relevance of answers given to it, may provide an interesting axis of comparing Jewish communities across time and place.
But in Israel, this eternal question has a special and immanent structure. All states grant citizenship and have policies of immigration. In principle, citizenship does not have to be related in any way to ethnic or cultural origins. In some countries, blindness to these aspects seems to be required by either law or ethos. In all countries, religion does not determine citizenship or eligibility to it. So most countries do not have to provide authoritative legal answers to a person’s ethnical identity, and no country needs to decide a person’s religious identity. These matters are left to civil society structures, including religious establishments and religious communities, who have the power to decide who is deemed a member. Often, the criteria are flexible and dynamic, responding to the needs and the perceptions of the communities in question. In any event, these questions do not have to be decided by state organs and the inevitable clashes between state and religious or group authorities are thus avoided, or at least mitigated.
Not so in Israel. Personal status laws in Israel, for a variety of complex reasons, are based on the millet system. These matters are governed by religious laws and institutions of people’s respective religious communities. Issues of religious pluralism within Judaism, and of the permissibility in Israel of interfaith marriages, are thus urgent public and legal issues, not just debates among different religious communities. The present orthodox monopoly over marriage and divorce creates non-stop political friction and debate. And it makes the question of Jewish identity central.
This is even more obvious in the context of return. Israel (like many other states) grants preference in immigration to members of the nation whose nation-state Israel is. In the 21st century, immigration to Israel has become more desired than Zionists ever expected. Eligibility for Israeli citizenship, as well as a generous absorption aid, are substantial practical advantages. They go, by the Israeli law of return as it was amended in 1970, to Jews and their family members. Jews are defined by that law as those born to a Jewish mother, or those who have been converted to Judaism, who do not practice another religion.
The 1970 amendment and its background illustrate my point. When the law of return was enacted in 1950, the right to immigrate to Israel was given only to Jews, and the law did not define ‘Jews’. People who wanted to come and participate in the effort to build the new Jewish state were all welcome. The assumption was that people not truly and sincerely affiliated with the Jewish people would not present themselves as Jews. Nazi persecution also meant that self-identification seemed quite enough. After all, many of those killed by the Nazis as Jews were not Jews under Jewish law! Many of the non-Jews who came in fact converted. Others were quite willing to live here among Jews, but accepted their religious difference. The issue was limited in numbers and in principled significance. A convenient ambiguity was maintained about the nature of Jewish identity, which was quite welcome to most parts of the Jewish community in Israel at the time. We should recall that the leaders of Zionism were mostly secularized Jews, who insisted that modern Judaism was a cultural and ethnic identity, with only historical relations to Jewish religious identity. The Zionist religious leaders were willing to provide theological justifications for the new form of non-religious Jewishness. And the haredim were ambivalent towards Zionism, but encouraged Jewish immigration to Eretz Yisrael. They all cooperated in not forcing a single, authoritative and binding definition of Jewish identity. They all realized that any attempt to provide one such definition might undermine the required unity of forces among Jews in the struggles ahead.
Once the existential threat seemed a bit further away, the legal structure of Israel meant that a forced crisis was only a matter of time. Various groups sought to have the state legitimate their own conception of Jewish identity. This meant that the other groups, who may have been content to lie low and refrain from principled debates, felt obliged to either enact their conception, or at least undermine the enactment of others conceptions, incompatible with their own. More over, the debate was not a matter of angry dispute among communities and their leaders, but became a political crisis of great magnitude, threatening the integrity and the stability of a large number of Israeli governments. The debate thus forced a new discussion of questions of Jewish identity, both in Israel and abroad. In addition, various state authorities such as legislature, government and courts got involved in the debate. This drew them into the arena of controversy and weakening their legitimacy as organs common to all parts of Israeli population. Furthermore, the debate became an all-Jewish matter rather than just an internal Israeli dispute. It thus weakened the power of Israel to serve as a spiritual center for all Jewish communities, because of its political reservation concerning religious pluralism within Judaism.
Awareness to the uniqueness of the Israeli dilemma in this sense may provide some useful guidelines. Israel cannot avoid the need to provide authoritative answers to the questions of identity related to its naturalization policies and to the application of its personal status laws. But it can, and should, clarify that these answers are political, and that they cannot and do not aspire to end the cultural and theological debates within Judaism about Jewish identities. Israel, its laws and its courts cannot and should not answer the question ‘Who is a Jew’? They must answer questions such as ‘Who is eligible for Israeli citizenship?’ ‘Who is under the jurisdiction of rabbinical courts’? ‘Who is entitled to register as Jewish in the registration under both religion and ‘nationality’? If Israel finds the latter too difficult, it may delete these categories from the registration. But it cannot get these questions completely out so long as it seeks to be the nation-state of Jews, and to provide state-sponsored religious schools and courts.
I therefore prefer the ambiguity of the original Law of return to the religious definition of Jew in the amended 1970 law. The original law was easier to justify in terms of entitlement to immigrate, it was less discriminatory, and it kept open, as far as the state was concerned, the question of the relationships between religion and national culture in modern Jewish identity, and the thorny issues of religious pluralism.
I therefore lament the decision of the majority in the Shalit case, which triggered the 1970 amendment. I think the dissent of Agranat and Landau, who declared the issue non justiciable, was wiser than the low-visibility decision by the majority to force the ministry of interior to register as Jews in their nationality the children of a non-Jewish mother and a Jewish father. Clearly, these children were full members in the Israeli polity. Their identification with it was full. The court should not have allowed the ambiguity in their Jewish identity to force an issue that could not be resolved, but needed simply to be acknowledged and lived with.
This distinct responsibility of the state and its laws is not only relevant concerning issues of Jewish identity. Jews never had the task of deciding issues relating to the state-religion relations of other religions. As potential victims of persecution, they were usually advocates of human rights, including freedom of religion, and usually supported some form of separation between state and church. While the American model advocated by some, that of a “wall of Separation’, is clearly not applicable here (and it is unclear whether it is applied in the US as well) – the lessons should be learned. A good illustration of the burden of statehood is the decision Israel now has to make concerning the mosque in Nazareth. Jews were never in the position to attract so much religious animosity because they never had the power to make such decisions. Now they do. Preferably, Moslems and Christians should be left to decide the issue among themselves. But if they cannot, as seems to be the case, Israel should exercise its power wisely and decisively. This is not about religion, it is about dispute resolution and public order. And it is crucial that it is decided, and seen to be decided, in these terms.
This may provide a good link to the last point I want to make in this context: Israel as a state has a Jewish majority. But it has a large Arab minority, consisting of people who used to live here before Israel was founded and their children, and a sizeable minority of other non-Jews (including large number of non-Jews eligible for immigration under the amended Law of return). To them Israel owes, by its own and by international standards, a duty of full equal citizenship and non-discrimination. Israel is therefore a place where Jews are institutionally required to take care of the welfare and needs and rights of non-Jews. In terms of identity, Israel has created a shared civic identity to all citizens, many of whom are not Jews. The new category of ‘Israelis’ is not merely a sub-class of Jews, as many assume. It is a group that has a large number of non-Jews among its members. And it has cultural and political affinities, which for some may threaten the centrality of the Jewish elements in their identities.
These facts have political implications: claims for non-discrimination against non-Jews are often confused and conflated with claims that Israel should give up its Jewish distinctness. Sometimes the claim is made that Israel cannot be both Jewish and democratic, because democracy is inconsistent with special treatment for one nation whose state the country is supposed to be. But they also have cultural and identity implications: many argue that secular Jews in Israel are truly ‘Hebrew speaking Gentiles’, and they differ only in the evaluation of the description. Some lament this distance between Jewish secular Israelis and their Jewishness, and some see it as the ultimate success of Zionism…
3. Implications to the stability and vulnerability of secular Jewish identities
Because Israel has a hegemonic Jewish-Hebrew public culture, it may create the only place in the world in which a non-religious Jewish identity may be maintained over time without assimilation. If the experiment succeeds, Israel can also create a model for such stable identities abroad, through an intensive connection with Israel as an additional, even if not exclusive, focus of Jewish life. The very same fact, however, may weaken non-religious Jewish identity because individuals are not aware of the effort they must make in order to keep their cultural identity alive.
Let me elaborate on these apparently contradictory claims. They may seem rather obvious to those who compare the lives of Jews in Israel and abroad. In open societies outside of Israel, Jews need to choose between integration into their societies and some voluntary separation to maintain their distinct ways of life. The spectrum of integration/separation is extremely broad. However, the wish to maintain a rich Jewish life, and to pass it on to one’s children, does require special effort and design. If one only takes the defaults that the country offers, in terms of public education and general frameworks of entertainment and sports, the choices will be between assimilating into a different culture, or maintaining some low and neutral ‘universalistic’ culture.
This is very different in Israel. The state’s symbols are national and Jewish. The flag has the magen-David in it. Public education is community-based and particularistic. Jewish students usually study in Jewish schools, either religious or ‘general’ in their orientation. Public high holidays are Jewish and Israeli. The hegemonic narrative is Jewish and Zionist. The language is Hebrew. The media celebrate Jewish events and Jewish holidays. Here, being Jewish is the default. The feelings of not belonging that people feel when they belong to minority cultures are here the lot of non-Jews.
In addition, the chances that Jews will meet, fall in love, and marry non-Jews are still significantly lower in Israel than they are in any other place (especially in non-religious communities). Consequently, most children of Jews in Israel will grow up in houses in which the cultural heritage is shared, and it is Jewish.
In this way, it is easier and more natural for people to maintain their Jewish identity, and feel comfortable and natural with it, than it is in other parts of the world. This is true for religious as well as for non-religious Jews. But religious Jews all over the world do make the effort to maintain and pass on their Jewish identities. Those who do not make this effort abroad are very likely to assimilate in one of two generations. In Israel, the chances for this assimilation are much lower. Moreover, we can have here non-religious Jews who are actively working at strengthening and deepening the Jewish identity of their like, with the active support of the state. Hebrew and other kinds of Jewish work and culture are produced here in large and impressive quantities and qualities, providing depth and meaning to non-religious forms of Jewish life.
All these facts make non-religious Jewish identity in Israel more solid and meaningful and whole than it is in other parts of the world. However, this richness has its disadvantages as well. Non-religious Jews in Israel take their identity for granted. It is conveniently supported by the environment, in which they live. However, they are usually either first- or second-generation non-religious Jews. Their fathers or grandfathers grew in orthodox or in traditional homes. They celebrated Jewish holidays, went to synagogues, and sang the prayers even if they did not observe. But they cannot pass all of these on to their own children, because this is not the style of lives they themselves live. A generation grows in Israel whose Jewish identity is exhausted by Hebrew and a vague sense of Jewish history and some mixture of animosity and fear towards the Arabs…
The vulnerability of this identity is clear on both the personal and the collective levels. When non-religious Israelis go abroad they either lose their Jewishness altogether, due to the lack of the supporting public culture, or they seek connections with a religious community to maintain it. Their Jewish identity is quite fragile. They realize how much it takes to create a culture, and how shallow their own particular culture has been.
Collectively, the weakness of Jewish identity may well translate into an inability to handle radical critiques of the notion and the justification of the Jewish State. There is an irony in the fact that many secular Jews are victims of the great success of Zionism. They now take for granted the idea that they live in a country whose language is Hebrew and whose public culture is Jewish-Hebrew. But they do not realize that this state-of-affairs is far from being trivial. They confuse their identity as Jews and their identity as Israelis. And they believe that they can advocate the victory of Israeliness without any loss to their cultural identity. They forget, however, that Israel is a state of many religions and ethnic groups, founded by a conflict with the Arabs. A civic nation-state of all Israelis may very soon turn into a bi-national state or even a state with a majority of Arabs. Ultimately, Jews in Israel may become a minority, just as they are and have been in all other countries, and as they have been in Eretz Yisrael itself for many decades. Israeliness will then cease to be related to Jewishness. It will be a territorial identification, not necessarily related to either religion or culture.
Some people see this as both inevitable and desirable. Jews will continue to live in Eretz Yisrael, and they will probably be many and enjoy a large degree of collective autonomy. But we should note that this will mean the loss of the features that I have mentioned above as unique to the form of Jewish life in Israel.
4. What can be done?
But there are also those, like me, who see these possible developments as involving a terrible loss for Jewish life, both in Israel and abroad. If Jews do not have a strong center, in which public culture is Hebrew-Jewish, and which can stand by Jews in dire economic or political need, Jewish prospects in the 21st century may diminish in various ways. For those who find this idea disturbing, we need to think of ways to strengthen Israel and its various ways of being Jewish; and the sense of solidarity between Jewish communities the world over. Further, it is not a good idea to base Jewish solidarity on the need to fight back against anti-semitism, new and old. It should have a positive aspect to it as well, a sense of the distinctness of Jewish culture and civilization, and pride about being a part of this ancient and unique civilization.
Jews may criticize Israeli policies. In fact, they may have a moral obligation to do so when they feel that what it does is immoral. But they need also to remember that Israel is a focal point for Jewish life, religious and secular alike. Criticizing Israel should be kept very different from supporting efforts to de-legitimate its right to exist as a Jewish state. For Israel’s achievement to help non-religious forms of Jewish life abroad, Jews abroad have to connect more solidly with aspects of Israeli life. Easiest, and maybe most important, is the language. It is easy to underestimate what a language can do to the identity of a collective. For many years, Jews did not have one active language. But through out they shared Hebrew as the language of the worship and many of the religious sources. When religion may lose its power to unite Jews the world over, Jews may also lose their hold on the Hebrew. People who would like to help non-religious Jews survive should support the development of modern, non-religious Jewish culture. A lot of this culture is written in Hebrew and in Israel. An active Hebrew, which people cherish and want to keep and transmit, may be a very powerful tool of maintaining Jewish identity over time. It is very hard to keep a language alive without a state or a place in which it is the default language. But once a place like this exists, that language may provide a way for Jews to keep in touch with their own distinctive culture and people.
Another implication is the fact that religious pluralism has a different place in Israel and Jewish communities abroad. People should be aware of these differences both in Israel and in other large Jewish communities. Social and political solutions, which are suitable for the Western democracies, may not be suitable – or necessary – in Israel. Among Jewish communities, the reform and the conservative form the majority in Western democracies. This is because many Jews who want to maintain some contact with their Jewishness find an orthodox way of life too constricting. Orthodox groups often claim that reform Judaism is a way of assimilation. But they seem to forget that reform communities attract precisely those who would not be orthodox. While a small number of reform Jews would become orthodox if this had been the only available way of being Jewish in the modern West – most would have assimilated. It is true that a reform Jew is 50% likely to marry a non-Jew. But only a reform Jew is also likely to ask his or her partner to convert and live a Jewish life! All I am saying is that the debate between orthodox and reform Jews about whether reform encourages Jewish identity or assimilation should not be decided by the state. It is a cultural and religious and historical debate, which will inevitably continue. But it should not be translated into either a monopoly for one vision of Judaism, or into coercing other visions to give up their claims of exclusivity. These are demanded, I think, both by liberal principles AND by a concern with the prospects of Jews and Judaism. Liberal principles demand that people be allowed to define their Jewishness, and this goes for both orthodox and non-orthodox. For some reason, most liberals are very vocal arguing the rights of non-orthodox to define their identity, but give less weight to the parallel demand of orthodox to define theirs, with the implications to rules of membership and entrance into the collective. But the point goes deeper than mere adherence to liberalism. The challenges to Jewish identity in the modern world are many and diverse. If streams of Judaism develop an absence of toleration to others ways of being Jewish, we are likely to see a lot of deep schisms within Judaism. These may contribute to alienation from it by those Jews who are discouraged by the fact that their form of Judaism is deemed unworthy by other gate-keepers. More serious, if religious Jews of all persuasion do not develop empathy to those Jews seeking Jewish meaning in other ways, we are likely to lose the sense of cohesiveness that makes all these efforts a part on one civilization. Jews cannot afford to let these schisms come in the way of each group helping the other maintain and strengthen its Jewish affinity.
In the West, religious pluralism within Judaism has developed as the leading trend. Israel is different in this sense. Non-orthodox communities in Israel are active and growing. They now include not only people who brought this sense of Jewish life from their homes abroad, but also Israeli-born individuals who felt the need for religious life and could not find themselves within orthodoxy. But the largest group among Israelis is still those who do not observe, but feel quite comfortable with the traditions and places and rituals of orthodoxy. Among religious communities, the orthodox, in their various ways, are by far the largest.
The political significance of pluralism, as well as the needs that support the various communities, are therefore very different. These facts may mean that solutions, which are obvious for Western democracies, may be unsuitable for Israel. Jewish solidarity will benefit if non-orthodox leaders outside of Israel accept that some of their arrangements will not be implemented in Israel, and if the orthodox establishment in Israel accepts the needs and legitimate interests of these large and important communities.
These understandings may be facilitated by a regular and structured dialogue between Jewish leaders from all Jewish communities. The dialogue may stress both the identity of interest among Jews the world over, and their different needs and concerns. I believe this dialogue will make clear the contribution of the Jewish state to modern Jewish life. And the ways, in which Israel and the Jewish communities can strengthen each other.
