Religion, Nationalism and Democracy in Israel^[*] 

Baruch Kimmerling

(to be published in Constellations, 3, 6, 1999).

     Israeli and western scholars consider Israel as a democracy. Dozens of books during the last fifty years have analyzed it as such a regime. This, despite recognizing some of its "imperfections" and limitations, referring especially to the inequality of its Arab citizens,^[1]  or the oppressive measures applied against the Palestinian inhabitants of the occupied territories. But these "imperfections" have been attributed mainly to external and situational factors, such as Israel's engagement in a protracted conflict with its environment, and it has been presumed that once the conflict will be terminated, these major deviations from the liberal democratic model will be corrected. All of these scholars have emphasized the existence of structural conditions for a viable democratic regime in Israel. For example, Israel has a government established as a result of free elections and universal suffrage, and a pretty good separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial authorities. Israeli citizens (mainly the Jewish citizens) enjoy innumerable civil rights and liberties, resembling the most "perfect" liberal democracies in the western world. The aim of this essay is to analyze the Israeli constitutional regime more closely in the historical and ideological context of its national identity, in order to examine the limits of its democracy, in some crucial areas.

     The term "democracy" has no one conclusive theoretical definition or even agreed upon set of empirical manifestations.^[2]  According to all existing definitions no actual political regime can be classified as a "complete" or "pure" democracy, but rather as located on a continuum between the two poles of democracy-non-democracy. Moreover, not just one, but multiple paths to democracy exists. However, in order to classify any regime, as "democratic" at least four necessary (but not sufficient) conditions must persist. These necessary conditions seem to include (a) periodic and free elections, including the possibility to change the ruling political elites or parties through such elections. (b) Sovereignty of the people exercised through a legislative system constructed by parliament, according which the judicial system operates. No independent or parallel legislation and judicial system can be compelled by the state. (c) Equal and inclusive citizenship and civil rights. (d) Universal suffrage where every vote is equal to the other. Given the nature of the Israeli "reality," as described in this essay it is easy to conclude that only one of the four necessary conditions for considering Israel as democracy is present.

     In contrast to some attempts in the 1960's and 1970's to define Israel as a liberal-democratic state, it becomes apparent through the conditions that have been described and analyzed above that it is difficult to apply the liberal-democratic model to Israel. The main reason for these difficulties is the historical inability to separate religion from nationalism and nationality that is built-in in the "Jewishness" of the Israeli state. The Israeli state is one of the strongest in the world in terms of its control of resources (for example, the real estate has been essentially nationalized) and its ability to enlist the population in times of war and emergency, and these have remained the same since its establishment. However beyond this, the basis of belonging and the criteria for measurement of enjoyment of rights in the state is ethnic-religious, as presented throughout this entire essay. The state is not defined as belonging to its citizens, but to the entire Jewish people. Rights within it are determined according to ethnic-national-religious belonging more than according to citizenship.

     The main characteristic of the social order in Israel is the Zionist hegemony. This hegemony is expressed in the taken-for-grantedness of the equivalence between the Jewish religion and nation. It is common to both the Right and to the Left, to Ashkenazim and to Mizrachim, to the poor and to the rich, to women and to men, to the religious - in their degrees and hues - as to the secular. Self-evidently there are, in Israel, secular individuals and groups and even sub-cultures. Their daily behavior and their self-identity is secular and there are even those waging a culture (or religion) war against this or that usage of the state in order to coerce this or that religious behavior, or even halakhic rule on the entire public or part of it. But when most of the Jewish public in Israel relates to his collective national identity, this identity is defined in large part by terms, values, symbols, and collective memory of which most is anchored in the Jewish religion.^[3]  In other words, there are secular Jews in Israel and the world, but it is highly doubtful that there is a secular Judaism. Judaism - as constructed and developed in Israel - and secularism have been mutually exclusive. However, at the same time, the state is administered also by universal and secular codes drawn from what is called "western culture," for without them it is impossible to administer a modern state and to maintain its military power, its relatively developed economy and all the rest of its mechanisms. These values do not necessarily stand in contradiction to the "Jewishness" of the state despite the constant tension between them. This tension is absorbed into the hegemonic situation and represents a part of it.

     A characteristic of a hegemonic situation is the ideological and intellectual dominance of the existing order, and its "self-evidence." This is an order generally found above public debate and outside it; a social situation that is unchallengeable, because there are not even terms and concepts by means of which to characterize it and to question it. Because of this, this is the order that is accepted and comfortable to all those found within the boundaries of this hegemony. Only those found outside of it - in our case, the Arab citizens of the state - can palpably sense the meaning, the consequences and the results of this hegemony. However, they are incapable of communicating with the rest of the members of the collectivity in the absence of a common language and consciousness with those found within the hegemonic bubble. The consequences of this hegemony on the character of the Israeli democracy are the existence of democracy according to most accepted measurements, but only within the framework of the parameters fixed by the hegemony, that is, a regime continuously fluctuating between democracy and nationalist-theocracy.

State and Ethnicity

     At least three basic laws^[4]  and one additional regular law, state that Israel is a "Jewish and democratic state." However, the definition of its 'Jewishness' that the state itself has adopted transforms these two concepts, 'democracy' and 'Jewishness,' into mutually contradictory ones in some areas. As a result, a major part of the practices engaged in by the State hardly conform to usually accepted notions of Western-liberal and enlightened democracy. Israel inherited what is known as the millet system from both the Ottoman Empire and the British colonial administration. This system provided that the "religious-ethnic" communities enjoyed autonomy from the state, and sole jurisdiction, in matters of personal status litigation. Even before it was established as a sovereign entity, the Israeli state decided to preserve the institution of the millets and to construct a millet form of citizenship. Therefore, citizens were subjected to two legal and judicial systems, which are not only separate, but which operate according to different, and even opposing, principles. One is secular, "Western" and universalistic; the other system, religious and primordial, and is mainly run - if we are speaking about Jews - according to the Orthodox interpretation of the halakhah. The minorities, who were thus defined ab initio as religious minorities, were also forced to conduct their 'autonomous' lives in accordance with this dual system. The Israeli parliament (Knesset) has so far given up its authority to legislate[MD1] in crucial areas and recognized a parallel legal and judicial system outside its control. In fact, the state obligated itself to relate to rules of halakhah, shariya and diverse Christian denominational rules as if it were its own law.

      Jewish-religious elements have been incorporated into other areas of legislation as well, such as the "Work Hours and Days of Rest Law," the "Freedom of Occupation Law", and the like. In contrast to these, the "Law of Return" and "Law of Citizenship," which were sorts of immigration laws that intended to establish a sort of "affirmative action" (or corrective discrimination) on behalf of world Jewry after the Holocaust, were relatively liberal ordinances. One must of course qualify this characterization, since these laws were indeed discriminatory against the Palestinians who fled or were forced to flee from the territory which fell under the rule of the new State, and against those who remained and who were for the most part denied family reunification.

      Although the Laws of Return and Citizenship are based on the theological definition of Judaism, in practice these laws granted Israeli citizenship (and defined the boundaries of Judaism), more or less in accordance with the broader definition of the Nuremberg laws. The logic underlying this was internally consistent and justified, as these laws were intended to enable the granting of citizenship to almost everyone who suffered persecution as a Jew, even if it did not correspond with the halakhic definition of Jewishness. However, if the laws of Return and Citizenship have been among the most problematic laws in Israel until now, they nevertheless preserved relatively open "Jewish" boundaries. But now the proposed "Conversion Law" is apparently intended to 'heal' the breach, and to give to the Orthodox a monopoly on this essential domain of determination of the boundaries of the collectivity.

      Complementing the laws of Return and Citizenship is another, "The Law on the Status of the World Zionist Organization" (of[MD2] the Jewish Agency), which also facilitates the grant of particularistic benefits on the Jewish citizens of the State alone. Yet another constitutional arrangement is inherent in the "Social Security Law," which for many years has been complemented by a set of welfare laws, in which the only eligible beneficiaries are "former soldiers" and their families. This most unsubtle code phrase is intended to construct a broad separation between Jewish and Arab citizens. Similarly, the agreement between the Jewish National Fund and the Israel Lands Administration prevents the leasing of state lands, which are 93% of the territory inside the "Green Line," to non-Jews.

      In addition, one must also take account of the role of the courts and the High Court of Justice. Although they have taken much care, especially in recent years, to promote a proper, 'enlightened', law-governed state, this is only within the framework of the Jewish boundaries of the state. Thus, in the 1950's and 1960's, the courts were one of the most active mechanisms for the dispossession of Arab citizens from their lands, and afforded no relief to the victims of the infamous military administration.^[5]  The High Court ruled that its jurisdiction also extended to the acts of the Israeli authorities in the occupied territories. However, in the great majority of cases brought before it, whenever the authorities claimed that "state security" was involved, the High Court tended to accept this claim without examining it, and without attempting to define the meaning and content of the term of "security." Thus, its jurisdiction extended to everything, except whatever the state defined as a security-related issue.

      Perhaps the most conspicuous example of this is the systematic assistance, which the High Court has lent to the blatant violation of international law. International law forbids an occupying power from making any substantial changes in the status of occupied territories, except for reasons of security. Accordingly, in the present situation, from the perspective of the High Court, all the settlements in the occupied territories were built for security reasons. This is indeed a most astonishing and problematic expansion of the concept of "security." The same justification was used by the High Court when it permitted individual and mass deportations and the use of torture during interrogations as well.

      All this took place at the most institutionalized level - which allows one to consider it as the constitutional level without taking account of the general political culture, which also set a number of norms which are not usually considered pillars of a democratic political culture. For example, a government coalition that includes parties defined as "Arab" ones, or a piece of legislation that depends on "non-Jewish votes," is considered illegitimate. Such a perspective constitutes a gross violation of the basic principle of "one person, one vote."

A Settler-Immigrant Society in Search for Legitimacy

      However, even the absence of the distinction between religion and nation is not the primary cause, but itself flows from the basic nature of the Israeli state, which cannot be understood apart from its historical-sociological context. Israel was formed as a society of settler-immigrants, and is still an active immigrant society, engaged in settlement process to this very day. Two mutually complementary political practices are involved. The first is Israel's being what we like to call an "immigrant-absorbing state;" the second is that its borders are still in the process of formation, from the point-of-view of their expansion and contraction. Israeli Jews therefore belong to the category of "immigrant-settler" nations, similar to the nations that were formed in North and South America, in North Africa (French Algeria), as well as in White South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

      Despite the tremendously fast and constant transformation that this society is undergoing, its fundamental characteristic, that of being a settler-society - which must consolidate itself in a given territory, living by the sword and with a need to create a space for itself remained constant. The Arab inhabitants, in whose midst the Jewish immigrants settled, resisted the process consistently and with determination, almost from the beginning of Jewish settlement in this territory. The Jewish-Arab conflict flows from this. Indeed it is true that Zionism, the national movement that motivated the Jewish immigration and settlement, but which was also formed by it, was clever enough to distance itself from the global colonial context, which was the matrix out of which it was born. Zionism emphasized the uniqueness of the 'Jewish problem," antisemitism, persecutions and later, the Holocaust, and presented itself as the sole realistic and moral solution. Thus, the Jewish immigration movement was successfully represented as a "return to Zion" correcting an injustice which had lasted for thousands of years, and as totally disconnected from the movements of European immigration to other continents.

      However, the fact that Jewish immigration and settlement were construed in these terms was not enough to change the basic social-cultural reality. The reality was a society, which was established mostly by immigrants from an ethnic, religious and cultural background different from the broad local population, and which saw itself as a 'Western' society. In the political culture of the post-colonial world order, this is a society plagued by the problem of existential legitimacy. It has to repeatedly explain to itself and to the international community why it chose Palestine, the land retitled as "The Land of Israel," as its target-territory for settlement. For behold, it was not chosen for its fertile soil, its natural treasures, the cheap labor force found there, nor its potential markets; rather, it was chosen out of ideological-religious motives.^[6]  This fact not only turned the Zionist project into one that was not self supporting from the economic point-of-view, but also to an essentially religious project, which was not able to disconnect itself from its original identity as a quasi-messianic movement. The essence of this society and state's right and reason to exist is embedded in symbols, ideas and religious scriptures - even if there has been an attempt to give them a secular re-interpretation and context. Indeed, it was made captive from the beginning by its choice of a target-territory for immigration and a place for its nation building. For then, neither the nation nor its culture could be built successfully apart from the religious context, even when its prophets, priests, builders and fighters saw themselves as completely secular.

Secularization of a Nationalism...

     In order to understand this unusual phenomenon, one must search deep into the history of the Jewish national movement. When looking at Zionism from a macroscopic perspective it is possible to locate two central missions that it was to fulfill. (a) The reconstruction of Judaism from a religion or civilization to a national movement, essentially modern and secular, or alternatively, defining the "Jewish problem" in political, national and secular terms. (b) The necessity to recruit and optimally concentrate Jews within a territorial framework to enable the establishment of an independent political entity therein. As will be argued in this essay, from the very beginning there were contradictions and tensions between these two goals. These contradictions and tensions led to the constitution of a social order - the shape of the society and state, political culture and the general culture of Israel, as we recognize them today - that may be characterized and analyzed as a mixture of democracy with theocracy. That is the existence of a national-religious system together with a secular-liberal-democratic system - two systems that are incompatible with the other, but at the same time complete each other, and cannot exist without the other.

     Most of the forerunners and builders of the national Jewish movement as an idea and as a social and political movement were secular people. Figures such as Leo Pinsker, Theodore Herzl, Max Nordau, Jacob Klatzkin, or Micha Joseph Berditschevsky adopted strong secularist ideologies, since only such people could think at that time in terms of modern nationalism. Their nationalism was generally not purely constructed, but was intermingled with other ideologies - such as classical liberalism, or the varieties of socialism, including communism.^[7]  It is necessary to also remember, that the beginnings of Jewish national thought and activity were shaped at the end of the colonialist era, when Jewish migration was intertwined with large scale intercontinental population movements. That was the era and when the formation and construction of immigrant-settler nations was still at its height. European colonialism was the dominant world-order, and Europo-centrism was the hegemonic cultural approach.

     Jewish-religious nationalism, or people who reached it from a religious outlook, were a negligible and marginal minority within the Jewish religious collectivity. Since religious principles did not permit "forcing the End"^[8]  or achieving collective redemption without divine intervention. Despite this, the religious worldview was positive towards the ascendance (aliyah) to the Holy Land. But the religious-national mixture was a relatively marginal phenomenon, which demanded a very great intellectual-interpretive effort. Even today its theological standing within Judaism is quite shaky and problematic.^[9]  Thus, for example, the first rabbi who can be classified as a "Zionist," Samuel Mohilever, was more concerned with convincing secular Jews to consider the sensitivities of the fervently observant Jews than he was with the theological problems of a return to Zion in his day. Practically speaking, Mohilever failed in his mission to acquire an understanding among the founding fathers of Zionism, and he played a part in the split that started between its religious and secular components of the movement. With this the foundations were laid for the beginnings of the Mizrachi movement (short for mercaz ruchani - spiritual center), which in 1902 incorporated the group of Rabbi Isaac Jacob Reines.

     The appearance of Zionism as a political movement forced the great and mighty camp of the haredim to also organize politically. They began to come together in Eastern Europe and even in the west (especially in Germany) as a political party, which could stand up in the general political (Gentile) sphere against Zionism and secularization. Thus, "Agudat Yisrael" was founded in 1912 in Poland (which even ran for the Polish parliament) and in Germany in order to represent the "true Jew in the world," through the modern and democratic means with which the emancipation had provided it. The other major aim was not to abandon the political arena to assimilators and secularizers - and even worse, to the carriers of false messianism, as Zionism was considered. "Agudat Yisrael" was the largest organized Jewish political force in Europe until the Holocaust, and it also represented Jews who were not completely Orthodox but who had not disconnected from the religion and the tradition and wished to demonstrate their patriotic loyalty to the land of their residence. In this way the lifestyle of the secular intellectuals like Moses Mendelssohn, as a "German (or Pole) of the Mosaic religion" made its way into the Lithuanian and Hassidic courts.

     But when the thinkers and activists of the national Jewish movement wished to define the goal and the territorial framework for establishing the national collectivity, they were compelled to choose the religiously sanctified Zion or Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) as the territorial objective of the national movement. These despite the many potential alternatives which apparently were available to them, including non-territorial and supra-territorial alternatives and despite their being clearly secularists. In effect, the territorial aim was determined at the fetal and apolitical stage of the Jewish national movement, as it was in the Hovevei Zion ("Lover of Zion") period, prior to consolidating its form as a modern political national movement. This choice was not taken for granted from the beginning, but was also not accidental. The territorial goal was forced, in practice, because the "Land of Israel" was the only territorial space that from the start had a value and an emotional attachment among a critical mass of Jews. This attachment towards the "Land of Israel," or the "Holy Land," existed particularly through the mediation of the traditional-religious terms and symbols that were embodied within them, and the world of the associations and sentiments they aroused.

     To the visionaries of the Jewish national idea it quickly became apparent that only for the "Holy Land" would it be possible to enlist Jews for emigration as the achievement of collective redemption, as opposed to emigration as individual salvation (in lands such as America or Argentina). Only the de-sanctified "Holy Land" had significance within the Jewish conceptual framework. A challenge to this approach was presented by universalistic ideologies (i.e., Communism, Socialism, Liberalism) offering participation in movements which were supposed to bring redemption to the entire "world" through emancipation, democratization, and assorted industrial or socio-political revolutions. They promised that afterwards, as a by-product of the changes they would cause, they would bring a remedy for the "Jewish problem" as well. Despite this, from the beginning there was a preference among the Jewish collectivity for seeking individual redemption in the form of emigration to North America. The emigration to America did not demand ideological or theological decisions or dilemmas, and thus the personal cost was less. It even carried within it a multiplicity of options. Emigration to North America allowed, at least in principle, the possibility for Jews to maintain an Orthodox-religious lifestyle and to be absorbed once again within the local supportive traditional community. Alternatively, it permitted them to consolidate as a Jewish particularistic political movement on the basis of universal ideals (like the "Workman's Circle").^[10]  Finally they were able to come out "into the light", to enlightenment and modernity. Moreover, they could even go completely outside the boundaries of Judaism, through becoming completely embedded in non-Jewish society and through a change of personal and collective identity, which was required in any case in the course of emigration.

...and the Secularization of a Nation

     It is also important to remember that the Jewish religion preceded its law, and in its various versions and incarnations indeed included within it clear proto-nationalist principles.^[11]  But these could not be fulfilled and stand on their own without becoming millenary movements like the Shabbetaian or the Frankists or to gravitate towards "false messianism" that attempted to synthesize concrete, present time and place with transcendental time and place - to synthesize the holy with the profane.

     But the construction of Judaism as a nationality, through giving it historical depth and analyzing it systematically according to European national concepts of the 19th century, should be credited to Heinrich Graetz and later to Simon Dubnow. The historiographical projects of these two historians carried tremendous influence in the construction of the collective consciousness and of a coherent collective identity, which are necessary conditions for thinking and acting in national terms. Though both Graetz and also Dubnow saw Judaism essentially as a "civilization" and not a national entity their contributions to the construction of the Judaism as nationalism were decisive. Both Graetz and Dubnow, who used Jewish (especially religious) and non-Jewish sources and texts equally, took as a given that Judaism was an ancient nationality. They included among the expressions of this nationalism, the religion that was, according to both, a national preservation mechanism in a state of de-territorialized collectivity and absence of sovereignty. However Dubnow thought that the Jews had transformed into a European nation and that it was upon them to demand the status of a national minority within the European or American nation-states. Some writers of the Jewish enlightenment movement made a weighty, even if indirect, contribution to the consolidation of the Jewish national consciousness. In particular, Abraham Mapu, who in his well-known novel, in the French Romantic spirit, "Love of Zion" (1845) succeeded in creating the sense of Jewish everyday life in the framework of the Biblical Jewish kingdom in the Holy Land.

     Zionism tried, therefore, to take from the Jewish religion some central ingredients but to give them different meanings and another context: (1) The definition of the boundaries of the collectivity as including all the Jews in the world. (2) The target territory, from the a priori perspective that emigration from Europe and establishing a society on another continent and amidst other peoples is an acceptable and legitimate practice in the context of the colonial world order. (3) Large, if selective, selections from the religious symbols of Judaism, including the Holy tongue, Hebrew, and the attempt to secularize it and to transform it to a modern language. (4) The Bible and especially the Books of Joshua, Isaiah and Amos. The Book of Joshua provided the muscular and militaristic dimension of conquest of the land and annihilation of the Canaanites and other ancient people that populated the "Promised Land," while the Books of Isaiah and Amos were considered as preaching for social justice and equality (a kind of proto-socialism).

     Judaism as a religion and a civilization, as it developed in "exile," was distanced from the biblical texts and focused instead on creating different bodies of knowledge and culture, in particular the Babylonian Talmud and responsa literature of the rabbis (poskim). The rabbis - a great innovation in Judaism - were the source for producing a new type of knowledge that allowed the complete adjustment to the place, the time and to the context of Jewish existence within non-Jewish power frameworks, even those hostile to Jews and Judaism. Thus a new culture was created, and law and order was established within the community. New interpretations were given not only to Judaism but also to the entire cosmic order, through emphasis on the local culture and institutions, while "all of Judaism" was transferred to the abstract plane. The majority of rabbis, in fact, drew their authority from the general knowledge of theology and often also of mysticism, but the source of power was usually anchored in the local community, of which the rabbi was the guide.

     The Bible, whose birth and instruction in the land from which the Jews were exiled, took a marginal place in the rabbinical culture and rabbinical theology, and not accidentally. Its relevance to actual Jewish life and "continuity" was minimal, despite its being among other things a moral-religious text. And if use was made of it, it was a chance, selective usage (mainly the "stories" of Pentateuch) and particularly as a textbook for young kids of the heder. It is no wonder, therefore, that Zionism adopts the Bible, redefines it as a national-historical text, and tries to transform it to the primary mythical infrastructure for a new historiography of Judaism as nationality. But despite its secularization, the Bible remains a religious morality text based on a binary opposition between those "who do good in the eyes of God" and are rewarded and those "who do evil in the eyes of God", and always receive their due punishment.

     Rachel Yannait, one of the few Zionist founding-mothers, tells that immediately upon her immigration to Palestine, the socialist-secular Hapoel Hatzair members took her on field trips mainly to "holy" sites. With a Bible in their hands, they tried with great emotion and religiosity to locate and recreate the Biblical geography of the country.^[12]  In the middle of the 1960's, Dr. George Tamarin^[13]  pointed to one of the results of Bible studies in the state schools in Israel. Tamarin's findings show the creation of radical Jewish ethnocentrism amongst the youth, due, he felt, to non-critical study of the Bible and to special projects of the educational system to provide "Jewish consciousness. Tamarin, a social psychologist, drew his conclusions from the approach of Piaget, which relates to the development of moral judgement at different stages of maturation. He took a chapter from the Bible, which talks of the conquest of the land by Joshua bin Nun by means of the aforementioned practices. These practices, which were intended for the conquest of the land by the Jewish tribes, received the full approval of most of the students ("that was the accepted behavior at that time"), and barely received any moral condemnation. In contrast, the very same actions, when switched to the context of the building of the ancient Chinese empire, and attributed to a Chinese warrior, were defined by most of the students as genocide, though these actions supposedly occurred at the same historical time.

Toward an Atheistic Judaism?

     The people of the first wave of contemporary Jewish immigration to Palestine (cir. 1882-1900) from Russia and Rumania were mainly very devout people, modern Orthodox, and their meaningful social unit, alongside the colony (moshava) was the traditional family. They intended to establish religious moral communities in the "Land of Israel" and to "worship the Lord" while working the land. Most of the groups were careful to include within them three professionals - a rabbi, a ritual circumsciser, and an agronomist. Prior to building their private houses and establishing their farms, they erected a synagogue and a ritual bath (mikveh) for the good of the collectivity. The people of the second and third waves of immigration (cir. 1904-1930) were already different from them by most criteria. They were young immigrants without family responsibilities, without private capital, but holders of more or less established worldviews. Their worldview was political and their social vision materialist. They regarded themselves from the beginning as an avant-garde and as a social elite. They established parties and communal groups, and at least some of them saw themselves as involved in the world revolution to come. They rebelled against their parents, and part of this rebellion found its expression in active secularism, even in atheism. In addition, in the very act of emigrating to the "Land of Israel," with all that implied, most of them regarded themselves first and foremost as Jews, and regarded their actions as a national revolution that often was more central than the socialist-universalistic context of the action. They were educated, but not necessarily of sufficient intellectual stature in order to clarify for themselves the essence of their secular-nationalist-socialist Judaism as opposed to the religious Judaism of their parents' generation. Aharon David Gordon, was the one who tried to create an alternative secular-religion for the young immigrants, the so-called "religion of labor." He asked in 1921: "Has the accepted idea been sufficiently examined and analyzed critically - is it sufficiently founded in logic and in the human spirit - that with the loss of the basis for the blind faith the basis for religion has also been destroyed?"^[14]  He proposed to distinguish between "blind faith" and a flexible, selective and critical religious faith, and to preserve for example the Yom Kippur.

      When examining thoroughly the cultural contents and the cultural baggage that the people of the second and third immigration waves brought with them and tried to apply or to produce, and their relation to the Jewish religion, a complicated picture arises. Their "grievance list" with the religion, its petrifaction and blindness had already been presented by some of the enlightenment writers. The chalutzim ("pioneers") themselves and the settlers in the territory were already a sociological generation after this "grievance," and to a certain degree evens a bit of a reaction to it. Since most of them were the first generation out of the ghetto, the childhood baggage of most of them was still anchored in a version of the childhood of the heder. If not the father, then at least the grandfather (and it is more difficult to rebel against grandfathers than father) were Jews, that in today's jargon we would classify as Orthodox. Micha Josef Berdichevsky expresses this double valueless ("the split heart" in his language) most frankly. Berdichevsky completely negated the tradition and the religion, and emphasized Nietzschean individualism, calling it the action of Balaam and reaching ecstasy by approaching the Talmudic legends and the Hasidic court. It is possible that it is difficult to regard Berdichevsky as a full-fledged "Zionist," but he expressed well the problematic of his time, and he and his ideas were well known and read among the "immigrants to Zion."

The Pre-state Jewish Community

     The problem of the specific character of the regime and its institutions in the Zionist collectivity, when it would be consolidated into an autonomous entity, was not a central issue in the discourse and in the ideology of Zionism. It appeared as such only some time after the establishment of the sovereign state. It is possible to enumerate several primary reasons for this absence. First, as long as great political, military, social, and economic problems piled up in the face of the very possibility of the establishment of this entity, the discussion of the character of the regime seemed like "putting the cart before the horse." Second, most of the thinkers, statesmen and implementers of practical Zionism had, in truth, some kind of initial image of the desired characteristics of the administration of internal affairs, decision making, allocation mechanisms and regulation of future internal conflicts. Thus, on the liberal wing of Zionism, as in the case of Herzl or Nordau, the image was of an enlightened aristocratic and meritocratic government, tolerant and secular. Among the varied socialists, it was of an egalitarian regime under the guidance of a "proletarian" avant-garde and an elite representing a mixture of class-sectoral interests. These interests were supposed to overlap more or less with the entire national interest (through a transition, according to David Ben-Gurion, "from class to nation"). Among the nationalist streams the first priority was given to building the national institutions (especially the military ones) and myths. Only later, when some of them became marginalized with regard to the diffusion of political power within the Jewish community, did the problem of "democracy" arise. That is the character of their inclusion not only in the processes of decision making and nation building, but also in the allocation of prestige and of the material resources of the collectivity. In the religious-Zionist stream, besides the existence of mechanisms for allocating material resources "justly," there was not much interest in the secular regime, since the final objective - even if utopian - was the building of a collectivity ruled according to the Jewish halakhah as far as possible. This objective at that time was perceived as completely unrealistic. A third reason for the supposed lack of interest within the Jewish collectivity regarding the character of the political regime was that this kind of discussion would arouse internal conflicts and enflame the antagonisms and the tensions, that in any case were built in to the collectivity since its inception. Also, only a minuscule minority of the leadership and the Jewish Zionist population in the territory had any kind of experience of participation in any kind of democratic regime. And finally, the common "Jewish" basis seemed promising for the construction of a society with a wide social consensus, that within it, the discrimination of Jews (others were not even taken into account) seemed irrelevant, especially vis-a-vis the Arab community.

     Moreover, though the Jewish immigration into the territory during the colonial period was limited (relative to the expected and the desired from the Zionist perspective), most of it was in need of direct or indirect subsidy from the "national funds." Because of this - and because of the pseudo-voluntaristic principles that in essence determined membership in the collectivity - was a need for mechanisms for the allocation of resources and in the determination of rules for this allocation, that would win, more or less, approval from the different elements of the system. This was important especially on the level of the elites who stood at the heads of the different sectors. In order to achieve legitimacy for the rules of the game and for the criteria for allocation of resources, use was made within the Jewish political system of the method of elections. These elections were for the "national institutions," as well as intra-class and intra-organizational elections, such as the elections to the Histadrut^[15]  and other local ethnic political organizations.

     These elections granted the Jewish system the partial appearance and some of the external signs of democracy. This was a sort of procedural democracy, missing most of the other conditions and freedoms of a liberal democracy.^[16]  These were sort of consensual arrangements that alongside participation in access to material resources also granted autonomy within the Jewish community to its different social elements. Within this autonomy the individual also found protection and support for him within it in the framework of different sociopolitical groups, that often took the form of "parties." Thus a sort of internal autonomy was granted to the urban and rural middle class, and to a variety of religious groups and of course to the political-economic and cultural complex of the "Labor Society" (the so-called hevrat ovdim). But democracy in any Western-liberal sense was in any case irrelevant in the context of the British colonial regime (even moderated through the image of a "mandate"). It was an immigrant-settler society, at least partially mobilized (to wage the conflict against the local Arab population), with a collectivist orientation, under the leadership of the pupils of various stages of the successful Bolshevik revolution in Russia. But within the Jewish framework there was also a need for "external groups," and these were the various "outsiders" or those defined as such (such as the non-Zionist Orthodox, the Communists, and later the Revisionists). A borderline case is that of the Sephardic "old Yishuv", the Jewish nobility from the Ottoman period who declined with the change in rule. They could be "inside" or "outside" almost as they chose.

     In this fashion, an ethnic-communalism was created that answered more or less the needs of most of the members of the community. The boundaries between "Jewish" identity and the "Zionist" identity (as opposed to the "diaspora mentality") were blurred not only as collective identities but also as organizing principles for the protection of different rights of the members of the community. These were not universal civil rights, but rather communal, not necessarily egalitarian, rights. They guaranteed specific rights that differed from community to community, but included collective external representation (towards the British foreign rule and the Arab majority) and granted protection from injury to person and property. To a certain degree, these communal rights guaranteed work, minimal support and aid systems and health and education services (generally separately for each group in the community). The reason for constructing these rights was not only concern for the members of the community, but the aspiration of the Jewish community to reach maximal autonomy and independence from the British colonial state. Thus a state within a state was constructed within the context of the triangular relations of British-Arabs-Jews. Since the Zionist movement did not succeed in creating a Jewish majority in Palestine, it was necessary to create parallel mechanisms and institutions ("the-state-in-the-making"), that in time would be able to replace the British colonial state mechanisms and bureaucracy.^[17]  The Palestinian-Arab community did not feel obligated to this institution-building process, since as the majority population they expected to inherit the colonial state institutions and bureaucracy, as occurred in most of the new states that were liberated from colonial rule. The essence of Judaism, between religion and nationality, was not a topic that needed to be decided at that historical stage.

     This was not the case regarding the establishment of the sovereign state of Israel which intended itself to be a nation-state for all the Jews of the world. On the 19th of June in 1947, towards the establishment of the state, the Jewish Agency sent a letter to the non-Zionist Agudat Yisrael in which it requested their support and full participation in the establishment of the state (the sending of the letter was preceded by relentless informal bargaining). In this letter, which even today is accepted as the basis for the "status quo", one of the cornerstones of the political culture in Israel, the head of the Jewish Agency, David Ben-Gurion, made three commitments: (a) Shabbat will be the legal day of rest of the state. (b) Kashrut will be observed in all the public and state kitchens. (c) On personal status issues "everything possible will be done to meet the deep needs of the religious public. The letter also promises full autonomy to every "educational stream." At the same time, the letter rejects the demand - which was raised in contacts behind the scenes - to declare the halakhah as the constitution of the state. The rejection of this demand from Agudat Yisrael was justified by a phony and formalistic constraint, supposedly only the external pressures and the fear of a refusal of the United Nations is preventing the establishment of a complete theocratic state. The impression is given that if it were not for these pressures then the Jewish society would be prepared to accept upon itself the "yoke of the Kingship of Heaven" immediately upon the establishment of the state. It is mentioned as an aside that in the state there will also be non-Jewish citizens and there will be a necessity to guarantee equal rights for them as well. This is also as a rationale for not fixing the halakhah as the constitution; that is - another external pressure. Agudat Yisrael praised the letter and saw it as an "important document," but noted that there was still not enough in it to meet their demands and suggested the continuation of the negotiations face-to-face.

The Non-Separation of State and Religion

     The wording the 1948 Declaration of Independence created difficulties, but the solution was signaled: "the Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and national identity was formed. Here they... created a culture of national and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world." While the state itself was declared on the basis of "natural and historical right" and on the basis of the decision of the United Nations General Assembly, it was also supposed to be based "on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace," as "taught by the Hebrew Prophets." These were primarily religious teachings. The state "will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex" [but not nationality - B.K.]. And all this was signed "with trust in the Rock of Israel," in order not to mention god explicitly, but at the same time not to ignore it.

     The issue here was in defining the identity of the state and the source of its legitimacy. The sublimated tension between the religious foundations enclosed in the declaration and the aspiration to give it secular universalistic validity, while mentioning some of the secular rights and freedoms of its citizens, in the style of the French and American Revolutions is clear. The solution already then signified, was the blurring of the boundaries between the religious principles and the secular ones, between religion and nationality. But here perhaps it ought to be added that even in the cradle of the idea of the separation of church and state - in the United States of America and its constitution - this separation never fully succeeded and was never fully enacted.

     Sooner or later, the topic of separation of religion from nationalism was brought before the Supreme Court, and it, in several rulings which set precedent, not only determined the accepted interpretation of the laws, but also reflected the insoluble cultural, historiosophical, and sociopolitical situation. The most well known verdict on the issue was of the registration of Benjamin Shalit's children as Jews. Judge Berenzon wrote in the majority ruling in the spirit of moderate liberalism: "The concept 'nationality' should be given a regular meaning appropriate to the spirit of the time and reflecting the opinion acceptable to the enlightened portion of residents of the country." But Judge Berenzon did not bother to define, for example, who is enlightened and which segments of the population were enlightened. Furthermore, "there should not be injected into the concept of nationalism, which according to the recognition of most human beings is separate from religion, the strictures of the Jewish halakhah... [Therefore] the view of the halakhah on the issue of the nationality of a resident of the country cannot serve as a basis for a ruling of the civil courts in the State of Israel." In contrast, Judge Zilberg declared in a minority opinion: "Jewish nationalism should not be detached from its religious foundations. Jewish religious belonging is necessary for Jewish nationalism. There is still no Israeli Jewish nationalism, and if it exists, it is not necessarily secular nationalism." Judge Agranat added: "In the history of the Jewish people the racial-national [sic!] principle was joined with religious uniqueness, and between these two principles a connection was formed which cannot be broken. During the long history of the Jewish people, and at least until the modern era, it carried a national-religious character... according to the historical Jewish view the principles of nationality and religion are bound up one with the other and cannot be separated."

     Even more fascinating was the approach of the court to the demand of Oswald Rufeisen (also known as "Brother Daniel") to be registered as "Jewish" despite having converted to Christianity. The problem at hand was the meaning of the term, "Jewish," as determined by the Law of Return. Here, in a paradoxical fashion, through the rejection of the principles of Jewish halakhah, which states that one who is born a Jew (that is, to a Jewish mother) continues to be a Jew even if he willingly converts. The court rejected the plea and separated between the secular meaning of being Jewish according to the Law of Return and all other civil laws, and its religious meaning according to the laws of personal status administered according to the halakhah. This ruling did not, in truth, enter into a discussion of the existence or non-existence of a Jewish nationality separate from the religion. Instead it ruled as if by way of "common sense" that "according to the regular meaning of the name 'Jewish,' a Jew who became Christian is not called 'Jewish'," despite the halakhic rule. Thus the ruling created, perhaps unintentionally, a definition of "Jewish" according to the halakhah, as opposed to a definition of "Jewish" according to the (perhaps secular) "accepted norm." And here came an additional and unflinching declaration by the Supreme Court: "Israel is not a theocratic state, because it is not the religion which orders the life of the citizen, but the law."

     This assertion is strange and puzzling taking in consideration that within the very same ruling it was accepted that the laws of personal status are located under the jurisdiction of the rabbinical courts. These courts, as described in this essay's opening section, rule not according to the laws of the state and its elected legislative branch, but according to the halakhah, and the interpretations given to it by the dayanim. For the purpose of these provisions "matters of personal status" means suits regarding marriage or divorce, burial, alimony, maintenance, guardianship, legitimation and adoption of minors, property of persons who are legally incompetent, and wills and legacies. Recently, secular family courts were established to deal with some of these issues, but their authority is limited without having the power to grant divorces (or marriages) which remains the sole prerogative of the rabbinical courts. However in the colonial period a person could "resign" from his religious community and turn to the civil adjudication of the secular state. However, since the establishment of the Jewish nation-state and the transformation of a religious community to a national majority exercising sovereign control by means of its elected institutions, this option has been avoided.

     In the opinion of certain religious thinkers, the most outspoken being the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz, this has made for the bureaucratization of religion, turning it into the "slave of the state."^[18]  The religion lost its autonomy and those doing holy work lost their religious source of authority and became government clerks. This claim indeed is deserving of in-depth separate examination. However, it does not change the facts of the existence of the rabbinical courts and of national and local legislation intended to coerce halakhic mores on all the Jewish citizens of the State of Israel. Two types of explanations are generally brought in order to elucidate this anomaly, especially the topic of the transfer of state authority to religious bodies in the areas of personal status. The first explanation is the normative one that was already hinted at in the letter to Agudat Yisrael - the threat of a schism in the people. If two systems of rules will be created (and perhaps even more than two) according to which people marry and divorce - then a person who is committed to the Orthodox pattern, by his system, would never be able to marry a non-Orthodox Jew. The second explanation is the political-power explanation - since no party in Israel has achieved an absolute parliamentary majority, the large parties are in need of the "religious votes" in order to establish governing coalitions, and so they "blackmail" religious legislation and other favors. This claim is accurate in some cases, but not in all. In any case it cannot provide an explanation on the cultural and general societal level where we seek causality beyond the mechanics of daily political life. My assertions is that parties groups and individuals connected to the "religious" public domain provide a certain kind of legitimacy in a settler-immigrant society that has never resolved the tension between the diverse elements of its collective identity.

Westernization and Statization

     In the course of the establishment of the Israeli state, when the boundaries between the blocs were being marked in the international arena, and the nascent Cold War was developing, it was incumbent upon Israel to decide to which bloc to belong. Though it seems obvious in hindsight today, in the perspective of that time it was not entirely clear what the character of the state would be and what would be its international orientation - two issues which were bound up one with the other. The dominant political and social forces in the state defined themselves as socialists and some of them held clear orientations toward the Soviet Union. In the period after World War II, communism and the Soviet Union symbolized the "world of tomorrow," while colonialism and western capitalism (and their liberal regimes) seemed a world in decline, against which (in its British incarnation) the Jewish undergrounds of the Jewish community had fought.

     Even after the Holocaust Eastern Europe was still the largest reservoir for Jewish immigration. On the other hand, the American government and the American society, which began to enter the anti-Communist whirl, revealed suspicion and an ambivalent attitude towards the "socialist" Jewish state, whose "trademark" was agricultural communes (that is, kibbutzim) and dominant socialist parties and a trade union. During the War of 1948, the US government and its allies declared an embargo on arms shipments to the Middle East, and its principle victims were the Jews. In contrast, the Eastern European nations were a primary source for weapons supplies and even for training sites for the Jewish forces fighting in Palestine. It must be supposed that in the initial stages the Soviet Union hoped that the Jewish state would become its ally in the region, and saw a reasonable chance that it would come under its aegis.

     The orientation of the new state was determined, as is known, towards the Western bloc. Some of the reasons for this were: (a) It seemed that American Jewry would be the most stable political and economical support for the state in the long term, and as an organized community, would be able to influence the government. The price of a split with American Jewry was perceived as too high, higher than the Jewish state could or would want to pay. (b) Since his visit to the United States, for the Biltmore Hotel Conference (May 1942), Ben Gurion had been deeply impressed by American society, its power and its diversity, and did not share the opinion that it was a society in decline. (c) Despite the fact that the signing of armistice agreements at the end of the war aroused expectations for the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict, it became clear that the Arabs were not hurrying to recognize Israel. In the framework of its extended borders, and following the uprooting and expulsion of about 750,000 Arab Palestinians, its recognition was out of the question. A siege mentality began to develop within Israel, apparently to the gain of the political and cultural leadership of the state. The ruling elites in Israel did not want to become buried in a backward and Levantine Middle East, especially after they were forced by ideological pressures to absorb such a large number of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.^[19]  Israel wanted to be attached to the European Community, whose thinkers began already then to discuss it with great enthusiasm, with their final objective the establishment of a United States of (Western) Europe. Geopolitically, economically, and culturally, the Jewish elite in Israel saw itself as part of Europe, and not of the Middle East. (d) The more that the conflict with the Arab surroundings worsened (with the refusal of Israel to accept the return of Arab refugees, while at the same time absorbing masses of Jews) the more the seeds of a legitimacy problem for a Jewish state in the region developed and grew. This problem became even more acute after the 1967 war.

     Paradoxically, the answer to the legitimacy problem of the Jewish state in an "Arab region" in the post-colonial age was found in the essence of the state as a Jewish state in the religious meaning of the term. The persecution of the Jews, the Holocaust, the heroism of the Zionist enterprise, the results of the 1948 war with the victory of the "few against the many" - all these appeared to be acceptable answers to the question of the legitimacy of building one society at the expense of another. This construction and interpretation of the past, near and far, was accepted by most of the Jewish people remaining after the Holocaust. This was also a political, cultural and - in certain senses a theological - victory for Zionism as a social movement and as a social and political idea. However the ultimate answer was locked in the very same original symbols and values, through which the Zionist movement succeeded in recruiting some of the Jewish masses and the political support of others, and these were the clear religious sentiments, symbols, and values. The Jewish state and the Jewish society were not and could not be a theocracy, but they needed Judaism and those who represented or claimed to represent Judaism for the "final" legitimacy of Zionism. Secular Zionism was incapable of relinquishing the active inclusion of the "religious" (and the more religious the better) in the Jewish national project. This inclusion could never have happened with an orientation towards the communist, essentially atheist, bloc. (e) An orientation towards the eastern bloc would have immediately changed the balance of forces within the internal political arena. Thus it might have created a favorable political atmosphere for Mapam - the main rival of Mapai for hegemony within the workers camp - and might have even created the basis for an alliance between Mapam and the Jewish segments of the Communist Party. The immigrant masses that arrived unselectively from Eastern Europe following WWII were in any case suspect in the eyes of the leadership of Mapai as holding Communist inclinations and too much sympathy for the Soviet Union, which had saved them from extermination at the hands of the Nazis. On the other hand the immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa were suspected as a potential reserve to be recruited by the ultra-nationalist Herut party.

From Secularism to Messianism

     However, since the 1960s the decision for a western orientation was connected with the decision towards the internal regime within the collectivity, and particularly to the commitment to a democratic multi-party regime, at least in the formal and declarative sphere, as opposed to the "popular democracy" model that came together in Eastern Europe. From an institutional perspective - the existence of parties, forming a parliament, holding free elections and an autonomous judicial system - the tools for establishing a liberal democracy were there or were created in a short time. But in addition to this institutional consolidation, there was a need for creating ideological mechanisms and structure that would "balance" the democracy and would guarantee the continued rule of the political and cultural elites of Mapai and its allies. For this reason, some sectors of the society demanded a "statist" approach.

     This approach demanded the supremacy of the state as an institution and a symbol, and loyalty to it and its representatives above loyalty to any political body or other entity in the civil society (since surely this was the Jewish nation-state, the pure fulfillment of the Zionist vision). The state immediately nationalized the armed forces and the police, the labor exchanges, but also much of the construction and all the land resources. Thus, it transferred to its control about 90% of the land - even land that had been previously owned by the World Zionist Organization - as well as abandoned Palestinian Arab property, not to mention the British colonial state lands.^[20] 

     The state took upon itself oversight of immigrant absorption; rule over the Arab population, which was defined as "enemy" (by means of a harsh military rule and removing this population from the workforce). Additionally, it built a regular army, a standing army and a reserve system. A state financed capitalistic economy was established by the state through subsidizing economic entrepreneurship. By providing welfare services the harshness of the economic regime was ameliorated and by dispersion of the population through creating regional segregation between most of the new immigrants and the veteran population, the state diminished the threat of internal frictions. And finally through adoption of a melting pot approach any possibility for pluralism and the creation of legitimate cultural, ethnic, and other minorities as competing political foci to the state was ruled out. With this the state became the nearly exclusive player and the most powerful factor within the system. The Israeli regime did not recognize the existence of minorities, since supposedly they were all Jews according a quite narrow definition of "Judaism," and whoever was not, was simply considered as outside the system's boundary.

     However the power of the state gradually declined, paradoxically the more that its policies succeeded. It created a new middle class, whose dependence on the state declined over time. This class developed a civil society around new bureaucratic and economic groups, professional, cultural and educational elites, who succeeded in creating public and private spheres that were difficult for the state to penetrate. The family also gained new power and led to a growth in individualism, that was previously unknown in this collectivity. The children of the second generation of Mizrachi (Oriental) Jews again did not accept the patronizing segregationist approach. Ironically, on the basis of the common Jewishness, they demanded participation and recognition and above all protest, revenge and remuneration for the humiliations the first generation had suffered. Jewishness was reinterpreted not just as religion and tradition, but also as an active ethnocentric, chauvinist, and anti-Arab nationalism. The Herut party not only knew better how to take advantage of these sentiments, which brought it to power between 1977-1992, but also how to fuel them. The Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel also slowly succeeded in turning their numbers to political power and in a wise policy of maintaining the declared rules of the game of the Jewish state became a self-conscious national minority. This is perhaps the only group that has succeeded in challenging what will later be termed the Zionist hegemony of the state.

     However, the national-religious youth knew how to make the most of Israel's being a Jewish nation-state, which by its very definition is also primordial. This movement took advantage of the identity crisis and the ideological vacuum that came upon the entire Israeli society following the military victory of 1967 and the trauma of the 1973 war. From a rather marginal Ashkenazi middle class group, they became a central influence, leading ideologically and politically.^[21]  Following the 1967 war, the Jewish nation-state changed de facto to a binational state in terms of population. The war caused a return to the territorial and especially primordial-religious term of "Eretz-Israel."^[22]  There was never a greater overlap in Zionist history between national and military-power sentiments on the one hand and religious-messianic sentiments on the other, as there was following the conquest of the "Land of Israel" (and almost everything conquered was redefined as the "Land of Israel)". The public that perceived itself as non-religious (but Jewish) lack ideological tools at hand with which to cope with the complex reality that had been created. On one hand, the grand scale military victory was perceived as miraculous (also by secular Jews and non-Zionist haredim), and a fulfillment of the national-territorial myth that had been suppressed for many years. On the other hand, there was the continuation of the refusal of the Arabs to recognize the right of Israel to exist in the region even in exchange for the return of the conquered territories. Moreover, the subservient conquered population, desired to cooperate (at least at that stage) with the conqueror in exchange for bread, and the encounter with the holy and historical sites and places aroused not only religious but also primordial-tribal feelings. The practice of settlement slowly became the central ideology of Zionism. When the frontier was reopened to Jewish settlement, the settlers inherited the role of the pioneer, and Gush Emunim was the entire Zionism: nationalist, destructive and ethnocentric, completely ignoring the rights of another collectivity settled in the same land.

     But despite the centrality of Gush Emunim, it could not conquer the whole socio-political map, because of the movement's "single issue" focus and its ignoring of the general needs of a complex society like Israel. Given its focus on expropriating the conquered territories and violating the delicate balance between the religious elements and the secular and universal elements in "Israeli Judaism," it was unable to appear as the representative of "all the people." For example, although the government was most of the time in the hands of an ultra-nationalist party like the Likud, it was not possible to attain a formal annexation of "Judea and Samaria" and to take practical steps that would bring about a constant and meaningful decrease in the Palestinian population of the conquered territories. They holed up more and more within the territorial space outside the borders of the state in an attempt to build holy communities of their own, run according to the halakhah. This process brought about the creation of particularistic interests of the "Gush", that is: not just "routinization of the revolution," but also protecting a way of life, residences, quality of life, property and occupations for the society created in the settlements. Also, the hope that the values of "the Land of Israel" would be dominant among all the Jewish residents of the State of Israel, was revealed as a false hope, since for most residents of the state this was more of a threat than a promise.

Ultra-Orthodox Ethno-Nationalism

      In concealed competition with "Gush Emunim," a popular nationalism quickly came together, that is possible to regard as supra Zionist. It is popular because it grew from "the bottom," and did not undergo ideological consolidation and codification of elites. The boundaries between it and Zionism were blurred. It is supra Zionist because it is almost completely "apathetic" towards the complex policy goals of Zionism, and its basis is religious and primordial similar to that of Gush Emunim. This nationalism is connected to another new phenomenon, the appearance of a haredi-Jewish nationalism (or even ultra-nationalism), anti-Zionist in origins. This nationalism is expressed in two interconnected dimensions. First, a sort of de facto recognition of the existence of the Jewish state following the large territorial-demographic concentration of Jews in the "Land of Israel" and the creation of the policy tools that are at their disposal (armed forces, police, bureaucracy and resources for distribution). This state is in truth founded in sin, since it is not managed according to the 613 commandments of the halakhah and even encourages the secularization process. It also did not come into the world in the expected and envisioned divine-messianic way. But once in existence, it has gained a degree of holiness and even a chance that one day its Jewish residents will turn it into a completely halakhic state. Second, through conflict with the "Religious Zionists" from the school of Rabbi Issac Hacohen Kook and the incarnations of the Arab-Israeli territorial conflict, the problem of the "holiness of the Land" was greatly sharpened. Thus, even great ultra-orthodox rabbis living in the United States and in Israel, despite their theological rivalries, are united in a their opinion that it is forbidden to relinquish any portion of the "Holy Land" to the control of non-Jews in general and to Muslims in particular. What are common to a-Zionist nationalism and anti-Zionist nationalism are the Jewish religion in general and the ethnocentric principles in Judaism in particular. These are also included in different degrees and expressions in nationalist-Zionism alongside additional and more universal principles. This Judaism openly fosters hatred of strangers and a master-slave attitude towards the Arabs. Furthermore, for the first time since the consolidation of the Jewish community there in the modern era there is a considerable expression of contempt and feelings of superiority towards the secular Jewish society and its culture. The very Jewishness of secular Jews is questioned and they are classified as erev rav or as "Hellenistic."^[23] 

     Despite this, when checking the positions of the Jewish population on issues of faith, religion, and basic world views, as the Gutmann Institute for Applied Social Research did, ^[24] one truthfully discovers a picture of a traditional to religious society, simultaneously Zionist and holding mixed orientations.^[25]  Thus, for example, the sample population defined itself as follows: 2% non-Zionist haredim; 3% Zionist haredim; 9% religious-Zionists; 36% traditional; 4% Conservative or Reform; and 45% as not belonging to any religious stream. 90% of the Jewish population of Israel defines themselves as Zionist, and 94% are proud to be Jews. 75% think that the Jewish religion has a great influence on their feeling part of the Jewish people, 72% attribute a similar influence to Jewish history, and 84% - to the history of Jewish settlement in the country. 95% attribute their feeling of belonging to the Jewish people to the establishment of the State of Israel, while 94% attribute their feeling a part of the Jewish people to their living in Israel.

     As far as the fulfillment of commandments: 69% declare scrupulous observance of kashrut at home (and 60% out of the home), and 68% among them regard kashrut as an important guiding principle in their lives. 48% of the sample have separate sets of utensils at home for meat and dairy (a serious demand only among Ashkenazim). 26% declare they will never travel on Shabbat and 42% abstain from doing any work on Shabbat, while 22% don't use electric appliances on Shabbat. 71% always fast on Yom Kippur; 8% pray everyday in synagogue, but only 19% completely stay away from the synagogue. 14% pray the "Hall" service and blessings for Independence Day, an act which transforms Independence Day to being religiously meaningful, used mainly among people of "national religious" orientation. 19% pray the morning invocation (shacharit) at home or in synagogue. 78% always participate in a Passover ceremony (seder) and 68% scrupulously avoid eating hametz (leavened food, like bread) during Passover. Only 2% of the total Jewish population don't have a mezuzah on their doorpost to the entrance to their house or apartment (72% have affixed a mezuzah to every doorpost at in their house!). While 83% believe or hope that the mezuzah will protect their house (from whom or what is not indicated). However, only 20% wear a head covering on a regular basis (37% won't cover their head under any circumstance). 16% carry out the monthly menstrual prohibitions. 11% go frequently to pray at the Western Wall and a similar number visit the graves of holy men (tzadikkim); and finally, 20% frequently or on a regular basis study in halakhah classes.

     What else do the Jewish citizens of Israel believe? Amongst other things, the absolute basis of the faith on mythological story of 55% of the Jewish population of Israel is that the Torah was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and only 14% reject outright giving of the Torah (Matan Torah) as a historical reality. 68% believe that the Jewish people are a "chosen people" and only 20% completely reject this ethnocentric belief. 54% believe in the existence of the "world-to-come." 58% - in the existence of "personal oversight" (or predestination), while 75% believe in "reward and punishment." The possible coming of the Messiah is definite for 39% of the Jewish population of the state (but they weren't asked about the time of his coming), 14% have some doubts and only 32% completely reject the very messianic idea. In this context it is especially interesting the large and fixed distance between "complete believers" and those who do not believe at all. Beyond beliefs and opinions and even specific behavior of one sort or another (observance of commandments) gapes considerable distances between the two polar positions of "complete believers" and "complete heretics/non-believers." In both poles there is a hard ideological core that runs about 16% believers in religion, in commandments and in the religious worldview, and on the opposite side about 15% that can be defined as "completely secular" in their belief, or even as atheists. Within this great distance there is selectivity and various levels of belief and fulfillment of commandments. Here apparently exists the overlapping space between popular religion and popular nationalism, where the religious commandments and its beliefs are part of the beliefs and commandments obligating a person as member of the Jewish nation.

Jewish Democracy?

     There are people for whom the values of democracy and Judaism are compatible. As for the others, asserts with praiseworthy courage and honesty the mitzvah-observant intellectual and political scientist Charles Liebman, the two are located in a certain degree in a situation of incompatibility. But Liebman goes even further in his argument. According to him, the Jewish values in the state are the primary, and perhaps exclusive, cohesive glue, and thus also a necessary condition for the existence of the state. Therefore the very existence of democracy is first and foremost dependent upon the existence of the Jewish values in the state. According to Liebman, the Israeli democracy can continue to exist only if there will be a consensus regarding the existence of common societal goals and objectives, that are above and beyond the rules of the game - for example, like those that guarantee the rights of the individual. From here, in Liebman's opinion, it is incumbent upon us to teach, to live, and to act in the framework of the simultaneous existence of incompatible value systems, that are not necessarily equal. He sees two threats to the state - the danger of secular extremism and the danger of religious extremism.^[26]  Unlike Shlomo Deshen, who is also a religious-Ashkenazi intellectual and an anthropologist,^[27]  he does not regard the Oriental Jewish-religious version as the more open and tolerant version of Judaism. That is due to consistent findings of bellow-mentioned surveys and social research that the Mizrahim reveal fewer tendencies to tolerance in most areas of public life.

     Liebman cannot locate exactly where and how to enact the "compromise" between liberal democracy and Judaism, apparently identical in his thinking to the Jewish religion. However, he knows where to locate the extremist groups in his opinion. They are those who represent an obstacle to partial coexistence between democracy and Judaism, and he identifies them: on one side, the movements of Meir Kahane, Moshe Levinger (and a portion of the religious settlers in the occupied territories), and likewise large segments within Agudat Yisrael and Shas. These groups desire the design of a Jewish collectivity without any democratic liberal contents. From the opposite side - extremist secularists such as those of the Civil Rights Movement, who are prepared to abandon all "Jewish content" of the state, only in order to establish a (secular) liberal democracy. The surveys and social research generally show that this is the public sentiment in Israel, and these groups, at least in part, are the most repugnant groups in Israel. Liebman does not deal at all in his thought with the rights of non-Jewish minorities, which are outside his ethnocentric cognitive map.

     The ideal situation according to Liebman - "synthesis" between liberal-democratic attitudes and Jewish ethnocentrism - is indeed the actual situation. But this mixture is not found in an "alliance between moderate groups," as per Liebman's suggestion, but rather internal to those people themselves. By the way, this mixture of tolerance and openness with hatred of "Others" and with a willingness to restrict their rights and freedoms is found in all the other "Western" cultures identified with liberal democracy, the question is if this is reflected there by laws and officially institutionalized arrangements.

Conclusions: Boundaries of Democracy in Israel

      As a summary, in order to define the Israeli state as a democracy only the condition of changing of government by free elections exists. Three additional necessary conditions are missing. First, the parliament, or the people, abandoned the whole private sphere including marriage, divorce and burial, to the control of rabbinical and halachic rules, courts and institutions. This imposes religious rules over all the citizens and subjugates the state to the synagogue. Second, there are different gradations of civil rights: for example, Arabs cannot buy or lease public lands and cannot reunite with their relatives' abroad. These are severe violations of their civil rights. Moreover, all the symbols and official holidays of the state are Jewish. Thirdly, the very definition of the state as Jewish, when Jewishness is interpreted as a mixture of religion and nationality, with all the above mentioned restrictions is the expression of the tyranny of the majority, which is incompatible with any definition of modern democracy. In addition an Arab vote for an "Arab party" is in fact "lost" because generally, a law passed with a majority based on their vote, or a government based on their support is considered illegitimate. This is one derivative of the constitutional definition of the state as "Jewish and democratic" This is a clear violation of the democratic principle of equality of votes.

      It is instructive to note one especially fascinating phenomenon, which has already been hinted at above, and which must be taken into account in order to understand what is happening in the Israeli socio-political and political culture arena. The existence of several different of social and political boundaries of the Israel state. This multiplicity, which facilitates the delineation of various boundaries in various contexts, allows the state to present a "democratic facade" and to provide legitimation for the regime and for the state. It is possible to distinguish four main, partially over-lapping boundaries:

     The boundary of Jewish citizenship: this boundary includes the Jewish citizens of the State. It is customary to consider that within this boundary Israel is a 'full' and 'enlightened' democracy. However, given the constitutional admixture of religion and nationality, the non-religious parts of this collectivity, which are supposed to be the majority within this boundary, are also subject to a legislative and judicial system, which is not based on fundamental democratic assumptions. Thus, even the privileged strata of the Israeli such as parts of the Ashkenazic middle-class, do not benefit from full democratic rights. So, for example, the dual judicial system, which gives to the rabbinical courts the monopoly over personal status law, has inserted into the system a basic inequality between men and women, as well between religious and secular Jews. The halakhah is basically an archaic patriarchal legal doctrine, which consistently preserves the superior status of male over female.^[28]  This is one of the most systematic and strongest violations of the right of freedom from religion. As for the principle of equality of vote, Arab votes given in Israel to parties defined as "Arab" parties are "wasted", in the sense that no substantial decision made by the parliament based on "Arab votes" is considered politically and morally legitimate.

     The boundary of Israeli citizenship: this includes both Jews and Arabs (or Palestinians) in Israel. The tendency is to grant to the Arabs in Israel, and the other minorities, citizen's rights equal to those enjoyed by the Jews - except for the previously enumerated rights - but on an individual rather than a collective basis. Thus, for example, it is considered legitimate to allow Haredi^[29] , national-religious other religious and perhaps even secular Jews educational autonomy, but not to the Arabs.

     The ethnic boundary: this includes everyone who is defined as belonging to the 'Jewish people,' both living in Israel and from the diaspora. Potentially, and with only a few reservations, the State 'belongs' to anyone defined as a Jew, wherever he may be, even if he/she never considered immigrating to Israel or requesting citizenship. The first and third categories can be further subdivided into Jews according to the halachic-Orthodox definition, and Jews accepted as such according to a political and/or any other social definition. By the way, even Jews who meet all the halachic Orthodox criteria of belonging, are in practice divided by an additional social boundary into three main "castes": the secular, national-religious, and haredi.

     The boundary of Israeli control system: the Palestinian population in the occupied territories is even today, after the setting-up of the autonomous national authority (following a partial implementation of "Oslo accord"), still included within the power field and economic system of the Israeli state. As long as no final settlement is reached, and as long as no sovereign Palestinian state has been established, there will be no essential change in this situation. But even if and when a Palestinian state is set up, it is difficult to see how it will be possible to separate the two entities. They are so interwoven with each other in a geopolitical sense, and there is so much asymmetry between them in terms of their economic and military might and their cultural capital. After twenty-nine years of direct Israeli rule over this population, based on coercion, the form of this rule has, for the time being, been transformed into a kind of mixed rule, divided between the Palestinian National Authority and Israel. This rule continues to be implemented by military, police and economic means, as well as through settlement. The network of settlements, and the military protection they have been afforded, constitutes a direct expansion of the Israeli state. In any event, even today, the territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip occupied in 1967 cannot be considered as outside the boundaries of Israeli military and economic control, even if the level of control has declined or has been passed to a subcontractor. It is not a usual colonial situation, but a kind of internal colonialism because (among other reasons) according to the basic perception of each side, neither of them has another homeland.

      At first glance it would seem as if we are dealing with three different, separate subjects. The first is the deprivation from the universalistic state of certain of its legislative and judicial powers, and their transfer to the particularistic field of religion and halakhah. Moreover, this is in accordance with the approach and interpretation of only one of the denominations within Judaism - Orthodoxy. The state thus facilitates the delineation of its collective identity, and the criteria for membership within it, according to non-civic criteria. From this perspective, the state is not even Jewish, but Jewish-orthodox. The handing over of these powers to the religious legal-judicial framework turns Israel into a partial theocracy, which cannot be reconciled with any definition of liberal-democracy. This regime places severe limits on women, secular citizens, and on citizens who identify themselves as Jews but are not classified as "Jews" according orthodox interpretation of halakhic rules. The second subject is the discrimination, entrenched in law, against the non-Jewish minorities within the boundaries of the state. The third subject is the holding of over two million human beings under occupation for more than a generation, and creating a control system. The state is expanding its boundaries beyond the limits of its legitimate authority; in other words, the inclusion of the occupied territories and their population into its field-of-power and economic system, as a subsidiary economy, while at the same time encouraging its under-development.^[30]  Thus, there is a population within the power field and economic boundaries of the state which is deprived even of the rights enjoyed by those of its compatriots within the boundaries of citizenship.

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NOTES

^[*]  This essay is an enlarged version of a paper published in Hebrew periodical Zmanim (50-51, Winter, 1994), issued by Tel Aviv University's Aranne School of History. The last part is based on an article published in the Hebrew daily Ha'aretz, 27 December 1996. The author is grateful to Matthew Diamond for his invaluable help in preparing the English version of this paper. Return to Text

^[1]  Smooha and Peled called it "ethnic democracy" (or "Republicanism"), S. Smooha, "Minority Status in an Ethnic Democracy: the Status of the Arab Minority in Israel." Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1990, 13, 3:389-412. Y. Peled, "Ethnic Democracy and the Legal Construction of Citizenship: Arab Citizens of the Jewish State." The American Political Science Review, 1992, 86(2), 432-443. Eliezer Schweid is using the term "Jewish democracy." See, The Idea of Judaism as a Culture.(Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1986). All of them presumed that in Israel, as a Jewish nation-state, where the Jews are entitled to "collective rights," Arabs would possess only "individual" citizen rights. The most appropriate terminology, "ethnocracy," of such a political situation was analyzed by Oren Yiftachel, "Israeli Society and Jewish-Palestinian Reconciliation: 'Ethnocracy' and Its Territorial Contradictions." Middle East Journal, 1997, 51(4):505-519. Return to Text

^[2]  See David Collier and Steven Levitsky, "Democracy with Adjectives. Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research," World Politics, 1997, 49: 430-451; and Karen Dawisha, Karen, "Democratization and Political Participation: Research Concepts and Methodologies," in: K. Dawisha and B. Parrott, (eds.), The Consolidation of Democracy in East-Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Vol. 1. Return to Text

^[3]  See my "Between the Primordial and the Civil Definitions of the Collective Identity," in Erik Cohen, Moshe Lissak and Uri Almagor (eds.) Comparative Social Dynamics (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1985, 286-292. Return to Text

^[4] See "Basic Law: Knesset," "Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation (1992)," and "Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty (1992)." The additional "regular" Law is the Parties' Law. A basic law is one passed by a special majority of the Knesset, and intended to be incorporated in any future written constitution (Israel lacks a written constitution, at present). Return to Text

^[5]  From 1948-1965, Arab citizens of Israel were subject to a military administration, which put them under a permanent curfew. For example, they needed special permits to leave their immediate locality. See Ian Lustick, Arabs in a Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980). Return to Text

^[6]  See chapter seven in my Zionism and Territory: The Socioterritorial Dimension of Zionist Politics. (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1983) and idem, Zionism and Economy. (Cambridge, Mass: Schenkman, 1983). Return to Text

^[7]  "Between the Primordial and the Civil Definitions of the Collective Identity," op. cit. Return to Text

^[8]  See for example the appendix of Aviezrer Ravitzki, Messianism, Zionism and Jewish Religious Radicalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Return to Text

^[9]  Menachem Friedman, "The State of Israel as a Theological Dilemma," in: B. Kimmerling (ed.). The Israel State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers (Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1989), 163-215. Return to Text

^[10]  Yoav Peled, Class and Ethnicity in the Pale: The Political Economy of Jewish Workers' Nationalism the Late Imperial Russia (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989). Return to Text

^[11]  For example, most of A. D. Smith's theses about the ancient nuclei of nationalism as contrary to the thesis of its being a modern invention (as argued by Gellner) was based on the "Zionist case." See Anthony D. Smith The Ethnic Origins of the States (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986); "The Myth of the 'Modern Nation' and the Myths of Nations," Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1988, 1: 1-26; or "Zionism and Diaspora Nationalism," Israel Affairs, 1995, 2: 1-19. For an opposite view see, Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford and London: Blackwell, 1983). Return to Text

^[12]  Rachel Yannait (Ben Zvi), We are Ascending: Chapters of Life (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1969) [Hebrew]. Return to Text

^[13]  George R. Tamarin, The Israeli Dilemma: Essays on a Warfare State (Rotterdam: Rotterdam University Press, 1973). Return to Text

^[14]  "Our Account with Religion," The Writings of A. D. Gordon (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization) [Hebrew], 127. Return to Text

^[15]  The Histadrut, also titled as "Labor Society," was a Jewish labor union, however it was not built following the European or even American restrictive concept of "unionism," but mainly for two other purposes: (a) To establish a whole and autonomous "Workers Society," self-sufficient from a material and cultural standpoint. As such it possessed industrial plants, agricultural and other cooperative enterprises, banks, newspapers, a health-insurance company, employment exchange, publication houses, etc. For a long time the trade union was one of the major employers of the community and the state. See Lev Grinberg, Split Corporatism in Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991). (b) The Histadrut was one of the major organs of management of Jewish-Arab conflict. It took care to establish an ethnically split market, that excluded the Arab labor from Jewish labor market and until 1937 was in charge of operating the Haganah, the semi-underground Jewish militia of the colonial period. Gershon Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Return to Text

^[16]  Yonathan Shapiro, The Formative Years of Israeli Labor Party: The Organization of Power, 1919-1930. London: Sage. Return to Text

^[17]  See my "State Building, State Autonomy, and the Identity of Society: The Case of the Israeli State," The Journal of Historical Sociology, 1993, 6,4: 397-429. Return to Text

^[18] See Y. Leibowitz, Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State Translated and edited by Eliezer Goldman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992). Return to Text

^[19]  See, Nissim Rejwan, "The Two Israels: A Study in Europeocentrism," Judaism, 1967, 16, 1:96-108. Return to Text

^[20]  The persecution and discrimination of the Arab minority in Israel is known and recognized today, though the Israeli political system has yet to draw all the conclusions from this recognition. Most of the land was nationalized and the proletarianization of this minority was accomplished especially by means of the military rule, to which most of this population was subject until 1966. The Kafr Qassem massacre (1956) and the trivialization by the Israeli justice system of the need to punish those responsible and the strangulation of some of their political and national expressions completely changed the face of the Israeli Arab society. If there is one dominant factor, which raised heavy doubts as to the ability of the Jewish nation-state to be a democratic regime, surely it is the lack of ability of this state to grant equal treatment to Arabs as individuals and as an ethnic and national group. This is expressed mainly in preventing their conscription to the army, and by not granting equal state and public material supports to this minority, for example, in the sphere of local government. Additionally, by the failure to incorporate into the governing system fully and legitimately the Arab parties and those parties enjoying the support of the Arab population. Ian Lustick, Arabs in a Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980). Majid Al-Haj, Arab Local Government in Israel (Boulder, CO: Westview 1990). Return to Text

^[21]  Gideon Aran, "From Religious Zionism to Zionist Religion: The Roots of Gush Emunim", in P.Y. Medding (ed.) The Challenge of Modernity and Jewish Orthodoxy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 2:116-143. Return to Text

^[22]  See my articles, "Between the Primordial and the Civil Definitions of the Collective Identity," op. cit., and "Boundaries and Frontiers of the Israeli Control System," in B. Kimmerling (ed.) The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989, pp. 265-284. Return to Text

^[23]  Erev rav means "an unholy mixture," that is a suspicion that among the secular Jews many gentiles infiltrated into the Jewish people during the generations and due to this mixture the secularists cannot be considered as genuine Jews. The Books of Ezra and Nechamia tell that during the first return of the Jews many non-Jews [women and their children, who are not considered as Jews] were among the returnees. The leadership "purified" the "holy community" by expelling the strangers and splitting-up many families. The "Hellenistic" accusation refers to the phenomenon that during the "Second Commonwealth" period, many Jews - and especially the educated elites and the wealthier hedonistic families - tended to adopt the Greco-Roman culture, and equivalent to today's Christian-Western culture. Return to Text

^[24]  See Sh. Levy, H. Levinson and E. Katz, Beliefs, Observances and Social Interaction Among Israeli Jews (Jerusalem: Guttman Institute of Applied Social Research, 1993). A lot of criticism was directed against the wording of this questionnaire and the implicit assumption of a wide scale of "religiosity" that located any believer in any kind of beliefs as "religious." Also see, Gershon Shaked, "Israeli Society and Secular Jewish Culture," in Ch. S. Liebman E. Katz (eds.) The Jewishness of Israelis: Responses to Guttman Report (Albany: New York State University Press, 1997), 159-165. Shaked emphasized that the same beliefs and practices have completely different meanings for religious and secular people. The entire approach is based on an earlier work of Yehuda Ben-Meir and Peri Kedem, "An Index of Religiosity for Jewish Population in Israel," Megamot, 1979, 24: 3534-362. Return to Text

^[25]  Other researchers such as Charles Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya identified these central elements of culture as "civil religion". Liebman, Ch. S. and E. Don-Yehiya. Civil Religion in Israel: Traditional Judaism and Political Culture in Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). However this is a term borrowed from the American socio-political reality that the sociologist Robert Bellah identified with general American holidays such as Independence Day, Thanksgiving, or Labor Day. In the US, these serve as "civil" and national alternatives to traditional religion, and are common ceremonies to all Americans without a difference of religion, ethnicity, race, or gender. In Israel, most of these beliefs and rituals don't have any "civil" aspects (excluding Independence Day, Memorial Day, and Holocaust Remembrance Day), and these also do not unite all Israelis. Thus, the Palestinian Arab citizens of the state do not see Independence Day as their holiday, and by means of this holiday it is difficult to create loyalty of all its citizens to the state. Most of the collective Israeli rituals are clearly religious, and even those that are not religious often receive a religious character (excluding what was once May Day). Return to Text

^[26] See Charles S. Liebman, "Perceptions of 'State of Israel' in Israeli Society," State, Government and International Relations, 1989, 39:51-60 [Hebrew]. Also see his article in Zmanim, 50-51, Winter, 1994. Return to Text

^[27]  Shlomo Deshen, "The Religiosity of the Mizrahi Jews: Public, Rabbis and Faith," Alpayim, 1994, 9:44-58 [Hebrew]. Return to Text

^[28]  See Frances Raday, "Religion, Multiculturalism and Equality: The Israeli Case," Israel Yearbook on Human Rights, 1996, 25:195-241. Return to Text

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^[]]  30 "Boundaries and Frontiers of the Israeli Control System," op. cit. [MD1]They chose not to legislate on these issues, but are not constitutionally prevented from doing so. [MD2]they are not precisely the same 29 Kimmerling: Religion, Nationalism and Democracy in Israel