The Unfinished Journey of Secular Israel

These days, Israeli liberals look around them with profound despair. Values that stood at the heart of Israeli society only a few decades ago are now under fierce attack. Far-right religious Israelis ridicule them, the current destructive government seeks to eradicate them, and many centrist Israelis seem embarrassed when asked whether Israel is a liberal country. Some, I suspect, would say that it depends on what you mean by liberal. They want to be part of the West, but of course they live in a Jewish state. How, then, did the values of the past fade to such an extent that even people in Tel Aviv seem uncertain about what they mean? To find an answer, we may need to return to Israel’s early years.

At the heart of the Zionist movement lay a decisive break with the Jewish past. The Jews of the newly established state were to be fundamentally different from their ancestors in the Diaspora. Looking at Eastern Europe, Zionist leaders saw a people they regarded as weak and unable to defend themselves, struggling to preserve Jewish traditions in a hostile environment. Although they acknowledged a certain spiritual depth in Jewish life, they believed that the character of the Jewish people required radical transformation.

But as with any break from the past, it was not enough simply to reject what had come before. It was also necessary to offer an alternative. What would the New Jew be like? The answers produced a fairly clear image: he would be strong, capable of defending himself, independent, Hebrew-speaking, and productive—which, in Israel’s early years, largely meant working in agriculture. Yet although this new image was defined in considerable detail, one question remained less clearly articulated: would the New Jew be religious or secular? Israel was created and shaped by liberal, often socialist, pioneers, and their values determined its early character. Yet in the Declaration of Independence, Israel was defined as a Jewish state committed to equality and democratic freedoms—but not explicitly as a secular state.

Growing up in Jerusalem, I was surrounded by a deeply liberal environment that did not always have a coherent view of its relationship with Judaism. My highly educated parents had a certain admiration for ultra-Orthodox Jews, whispering reverently that “they study all day.” On Yom Kippur, we attended the Orthodox synagogue in our neighbourhood; fasting was regarded as a sign of moral virtue. After the Six-Day War, visiting the Western Wall somehow became a spiritual experience, although it was never entirely clear why. Was it an expression of attachment to Jewish history, or a revival of the religious feelings of our ancestors? Shmuel Eisenstadt, one of the founders of Israeli sociology, identified the crisis created by the Yom Kippur War as a moment of renewed religious feeling. Confronting the possibility of Israel’s annihilation challenged the oversimplified Zionist view of Jewish life in the diaspora and prompted a reconsideration of the role religion had played within it. Yet even then, what exactly was the nature of this nostalgic yearning for Jewish life in Eastern Europe? Did it imply giving up part of the essence of modern Israel?

Looking back, this ambiguity about the nature of our Judaism as secular people had far-reaching consequences. In the process of reconnecting with the Jewish past, liberal Israelis never stated clearly and without hesitation: We are secular Jews. We are part of the Western world. We regard democracy, equality before the law, and the protection of minorities as fundamental to Israeli identity, and we embrace only those elements of Judaism that are compatible with these values. Of course, even in the final decades of the twentieth century, parts of Israeli society would not have accepted this position. But liberal Israelis themselves never fully defined their identity in these terms: as secular Jews who belonged to the Jewish people while remaining firmly committed to liberal values.

This failure to develop a clear secular identity has had extensive political consequences. By turning to state-appointed rabbis to conduct their weddings, Israelis have continued to strengthen the Orthodox establishment and its political power. When right-wing parties invoke the values of Jewish tradition, liberals have often hesitated to reject the claim outright, asking themselves instead which of those values they might also share. Until recently, large parts of the Israeli public likewise accepted the complete exemption of yeshiva students from military service, partly because they were willing to believe that prayer, too, contributed to the country’s spiritual strength. Arguably, the lack of opposition to Jewish settlement in the West Bank derived from hesitation about the religious vision of returning to the Land of Israel as depicted in the Bible. The Israeli historian Anita Shapira argued that early Zionists used the Bible to create a new national identity, which they perceived as entirely secular. However, due to later uncertainty surrounding the meaning of religion in Israel, the result may ultimately have been the opposite.

The many theoretical discussions about the tension between the “Jewish” and “democratic” character of the state will not determine the nature of Israeli society. But self-definition just might. Once Israel’s liberal public declares—directly and unapologetically—that we are secular Jews, that we understand our Jewish identity through secular eyes, and that we need no affirmation from any religious leadership, the internal balance of Israeli society may finally begin to change.

As so often happens in history, self-definition emerges in difficult times. October 7^th, the horrendous actions of Netanyahu and his government, which are pushing Israel toward the abyss, may contribute to the consolidation of secular self-consciousness. The political extortion practiced by the ultra-Orthodox sector, together with the crimes committed in the West Bank in the name of Judaism, may finally lead the liberal public to reject the current form of religiosity outright and to act as a cohesive secular group seeking to shape Israel’s character.