A number of people have asked me to write about the revolutionary upheaval going on in Israel. To put recent events into perspective I am going to discuss the confluence of several factors from pre-statehood, early statehood, and the most recent period.

While Israel celebrated its 50th anniversary as a state last year, a relatively short time in the life of a country, it is now experiencing the confrontation of unresolved issues so important to the process of nation building. At the heart of these issues is a clash between the various subcultures of its very diverse immigrant population with the newly emerging Israelization of its native born Sabras. Most of the immigrant groups are rooted in Europe, the Ashkenazim, and in the Arab Middle East and North Africa, the Sephardim. The former comprise those rooted in 18th century Europe as well as those who are products of the Enlightenment. The Sephardim are rooted in the Muslim world and in the case of Ethiopian Jewry, the Christian and Coptic orbit. The result has been incessant clashes between religiosity and secularism, between traditional Judaism and modernity, between the authority of the religious leadership and that of the modern democratic nation-state.

Modern Israel was founded largely by Zionists from Europe whose mission was the restoration and survival of the Jewish homeland. For the most part religion played little if any role in their world view that focused on building an enlightened society patterned after the socialistic wave sweeping Europe. Following the Second World War, an influx of displaced Jews from Europe and the Arab Middle East and North Africa brought a population where religion played a significant role in their lives. Rooted in very different worlds, the Ashkenazic and Sephardic cultures inevitably clashed. The first Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, was concerned with unifying a population from different social, political, and religious orientations. He struck deals with the differing groups including the religious bloc with it's 12 % of the vote. He granted them a relatively free hand in religious matters. While carefully navigating the minefield of internal cultural and religious divisions, he shaped a country grounded in democratic ideals while he allowed the orthodox to have a role in the social and economic life of the country.

Orthodox Judaism, while never monolithic, has always dominated religious life in Israel. The Haredim or “black hatters” are ultra-orthodox whose orientation is rooted in the 18thcentury European world and who are wary and may even reject the recognition of the Jewish state. For them, the next Jewish commonwealth can only come into existence with the rebuilding of the Temple. Except for a brief period in which the Haredim participated in the pre-state underground and served in the army in the early years, insularity from the secular society increasingly intensified. In the coalition politics of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, the SHAS party, being the spearhead of the ultra orthodox Haredim, became increasingly demanding and influential in government affairs.

The Religious Zionists, long led by the National Religious Party, have supported the building of a modern state, and have participated in its social and political life while trying to integrate Judaism into the governance and the educational and social fabric of Israeli society. They have been a strong force in the settlement movement in the West Bank and formerly in the Sinai. However, according to Professor Avi Saguy of the orthodox Bar IIan University, the Religious Zionists were stung by the peace process that resulted in the relinquishing of settlements in the Sinai and increasingly in the West Bank. The result has been an increasing rapprochement between Religious Zionists and the Haredim, allowing the former to compete more effectively with the ultra-orthodox.

The role of orthodoxy in Israel has become increasingly challenged. The diversity of the six million Israeli population includes 20% Arab, 20% Israeli born Sabras, 20% born in the former Soviet Union, and 25% whose ancestors are from Arab countries and North Africa. Except for the latter as well as its Arab population, 80% of Israelis are secular. Israel’s success after several wars has resulted in a physically secure and increasingly economically viable and technologically vibrant society in search of a new identity. It no longer sees itself isolated and embattled facing a serious physical threat to its very existence despite periodic waves of terrorism. Each segment of its population is attempting to carve out its enclave.

There are eleven political parties in the current Knesset, each pursuing the interests of its constituents. In addition, the orthodox have been increasingly challenged by the embryonic Progressive (Reform) and Masorti (Conservative) religious movements in Israel as well as their counterparts in America. The “Who is a Jew” question, the inclusion of non-orthodox representatives on the religious councils which distributes funds to religious, educational, and social programs in local communities, and the challenges to the role of orthodox litmus tests in marriages, divorces, religious conversion, and burial among other facets of daily life, has resulted in fear of the Haredim that their monopoly on Israeli religious life is becoming increasingly jeopardized.

The Supreme Court, the ultimate protector of democracy in the Jewish state, has made a series of decisions liberalizing conversions and non-orthodox participation on Religious Councils. This has prompted the Haredim and the Chief Rabbis to question their legitimacy, threaten its justices, and organize mass protests. These actions galvanized the large secular Israeli population who views the Supreme Court as the ultimate safety valve protecting democracy and preventing a more fully theocratic state. Well-known secular Israeli intellectuals led by two important literary figures, Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, have called on their fellow Israelis to join the Progressive Reform and the Masorti Conservative movements to provide a counterweight to orthodoxy. Some Israeli modern orthodox rabbis including Professor Yehuda Friedlander, rector of orthodox Bar-Ilan University, see this culture war, if the Haredim were to win, as leading to the loss of much of Diaspora Jewry. They are calling for a near total separation of religion and state.

The 51st year of the State of Israel marks an important turning point where the traditional and modern, social, political, and religious balances are in a state of flux. The long developing and inevitable upheaval of Israeli society is the consequence of changing realities in the Middle East and in the Jewish world. It represents a significant advance in the nation building process resulting in a more inward examination ironically at a time when Israel is becoming more politically part of the world stage and of the global technological economy. Any building process entailing the forging of a new identity is painful, but in the end, Israel must determine what kind of Jewish society it wants to be and what larger role it will play with the rest of the Jewish world, klal Yisrael. Kein Yahee Ratzon.