Rabbinic Judaism in Israel: Continuities and Ruptures

From a historical perspective, Judaism has never ceased to transform—often implicitly—as halakha evolved under the pressure of social realities. These changes frequently led to increasing isolation of Jews from their non-Jewish or secular environments. Some communities chose to adopt the principle that, in the event of a conflict between religious law and state law, the latter should prevail, thereby adapting rabbinic jurisprudence accordingly.

In theory, since halakha is of divine origin, it tolerates no compromise and imposes on every Jew the obligation to observe the commandments, regardless of their personal beliefs. Judaism thus presents itself as a religion that automatically applies to anyone born of a Jewish mother—except through conversion—while refusing to impose its laws on non-Jews, thereby making their integration particularly difficult. From this perspective, the demand of secular individuals not to be subject to religious prescriptions appears, to rabbinic Judaism, as an absurd claim.

Efforts by Maimonides and other thinkers to define “principles of faith” for Judaism have failed; the religion continues to function through strict observance of the 613 commandments. In this way, it resembles an ethno-religion: an imagined ethnic group, whose members are defined not by their faith, but by their family or communal lineage. In the modern era, some have even developed an extraterritorial nationalism, devoid of religious anchoring, based on a fictitious common denominator: a supposedly genetic origin, without scientific foundation and contradicted by historical facts.

The Radicalization of the Religious World

Jewish halakha is currently undergoing one of the most profound transformations in its history. Beneath the surface, religious and ultra-Orthodox circles are being shaken by rapid and deep changes. These shifts are so significant that the leadership elites have lost control over their adherents and are attempting to restore order by hardening their positions, multiplying halakhic restrictions in an effort to contain the destabilization.

Lacking any coherent intellectual or theological response to this crisis, the rabbinic establishment has abandoned the study of Judaism, redirected its resources toward the secular political sphere, and now draws its legitimacy from the mechanisms of the state. Ultra-Orthodox politics thus focuses its efforts on instrumentalizing secular institutions to reinforce communal isolation, while simultaneously restricting access to education, thereby maintaining its members in ignorance. Turning away from Judaism proper, religious authorities have now invested themselves in the terrain of secular governance.

No halakhic authority has dared to denounce the growing influence of magical-religious practices: the veneration of graves, amulets, spells, curses, and incantations. No leader has condemned the rise of rabbi-wonderworkers who exploit the distress of the most vulnerable for profit, nor the rampant rabbinic criminality. Judaism is sinking into a toxic mysticism, indulging in populist practices such as setting up tefillin stands in secular neighborhoods or spreading simplistic slogans. Will we one day see the emergence of a figure capable of bringing Judaism back to the critical and enlightened spirit of the Middle Ages? Will we witness the rebirth of thinkers of the stature of Maimonides, Ibn Gabirol, Abraham ibn Ezra, or David Kimhi? Will a master of halakha dare to break the shackles of existing legislation to adapt it to contemporary realities? If the current moral drift is not checked, religion as we know it may well collapse before our eyes—just as communism once did, in a fall as sudden as it was unforeseen.

Despite cultural progress, Israeli society remains deeply segmented. It can be said to house several distinct societies: Arabs live apart from Jews, Haredim have withdrawn from general society, and settlers live in a parallel state. This fragmentation follows a logic of apartheid. Haredim, Arabs, and settlers differ from other citizens in that they share neither living spaces, meals, educational systems, nor marriages. This rigid compartmentalization has troubling demographic consequences. Israel is one of the few countries in the world where citizens’ national identity is officially defined according to their ethnic origin.

The Powerlessness of Secularism in the Face of Religious Hardening

In this context, the so-called “secular” society fails to offer a solid ideological alternative to the excesses of the religious sphere. Attempts at rapprochement between religious and secular communities are mostly one-sided. The secular individual often feels a sense of inferiority when confronted with “the bookshelf of Jewish texts,” whereas the religious person rarely feels obliged to make compromises toward secularism. Contemporary halakha is not moving toward accommodation, but toward doctrinal rigidity. The believer’s life is governed by dogmatic prescriptions, while the secular individual seeks to forge their own path—marked by doubts, dilemmas, and personal experiences—within a world founded on pluralism, methodological skepticism, and critical thinking.

Society tends to attribute a special sensitivity to religious people, which secular individuals are expected to respect, without demanding equivalent principles to be honored by the religious in return. The secular often continues to practice certain religious rites merely as cultural traditions, emptied of any spiritual meaning—hollow ceremonies, disembodied symbols. It would be naïve to ignore the reality: the quest for the sacred and the thirst for wonder are intrinsic to the human condition, just like the negative impulses that culture seeks to restrain.

Secular individuals have grown accustomed to justifying themselves by claiming they are not “anti-religious,” but merely opposed to religious coercion. The term “anti-religious” is perceived as a denial of everyone’s right to live according to their faith. However, reducing the religious-secular debate solely to the issue of coercion prevents a deeper critique of the very concept of religion, and of Judaism itself.

Today, Israeli society is composed of impermeable communities, relatively isolated from one another. More than seventy years after the founding of Israel, and over a century since the first Jewish settlements in the land, religious and secular Jews—except for rare exceptions—do not share meals, marriages, studies, workplaces, or daily life.

It is worth recalling that the split between early Christians and Judeans was triggered by their inability to share the same table. What, then, will become of religious Zionists, settlers, and ultra-Orthodox Jews? No one can say. What seems certain, however, is that they will not disappear, but may instead evolve from within—perhaps even integrate into a broader society that their leaders are still determined to resist.

The Crisis of Judaism in a Jewish State

Judaism is in constant transformation. Yet in the face of contemporary upheavals, it now risks a slow decline. Ironically, it is the very founding of the Jewish State that has confronted halakha with the gravest crisis in its history. This turning point occurred just as humanity was entering the Enlightenment era and gradually distancing itself from religion. In hindsight, it can be said that halakha has failed in its attempt to govern Jewish life within a sovereign state. It lacked the courage needed to adapt to the political and social realities of this new condition. Rabbinic authorities have been unable to revise commandments that have become obsolete—sometimes even contrary to contemporary ethics and the demands of progress. They have instead chosen retreat, erecting new walls and barriers to try and contain the ideological earthquake that is shaking them.

In place of the great intellectual figures who once shaped Judaism, we now see a rabbinate in crisis, drifting into mysticism, excessive messianism, and the exploitation of the vulnerable. The political activism aimed at imposing religion on the secular population betrays, in fact, a crisis of faith within the religious camp itself. What drives its leaders today is not a desire for renewal, but a visceral fear of change. The consequences of this defensiveness have been swift: halakha is now experiencing an unprecedented intellectual decline. Its weakness is embodied in the mediocrity of its elites: many of its defenders have become mere functionaries of the cult—sometimes corrupt, cut off from any spiritual or ethical reflection. They have abandoned the great questions of faith, preferring to target secular Jews through various forms of religious harassment. Lacking the courage to reform, halakha has ultimately alienated many Jews.

It is unlikely that religions will disappear, but they will have to undergo profound reinvention. Rabbinic Judaism, as expressed in Talmudic literature, seems unlikely to undergo a radical transformation. At the same time, liberalism and humanism have failed to offer a strong intellectual response to the rise of religiosity and its harmful effects. Liberalism, humanism, and scientific progress have not proven sufficient safeguards against the resurgence of racism and violence. Yet it is not inconceivable that the religious world could collapse from within, without external intervention. Many rightly argue that a Jewish state cannot be fully democratic, and that a truly democratic state cannot be essentially Jewish. More paradoxically still, a Judaism rooted in an exilic consciousness cannot fully flourish within a sovereign state, and a sovereign state cannot define itself as Jewish without internal contradictions.