Jewry between Tradition and Secularism

Jewish Identities
in a

Changing World
General Editors

Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Yosef Gorny

VOLUME 6

Jewry between Tradition

and Secularism
Europe and Israel Compared

Edited by

Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Thomas Gergely,

and Yosef Gorny

BRILL
LEIDEN BOSTON
2006

This publication was made possible by the support of the Institut dEtudes du
Judasme lUniversit Libre de Bruxelles, The Weinberg Chair of Political Sociology
at Tel Aviv University.
This Series brings together contributions to the question of the unity versus conict
entrenched in the innite variety of collective identities illustrated by Jews in this
era. The books of this series investigate the principles, narratives, visions and commands which constitute in dierent places the essentials of Jewishness. They ask
whether or not one is still allowed to speak, at the beginning of this new century,
of onesingle and singularJewish People. These investigations should yield an
understanding of how far Judaism is still one while Jewishness is multifarious. The
perspectives oered may draw from Sociology and the social sciences as well as
from history and the humanities, in general.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is available on http://catalog.loc.gov

ISSN 1570-7997
ISBN 90 04 15140 0
ISBN 978 90 04 15140 6
Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic
Publishers, Martinus Nijho Publishers, and VSP.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,
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printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS
preface
Judaism and the Culture of Memory
THOMAS GERGELY ........................................................................

ix

introduction
European Jewry and Klal Yisrael
ELIEZER BEN-RAFAEL, THOMAS GERGELY,
AND YOSEF GORNY
......................................................................

part i
CONTEMPORARY PRACTICES
chapter one
Is the French Model in Decline?
PIERRE BIRNBAUM ........................................................................

13

chapter two
The Case of Belgium
JEAN-PHILIPPE SCHREIBER ..............................................................

27

chapter three
The Identity of Dutch Jews
LUDO ABICHT ..............................................................................

31

chapter four
Russian-Jewish Immigration to Germany
JULIUS H. SCHOEPS, WILLI JASPER,
AND OLAF GLCKNER ....................................................................

36

chapter five
Religiosity, Praxis and Tradition in Contemporary
Hungarian Jewry
ANDRS KOVCS ............................................................................

43

vi

contents

chapter six
Being Jewish in Romania after the Second World War
CAROL IANCU ..............................................................................

50

chapter seven
Jewish Identity, Memory and Anti-Semitism
MAURICE KONOPNICIKI ..................................................................

60

part ii
JEWRY BEYOND EUROPE
chapter eight
The Siamese TwinsReligion and Secularism
in Jewish National Thought
YOSEF GORNY ..............................................................................

75

chapter nine
Israeli Identity and Mission in Bubers Thought
SHALOM RATZABI ..........................................................................

85

chapter ten
Sovereignty, Voluntarism and Jewish
IdentityNathan Rotenstreich
AVI BARELI ................................................................................

93

chapter eleven
On Religious-Secular Tensions
AVI SAGI .................................................................................... 105
chapter twelve
The Religious-Secular Cleavage in Contemporary Israel
YOCHANAN PERES .......................................................................... 121
chapter thirteen
On European Jewish Orthodoxy, Sephardic Tradition and
the Shas Movement
ZVI ZOHAR .................................................................................. 133

contents

vii

chapter fourteen
Ultra-Orthodox, Orthodox, and Secular Women in College
LIOR BEN-CHAIM RAFAEL .............................................................. 151
chapter fifteen
The Challenge of Secularism to Jewish Survival in Abba
Hillel Silvers Thinking
OFER SHIFF ................................................................................ 173
chapter sixteen
The Identities of Jewish American Women
SUZANNE VROMEN ........................................................................ 186

part iii
IDENTITY, SINGULARITY, CONFLICT, AND
COOPERATION
chapter seventeen
Jews and Secularization: A Challenge or a Prospect?
GUY HAARSCHER .......................................................................... 203
chapter eighteen
Submission and Subversion before the Law
RIVON KRYGIER ............................................................................ 223
chapter nineteen
Tradition of Diaspora and Political Reality of the
State of Israel
DAVID MEYER .............................................................................. 230
chapter twenty
The Diaspora Museum and Israeli-Jewish Identity
DINA PORAT ................................................................................ 233
chapter twenty-one
The Jewish Transnational Community and the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
URI COHEN ................................................................................ 248

viii

contents
EPILOGUE

chapter twenty-two
Contemporary Dilemmas of Identity: Israel and the Diaspora
ELIEZER BEN-RAFAEL .................................................................... 279
chapter twenty-three
Was the Shoah the Sanctication of God?
THOMAS GERGELY ........................................................................ 289
Bibliography ................................................................................ 301
Index of Subjects ........................................................................ 313
Index of Names .......................................................................... 319

PREFACE

JUDAISM AND THE CULTURE OF MEMORY

Thomas Gergely
For a number of non-European Jews of the third post-war generation, the old continent, which many of them have never visited, seems
nothing less than Jewish historys largest burial ground.
This because the Shoah was not perpetrated by descendants of the
Jivaro head-hunters, nor of the Sioux, who were said to scalp their
enemies, nor by the sons of the ancient Mayas, who were more or
less cannibalsbut by people from the gentle western culture of Europe,
the culture that gave us Goethe, Bach and Mozart, and which developed Christianity. Even though Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Eichmann
and their like did not act as Christians at the time of the brown plague,
most of these men had, after all, been baptised and brought up in
that faith. A fact that stupeed those they persecuted.
Jews from outside the arena of death thus have a tolerably dierent
view of the Shoah than those it aected rst hand. And hence they
also perceive their own identities dierently. It is beyond question
that after the Second World War, the denition of what it means
to be Jewish can never be separated from the existential sense, or
non-sense, of this wave of Jew-killing.
In truth, alongside the typically European shock to religious
certainties, which are such an intrinsic component of identity, we
must take note of the feeling of guilt that developed in Jews who,
having experienced these events from a distance and as spectators,
whether or not they were aware of the scale of the drama, had had
the good fortune not to experience its physical suering. It is characteristic of this that the relatively mild demands that American Jews
of the time made of their government to bomb the gas chambers
are followed today by a veritable cult of the memory of the Shoah,
something that has almost reached the status of a religion, though
not deeply questioning God and His existence. While it is true that
America is a religious continent, American Jews are ill-equipped to
understand the identities of many Europeans who henceforth saw
themselves as secular or atheist, though still Jewish.

preface

There is also a signicant fringe of modern-day Israelis, people

whom the forces of history have made capable of resisting through
arms, who are suocating through incomprehension of the idea that
millions of European Jews allowed themselves to be tipped into the
jaws of hell without ghting or even putting up much resistance. But
Israeli Jewish identity is not at all the same as that which once gave
European Jews their sense of self. Whereas for many Israelis the criterion of nationality is today enough to cover their need for a
denition of Jewish identity, in the diaspora Jews are living and have
lived in a situation of ambiguity that combines various degrees of
attachment to or rejection of religion, culture, history and politics,
including politics vis--vis the state of Israel. And what physical, let
alone armed resistance, could be oered against such barbarity by a
religious central European Jew whose days and nights were taken
up with Halachathe rules of Talmudic lawand who was already
living on this earth with his head in the heavens? The very purpose
he gave to his existence here on earth was to walk in the ways of
the Lord (this is the sense behind the notion of Halacha), and this
was made concrete by his behaviour, both ordinary and extraordinary; behaviour that constituted his identity, and which made him
the perfect prey.
It is clear that Jewishness takes many forms and can scarcely be
locked down in a single denition. Labels such as religion, history,
identity, culture, belonging, and community of destiny may be very
precise, but they do not allow us to pinpoint the essence of Jewish
identity to the exclusion of all others. Nor does any combination of
them. There will always be a number of Jews who will object, for
example, to the criterion of religion, to the criterion of culture, or
to the criterion of history. This is because it is possible to be a nonpractising Jew, or to have escaped the fate imposed by history on
ones neighbour. This we know. Additionally, many thinkers prefer
denitions of Jewishness that transcend the individual approach.
Amongst these attempts is one that considers Jewish identity to be
achieved through belonging to a culture of memory, in other words
a system of thought that derives its moral values from an appraisal
of history, whether this history is real or imaginary.
The most agrant example of this remains the institution of the
Sabbath, the cornerstone of Judaism. The prescription for rest on the
seventh day is written in both versions of the Decalogue, and that
it appears, with diering justications, in Exodus and Deuteronomy.

preface

xi

In fact, although in the second book of Moses the Sabbath appears

as a kind of imitation of God and memorial of creation, in the fth
book the reason cited harks back to the memory of slavery in Egypt
and the freedom that followed, events relived from generation to generation and handed down as an inheritance, as if all Jews of all ages
had, in fact, themselves suered under Pharaoh. With this was a clear
lesson addressed to Jews and to all nations that they should not subject their fellow men to slavery, or subjugate them through perpetual labour: Do not unto others as you would not have them do
unto you, Love thy neighbour as thyself.
Under these conditions, Jewish memory, so often evoked in this
new century, appears for what it is: It is an active memory, despite
appearances, and one that is much more active than doloristic, even
if the specic events that populate it have very often been experienced with pain.
In this respect, the Shoah makes it possible, through the changes
to Jews sense of self that it imposed on them, to measure the eects
that the culture of memory still has today. And they are sometimes
startling. It was in the name of this culture that, after the war, a
number of Jews asked themselves how to respond to the religious
duty of procreation, chronologically the rst of the biblical commandments. Did the fact that one and a half million children had
been exterminated in thirty-six months call for urgent action to ll the
demographic gap, or was it better to avoid bringing beings into
the world whose very existence might eventually condemn them to the
gas chambers? Since Judaism has no regulator in charge of doctrine,
the decision remained the prerogative of those concerned. And whilst
many of them made a categorical imperative of beginning without
delay to re-establish the fabric of Jewish society that had been so
badly torn, others drew the most acute of moral conclusions from
the genocide, a conclusion that confronts parents with the responsibility they assume when bringing children into this world, a world
that they too have contributed to shaping or to disguring as the
case may be. And others decided that the only moral response was
abstention. It was to them, inter alia, that Emil Fackenheim directed
his armation in Gods Presence in History that Jews were forbidden
to give Hitler posthumous victories. Jews are commanded to survive
as Jews, lest the Jewish people perish. They are commanded to
remember the victims of Auschwitz, lest their memory perish. They
are forbidden to despair of Man, lest they cooperate in delivering

xii

preface

the world to the forces of Auschwitz. Finally, they are forbidden to

despair of the God of Israel, lest Judaism perish.1 A set of new
commandments whose origin is in modern times, and which are
imposed by the culture of Jewish memory, an addition to the six
hundred and thirteen injunctions and prescriptions of the Law.
This self-imposed refusal to despair of mankind also provided a
fulcrum for the paradoxical reasoning of the American rabbi Richard
L. Rubenstein, the author of After Auschwitz.2 This book which was
the rst Jewish theological examination of the Shoah and came after
twenty years of stupor resulting from the fear of confronting the problem of the existence or non-existence of God in the grey light of the
experience of genocide, arrived at radical conclusions. Considering
that the possibility of Auschwitz rendered the hypothesis of God
impossible, Rubenstein concluded that heaven was empty. But then,
he said, if there is nothing up there, men are necessarily alone. They
can count only on themselves. And of all the things that can unite
them, religious behaviour is the most eective. In true logical style,
Rubenstein therefore proposed that henceforth all rituals be preserved,
but that they be stripped of their transcendental references. In short,
religious practice in atheist Judaism. This is a strange position, but it is
coherent in that it tries to accommodate both the legacy of ancient
memory arming the existence of God and the legacy of recent
memory that for some invalidates this same existence.3
This hope placed by Judaism in the capacity for moral renewal
of men who were nonetheless capable of the worst was to be seen
in the overall reasoning of the survivors of the Shoah immediately
after the genocide ended. Where they might have succumbed to the
temptation of bloody revenge against their very executioners, who
had been identied throughout Germany and Austria, without anyone
daring to reproach them for it, almost all Jews contented themselves
with demanding trials and criminal proceedings. And to refute forever
the assertion that the loss of Jewish national sovereignty, due in
history to Titus and Hadrian, was in reality the expression of some
kind of divine curse linked to the death of the prophet from Nazareth,
1
Emil Fackenheim, La prsence de Dieu dans lHistoire, Paris, Verdier, 1980, p. 146.
The author adds here that a secular Jew cannot make himself believe by a mere
act of the will, nor can he be commanded to do so.
2
Richard Rubenstein, After Auschwitz, Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism,
The Bobbs-Merril Company, Inc., Indianapolis-New York, 1966.
3
Cf. my contribution to this volume.

preface

xiii

the justication for all the bimillenial pogroms, they demanded a

state. Here the ancient memory of slavery in Egypt, the origin of
the Sabbath, had been given new relevance by the misdeeds of Nazi
Germany and again forbade the victims to imitate their persecutors.4
The certainty that men will nally return to the path of the just,
even if their conversion is late in cominglike the arrival of the
Messiah of Judaism or the Parousia of Christianityfor survivors of
the Shoah this assurance nds its most brilliant illustration in the
luminous ranks of the Righteous Among the Nations. Risking their
lives and, worse, sometimes the lives of their children, they saved
the dignity of mankind by demonstrating through their salvatory
action that, in the words of the Talmud, the tiniest ame of a candle was enough to dispel the thickest shadows. So much so that the
memory of such people, even if they were rare and isolated, forbids
us from ever doubting humanity. It is an obligation for the author
of these lines to bear witness to this, since along with many others
he owes his survival to the actions of Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest,
who was then, in 1944, just thirty-two years old. That an individual
acting out of a deep-rooted sense of human duty can succeed where
churches and states had almost failed, has a resonance in the Jewish
conscience with the rabbinic aphorism that teaches that although
nobody is obliged to do the deed, it is all the more true that nobody
may refrain from it. And that despite its limits, participating in saving
the lives of people threatened by inhumanity is enough. The memory
of the Righteous, then, gives moral imperatives for everyone, which
cannot today be ignored. As does the broader context that caused
these exceptional people to act. A context whose memory bequeaths
us a duty of vigilance, since it teaches that men have never been
ashamed of their misdeeds, and consequently that the impossible can
always happen, especially where the unthinkable has already come
to pass. This realisationabove all othersis a constituent of Jewish
identity, especially in Europe.

4
The ideological, political and verbal analogies drawn between the Shoah and
the serious diculties faced by the Palestinian population must here be refuted. The
Israeli-Palestinian conict is the expression of the often brutal and bloody confrontation,
always to be deplored, of two historical legitimacies that are condemned to coexist.
But to make comparisons, as some have found expedient, between the sealing o
of the Autonomous Territories, which is a blockade technique, and the imprisonment in Auschwitz, which served to ll the gas chambers, is quite simply unworthy
and so excessive as to be counterproductive to the cause it attempts to defend.

INTRODUCTION

EUROPEAN JEWRY AND KLAL YISRAEL

Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Thomas Gergely, and Yosef Gorny
In his preface, Thomas Gergely comes up with a thesis. Judaism,
he states, is a culture of memory, and this feature is illustrated primary through the case of European Jewryboth in its legacy and
prospects. From within this framework, it may be that European
Jewry hopes to regain a prominent presence both on the world scene
of Jewries as well as within Europe, its direct geopolitical and cultural
context. At a given point, this outlook intersects with Diana Pintos
(2000) thesis that European Jewry today has an opportunity to build
itself anew as a full-edge participant of the Jewish world, resulting
in a triangular relationship where European Jewry forms a foundational partnership with American Jewry and Israel at the other poles.
This, she argues, is a possibility in an epoch when borders have
opened and Jewries once silenced for decades behind the iron curtain have rejoined the Jewish world; when migration movements
such as North African Jews to France, Russian Jews to Germany as
well as other caseshave created new frames of references; and
when, last but not least, a large part of Europe is in the process of
creating a new European Union in which all Jewries of the continent play a role. In actuality, however, Pintos assessment is more
of a program than an analysis of the existing reality.
Yet, this program tends to ignore the alarming renewed anti-Semitism
growing in contemporary Europe ever since the last decades of the
twentieth century. The rising form of this anti-Semitism (Taguie,
2004; Finkielkraut 2003) has been conjured by the encounter between
old nationalisms, on the one hand, and the interests of political elites
in the Arab world, enhanced by the medias empathy for it, on the
other hand. This situation is also most denitely exacerbated by the
dramatic growth of Europes Muslim population that adheres, for
the most part, to anti-Israel slogans and varying degrees of hostility
towards the Jewish communities within their present-day society. This
new reality as well as the inherent division of European Jewry by

introduction

country, language, and culture can by no means be left out of a

sketch of what European Jewry looks like today and what it is evolving towards. These aspects shed light on essential perspectives of
what the current situation is and how dicult it may be to create
a new European pole of world Jewry. Above all, these hard facts
serve to increase interest in the question: Can European Jewry play
an inuential role not only vis--vis the Jewish world but also vis-vis Europe itself in this era? This book is about the space of issues
embedded in this question which gain clarity when set in a comparative
perspective with other Jewish experiences, especially Israels.
The Jewish people is known for being one of the earliest examples of a multinational diaspora. As such, Jews are actors evolving
in particular cultural and linguistic contexts and, at the same time,
convey values, norms, and narratives that elaborate forms of particularism which, to varying degrees, set them apart. Their acting
as citizens of given societies is marked by their legacies as members
of the society as a whole. At the same time, they also express, in
supra-national Jewish frameworks, attitudes and convictions that reect
their experiences in specic settings, cultures, and languages. This
dual experience is not unique to Jews; it is common to all transnational diasporas, the multiplication of which has become a widespread feature of the contemporary era. This assessment ties directly
to the ambition of the Klal Yisrael project which initiated a string
of international seminars and a series of books all dedicated to Jewish
Identities in a Changing World. The intention of this project has
been to analyze critically the divergent and convergent forces that
pass through world Jewries in this era of globalization and drastic
sociocultural transformations.
It is in the context of these issues that Thomas Gergley refers to
the culture of memory as deeply embedded in understanding the
state of European Jewry. This dimension is, on the one hand, shared
with all other Jewries and, on the other hand, takes on its own
particular acuity in the European context. It is assessing the development of European Jewry as both an integrative and distinct
part of world Jewry, and as both an integrative and distinct part
of the new Europe that constitutes a central theme in this book.
The papers presented here were part of the Second International
Seminar of the Klal Yisrael Project held in Brussels in September 2003,
under the auspices of the Institut Martin Buber pour lEtude du
Judasme.

introduction

The contributions to this book are grouped under three headings.

The rst focuses on the Practices of European Jewry and assesses
the diversity of the models as well as the common denominators of
Jewries in the new Europe. Pierre Birnbaum begins this section with
an analysis of the French Model. He recalls the long special relationship that the Jews of France have had with the state. Well integrated
into French society and beneting from upward mobility, these Jews
always remained loyal to the Republic. Though, this model is also
ambivalent as it provides for a top-down communitarism under the
heading of consistoire. In recent decades, a sort of bottom-up
communitarization has taken shape with the massive arrival of North
African Jews who regenerated, so-to-speak, French Judaism. In this
sense, Jews are moving away from the state and challenging their
traditional alliance with the authorities. By the same token, they tend
to nd themselves much more alone. Moreover, they are now also
facing hostilities with Moslem citizens of North African origin and
a growing expression of a new kind of anti-Semitism. These factors
have had a serious impact on the now fragile model of Judaism in
France.
Turning to the case of Belgian Jews, Jean-Philippe Schreiber shows
that this community has widely perpetuated a duality of perspectives
commitment to integration and the practice of social particularism.
This duality is accounted for by features of the political and legal
construction of Belgium society that contrasts with the French regime.
Moreover, the Jewish condition in Belgium today is strongly marked
by the memory of the Shoah and by the communitys relations to
Israel. Ludo Abicht who discusses the case of Dutch Jews also emphasizes that their Jewishness is closely linked to the traumatic wartime
experience. Yet, compared to other Jewish communities in Europe,
the overall historical picture is clearly positive for Dutch Jews. Though,
for the survivors of the Shoah and their children there is no way to
reconstruct the past. The majority are no longer religiously aliated,
although many have become active in pro-Israel organizations.
Julius H. Schoeps, Willi Jasper and Olaf Glckner discuss the very
special case of Russian-Jewish immigration to Germany in recent
years which is ocially encouraged by Reunied Germany. Nearly
185,000 Russian Jews have entered the country since the early 1990s
and the number of members in the Jewish community has augmented
threefold. Signs indicate that Russian Jews already play a key role
in the building of a new Jewry. This is visible in the growing number

introduction

of new synagogues and community centers. Yet, unsolved integration problems exist which make it dicult for these immigrants to
feel resettledabove all these problems relate to unemployment,
language and cultural barriers as well as frictions within the Jewish
communities. Andrs Kovcs turns our attention to Hungarian Jews.
On the basis of an empirical study, he shows that secularization has
taken place during the lifetimes of the older generation who observe
fewer Jewish practices now than during their childhood years. On
the other hand, the younger generation illustrates an inclination to
return to tradition, to oppose assimilation and to identify with Israel.
This reects a strengthening of the demand for ethnic and religious
identities after the collapse of Communism. Similar developments
may be observed among the Jewish populations of the other former
Communist countries of Eastern Central Europe. Carol Iancu focuses,
more specically, on Romania and evinces that while half of the
Romanian Jewish community perished in the Shoah, the Communist
regime also had a role in the systematical persecution of the Jewish
organizations. Throughout this period, many Romanian Jews applied
for immigration to Israel despite the attacks on Zionism by the
Communist regime. And, indeed, Jewish immigration to Israel from
Romania took place steadily. On Yom Kippur of 1958 Romanian
authorities allowed for Jewish emigration to Israel. Resultantly, a
large number of Jews took advantage of the opportunity and emigrated. After the fall of Communism, immigration to Israel continued
to intensify though the conditions for Jews in Romania did improve
as Jewish institutions were given the freedom to exist and grow.
In a wider scope, Maurice Konopnicki expands on the fragility of
the Jewish condition in Europe half a century after the Shoah. He
rstly evokes his own youth and the humiliations which he suered
in the past from school peers and later in the university and his professional career. Secondly, the author describes the current hardships
encountered by Jewish individuals and institutions in the very heart
of Western Europe. His apprehensions nd conrmations in the
analyses of contemporary intellectuals also discussed in the chapter.
These chapters that make up the rst section of the book provide
a descriptive view of Jews in Europe and their societal and political
situations. All in all, however, the various cases of European Jewry
do not reect a level of dynamism comparable to the present-day
dominant poles of Jewish life in Israel and Americaneither on a
theoretical level nor in social reality. Thus, under the heading of

introduction

Non European Jewries, contributions are grouped together that

focus on Israel and the US. Among these contributions, some deal
with major elaborations of secular forms of Jewish identity and others
with the social dynamics of identity issues. Yosef Gorny begins this
section with a focus on the relationship between nation and religion
in the thought of two outstanding writers-philosophers of Zionism,
Berdichevsky and Brenner. Both were radical Hebrew nationalists,
each in his own way. Yet what they agreed upon was that the survival of the Jews as a people was dependent on a complete separation
between Jewishness and Judaism. Berdichevsky coined the famous
provocative statement that the revival of the Jews as a normal people
depends on the choice between Jews and Judaism. For Brenner,
There is no Messiah for Israel and Jews should be strong enough
to survive without him. These attitudes sharply contrast with those
of Martin Buber. Shalom Ratzabi shows according to Buber, the
singularity of the Jewish people is rooted in their original essence
which unites the principle of nation with that of religion, where
religion is understood as carrying a covenant with God. This particular unity is the secret force that enabled Jews to survive in an
exile which lasted much longer than their independence. The allegiance
to the land of Israel conditions the fulllment of their mission. Buber
also posses that in light of the Bibles invalidation of any dichotomy
between the sacred and the profane, Zionism is not a regular national
movement but Salvation. In this context, the Jewish State is but the
instrument for the Jewish people to fulll their duty in accordance
with the covenant and the exigencies of the prophets, which implies
that Israel has to become an exemplary nation based on justice and
truth. Avi Bareli discusses the perspective of Nathan Rotenstreich, a
follower of Buber, on the encounter between Jewish thought and
modernity, and the unavoidable tension existing between the centrality
of the state and civil voluntarism. Jewish sovereignty consists of an
eort to re-activate the Jewish collective will as impacted by Jewish
traditions. But, at the same time, political sovereignty also demands
discipline and policies that may oppose the value of voluntarism. Avi
Sagi insists, however, that such secular eorts which minimize the
role of the religious principle can represent only partially the work
of re-thinking Jewishness. In his chapter, he speaks of a lack of openness of the secular and the religious toward each other. At best, the
discourse with each other revolves around the question of respective
rights, meaning essentialist rejection, which expresses that these two

introduction

perspectives actually compete with each other as alternatives views

of Judaism. Sagi sees no other way to reconcile the sides than a profound transformation that would bring them to endorse the necessity of multiculturalism. Though, with the help of a sociological
investigation of Israeli reality, Yochanan Peres shows that religiosity
among Israeli Jews is a matter of degree, rather than a polarized
dichotomy. Belonging to the Jewish religion means also belonging to
the Jewish people. Hence, religious symbols, myth, and traditions are
embedded in the various versions of Jewishness, including Zionism.
The ndings reveal that while the ultra-orthodox and the secular are
at conictual poles, their antagonism is buered by intermediary categories like the non ultra-orthodox religious and the traditionalists.
Among the latter, moreover, one denotes in recent years a new phenomenon that concerns the Oriental-Sephardic Jews in Israel, i.e.
the Shas party. Zvi Zohar discusses this phenomenon and reminds
that inuences of modern Europe were already apparent among
Oriental-Sephardic Jews in the mid-nineteenth century when the rabbis words were generally marked by moderation. However, it happened that in Israel this changed in part because Jewish youth from
Muslim countries who sought to pursue Torah studies attendedin
the absence of alternativesLithuanian ultra-Orthodox yeshivot. In
those yeshivot, Jews from Muslim countries were never accepted on
equal footing with their Ashkenazi peers. This is the context of the
creation of Shas. In time, Shas gained political power, under the
leadership of Torah sage Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, creating a new phenomenon in the Israeli religious scene. An additional new religious phenomenon in Israel also worth remembering relates to the place of
women in the religious sphere. Lior Ben-Chaim Rafael examines
aspects of this in a comparison of Israeli female students of dierent
religious allegiances. She shows that ultra-orthodox women are agents
of change with respect to themselves as well as to their communities.
These women are in the process of redrawing the boundaries of
modernity, religion, and tradition. Above all, this study conrms the
contention that Jewish ultra-orthodoxy can by no means be described
as a stagnant and non-modern niche of contemporary Judaism.
This series of works about the Israeli Jewish reality is revealing of
the predominant role that Jewishness plays in the thought of intellectuals
as well as in the dynamics of the social life. One may say that
Jewishness is deeply anchored in the very gestalt of the society at all
levels. This is less true of the Jewish experience elsewhere but still,

introduction

in America, one also nds a Judaism marked by vitality. We bring

here two dierent contributions to elaborate on this assessment. Ofer
Shi discusses the example of Abba Hillel Silver, a second-generation
Jewish American intellectual who in the beginning of the twentieth
century joined the Reform movement. Silver viewed this movement
as loyal to the old Jewish ways of life, made into a reality in American
culture. He saw his own choice to become a Reform rabbi as the
continuation of his fathers and grandfathers careers as orthodox
rabbis. Silver regarded adherence to universalistic values as an envelope that might protect the traditional Jewish heritage while allowing
it to become a part of the American culture. At the same time, the
building of a Jewish state also seemed to him a great, urgent and
historically inescapable task of Jewry. On more of a sociological
level, Suzanne Vromen points to the dynamics of Americas Jewish
scene, and in particular, the scene of Jewish American women. She
follows Jewish women in their work in charity organizations that
they themselves have created, and beyond. She shows the impact of
feminism and how it inuences those who wish to maintain their
Jewish identity in a new context founded on greater gender equity.
The constant thread of activism and tikun olam, she says, is remarkable.
Those, moreover, who aspire to retain a Jewish identity are passionately
involved in reshaping it.
In comparison, European Jewry seems to carry dierent preoccupations and acts on them both in the Jewish world and in its own
geopolitical and cultural environment. Under the headline identity,
singularity, conict and cooperation are brought forth contributions
that elaborate on central issues regarding European Jewry. The rst
issue considers the question of how Jewish identity may be understood
by European Jews; the second issue focuses on their contribution to
Judaism; the third issue revolves around how European Jews view
themselves vis--vis other Jewsespecially in Israel; the fourth issue
relays cases of cooperation between European Jewry and Israeli Jewry.
With respect to how the question of collective Jewish identity may
be understood by European Jews, we may see in Guy Haarschers
chapter an example of how a European intellectual Jew confronts
this issue. Haarschers approach insists on the necessity for a nonreligious Jew to nd a way of coping with his or her Jewishness by
remaining within the space of lacit and to remain alert to the
danger of communautarisme. In other words, it is the authors
conviction that emphasizing too strongly Jewish particularism may

introduction

lead to antagonism with the otherthe non-Jew. Rivon Krygier

proposes an alternative view. He attacks the premise that religious
Judaism and secularism are incompatible. Through an investigation
of biblical and talmudic narratives, his perspective is that it is legitimately possible for Jewish worship to incorporate the autonomous
judgement of conscience that lies at the heart of secularism. This
worship cannot be understood as requiring only obedient observance
of given practices. Moreover, it is his contention that many authorized
sources contain a subversive dimension and that it is possible for
man to question the explicit authority of a divine law on behalf of
implicit higher imperatives. In this perspective, the ultimate value of
Judaism is the aspiration to justice through the voice of conscience.
From these chapters, one is presented with the confrontation of
European Jewry with essentialist dilemmas and understandings regarding what a Jewish identity means. Additionally, unlike their counterparts elsewhere, European Jewry, in part, willingly voices criticisms
and critical judgments on other Jewries. David Meyer discusses an
aspect of this in his chapter about the expectations that Jews living
in the diaspora have about Israel to be exemplary and discusses the
Jewish state as a test that the practice of power is not incompatible
with the ethical teachings featured out by diaspora Judaism. If this
test for Judaism fails, he contends, it is a failure for Judaism as a
whole. Despite the conictual mood that may lie behind the relations between European Jewry and other parts of the Jewish world,
strong patterns of cooperation exist that make world Jewry a genuine
transnational diaspora. Dina Porat describes a signicant example of
this cooperation against the background of diverging opinions, namely,
the creation of the Nahum Goldmann Diaspora Museum in TelAviv. She discusses how Ben-Gurion and Goldmann debated in the
1950s the importance of the diaspora in regards to the Israeli-Jewish
identity; Ben-Gurion argued on behalf of Israeliness and Goldmann
on behalf of the diasporas contribution to civilization. When the
Diaspora museum was nally created by joint eorts of the Israeli
Government and the World Jewish Agencey, it was shaped by Goldmanns vision. Subsequently, new controversies arose about ethnic
representation, the lack of reference to modernity and to non-Zionist
forces, and the weight given to the suering experienced in Diaspora
history. In the next chapter, Uri Cohen discusses another example
of cooperation which is also marked by convergent as well as divergent
interests. This is the case of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

introduction

Cohen suggests that, all in all, the cooperative process in creating

and sustaining the university has been successful ever since its founding in the mid-1920s. Symbolic denitions of Diaspora held by various
bodies involved set the ground for shared networks, a cultural platform,
and solidarity.
Together, all of the texts discussed in this book provide a general
view of the practices of Europes Jewish communities in a comparative perspective and their interaction with other parts of the Jewish
world. Considering divergent and convergent aspects of Jewries examined, Eliezer Ben-Rafael concludes the book by confronting the question: Are Jews today still the carriers of a single and identical collective
identity and do they still constitute a single people? This two-folded
question arises when one considers the range of Jewish lifestyles from
a Hassidic Habad in Brooklyn, to a Jewish professor at a secular
university in Brussels, to a traditional Yemenite Jew, to a Galilee
kibbutznik, to a Russian Jew in Novossibirsk. Is there still today a
signicant relationship between Jews with very dierent lifestyles,
beliefs, and norms?
The analysis shows that there are multiple manifestations of Jewish
identity. This can be explained by considering all variants as surface structures of the three universal deep structures of the notion
of collective identitynamely, collective commitment, perceptions of
the collectives singularity, and self-positioning vis--vis others. The
same analysis also leads to the conclusion that despite the variation,
the Jewish people are, for the time being at least, still one. In the
last chapter of this book, Thomas Gergely recalls and elaborates on
the experience of the Shoah and its lasting imprint on Jewish memory as possibly the central aspect of the historical and spiritual course
of the Jewsprimarily in Europe but also throughout the Jewish
world. Though, for European Jewry, it is especially clear, obvious
and denitive that this tragedy which belongs to all Jews, unrelated
to geography or to religiosity, will constitute a most central challenge
to the understanding and self-perception of Jews for generations to
come.

PART I

CONTEMPORARY PRACTICES

CHAPTER ONE

IS THE FRENCH MODEL IN DECLINE?1

Pierre Birnbaum
In todays world, Jews are basically grouped around two poles, each
of which claims to be the ideal place for fulllment of Jewish life:
the United States and Israel. In the U.S., Jews have found a haven
of peace and tolerance, a home or a modern Babylon where
democracy and all forms of liberalism ourish. This situation is exemplary of a rare period in the Diaspora era. Naturally, in this climate
of multiculturalism and individualism, a wide range of types of assimilation threaten the preservation of a particularistic identity. In Israel,
the issue of multiculturalism is also undermining a culture that denes
itself as solely Jewish. Relations between religion and state and between
citizens and cultures with distinct identities need to be re-thought to
make them more egalitarian, on the one hand, without abandoning
ties to Judaism and shifting toward a mere community of citizens
on the other hand. In both cases, the obstacles can be overcome,
even though they challenge many preconceived notions and certitudes. These communities lead to futures that seem to defy the imagination to varying degrees, and occasion a distribution of space that
reconciles cultures and other dierences.2
What is the fate of other Jewries outside of the US and Israel? It
is apparent that in the former Soviet countries, Judaism is shrinking
at an incredible pace, slowly ending a thousand-year history where,
for many, Jewish culture was forged. The same may be said about
two Muslim countries, Morocco and Yemen. The remaining countries
are Great Britain, Hungary, Argentina, but above all France. France
in particular holds a symbolic place in modern Jewish history because
it was there that the tradition of the Enlightenment and the French
Revolution, the model for Jewish emancipation, was born. Thus, in
1

A version of this chapter appears in E. Ben-Rafael, Y. Gorny, and Y. Ro"i,

eds., (2003).
2
For a comparison along these lines between the situation of Jews in the U.S.
and in Israel, see Ben-Rafael (2001).

14

pierre birnbaum

modern Europe, the fate of French Jewry is critical with respect to

both centers mentioned: Israel, a nation-state predicated on a dominant Jewish culture, and the U.S., a basically multicultural society
endowed with a strong communal fabric. In its lengthy history, French
Jews have taken a unique tack by creating a special relationship with
the statethe great liberator of minorities. They preserved a vertical alliance with a state that restricted individualism and any form
of collective alliance in the public sphere but fully legitimized individual beliefs. Jew became full citizens at the end of the French
Revolution and almost entirely and enthusiastically accepted the
Republican contract that limited the expression of religious belief
and cultural dierence to the private sphere. Fanatics of the emancipating Republic, the Jews of France vanished as a nation and did
not oppose the broadening of the principle dina de malkhuta dina
the law of the state is the law, a Talmudic precept that instructs
exiled Jews to accept and obey the laws of their host countries. Like
their fellow citizens, particularly Catholic fellow citizens, who were
directly targeted by the secularization of the public sphere, French
Jews were forced to yield to state control over marriage and adapt
to a state power that, since Napoleon, has been based on the consistorial system.
During the nineteenth century, Jews were well integrated into French
society. They beneted from upward mobility (thanks to the Republican
meritocracy), played a major symbolic political role, and attained such
high-ranking oces as minister, deputy, general, prefect, state counsellor, and judge in the highest court of appeals. The prosperity of
the Jews seemed to overshadow the severe crises of the times such
as the Dreyfus Aair. Yet, the integration of the Jews did not obliterate their cultural identity, even though it was conned to the private
sphere. Throughout the nineteenth century, they maintained their
Jewishness and strongly rejected mass out-conversion, self-hatred,
and intermarriage. Though, it is nevertheless true that the state power
over society, connected with the expansion of a centralized state, has
accentuated the decline of Jewish life. Additionally, the benets of
integration in the public sphere have diminished collective awareness
and creativity within Jewish life. In this respect, a German-type science
of Judaism exists in France but has had much less of an impact
there than in Germany (Birnbaum, 1996; 2000; 2002).
One may say that in many ways the Jews of France invented a
model of Diaspora Jewish life that coincided with the French model

is the french model in decline?

15

of a strong, universalistic state. Criticized by certain Zionist thinkers

and accused of serving a nation-state that diminished their identity,
French Jews, like their non-Jewish fellow citizens, in fact succeeded
in preservingthough mostly in their inner reachestheir culture,
memory, values, and specic social modes. Although deprived of a
territorial niche, they were able to maintain an environment of their
own and remain faithful to a specic history while fully assuming
their duties as citizens and participating in the nation. This pattern
laid the foundations, for Jews and non-Jews alike, of a coexistence
between a nation-state political ideal and the generalized preservation
of specic forms of belief and cultures in a way that is much less
conictual than might be presumed.
Today, however, this model is being denigrated by a general
political theory that has rediscovered the force of collective cultures.
This theory rejects the integrative model in the name of the survival
of the collective identity of every national group that is purportedly
threatened by the reinforcement of a nation-state which answers solely
to the cult of Reason. This argument is often brandished by the
nationalist Right that rejects the integrative model in favor of a
national identity whose true origins they unearth from the distant
past. However, today this viewpoint is championed more often by a
segment of the Left that seems to have recovered from the form of
Marxism that ignored tribes, nations, and cultures and has now
found legitimacy in them. The French model has also become the
scapegoat of culturalists of the Charles Taylor or Will Kymlicka school
who criticize the rationalist pretensions of the nation-state while disregarding its genuine capacity to allow individual cultures to survive.
The theoreticians of multiculturalism are unaware of the real exibility
of the French model which turns out to be less reductive than it
seems and can more-or-less eciently reconcile rationalism and respect
for dierent cultures (Taylor, 1994; Kymlicka, 2000: 121122).
In contrast to this view, theoreticians of the public sphere, such
as followers of Jurgen Habermas, view the French model as the ideal
type of post-nationalism and nd that it facilitates discursivity between
reasonable citizens who have distanced themselves from their own
cultural backgrounds. Apologetic toward the rationalizing French
model, this school of thought draws on the French model of Reasonoriented citizenship to produce a broad concept of the European
public sphere; one which is unanchored in individual histories and
cultures that run the risk of creating irreconcilabilities. Thus, when

16

pierre birnbaum

considering the general positions regarding the French model, one

could claim that theoreticians of multiculturalism do not notice the
strong tolerance of cultural identities that the French model supports,
while post-national theorists of the public sphere do not realize that
they are over-ballasting the republican nature of French culture
(Birnbaum, 2002).
The history of French Jewry itself attests to the ambivalence of
the French model. As citizens who are positively oriented toward
their country and who possess no territorial niche, French Jews have
been able to preserve a specic collective awareness without constituting a nation within a nation, as they were before the French
Revolution. They also did not Judaicize their exile as did Jews in
the American model. Once the Jewish quarters of Alsace and Lorraine
disappeared and the specicities of exile such as the Marais quarters vanished, their home blended purely and simply into the nation
itselfor, at least this was the case until the most recent times.
However, like their fellow citizens, but this time with specic consequences, French Jews became involved in the rediscovery of regional
lands and cultures. This phenomenon resulted from the decentralization laws of 1981 which gave legitimacy to varieties of observance through the reconstruction of collective beliefs in the public
sphere. The outcome has been a sort of bottom-up communitarization that draws on the visibility of political and consistorial institutions that intervene in public debate and marks a relative Judaizing
of the public sphere. This process has been further enhanced by the
sociability of Jewish immigration that originated in the decolonization of Northern Africa. These immigrants brought a mode of collective sociability and modes of religious observance that led to a
paradoxical and unexpected regeneration of French Judaism. This
can be seen in the Hebrew letters on storefronts and private schools,
which, like private Catholic schools, are experiencing a period of
growth. Additionally visible is the American-style presence of identiable
Jewish attire and skullcaps. In some neighbourhoods and suburbs of
Paris and in several large cities, such as Strasbourg, this public show
of particularism has even led to the symbolic demarcation of public
areas devoted to religious observance. Part of this new found public identity is apparent on festival days such as Torah Day, which
can attract 30,000 people, and large demonstrations, e.g., in support
of Israel. There has also been an undeniable return to an immediately identiable Jewish presence in the national space, a sort of

is the french model in decline?

17

nation-within-the-nation. This phenomenon seems compatible with

the wishes of a Mirabeau but not with those of an abb Grgoire.
A surprising but deliberate top-down communitarianism, implemented by the state, is also taking place. One cannot deny that
France is steadily acknowledging the existence of one community
after another even in the public sphere, e.g., unhesitantly granting
Corsica dispensatory privileges in respect to public law. This tendency,
indicative of the Girondinization of French society, is clearly a
source of mutual cultural enrichment but also a dicult path to
navigate for a nation-state that rests on highly universalistic foundations.
This top-down forging of communities aects Jewish circles in particular
because the highest authorities of the state and the mass media have
been urging these circles to view themselves as an organized community. This behaviour reinforces the aforementioned bottom-up
communitarization which in the wane of the state is gaining legitimacy
and visibility with each passing day. The bottom-up community formation is aecting the entire range of collective cultural identities.
However, it further destabilizes the Jewish destiny by asking it to
distance itself from its militant citizenship in order to accept collective
structures that many reject.
Many French Jews have worked hard to recreate an imagined
community within society which is recognized by the public authorities and legitimized by making amends. A home for French Jews
has thus been created within the nation. In this sense, they are moving away from the state and challenging their traditional vertical
alliance with the authorities. Moreover, like their fellow citizens, they
seem increasingly inclined to espouse associative ideals or a market
individualism that attracts the elites who were formerly so devoted
to the state. France in general seem to be slipping gradually into
the mode of a weak American-type state in which the market is
dominant. Citizens seem to be adopting an associative and cultural
lifestyle that legitimizes a wide range of multiculturalism and armative
action. In this sense, the Republican model has been shaken for all.
Yet, the situation has critical eects on the integration of French
Jews in particular who have been thrust into negotiations or horizontal clashes to the detriment of their traditional vertical relations
with the state. Even though Jews still appeal for the intervention and
the protection of the state, they suddenly nd themselves much more
alone if not isolated, and are viewed as a specic group that actually
has little impact on national political life. These feelings of isolation,

18

pierre birnbaum

one can assume, are directly tied to the fact that they account for
less than one percent of the French population. Their electoral clout
in this type of American mode of political cooptation, based on the
quest for specic collective advantages designed to ensure voter delity,
is suddenly even more reduced as political parties are quick to emphasize their candidates ethnic backgrounds to attract multiple-identity
voters. In the previous scenario of a strong state and an active citizenry, Jews were often symbolically at the heart of French politics
and their presence in Republican politics attracted nationalistic hatred
of those who wished to pick a ght with the Republic. Today, amidst
the receding of the state and the general retreat vis--vis society, the
hard-won consensus about the Republican armour of the nation has
caused Jews to lose some of their centrality. That is, after generations of being State Jews, French Jews today hardly participate in
the state service anymore; those who do have become more discreet.
In their place, the Jewish community has become more visible. It
seems to be as though Vichys betrayal of high-ranking Jewish civil
servants still weighs heavily on the minds of French Jews and encourages them to retire from history to the less exposed niches within
the social system.
Nevertheless, French Jews cannot escape history, let alone the
direct blow that it is dealing them today. Suddenly, they have been
plunged into a situation beyond their control in that their options
are dictated by new considerations. The adverse eects of lessened
state intervention may have a long-lasting inuence, making the status
of Jews in the nation, now nally pluralistic, more fragile. The state
has become less protective and somewhat unifying and reductive of
specic cultures. The advantages and disadvantages of the former
Republican contract will no longer be the same. The now-legitimized,
although limited, Americanization of French cultural pluralism is
leading to unpredictable outcomes. The rivalry or potential clashes
that the consolidation of the nation-state attenuated considerably are
now free to resurface. These risks are even more probable in the
imaginary French political landscape shaped by the nation-state that
has always shied away from multiple allegiances, or the diverse loyalties that are commonplace in the U.S.
In American culture, based on so many waves of immigration
from so many backgrounds, the coexistence between adherence to
fundamental constitutional values and lasting and strong ties with
distant mother countries is taken for granted. The multiple allegiances

is the french model in decline?

19

do not come into deep conict even though in some cases a national
policy that is considered unjust with respect to a country to which
some Americans maintain natural loyalties may cause rancour and
discontent. These frustrations have never led to internal clashes,
except perhaps in the nineteenth century regarding Catholics. The
occasionally violent conicts between African-Americans and AsianAmericans, Latin Americans, or Jews remain above all at the level
of competition for control of scarce economic resources; they are not
translations of purely political attitudes resulting from anities that
lie outside American society and viewed as antagonistic. These tensions in no way mirror conicts that, in other countries, create opposition between cultures. Everyone nds a home in American society,
more or less, and preserves external allegiances and memories.
The same cannot necessarily be said for French society, which
today, like American society, is composed of waves of immigration.
In modern times, France and the U.S. are the two best examples
of societies with high immigration rates. The former, however, has
long been striving to integrate its immigrants. The latter has opted so
strongly to respect multiple identities that it accepts each individuals
right to dene his or her identity to various degrees in a hyphenated style. In this hyphenation, it is the left-hand side of the equation (e.g., Italian-American) that dominates the right-hand side, thereby
reducing the platform of shared values to a minimum. No one in
the U.S. nds it disturbing that American cultural groups assert close
relations with their countries of origin. In France, across the entire
spectrum, the hypothesis of multiple allegiances is not considered
credible, and the idea that French Jews could remain loyal to their
French citizenship while proclaiming their ties with Israel has never
ceased to astonish and be troublesome. As a result, in France, the
sudden withdrawal of the state and the rise of individualisms in the
public sphere have brusquely left imaginary communities with no
real face-to-face empirical reality. These communities are profoundly
heterogeneous, unequipped with any collective capacity, inconsistent,
and composed of myriad individuals with conicting values. Thus, it
is uncertain that as France slowly grows more multicultural and multiethnic, the history of French Jewry will shift from the margins to
the center. Indeed, the Jews, who have now become just one minority
among others, may abandon their traditional classic vertical alliance
with the state, which has protected them from the hostile masses
and made them key players in the Franco-French wars. Thus, instead

20

pierre birnbaum

of moving toward the center, they may marginalize themselves and

leave history behind, abandoning a prime historical function within
the French model, the one that has given them a royal road to
emancipation since the nineteenth century.
One of the immediate outcomes of the growing ethnicity of the
French public sphere has been an upturn in communitarization, suddenly placing Jews side-by-side with citizens from North African who
now outnumber them by ve to six million versus 600,000700,000.
The conict between Israel and the Palestinians is becoming increasingly visible in metropolitan France, where a certain proportion of
North African immigrant youth has adopted the Palestinian struggle
by turning it against French Jews, whom they accuse of pledging
their loyalty to the Jewish state. Young people from the suburbs who
used to be close to the Jews of France, including leaders of very
active organizations such as SOS-racism, are very clearly behind a
large number of hostile acts against French Jewry, using violently
anti-Semitic slogans disseminated in Arab countries. Some of them
have committed acts of violence unheralded in French history.
Numerous synagogues have been torched or attacked with rebombs,
shots have been red or stones thrown (at several synagogues in various arrondissements of Paris, but also in Trappes, Les Ulis, Bondy,
Aulnay-sous-Bois, Versailles, Bagnolet, Villepinte, Lilas, Noisy-le-Sec,
Vincennes, Saint Denis, Sarcelles, Creteil, Aubervilliers, Meaux,
Garges-les-Gonesses, Colombes, Clichy-sous-Bois, Stains, Noisiel,
Bagneux, Lyons, Villeurbanne, Strasbourg, Lille, Nice, Rouen, Avignon,
etc.). Mezuzas are systematically ripped o walls, several schools have
been attacked or have been targets of rebombs (from Paris and
Sarcelles to Marseilles), rabbis have been assaulted, children physically harassed in the street, school buses attacked, and insults hurled
at passersby. Anti-Semitic grati such as Death to the Jews has
been written on synagogues or Jewish-owned shops, as well as swastikas
or messages such as All the Jews into the sea, Exterminate the
Jews, Long Live Bin Laden, Long Live Palestine, Allah is
great, and Dirty Jew go back to Israel. Some Jews have received
personal death threats in their own homes. The list of violent acts
throughout France, from Paris and its suburbs to Toulon, Strasbourg,
and Bayonne, grows with each passing day (Hyman, 1998: 218).
Aside from the Vichy era and the Nazi occupation, the country has
not experienced this type of situation since the French Revolution,
i.e., since the rise of the nation-state.

is the french model in decline?

21

A comparison of anti-Semitic incidents in 1898 with those in 2001

reveals many dierences (Birnbaum, 1998). In 2001, the streets of
the capital and most large and medium-sized peripheral cities did
not teem with crowds of thousands or, at times, tens of thousands
of people screaming vicious slogans and continually calling out the
old standby Death to the Jews. Though, this slogan was heard
several months ago in the streets of Paris at the end of an anti-Israel
demonstration and, also, may reoccur here and there, voiced furtively
against rabbis or passersby. However, this would not be comparable to the whirlwind of 1898 when this cry was echoed shamelessly
by angry crowds, taken up by the national press, and shouted in
political meetings that nationally known public gures attended. Back
then, this uncompromising rejection of a Jewish presence in French
society was part of the political landscape; the goal was to exclude
Jews from citizenship and the public sphere by expelling or destroying
them. The public dimension of the anti-Semitic mobilization a century
ago cannot be likened to what is happening today. Though, it can
be noted that acts of anti-Semitism today are low-prole in the populist press. In most cases, the press reports these attacks on the back
pages, disposing of them in a few lines among reports about paedophiles, run-over dogs, and trac accidents. Today, as compared
to the past waves of anti-Semitism, there are fewer people physically
wounded but more attacks on synagogues and schools. Communitarization has made the Jewish presence more visible; instead of small
shops, synagogues and schools in suburbs or provincial cities are the
targeted Jewish institutions. Anti-Semitism is no longer accompanied,
as it was at the end of the nineteenth century, by an unleashing of
propaganda through libel, songs, caricatures, and toys. It is reduced
to these frontal attacks against property, individuals, schoolchildren,
and Jewish professors, who are assaulted, insulted, and harassed. Despite
the visibility of anti-Semitism, France is not in a state of internal siege
as it was in the past. Police and the army maintain order by conducting tireless patrols, charging demonstrators, and standing guard in
front of Jewish buildings. France remains peaceful and seemingly
untroubled; even arson of synagogues, which is spreading like a lit
fuse, and the aforementioned attacks on individuals, which are not the
outcome of mere rumour, pose no threat to public security.
Populist nationalism has lost the vitality that characterized it in
the Dreyfus Aair period. The alliance among Drumont, Blanqui,
and Barres disintegrated long ago, primarily because of a radical

22

pierre birnbaum

change in the positions of the Catholic Church. Whereas in the late

nineteenth century the Church supported anti-Semitic mobilization,
at least through the mediation of priests or political groups with
which it was connected, it now rmly condemns the activities of Le
Pens National Front. The Church of France today acknowledges
the fundamental multiculturalism of French society, accepts its own
status as only one of the many cultural constituents of the nation,
and considers Jews an integral part of French society. Consequently,
the outlets of anti-Semitism have changed considerably, nding today
only weak support among social forces that were inuenced in the
past by Catholicism. The inuence of the Catholic Church in general
has also declined signicantly due to the decline in observance and
to a deliberate retreat on the part of the Church, which has permanently sided with the Republic and no longer lends its support
to fractional groups that may wish to oppose it. Leftist anti-Semitism,
too, which was once extremely virulent in French society, has also
lost most of its impact. The inuence of Proudhon, Fourier, and the
Communist Party, which made anti-Semitic accusations as recently
as the 1950s, has also waned. This has further attenuated the traditional anti-Semitism which drew its inspiration from both the
Catholic camp and its adversary, the anti-capitalist Left, which easily
paired its denunciations of capitalism with accusations against Jews.
Today, the situation is far dierent. The source of contemporary
anti-Semitism is found mainly in the societal changes that are aected
by the conictual processes of communitarization.
In other words, contemporary France as a nation, unlike France
during the Dreyfus era, seems only marginally involved in the new
resurgence of anti-Semitism, which this time challenges neither the
countrys national institutions nor the Republican nature of its regime.
Yet, the state does not make itself heard today as clearly and rmly
as it did in late 1898 when the elites nally realized that the Republic
itself was being threatened. Even today, apart from a few lip-service
condemnations at the highest ranks of the state apparatus, there have
been no ocial statements making explicit that the perpetrators of
anti-Semitic acts will be brought to justice. The police have done
little if anything to arrest those who have attacked Jews or their
property. The legal system as well has been slow to condemn them
severely (a few individuals, mostly of North African decent, have
been arrested and given extremely light sentences). Accused of being
alarmist if not provocative, the few people who have rmly denounced

is the french model in decline?

23

these activities are frequently Jews themselves. The Jews of France

feel threatened in regards to their status, their future, and the civil
rights that they have exercised since they enthusiastically signed
the Republican contract. Now that they have become a tiny minority,
they seemingly nd themselves less under the protective umbrella of
a state that itself is retreating and seems to have given social forces
free rein. It is as though the much-touted Americanization has also
animated overall political strategies designed less as a function of broad
political platforms or global visions than as a search for key votes at
election time. In this situation in which relativist strategies of all types
vie against each other, another form of relativism with explicitly antiSemitic consequences that reinforce prejudices is also on the rise.
According to a poll in February 2002, 51 percent of French youth
feel that it is wrong to condemn people who hold Holocaust-denying
opinions. Given that 34 percent of those polled feel that Jew-bashing
jokes are nothing serious, it may be seen that even though the vast
majority of these youths severely condemn attacks on synagogues
(although disturbingly enough, only 75 percent), the mindset of the
times can hardly be described as staunchly philo-semitic.
As for acceptance of Jews in the public sphere, disastrous impacts
were felt after the release of the Boniface report, which was commissioned by the Socialist Party and signed by Pascal Boniface, who
is the director of the Institute of International and Strategic Relations
and an expert with Socialist leanings. Written as an internal memo
for the Socialist Party and addressed to the party leaders, the document,
titled The Near East, the Socialists, International Equity, [and] Electoral
Eciency, was revealed publicly by the monthly LArche in November
2001. The text contains the following shocking passage:
The connection between the ght against anti-Semitism and the defence
of Israel at all costs [will have the outcome of ] increasing irritation
against the Jewish community [and] isolating it on the national level. . . .
By counting on its electoral clout to ensure the impunity of the Israeli
government, the Jewish community is also the loser on this score in
the medium term. The Arab/Moslem community is also organized, at
least in France, and will soon weigh more heavily if it is already not
the case. . . . An attitude judged to be unbalanced as regards the Middle
East will conrm that the Arab-Moslem community is not being taken
into account or is even being rejected by the Socialist family. The
situation in the Middle East and the hesitancy of the Socialists to
condemn Israeli repression reinforces a turning inward of Moslem
identities in France, which nobodyJews, Moslems, Christians, or the

24

pierre birnbaum
nonreligiouscan be happy about. It is certainly better to lose an election than ones soul. But by putting the Israeli government and the
Palestinians on the same level, we are simply risking to lose both. Is
support for Sharon worth losing in 2002? It is high time that the
Socialist Party depart from a position that it hoped to be balanced
between the Israeli government and the Palestinianswhich does not
serve but in fact undermines the medium-term interests of the Israeli
people and the French Jewish community (LArche, 1011/2001: 1415).

There are probably other documents like the Boniface report, written
by spin-doctors of the rightist parties who are intent on winning over
and consolidating the votes of French Muslim citizens, as though
these citizens were a homogenous bloc that a well-designed policy
of distance from Israel could attract on this basis alone. Today it is
known that special interests guided by ethnic or cultural ties in the
public sphere are gaining ground in France. In the Third Arrondissement of Paris and in Sarcelles, for example, the list of candidates
reects the local presence of a Jewish population. In the Eighteenth
Arrondissement, it responds to the large number of French-Asian
residents. This tendency is accentuated in every election campaign
from Paris to Lyons, Marseilles or Roubaix, in the selection of candidates whose names suggest a background related to North African
immigration. The ethnicization of politics (Geisser, 1997) is making
inroads, to various degrees, in all political parties as they try to
attract the votes of this important minority, which stands at 46 million and represented (by conservative estimates) a million voters. The
600,000700,000 Jews of France, in contrast, are practically nonexistent in terms of political leverage. Apart from their common rejection of Le Pen, Jews vote across the political spectrum and generally
reject the ethnic strategy by objecting to the idea of a presumed
Jewish vote (Strudel, 1996). Their voting accurately mirrors the voting
patterns of non-Jewish citizens. Furthermore, there is no guarantee
that some French of Muslim decent would respond to this ethnicization
of politics, which may prove repulsive to many individuals who are
eager to follow the path to Republican emancipation by rejecting
calls for communal voting of this type.3

Until recently, most authoritative works showed that French people of North
African background were concerned above all with integration and restriction of
religious observance to the private spheresee Leveau, Rmy, and Kepel, Gilles,
eds., 1988; Cesari, 1977; Vieillard-Baron, 1994. Tribalat, 1996.

is the french model in decline?

25

Be this as it may, the Boniface report represents a turning point

by its legitimization of a policy based on ethnic utility. It is unprecedented because it sets forth a community policy that favors one
community over another, with both communities evaluated solely
on the basis of their potential votes in the upcoming national elections.
It profoundly devalues the political undertakings of parties on behalf
of moral or even ideological imperatives alone and severely challenges
the universal nature of the public sphere, in which citizens are presumed to act on the basis of personal values and not according to
their attachment to a nation-within-the-nation. It attempts to build
collective identities that are in fact unstable, contradictory, and increasingly imaginary in the minds of the individuals involved. The Boniface
document virtually appears to justify the current outbreak of antiSemitism by holding the Jews culpable due to their allegedly overly
strong ties with Israel. It also condemns the very principle of full
but plural citizenship in the public sphere where citizenship asserts
its right to preserve other extra-national ties that are perceived as
legitimate when anchored in memory or history.
As a result, some Jews are belittling the current wave of anti-Semitic
acts, considering them the work of idiots and deeming themselves
obliged to proclaim, loud and clear, that they are French only.
This proclamation expresses the fear among Jews that any other attitude would lead to a sense of dual allegiance and dual membership which is a status contrary to the interests of the Jews of France
and the national community (Israel, 2002).
The communitarization of dierent groups or a splintering of the
public sphere into rival clans that would negate the idea of the public
sphere all together is a threat to the French model. On the other
hand, the acknowledgment of the multiplicity of imaginary collectives
and solidarities, both internal and external, and not predictive collective
behaviours that verge on treason, can enrich French society. Otherwise,
we are dealing with a recurrence of the Dreyfus Aair, with the
Jews collectively accused once again of serving a foreign power
no longer Germany, as in the past, but the State of Israel. The
Jewish citizens of France do not react as a community or as a nationwithin-the-nation and are careful not to do so since they are acutely
aware that this act would distance them from the Republican contract.
It is high time that if we wish to abate the current intolerable outbreak
of anti-Semitism, we stop being afraid of expressing these multiple
solidarities but nevertheless to oppose, now more than ever, a state

26

pierre birnbaum

that remains exasperatingly silent, thereby allowing various groups

to transpose foreign conicts into the national space. Precisely because
dina de malkhuta dinathe law of the Republic is the lawit behoves
that the law protect all citizens who abide by it without forcing them
to abandon their personal loyalty to their own memories and cultures.
Citizenship is in no way incompatible with identity. In this vein,
identity can in no way be used to make the numerous anti-Semitic
acts towards French Jews acceptable. At the same time, it is clear
that although the Jews have not questioned their integration into the
Republic despite the anti-Semitism they faced during the Dreyfus
era; although they have tried to forget the treason committed against
them by the state during the Vichy years by taking into account the
German presence and the assistance rendered by the French population; although they have continually viewed France as a natural
home that enables them to exercise full rights as citizens, the situation today threatens to place them on the razors edge in an unstable context that arouses from the multiple loyalties experienced more
intensely than ever.

CHAPTER TWO

THE CASE OF BELGIUM

Jean-Philippe Schreiber
Jewish individual identity lies between memory, sentimental or intellectual adhesion, socio-religious membership, and ortho-praxy. Within
the web of relationships that makes up an individuals Jewish identity,
a Jewish collective identity exists which itself is composed of various
relationships. Evidence of this collective identity is found, in part, in
the shaping of a community, sometimes more imagined then real.
The dierent identity and behaviour patterns among Jews are largely
due to internal and external factors. Internal factors are the community
organization type, local traditions, and sociological face of the community, while external factors of particular importance are the type
of citizenship oered to Jews, their status in society, and relationship
to the state. In this chapter, the case of Belgium Jews is presented
as one community model highly inuenced, like other communities,
by external factors relating to the state and society.1
From a comparative perspective, we see very dierent models of
community within the Jewish world inuenced by external factors.
In the United States, for example, the centrality of ethnic identity
is constitutive of social construction that has shaped the perceptions
of self among Jews. In Greece, the structure of the Jewish community
can only be understood in the context of the Jews as a minority in
the margins of the Greek Orthodox nation. In France, where the
state is guided by social assimilation, the Jews have been great supporters of the Republic. The case of Belgium is somewhat comparable
to that of France, though, as will be discussed, there are several
dierences as well.
Since the nineteenth century, Belgian Jews have been confronted with
a number of issues that contributed to the shaping of their collective
identity: most important among them being a complex connection

1
See Jean-Philippe Schreiber, 1994a (pp. 415440); 1994b (pp. 8796); 1995;
1997 (pp. 9197).

28

jean-philippe schreiber

with the tradition, a particular relationship to modernity, and a paradoxical interaction of integration with the local culture and particularism. An example that illustrates the interplay of interaction with
the larger society combined with acute particularism is symbolically
apparent in the architecture of the Great Synagogue on Regency
street in Brussels established in 1878. In its roman-byzantine style
one can see the two faces of the historical interaction of Jews with
their environment. The Jewish roots of the architecture are shown
in the Byzantine Orient style. This style, however, combines with
Roman Occident style which can be understood as a representation
of Christian civilization. Thus, the synagogue architecture can be
seen as an intersection between its own Jewish tradition, on the one
hand, and outside inuence, on the other hand. Though, as will be
demonstrated, there is here also an assertion of Jewish particularism
over integration.
A Segmented Society
Since the second half of the nineteenth century, the social and political scene in Belgian society has become more and more polarized.
There is a clear partition on the basis of philosophical and religious
identication that has slowed down the process of integration of
immigrants. In this situation, the Jews constituted their own pillar
arming their particularism within the Belgian framework. Separation
between Jews and non Jews was both a measure of respect for the
religious tradition and acknowledgement of cultural and social
dierences within society. Belgian society thereby perpetuated a vision
of the Jews which went beyond religious otherness. The Consistory
itself, the ocial roof organization of Belgian Jewry, professed an
ideology of integration, but persisted in contributing to maintaining
Jews as a minority which it hoped to see recognized in the legal
framework of the Belgian society.
Thus, the context of Belgian society led to the development of a
Jewish community as a constitutive pillar of the national coexistence.
In general, Belgian society was less inclined towards standardization
than French society. Hence, contrary to the situation in France, in
Belgium, the will of integration of the Jews had not to be justied
by their capability to adapt to the Nation. Cleavages between Catholics
and Liberals, which were increasingly accentuated since the second

the case of belgium

29

part of the nineteenth century, left room for assertion of dierences

in the religious sphere. Indeed, this division contributed to slow down
the complete assimilation of the Jewish population.
Because of the political and religious context of Belgium, along
with the will of the Jewish population to preserve its traditions, Jewish
leaders were determined to mark the presence of Judaism in the
public sphere. They did this in spite of their clear policy of integration
into Belgium society. In their eyes, the acquisition of equality did
not mean only abrogation of civil discriminations but also the right
for the Jews to arm their identity like other groups in the Nation.
Church and State
Belgium has not instituted an unambiguous separation of religion and
state. Six denominations are ocially recognized and are supported
nancially by the state on behalf of their assumed social utility. Moreover,
for a variety of reasons, Belgium Authorities also favor orthodox forces
within religious communities, which is nothing but impactful on the
game of religious denominations within the Jewish community. Hence,
while observers might see the Consistory as rather secular and pluralistic, it is actually dominated by orthodoxy notwithstanding the
genuine sociological texture of the Belgian Jewish population.
This tendency is widely accounted for by the policy of the Belgian
state vis--vis the religious communities which encourages homogeneity.
In doing so, it contributes to create a facade of a monolithic religious
organization where diversity can be manifested only within the recognized and legitimate framework. This ctional representation of
religious life rests on a system inherited from the nineteenth century
when the vertical model of the Roman Catholic Church was still in
vigor. This univocal top down structure of religious life implies many
consequences; one of the most important of which concerns the educational system.
As a result of the religion-state compromise in Belgium, private
denominational schools, known as free schools, are common. Subsequently, there is not a single integrating educational melting pot,
but rather a coexistence of systems which convey divergent values.
Like elsewhere, in the schools the social practices are marked by
the role of religious organizations and their inuence on the individuals in their orbit. In this system there are also Jewish schools

30

jean-philippe schreiber

which are motivated both by external factors, complying with the

norm, and by internal factors, preserving the tradition. Today, for
instance, in the Jewish community of Antwerp, approximately 90% of
the children attend a Jewish school. This, however, by no way means
that the majority of the Jewish population of Antwerp is religious.
Part of an explanation for the ties to religious schools lies in the
fact that religion is here, vis--vis outsiders, a marker of the Jewish
community. This means that the community is invested rst and
foremost in religious references. As a consequence, religion, as a symbolic system, constitutes the cultural reference and the framework
for socialization. Religion, moreover, appears as a singular unit,
despite the diversity in forms which it may take on throughout the
Jewish population, and receives as such objectively exaggerated social
weight within the community.
Conclusion
What can be concluded from this short analysis is that despite the
signicant transformations that the Jewish community has undergone
for a century, it has perpetuated, sometimes eectively and sometimes symbolically, a basic duality. On the one hand Belgian Jews
are extremely ideologically tinted by the concept of integration, and
on the other hand, they have perpetuated a variety of practices of
social particularism. This duality stems both from internal factors,
its specic social and cultural practices, and from external ones, such
as Belgiums political and legal establishment.
However, this singularity of Belgian Jewry is in no way static. In
the nineteenth century Jewry was marked mostly by its armed presence in the public space. Today, what marks the self-assertion of the
Jewish community is most often memory and the interest in Israel.
In Belgium, a de facto multicultural society in search for a denition
for its modes of citizenship, Jewish identity is suspended between two
worlds, without denite borders. In a society which has not made
clear choices regarding the type of citizenship it wishes to promote,
the collective identity of Jews oscillates between ethnicity (or particularism) and cultural fusion, between the mental ghetto and the plurality of identication.

CHAPTER THREE

THE IDENTITY OF DUTCH JEWS

Ludo Abicht
When it comes to the case of Dutch Jews, an interesting fact worth
noting is the case of the Dutch Jewish Social Welfare Organization,
the Joods Maatschappelijk Werk ( JMW). This organization, established in 1947 to coordinate social welfare programs for the postwar Jewish community and which devoted its activities to the
implementation of the Law for Payments to the War Victims, is
today, among its other projects, organizing seminars on the question
of Jewish Identity. At the same time, it is also heavily invested in
psychological services at the intention of the post-war generation, the
children and grandchildren of survivors of the Shoah. One learns
from this development of the JMW that the question of Jewish identity in the Netherlands is closely linked to traumatic wartime experiences, to the relations between the Jewish minority and the non-Jewish
Dutch majority, as well as to the Jews relationship with Israel. And
though some basic features of the Jewish presence in the Netherlands
such as the division between Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities
or the Liberal versus orthodox congregationsare rooted in centuries of history, it is impossible to deny that the systematic destruction of Dutch Jewry in World War II has deeply aected Jewish life
in Holland.
Pre-World War II Era: A Success Story
Until 1939, the history of Jewish immigration and expansion of the
Jewish community in the Netherlands may be described as a success story. After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal
at the end of the fteenth century, and their ight from Antwerp
and the occupied Southern Netherlands after 1585, the new Dutch
Republic became one of the havens for the persecuted Sephardic
Jews who, either as Marranos or Orthodox Jews, gradually but steadily
conquered the right to fully participate in the building of the new

32

ludo abicht

State and its rapidly expanding merchant empire. The Dutch Calvinists,
who considered themselves to be the new Hebrews, rediscovered the
central importance of the Bible and were as critical of idolatry and
images as were the Jews. They often felt closer to Judaism than to
their Roman Catholic ancestors. This new respect for Judaism, however, did not translate into open and full acceptance and emancipation of Sephardic immigrants. Sephardic Jews faced numerous
setbacks, professional restrictions, settlement prohibitions and even
persecutions during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. However,
compared to the situation of the Jews in other European countries,
the overall picture was positive. Sephardic Jews played a signicant
part in the development of the Golden Age of the Netherlands; they
were shareholders in the powerful East India Company, became
prominent in new industries, especially in sugar reneries and the
diamond industry, and in book printing and editing. They were at
the forefront of cultural activities and felt safe enough to openly
practice their Judaism. These Sephardic Jews played a remarkable
role in the Shabbatean movement, although the ultimate demise of
that messianic movement led also to an estrangement from the
Orthodox congregations and marked the beginning of a new trend
toward assimilation into the non-Jewish Dutch society that gained
impact until the beginning of World War II and the Nazi occupation.
Starting in 1620, many Ashkenazi Jews moved to the Netherlands,
rst from Germany and later increasingly from Poland and Lithuania.
They rapidly outnumbered the Sephardic community, although it would
take them until the end of the eighteenth century before they could
assume a leading role in the Jewish community. Unlike the Sephardic
merchants and diamond traders, they were mainly peddlers, butchers
and cattle dealers who spoke Yiddish mixed with Dutch words. Under
their inuence, it is to note, the Dutch language spoken in the
Netherlands came to adopt a large number of Yiddish words and
expressions. This can be interpreted as a sign of a growing symbiosis
and interactivity between Jewish and non-Jewish Dutch people.
When on September 2, 1796 the Batavian Republic, under French
occupation, granted full emancipation to the Jews, the majority of
the Sephardic Jews did not share in the enthusiasm of the mainly
Ashkenazi republican patriots, for the price of this new freedom
was an increasing pressure upon the Jews to enter the mainstream
of Dutch society. The Jews were now forced to adopt a Dutch surname and encouraged to give up Yiddish in favor of Dutch. Just as

the identity of dutch jews

33

Napoleon before him, King William I (18151840) wanted to organize the Jewish population as a national institution, representing the
Ashkenazi Dutch-Israelite and the Sephardic Dutch-Portuguese
communities. The expectation of total integration in this respect was,
however, to be successful mainly among the Jewish upper classes,
several members of which became prominent as scholars, writers and
politicians. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the Jewish
working class in the large cities, especially Amsterdam, played a
prominent role in the trade unions and the socialist movement under
the leadership of people like A. C. Wertheim and Henry Polak, a
founder of the diamond industry trade union.
Paradoxically but in hindsight not surprisingly, this ongoing political,
cultural and social emancipation resulted in a slow decline of the
Jewish community during the rst half of the twentieth century. The
Jewish leadership had become more and more secular and emphasized charitable institutions ( Jewish hospitals, old age homes etc.)
over religious and cultural Jewish education. Concomittantly, the
number of mixed marriages rose from 13% in 1901 to 41% in 1930.
Today, that number is estimated at more than 50%.
Before World War II, Jews played an important, but not typically
Jewish, role in Dutch society. They were successful in the textile
industry, in chain department stores, in the food industry, in the liberal professions, in science, politics and the arts. One cannot study
twentieth century Dutch literature without mentioning names such
as Herman Heijermans, Jacob Israel de Haan, Carry van Bruggen
or Israel Querido, to name just a few. Others became famous as
musicians, composers, theatre actors, painters, sculptors and architects.
In 1939, it seemed that the integration and emancipation of the Jews
in Dutch society had been a resounding success, although it had also
resulted in the decline of religious and even cultural Jewish life.
The Disaster and its Aftermath
In 1940, there were 140,000 Jews in Holland: 121,400 Ashkenazim,
4,301 Sephardim and 12,400 not religiously aliated. The overwhelming majority of these Jews were murdered in the Shoah.
Although only a small number of Dutch national-socialists took an
active part in the deportations and although many Christians and
communists risked their lives trying to rescue their Jewish fellow citizens,

34

ludo abicht

these gures speak for themselves. What was once a ourishing,

inuential, largely prosperous, culturally creative and highly respected
segment of the Dutch population had been wiped out by the Nazis
and their local collaborators. The steady development of the Jewish
community in the Netherlands had been brutally interrupted. After
the German defeat, the Shoah survivors and their children could not
possibly reconstruct the glorious past nor regain the condence they
had felt in the mid-thirties. After the war, some 4,500 of these survivors left for the United States, Israel, Canada and Australia. Others
decided to stay and, in a sense, give the diaspora in the Netherlands
a second chance.
At the end of 1992, the Jewish population amounted to 25,000
out of a total population of 15,250,000. This gure of persons of
Jewish origin has to be compared with the gures of those Jews
who are members of a religious congregation: The Netherlands
Ashkenazi Congregation (Nederlands Isralitisch Kerkgenootschap)
had 5,600 members, the Sephardic Community about 500, partly
due to recent immigrations of Moroccan and Iraqi Jews, and the
Liberal Jewish Congregation had about 2,250. Which means that
the majority of the Dutch Jews were no longer religiously aliated,
although became active in Zionist or pro-Israel organizations. This
large secularisation contributed and still contributes to the growing
number of mixed marriages and, hence, the renewed interest in the
question of Jewish identity.
Dutch Jewish Identity
In Holland, we are not talking about Jews in the Netherlands but
about Dutch Jews, i.e. Jews who rightfully consider themselves
Dutch citizens or, vice versa, Dutch citizens who explicitly assume
their Jewishness. One can add to this the conscious or semi-conscious
ties to their previous countries of origin as expressed by their
Portuguese, Polish or German surnames, in some cases by their
knowledge of Yiddish or, more generally, their interest in cultural
and historic roots and by their loyalty to the State of Israel. Indeed,
all this points in the direction of multiple or layered identities. For
many, Jewishness is grounded in a broad range of sources: national,
historic, linguistic, cultural, philosophical, or ethical. For those who

the identity of dutch jews

35

survived the Shoah, identity is of course deeply tied to the Shoah

and its memory.
Unlike their relatives in Eastern Europe, Dutch Jews share a
memory of a past characterized by freedom and cooperation with
their non-Jewish fellow citizens. Unlike their relatives and friends
who lived in the USA before World War II, they also share the
memory of the Shoah that destroyed their families. Of course, in all
cases of Jewry, the Shoah plays a major part in their search for
Jewish identity. Though, for Dutch Jews, the existential particularism
of this memory resides in their walking on the same streets from
where parents and siblings were deported to the death camps. This
experience is quite dierent from that of individuals visiting an impressive Holocaust Museum like in Washington D.C. that has been
erected thousands of kilometers from the scene where the Holocaust
took place.
Arthur Hertzberg, the former president of the American Jewish
Committee, spoke of this memory of the Shoah, and emphasized
that together with the loyalty to the State of Israel, these are the
two essentials of American Jewish consciousness. It is in this context
that, later on, he commented that the messianic hope of a future of
peace and justice remains the most important task of Jews today. It
is this sense of Tikkun Olam that I nd so attractive. Dutch Jews in
the seventeenth century eagerly awaited the coming of the Messiah
who would rescue them. Some of their descendants of the twentieth
century, vaguely remembering the disaster of that old messianic
movement and very sharply remembering the catastrophe of World
War II, realize that this Tikkun Olam will not happen unless they
begin to make it happen.

CHAPTER FOUR

RUSSIAN- JEWISH IMMIGRATION TO GERMANY

Julius H. Schoeps, Willi Jasper, and Olaf Glckner
At the turn of the twenty-rst century, the World Jewish Congress
(WJC) made an amazing discovery: Berlinthe city where the
Holocaust had been master-minded by German Nazi rule 60 years
priorhas become the place with the most dynamic Jewish community outside Israel. Ten years before, such a development would
have been unimaginable as the European continent was still divided
by the Iron Curtain and the Jewish communities especially in East
Germany were on the verge of demographic vanishing.
But since the rst government of the reunied Germany, encouraged
by the Central Council for Jews in Germany, passed the so called
Contingency refugee act in 1991 which welcomed Jewish inhabitants of the crumbling Soviet Union, nearly 185,000 Russian Jews
found a new home in Germany. Moreover, the constant RussianJewish inux with an annual number of 15,00020,000 has warranted
demographic stability to Germanys Jewish communities and gave a
new chance to their cultural and religious revival.
Most newcomers settle in any of the large citiesBerlin, Munich,
Frankfurt, Cologne or Stuttgartoften resulting in tripling the size
of the local Jewish communitieslike in Cologne and Stuttgartor
doubling itlike in Berlin and Munich. Smaller communitiesfor
instance in Chemnitz and Hallecould reactivate their religious and
cultural life while a considerable number of new communities
Emmendingen, Lrrach, Schwerin, Potsdam and otherswere to be
founded by Russian Jews exclusively.
Berlin actually enjoys most of this unplanned Russian Jewish inux.
The established Jewish community (Einheitsgemeinde) has more than
12,000 members today, compared to 6,400 in 1989. Seven synagogues
are now open for service and community events. Social, cultural,
and educational institutions were built up around Berlin Jewish Communities. German and Russian Jews can now join Jewish kindergardens and secondary schools. Cultural centers, Jewish theatres, and

russian-jewish immigration to germany

37

libraries have drawn an interested audience. In brief, Jewish life has

become an essential aspect of the city. Similar tendencies are visible in Munich and Frankfurt.
Among the immigrants, all age groups are represented, but for the
rst time since 1945, there is a signicant rise of the number of younger
people. All in all, Germany has now the third largest Jewish community in Europeafter France and England. Interestingly enough,
in 2002 even more Russian Jewish immigrants came to Germany
(19,262) than to Israel (18,878). Because of the ongoing Middle East
Conict and a drastic decline of the immigration rates allowed in the
United States of America, Germanys importance as a country of destination has be strenghtened. An additional 80,000 Russian Jews are
waiting for their entry permit to Germany. Some intellectuals are
already talking of a Jewish renaissance in Central Europe.
In actual fact, the integration process is far from being a success
story. In a survey of the Moses Mendelssohn Center, Potsdam, in
1999 more than 50 per cent of the respondents expressed the feeling that their integration problems are unsolved. It was learned that
because of the inux of newcomers, Jewish communities were suering
from nancial weakness as they had to support more and more members badly in need of social and cultural services. Moreover, many
Russian immigrants stay unemployed, nd it hard to learn the German
language, and tend to concentrate among themselveswhat Judit
Kessler callsRussian colonies.1 Furthermore, the veteran Jews are
rarely able to understand Russian cultural codes, and thus remain
quite aloof from Russian Jews, a fact which constitutes weak grounds
for solidifying common Jewish community life.
Cultural Tensions between Veterans and Newcomers in the Jewish Communities
It remains that the Russian-Jewish inux to Germany has been seen as
a historical chance by Jewish leaders in Germany who expressed their
hope for a revival of Jewish life. Though, one diculty in this program
resided in the fact that the immigrants, who came from all parts of the
former Soviet Union, were not a culturally homogeneous group. A
large number, moreover, arrived with very vague notions of Jewishness.

J. Kessler (1998), p. 98.

38

julius h. schoeps, willi jasper, and olaf glckner

This context occasioned many misunderstandings between the old

German community and Russian newcomers from the very beginning. German Jewsalthough mostly non-orthodoxshow a greater
interest in religious service and in observing religious command than
Russian Jews. A part of these veterans speak Hebrew, and share a
sense of responsibility for administrative and community voluntary
work. In contrast, Russian Jews tend to use community institutions
as meeting points and places of communication. They show more
interest in aspects of Jewish history and culture than in religion, and
they primarily see in their Jewishness a matter of ethnicity.
Both sides see these dierences as problematic, but the sharpest
tensions arise around central religious questions. Russian Jews often
consider Halachic rules of Jewishnessmatrilineal descent or conversion, as upsetting. These rules, indeed, mean that non-Jewish
relatives of Jews have to undergo religious conversion, before they
are entitled to all rights and privileges as members of a Jewish community. They tend to claim that their Jewish nationality was actually noted in their former Soviet identity cards, even when it was
not in line with halachic Judaism. In any case, the prospect for their
relatives of undergoing religious conversion sounds unreasonable them.
This drives a number of them to leave the Jewish community and
join the Jewish Cultural Associations or the Liberal Jewish Communities which are more accommodating.
Hence, in East Berlin there is a very active Jewish Cultural Association with about 300 members. Its founders see themselves as
liberal and secular Jews very interested in acquiring and preserving
Jewish knowledge, tradition, and culture. It sustained an artist club
(Meschulasch), professional groups, a choir, and a group of discussion about Middle Eastern problems. Religious issues were here of
secondary importance. Such institutions compete with regular community bodies and therefore often awake protest on the side of representatives of the Central Council for Jews in Germany and of
the Central Welfare Institute of German Jews.
While some Russian Jews prefer their own circles, others are ready
to join the established Jewish communities and to make use of their
growing majority to gain leading positions in executive bodies, thereby
also serving their own specic interests. So, it can also happen that
German-Jewish veterans will become a minority and feel neglected.
The worst scenario would be that the German minorities within the
Jewish community break away from it. But it is also possible to

russian-jewish immigration to germany

39

imagine that dierent religious and traditional movements will cause

a structural split, which would probably mean the end of the Einheitsgemeinde. A brighter alternative could be a cultural and traditional
symbiosis which would require openness and concessions from both
sides. Despite the tensions and misunderstanding, there are still common elds of interest between German Jews and Russian Jews, such
as Jewish education or cultural activities.
As a religious alternative to the more conservative Jewish Communities and in the context of the inux of Russian Jews, the liberal
Union of Progressive Jews in Germany was created in the mid1990s and developed rapidly, numbering thirteen communities in
2005. This movement is part of Reform Judaism which was once
strong in Germany in the early 1930s. Today, it is supported by the
World Union for Progressive Judaism based in the US and numbers several thousands of members in Germany, the majority of whom
are immigrants from the former Soviet Union. In contrast to the
orthodox synagogues aliated with the Central Council of Jews in
Germany, these communities practice less rigorous rites and, more
importantly, accept as full members individuals whose fathers are
Jewish but not their mothers. And indeed, a survey by the Moses
Mendelssohn Center in 1997/1998 shows that a high percentage of
Russian Jews in Germany prefer liberal/reform oriented Judaism
to orthodox Judaism.2
Russian Enclaves
It is also important to bear in mind that Russian Jews in Germany
represent only one group of a wider Russian-speaking category. Ethnic
Germans from the former Soviet UnionAussiedlers are much
more numerous. Moreover, there are also former political migrs
and dissidents, members of the former Soviet Russian administration
in East Berlin, or Russian spouses of Germans who represent a large
percentage of Russian speaking population.3

2
The overwhelming majority (67.1%) however claimed not to be able to identify
with any branch of Judaism or gave no answer. But among those immigrants with
a religious interest we received the following percentages: 22.1% called themselves
liberal/reform oriented, 5.4% orthodox, 1.9% conservative. 3.5% used the
term other.
3
J. Kessler in: Schoeps/Jasper/Vogt (1999), p. 159.

40

julius h. schoeps, willi jasper, and olaf glckner

Surveys have shown that a considerable number of Russian Jews

tend to join other Russian speaking groups in clubs, cultural centers, and schools. This kind of informal network and cultural cohesion can even lead to densely populated Russian neighbourhoods
like in the West Berlin quarter Charlottenburg, popularly called
Charlottengrad. In some large cities, one may even speak of Russian
cultural enclaves. Russian-language media serves as the mouthpiece
of such enclaves, both in Germany and elsewhere. Since the midnineties, Russian Jewish publishers have been active in creating
Russian language newspapers. The rst such newspaper on the scene
was the monthly edition of Kpy (The circle). In autumn of last
year (2002), the monthly journal Ebpeca aea (Jewish Paper)
was established in Berlin with a Jewish readership all over Germany.
Not surprisingly, the Ebpeca aea focuses on integration problems within the Jewish community more so than the non-Jewish
German media. In general, this development eases the immigrants
experience at early stages of resettlement. On the other hand, Russian
speaking enclaves, distant from the German language and society,
can hardly contribute to the successful integration of immigrants.
Economic Diculties and Alienation
Shortly after their arrival, immigrants normally have to solve elementary problems and to care for basic needs before they feel ready
to join associations or communities. This may explain why a signicant
number of Russian Jewish newcomers in Germany are still passive
vis--vis the Jewish communities. One of the central problems is the
constant unemployment of many Russian Jewish immigrants. It is a
fact that nearly 70 per cent of the Russian-Jewish newcomers hold
academic degrees and normally show great exibility in coping with
challenges in their new surrounding. On the other hand, most of
them are very determined to retain their original occupation, which
explains part of the drive to settle in the bigger towns and cities
from the beginning.
Yet, nding lodgings in large cities by no means guarantees better
perspectives in the job market. Berlin, for example, has an overcrowded
labor market in professions like medicine, law, engineering, and art.
As a result, we nd that no less than 60 per cent of Russian Jews

russian-jewish immigration to germany

41

in Berlin today are either unemployed or have low paying jobs.4 At

the same time, the Jewish communities have been trying to help
unemployed immigrants directly. For example, Berlins Jewish community has established its own job agency.
The generally high unemployment rate among Russian Jews
combined with the immigrants exceptionally high professional degrees
can at times lead to an increasing number of psychosomatic disorders,
family conicts, drug abuses and violence. While there are no reliable statistics, integration centers and social services report a rising
number of immigrants with psychological problems. Moreover, a
large number of Russian speaking Jews report that they lack contacts with the native population. 55.9 per cent of the immigrants
surveyed in 1995/96 said that they had unsatisfactory social relationships with inhabitants of the country. The reason for this, according to most respondents, is an insucient command of the language
for adequate communication, as well as cultural dierences. 19.3 per
cent of those surveyed in 1999 stated that they felt rebued by the
German population.5 Especially older, unemployed and widowed
immigrants with little knowledge of German have great diculty in
creating contacts outside their immigrant group. They also refer to
cultural barriers and dierent expectations about public life.
Despite all those diculties, immigrants who have settled in the
big cities are still in a better position than those who undergo their
rst accommodation in rural areas. The latter are away from modern infrastructures, far away from strong Jewish communities and
relatively far away from existing cultural centers.
Conclusion
All in all, the Russian Jewish inux into Germany, initiated by the
collapse of the Soviet State has already led to a surprising stabilization of Jewish community life. The number of Jewish community members has multiplied three-fold which has made the Jewish
population in Germany the third biggest in Europe. Some observers

4
5

J. Kessler (1998), p. 94.

J. H. Schoeps/W. Jasper/B. Vogt (1999), p. 82.

42

julius h. schoeps, willi jasper, and olaf glckner

even see Germany as the core for a Jewish renaissance in Middle

Europe now. Indeed, there are some signs that the Russian Jews
already play the key role for German Jewry in future. Step by
step we can observe Jewish life returning to the public sector. New
synagogues are being built, new community centers are being founded;6
more Jews are entering media, arts, and science.
In general, Russian speaking Jews, who have arrived to Germany
from dierent geographical regions with dierent world views and
social attitudes, are creating their own structures to serve their needs,
while at the same time integrating into the dierent Jewish communities.
Their sheer mass, which now makes up approximately 90 per cent
of the Jewish population, will undoubtably have a role in shaping
the future of German Jewry. However, as for now, the immigrants
are still at an early stage of resettlement insofar as the majority is
unemployed and in need of greater nancial and social stability.

6
There are 104 Jewish communities in Germany now, mainly from the Einheitsgemeinde, but also a dozen of Liberal communities.

CHAPTER FIVE

RELIGIOSITY, PRAXIS, AND TRADITION

IN CONTEMPORARY HUNGARIAN JEWRY
Andrs Kovcs
Between March and November 1999, I carried out a questionnairebased sociological survey on contemporary Hungarian Jewry. The
study investigated demographic data, social and cultural characteristics,
religion and Jewish ancestry as well as the ideological, social and
economic attitudes of the interviewees. A total of 2,015 individuals
age 18 and over were interviewed.1 In the following, survey data are
analyzed with an emphasis on religious praxis and tradition.
Historical Background
The Hungarian Jewish community, nowadays one of the largest on
the European continent, has always followed the historical model of
Western urbanized and secularized Jewry (Mendelsohn, 1983). Partisans
of reform (Neolog) Judaism appeared in the country as early as in the
rst decades of the nineteenth century, and their fast growing inuence
led to a dramatic split in Hungarian Jewry in the mid nineteenth
century. This resulted in the establishment of two separate, autonomous,
Jewish communities, Orthodox and Neolog (Katz, 1998). The policy
of the liberal Hungarian political class created an extremely favorable
atmosphere in the late nineteenth century for the emancipation of
Jews (1867). Civil marriage was introduced rapidly and the Jewish
religion was recognized as one of the countrys historical denominations (1895). Jews condition was further favored by fast urbanization and economic modernization, which gave a push to their quick
upward mobility and cultural assimilation in the Hungarian society.

1
The general results and an analysis of some special aspects of the survey have
been published in Kovcs, 2003 and Kovcs, 2004.

44

andrs kovcs

These conditions decisively accelerated the secularization of Hungarian

Jewry, and already in the rst decade of the twentieth century, nearly
half of the Jewish communities in Hungary were members of Neolog
Judaism.
As a consequence of post World War I treaties, however, Hungary
lost two-third of its former territories, among them the regions of
Upper Hungary, Carpatho-Ruthenia, Northern Transylvania where
the majority of the orthodox Jewry lived, leaving Neology the leading
trend of Judaism on the territory of post-WWI, Hungary.
The Holocaust changed again the religious prole of Hungarian
Jewry. Jewry in peripheral areas happened to be the more religious
and traditional Jews, and it is this Jewry that was nearly completely
annihilated by the Holocaust. The majority of the survivors who
belonged mostly to the more urbanized, assimilated, middle-class
strata were concentrated in Budapest.
Furthermore, in the following decades, the militant antireligious
policies of the Communist regime made Jewish religious life practically
impossible. Following the nal formal suppression of the orthodox
community (1950) and the persecution and forced emigration of
Orthodox leaders and community members in 1956, orthodox Judaism
practically ceased to exist in the country. The Neolog community
lost a great bulk of its members as well and the rare available statistics
indicate that of the 190 pupils enrolled into the Budapest Jewish
School in 1956, just 47 were still there in 1957 (Felkai, 1992; 153,
168). In 19591960, 75 pupils received certicates from the school;
this number rose in the following years to over 100 but then from
1967 it declined steadily to a 1977 low when just 7 pupils were still
studying at the school. It was not until 1986 that the number of
pupils rose once again to more than 30 (Felkai, 1992; 152153).2 In
early 1956 the Budapest Jewish Congregation had 15,000 tax-paying members. After 1956, however, this number fell considerably,
although according to estimates (Stark, 2001) in 1960 at least 115,000

The fact that demographic factors were not the primary cause of the decline
in pupil numbers is proved by the developments of the period after 1990: by the
academic year of 19901991 the school had 119 pupils. Since 1990 the number
of pupils attending Jewish schools in Budapest (four primary schools and three grammar schools) has been approx. 1200. The Congregations school has had about 300
pupils.

religiosity, praxis, and tradition

45

Jews were still living in the country.3 In 1960 the Budapest Jewish
Congregation registered just 12 births, and this number fell even further over the following ten yearsthe congregations records show 3
births in 1965 and 9 births in 1970.
Post-Communist Hungary
Our recent survey focuses on Hungarian Judaism as it evolves today,
after the fall of communism and the liberation from Russian tutelage.
It attempts to map the present-day level of religious observance and
the presence of various elements of Jewish religious-cultural tradition
across generations. The questionnaire contained a series of questions
about religious practices and cultural traditions, asking the extent to
which they were observed or preserved in the respondents parental
families and in their current households. Table 5.1 shows the distribution of answers to the question of religious observance.
Table 5.1. Religious observance in the parental generation and among
the respondents, by age (%)
Behaviors and Father Moth. sample 1825 2635 3645 4655 5665 6675 75+
beliefs (N)
(1936) (1971) (1995) (251) (169) (241) (373) (260) (358) (343)
Observant
15
Observing
Holy Days
30
Non-practicing
believer
12
Not religious
28
Atheist
15
Total
100

16

12

34

25

34

28

26

26

21

23

20

13
27
10
100

17
37
15
100

11
39
10
100

17
42
8
100

13
38
19
100

13
41
16
100

21
38
18
100

18
34
20
100

27
29
12
100

The picture yielded by our data corresponds to our expectations.

Only a small minority (6%) of our respondents belongs to the observant

3
The social background of Jews that emigrated in 1956 may be reconstructed
on the basis of secondary sources alone. In late 1953 the political police compiled
a report for Communist Party General Secretary Mtys Rkosi concerning Jews
who intended to emigrate. The report (Mltunk, 1993, pp. 291292) indicates
approx. 10,000 potential Jewish emigrants, of whom 80% were Orthodox. This
represented approx. 80% of the Orthodox Jewish population. About half of those
who intended to emigrate were aged 3555. The primary reasons for emigration
included religious or Zionist convictions, as well as relatives living in Israel.

andrs kovcs

46

Jews. Though, interestingly enough, the lowest proportion of observant

Jews is found in the 5665 age bracket, i.e. among those who grew
up in the decade following the war. Religious Jews are more numerous both among the elder and the younger. As table 5.2 shows, nearly
three-quarter of the members of this group have never entered a
synagogue. About one quarter of the sample visits the synagogues on
high holidays, what can be interpreted as symbolic expression of
attachment to the Jewish community. Religiosity and observance is
much less present in the group of our respondents, than among their
parents. However, among the youngest sector of the sample, especially
in the area of symbolic attachment, there has been an apparent
reversal of the pattern of secularization, which suggests that there has
been a revival of interest in Judaism and Jewish tradition among the
youth.
Table 5.2. Synagogue attendance in the parental generation and among
respondents, by age (%)
Synagogue
Attendance
Daily
Several times
a week
Weekly
Monthly
At the big
Holidays
Rarer/never
Total

Father Moth. sample 1825 2635 3645 4655 5665 6675 75+
(1900) (1947) (2006) (253) (173) (241) (376) (260) (359) (342)
3

4
10
3

3
9
3

1
5
4

4
6
7

1
8
6

1
6
4

1
5
4

1
2
3

0
4
2

2
5
2

36
44
100

42
42
100

26
63
100

34
48
100

25
58
100

29
59
100

31
58
100

22
72
100

26
68
100

18
72
100

Table 5.2 shows that this pattern also applies to synagogue attendance. The rate of those who never go to the synagogue, even during important religious holidays, is very high, amounting to nearly
two thirds of the whole sample. However, among the youngest sector in the sample, one can again observe an apparent reversal of
the pattern of secularization, suggesting a revival of interest in Judaism
and Jewish tradition.
Concerning the presence and transmission of Jewish religiouscultural tradition, the questionnaire listed nine religious-cultural practices, asking the extent to which they were observed or preserved in
the respondents families of origin and in their current familiessee
Table 5.3.

religiosity, praxis, and tradition

47

Table 5.3. Religious observance and tradition in the childhood and

present households by age (%)
Total*
(2013)

Sabbath
Fast Kippur
Seder
kosher
Mezuzah
Han-a candles
Bar-mitzvah
Jewish burial
Circumcision

1825
(254)

2635
(174)

3645
(241)

4655
(376)

5665
(262)

6675
(360)

75+
(346)

ch

ph

ch ph

ch ph

ch ph ch ph

ch ph

ch ph

ch ph

30
52
41
20
37
43
36
64
41

14
34
29
8
21
32
15
44
17

8
33
24
5
25
27
20
58
21

6
14
13
6
13
13
10
46
13

11
23
20
10
17
22
16
58
19

38
60
46
19
37
47
37
68
47

49
80
61
32
59
67
59
79
65

58
84
49
42
66
69
69
80
72

11
44
37
13
31
39
25
51
23

18
34
35
14
26
41
12
41
18

14
33
34
9
25
38
17
44
17

20
41
33
13
24
33
21
59
29

14
38
35
8
26
36
16
50
12

10
26
24
5
11
26
11
34
13

14
27
21
3
13
23
13
40
15

19
40
24
10
22
28
16
45
22

*ch = childhood household; ph = present household

Hence, in 26% of original families and 45% of current families, none

of the nine traditions was present. At the other end of the scale, in
17% of original families and 4% of current families, eight or nine elements of religious and cultural tradition were retained. Between the
two extremes, we nd families with only very weak ties to tradition
as well as families that ignore day-to-day rules (observance of Sabbath,
kosher food) but which still endorse some elements of tradition (such
as the celebration of major holidays) as symbols of Jewish identity.
The data in table 5.3 are revealing and clearly demonstrate that
for the sample as a whole the observance of Jewish religious and
cultural traditions has greatly diminished in Hungary over the past
50 years. At the same time, however, comparing the patterns for
dierent age groups enables us to draw a more detailed picture. It
appears that secularization has manifested itself most strongly during the lifetimes of the older generations. The older groups observe
less Jewish practices now than during their childhood years. Todays
middle-aged group, age 4565, observe very few elements of tradition, and their original families were already quite secularized. This
means that our middle generation interviewees underwent only limited behavioural changes during their own lifetime. This middle generation also appears to have been little touched by the religious and
cultural revival that has taken place since the fall of communism
and which is manifest among the younger generations where elements of religious-cultural tradition come out more frequently than
original families and in the practice of the older generations.

48

andrs kovcs

The younger group which reverts to tradition makes up approximately 10% of the whole sample. This group grew up during the
era of the disintegration and collapse of Communism (see Kovcs,
2003). Though, while its Jewish identity appears relatively strong, it
remains that Jewishness constitutes for it but an acquired identity.
It grew up without tradition and we also know that 15% of them
were already adults when they discovered that they were Jews. In
the families of a signicant majority of the group, Jews were almost
never mentioned. Still, reverting to tradition does not mean the
revival of all religious tradition. Just 10% of members of the group
strictly observe religious tradition and 41% observe only the major
holidays. Other members of the group interpret their Jewish identity in dierent ways. In general, members of the group oppose assimilation and strongly sympathize with Israel. A signicant proportion
of the group opposes intermarriage with non-Jews, and although
many members of the group (69%) have mainly or exclusively Jewish
friends, they would still prefer to live in an environment where there
are more Jews. This group can be called the group of voluntary
Jews (Pinto, 2000, 188189): they could have gone further down
on the road of total assimilation, but they took the option of return.
The increase of traditional Jewish practice amongst younger age
cohorts is representative of what appears to be a resurgence or renewal
of Jewish identity. As far as we can judge, the reasons for this assumed
revival are highly complex. One reason seemingly lies in the general
strengthening in Hungary of the demand for ethnic and religious
identities after the collapse of the Communist system. This is a natural
phenomenon at a time of great social change which generally plunges
acquired social identities into a crisis. This search for identity was
probably enhanced by the concomitant growing acceptance of multiculturalist orientations. Finally, identity renaissance was obviously
facilitated by the opening of borders and the rapidly developing relations with Israel and Jews in the United States. However, the main
motive behind the new identity strategy is, in our opinion, the desire
to cast o the stigmatized identity of the older generation.
After decades of secularization and assimilation, many Jews in
Hungary had reached the point that being Jewish meant for them
only one thing: to be a target of anti-Semitism. The younger Jewish
generation, however, in the last twelve years has experienced Jewishness
without any of the political restrictions placed upon their parents by

religiosity, praxis, and tradition

49

Communism, and their quest for a positive Jewish identity is the

direct outcome of their refusal of any stigmatization of Jewishness.
Similar developments may be observed among the Jewish populations
of the other former Communist countries of East Central Europe.
In any case, as far as Hungary is concerned,and where according
to estimates Jews number between 80,000 and 140,000, this numerical
importance warrants that the new turn in Jews attitudes toward
Jewishness is not just episodic but strong enough to counterbalance
the process of attrition that takes place at the margins of the Jewish
population.

CHAPTER SIX

BEING JEWISH IN ROMANIA AFTER

THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Carol Iancu
Historical Remarks
Like in the case of other European Jewries, Romanian Jewry has
been strongly aected by World War II. This chapter considers a
historical account of the events which most closely shaped the limits
of Jewishness in Romania during the postwar period and their
impact on present day Jewry. On August 23, 1944, King Michael
ordered the arrest of the dictator Antonescu and announced on the
radio the end of the alliance with Germany, thereby ending the war
against the Allies. His voice trembled with enthusiasm when he stated:
With full condence in the future of the Romanian people, we are
determined to make the Romania of tomorrow, a Romania that is
free, powerful and happy. Unfortunately, these fateful words would
remained no more than a distant dream as the country soon came
under the yoke of the Soviets, who had become the new allies and
brothers in arms. More than 265,000 Romanian soldiers would ght
alongside the Red Army to liberate Hungary. With the agreement
of the USSR, Romania recovered Northern Transylvania, which had
been occupied by Hungary since 1940, while Bessarabia and Northern
Bucovina remained part of the Soviet Union. The Communists gained
control in various successive stages. The Act of August 23, 1944 was
the work of a veritable coalition that involved the King, the communists
as well as the traditional parties. However, the signing of the Armistice
with the USRR on September 12, 1944, only caused tightening of
the communist grip. The coalition governments at the time comprised of several leading members of the Communist party such as
Lucretiu Patrascanu ( Justice), Gheorghiu Dej (Communication), Emil
Bodnaras (Information Service and later on Armed Forces), alongside
whom there were representatives of Iuliu Manius National Farmers
Party, Bratianus National Liberal Party, and Titel Petrescus small
Socialist Party.

being jewish in romania after the second world war

51

The governments formed by General Sanatescu and later by

General Radescu gave way to a government led by Petru Groza,
the head of the Workers Front, who had been appointed by none
other than Stalin himself. This government ushered in a new period
in the countrys history that would last for 45 years. The establishment of the popular democratic regime (19451947) preceded the
forced abdication of King Michael on December 30, 1947 and the
promulgation on the same day of a Popular Republic. The forced
amalgamation of the Socialist Party and the Communist Party (whose
membership had grown spectacularly, from a thousand-odd prior to
the war to nearly a million in 1949) resulted in the setting up of
the Romanian Workers Party in February 1948, led by First Secretary
Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej. In 1952 Dej became Chairman of the
Council and remained master of the country until his death in 1965
when the reins of power were taken over by another dictator, Nicolae
Ceausescu who remained in power until his arrest and execution in
December 1999. After collectivizing agriculture, the totalitarian
Communist regime had, indeed, embarked upon a merciless repression
of all opposition at home, retaining a degree of independence from
the outside world, particularly after the 20th Congress of the USSR
Communist Party in 1956 and Kruchevs famous secret report of
the same year.
All of these changes had a profound eect on the Romanian
Jewish community, half of whom had escaped the Holocaust. In
1943, Antonescu outlawed Jewish communities and their national
leaderships, the Federation of Communities, and, analogous to the
Nazis collaborationist Judenrat, replaced it with the so-called Jewish
Center (Centrala evreilor). After the fall of Antonescu, this Jewish Center
was dissolved and the communities reorganized, while the Federation
was restored through a Decree in October 1944. In fact, as of August
of that same year, various Jewish organizations and associations were
reassembled. The rst were the Jewish Party and the Bucharest section of the Union of Romanian Jews (September 18). Shortly thereafter on October 13th, the Zionist Organization Committee was
established. By the end of 1944 the Romanian section of the World
Jewish Congress, the Joint Distribution Committee for Romania,
and other Romanian sections within international Jewish organizations like the ORT (which promoted vocational training), the OSE
(medical assistance to children) and the Bnai Brith were all operational again.

52

carol iancu

The Communists tried to control the communities by positioning

their representatives in key positions, and nally by imposing their
will. The Jewish Democratic Committee (Comitetul Democrat Evreesc,
CDE) was to put this policy into practice by both weakening (and
later on suppressing) the two large pre-war Jewish organizations, the
Jewish Party and the Union of Romanian Jews. Moreover, there was
a merciless war waged against the Zionists. Set up as a mere
government instrument within the Jewish community and led by a
fanatical communist (Bercu Feldman), the CDE, like its mouthpiece
Unirea, was dissolved in 1953 only after having fullled the roles it
had been assigned. From 1948 onwards, the Union of Romanian
Jews, the Jewish Party and Zionist Organization had gradually been
forced to cease their activities. Hakhcharot (farms where young Jews
took care of agricultural work in view of their immigration to Israel)
were suppressed on March 8, 1949, a few days after the Joint, ORT
and OSE were outlawed.
One of the thorniest issues at the time was the reintegration of
Jews into the Romanian armed forces from which they had been
expelled at the start of the war. At that time the Romanian army
had not yet been subject to purges and still numbered many ocers
and soldiers who had fought the USSR. Thousands of them had
participated in the massacre of Jewish populations in Bessarabia,
Bucovine and Transnistria.
This was also the epoch that the civil rights that had been stripped
from the Jews under anti-Semitic legislation had still to be returned.
Romanias Grand Rabbi Safran, together with other central Jewish
gures, used the feeling of guilt of some Romanian politicians over
the Holocaust to achieve concessions and obtain support from the
new authorities (notably the minister Patrascanu), with the help of
foreign delegations in Bucharest (particularly those of the United
States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union). The rst Act addressing the return of property to the Jews was published only on December
19, 1944. Known as the Patrascanu Act, it was, however, bedevilled
by a whole raft of administrative restrictions and consequentially became
a lame duck. In fact, properties lost under the racial laws were never
returned to their rightful owners and the state never did oer them
any nancial compensation. Moreover, new regulations prohibited
Jews from returning to their villages, thus in eect depriving them
of the possibility of entering their houses and recovering their property.

being jewish in romania after the second world war

53

Furthermore, tens of thousands of Jews who had lost their employment

as a result of the same racial legislation never did get their jobs
back, despite ocial decrees being issued in support of this.
In early 1945, Fildermans newspaper, Curierul Israelit, in which
there was a constant stream of petitions and letters particularly with
regard to the question of spoiled Jewish property, was suspended by
the authorities for a period of twenty days. Fildermans personal
archives were conscated. This attitude caused the president of the
National Liberal Party, Constantin I. C. Bratianu, to protest vehementlybut unsuccessfullyto the Inter-Allied Control Commission
denouncing this new and grave attack on personal liberty. Filderman
who was jailed for a while was later released but the Communists
continued their campaign against him, through the governments
ocial newspaper Scnteia (The Star).
Though, in 1945, the leadership of Romanian Jewry succeeded to
convene a large rabbinical congressthe rst in postwar Europe
in which survivors from Hungary, Czechoslavakia and Poland took
part. Later on, on July 17, 1946, a meeting of representatives of the
Union of Romanian Jews, the Zionist Organization, the Jewish
National Party, and even the pro-Communist Jewish Democratic
Committee was convened, unfortunately with no genuine results. In
1947, Grand Rabbi Safran was ousted from his post and expelled
from the country and on March 12, 1948, Filderman was forced to
ee Romania to escape imminent arrest by the Communist police.
Jews and Communists
Anti-Semitic propaganda often contended all Jews are Communists. This assertion has no basis in reality whatsoever. In August
1944, the number of Jewish Communists was minuscule. It involved
approximately 300 of the 1,000 members of the Communist Party.
The number of Jewish members had increased to 1,000 by the end
of 1944, ca. 5,000 in 194545, and 10,000 in 1949 when the Communist Party had a total membership of some 1,000,000. Between 1944
and 1950 there were very few people of Jewish origin at the highest levels of the Communist Party. The most famous was Ana
Pauker, who, following her return from the Soviet Union, became
Foreign Minister before being ousted in 1952. There were only a
few hundred throughout the Partys bureaucracy. In fact, it is dicult

54

carol iancu

to talk of Jews massively rallying for the Communist cause. Quite

the opposite was true. A major gap had soon emerged between the
Jewish community and the Communist Party.
Many of the Jewish members of the Romanian Communist Party
(and about whom Filderman had said that they had ceased to be
Jews the moment they joined the party) became docile instruments
in the governments Jewish repression policy. Among those who promoted a particularly virulent brand of anti-Judaism, one may cite
Iosif Chisinevschi, Ghizela Vass, Alice Benari, Ofelia Manole, Chrita
Abramovici and Bercu Feldman. Some took it even further and were
involved in the torture of their coreligionists; this was the case for
the infamous Colonel Dulgheru (in charge of investigating Zionist
cases) or Lieutenant-Major Teodor Micle (charged with investigating
the Zionist leader A. L. Zissu), both of whom were decorated later
as heroes by Gheorghiu Dej. While anti-Jewish actions by Communist
Parties all over Eastern Europe started in 1947 (consider the trial of
Laszlo Rayk in Hungary, Slansky in Czechoslavakia and that of the
Jewish doctor in the Soviet Union), anti-Jewish demonstrations had
already started in Romania as early as 1945. The recently published
minutes of the plenary session of the Romanian Communist Party
Congress of October 5, 1945, reveal a blunt anti-Semitic platform
supported by all delegates. In a brazen distortion of history it attacked
the Jews as fascists taking support from past anti-Semitic sources
(such as Porunca Vremii, The Command of the Hour). As one delegate put it: We cannot tolerate that the Jews, on the basis of their
suering, attempt to carve out privileges in order to ransack and
exploit the Romanian people. Ion Vinte, of the Secret Service and
future head of the Securitate, stated that anti-Semitism was elicited
by the Zionists who sing from Saturday to Monday.
On May 4, 1946, the General Security Service of the State (at the
time it was not yet called the Securitate) ordered the regional security services to draw up dossiers of the leaders of Zionist organizations,
the Union of Romanian Jews, the local leaders of the Joint Committee,
the ORT, OSE, and Bnai Brith. It was on the basis of minutely
maintained les and close surveillance tactics that hundreds, and later
on, thousands of people were imprisoned and sentenced as enemies
of the state. On June 14, 1946 the Communist police did not even
hesitate to open re on Zionist demonstrators in the town of Iasi
and to arrest a dozen people. In the course of the same year other
clashes took place between the Communist authorities and Jews

being jewish in romania after the second world war

55

protesting the action of the CDE and various anti-Jewish measures.

On December 12, 1948 and March 4, 1949, the Central Committee
of the Romanian Workers Party and the Romanian government,
respectively, decided to prohibit all activities by the international
Jewish organizationsJoint, ORT and OSEon Romanian territory.
This marked the start of a systematic repression of the Jewish population and of Zionist organizations and their leaders, who were
arrested and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for ctitious
crimes.
The long investigations that included inhuman torture generally
resulted in confessions by the accused. An account that deserves
mentioning here is that of the Assir Zion (Zionist prisoner) Theodor
Lavi-Lwenstein who spent ve years (19501955) in Communist
jails. In his memoirs, Nu a fost pisica neagra (It Wasnt the Black
Cat), he paints an accurate picture of the vast machinery behind
the dehumanizing repression:
It was not just us, the Zionists, who got caught up in the wheels of
the huge political police machinery; meetings with other categories of
prisoners, the inevitable discussions with them on the Jewish and Zionist
question made clear to us the extent to which the stereotypical image
of the Jew as a Communist was rmly embedded in peoples minds.
On the other side of the barricade, the investigators, who were necessarily
anti-Zionists, rediscovered anti-Semitic penchants.

The trials that took place and especially the appeals by the convicted (184) reveal the dignity and personality of many Zionists who
were tried and convicted. These secret trials took place after sessions
of the Political Bureau of the Romanian Workers Party (especially
the session of January 14, 1953), with sentences being decided beforehand. The members of the Central Committee of the Romanian
Workers Party engaged in a sort of one-upmanship in the punishment that was meted out against Jews. For example, Gheorgiu Dej
demanded two to three death sentences in each anti-Jewish trial and
hard labor or life imprisonment for the other accused. Iosif Chisinevschi
as for him, requested to set re to synagogues and Talmudic schools.
All these instituted lawsuits took place before military tribunals,
generally without any kind of legal representation for the accused.
The rst anti-Zionist trials involved the leaders of the right-wing
Zionist youth movement Betar ( July 7, 1953; October the same year),
with sentences ranging between 10 and 18 years in prison). Next in
line were the leaders of the Transylvanian Zionists (November 24,

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carol iancu

1953 in Timisoara) and those of the Hachomer Hatzair organization (March 18, 1954between three and eight years). On March
28, 1954 there was the trial of the thirteen leaders of the Romanian
Zionist movement. Three were sentenced to life imprisonment, A. L.
Zissu, Jean Cohen and Misu Benveniste (whose wife, Suzi Benvenisti,
was already serving a ten-year sentence since her trial on November
5 1953 while her codefendant, Iacov Littman-Litani, had received a
fteen-year sentence). The remaining accused faced terms of imprisonment ranging between eight and twenty years: Carol Reitter, Zeev
Beniamin, Simon Has, Haber Karin Fichte, Zoltan Hirsch, Moshe
Weiss-Talmon, Bubi Beer, Moti Moscovici, Gir Hasvetari, Simon
David. Barely a few days later, on April 4, 1954, there was the start
of the trial of forty-one Zionist leaders, followed by yet more arrests
and trials. In May 1954, at the instigation of Itzhac Artzi, a group
of 48 former leading representatives of the Romanian Zionists started
a hunger strike in the Great Synagogue of Tel Aviv in order to
demand the liberation of ve hundred Zionists who were languishing in Communist prisons in Romania. However, it required many
more eorts by the Israeli Government,1 by Western Jewish leaders,2
and by Jewish organizations before the Zionists were released. In
early June 1954, a Paris meeting of the Zionist Federation ended
with a vote on a motion condemning the imprisonment and sentences for people whose only crime was to belong to a Zionist
movement, and a call to free the Jewish and Zionist leaders imprisoned by the Communist authorities and to allow them to emigrate
to Israel. In New York on June 11, 1954, President Eisenhower
made a statement expressing his support at a protest rally organized
by the American Jewish Congress.
Because of the harsh treatment to which they had been subjected,
many Romanian Zionists never left prison alive, or died soon after
their release. This fate befell people like, to name but a few, Kiva
Ornstein, Avram Iampolschi, Elias Schein, Hugo Nacht, Abir Mark,
and A. L. Zissu. Despite this violent repression, Romanian Jews continued to push for their right to alyah. Zionism, which had strong

1
For example, Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett made a seminal statement on
the subject in the Knesset on May 24, 1954.
2
For example, Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress,
promised Gheorghiu Dej that there would be economic benets for Romania.

being jewish in romania after the second world war

57

roots in Romania, had made spectacular progress in the post-war

period; by late 1947 the Zionist Youth movements counted over
20,000 members, all of whom were preparing for their future lives
in Palestine at the Cultura agricultural school, near Bucharest, and
in the many summer camps and various farming colleges. Fully supportive of the struggle for a Jewish state and lled with enthusiasm
at the resurrection of Israel, most Romanian Jews embraced the
Zionist cause. This was due in no small measure to the persecution
they suered at the hands of the Communist state and the persistence
of strong anti-Zionist sentiments.
On January 31, 1949, the representative of the French government
in Bucharest, Pierre Charpentier, observed in a letter addressed to
the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman: It is a well-known
fact that most of the Romanian Jews, estimated at 360,000 people,
have Zionist tendencies. This was an accurate statement since,
despite the uctuations due to the policies of the various Romanian
governments, there was a powerful alyah movement which continued
until the fall of Communism, and beyond. The 1956 census however
put the number of Jews at 146,264 (0.84% of the total population),
though it must be said this gure was seemingly underestimated.
In the course of a single decade, the Jewish community had lost
more than half its members. The main cause is to be found in emigration. Despite the attacks on Zionism which were stepped up after
December 1948, most people headed for Israel17,668 in 1948,
13,595 in 1949, 46,430 in 1950, 40,206 in 1951. In 1952, the number
suddenly dropped to a mere 3,627. This was due to the fact that
the government decided to stop the ow of emigration. It was not
until the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Romania (summer of 1958)
and the Romanian governments new Foreign policy that the reunication of families once again got underway. On Yom Kippur
of 1958 the authorities released a communiqu which stated that all
those who wish to immigrate to Israel have to submit a request at
the police station. This marked the beginning of a new wave of alyah,
with 106,200 olim between 1958 and 1966 (during the rst wave between
1948 and 1951, when Ana Pauker was in power, there were almost
117,000 Romanian immigrants to Israel). Immigration to Israel from
Romania continued uninterrupted, albeit with ups and downs: 1,000
in 19671968, 17,800 between 1969 and 1974, 21,800 from 1975 to
1989, and 3,400 between 1990 and 1995. Throughout the Communist
period, the harassment of Jews by ocialdom continued unabated.

58

carol iancu

Years of waiting to get an exit visa, loss of employment, expulsion

from school, and separation of families characterized this period. In
1966, there were about 100,000 Jews in Romania. A decade later,
this number was cut in half, with the Jewish population numbering
approximately 45,000 (the ocial census recorded only 25,686 individuals, i.e. 0.11% of the total population). After the Yom Kippur
war, the emigration ow slowed down considerably, and the number of exit visas for Israel fell consistently: 1,134 in 1978, 1,184 in
1979 and 1,076 in 1980. In 1981 the Jewish community was estimated at around 34,000 people: 16,000 in Bucharest, the rest spread
over 68 communities in the country (about 3,000 in Iasi, 2,000 in
Timisoara, and 800 in Cluj). The Federation of Mosaic Communities
the ocial name of the Romanian Jewrys umbrella organization
during the Communist periodwas presided over by the Grand
Rabbi Moses Rosen; he was appointed by the Communist authorities after the forced departure of Grand Rabbi Alexandre Safran.
Rabbi Rosen maintained fteen ritual baths and sent the remaining
12 chohatim to the most remote corners of the country in order to
ensure the provisioning of kosher food. In the same year more than
600 adolescents and many more adults received religious instruction
through the Talmudey Torah. The Federation also owned three retirement
homes (two in the mountains and one on the shores of the Black Sea)
and, together with the Joint Committee, it operated a medical assistance service, while providing clothes, food and money. Worship took
place in 120 temples and synagogues. Rabbi Rosen remained in this
post until his death in 1994.
After the fall of Communism, emigration intensied and today
there are fewer than 12,000 Jews in Romania, the majority of them
over the age of sixty, equally divided between the capital and the
provinces. This is a decimated community, yet one that shows
exemplary solidarity with its community structure which includes
here hospitals, asylums, kosher restaurants, etc. from which nearly
two-thirds of the members benet. It is a structured, highly vibrant
community which is unique in that it has its own publishing house
(Editura Hasefer), which published dozens of books. A Museum of the
History of Romanian Jews, moroever, was set up in 1978 in an old
synagogue where a special room presents an exhibition dedicated to
the Holocaust. Furthermore, a Center for the Study of the History
of Romanian Jewry publishes documents, as well as a Newsletter.
Last but not least, a Jewish State Theatre perform Yiddish plays

being jewish in romania after the second world war

59

often with non-Jewish artists; a Jewish primary school in Bucharest

diuse Hebrew teaching; a bimonthly magazine Realitatea Evreiasca,
is published in Romanian, Hebrew and English. An oshoot Revista
Cultului Mozaic (est. 1956) is the ocial publication of the Federation
of Jewish Communities.
Worth mentioning is also the fact that a representative of Romanian
Jewry, Dorel Dorian, has for several years been a member of
Parliament. The symbol of his party is the ritual Menora (Candelstick)
and it is probable that many non-Jews regularly vote for him and
his party. Though, this was unable to prevent a leader of the farright, Corneliu Vadim, to be elected in 2000, which at the time,
brought the Executive Committee of the Federation of Jewish Communities to react. On December 7, 2000, three days before the second round of voting, they published a press release in which they
castigated the far-right political rhetoric as an enemy of Judaism.
It is during these polemics that the new concept, real-Semitism,
was invented, which highlights the role of Jews in the development
of all areas of the countrys economic, social and artistic life. This
concept and this perspective sustains Romanias remaining Jews to
combat any demonstrations of anti-Semitism.

CHAPTER SEVEN

JEWISH IDENTITY, MEMORY, AND ANTI-SEMITISM

Maurice Konopnicki
How does one go about dening his or her own Jewish identity?
What criteria determine the foundations of this identity? We know
that for many, religion, history, culture, and daily life experiences
play a role. Yet, the question remains if one is truly the master of
the choices one makes or the criteria one chooses. In this respect,
the memory of the Holocaust raises important issues in Jewish identity.
Today, the memory of the Holocaust is only acceptable if reference
to it is discreet. Jews are asked to abandon the concept of the singularity of the Holocaust. In this framework, Jews are brought back
to their traditional role of the silent and consenting victim; there is,
what seems to be, a repetition of this kind of dispossession that has
marred Jewish history. Before, considering the signicance of this in
the context of Belgium and also in Europe in general, I would like
to present to the reader some background about myself that might
help me make my point.
I was born in Charleroi, 1938, in a small but dynamic Jewish
community where Zionism and Communism existed side by side, as
they did in so many other European communities. At a very young
age I was confronted with the harsh fate of being a Jew at that
time. I was four years old when, in July 1942, my fourteen-year-old
brother Victor was deported to Auschwitz. He never returned. For
two years, until September 1944, my parents, sister and myself were
able to survive thanks to the courage of some Righteous among the
Nations who gave us shelter.
I vividly remember that on the rare occasions when I was allowed
to go out on the street, my parents would try and stop me from
speaking in Yiddish. I never accepted this prohibition and after the
liberation it became an absolute necessity for me to express myself
freely on any subject dear to my heart, especially concerning Judaism
and Israel.
As I mentioned, my brother never returned from the concentration

jewish identity, memory, and anti-semitism

61

camp. Neither did my uncles or my cousin who had also been

deported from Belgium. The entire Polish side of my mothers and
fathers families were deported. Then, in 1948, I lost my uncle Ze"ev
during the Israeli war of Independence.
It was a childhood marked by tragic events. As a child, I often
heard people around me, in the street, saying things like there are
still a lot of those Jews left here, or Jews, why are you staying in
Belgium? Go back to your country! Go back to Palestine.
Along the same lines, my primary school teacher one day shouted
at me, pointing a nger in my direction and accusing me of being
part of a Jewish terrorist underground movement. I must admit
though, I do not remember if I was supposed to take her words
truly as an accusation of being a terrorist or feel honoured for being
part of the Jewish resistance in Palestine. Later on, but still during
primary school, I remember the chance I had of being elected the
best student in class by my fellow pupils. I was always rst in my
class and, I thought, much be loved and respected by all. The winner of the vote would receive a dictionary as a prize. My thirst for
knowledge was such that I really did want to be the winner. However,
I lost the much coveted title by one vote. On the way back from
school, the boy with whom I always walked to and from school noticed
my disappointment and admitted that he had not voted for me. He
told me, it was you who deserved the prize, but you have to understand that with everything they say about the Jews, I just couldnt
vote for you. These same words were repeated to me twenty years
later when I applied for the directorship of an international center
at the University of Lige. My best friend warned me: Dont kid
yourself, it is unthinkable that a Jew will be elected to run this
center.
My Jewish identity has been strongly tied to my profound attachment to Israel. Even during my childhood years I was a true patriot,
rejoicing with Israels every military success. This enthusiasm for
Israel clearly played a signicant role in shaping the focus of my
career on Israel and the memory of the Holocaust. In the very early
years of my research I studied cooperation in the rural areas of
Israel. I investigated issues related to the kibbutz, Jerusalem and the
peace process. Later, I was given the opportunity to help create a
House of the Righteous among Nations and return to the roots of
the Jewish community in Charleroi. I also held a position at Haifa

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maurice konopnicki

University for a number of years. Part of my decision to take this

position was due to the political and social climate in Belgium after
the Six Day War, when it became gradually politically incorrect
to talk about Israel in positive terms.
All these have constructed my Jewish identity as a Jew raised in
Europe during the aftermath of World War II, and it is from this
startpoint that, in the following, I discuss a number of viewpoints
on the memory of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and Israel as formative
elements of Jewish identity.
The Memory of the Holocaust
My son Pinhas taught me that teaching horror is not educational. How
then can we understand the memory of the Holocaust and the building
of a Jewish identity thereafter? More than everyone else, Emmanuel
Kattan oers a most pertinent interpretation of how the Holocaust is
to be remembered and passed down to the next generation as part of
Jewish identity. This requires, he says, a contemplation of the place
of the Holocaust in the past concomitantly with its present signicance:
The reference to a memory and the never-again rhetoric have an
incantational, almost magic character. Before the exhaustion of the
memory, an attempt is made to reproduce the traumatism, the feeling
of horror and disgust one experiences when one encounters the reality
of the holocaust for the rst time. In so doing, one hopes to instil in
the next generations a determination to prevent an event of this kind
from ever happing again. The duty of the memory seems to be, therefore, to act as a kind of talisman: it is our insurance policy against
the threats that the future has in store for us. Surreptitiously, what is
handed down is the armation that the knowledge and transmission
of the past can be useful for new crimes in the knowledge that it is
enough to remember in order to prevent the return of the horror. Instead
of being a source of anxiety, the duty of memory becomes one of reassurance: as long as we continue to remember, we are protected from
the return of evil.
However, if one is rst and foremost guided by a desire for prudence,
if one wants to expose the dangers of totalitarianism, the excesses of
racism and hatred, there are other events than the holocaust that
should be mentioned. To be sure, not to give credit to the view that
crimes are equivalent to another other, but to provide a more encompassing representation of the diversity of guises in which violence may
manifest itself.

jewish identity, memory, and anti-semitism

63

If we want to be able to detect injustice in its many dimensions,

prudence demands that we develop a more profound sense of history,
that we recognize the manifold manifestations of evil that have marked
our history.
Moreover, the transmission of democratic values and the development
of a practical wisdom do not only come about by the reference to crimes
in the past that embody the negation of these values. It is equally important to have a positive representation of justice, of respect for others.
Indeed, if we believe that knowledge of crimes of the past better
arms us to prevent them from recurring, it is because the past seems
to remain pertinent today. The events that we commemorate are part
of our history, stages in a process of continuity from which we interpret
our future. This is why the memory of the holocaust has no educational
value unless it refers to a historical logic with which we identify ourselves.
It can only serve as a warning for a possible recurrence of the barbary
if we recognize this barbary as being part of our past.
Hence, we have to recognize that memory is a duty, even if we
seek to confer upon it a general educational value, independent of a
precise historical context, and that at its basis lies a dimension of identity. An awareness of our past, the commemoration of consecutive
moments in our history does not make us better people, but it does
enrich us; it makes our lives more of a whole and gives them meaning.
(Kattan; 2004)

Anti-Semitism and Israel

To speak of anti-Semitism as such, Michel Wieviorka considers its
present-day sources as follows:
The rise, all over the world, of anti-Semitism, which is rooted in specic
political, social and cultural features of the countries involved, while
identifying itself, everywhere, with the same mix of Palestinian, Arab
and Islamic causes. The epicenter of the problem seems to be located
in the Near East, but outside this region it is sustained by three sources.
The rst is related to the breakthrough, especially in Europe, of
powerful nationalist-populist movements feeding both on the hatred of
Jews and on an old anti-Jewish streak in Christianity, whether it be
Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox.
The second stems from the planetary decomposition of regimes,
parties and Marxist, Communist or leftist ideologies. Depending on
the individual cases, it gathers three main dimensions. First, there is
that of an anticapitalism, which, in a tradition inaugurated by the young
Karl Marx of the Franco-German Annals (1843), assimilates Jews with
commerce and money. Second, an anti-Zionism by which a hatred of
Israel is extended to hatred of Jews all over the world.

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maurice konopnicki
Finally, across the world, anti-Semitism is growing against a backdrop
of social problems and a sense of exclusion and contempt experienced
by populations who are, themselves, victims of racism.
In the Arab-Muslim world, anti-Semitism expresses the widely held
conviction of being rejected by Western modernity to which many
aspire, social and economic exclusion, and, to cap it all, the fact of
being subjected to a racist-like contempt. From this point of view, the
existence of Israel, which is seen as an intrusion of this very same
modernity in the heart of a region which is entirely rejected, is considered
an unbearable provocation. The peculiar nature of this anti-Semitism
is that it can be legitimized by religious and political authorities, and
that it can grow without any objections from the world of politics, and
multiply unchecked across the planet thanks to audiocassettes and the
worldwide web. (Wieviorka; April 28, 2003)

According to Eric Marty:

(. . .) The cross between the movement supporting the Third World,
Islamic fundamentalism and the extreme right partly came about,
depending on the opportunities, through the example of hard-core
negationism, but also through a general climate in which the imprescriptible nature of the holocaust is called into question. Yet, it was
in Durban in September 2001 that the premonition of a more dramatic
rapprochement between the Third World movement and anti-Semitism
was conrmed. It is truly unbelievable that a conference on racism,
held under the aegis of the UN, should have been transformed, between
two speeches by Fidel Castro, into a huge meeting of hatred and accusation aimed at Israel and the Jews. The various reports published in
the French newspaper Le Monde mentioned a climate of intimidation,
harassment, threats and violence, with slogans like Death to the Jews
or One Jew, one bullet. The most striking feature was the ThirdWorldization of the concept of racism. For instance, it has been proven
that the Muslim world was the most important actor in the trade in
Black people, that the abolition of slaverywhich was also an African
phenomenon practised rst and foremost for the prot of the Africans
themselveswas a purely Western initiative, that American Jews were
the rst to ght for the civil rights of black people in the United States.
Yet, in spite of all of this, the enemy that was singled out, in some
huge Afro-Arab synthesis, was the American Jew and his counter part,
the Israeli. (Marty, 2002)

Michel Wieviorka has this to say about the rise in anti-Semitism:

The current context is not so much marked by the acts, themselves,
as by the rise in general hostility towards Jews among various groups.
This situation has created an anti-Semitic climate at school, where
student relations are ethnicized, at university, where the Left remains
conspicuously quiet on the issue of anti-Semitism because of its sympathy

jewish identity, memory, and anti-semitism

65

for the Palestinian cause, but also in more traditionally anti-Semitic

milieux such as the Far Right. In France, there is one less taboo: it
seems perfectly acceptable now to express ones hatred of Jews, even
in public. (Wieviorka; September 3, 2004)

For Bernard-Henri Lvy, talking to Alain Finkielkraut and Benny

Lvy:
The craftiest tactic of anti-Semitism is its ability to change its appearance over time, to slough its guilty skin in order to don the vestments
of innocence; it is clear that in the past fteen or twenty years, antiZionist rhetoric has been the new cloak of anti-Semitism.
Nothing would be more harmful than to make this duty of remembering something that only aects the Jews. Nothing would be more
tragic than to give the feeling that this memory is a property, a treasure
that we should jealously guard. To be sure, we have the duty to guard
the event of the century that is the holocaust. However, the children
of the executioners or those of the indierent have the same duty.
As for the singularity of the holocaust, its exemplary nature, which
makes it a unique crime and its unconscionable horror is the unparalleled
conjunction of the radical and the banalHanna Arendts banality of
evil and Kants radical evil. This singularity makes the holocaust a
kind of yardstick of horror, a measure of the inhumane.
Auschwitz, the Warsaw ghetto, the holocaust all act as a referent,
as the ultimate horror, against which the horrors of the moment are
measured.
One should also depart from the bogus debate on the exploitation
of the holocaust. There are two conceptions of memory. First of all,
there is the dead memory, a melancholic memory, a sterile memory,
a memory which is a pure xation on the past, where the past governs
the present. And then, there is another memory, a live memory, a
memory which works instead of ruminating, a memory that acts on
the present, a memory in which the past feeds the present and where
the present, in a way, governs the past; this memory is the right
approach to remembrance. The example in politics is that of a great
European statesman, the German Minister for Foreign Aairs, Jochka
Fischer, who in the course of the debate on the future constitution of
Europe, stated that the only thinkable constitution, the only viable constitution in the eyes of the survivors of the holocaust, the only possible
constitution for Europe would be the never again of the extermination camps. This use of the holocaust takes place in the live memory,
the memory that vitalizes and works in the present. As a result, the
real debate is not about the exploitation of the holocaust. It is about
knowing whether the memory that we are working on is a dead memory, a melancholic memory or an active memory, one that is turned
towards the present day. Why do we need all those monuments? They
come in the place of ruins.

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maurice konopnicki

Finally, according to Viviane Forrester (2004) the responsibility for

the Holocaust does not lie solely with the Nazis, but with the West
as a whole, due to the complacency and passiveness of the great
democracies, imbued with the contempt to which Jews were subjected
in the Western world.
Anti-Semitism Today: Facts and Figures
According to an Israeli association campaigning against anti-Semitism,
in 2003 the attacks on Jews and the acts of vandalism against Jewish
sites increased by 15 per cent across the world. According to the
annual report of the Stephen Roth Institute of Contemporary AntiSemitism and Racism, this increase in anti-Semitic acts is due primarily to the Israeli-Palestinian conict. It would seem that the
events in the Near East serve as a catalyst for incidents in Europe,
said Roni Stauber of the Roth Institute.
The Institute, which is based in Tel Aviv University, has recorded
a total of 360 serous incidents of an anti-Semitic nature worldwide
in 2003, as opposed to 311 in 2002. It lists the four countries with
the highest rate of anti-Semitic acts: France, the United Kingdom,
Germany and Canada. According to Roni Stauber the increase in
attacks against Jews in Europe is largely due to young Muslim immigrants frustrated by the situation in the Near East. Extreme rightwing anti-semites, as for them, are more likely to attack synagogues
or cemeteries.
In France, actually, blunt anti-Zionism is the politically correct
manifestation of a latent anti-Semitism.1 The rhetoric may have
changed, but not the hatred. Today we even witness an amplication
of this hatred. The reprobation of Israel has become a must, especially among the political left.
Eric Marty (2002) is very much concerned by this phenomenon
and oers his interpretation in the following terms:
The most dangerous aspect of the silence on the part of the media
and the institutions when it comes to anti-Semitic attacks is that it is
a silence with a great deal of subtext. It is a silence regarding at once
the Jews and the Muslim community. On the one hand, the Jews are
told to be quiet, or at least not to kick up too much of a stink; they
1

Patrick Gaubert et Philippe Benassayn, Le Figaro, 20.03.03.

jewish identity, memory, and anti-semitism

67

are given to understand that Israel is sometimes responsible for what

is happening to it and that at times Jewish support of Israel is too
outspoken. In fact, this is a repetition of the dark years, albeit with a
slight twist adapted to the new circumstances resulting from the creation of the state of Israel. Any attempt at self-defence by the Jewish
community is seen as a provocation for renewed persecution.

According to the Rapport de la Commission nationale consultative

des droits de lhomme:2 the statistics, particularly those from 2000
onwards, clearly show that the violence against the Jewish community has taken root and has increased. Since 2000, the CNCDH is
particularly concerned about the spread of racial and anti-Semitic
violence in educational in schools.
According to the European Jewish Congress, there was also a
cover-up of the report3 on anti-Semitism that was presented to the
European Parliament in Strassbourg by the European Observatory
of Racist and Xenophobic Phenomena which conrmed the content
of the Observatorys 2003 report. In its press summary, the Observatory
stated that most of the anti-Semitic incidents in Europe involved
young white right-wing anti-Semitic extremists. This statement was
in direct contradiction with its own report which recognized that
most of the anti-Semitic attacks in European countries were committed by Muslims of North African origin, which urged Serge
Cwajgenbaum, Secretary-General of the CJE, to react: How can
one combat anti-Semitism if the courage to clearly identify the perpetrators is lacking?
In his book entitled The anti-Semitic Enigma, Daniel Sibony
(2004), a psychoanalyst, did not hesitate to state:
The problem is simple enough: every establishment vehemently condemns anti-Semitic acts but cannot prevent them as this would mean
prosecute the perpetrators, essentially Muslims, which would leave them
open to accusations of Arab bashing, i.e. of being racist. So, in order
not to appear to be racist, anti-Semitism is allowedsurely, this is
the very root of any kind of racism in the sense of a hatred of an
identity. The only way out for the authorities is to be honest, to apply
2
Rapport de la Commission nationale consultative des droits de lhomme, Associated
Press, 01.04.04.
3
The European Observatory of Racist and Xenophobic Phenomena published
two reports on anti-Semitism in the European Union. The main report is entitled
Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the EU 20022003. The second, Perceptions
of Antisemitism in the European Union (48 pp.) is a collection of interviews with
members of the jewish community, 31.03.04. See http://www.eumc.eu.int.

maurice konopnicki

68

the law, rather than applying a bandage of goodwill on the wounds

of one or other group. If the people who are, themselves, victims of
racism practise it in its anti-Semitic version, then they must be punished. (. . .) In fact, today, the ght against racism and the ght
against anti-Semitism have become two dierent things.

The association Jewish Children in Danger has raised alarm over the
multiplication of anti-Semitic incidents in French secondary schools.4
Over a period of many months, a student at a prestigious Parisian
secondary school was insulted, humiliated and bullied by two classmates simply because he was Jewish. He had been terrorized into
silence, and for a long time his ordeal was not known to anybody.
Neither his teachers nor the headmaster of the school were able to
protect him from the hatred of his attackers because they did not
fully comprehend or recognize the nature of the violence. At another
Paris secondary school, a Jewish student was physically threatened
in the name of the Palestinian children killed by his family, as a
result of which he hastily had to leave the school, at the request of
the person in charge, who felt the boys safety could no longer be
guaranteed. Another incident took place in a dierent secondary
school in Paris, where a young girl was thrown to the ground and
beaten by some twenty fellow-students shouting lthy Jew.
The moral implications of such events are not symbolical and must
not be played down: after the Vichy regime nobody imagined that
in France Jewish children could be harassed in this way, in eect
barred from going to school, and at risk in public places.
Michel Winock has shown that, between 1789 and the present
day, the hostility towards Jews has always reected national crises,
rather than being a doctrine rooted in the French psyche:
Anti-Semitism is not a bad memory reserved for commemorations or
university conferences. Its recent explosion has caused considerable disquiet among the French Jewish community. Much worse, however, is
the indierence they encounter. The only response to this crisis of
condence by the political world and the media has been, after a
period of silence, a series of curses, whose grandiloquence was only
matched by their lack of eect; anti-Semitism has spread to the extent
that it feeds the frenzy of madmento which the paranoia of some
Jews contributesand serves as a plausible pretext for various swindles and petty vengeance. This explains the twisted developments, with

Libration, 10.03.04.

jewish identity, memory, and anti-semitism

69

some using bogus aairs in order to minimize a growth in anti-Semitism

on which they thrive. (Winock 2004)

In Belgium we could not imagine either that we would ever arrive

at a situation like today when it is dangerous for children of the
Jewish Ecole Mamonide to wear a kippah outside the school. One
could not imagine either that synagogues could be attacked, as was
the case in Charleroi or Brussels, for instance, which were the targets
of attacks; that the police was to be on constant alert during commemorations of the Holocaust in cemeteries and public places; or
that the House of the Righteous among Nations was to be closed
down in Charleroi, because it is currently considered politically
incorrect to have a place linked so closely to the memory of the Holocaust and Yad Vashem, in Jersusalem. In general, expressing ones
Jewish faith, bond with Israel and Zionism, the memory of the Holocaust and Jewish identity is now bound, in many cases, to the arousal
of sarcasm, criticism, hostility, aggression, violence and . . . accusations of racism.
Alain Finkielkraut recognizes that it took him some time to see
that contemporary anti-Semitism expresses itself almost exclusively
in the language of anti-racism. One may even wonder whether racism
was not a periodapocalyptic and briefin the long history of antiSemitism. Today, Jews are not hated because they are a separate
race but because they are intractable racists, with their new unaccusable detractors using the duty of memory. (Finkielkraut; October
31, 2003) In an interview with Dominique Simonnet on August 30,
2004, Alain Finkielkraut explained that:
Anti-racism, the religion of man, in turn, incites crime. This ideology, which does not reveal its name, reduces reality to a conict
between the aggressors and the victims by subverting the facts in a
perverted way ( Jews are nazis, America is a totalitarian country), and
cultivates an anti-Semitism cloaked in humanism (. . .) The hatred of
anti-racists is just as dangerous as that of the racists . . . These are
disturbing developments, which must be addressed urgently, without
worrying about conforming with what may be fashionable at present.
(. . .) The animosity towards Jews has become part of the landscape:
its presence is clearly felt as those who express it and disseminate it
do not correspond to the typical picture of the anti-semite that people
have in their minds. (. . .) The anti-semites portrait painted by Sartre was
someone imbued with a profound sense of hostility towards democracy.
In order to feel as if he were a member of an elite, he revived the
idea of a natural hierarchy of beings. Contemporary anti-Semitism, in

70

maurice konopnicki
contrast, is wholly democratic. It professes the religion of humanitarianism, which has no sacrilege other than the questioning of equal dignity among all human beings. This religion has protected Jews for a
long time. Today, it turns against them. Indeed, here they are, accused,
vicariously through Israel, of treating Arabs as inferior beings. The
conict in the Near East is no longer placed in the category of
war, but in that of crime; rather than involving two adversaries, it
opposes martyred innocence with the Zionist enemy of mankind.
(. . .) [Interviewer] So, Jews are currently accused, not of being a
race but of being racist. And it is this reversal which is the new shape
of anti-Semitism?
Indeed, it is not an incitement to racial hatred, but to anti-racial
hatred that characterizes contemporary Judaeophobia. The anti-racist
hatred of the Fence, for instance. It is worth remembering that the
Israelis did not set up this fence as a separation barrier symbolizing
that Palestinians are inferior beings. They did so in order to stop the
suicide attacks. Perhaps they have bought relative security at the expense
of aggravating the living conditions of a large number of Palestinians.
No doubt, one should question the itinerary of the barrier as it penetrates the West Bank in order to protect certain setttlements. However,
to use the term apartheid is a remarkable feat in that it both denies
and legitimizes terrorism. Against those who deny the fact that anyone else is a human being, everything is allowed since, by exclusion,
they are excluding themselves from humanity at large.
(. . .) [Interviewer] How do you explain the fact that so many people
believe in the simplications that you are debunking?
This is related to the eort it takes in order to penetrate the tragic
nature of existence. Wherever there is tragedy, i.e. the inextricable,
the irreparable and several legitimacies, melodrama is spontaneously
added. As a result, the conict between two rightsthat of the Israelis
and that of the Palestinianshas been transformed into a ght against
Zionist crime. The irony of memory is that Hitler did not simply
destroy Europe, he also numbed its wit, for some time to come. As
this was the terrible simplicity of absolute evil and as this evil is unforgettable, Nazism has cut us o from a great tragic heritage, which,
from Sophocles to Hegel, had shaped the European soul. (. . .).

Pierre-Andr Taguie pursues in this line:

The new teaching of respect that I am hoping for with all my heart
must take place through interaction between, on the one hand, the
teaching about the holocaust by combining history and reection on
the meaning of the Nazi genocide of Jews, and, on the other, an
objective presentation of the underlying reasons of the Israeli-Arab
conict, involving the teaching of both Zionist history and that of Arab
nationalism, with its contemporary extension in radical Islam, the new
worldwide carrier of anti-Jewish hatred. The aim is to provide stu-

jewish identity, memory, and anti-semitism

71

dents with the means of distinguishing between Islam (in all its forms)
and the various ways in which it has been politicized through various
fundamentalist . . . guises. The recent wave of anti-Jewish sentiment in
France, irrespective of national specicities, can only be understood if
one includes the specic international context of a new war against
the Jews declared by radical Islamic fundamentalists. ( July 6, 2004)

Anti-Semitism, whether it be in France, Belgium or the rest of Europe

and the world, must be identied for what it is: a stain on mankind.
Without this recognition and action to ght it, the abomination of
the nal solution of the Holocaust remains, in the words of Andr
Neher the unthinkable and the incompensatable.

PART II

JEWRY BEYOND EUROPE

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE SIAMESE TWINSRELIGION AND SECULARISM

IN JEWISH NATIONAL THOUGHT
Yosef Gorny
Past and Present
This chapter examines the attitudes towards Judaism as conveyed
by some leading secular nationalist intellectuals from Eastern Europe
before World War I, and their impact for our present and future.
By and large, on the rational level, religion and nationalism are
dierent phenomena: for the oneGod is the center, for the other
the nation. One is a transcendental anti-historical belief, for the
otherhistory has major ideological meaning. But beyond the rational
dimension, in historical reality, these two beliefs have a certain common denominator of dierential ties between religion and nationalism. Examples are multiple: Pravoslavism and Russian nationalism;
Catholicism and Polish or Irish nationalism; an American national
feeling and its ties with religious tradition; and in recent times we
see Arab nationalism inamed with Islam. These examples are meant
to indicate that while each case is particular, they have a general
common component. The subject of this chapter, Judaism and nationalism, is included in this universal framework. Yet, by the same
token, it should be noted that the Jewish case is also unique. In a
metaphoric way, I would say that the connection between religion
and nationalism is sometimes like between cousins and brothers and
sometimes like between twins; in the case of Judaism and nationalism, their relationship in Jewish history is like the biological tie
between Siamese twins. This phenomenon has been discussed for
more than two hundred years, since the French Revolution, and continues to be central in the present time as well. The reasons for this
are well known, but I will allow myself to mention some of them
which relate directly to the subject at hand.
Looking at the Jewish people from a historical perspective, as a

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yosef gorny

primordial ethnic community,1 we have to accept the notion that

religion, most of the time, was the most signicant component which
shaped the character and fate of this people. In other words, religion was for the Jews who were dispersed in many countries and
living in dierent cultures a substitute for the other components that
shaped most of the nations in the world: shared territory, economy,
political power and a common popular language. Paradoxically, this
abnormal situation of the Jewish people united modern nationalistic
intellectuals, especially in Eastern Europe in a striving to change this
historical reality. In other words, to normalize the Jewish existence
as a people among peoples and a nation among nations. This
would mean, as the historian Ben-Zion Dinur dened it, the rebellion against the Galut (exile).
From this perspective, ideological foes and political rivals like the
Zionists, Bundists and Dubnowists were partners in this vision, which
of course had various formulations. Indeed, all of the ideologies were
evidently contradictory to the religious orthodox perception of the
Jews as a people of GodAm Yisrael. But paradoxically, in this concept some of the principal ingredients of nationalism existed in an
embryonic form long before modern national ideologies. Specically,
I mean the idea of a chosen people with a mission to mankind; the
emotional feeling that a homeland is not only a place to live but
also a land with a spiritual meaning for the people and for the individual. It is the symbolic mystic citythe Zion of every religion
and of every national movementlike Paris for the French revolution, Rome for the Italian liberation movement, Gettysburg for the
American new nation, London during the Blitz and Stalingrad as
a turning point in the struggle against evil. Above all, this mystic
city is, of course, Jerusalem of the Temple, which more than any
other symbol, indicates the Siamese twins alliance of religion and
nationalism in Jewish history. However, this nationalism implied a
feeling of primordial identity, and in many respects came as a substitute to the orthodox concept of Judaism.
This was understood by the secular nationalistic political intellectuals
in Eastern Europe in the formative period of the Jewish national
movementi.e. before World War I. These political intellectuals

1
This view is accepted not only by Jewish historians like Dubnow, Baron and Dinur,
but by modern social scientists as well; See: Anthony D. Smith, 2003, pp. 6364.

religion and secularism in jewish thought

77

responded quite closely to Jonathan Frankels Polo Intelligentsia,2

by which he identied the founders and leaders of the Bund party.
A kind of Intelligentsia which consisted primarily of Russian political
and revolutionary gures.3 Political intellectual stands beyond the
Russian Intelligentsia and is more universal historical; it points to
intellectuals who are insider of political movements. It represents
the opposite of the usual denition of an intellectual as an outsider
of established structures. While both of them are social critics, for
the outsider, criticism is a cultural principle and for the insider
it is a political instrument. In a dierent way it may be said that
the outsider4 sees the destruction of the evils of the establishment
as his anarchic assignment; the insider sees his historical mission
in his attachement to the construction of a new society.
All of the intellectuals dealt with in these pages are insiders at
dierent levels, involvement in political ideology, and political activity.
All of them were fully committed to the making of a new Jewish
reality; they participated in the all-encompassing development that
transformed Eastern Europe Jewry. More specically, the inside
intellectuals discussed here represent three major trends of secular
nationalism and approaches towards religion: the negative, the separatist, and the integrative.
The negative approach belonged to the inside intellectuals of
the Bundthe social democratic Jewish party that combined, in its
own very special manner, Marxism and nationalism. The Bund
shared, indeed, a radical approach toward religion; it saw in it a
hypocritical belief and a dangerous political opponent with whom
any compromise was inconceivable. The separatist approach advocated complete ideological and cultural distinction between Jewishness
as a living national society and Judaism as a religion, which, in its
view, is contradictory to the national goal. Two writers and national
thinkers represented this attitude: Micha Yosef Berdichevsky (1865
1921) and Hayyim Brenner (18811921). The integrative approach
was a combination but not a synthesis of three substantially dierent
yet not hostile opinions. These intellectuals were critical but pragmatic insiders. The nationalist non-Zionist historian, Simon Dubnow;
2
Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism and the Russian
Jews 18621917 (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1989, p. 13.
3
See: Michael Conno, 1972.
4
See: Edward W. Said, 1994.

78

yosef gorny

the Zionist thinker, Ahad Ha"am; and the senior leader of the Jewish
Labor movement in Eretz Israel (Palestine), Berl Katznelson.
Since the subject of this book is strongly oriented to present-day
Jewish society, I will deal only with two approaches, which, in my
view, are still very valuable in our time and have a special importance
for the existence of Klal Yisrael in the futurethe separatists
and the integrationists.
Berdichevsky and Brenner were radical Hebrew nationalist and
critical Zionists, each of them in his particular way. Brenner made
Aliyah (immigrated) to Eretz Israel and was killed there. Berdichevsky
lived and died in Berlin. For them, as radical humanistic nationalists, the survival of the Jews as a people was dependent on a complete separation between Jewishness and Judaism. Berdichevsky coined
the famous provocative statement that the revival of the Jews as a
normal people depends on the choice between the Jews and Judaism.
Therefore, The priority should be given to the Jews rather than to
their ancestors.5
For Brenner, as for Berdichevsky, Jewish life was not identied
with the Jewish religion. From his point of view any synthesis should
be uprooted because it impedes the project of freeing Jews. Instead,
the Jewish people should, in this perspective, accept that there is
no Messiah for Israel and that the key of success lies in the strenght
to live without Messiah.6
Hence, while the Bund, the negativistic approach, negated religion totally from its Marxist proletarian point of view, Berdichevsky
and especially Brenner advocated a separatism based on the national
principle. Brenner did not negate religion as folkish or as noble
individual belief, but as a major component of Jewish nationalism.
For him, as a free man, a Jew may be an atheist or a believer
but only within the circle of his or her private life. In contrast, at
the collective level, not religion but only nationalism warrant the
future of the Jewish people. This was the very dierence that separated the negation of Klal Yisrael by the Bund and its acceptance
by Berdichevsky and Brenner. As nationalists, these two were insideintellectualseven though, because of their radicalism they often
were rejected as outside intellectuals.

5
6

Micha Yosef Bin-Gorion (Berdichevsky), 1966.

Yosef Chaim Brenner, 1985.

religion and secularism in jewish thought

79

The third approach of the pragmatic and critical insiders is the

central issue in this context. The pragmatic feature of this approach
derived from its political nature, and its critical approach was rooted
in its intellectualism. But above politics, there was the a-priori Klal
Yisrael ideology. The logic of the conceptual unication brought up
an unavoidable compromising pragmatic approach justied by its
goal. For Dubnow, the goal was the Jewish-World People; Ahad
Ha"am added the spiritual center in Eretz Israel, and Katznelson
the working new society label.
However there was a dierence in the degree and nature of compromise with religion that each of these trends was ready to accept.
Additionally, implementing their goals was very much dependent on
their involvement in political activities. Dubnow, the historian, was
the initiator of the Peoples Party and other political enterprises, but
he was not a political leader. Ahad Ha"am was rst a thinker but
also an initiator and head of a cultural and political association,
Bnei Moshe.7 Katznelson was the senior ideological and political
leader of the leading party Mapai in the Labor movement in Eretz
Israel.8
Dubnow was one of the fathers of modern Jewish nationalism and
the promoter of the idea of Klal Yisrael as a general Jewish united
front to establish security and ght for Jews national rights in Russia
at the beginning of the twentieth century (he never forgave the Bund
and the orthodox Agudat Yisrael which refused to take part in this
front). His basic outlook viewed Jews as rstly a national entity and
not a religious belief or ideological worldview. Insofar as religion is
concerned, a Jew although being an atheist continues to belong to
the Jewish nation as long as he does not convert to another religion.
7
Bnei Moshe, an organization founded in 1889 by Ahad Ha"am and a group
of Hebrew intellectuals as a part of the Lovers of Zion movement (Hibbat Zion).
8
A more pragmatic political approach towards religion can be seen, as well, in
the Bund in Poland between the two wars. Since the party was legitimate in the
democratic Polish Republic, they also had to decide about their participation in
the democratic Jewish communities together with political and ideological foes: the
Zionists and the Religious Orthodox. After not an easy dispute among themselves,
the Bund decided to take part in the elections in the communities (Kehilot). The
pragmatic leaders of the Bund, like Victor Alter, were ready to accept into the
trade unions under their leadership Jewish religious workers and even Zionists. It
is as well interesting to notice, that during WWII, when the Jewish section in the
Communist party in the US advocated a united Jewish front against Fascism, they
softened their attitude toward religion. See: Idn mit religie un on religie (Jews
with religion and without religion), Morning Freiheit, April 2, 1944.

yosef gorny

80

The reason that religion played such a role among Jews, according
to Dubnow, consists of the unique existential condition of the Jewish
people as a nation in exile where religion was a substitute for the
lack of national territory and other components assiociated with
nationhood. Hence, Dubnow rejected complete separation between
religion and nation. But as a non-Zionist, he saw in the Jewish condition an eternal Exile Nation (Galut Nation), which means that religion is here built in nationalism forever.9
Ahad Ha"am was in total agreement with Dubnows historiosophy.
But in spite of this, and in spite of the warm friendship between them,
he fundamentally disagreed with him about the way to keep the Jewish
people in the modern time from disintegration and assimilation. Dubnow
believed that popular Yiddish cultural and social autonomy would
suce to establish a national stronghold. Ahad Ha"am did not oppose
the autonomy principle but believed in a magnetic spiritual and
social elite which would establish a Hebrew national center in Eretz
Israel able to monitor culturally the dispersed and disintegrated Jewish
people.
On the political level, these dierent outlooks implied very dierent
conclusions. Dubnow was convinced that national autonomies as
world phenomena would be established, in the future, as a result of
a progressive social and political process. In contrast, Ahad Ha"ams
political agenda required building a spiritual center for the Jewish
people. This could not be done at the time without agreement
between secular nationalists and parts of the religious Jewry in Eastern
and even in Western Europe interested in the construction of a
Jewish modern culture in Eretz Israel. Ahad Ha"ams main preoccupation was spiritual renaissance grounded in modern Hebrew education. This national-mission perspective went through two dierent
formulations regarding his relation to religious Jewry.
The rst formulation was elaborated in the late nineteenth century;
it emphasized some basic principles but left room to pragmatic considerations; the second started from pragmatic considerations but also
referred to basic principles. The former is reected in two open letters to Rabbi Mordechai Elyashberg (1890) and his son Yehonathan
(1895)10who were in favor of constructive work in Eretz Israel.
Ahad Ha"am underlined two basic principles: one which was expressed

9
10

Dubnow, 1937.
Ahad Ha"am, 1949.

religion and secularism in jewish thought

81

already by Mordechai Elyashberg, that the two ways of building the

Jewish society in Eretz Israelthe religious and the secularare
legitimate; the second principle was the non-intervention of secular
nationalism in the domain of religion. He assured them that it never
crossed his mind to use the Zionist movement (Hibbat Zion) as an
instrument for religious reforms. But he was decent enough to admit
that he believed in a historical self-corrective inner process in the
Jewish religion. In other words, Ahad Ha"am believed then in two
ways of national upbuildingthe secular and the religious.
About ten years later, however, in the rst decade of the twentieth
century, Ahad Ha"am was to change his mind in the context of the
dispute that took place between secular Zionists in Eretz Israel and
the modern-orthodox heads of Ezra, a cultural foundation that set
up a there a new high-school. The dispute was about the nature of
the teaching orientation of the new institutionwhether the secular
or religious. A letter to his friends clearly expresses his dilemma at
the time. Ahad Ha"am emphasizes here his secular nationalism but
also admits that religion is a basic component in Jewish national history. This brought him to a pragmatic point of view. Since the main
national goal is Hebrew education, and if there is no other choice,
it is better to have a modern education in a religious spirit, but in
the Hebrew language, than not to have it at all. For the future, he
hoped that the political balance in the Jewish Yishuv would change
in favor of the secular nationalists. He hoped to be able then to take
part in the struggle against the radical and even modern orthodox.
This kind of pragmatic compromise was an outcome of his national
ideology and how he sees that it may be fulllled; it is this conviction
that he shared until his last days in Eretz Israel.11
With Berl Katznelson (18871944), the integrative principle and
pragmatic politics reached their peak. He was one of the spiritual
guides of the Second Aliyah (19041914)a group of founding fathers
who laid down the basic principles of social and political action of
the Labor movement: Hebrew Labor; cooperative settlements; military
self-defence organization HaShomer; and the ideology of constructive socialism as a way of building the new nation. The attitude toward religion in this group was not one-sided. Actually, they
were divided into two approaches: the separatist illustrated by Brenner,
and the more traditionalist illustrated by A. D. Gordon (18561922).
11

Ahad Ha"am, letters concerning Eretz-Israel (18911926).

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yosef gorny

For most of the group the attitude toward religion was critical
and connected to the Negation of Galut. For them the religious
society in Eastern Europe and in Eretz Israel was the embodiment
of Galut and therefore an anti-national phenomenon. For instance,
praying and mourning by orthodox Jews at the Wailing Wall symbolized, in their eyes, the Galut phenomenon. But at the same time,
the Wall itself was a national shrine which inspires rebellion against
this mourning. Their criticism against the settlers of the First Aliyah12
as well was not against their religious tradition, but rather because
of their social behaviourespecially their employement of Arab workers and opposition to the principle of Hebrew Labor, which in
their eyes contradicted the predominant national interest.
Katznelson was very close to both A. D. Gordon and Brenner.
But when it came to religion, he swayed more on the side of Gordon.
Katznelson himself was a traditionalist. In the 1920s and 1930s as
a leader of the powerful Histadrut (the labor trade union), his attitude was also very pragmatic. He supported vigorously the aliation
of the religious workers movement with the Histadrut on the ground
of socialist interests. When confronted with the question of the Kashrut
in Histadruts restaurants, he did not hesitate to declare that it is
better to have a Kosher Histadrut with religious workers than a
non-Kosher Histadrut without them. Actually, this kind of pragmatic
attitude became the political credo of Mapai, the dominant Labor
party. Though, behind this political pragmatism lied a historical view
that can be linked to Dubnow and Ahad Ha"am about the unbreakable
tie between religion and nationalism. This explains why for him the
fast of the Ninth of Av carries primarily a national meaning. In
his words: This very night when the Jewish people laments its
destruction, enslavement and the bitterness of its exile . . . This
remembrance of the destruction, the sense of exile, and the ardour
to create a new society were one and the same, not only as a heritage but also as a spiritual and cultural reality that symbolizes the
unity of dispersed Klal Yisrael.13
12

The First Aliyah, 18821903: the founders of the modern Zionist society in
Eretz Israel and the builders of the rst agriculture settlements (Moshavot).
13
See: Berl Katznelson Hurban uTelishut (Destruction and Uprooting), and
Mekorot Lo Achzav (Inexhaustible sources) Writings vol. 6, Tel-Aviv 1947, pp.
365367; 385393. It was signicant that most of Berls critics, in this case, indicated not their anti-religious principles, but the hostile and even vicious attitude of
the majority of the orthodox Jewry towards Zionism and the Labor movement.

religion and secularism in jewish thought

83

To sum up, the Bund and BerdichevskyBrenner represented a

separatist non-historical approach. Fort this approach, even though
in the past religion expressed Jewish nationalism, in the present modern time there is no further tie between them. The second approach
illustrated by Dubnow, Ahad Ha"am and Katznelson was explicitly
based on historical continuity. Our question at this point is whether
or not the problem that was at the heart of the elaboration of Jewish
national thought decades ago is still relevant to our present-day preoccupations? My answer is yes, in spite of all the fundamental and
dramatic changes that have taken place in the history of the Jewish
people, and perhaps even because of them.
It seems that today we are facing a phenomenon of neo-Brennerism, neo-Dubnowism and neo-Ahad Ha"amism. The rst,
which is mainly Israeli, demands the separation between the state
and religion; the second is Diasporic and believes in a revival of
Jewish centers; the third holds the idea of the centrality of Israel
in the Jewish world. For the latter two the historical connection
between nationalism and religion is essential. But even a part of the
new separatists who do not deny the existence of a world Jewish
people must accept the historical hyphenation of Judaism and
Jewishness because in present-day Jewish Diaspora, the public expression of Jewishness or Jewish ethnicity is often fullled through religious institutionsOrthodox, Conservative or Reform. This means
that only an ultra-radical secular and anti-nationalistic view can break
the historical Siamese tie between religion and nationalism as an
exceptional Jewish phenomenon. On the other hand, the religious
Jew cannot deny the existential link between secularism and religion
in Judaism imposed by the Halacha itself. Here specically, reference is made to the categorical imperative of born a Jew always a
Jeweven the one who converted. Paradoxically, in this respect,
the Halacha is more liberal than the historical approach. From
this point of view, the religious and the secular are in the same
trap of dual recognition. The secular recognizes historical Jewishness
as a synthesis of religion and nationalism, and the religious accepts
the secular Jews as an integral part of Judaism.
So far, the integrative approach of Dubnow, Ahad Ha"am and
Katznelson are even more needed in the present and for the future
than they were in the past. But at the political level, reality negates
ideology. The bond between religion and politics has an anti Klal
Yisrael meaning in three aspects. It is anti-Zionist because of the

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religious discrimination that it institutes between the dierent parts

of Jewish people; it is anti-democratic because of the unequal status
in Israel of the three main religious denominationsOrthodox,
Reform, Conservative; and it is anti-liberal because it does not allow
the individual to choose his way to join the Jewish people and to
build his life among them by marriage or conversion to Judaism.
Because this is an academic book, and not a political one, pragmatic suggestions or solutions are out of our competence and experience. But our critical intellectual duty is to uncover the fundamental
diversions in our society and the dangerous consequences they may
imply. The Jewish people in Israel and in the Diaspora are inside
a Canaanite Syndrome14 which means that the territory and its
culture are more and more the fundamental factors in shaping Jews
collective national identity. And that means a dynamic process of
more and more identication with the peoples and cultures where
Jews evolve. This is an objectively unavoidable process for a substantial
part of the Jewish people in free societies and even in Israel. But
the other part, which strives to keep the unity of Klal Yisrael, faces
a historical paradox. The state of Israel, which is ideologically a
Zionist state and is attached to the unity of the Jewish people, is
causing a deep schism between them in the context of religions
politics.
In this situation, an intellectual constant debate is needed at the
very least, especially by insideintellectuals, in order to consider
a new concept of Klal Yisrael appropriate to todays Jewish civilization.

14
A group of intellectuals in the State of Israel in the 1950s, who preached for
the founding of a Hebrew nation disconnected with the Diaspora Jewry.

CHAPTER NINE

ISRAELI IDENTITY AND MISSION

IN BUBERS THOUGHT
Shalom Ratzabi
The goal of this chapter is to show the contribution of Bubers theopolitical thought, which identies the Jewish people both as nation
and as a religious community, to recent eorts to nd solutions to
this acute problem facing Israel for decades, namely, the Jewish-Arab
conict. It is well known that the main stream dominating Zionist
thought before and after the establishment of the state of Israel sees
Jewish nationality in terms of a modern national framework. This
view correspondingly perceives the uniqueness of the Jewish people
as only the result of their exilic situation which made them prey to
their neighbours. The claim set forth from this perspective has been,
and remains, that the aim of Zionist activity must be the normalization of the Jewish people. This is embodied in the Zionist popular
slogan a nation like all nations, and, indeed, the essential dierence,
before the founding of the Jewish state, was that the Jews were
deprived of the principle attribution of a nationa sovereign state.
Achieving an independent state would thus normalize their situation
and secure their existence as a nation like other nations. The dominant current of Jewish nationalism also believed that only citizenship in the Jewish State should determine the Jewish national identity,
as only French citizenship determines a Frenchmans national identity.
This mainstream view sees Israel as an end and not an instrument.
That is, the eorts of the Jews should be completely invested into
the security and the existence of the state of Israel serving as the
basis for a Jewish national identity.
Bubers theo-political thought stands in sharp contrast with this
nationalistic outlook. He articulates his understanding of the existence of the Jewish people from a religiously inward perspective
that is to say, from the Jewish experience across generations. From
this it follows that the concept of Jewish people and Jewish national
identity are built upon the grounds of Jewish religiosity.

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shalom ratzabi

The core of Bubers theo-political thought or as he labelled it

Hebrew Humanism is, as he saw it, opposed to a nationalism which
is nothing but empty self-assertion; in other words, his claim is that
the Jewish people is not like other nations, no matter how much its
representatives have wished it. The singularity of the Jewish people
is a by-product of the way by which the tribes of Israel became a
people. That is to say, the uniqueness of the Jewish peopleas a
nationis inherent in its structure as people, a structure which has
determined Jewish history ever since ancient times. In Bubers view,
the root of this uniqueness goes back to the rst appearance of the
people of Israel as a nation and which constituted of both a nation
and a religious community (1963: 248).
Buber articulated these ideas in his research on the Bible and
Jewish thought throughout Jewish history, especially regarding Jewish
Hasidism. He sees in the early formative events of Jewish history the
importance of the covenant with God as a basis for the nation. A
principle that is recurrent and which, for example, is illustrated both
in the scene of the Israelites standing at the foot of Mount Sinai
amd in the war of Baraq and Deborah when the 12 tribes united.
In either case, one sees Revelation taking the form of a covenant
with God. The signicance of this is that the nation is directly tied
to a relationship with God. In this context, Jews identity as a nation
must be based on Gods commandments.
Thus, according to Buber, alread in these Biblical times, Israel
was not a nation in the comprehensible sense, but rather a people
and a religious community in one. It is this element that builds the
Jewish identity and it is this element that embodies the uniqueness
of the Jewish people. Moreover, this unity of a people and a religious community, Buber argues, was the secret force that enable it
[the Jewish people] to survive in an exile no other nation had to
suer, an exile which lasted much longer than the period of its independence. That is to say, he who serves this bond serves the life
of Israel (1963: 248).
Along the same lines, Buber observes that to the biblical concept
of the election of Israelwhich begins in the election of Adam and
goes on through Abraham to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai
carries out the divine plan of justice and responsibility in all realms
of life. Only a nation whose responsibility extends to nearly all realms
of life can actually model the modes of relationship required by such
a covenant. Thus, for the people of Israel, the land of Israel serves

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87

as a necessary precondition to fulll their task in the world as a

nation. Moreover the land of Israel and the Jewish people are the
only two parts to the partnership in the covenant of which God is
in the center. This means that to actualize true and just relations
fully in everyday life, the nation requires a land of its own where it
can establish a community that lives in full accordance with the
covenant. Though, it should be reminded that, according to the
Bible, the real owner of land is God alone. Indeed, in the article
entitled The Land and its Possessors, Buber writes:
It seems to me that God does not give any portion of the earth away,
so that the owner may say as God says in the Bible: For all the earth
is mine (Exod. 19:5). The conquered land is, in my opinion, only
lent even to the conqueror who has settled on itand God waits to
see what he will make of it. (1963: 233)

Undoubtedly, we may conclude from this theo-political standpoint

that the identity of the Jew and so too the identity of the Jewish
people as a nation is not a regular national identity. It is conditioned
chiey on the obligations that Jewish people took upon themselves
within the framework of their covenant with God. Therefore neither
the state nor any other national attributes are the source of the
Jewish national identity.
Israels accepting the covenant implies two basic ideas: the kingship
of God and consecration of every day life. The laws of the Torah
in the teachings of the prophets seek to realize the rule of God in
all spheres of life. In the Bible, any dichotomy between the realm
of sacred and that of profane is invalid. In the following, Buber
explains this idea:
He calls truth and righteousness, and he does not demand these
for certain isolated spheres of life, but for the whole life of man, for
the whole life of the people. He wants the individual and the people
to be whole-hearted with him. (1963: 251)

To live as a nation of God or in the words of the Bible to be a

kingdom of priests and a holy people (Exodus 19:6), the community has to maintain all of its life spheres so that all relationships
between its members and with its neighbours communities will reign
by justice and be sacred. With this theo-political concept of the
uniqueness of the Jewish people in mind, we can now delve into the
signicance of the Land of Israel in Bubers Jewish nationalist thought.
Unlike other nations, the Jewish people did not develop on its own

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land in the regular progression from tribes to nation. Rather, as

mentioned, they became a nation only through their covenant with
God. It follows that in the framework of this covenant we have to
dene the rule of Eretz Israel. The land of Israel is the land that
God elected and promised to Israel as a part of the covenant. It
then follows that the land of Israel has no meaning to the history
of the Jewish people except as one ingredient in the covenant.
Given these considerations we can understand why Buber did not
regard Zionism as a regular national movement. The ordinary national
movement thrives to a national state, which is their motherland. It
is not so in the Jewish case. The land of Israel is not the motherland
of the Jewish people; it is the land which was designed to be the
place for the Jewish people to fulll their duties of the covenant.
From this argument follows that Eretz Yisrael (land of Israel) is not
the native country of the Jewish people, but rather part of the
covenant, or as Buber puts it, a task. That is, because living in
Eretz Yisrael is tied to accepting to be a Nation of priests and holy
people in that land, Zionism is not a national movement in the
ordinary sense, but a Jewish renewal movement which aims to have
the Jews return to their history and renew their task. In this form
of nationalism, the Jews return their responsibility towards God in
the land of Israel in establishing a just community. On this basis,
Buber denes what he sees as the goals of Zionism and his political attitude towards the Jewish-Arab conict.
In Bubers thought, the recovery of the Bible constitutes one of
the major tasks for the Jewish people in their quest for renewal. As
Silberstein mentions in his writings on Buber, this recovery means
a constant dialogue between the realities of the present and the teachings of the prophets in the remote past about the moral of the nation,
its justice and truth (Silberstein, 1989). Thus, in every period and
situation, the Jewish people must shape their task in accordance with
the teachings of the prophets. Only then will they be able to make
clear what is needed in order to create a community based on justice and truth. On this basis, Buber articulates the aim of the people
of Israel today as Salvation: Our only salvation is to become Israel
again, to become a whole, the unique whole of a people and a religious community: a renewed religion and the renewed unity of both.
(Buber 1963; 252)

israeli identity and mission in bubers thought

89

With the establishment of the State of Israel, Buber formulated

the aim of Zionism as an instrument of and a framework for the
struggle of the Jewish people to fulll their duty in accordance with
the covenant. In this new design of Zionisms goal, the meaning of
the renewal of the nation of Israel as both a religious community
and a nation received a new political form. One of the best presentations of this new aim can be found in Bubers speech entitled
Israels Mission and Zion, which was delivered in Jerusalem, 1957.
Indeed this speech was an answer to the Zionist view expounded by
then Prime Minister Ben-Gurion who saw in the state of Israel not
merely an instrument, but the beginning of redemption and of the
fulllment of the messianic idea of the prophets. In contrast to this
view Buber states:
Ben-Gurion is right in saying that youth in Israel is very much interested in certain parts of the Bible, especially in the stories about the
conquest of the land, in the narratives and also in some words of the
prophets. But on no account are the prophets to be regarded apart
from their historic mission that sent them to those men who seized
the reins of power in order to summon them to stand in judgment
before their God who had made them king provisionally (1963: 249).

In other words, the destiny of Israel depends upon the fulllment of

the demands of the prophets, which imply that the people of Israel
have to act in accordance with the covenant. While the prophetic
demands apply to all generations, they apply especially to our own
generation as for the rst time in two millennia exists the prerequisite
for fullling this task, i.e. a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Our
generation has the power to determine for itselfin no small measure
its institutions, its modes of life, and its relations to other nations.
In this context, Buber continues, the intensity of the political principle which characterizes the modern world in general and political
Zionism in particular has drawn the Jewish-Arab conict to the realm
of politics and its consequent falling victim to politicization. In this
perspective, Buber argues in his book Land of Two People:
We must ght against the excessive growth of politics, must ght it
from within, from a position within politics own domain. Our objective
is to eliminate the political surplus conict, the imaginary conict, to
bare the real interests, to make known the true bonds of the conict
between interests. (Buber, 1983: 188)

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That is to say the task of the people of Israel, in Bubers thought,

is to depoliticize this conict and restore it to the realm of everyday relations between persons and communities. With this in mind,
Buber concludes:
The only hope is to establish institutions which accord supremacy to
the demands of life over the demands of politics and which thereby
provide us with a real and substantial base from which to explain the
truth (Buber 1983: 188).

If the Jewish-Arab conict is to be resolved, it must shift from the

sphere of political principle that is to say from the framework of
power politics to the sphere of social principle that is to say to
human relationship, responsibility and dialogue. And indeed in the
Zionist outlook of Ben-Gurion which I have mentioned above, Buber
saw the will to make the political factor supreme (Buber, 1963:
261). In an interview with Ben Ezer, he argues that there can be
no peace between Jews and Arabs, merely a cessation of war. And
in accordance with his stance about the political principle he adds:
there can be only a peace of genuine cooperation. Today, under
circumstances so manifoldly aggravated, the command of the spirit
is to pave the way for cooperation of people (Ben Ezer, 1974: 120).
The Jewish-Arab conict is according to this outlook the test of
Zionism. That is, in this historical hour to fulll their covenant, the
Jews must solve the inherent problem in the relationship between
two peoples according to the moral principle and not according the
political principle.
In summary, Buber rejected the conventional view that saw the
Jewish-Arab conict and Israels survival solely in military terms. To
him, the true test of the Jewish people was moral and religious,
resolved around the Jews ability to achieve a genuine peace with
the Arabs. He agreed that the Jewish people need the land and freedom to organize their own life in order to realize the goal of community, as claimed by political Zionism. But we must remember,
contends Buber, that the state as such is at best only a means to
the goal of Zionism, and it may even be an obstacle to it if the true
nature of Zion as task and mission is not held to be most important. It follows that because the Jewish people is both nation and
religious community, Buber claims:
We do, of course, need the conditions of normal national life, but
these are not enoughnot enough for us, at any rate. We cannot

israeli identity and mission in bubers thought

91

enthrone normalcy in place of the eternal premise of our survival.

If we want to be nothing but normal, we shall soon cease to be at
all. (Buber 1963: 252)

Buber was not a naive political thinker as his opponents labelled him.
He acknowledged that it is indeed true that here can be no life without injustice. The fact that there is no living creature which can live
and thrive without destroying another existing organism has a symbolic signicance as regards our human life (Buber 1983: 86). But
Buber argues that the inevitability of injustice does not give the right
to abdicate the responsibility to strive for justice. In Bubers words:
A person commences to be truly human when he pictures to himself
the results of his actions and attempts to encroach upon other creatures as little as necessary. We cannot refrain from doing injustice altogether, but we are given the grace of not having to do more injustice
than absolutely necessary. And this is none other than the grace, which
is accorded to us as humanity. (Buber 1983: 170)

This is Bubers rst moral imperative. The Jewish people, he argues,

has to confront the responsibility of drawing the line of demarcation
between just and unjust acts. In the face of this ongoing responsibility,
political slogans are totally inadequate; likewise, abstract principles
would not suce. At this historical hour, the leaders and citizens of
Israel alike as people and as a religious community which stand
before God, claims Buber, must accept their human and religious duty.
They must demark the line between evil and least evil, which is
inherent and inevitable in the concrete situation, and make a decision.
On this basis, Buber forms his attitude regarding the major issues
which have stood between the Palestinians and Israel since the founding of the state of Israelparticularly, the issues of the refugee problem, the status of Jerusalem, the armed conict with terror and the
restriction of nuclear weapons. So, for example, Buber demanded
the repatriation of the Arab refugees who had ed from Israel in
1948 (Maurice Friedman 1983: 346347). In one of his statement,
he not only urged to relive the situation of the refugees within the
country, but also to take the initiative in calling an international conference to deal with the problem of refugees in Arab lands. This
meant asking the Israeli government to abandon its position that the
refugees could be dealt with only within the framework of a general
political peace settlement. Moreover, Buber spoke out publicly in
several instances when Israeli forces killed Arab civilians and particularly

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in Kafr Kassem. In a public speech delivered in 1958 he expressed

his feelings:
Often, in earlier times, Arabs hordes had committed outrages of this
kind, and my soul bled with the sacrice; but here it was a matter of
our own, or my own crime, of the Jews against the spirit. Even today
I cannot yet think about this without feeling myself guilty. Our active
faith in the spirit was too weak to prevent the outbreak and spread
of the demonic false teaching.

We can conceive his sorrow only if we remember that Buber saw

Zionism in its prophetic dimensions and in accordance with Hebrew
Humanism as fulllment of Israels mission as a people with responsibility before God. On the one hand, he could not agree with BenGurion that the state of Israel is the beginning of the messianic
redemption. Indeed, Buber could not imagine the messianic idea
without the yearning for the redemption of mankind and without
the desire to take part in its realization (Buber 1963: 263). On the
other hand, he believed that the values of Israel are the fruits of
their covenant with God which gures their unique existence as a
religious community and nation. So the values of Israel, he said,
cannot be reborn outside the sphere of this union and its uniqueness (Buber 1963: 252). That is to say the task and the goal of
Zionism is to realize Hebrew Humanism that consists of the principle
of responsibility and justice, grounded in an understanding of the
Bible regarding Jewish national identity as a religious community
and a nation.

CHAPTER TEN

SOVEREIGNTY, VOLUNTARISM, AND JEWISH

IDENTITYNATHAN ROTENSTREICH
Avi Bareli*
During the early years of the state of Israel, Nathan Rotenstreich was
a prominent gure in public life. He was one of the main thinkers
in the leading political party Mapai1 and a gifted and well-known
academic philosopher. His many works include, among other topics,
profound and original interpretations of Kant, Hegel, and Marx.
Rotenstreichs sociocultural commitment to Judaism manifested
itself through his continual research into Jewish philosophy and the
encounter of Jewish thoughtsecular and religiouswith the crisis
of modernity. By exploring philosophical questions about the status
of Judaism in the modern era, Rotenstreich sought to tackle the spiritual agonies of modern Jewry. It was this commitment that prompted
Rotenstreich to publish his thoughts in various journals and newspapers aliated with Mapai and the Zionist Labor Movement.
Rotenstreich was Socialist and Zionist and his thinking aspired to a
synthesis of national and social outlooks. As we shall see, one of the
most important concepts that made his synthesis possible is the
concept of rational will. He was committed to the values and interests of the Jewish national and secular society of the pre-state Yishuv.
A man of theoretical thought, he expressed this commitment in

* Some of the ideas that are elaborated here are the products of intensive discussions I have had with Prof. Y. Gorny while writing together an introduction to
a book of articles by Nathan Rotenstreich (Zionism Past and Present, Suny Press, New
York, forthcoming). I also used here some of his discussion on Rotenstreich in his
book (1994) The State of Israel in Jewish Public Thought: the Quest for Collective Identity. I
would like to thank him for his help and support.
1
Mapai, the leading party in the Zionist Labor Movement in Palestine, was founded
in 1930 and embraced most members of the Movement except for Ha-Shomer haTsa"ir and other small groups. In 1933, Mapai became the leading party in the
Zionist Movement and the Yishuv (the Jewish community of pre-independence Israel),
led them in the process of establishing the State of Israel, and served as the ruling party until 1977 (During its tenure at the helm, it underwent metamorphoses,
splittings, and mergers, and was renamed the Israel Labor Party).

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avi bareli

elaborating on the signicance of rational will and his discussing the

inter-dependence and conict between sovereignty and voluntarism.
At the core of Rotenstreichs thought on these subjects, we nd the
tension between the centrality of the state, on the one hand, and
voluntarism, on the other.
Rotenstreichs Zionist and socialist worldview was explicitly voluntaristic. His thought aspired to a life shaped by rational volition,
even though he was completely aware of the deep disparity existing
between human reality and aspirations. But he was not content with
this realistic evaluation. In his eyes, realism should be used for nding
a feasible way to mould human society, not to abandon altogether
the very idea of a society shaped by collective and individual rational will. Rotenstreich was thus an overt left-winger Zionist, in the
original sense of the term leftin demanding that individuals and
collectives do not take social or national reality for granted.
This voluntaristic approach stemmed from two major sources:
1) Kantian ethics and its focus on human will guided by the imperatives
of reason, and 2) Socialist-Zionism which in the pre-state period was
grounded in the spirit of pioneers devoted to the establishment of
Jewish sovereignty. Rotenstreichs commitment stood for a voluntarism
that posits the centrality of volition guided by reason. This commitment
was at the foundation of his bond with Kantian ethics and the values,
interests, and hopes of Labor Zionism. It was also at the core of
what he saw as Jewish secular identity at the time.
Voluntaristic Socialism
For Rotenstreich, the convergence of Kantianism, Zionism, and
Socialism is evident. A prominent example is his article Socialism
and the Problem of Responsibility published in 1952. In this article, he discusses the concept Responsibility as stemming from the
Kantian concepts of obligation and autonomy so central to the
German philosophers rationalist ethics and philosophy of liberation.
The arguments presented in this article demonstrate that concepts
of Kantian ethics, with clear secular connotations, can be seen as
the link between Rotenstreichs socialist ideology, on the one hand,
and his voluntarism and denial of determinism, on the other. From
Rotenstreichs standpoint, the responsibility of the individual who
makes a moral decision and does not slide passively into a state of

sovereignty, voluntarism, and jewish identity

95

action pertains directly to the historical enterprise of the humanistic

Left. It directly aects the fate of the socioeconomic enterprise of
the Left, which may be dened as a quest for authentic social
existence arising from the negation of the supremacy of economic
considerations. As Rotenstreich states at the outset of his argument
(1952), Socialism nds itself in a situation where it sees no other
way of attaining the desired level of production than to behave as
though it were not Socialism, and to nurture in the individual the
urge of possession and of economic and social progress. The socioeconomic arrangements that Socialism has ordained, however, restrain
these urges. Thus, the individual tumbles into a dicult zone that
lies between encouraging these urges and restraining them: he sees
himself functioning as a capitalist and is judged as a Socialist. The
beginning of his behaviour should be capitalistic and its denouncement . . . Socialistic.
This untenable and severely pernicious confusion occurs because
Socialism separates its means from its ends. By so doing, Rotenstreich
believes, Socialism does itself a disservice. Socialism should not reduce
itself to the anonymous regulatory frameworks of the welfare state
in order to alleviate the inherent injustice of rationalism or economic
eciency, while individuals actual behaviour continues to be guided
by the prot motive even under Socialist dominion and regulation.
Socialism then merely concedes its own defeat insofar as its main
object, since the time it was devised, is the praxis in individual lifes.
Rotenstreichs solution to the problem resides in the Kantian idea
of responsibility which, in his view, should amend the accepted version of Socialist theory. Without this amendment, mans demand for
rights in Socialism, and a fortiori in Liberalism, will inevitably lead
to hedonism and a stance made up solely by demands from
society. Rotenstreich preached instead for recognition of the individuals responsibility to the community and commonality. No longer
would individuals action be perceived as a means but as an objective and overt quasi-extension of his psycho-physical personality.
Hence, Rotenstreich was very sorry that the kernels of authenticity
implanted in the Zionist Labor Movement, were now in the rst
years of the State awash in the whirlpool of all-sweeping economic
considerations.
Rotenstreich was critical of Socialism when understood in terms
of nationalization and expressing a macroscopic view of society where
ownership is anonymous and appears as an organization and not

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avi bareli

as a concrete unit of life. Such a society encourages a culture of

entitlement and leaves no room for the relationship of responsibility
that intimacy presumes. Such intimacy is possible only where there
is an identity of economy and society. This principle, he contended, is best illustrated by the kibbutz, the Zionist commune, where
a economic activity is but one manifestation of social action. This
identity of economy and society that exists in the kibbutz grants its
identity to the whole Zionist Labor Movement and it is in this sense
that Rotenstreich could write [t]he fate of the Labor Movement
depends on reinvigorating the kibbutz movement (1952). He hoped
that the kibbutz movement would continue to be a pioneering and
society-serving elite as it had been in the pre-independence period.
Above all, he hoped that it would now function as a paragon for
society at large and would inspire society to emulate it.
Rotenstreichs discussion of the concept of responsibility contained
the exigency that politics, economy and society, as they were given
shape by the Zionist Left during the period of the formative period
of the state, leave room to individual autonomy. He thought that
the collective will embodied in the new sovereigntythat is, the
State of Israelshould not foster bureaucratic obedience, but rather
activate the citizen in the frame of appropriate social and economic
systems. Rotenstreich related the demand for individual autonomy
and personal responsibility to intimate social bonds, though these
kinds of bonds are dicult to envisage in the context of wider political
systems. Similar diculties recur in Rotenstreichs extensive polemical writing: while his conclusions often rest on in-depth critical analysis, he no less often confronts the political reality from a point of
view that sounds like inapplicable moralism.
Society-building in Israel, in his view, should not wait until the
economic and global basis for a Socialist society takes shape. The
very act of waiting is tantamount to succumbing. Socialism, and
especially Zionist-Socialism, must not postpone the creation of a
social cell of human signicance at the present time, since in the
absence of such a cell, Socialism would create with its own hands
a social organization that would render it void. Rotenstreich even
claimed that rejecting the primacy of purely economic considerations
is essential for Israeli society specically. Israeli society, he said, is
struggling to establish the physical basis of its very existence, and
the struggle may lead to a confusion of standards and the development of a unilateral functionalistic consciousness. To forestall such

sovereignty, voluntarism, and jewish identity

97

a possibility, a renewal of the consciousness of responsibility and

the social cells that carry its imprint is imperative.2
Essential in this criticism is the authors rejection of social passivity. This insistence on activism, the voluntaristic source of his secularism, was also the source of his socialist criticism of Israeli society
in its early years. Rotenstreich was one of the most prominent critics in Mapais internal debate about political institutionalization at
the outset of Israeli independence. His criticism centerd on the weakening of societys voluntaristic nature as well as its special socialist
orientation.
Rotenstreichs rst criticism of the political institutionalization of
the State already appeared an article entitled Israeli Society in
Crisis, published in October 1950, about two years after the creation of the State. The article expressed harsh feelings vis--vis the
current internal ideological debate in Mapai. Rotenstreich urged the
party to adopt realistic critical thinking, free of cynical scepticism
and self-satisfaction. The heads of state should laud kibbutz society;
the kibbutz movement should withdraw from the frenzy of nancial
corruption that has gripped Israeli society in its outward behaviour
and not only in the management of its internal aairs; Mapai should
stanch the frenzy of selshness and should demand that its members lead a modest lifestyle; the leaders of government should become
paragons of return to a simple life, i.e., the dominion of the idea.
It is hard to resist the conclusion that Rotenstreichs critical power
in this article surpassed his ability to propose a way to solve the crisis of norms that was involved in the process of institutionalization
during the early years of independence. Nevertheless, one cannot
but respect the voluntaristic moral ethos that guided him.3
The atmosphere of crisis and alarm also stands out in another
article About the Horizon of Time in Our Lives, which Rotenstreich
published about half a year later, in June 1951. Here, among all
aspects of the social crisis that he identied at the time, Rotenstreich
focused on bourgeoisization. In contrast to the allegations, accusations, and preachings that lled his earlier article, Israeli Society
in Crisis, Rotenstreich now took a more sober approach. He appreciated the intensity of the objective processes that had engendered
2

N. Rotenstreich, 1952, pp. 1825 (Hebrew).

N. Rotenstreich, October 1950, quoted from Rotenstreich, Al ha-Temura, pp.
152161 (Hebrew).
3

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the contemporaneous crises and realized that preaching would not

be too useful. He admitted that the Israelis, immigrants and nonimmigrants alike, would not be able to escape the crises of the day
afterafter twelve years (19361948) of Holocaust, of conict with
the Palestinians and the British government and then the war of
independence against the Palestinians and the Arab states. The reactions and the fatigue after these years, he now admitted, were unavoidable and more powerful than the countering force that Ben-Gurion
and his colleagues in the government could call in.4 It is interesting
to see how an anti-determinist5 such as Rotenstreich, who attributed
much importance to social engineering was now forced to acknowledge the predetermination of social processes. But at the same time,
he warned that the bourgeoisization of the Jewish workers, along
with the rest of society, would endanger the existence of Israeli society, lower its morale, and ultimately impair its security. To revive
Israeli society, he wrote, Mapai and its leadership should banish considerations of popularity from their thinking and revert to the wellsprings of the Labor Movement, to prefer the value of labor over
the value of standard of living, to serve society instead of exploiting
it, and to prefer voluntary bottom-up awakening over top-down guidance by means of rules and regulations.
About a year later, in late 1951, Rotenstreich published another
article, The First Pincer, in which he expressed dierent attitudes
toward the role of the state in view of the erosion of the voluntaristic norms and the crisis of halutsiyut (pioneering). In his October
1950 article, Israeli Society in Crisis, Rotenstreich attributed most
of the blame for the crisis to the state and its leaders. Now, he set
his trust in these very actors and urged them to renew the pioneering
movement. Here we can see more clearly how Rotensteichs thought
reects on the complexity of the relationship between sovereignty
and voluntarism. One of the main functions of the state, from his
republican and Kantian perspective, is to activate its citizens. But,
there is always the danger that the state would rather foster obedience
4
In October 1950, Pinchas Lavon, leader of the Gordonia group in Mapai, the
branch with which Rotenstreich was aliated, had joined the Government.
5
This stance was the dominant one among the Mapai ideologues, nearly all of
whom were rather extreme voluntarists and anti-determinists. Rotenstreich was a
most profound representative of the dominant approach in the world of Mapai.
Leaders such as Ben-Gurion and Lavon may also be considered pronounced voluntarists, in contradiction to their being no less people of authority.

sovereignty, voluntarism, and jewish identity

99

and passivity. Now, Rotenstreich likened the countrys populace to

a mass of individuals at each others throats. People are behaving
. . . like a society that no longer believes in its future and, accordingly, is indulging in a feeding frenzy. The immigrants, in Rotenstreichs judgment, have given the non-immigrants a human and
social alibi. The gist of this alibi, he wrote, is the assumption that
since the countrys human quality is about to decline in any case,
it is best to live for the moment and maximize ones pleasure. However, he continued, it is the non-immigrants, not the immigrants,
who are the source of the immigrant-absorption problems. Successful
immigrant absorption integrates newcomers into institutions that teach
them patterns that they would perceive as parts of the natural landscape that should be taken for granted. Instead of this, Israels nonimmigrants have become a collection of individuals [that] lacks the
strength to absorb [immigrants]. A faceless community that confronts another faceless community.
Momentarily abandoning his typical voluntarism, he admitted,
There is no hope for a moral turnaround without the assurance of
a known minimum supply. . . . [Otherwise, people] will regard themselves as ghting for life itself and will consider all means t. . . .
He hurriedly added, however, that the main need was to put together
core groups of people who will maintain the cohesion of the veteran
Yishuv and, by so doing, sustain its institutions, without which the
masses of immigrants will not be absorbed. In other words, a pioneering elite should be established and the government should be
responsible for establishing it. Thus, while overlooking his disapproval
of the state that typied his article Israeli Society in Crisis (and that
would typify his writings in subsequent articles, especially those in the
1960s), Rotenstreich assigned here the government a normative role.6
In this article and others of similar intent that he published during
those years, Rotenstreich sustained a fundamental aspect of the mamlakhtiyut (Zionist and Israeli republicanism) outlook, that is, that the
state is a major, nay even primordial, object of emotional identication
for its citizens and is to be recognized as a dominant actor in society.
In The First Pincer, as we have seen, Rotenstreich even designated
the state as a source of norms.
6
N. Rotenstreich, 1951. Quoted from N. Rotenstreich, Al ha-Temura, pp. 162169.
The year 1951 is noted at the end of the article in the latter publication; this may
denote the year the article was written.

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In three articles published in the spring and summer of 1952 and

in early 1953, Rotenstreich attempted to devise a general way out
of the impasse that he had identied between late 1950 and late
1951 and early 1952. This attempt, however, amounted to adherence to an orieintation that may have diverted his political thinking
from practical conclusions. Thus, again he called for a renewal of
the relationship between the members of the Socialist pioneering settlements and the political system. Once more, Rotenstreich resorted
to a rather idyllic portrayal of the formative past. Again, he said,
an eort is to be made to blend, if not to fully integrate, the pioneering settler elite and the political elite and to recruit leaders from
the ranks of those who consider their personal fate and the collectives as one and the same. Hence, Rotenstreichs analysis remained
within the domain of hope for the restoration of the political role
of pioneerism and voluntarism; it contained no proposals about
society-building. Moreover, there was no proposal for adaptation
and implementation of the voluntaristic values in the new political
structure of the state.7
As a matter of fact, the complexity of Rotenstreichs public writing
is amply evinced in his discussions of the concept of mamlakhtiyut.8
He refused simplistic distinctions and either-or conceptual dichotomies
that ostensibly set matters straight but render discussion supercial.
This explains the typical tension in his writing between a demand
to bring Israeli society back to the voluntaristic values that he cherished and a static outlook that assigns the state and its leadership a
central and normative role in the revival of pioneering voluntarism
and the reinvigoration of its values. The tension in his writing mirrors the dialectic tension that existed in the historical reality of the
time. In this sense, Rotenstreichs public writing, at its best, ushers
us into the secret recesses of the basic contradictions that typied
the Israeli condition during the countrys founding years.
This specic condition makes Rotenstreichs criticism of early Israeli
society a valuable presentation of the problematic relation between
sovereignty and voluntarism in his secular thought. The new sovereign state is an embodiment of the Jewish collective will, but it came
7

N. Rotenstreich, May 1952, pp. 7785 (Hebrew), quoted from Rotenstreich, Al

ha-Temura, pp. 170177; ibid., August 1952, pp. 183191 (Hebrew); ibid., Feb. 20,
1953, pp. 285286 (Hebrew).
8
See above for the denition of its main fundamental.

sovereignty, voluntarism, and jewish identity

101

into being and cannot be sustained but by the force of individual

volition which would be true to itself only insofar as it fosters social
activism. The deep root of this exigency is the secular idea of man
shaping his own world according to his rational will.
Voluntaristic Zionism
The same thoroughly voluntaristic approach that we saw in Rotenstreichs discussions of social problems also characterized his perception of Zionism. In his opinion, the active individual is responsible
for the fate of his nation just as he is responsible for shaping his
society. Rotenstreich saw Zionism as a reemergence of collective
Jewish will in history. In his opinion, the fulllment of the political
project of Zionism rests on the strength of the individuals desire to
devote himself to the interests of Klal Yisrael.
He called Zionism an auto-emancipatory movementfollowing
Leon Pinsker, the renown zionist ideologuein order to emphasize
that it was a voluntary self-liberation movement and that its objective
was the creation of a sovereign political society. This movement
contrasts with the Emancipation movement in Europe, which, according
to Rotenstreich, was not the result of voluntary personal action of
Jews but rather of independent circumstances.9 Rotenstreichs Zionism
was denitely secular, though not in the sense that it was anti-religious
or aimed at the secularization of the Jewish people. Rather, Rotenstreichs
Zionism was secular in the sense that it was based not on a collective
covenant with God, but on an earthly and political collective will
and on the demand that it would stem from human rationality
and not from an irrational or super-natural source.
Rotenstreich based what he called the pre-eminence of the state of
Israel in Jewish national aairs on the state being a manifestation
of collective Jewish will in history.10 Nevertheless, the pre-eminence of
the state of Israel over the emancipated Diaspora does not negate the
co-existence of the two.11 Here, too, we can discern the originality of
Rotenstreichs voluntaristic approach. He focuses on the question: Will
the Jewish nation be politically free, and will it obtain state sovereignty?

9
10
11

See, for example, N. Rotenstreich, 1977, pp. 3344.

Op. cit., p. 38.
See A. Bareli and Y. Gorny, (forthcoming).

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These are two crucial factors for its continued existence without
which it will, heaven forbid, be swallowed up in the universal culture of the modern world.12 The nations desire to perpetuate its
existence and formulate it creatively is at the center of his Zionist
voluntaristic vision:
We are struggling . . . [with the question] whether the Jewish nation
as a historical unit, will continue to act from the source of its existence, or whether it will exist by the wayside of the world, with only
symbols of Jewish existence surviving in the best possible scenario. Do
we want symbolic remnants of existence [traditional-religious and others], or do we want the fabric of activity [of the nation], Rotenstreichs
including its creative fabric, to continue to exist?13

This quote shows that in Rotenstreichs eyes, collective and individual

Jewish creativity in a sovereign state, is central to Zionism. He is by
no means hostile to tradition and religion, but believes that Jewish
viability lies somewhere else.
We are now able to discern the basic approach which we show
in these pages. To be sure, Zionism is not a comprehensive worldview,
neither ethically nor philosophically. It is an attempt by Jews to
maintain a Jewish collective reality within the world as it is. Rotenstreich
thinks that this focus directs Zionisms attention to the fate of Jewish
individuals as part of the Jewish collective and therefore leads . . .
towards a principle of solidarity with all creatures. Rotenstreich
holds that if this principle does not guide Israeli society, Israel will
be torn from its Zionist roots as well as its socialist roots.14 The voluntaristic link that facilitates the Zionist-Socialist synthesis in Rotenstreichs public thought was the source for his pungent criticism of
early Israeli society. And this very voluntaristic principle led him
to dash American Jews hopes of establishing a new Babylon in
their own country. Sorrowfully, without gloating, but without pulling
punches, he contended that America had not evolved into a creative
Jewish center and that all the immense intellectual forces of American
Jewry were being pledged to retain, but not to enhance, the Jewish
framework.15

12

See A. Bareli and Y. Gorny, (forthcoming).

Ibid., pp. 4849.
14
Ibid, pp. 6466.
15
See, for example, N. Rotenstreich, 1972a, p. 19. See also N. Rotenstreich,
1972b, pp. 139162.
13

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103

Hence, he adopted here a clearly non-religious perspective about

the future of the emancipated Diaspora, and especially American
Jewry. In Rotenstreichs opinion, Klal Yisrael was threatened by disintegration in the absence of Jewish coalescence around a collective
national will. He asked for the national auto-emancipation of postemancipation Jews in the liberal Western democracies whose personal civil emancipation was rmly grounded. He wanted them to
have a free collective will. This was not an anti-religious position; it
was a secular, i.e. non-religious position focused on nationalism and
collective independence.
Rotenstreich knew that American Jewry, although having fervently
supported the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine since the
Biltmore conference in 1942, distinguished between Jewish sovereignty in Palestine and the ingathering of all Jews there. But, he did
not consider immigration to Israel or the support for the establishment of a Jewish state as the only ways opened for American Jews
to foster their collective independence. Rather, he called for a collective eort of the Jews in the Diasporas in order to free themselves
from the threat of cultural assimilation and from the hazards of fragmentation and dispersion, by means a national awakening in emancipated Diasporas.16 We see then that his voluntaristic Zionism also
favored active Jewish Diasporas. Rotenstreich hoped that in present
circumstances, the Jewish people will still remain one people. In other
words, that the Diasporas would foster active collective life, be closer
in spirit to the state of Israel, and be connected with the state as
equal partners. These hopes rested mainly on the power of Jewish
collective and individual will, and not on religion.17
All in all, the essence of the secular Jewish identity that Rotenstreich
advocates for the Jews and for the Jewish people is an identity of
self-made men, women, and people, sovereign and guided by their
reason. Voluntaristic Zionism focused on a Jewish sovereign state
and on auto-emancipated Diasporas, both of which were seen by
him as the two main roads for cultivating active Jewish identity.
Negation of Jewish passivity was a crucial condition, according to
Rotenstreich, for the survival of any Jewish identity, be it religious
or secular. But he does not cling excessively to this voluntaristic and

16
17

N. Rotenstreich, 1953 (Hebrew).

N. Rotenstreich, Parallel Tracks, op. cit., pp. 9194.

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secular principle of self-made men, women, and people. He fully

acknowledges the natural and traditional limits of the human capacity
to shape society and to mould culture. This puts a boundary on
Rotenstreichs secular Jewish identity. He deeply acknowledged that
in order to be Jewish, individuals cannot cut themselves o from
Jewish tradition and religion. They must, in one way or another,
represent some form of cultural continuity through creative re-shaping.
The same applies, of course, to the natural limits on women and
mens ability to dominate and to determine the characteristics of
their social relations. A good way to further understand Rotenstreichs
thought on this matter is by examining his criticism of Marxs exhaustive historicization of the concept human nature. In Rotenstreichs
opinion Marxs extremist historicist tendency went so far as to equate
everything existing in human reality with changing historical times.
His basic claim is that Marx exaggerated the application of the category of history to the point of assuming that the dialectical course
of history will settle even those contradictions that are not fundamentally
historical. For example, the contradiction between man as an independent creature and the world that surrounds him, to which he
belongs yet from which he diers. And the same, of cource apply
to a less acute contradiction, such as that between the individual
and the group, or between the individuals ability and his will. Delving
further into this particular discussion would, however, take us beyond
the scope of this chapter.
In conclusion, the secular identity that Rotenstreich advocates for
Jews and for the Jewish people is that of a sovereign identity, of
people who shape their own fate. It is a voluntaristic identity, insofar
as it is shaped by rational collective and individual will. But this voluntaristic and rational conception of national and secular identity
does not renounce the natural necessary limits on the way societies
shape themselves. Moreover, it does not renounce the essential function
of tradition nor does it cut itself o from tradition.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ON RELIGIOUS-SECULAR TENSIONS1
Avi Sagi
The concern with religious-secular tensions involves an analysis of
both the real and ideal circumstances of this relationship. In this
article, I attempt an analysis of religious-secular relationships in Israeli
society in light of a new conceptual framework. First, however, a
methodological caveat: terms such as religious and secular are
often cast in an essentialist mould, as if they represented actual discernible entities. Israeli reality, however, shows these terms are part
of a sequence, points against which to locate specic groups rather
than distinguishable and contradictory essences.
My analysis will focus on three main conceptual frameworks used
to describe relationships between cultural and social groupstoleration,
pluralism, and multiculturalismand on the meaning of the rights
discourse within each of them. A discourse of rights describes a situation involving one party demanding its rights and another to whom
this demand is addressed, on which corresponding obligations are
imposed. For the purpose of this discussion, I have adopted the
denition endorsed by Joseph Raz (1984; 194): claiming that an
individual or a group has a right usually implies that the interest of
the individual or the group is a sucient reason for claiming that
others are under an obligation. Obviously, not every individual or
group interest automatically turns into a right; only an interest that
is suciently valuable and important imposes a matching obligation
on the other. In this denition, however, the concept of right assumes
an additional dimension which conditions the very possibility of a
rights discourse. If a right is a demand from the other, this implies
the existence of some legal systemjudicial, moral, or otheragreed
upon by the parties to the discourse. In the absence of a shared
legal system, to speak of a right as a demand from the other is
meaningless.
1

Thanks to Batya Stein, who translated this article from the Hebrew.

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A rights discourse does involve human interaction, but this interaction diers from a dialogue. First, interaction in a rights discourse
hinges on certain interests, so that the meeting takes place only in the
perspective of this interest. In a dialogue, to use the terminology of
Emmanuel Levinas, human beings meet each others face, whereas
parties to a rights discourse do not see each others face but rather
their own needs and interests, namely, themselves.
Secondly, constitutive relationships in a rights discourse are hierarchical
rather than symmetrical, whereas the parties to a dialogue face each
other in their full concreteness as equal creatures, conveying a
dierence in their basic situation. While a dialogue involves direct
address, a rights discourse is conned to the language of law and
cannot exhaust the complexity of human reality.
A dialogue, then, is the antithesis of a rights discourse. In a rights
discourse, the parties entrench themselves in their own territory. They
address each other obliquely, through the law, only to protect themselves from potential injury by the other, whereas in a dialogue, this
territory is precisely what is encroached upon. A discourse of rights
protects what Isaiah Berlin called the individuals negative liberty,
the domain where individuals will not be disturbed and will be
autonomous to do as they please (Berlin, 1969). In a dialogue, however, borders are breached, walls are cracked open, and the protected
territory becomes the main topic of the dialogical struggle. Dialogue,
by denition, is a struggle over the very meaning of identity. A rights
discourse is meant to preserve the personal, biographical, cultural,
and economic identity of individuals and of society, whereas a dialogical relationship tears this identity down.
The status of the rights discourse in any given culture is thus the
litmus test of the relationship between self and other. The greater
the dominance of a rights discourse mode in the public, intra-social
discourse, the less vital the interpersonal cultural dialogue. The rise
of the rights discourse results in borders between various elements
of society and in relationships marked by mutual alienation and selfsegregation.
How does the discourse of rights t into each of the three conceptual frameworkstoleration, pluralism, and multiculturalism
dening the relationships between various social and cultural groups?
Toleration is a paradoxical concept, implying we are willing to
bear what we actually reject. The tolerant person rejects the tolerated
stance as false, but refrains from adopting steps toward its elimination.

on religious-secular tensions

107

Toleration, then, is a second choice, since the rst choice would be

the disappearance of the tolerated stance. Since this stance still exists,
however, toleration is a response to the dilemma faced by monists,
who believe there is one truth and they have it, but do not coerce
the other to accept it. This restraint may rest on utilitarian reasons,
on respect for the other as an autonomous creature, or on other
grounds (on historical and philosophical aspects of toleration see Kamen,
1967; King, 1976; Mendus, 1988; Horton and Mendus, 1985; Mendus
and Edwards, 1987; Horton and Mendus 1991; Heyd, 1996).
The rights discourse ts in well with tolerance and derives directly
from it. Identifying the tolerated party as tolerated creates a sense
of distance and negation that precludes dialogue and marks o the
other as separate. Beyond the rights of the tolerated party and the
concern that their implementation should not bother the tolerating
one, the inner world of the other evokes no interest.
Pluralism, unlike toleration, is not predicated on a hierarchical relationship between truth and falsehood. Weak pluralism, a minimalistic stance, assumes that all participants in the discourse might posses
the truth, hence the importance of freedom of thought and of expression in helping to discover it (see Mill, 1984, ch. 2). By contrast,
strong pluralism assumes the good has various forms, but we
lack a criterion for comparing values which are incommensurable
(see Kekes, 1993). All forms of the good are intrinsically valuable, and
more than one of them is possible (Mill, 1984, ch. 3; Berlin, 1969;
Berlin 1990).
The rights discourse in a pluralistic society, then, is not hierarchical.
It is merely a legal-political expressionone of many and not even
the most important oneof a culture of dialogue predicated on
dierence. Pluralists seek to preserve the others uniqueness and confront the others fullness. Rather than a claim of one party on another,
the rights discourse in a pluralistic context represents the claim of
one part of society (usually the stronger and more dominant one)
on itself, to make room for the rights of other, usually less dominant
cultures (Tamir 1988, 8788).
The third conceptual framework is multiculturalism. This term
refers here to the identity concept developed by Taylor (1992a;
1992b), whereby the identity of the individual and of society are
shaped through dialogue. The new dimension introduced by this
approach emerges in contrast with the essentialism of the classic view.
In his later writings, Taylor asserts that the dialogue with signicant

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others is the most important dimension of identity: people shape

their world and their being in the course of a dialogue with others.
Dialogue need not express agreement with the other, and often
involves confrontation and rejection. The gist of this approach, however, is that identity is not a given, or a nished product. Rather
than nding an identity, people shape it and establish it through the
course of a dynamic relationship.
The other is not only the one who is dierent from me, since
everyone is dierent from everyone else. The other is singularly
important because he oers a signicant alternative for the organization of my own existence. The other is the one questioning the
traditional perceptions of my consciousness, by the very presentation
of an alternative that is meaningful and coherent and yet so dierent
from my own. The encounter with the other, then, requires an act
of interpretation concerning the old foundations of identity. It could
lead to a transformation of the most basic meanings of old practices
and myths, a response many traditional societies have endorsed in
their encounter with modernity (see, for instance, Eisenstadt 1983,
ch. 14). It could also lead to complete rejection of the other and
entrenchment in the old identity that, in extreme situations, leads to
the branding of the other as demonic.
Human identity, then, emerges in the course of a relationship with
the other that wavers between, on the one hand, a perception of the
other as a full, concrete self, Taylors signicant other and, on
the other hand, a view of the other as a demon; whereas the former
will lead to a dialogical relationship, and hence to a dynamic, changing
identity, the latter will result in negation and segregation.
The rights discourse is not the natural channel for conducting a
dialogue about identity. Excessive emphasis on demands addressed
to the other denotes a failure to acknowledge dialogue and a multicultural identity as constitutive elements of identity. A discourse of
rights as the exclusive mode of the relationship thus implies a return
to static, closed, and alienated models of identity that exclude a
perception of the other as signicant. This might even lead to a
view of the other as a demon, from whom a rights discourse will
ensure protection.
This conceptual framework enables us to map the tense relationships
between religious and secular Jews in Israel. Neither secular nor religious Jews accept the multicultural approach to identity in Taylors
sense, and neither approaches the other as the signicant other to

on religious-secular tensions

109

be engaged in a dialogue that will build their own identity. For religious Jews, their worldview and their identity are shaped from the
inside, through the norms, memories, and yearnings called Judaism.
The religious public tends to perceive the Jewish identity of secular
Jews as contracted. Even if they do not view secularism as an empty
cart, as R. Abraham Karelitz (Hazon Ish) had held, they certainly
do not consider it a full Jewish cart. The links established throughout history between religious and secular Jews in the community, in
the Zionist movement, and in the State of Israel rest, from a religious perspective, on an assumption of asymmetry between secular
and religious Judaism. Only religious Judaism continues the Jewish
legacy, and secular Judaism is an unfortunate historical mishap. For
many religious Jews, Jewish historical existence without religion is
senseless. The practices, the ethos, and the myths of secular Jews
are therefore meaningless. The secular other is not the signicant
other in an identity-shaping dialogue.
The attitude of the religious towards the secular other thus ranges
from paternalism up to a perception of him as the demonic other.
Zionist circles drawing on the ideas of Rabbi Abraham Kook insist
on explaining secular Judaism as an expression, indeed dialectic, of
hidden religiosity, whereby secular Jews are unaware of their own
motivation but will eventually discover it. This interpretation assumes
that if secular Jews want to remain attached to Judaism, they thereby
convey their basic desire to link up with authentic religious Judaism
(for further analysis, see Sagi, 1995a). The attitude toward secular
Jews prevalent in ultra-Orthodox circles is dierent. Rather than
approaching secular Judaism as a concealed expression of religious
yearnings, they recognize its threat to traditional Jewish existence. It
is no wonder that the ultra-Orthodox public discourse, literature,
and press include references to secular Jews as demonic, since they
represent the threatening other.
Although Jewish religious identity in the modern era is largely
determined by its contest with secularism, most members of the religious public have not reversed their conscious course to identify the
secular other as constitutive of their identity.
The picture is not radically dierent in the secular public.
Historically, Jewish secularism was built on the negation of traditional religious Judaism. The choice of the proof-texts through which
secular Jewish identity was moulded, as well as its choice of myths
and national heroes, clearly point to the negation processes that

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constituted this identity. Favoring the Bible over the Talmud was
not a random preference. Rather, it reects a value priority that points
to crucial elements in the creation of a secular Jewish identity. Secular
mythical heroes included biblical gures, the Maccabeans, and paladins
such as Bar Kokhba. These heroes replaced the ideal gures of
Halachic Judaism: talmudic sages, Halachic scholars, and religious
paragons. Both cultures occasionally shared paradigmatic models,
since both drew inspiration from the Bible as a common source, but
the meanings they attached to these gures diered since they derived
from the fundamental perceptions prevalent in each of them. The
secular outlook outlined biblical heroes in strong lines, taking clues
from the biblical narrative and from the romantic background that
played a signicant role in the consolidation of a secular Jewish identity. The Halachic tradition was far removed from this context. In
sum: secular Jewish identity shaped a new myth and a new ethos
that consciously rejected the myth and ethos of traditional Judaism.
Even deeply inspired individuals touched by the sorrow of Judaism,
such as Ahad Ha"am, acted in this fashion. Ahad Ha"am, whose
contribution to the moulding of a secular Jewish identity is unparalleled,
was, relative to his contemporaries, surprisingly sensitive to the decisive
role of culture and tradition in the constitution of personal and collective identity. And yet, he too leaped over tradition and culture:
from his times to the beginning, to the biblical era.
This leap over tradition exacerbated the negation of, and the alienation from, Jewish religion. What was identied as post-biblical Jewish
religion was perceived as exilic, meaningless, and often as mistaken.
Instead of reinterpreting Jewish tradition as a whole through cultural
and historical conceptual terms, secular Judaism chose the romantic
path of a leap to a pristine beginning.
One of the most powerful expressions of this trend is the story
Ha-Drashah [The Sermon] by Hayim Hazaz. Yudke, the protagonist, utterly rejects Jewish history and claims: We have no history at all (Hazaz, 1968, 222), since Whats in it? . . . (elision in
original) edicts, libels, persecutions, and kiddush ha-Shem (ibid., 223).
Exile, as well as the messiah and religious redemption, are merely
an evasion of real history for Yudke. He therefore concludes:
Zionism and Judaism are not the same thing, but two dierent things,
perhaps even mutually contradictory. Surely two mutually contradictory things! . . . When a person cant be Jewish, he becomes a Zionist
(ibid., 233).

on religious-secular tensions

111

Even if this is an extreme view among the spectrum of trends prevalent in the Zionist movement and in the revival of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, we cannot deny that this typical element
of negating traditional religion as inferior and inadequate to modern life, the remnant of a world no longer signicant, is undeniably
present in this generation.
The beginning of a return process to Jewish history and culture
as a whole have recently become evident in a renewed openness to
the Jewish canon. This process sometimes conveys a genuine willingness to understand the concepts of the traditional Jewish world,
out of a desire to engage it in a multicultural dialogue. The negation, however, still echoes strongly. The dominant tone is still one
of enlightenment. In the spirit of an enlightenment project, secularism may suggest a more correct Judaism, more scientic and historical, and perceives religious Judaism as an archaic remnant. Large
groups of secular Jews, aware of the tension and the conict with
the religious public, have not renounced the enlightenment project
that views the relationship between religion and secularism as hierarchical, and religion as inferior to secularism on such aspects as
rationality, liberalism, and so forth. When these values determine the
universal criterion for judging the religious other, the other is usually perceived as inferior.
This approach is embodied in the fact that this segment of the
secular public is ready for a discourse of rights with the religious,
but less ready for an encounter of horizons that endangers its own
identity and opens it up to a dynamic perception of identity. As
noted, when the discourse of rights epitomizes the relationship, it
becomes one of self-segregation and isolation of the various parties:
secularism or religiosity. The tendency of the secular public
toward a discourse of rights reects not only self-segregation, but
also the denial of the other and the willingness to remain within the
boundaries of the familiar cultural territory.
In sum, even if identity is indeed shaped through the contest with
the other, neither the secular nor the religious public show any signs
of having turned this fundamental fact into a constitutive element of
their identity.
Nor is pluralism a common currency in Israeli society. The religious reject weak pluralism because it makes the certainty of their
world temporary, and a pluralistic discourse might lead to the rejection

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of the religious world as mistaken. Yet, they do not accept strong

pluralism either. Generally, the religious public does not accept the
view that the others Jewish world is a self-contained reality rather
than a reduction of the religious realm of meaning. More precisely,
considerable segments of the religious public are ready to acknowledge
that secularism is not a world devoid of meaning but, despite their
readiness to recognize the fullness of secular values, they are unwilling
to acknowledge their Jewish resonance. Ever since the culture controversy in the Zionist movement, the religious public has consistently
perceived itself as the custodian of Judaism, and expected secularists
to take their Jewish value from within a religious Weltanschauung. The
basic attitude of most religious Jews is a rejection of strong pluralism.
As for secular Jews, although they appear to support both weak
and strong pluralism, this is not really the case. Only a minority
within the secular public considers Jewish religion an option that
might emerge as the truth. Most of the secular public is entrenched
in a secular stance and does not view it, at least in principle, as
temporary. Strong pluralism is also generally rejected, since secularists
tend not to recognize the intrinsic value of the religious world. This
fact is reected in the epistemic mechanism that many secularists
apply to the understanding of the religious world. From a pluralistic
perspective, the only legitimate epistemology is to understand the
other through his own practice and inner conceptual system. This
epistemology replaces the reductionist version that judges the other
in terms of the observers world. A pluralistic epistemology is predicated
on the notion of value incommensurability which assumes the lack
of a general common yardstick for ranking dierent cultural worlds
(Kekes, 1993, ch. 4), and therefore seeks to understand the other in
his otherness. This epistemology would not appear to be widespread
among the secular public. As noted, this public often tends to
understand the religious other by setting up a more correct Jewish
model. In reality, then, the secular public returns to a rights discourse,
but this discourse can only express one of two optionseither
indierence to, or toleration of, the other. This analysis, then, points
to a symmetry of isolationism and rejection of the other between the
secular and religious public. The other is not a true option, and his
world is a rejected world.
These circumstances do not altogether dismiss the possibility of
a relationship of toleration. Toleration, besides indierence and
detachment, appears to be the more typical relationship in Israeli

on religious-secular tensions

113

reality. Secularists tolerate the religious, and vice-versa. But toleration

is by nature limited. Ultimately, its real (rather than philosophical)
borders are determined by the extent to which the tolerated party
wrongs the tolerant one. In Israeli society, tensions indeed erupt precisely at the point one party feels that the other has violated an
essential foundation of its world.
In a tolerant society, as noted, a discourse of rights is possible.
The parameters of the discourse are determined by the democratic
character of the state on the one hand, and by political practice on
the other hand. In the Israeli context, then, the discourse of rights
is not a sign of openness toward the other but a formal normative
summary of its constitutive elements. In other words, secular-religious
relationships are characterized by a mutual hiding of the face, a
silent denial of the others concrete fullness.
This mapping provides a key to the sources of the tension between
religious and secular Jews in Israel. The lack of openness toward the
other, and certainly the absence of a multicultural or even a pluralistic
consciousness of identity are the basic features of the intra-Jewish dialogue. At best, the discourse with the other, religious or secular, takes
place at the level of a discourse of rights on the one hand, and in
the course of developing an attitude of toleration on the other hand.
There are several reasons for such a clear rejection of the other.
A prominent, if not the main, cause of the rejection, however, is
that the other represents an alternative of the very same thing. Both
the religious and secular parties oer an option of Jewish existence
and of Judaism. The various segments of Israeli society are thus contending for the same cause: Judaism. Hence, each one is required
to deny and reject the alternative Judaism represented by the other.
In truth, the various Jewish groups approach Judaism in essentialist terms, namely, as if it were possible to identify and nd in
reality a specic entity called Judaism. The religious claim I have
it all, and the secularists argue whatever is yours is only a part of
oursa particular pattern of Jewish culture.
Pluralistic and multicultural cultures do not function within an
essentialist discourse of this type, and the uniqueness of one culture
does not pretend to play the same role in another. Israeli society,
however, is still bound by this essentialist discourse and every segment
within it speaks in the name of Judaism.
Why does Israeli society cling to this essentialist discourse of identity?
The reasons are many. First, the essentialist discourse often reects

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our primary perceptions as human beings. We identify our discourse

with metaphysics. Our natural view is that our human discourse
is only a mirror of what truly happens there, in reality (see Rorty,
1979 and Rorty, 1991, ch. 1). In this sense, the essentialist discourse
of identity is not specic to Israeli society but expresses a dominant
trend in human life: a metaphysical yearning and the identication
between the language and the entity.
The second and decisive point is that modern Jewish identity was
built on the rejection of the other. Orthodox Jewish identity, was
built in a process of negating the alternative, new or old. The ultraOrthodox built Jewish identity as a confessiona perception of
Judaism as a community of the faithful precisely because many Jews
continued to live within the Jewish community and ceased, in one
way or another, to abide by the Torah. Branding these Jews as the
other that must be rejected compelled the ultra-Orthodox community into a conceptual reformulation of Jewish identity in terms of
actual religious practice and even of faith. But secular Jewish identity
was also shaped out of a negation of the traditional world. Although
secular Jews who had chosen their Judaism wanted it sanctioned and
armed, they were unwilling to do so in the religious terms that
the preceding tradition had oered. Hence, they were required to
reinterpret Jewish tradition itself.
The negative burden of the Jewish identity discourse implies that,
if a particular stance emerges as true when analyzing the essence
of Jewish identity, the other is false and does not reect Judaism.
This negative burden and the urgency of contending with the question of Jewish identity have turned the Jewish identity discourse into
one of constant negation. The other is no longer a real entity, and
has come to symbolize the opposite of genuine Jewish identity. In
these circumstances, it is not surprising that the identity discourse
failed to develop along pluralistic or multicultural lines.
Political and social aspects also enter into the equation. Jewish
society, at least since the early days of Zionism, views the problem
of identity as a matter bearing implications for public life. Since the
aim was, and for many still is, the building of a Jewish society and
the development of a suitable mode of public life, the question of
the meaning and the essence of Judaism is one of crucial practical
signicance: what is the Judaism that will constitute the public
space? What is the Judaism that will chart the myths, the ethos,

on religious-secular tensions

115

and the public practice? Since the shared starting point of the
participants in the identity discourse is the existence of one Jewish
identity, the struggle over Judaism obviously turns into a life and
death contest: the others death is a condition for my life.
Israeli society will not become pluralistic, and certainly not multicultural, as long as it does not renounce the essentialist discourse,
as long as it speaks of Judaism rather than of various Jewish cultures.
In a world where pluralism is obvious and where the multicultural
aspects of identity receive increasing recognition, the aim of tolerant relationships is too limited an expectation. The greatest cultural
and educational eorts must be directed to a multicultural model.
For many, the price of establishing a pluralistic or multicultural
Judaism is too high since, in their view, a multiplicity of self-contained
Jewish identities threatens Jewish continuity and the solidarity of the
Jewish collective. A serious discussion of this complex question is indeed
necessary but beyond the present scope, and I will conne myself
to a preliminary outline of a solution to the problem of continuity
and solidarity in the context of a non-essentialist identity discourse.
The starting point in the claim assuming this price is that variety
and multiplicity imply a total absence of links and similarities, hence
the breach in continuity. In other words, if Judaism is A, nothing links
it to another Judaism, whose content is B; in fact, if type A Judaism
is correct, then type B Judaism is false, and vice-versa. The term
Judaism is thus a common denominator for entirely dierent phenomena. But this starting point is merely another version of the essentialist outlook, and of the link that this outlook assumes between cultural
patterns and a particular essence. Once we renounce essentialist assumptions, a highly plausible concession in a discussion about cultural historical phenomena, we are compelled to acknowledge the existence of
several, highly similar Judaisms. The similarities and anities among
these Judaisms come to the fore in various dimensions: texts, language,
memories, ethos, and so forth. The term Judaism thus denotes an
entire family of cultural phenomena that resemble each other. Some
family members resemble each other more and some less. In sum, the
term Judaism denotes a family rather than a single specic entity.
According to this approach, historical continuity is ensured through
the similarity between dierent versions of Judaism, a similarity that
also preserves and catalyzes the development of solidarity. Acknowledgement of the family resemblance expands the we that is the

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object of primary solidarity bonds to include everyone in the family

of Jewish identity. Jewish solidarity need not rest on an exo-historical
essentialist element, and from a sociological, psychological, and
even from a historical perspective, solidarity cannot be explained on
grounds that it is shared by all Jews. Solidarity develops precisely
through the similar common elements noted above. In Rortys terms,
essentialist approaches lead to objectivism rather than to solidarity.
Solidarity is constituted by the actual relationship with a real human
community and with its prevalent practices. Solidarity reects the
sense of attachment to a given human community and a recognition
of the similarity and cooperation between its members (Rorty, 1991,
Part 3; Rorty, 1994, 2134. For a modern Jewish version, see
Soloveitchik, 1993, 8992). In sum, replacing the essentialist discourse
of identity with a non-essentialist discourse of cultural identity does
not require the high costs of renouncing continuity and solidarity.
Instead, the attempt to preserve the essentialist discourse seems to
harm the delicate web of continuity, enhances alienation, and furthers
the split between members of the Jewish collective.
This approach to Jewish multiculturalism and Jewish pluralism
requires a profound transformation in the organization of both the
secular and the religious Jewish world. From religious persons, it
demands a radical revolution in their ways of thought and in the
practical organization of their lives (see Sagi 1995a, Sagi 1997). As
for the attitude towards the other, the gist of the revolution is the
acknowledgement that religious commitment, like other forms of value
commitment, is not contingent on negating the world of the other.
People can be absolutely committed to the Torah without assuming
this means denying any value to the others world. Value commitments mean that people are ready to organize their lives in light of
their faith and their values, namely, commitment has ethical meaning and it is no longer an epistemic claim whose reliability and certainty depend on ascribing negative value to other competing
statements (see Winch, 1972, 193209; Sagi, 1999).
Despite the analytical distinction between normative commitment
and epistemic claims, a stance such as the one described above will
probably be adopted by a believer who has endorsed a dual undertaking: religious commitment on the one hand, and commitment to
a pluralistic or multicultural world view on the other, drawing
norms and values both from Jewish religion and from other sources.
Even if the varied commitments lead to contradictions, the very

on religious-secular tensions

117

acknowledgement of the contradiction implies that conicting values

are ascribed equal merit.
The recognition of possible contradictions between the sources of
commitment can lead to many ways of life. Contradiction itself can
become an ideal of religious life, when believers are forced to stand
within this contradiction because, as individuals, they acknowledge certain values, and as believers, they acknowledge others. Since values
are incompatible and incommensurable, the believers existence is
one of ceaseless contradiction. This outlook on the ethos of religious
life is one of Sren Kierkegaards most crucial contributions to religious thought (see Sagi, 1992), and a particular version of this
approach is advocated by Leibowitz (see Sagi 1995b).
This life ethos, however, is not the only one available to believers.
One of the more common paths adopted by Jewish tradition to contend with genuine value contradictions was the interpretation of
compelling sources of authority in ways enabling their reconciliation
with changing values. The uniqueness of this interpretation is that
it expresses a commitment to tradition together with a commitment
to non-Halachic moral, cultural, and value systems. Interpretation is
thus a mechanism of coordination.
Interpretation may not be capable of resolving all the contradictions between a religious-Halachic commitment and the acceptance
of the others world as intrinsically valuable. The recognition of the
contradictions, however, as well as of the need to realize ones religious
commitment through a reinterpretation process of authority sources,
might gradually tone down and perhaps resolve some of them.
Some of the solutions will provide only practical answers to various
questions concerning the attitude to the other, since satisfactory solutions at the theoretical level are not always available. Halachic interpretation will probably be able to provide solutions in the spirit of
toleration theories. In other words, it will suggest practices that deny
value to the tolerated party while refraining from direct or indirect
coercion of religious practices. The assumption that Halachic interpretation might be able to suggest solutions in the spirit of pluralistic theories, recognizing the intrinsic value of a practice opposed to
the Halachic norm, seems less probable.
From a pluralistic perspective, a solution that does not acknowledge the intrinsic value of the others practice may seem insucient. It leaves us with an uneasy feeling, since Halacha is ultimately
denying the value of the opposing practice. Halacha, however,

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avi sagi

is chiey a normative system that organizes practice, and solving a

problem at the practical level is indeed a solution, even if unsatisfactory from an intellectual perspective.
Believers committed to several value systems strive to foster religious pluralism and to recognize the facts and the values of a multicultural identity, even when aware that in many areas of their
everyday lives they will only reach compromises of toleration. An
individual or a society living in this fashion probably benet from
the fruitful contradiction between a consciousness of pluralism or
multiculturalism and a practice that is at best tolerant. This contradiction is fruitful because a pluralistic and multicultural consciousness that is accompanied by a value commitment propels the wheels
of Halachic interpretation, which reduces the gap between Halachic
commitment and the acceptance of the others world as intrinsically
valuable.
This is but an initial draft of the kind of religious revolution that
is required to establish a pluralistic or multicultural way of life. Even
if the task is hard, the history of Jewish thought may provide the
deepest anchor for shaping a multicultural consciousness, since a
basic dimension of classic Jewish thought is the attempt to reinterpret Jewish tradition itself in light of the encounter with the other.
Maimonides Guide of the Perplexed is not a Jewish work created from
within. Rather, it is the mature fruit of an encounter between the
Jewish inside and the Aristotelian philosophical outside. This
encounter generated a revolutionary view of Judaism itself, not only
at the theoretical but at the actual normative level. The borders
between inside and outside are thus blurred, since the dynamic
of the encounter shapes a new consciousness and a new perception
of Judaism itself. Although this outstanding philosophical endeavour
was highly successful at the theoretical level, this was not always true
for the practical one. Its value is nevertheless enormous, as a paradigm for the integration of religious commitment and intellectual
daring. New daring is now required from religious individuals, in
order to meet the challenge of the encounter with the secular other.
Secularists also need to undergo a revolution of consciousness and
of practice. They must internalize the understanding that arming
their Jewish identity does not depend on a denial of religious Judaism
as inferior. This approach derives from an unnecessary interpretation of the meaning of secularism. The basic equation in this
approach is that secularism implies the absolute rejection of religiosity.

on religious-secular tensions

119

Secularism in general, and Jewish secularism in particular, is interpreted only in negative terms. Such a view assumes that secularism,
rather than creating an intrinsically full and signicant world, is
merely the opposite of the religious world. Since secularism is interpreted in negative terms, it cannot be armed except through the
negation of the religious stance. It is then concluded that the armation
of secularism is contingent on the negation of religion.
Many religious individuals do indeed endorse the view that secularism is merely the negation of religiosity. They therefore view it
as a temporary station that can only be understood against the background of the religious realm, which is the one possessing genuine
meaning. But why should a secular person support this view, which
is analytically unnecessary and projects an incorrect image of the
phenomenon of secularism? Why should secular individuals interpret
themselves in religious terms?
Secularism, both in its Jewish and non-Jewish versions, involves
the setting up of a metaphysical alternative to the elements that organize reality. Secularism is the recognition of human sovereignty, of
human primacy, and chiey the recognition that certain realms of
life are not dictated by religion or by a religious establishment.
Secularism is the recognition of history and culture as the only elements constitutive of meaning (see, for instance, Arieli, 1992, 135200).
Hence, Jewish secularism does not rest simply on the negation of
Jewish religiosity; it oers a meaningful alternative of Jewish existence, interpreting Judaism in terms of tradition and culture.
The relationship between religious and secular Judaism is as the
relationship between two dierent and incommensurable cultures of
value. Secular Jews, then, can arm their Judaism without denying
the intrinsic fullness of the religious world. Furthermore, the secular
individual or the secular society moulding a Jewish secular self-identity
must reverse their conscious disposition toward texts and other traditional sources. If Jewish identity is a renewed kind of linkage with
tradition, the warranted conclusion is a willingness to listen to the
voice of the tradition as it emerges from tradition itself. Secularists
must renounce the pretension to be the exclusive yardstick for the
meaning of religious practices, traditions, and texts. They must interpret them from the inside, in terms appropriate to it as an active,
living culture at a particular time and place.
Indeed, they must learn to dierentiate between meaning, and
signicance or relevance. In other words, they must dierentiate

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between what is there, in the traditional texts, ethos, and norms,

and what is relevant here, namely, what can be taken from the
tradition for present life. This distinction does not detract from the
importance of relevance and of a renewed interpretation of tradition. But only the distinction between meaning and relevance ensures
a link to tradition that ensures both continuity and creativity. The
element of meaning ensures the link with the past, with the world
of tradition. The element of relevance ensures the link between past
and present. The test of relevance ensures the ability to identify with,
and relate to, the past. The combination of both elements, acknowledging the dierence between them, ensures a dimension of historical depth in secular Jewish identity.
So far, Israeli society has conned itself to solving tensions in what
Ariel Rosen-Zvi calls an encounter at the level of results (Rosen
Zvi, 1996), namely, litigation at the level of a rights discourse that
renounces the inside of the other, the living dialogue between
intrinsically full worlds. Now, once symbolic elements have become
increasingly important (see Schiman, 1995), as part of the maturation of peripheral sub-cultures that demand recognition for the fullness of their own world, the politics of results has collapsed. It is
precisely now that a deeper revolution is required. Together with
the rise of particularistic consciousness, honour for the others world
and a readiness to interpret it without taking over its meaning are
in place, beside recognition of the dialogical character of Jewish identity as part of the dialogical character of identity in general.
Historical political processes exposing each party to the power as
well as the world of the other might contribute to the development
of this dialogue. These processes, however, will probably intensify
tension and isolationism. What will remain after them will be the
rights discourse, covering up for estrangement from and denial of
the other. Are we doomed to live in this symmetry of negation and
obliviousness or can we perhaps shape a life of multicultural dialogue? I have no answer to this question, but I do hold that awareness of the elements shaping the Jewish multicultural discourse of
identity can contribute, even in small measure, to the development
of a renewed dialogue about Jewish identity.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE RELIGIOUS-SECULAR CLEAVAGE IN

CONTEMPORARY ISRAEL
Yochanan Peres
Religiosity as a Continuum
The cleavage between religious and secular is perhaps the most central split among Israeli Jews. The religious and the secular populations dier in their lifestyles, study in dierent educational institutions
(from kindergarten though high school and often college and university as well), often reside in dierent neighbourhoods, socialize
mostly inside their religious categories and in many cases vote for
dierent political parties. In addition to all these practical divides,
the dierent categories of religiosity develop also divergent perspectives on Judaism as well as on the proper direction Israeli society
should take (Ben-Rafael, 2002).
The main issues this paper will address are: 1) The interaction
between religiosity and Jewish-Israeli nationality and the extent to
which these value orientations are both in conict and in cooperation. 2) Social distance between religiosity categories: To what extent
dierent lifestyles impact the personal relationships between people
of dierent degrees of religiosity? 3) What are the major controversies between religiosity categories concerning the nature of Israeli
culture and society and their signicance for the dynamics of the
religious-secular relationship?
In the above context, research was conducted through a survey
study in 1999 that sought to present a picture of Israels religioussecular cleavage. The sample was a random sample of the Jewish
Israeli populationnot including Russian-speaking new immigrants
who have not resided in the country for long enough to participate
in a study investigating the religious-secular cleavage. The survey
questionnaire was comprised of ve general groups of questions:
The rst group of questions dealt, as usual in sociological questionnaires, with context issuesage, religion and religiosity, origin, and

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yochanan peres

socioeconomic status. The second group of questions asked about

group commitments, and the importance of allegiances in the respondents life. The third group of questions delved into perceptions of,
and attitudes toward, the uniqueness of subjects allegiances. The
fourth group of questions focused on feelings of closeness to, and
distance from, a variety of social categories. The fth group of questions concerned respondents political behaviour.
Table 12.1. Survey Sample (May 1999)
Categories of
religiosity

Ethnic categories

Total within
category

Ashkenazim
Mizrakhim

100
100

Ashkenazim
Mizrakhim

100
100

Ashkenazim
Mizrakhim

100
100

Ashkenazim
Mizrakhim

100
100

Secular

Total of
200

Traditional

200

Religious

200

Ultra-Orthodox

200

The sample of the research is shown in Table 12.1. As can be seen

above, attention was paid to the division of Israeli society into ethnic categoriesAshkenazim ( Jews with Eastern or Central Europe
origin) and Mizrakhim ( Jews with North African or Middle-Eastern
origin). We considered this ethnic distinction because we know that
processes of secularization preceded the immigration to Israel for the
large majority of Ashkenazi Jews while it often came after immigration to Israel, for Mizrakhi Jews. Seeing the religious character
of the Jews legacies, one can easily understand that ethnicity in
Israel strongly relates to dierent degrees of religiosity.
Our data underwent a linear transformation to a scale that runs from
0 to 100. Hence, if a question had ve options of answer1 = completely agree; 2 = agree; 3 = I have no idea; 4 = dont agree; 5 = dont
agree at all, one subtracts 1 from each answer thus obtaining a
scale running from 0 to 4; one then divides the number obtained
from the answer by 4 and multiplies by 100. In this manner, all
possible data are presented on a simple scale running from 0 to 100.

the religious-secular cleavage in contemporary israel

123

In this study regarding religiosity, it should be emphasized that

the Jewish Israeli public does not experience polarization with respect
to religion, neither in practical behaviour nor in the realm of belief:
when Israeli Jews dene their attitudes toward to religion, the religious-secular dichotomy is by no means satisfactory (Herman, 1988).
Many individuals in Israel, and this probably the case for Jews in
some other countries, nd it dicult to answer questions with yes
or no possible answers to religiosity, rather they tend to set themselves in at least in four categories: secular,1 traditional, orthodox
and ultra-orthodox (Liebman and Katz, eds, 1997; Liebman, 1997a,
b). We may dene seculars as those who do not observe any tradition in a religious spirit, meaning that if they do observe some traditions, it is more in a national spirit or as a tribute to community
norms. Beyond this category, we also have in Israel a wide group
of individuals who are reluctant to call themselves either secular
or religious, and tend to view themselves as keeping to some traditions such as lighting Hanukkah candles, having a family festive
dinner on Friday, attending synagogue service on major feasts (especially Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) etc. At the next stage of
religiosity we nd the religious (dati"im) who often also refer to themselves as national religious or modern Orthodox. They aspire to
be observant in the context of modern Israeli society, participating
in all political and civil frameworks and portraying themselves as
devoted Zionists. The next stage of religiosity is that of the ultraorthodox (Haredim, which means anxious). Historically, the ultraorthodox were the very rst to oppose Zionism. For many years,
they viewed Zionism as a form of collective assimilation to the ways
of the gentiles, and tended to isolate themselves institutionally and
individually from the main stream of Israeli society (Farago, 1989).
By and large, Jewish Israeli society seems to be best described as
a continuum where the largest group are the seculars, then traditionalists, followed by religious, and ultra-orthodox being the smallest. This order is conrmed by our data: 51% of the Jewish respondents
dene themselves as secular, 32% as traditional, 11% as religious

1
The secular might also be termed not-religious. However, we preferred to call
them secular as this is a positive denition rather than dening this category by
what it is not. Though, it should be mentioned that in dictionaries the terms appear
interchangeably.

yochanan peres

124

and 6% as Haredim.2 Beyond the predominance of the seculars (half

of the population) and the traditional (another third), we learn from
Table 12.2 about the complex ethno-cultural contours of the distribution of religiosity in Israeli society.
Table 12.2. Religiosity by Ethnic Division (%)
Origin
Religiosity

Miz 1st Miz 2nd Miz Ash. 1st Ash. 2nd Ash. 3rd
Total
Gener. Gener
Total Gener. Gener.
Total Gener. + Sample

Ult.-Orth.
(N = 49)
Religious
(N = 87)
Traditional
(N = 255)
Secular
(N = 408)
Total (%)
Total
(N = 799)

17

11

13

10

10

10

11

51

45

47

26

15

21

29

32

28

39

35

60

67

63

53

51

100
90

100
183

100
273

100
171

100
152

100
323

100
203

100
799

Cramers V = .17**

Table 12.2 distinguishes Ashkenazim and Mizrakhim. It also distinguishes rst-generation (a respondent born abroad), secondgeneration (a respondent born in Israel, father born abroad), and
third-generation (or more). The table shows that Haredim are mainly
Ashkenazim, the religious are a multi-origin category, the traditional
are overwhelmingly Mizrakhim and the seculars are primarily
Ashkenazim. All in all, religiosity is associated with ones origin
but does not have a polarization eect. That is, one nds a majority Ashkenazi population at the two ends of the continuum and a
majority of Mizrakhim in the two in-between categories. This means
that religious and ethnic categories do not overlap. Interestingly
enough, third-generation Israelis, a minority of less than a quarter,

2
This nding is consistent with many other surveys but one may presume that
in actual fact, the percentage of Haredim is a bit higher seeing that this public is
naturally reticent to exposure and to answer the questions of investigators. Hence,
we would think that Haredim are a bit more numerous than shown by our survey,
that is around 8% rather than 6%.

the religious-secular cleavage in contemporary israel

125

resemble the distribution of the whole sample, which contributes to

a mitigation of the religious-secular cleavage. This continuum perspective is strengthened further when we relate religiosity with aspects
of collective identity, such as feeling an integral part of the society
and the desire to remain living in Israel.
Table 12.3 shows that the vast majority of respondents (about
80%) feel an integral part of Israeli society, but religiosity does have
an impact on this sense of belongingness. The ultra-orthodox have
the largest minority (21%) who do not feel integrated at all in society while the religious have the strongest feeling of integration. Among
the secular we observe a sizeable minority (24%) who feel somewhat
alienated. All in all, those in the center of the religiosity continuum
feel more integrated. Moreover, the preference of living in Israel
over other countries is more generally agreed upon than the feeling
of integrationalmost 90% show this preference.
Table 12.3. Do You Feel Like an Integral Part of the Israeli Society?

Ult.-orth (N = 48)
Religious (N = 87)
Tradition (N= 255)
Secular (N = 408)
Total (N = 798)
N

Not at all To a some

extent

I do/Much so

21
1
3
4
4
36

62
92
86
76
80
632

17
7
11
20
16
125

Total
100
100
100
100
100
793

Cramers V = .18** Kendalls tau c = .11**

Table 12.4. The Desire to Live in Israel

If you could choose, what country would you live in?
Respondents
Ult.-orth (N = 48)
Religious (N = 87)
Traditional (N = 255)
Secular (N = 408)
Total (N = 798)
Cramers V = .13**

Israel
96
97
83
86
87

Other countries
4
3
17
14
13

Total
100
100
100
100
100

yochanan peres

126

Religiosity and Collective Identity

Collective identity was measured by asking the respondents which
group do they rstly belong to. The options provided were: Jewish,
Israeli, Mizrakhi, and Ashkenzi. Table 12.5 yields an interesting picture in this respect: Haredim feel Jewish above all else, though, a
segment among them tends also to emphasize ethnic identities. Among
the religious, one also nds a strong (even stronger) commitment to
Jewishness; but in second place Israeliness trumps ethnicity. Among
the traditionals, Jewishness is also rst, though Israeliness comes in
a very close second. For seculars, the leading response is Israeliness.
In some groups, religiosity categories dier signicantly in their patterns of collective identity. We see for example:
Table 12.5. Collective IdentityNational or Ethnic?
Col. Identity/
Religiosity

Ashk. Miz. Total ethnic Jewish Israeli Total national Total

identity
identity

Ult.-orth (N = 48)
Religious (N = 88)
Tradition (N = 256)
Secular (N = 408)
Total (N = 800)

21
5
6
18
13

8
5
9
4
6

29
10
15
22
19

65
73
45
12
32

6
17
40
65
48

71
90
85
77
80

100
100
100
100
100

Cramers V = .33**

(1) Jewishness conjunctively with ethnicity among the Haredim

(2) National Jewishness among the religious and the traditional
(3) Israeliness emphasized among seculars.
The question that arises from these variations among forms of religiosity is whether or not these dierences fuel religious conicts. The
rest of this chapter is devoted to considering this question from
dierent aspects.
The Dynamics of Religiosity over Generations
Does religiosity increase or decrease from generation to generation?
To tackle this issue we asked the respondents of they are more or
less religious than their parents were. Table 12.6 compares the
responses to this question according to degree of religiosity.

the religious-secular cleavage in contemporary israel

127

Table 12.6. Religiosity Over Generations

Are you more or less religious than your parents?
Ult.-orth. (N = 49)
Religious (N = 87)
Traditional (N = 255)
Secular (N = 411)
Total (N = 802)

More
47
26
22
7
16

Same
47
60
30
51
45

Less
6
15
48
42
39

Total
100
100
100
100
100

Cramers V = .24**; Kendealls tau c = .17**

The table as a whole indicates an inter-generational dierence: 55%

of the respondents report that there is a gap between their parents
religiosity and their own, compared to 45% who are as religious as
their parents. The direction of the dynamics is rather clear: 39%
are less religious than their parents as against 16% who are more
religious. A more detailed examination of the data indicates a tendency towards a non-symmetric polarization. The religious categories
(ultra-orthodox and religious) tend to become even more zealous and
observant, while the non religious categories (traditional and secular) tend to secularize over time. At the same time, both camps
the religious and the secularintensify their positions, but since the
secular and traditional are an overwhelming majority (about 80%)
the trend of secularization is stronger.
Social Distance between Religious Categories
We were also interested to learn to what extent degrees of religioisty
relate to socialization and friendship networks, and readiness to accept
members into ones family or neighbourhood. It is in this line of
thought that Table 12.7 compares friendship patterns of dierent
religious categories.
Table 12.7 shows that in all categories, except the religious, respondents prefer friends who share their level of religiosity. 73% of the
entire sample have only friends who belong to their own category.
The most secluded group is the traditionals, and the least secluded
the religious.
Explaining these dierences is not easy seeing that they seem to
contradict deep rooted conceptions. One explanation that comes to
mind, however, is that seeing the small size of the Haredi group,

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128

Table 12.7. Social Distances

How many of your close friends belong to your own category of religiosity?
All or
Half
Nearly
Index of Total
nearly all
none/none closure*
Ultra-orthodox (N = 49)
Religious (N = 87)
Traditional (N = 255)
Secular (N = 411)
Respondents (N = 802)

58
22
89
63
73

37
61
11
30
25

5
17
0
6
2

5.4
0.7
1.7
13.0

100
100
100
100
100

*calculated as the ratio of expected on observed; Cramers V = .38**; Kendalls

tau c = .35**

Table 12.8. Readiness for Inter-marriages (%)

Would you agree that your daughter marries . . .
Haredim Religious
Tradit.
Secular
Haredim
(N = 48)
Religious
(N = 87)
Traditional
(N = 255)
Secular
(N = 411)

Certainly/yes
No/by no means
Certainly/yes
No/by no means
Certainly/yes
No/by no means
Certainly/yes
No/by no means

n.a.
39
18
23
52
13
72

29
47
n.a.
79
4
37
20

0
0
47
16
n.a.
62
4

0
0
19
33
81
2
n.a.

n.a. = not asked; Cramers V = .23**

they naturalley tend to have networks that crosscut their community

while the large size of the secular group permits socialization lines
to remain within the category.
When, however, one compares readiness for intermarriage, a very
dierent picture emerges. Table 12.8 shows that the ultra-orthodox
seem to be the most endogamous group. About half of them do not
consent to marry even a religious partner. None of them will consider a traditional, let alone, a secular spouse. The religious are quite
open in both directions. Many of them will consider an ultra-orthodox
and/or a traditional marriage partner. Even the secular is not entirely
excluded. The traditionals are also open to both the secular and the
religious options, but resists the ultra-orthodox. The secular is also
relatively open to everyone but the ultra-orthodox.

the religious-secular cleavage in contemporary israel

129

Tensions between Religiosity Categories

Against this background, one would expect growing tensions between
the various categories of religiosity.
Table 12.9. Perceived Tensions in the Context of Religiosity
To what extent are there
tensions between:

Respondents Grave
tension

Some
tension

No
tension

Total

Traditional and religious

people
Seculars and ult.-orth

traditional
religious
secular
ult.-orth

31
18
19
22

46
80
12
31

100
100
100
100

23
2
69
47

Table 12.9, as a whole, reveals a high potential for conict with

respect to a particular set of relations. We took two cases of intercategory relationship which illustrate the smallest (traditional-religious)
and the largest (secular and ultra-orthodox) schisms. The Haredim
and the secular, as a rule, tend to oppose each other on numerous
issues. Seculars, as well as Haredim, feel involved in a situation of
genuine conict. Though, the Haredims visions of their conictual
relation with the secular are less acute than the latters feelings
vis--vis them. The secular appear to feel more threatened by the
Haredim than the other way roundeven though the conict is
by no means one-sided. On the other hand, the traditionals and
the religious do not appear to be opposed to each other by severe
tensions.
Major Controversies between Religious Categories
Religious categories also dier in their perspectives on the collective,
society and the world.
Table 12.10 rstly shows a genuine tendency towards polarization
when it comes to the question of the Jewish-religious character of
Israeli culture: the Haredim heavily support a strong emphasis on
this aspect in the present-day situation, and the secular, on the contrarybut more mildlyaspire to a weakening of this emphasis. The
religious are much less militant in this respect than the Haredim but
still closer to them than to the seculars, while the traditionals are
more attracted by the secular pole.

yochanan peres

130

Table 12.10. Attitudes towards the Jewish-Religious Character

of the Israeli Culture
In comparison to the situation today, Israeli culture should be:
Haredim Religious Traditional Secular
Total
(N = 50) (N = 96) (N = 322)
(N = 471) (N = 939)
Much less Jewish
A bit less Jewish
Remain as it is
A bit more Jewish
More Jewish
Total

0
2
10
10
78
100

3
0
29
31
37
100

5
15
45
24
11
100

24
29
38
7
2
100

14
20
38
16
13
101

Cramers V = .39**; Kendalls tau c = .44**

The distribution of the entire sample is almost symmetrical: 34%

opt for a less Jewish-Israeli culture compared to 29% who prefer a
more Jewish-Israeli culture. The largest category presents a conservative attitude, which stabilizes the distribution. More specically,
any radical change in favor of or against the Jewish character of
Israel will meet strong majority opposition. A very similar pattern is
revealed in response to a question about the more or less Western
character of Israeli culture. 50% prefer the existing balance between
Western culture and Jewish tradition.
Currently, the most extreme controversy between the religious and
the secular concerns the balance between the Jewish and the democratic orientations of the Israeli society. This question takes on a
great deal of acuity given the fact that Israel includes an Arab minority which is highly sensitive the development of the on-going protracted Israeli-Palestinian conict and tends to identify with the
Palestinian cause. The question then concerns the extent to which
democracy, under these conditions, which is attached to the safeguarding of the minoritys rights, constitutes for Israel a major
cultural-political goal, and if the degree of religiosity of Jews makes
a dierence.
Table 12.11 reveals a substantial gap between the Jewish-orientation of the Haredim and the democratic orientation of the secular,
with again both the religious (relatively closer to the Haredim) and
the traditional (relatively closer to the secular) in a middle-of-theroad position. The sample as a whole is tilted towards preference of
democracy over the states Jewish character (46 > 26), but again,
there is a sizeable portion of the sample (30%) which evaluates both

the religious-secular cleavage in contemporary israel

131

values ( Judaism and democracy) as equally important. Any attempt

to eliminate either Jewish or democratic values from the Israeli agenda
is strongly opposed.
Table 12.11. Israel as a Democracy versus Israel as a Jewish State
If you had to choose between Israel as a democracy or as a Jewish state,
which would you prefer?
Attitudes
Haredim Religious Traditional Secular Total
(N = 50) (N = 96) (N = 322) (N = 493) (N = 971)
Prefer a Jewish state
Both goals are
equally important
Prefer a democratic
state
Total

84
10

59
30

32
34

9
29

26
30

10

34

63

45

100

99

100

101

101

Cramers V = .37**; Kendalls tau c = .41**

Table 12.12. The Necessity of Mutual Concessions between

Religiosity Categories (%)*
Who is to make concessions in the religious-secular relations?
Categories
Religious Chiey Both sides Chiey Secular Total
only
religious
secular only
Haredim (N = 44)
Religious (N = 83)
Tradition (N = 247)
Secular (N = 391)
Total (N = 765)

0
0
2
9
5

2
1
10
29
18

75
88
75
60
69

11
8
13
1
6

11
2
0
1
2

100
99
100
100
100

Cramers V = .26**; Kendalls tau c = .25**

Undoubtedly, a large portion of the Israeli public is aware of the

gravity and depth of the religious-secular cleavage. This cleavage is
considered to be second only to the Arab-Israeli rift as a danger to
the integrity and to the very existence of Israeli society. How should
this issue be addressed?
Table 12.12 shows that the majority of the sample (69%) supports
a solution based on mutual concessions. The same tendency is revealed
in each of the separate categories, from ultra-orthodox to secular.
Only a negligible percentage demands that all concessions should
be made by one side only. In summary, the religioussecular conict is perceived to endanger the integrity of Israeli society to a

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yochanan peres

degree which makes it necessary for all groups to contribute to its

moderation.
Conclusion
This paper focuses on the role of religion in the collective identity
of Israeli Jews. In our study, as in many preceding studies, we found
that religiosity among Israeli Jews is a matter of degree, rather than
a polarized dichotomy (see also Katz, 1997). Even those who dene
themselves as secular or non-religious are reluctant to declare that
they have no religion (Oron, 1993). The belongingness to Jewish
religion means also belonging to the Jewish people. Hence, religious
symbols, myths, and traditions merge into all versions of Jewishness
(Levy, 1996).
This fusion of religiosity and nationalism seems to be the reason
for the never-ending controversy over the issue whether Judaism is
basically a religion or a nationality. Those who dene themselves as
religious seem to have an edge over other categories in terms of
integration of modern nationalism with ancient Jewish religion. The
seculars commitment to modernity, individualism, and democracy
seems an obstacle to the acceptance of a Jewish religious perspective, while the ultra-orthodoxs radicalism does not allow smooth
adjustment of norms and values to a modern liberal society (Friedman,
1986). Hence, while the religious and the traditionals buer the
antagonism opposing the ultra-orthodox and the secular, the latter
two are by no means just a virtual threat.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ON EUROPEAN JEWISH ORTHODOXY, SEPHARDIC

TRADITION, AND THE SHAS MOVEMENT
Zvi Zohar
Introduction
There are many ways in which a Jew can express his or her Jewish
identity. One of these is by living according to the guidelines of
halachathe normative aspect of Torah as explicated by scholarly
rabbis. Dierent understandings of halacha will generate dierent
modes of Jewish Halachic identity. In this article, I seek to illustrate
this thesis by consideration of the Halachic dynamic in modern times
in Northern European versus in Muslim countries. Subsequently, I
argue that the cadre of the Shas movement in contemporary Israel
reects an interesting case in which Jews of Sephardic extraction
have internalized central aspects of a non-Sephardic Halachic identity.
It is hard to imagine a society in which change and development
do not occur over time. This is true not only of modern societies;
even in ancient times and pre-modern societies, change was rampant. Sometimes change was sharp and acute; a clear example of
this in the history of the Jewish people is the destruction of the
Second Temple. But during most of history social norms evolved at
a moderate pace enabling people to imagine, along with Ecclesiastes,
that there is nothing new under the sun.1
The above held true for the world of halacha as well. Indeed, even
in bracketing the eects of historical-social change, some dynamic is
bound to characterize halacha simply as a result of the intellectual
activity of Torah sages: A beit midrash [hall of study] is never
totally without innovation.2 But beyond changes rooted in interpretation and religious thought as intellectually autonomous areas of

1
2

I:9.
Cf. BT Hagigah 3a.

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zvi zohar

creativity, halacha is intimately connected to the reality of real life

and to the natural activities of concrete societies and times.3 Thus,
even in pre-modern periods, some Halachic change occurred as a
result of the response of Halachic sages to the exigencies of social
change.
Change in the modern era diers from that of the past, in both
frequency and breadth. As a result, ever widening gaps open, at a
relatively rapid pace, between life patterns of the past and of the
present. Moreover, and perhaps even more important for the present discussion: these changes undermine not only actual continuity
with the life patterns of the past, but also the consciousness of continuity that contemporary people sense with the lifestyles of previous generations. Despite the fact that every culture and every social setting
is possible only because of deep-rooted and basic elements of tradition and continuity with the past,4 in the modern era consciousness
of the new has become a central hallmark of human existence.
In conjunction with this, awareness increases as to the signicant
dierences between our lifestyles and patterns of existence in the
present, and those of the past. This reinforces historical awareness,
thereby undermining even more the sense of a self-evident connection between the reality of our forefathers and our own.
Accelerated and widespread processes of change, coupled with the
crisis in the consciousness of continuity with traditional times, create unprecedented challenges for present-day Jews who seek to manifest a Halachic identity. This determination is even more true with
regard to rabbis, who are expected to dene and formulate norms
of Halachic life within the modern context.
In addition to the above, the processes of modernization included
enlightenment, non-traditional education, and secularization. Quite
a few Jews aected by these phenomena adopted anti-traditional and
anti-religious ideological positions. It was not easy for traditionalminded Halachic sages to dierentiate between what they saw as their
responsibility to negate such ideologies, and their duty to respond
in a relevant manner to modern developments per se. Many sages
were sorely tempted to posit an integraleven necessarylink between
modern society in toto and the challenging and threatening views of

3
4

I have expanded on this elsewhere; see Zohar 1984; 5971.

See: Edward Shils, 1971, 122.

on european jewish orthodoxy

135

those who had thrown o the yoke and totally rejected Halachic
identity.
Indeed, quite a few great scholars succumbed to this temptation
and formulated a worldview that equated faithfulness to Torah with
faithfulness to the norms and life patterns that characterized the
Jewish community before the outbreak of modernity. This attitude
was epitomized in the motto, the new is prohibited by the Torah.5
In this view, Torah can be fullled only if Judaism consciously isolates itself from the inuences of the times, and if its proponents are
hidden away in a room within a room.6 This worldview placed
great constraints upon rabbinic scholars attempting to relate halacha
to current issues and realities.
The Halachic system regards precedent as signicant but not binding.7 This does not mean that a rabbi will deliberate on current
issues in disregard of accepted praxis and norms. However, the bottom line is that the system authorizes him to determine the halacha
considering both his own understanding of the Halachic sources, and
the circumstances and contexts that dierentiate the case at hand,
relative to the past: The judge has nothing but what his eyes see.8
However, the position that the new is prohibited by the Torah
led to a notion of Halachic identity according to which faithfulness
to Judaism entailed denying the authority of Halachic sages to rule
in a manner dierent from what had been accepted in the past. It
is forbidden to change the halacha or custom because of the spirit
of the times, writes Rabbi Shmuel Yitzhak Shor, and if you nd

This motto was rst applied in this manner by rabbi Moshe Sofer, known by
the title of a work he composed as the Hatam Sofer. Sofer is considered the
founder of the modern trend within Judaism known as Orthodoxy.
6
In the words of the Hatam Sofer, in an impressive sermon he gave in 1811,
when the Enlightened Jews wanted to establish a modern Jewish school in the
city of Pressburg. See: The Sermons of the Hatam Sofer, on the Torah portion of
BShalach. The strategy he preaches is characterized by the Hatam Sofer (ibid.) as
the behavior that we followed from the days of Moshe Rabbenu until now. Here
the Hatam Sofer uses rhetoric typical of other Orthodox leaders who stated that
they simply continuing the lifestyles and the worldview of pre-modern Judaism.
However, these declarations are not consistent with socio-historical data. Jacob Katz
writes: The claim of the Orthodox that they are none other than the preservers
of ancient pure Judaism is a ction. In fact, Orthodoxy was a way of confronting
heretical trends, and of reacting to those stimuli that caused these trendswith
a conscious eort, however, to deny such external motives.J. Katz, (1986; 45).
7
See Elon, 1992, p. 802.
8
Bavli, 6b.
5

136

zvi zohar

some heretics who say otherwise, why, the knowledge of fools isnt
knowledge.9
Religious education in Israel, including the education provided by
State-Religious stream, advocates this version of Halachic identity.
It teaches its pupils to accept as a self-evident truth and central religious principle the notion that European Orthodoxy was the authentic Halachic-traditional approach. Students are acculturated from
childhood to believe that Orthodoxy and true faithfulness to
Judaism are synonymous terms. It follows, that to hold an authentic Halachic identity, one must emulate Central and East European
Orthodoxy as described above.
Interestingly, most secular Israelis seem to hold a similar view.
While their Jewish identity is not expressed as a Halachic identity,
they nevertheless agree that European Orthodox Halachic identity
is the only authentic Halachic identity. The fact that classic European
Reform Judaism rejected both Zionism and the authority of any
form of halacha may have contributed to the internalization of such
a view among secular Israelis, from the early twentieth century
onwards.
However, is it really necessary for every Halachic sage facing the
challenges of modernity to hold that Torah prohibits the New?
Perhaps this was not an immanent, necessary reaction of Halachic
Judaism, but a specic strategic move whose inner logic related to
a specic socio-religious context? Happily, we have a comparative
test case that allows us to follow the response to modernity by sages
who were active in a modernizing socio-religio-historical context
essentially dierent than that of Europe. I refer here to the Jews of
the Middle East and North Africa.
Middle Eastern and North African Jewry in Modernity
The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa were signicantly
exposed to the inuences of modern Europe since the fourth decade
of the nineteenth century. In 1830, France conquered Algeria; in
1831 Egypt conquered Palestine and Syria, and soon thereafter
extended legal equality to non-Muslim inhabitants; in 1839 the
9
Quoted by his son, Avraham Zvi Shor, 1934, comments on the halakhot of
Sabbath, section 340 (page 73.).

on european jewish orthodoxy

137

Ottoman Empire followed suit in its Hatt-i-Sherif Gulhane policy

declaration on civil rights. In addition to increasing general European
inuence in the Middle East and North Africa, Jews of these lands
were directly inuenced by another factor: West European Jewry.
The latter mobilized to assist their downtrodden Oriental brethren
and established international organizations such as the Alliance
Israelite Universellededicated to that task. In addition to political
lobbying aimed at eecting European diplomatic intervention for the
protection of Oriental Jews, the organizations (and private philanthropists) also sought to enlighten those Jews by providing modern,
western education. In schools such as those established by Cremieux
in Cairo (1840), by Lemel in Jerusalem (1853), and especially by the
Alliance Israelite Universelle from 1862 (Tetuan) onwards, generations of young Jews and Jewesses in Islamic lands received a modern, European-oriented and basically secular (though not anti-religious)
education.
Activities of Gentile and Jewish Europeans was augmented by local
government policy: legal and politico-structural reforms were initiated during the nineteenth century by Ottoman, Egyptian and Tunisian
governments, seeking to modernize their states so as to withstand
external pressures. New technologies in communications, transport,
industry, agriculture, and urban development reached the area and
had far-reaching eects, especially in the urban centers. Thus we
nd that on the eve of the First World War, Jews of North Africa
and the Middle East were signicantly aected by modernity, in
direct proportion to their economic status, their education and their
urban location.10 The inter-war years saw the extension of modernization to large sectors of the Jewish middle and lower-middle class.
In sum, by the late 1940s, a large proportion of Sephardic-Oriental
Jews in their countries of origin were quite modernized.
However, the typical response of the Sephardic rabbinic elite to
these developments was very dierent from that of their European
Orthodox peers. These dierences are linked both to externalcontextual and to internal-cultural factors.

10
That is to say, a wealthy, Alliance-educated Jew living in a newly built quarter of Cairo was quite modernized indeed, while a lower class, kuttab-educated Jew
living in a Kurdish village was little touched by modernization.

138

zvi zohar

Contextual Dierences
Elsewhere, I have noted and discussed several variables which made
modernization in Islamic lands dierent from that of Europe.11 Here,
I would like to stress one of those variables, namely, the lack (in
Islamic lands) of anti-clericalism as a salient feature of modernism.
Also, Islamic religious leaders in these countries did not respond to
modernity by rejecting traditional religiosity and attempting the formation of radically dierent modes of Islamic religious life.12 Rather,
even those Muslims who criticized the current socio-political and cultural situation of their society chose to characterize the sought-for
changes as truly compatible with the spirit of Islam and with the
norms of the Sharia.13 In this respect, Jews of Islamic lands were
similar to their Muslim compatriots: attacking rabbis as backward
and criticizing Halachic Judaism as obscurantist were not a la mode
in the Sephardic-Oriental milieu, and movements which advocated
abandonment of rabbinic Judaism in favor of some new denition
of Jewish identity did not develop there.14 In general, even those sectors of the Jewish community whose lifestyle reected a Halachic
identity in only the most minimal wayincluding those who advocated modern political ideologies such as socialism, communism or
secular Zionismdid not seek to bolster their position by insulting
the communitys rabbis or traditions.15

11
For a concise presentation, see my article The Halachic Teachings of Modern
Egyptian Rabbis, 1983, pp. 6588 (Hebrew).
12
Thus, the so-called Islamic Reform movement, which was an important factor in Egyptian and Middle Eastern Islam in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century under the leadership of Afghani and Abduh, was much less radical
than European Christian Reform. Conversely, the Wahabi movement, which radically attacked the traditional Islamic establishment, was not at all a response to
modernity.
13
Inter alia, this was the path adopted by most Arab communists.
14
A very unusual exception to this general rule was Rabbi Raphael Katzins
attempt to establish a reform congregation in Aleppo ca. 1862, described by
Yaron Harel (1992) pp. XIXXXXV (Hebrew).
15
Which is to say that rabbinical leaders were never openly and directly criticized. Thus, many Cairene Jews in the early 1920s severely criticized the behavior of the incumbent Chief Rabbi as high-handed and despotic; in the late 1940s,
thousands of Baghdadi Jews participated in a mass demonstration against Chief
Rabbi Khaduri, whom they regarded as cowardly in failing to demand that Iraqs
nationalist (and eectively anti-Semitic) leadership alleviate the communitys plight.
But even these radical critiques were denitely ad hominem.

on european jewish orthodoxy

139

Halacha as a Dynamic Religious Phenomenon, as seen by Sephardic Rabbis

In the absence of Jewish ideological attacks upon Judaism or against
rabbinic authority per se, there was no external impetus for SephardicOriental rabbis to formulate a policy stating that Torah prohibits
the new, or to refrain from reaching novel Halachic decisions if
warranted by specic socio-historical developments. However, lack
of such external factors is not enough; considerations internal to
Halachic discourse might conceivably lead rabbis to reject Halachic
change. Let us see then, how Sephardic Halachic writers regarded
change in halacha.
Examining writings of prominent Sephardic rabbis of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we nd that the prevailing attitude
was that there were no immanent features in halacha requiring rabbis to refrain from formulating new Halachic rulings, in new circumstances. Rather, they held that the greatness and eternal vitality
of halacha lie in its capacity to express Judaisms noble values in a
variety of forms, as appropriate to changing circumstances.
Let me provide several illustrations:
1. In nineteenth-century Europe, some voices were heard calling for
the revision of Maimonides thirteen Principles of Jewish Faith.
Inter alia, it was suggested that the Article arming belief in the
absolute eternality of Torah be re-phrased or deleted, so as to
provide Jews with the capability of accommodating Judaism to
modern conditions. Rabbi Eliyahu Hazan16 responded that Torah
as we have it requires no change at all in order to enable response
to contemporary historical developments. The reason, he wrote,
is this:
Since the Holy Torah was given to physical human beings, who are
always subject to changes stemming from dierences in history in rulers
and decrees, in nature and climate, in states and realmstherefore,
all Torahs words were given in marvelous, wise ambiguity; thus, they
can receive any true interpretation at any time . . . Indeed, the Torah

16
Eliyahu Hazan was born ca. 1847 in Izmir and grew up in Jerusalem, where
he received a thorough rabbinic education. He later served as rabbi of Tripoli and
then of Alexandria, until his death in 1908. His published works include Ta"alumot
Lev (Secrets of the Heart), responsa (in four volumes) and Neve Shalom (Oasis of
Peace), on the Halachic traditions of Alexandrian Jewry, in addition to the work
cited in the following note.

140

zvi zohar
of Truth, inscribed by Gods nger, engraved upon the Tabletswill
not change nor be renewed, for ever and ever.17

In other words, the words of the Holy Torah are eternal; yet the
eternality of Torah is manifest specically in its inexhaustible
capacity to yield multiple meanings, each appropriate to a dierent
human reality.
2. In the introduction to the rst volume of his collected responsa,
Mishpetei Uzziel, Rabbi Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uzziel18 totally rejected
the central premise of European Orthodoxy and stressed that
halacha must respond to modern developments: In every generation, conditions of life, changes in values, and technical and
scientic discoveries create new questions and problems that require
solution. We may not avert our eyes from these issues and say
Torah prohibits the New, i.e., anything not expressly mentioned
by earlier sages is ipso facto forbidden. A fortiori, we may not simply declare such matters permissible. Nor, may we let them remain
vague and unclear, each person acting with regard to them as
he wishes. Rather, it is our duty to search Halachic sources, and
to derive, from what they explicate, responses to currently moot
issues . . . In all my responsa, I never inclined towards leniency
or strictness according to my personal opinions; rather, my intention and striving were always to search and discover the truth.
To the extent that my understanding enabled me, I walked in
the light of earlier Halachic masters, whose waters we drink and
whose light enlightens us. With this holy light, which issues from
the source of the hidden, concealed Light, I illuminated my
eyes . . .19
In this paragraph, Rabbi Uzziel rejects the path of Orthodoxy,
of Reform, and of those afraid to decide described by Elon,
above. He states that halacha can and should develop through
17

Eliyahu Hazan, 1874, p. 57.

Rabbi Uzziel (18801953) was born in the Old City of Jerusalem to an ancient
and illustrious Sephardic family. From 1912 to 1939, he served as Sephardic rabbi
of Jaa and Tel-Aviv, and from 1939 until his death, he was Sephardic Chief Rabbi
of Israel. He composed a seven-volume work of responsa, entitled Mishpetei Uzziel;
a two-volume work, Shaarei Uzziel, on the halacha concerning the legal guardianship of orphans and widows; and works of theology and homilies such as Hegyonei
Uzziel and Mikhmanei Uzziel.
19
Introduction to the rst volume of Mishpetei Uzziel, 1935 pp. IXX.
18

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141

hermeneutic and analogy, applied by halakhists deeply motivated

to discover the truth. His sentences are replete with what may
be termed mystical rationalism, which bring to mind Maimonides
introduction to the Guide of the Perplexed. Clearly, Uzziel sees halacha
as far from a nite set of normative dicta, but rather requires
halakhists to discover anew how Jews should relate to developments in human life, values and sciencefollowing the light contained in earlier rabbinic writings so as to illuminate thought on
contemporary issues.
3. A third illustration is to be found in the thought of Rabbi Hayyim:
David HaLevi served as Chief Rabbi of Tel-Aviv.20 In response
to criticism directed against him by an (unnamed) Orthodox rabbi,
HaLevi rejected that rabbis assertion that commitment to Judaism
entails abstention from Halachic innovation. Since all legislation
known to human beings requires nearly constant revision due to
changes in the conditions of life, how is it, asked HaLevi, that
the laws of our Holy Torah, revealed to us thousands of years
ago, can still function and guide us, today? He responded:
This is possible only because permission was given to Israels sages
in each generation to renew halacha as appropriate to the changes of
times and events. Only by virtue of this was the continuous existence
of Torah in Israel possible, enabling Jews to follow the way of
Torah . . . There is nothing so exible as the exibility of Torah . . . it
is only by virtue of that exibility that the People of Israel, through
the many novel and useful rulings innovated by Israels sages over the
generations, could follow the path of Torah and its commandments
for thousands of years.21

20
Rabbi HaLevi was born in Jerusalem in 1924, and was educated in Jerusalems
Sephardic yeshivot. He served as rabbi of Rishon LeZion, and from 1973 until his
decease in 1998 was Chief Rabbi of Tel-Aviv. In addition, he served from 1964
as a member of Israels Chief Rabbinate Council. HaLevi wrote hundreds of articles on a wide range of Jewish topics, and published over twenty-ve volumes,
including Bein Yisrael LaAmim (Between Israel and the Nations), 1954; Devar Hamishpat
(The Word of Judgment), three volumes, 196365; Dat U-Medinah (Religion and
State), 1969; Maftehot Ha-Zohar u-Ra"ayonotav (Keys to the Zohar and Its Ideas), 1971;
Mekor Hayyim Ha-Shalem (The Complete Mekor Hayyim), an ideationally explained
code of religious norms, ve volumes, 19671974; 'Aseh Lekha Rabbi (Choose a Rabbi),
nine volumes of responsa, 19761988; et alia.
21
Hayyim David HaLevi, 1989, pp. 183186. The words of the anonymous questioner appear on p. 182.

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I do not know if Rabbi HaLevi was acquainted with the words of

Eliyahu Hazan, quoted above, but the similarity between them is
striking: the same Torah can serve as the ground of Jewish life
over thousands of years, despite far-reaching changes in society, history, science and culture, only because of the exibility inherent in
its words, whose potential is realized through the creative endeavours of Israels rabbis. In sum, perennial renewal is a sine qua non of
authentic halacha. The Halachic identity deriving from such a notion
of halacha is markedly dierent from an Halachic identity deriving
from Torah prohibits the new.
Halachic Innovations: According to What Principles and Values?
Prominent sages of Oriental Jewry in modern times adhered to a
basic orientation very dierent from that of European Orthodox rabbis. While the former uphold a dynamic halacha, the latter identify
faithfulness to the Torah with the preservation of a pre-modern
Halachic status quo. But, what content and values characterized that
living halacha? A dynamic reaction to the modern world might take
a direction of increased isolation and stringency, as Samet wrote, for
example, about those elements of innovation that he nonetheless
detected in Orthodox halacha: Innovations are added in one direction only: towards more stringency.22
Elsewhere, I deal at length with the qualities of a wide range of
specic reactions by Sephardic-Oriental Halachic sages to the challenges of modernity.23 A partial summary of the characteristics of
their positions on modern issues includes:
1. Support for integration of secular studies into the Jewish
curriculum.
2. Positive regard for modern science and technology.
3. A sense of solidarity with aspects of contemporary non-Jewish
societies and states.

22
See his article, The Reaction of the Halacha to Modernization, (1969), pp.
2630. The quote is from page 30.
23
I dealt with these issues in my books, Tradition and Change (1993) and The
Luminous Face of the East ( 2001), and in other articles I published in various forums.
And see above, note 1.

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4. Acknowledgment of a common, Jewish Gentile rationality which

encompasses (inter alia) the realm of halacha.
5. Halachic armation of certain values central to European
modernity.
It should now be apparent that beyond conventionally recognized
options of Jewish identityOrthodoxy, secularism, and the innovative European religious movementsthere is an additional Jewish
culture: Oriental-Sephardic Judaism, in all its variations. Indeed, it
should also now be clear that the prevailing popular image of the
Judaism of the Islamic countries as colourful, folkloristic and nonintellectual requires a basic revision: the Halachic creativity of many
important sages from Oriental-Sephardic Jewish circles includes conceptual aspects of abiding interest, by any comparative standard.
The Shas Movement as a Modern Israeli Phenomenon
Let us now focus on a modern Israeli social phenomenon that has
signicantly impacted contemporary Israeli society and politics: the
Shas movement. In order to understand the outlook of Shas, one
must focus ones attention, not on the rabbinic elite of the Jewry of
Muslim lands, but on the characteristics of the Torah world in
Israel during the past century, especially since the establishment of
the State of Israel. Some relevant characteristics are these:
1. The world of advanced [post-teenage] yeshivot in Israel follows the East
Europeanultra-Orthodox model.24 Therefore, young immigrants from
Islamic countries who sought to continue their Torah studies in
Israel, naturallyin the absence of any other alternativeentered
the world of the Lithuanian yeshivot, and were socialized to an
ultra-Orthodox Halachic identity and religious ethos.
2. Ultra-Orthodox society is characterized by a consciousness of ethnic
superiority, that in other contexts we would unhesitatingly call racism.
Such approaches were characteristic in the past of broad sectors
of European Jewry that tended to denigrate Jewish sub-groups

24

Many Zionist yeshivot deviate from the Lithuanian-Haredi model only in the
theological-religious attitude they have towards the establishment of the State. Other
areas, such as methods of study and worldviews in non-political areas, the dierence
is nonexistent or not signicant.

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other than their own: Lithuanians vs. Galicians, Austrian Jews

vs. Hungarian Jews, German Jews vs. the Ostjuden, Hassidim vs.
Mitnagdim, etc. In Israeli Jewish society since the mass immigrations, these attitudes have declined among broad sectors of the
populace, due, inter alia, to direct contact in the army, and subsequently to courtship and marriage of couples from dierent
Diaspora communities. However, these attitudes were preserved
and perhaps even strengthened among the most conservative sector of the Jewish community in Israel, i.e., the Haredi [ultraOrthodox] sector.25
3. Therefore, Torah scholars of Oriental-Sephardic origin were not accepted as
equals within the elite of the Haredi Torah world. This wasand is
reected in central areas such as lack of opportunities for matches
with brides from prestigious Ashkenazic families, and lack of
opportunity to be accepted for important positions in the yeshiva
world and in the world of the Haredi rabbinate.
4. Similarly, even the greatest of Oriental-Sephardic Torah sages were not accepted
into the ranks of the spiritual-religious leadership of Haredi Judaism, such
as the Council of Torah Sages of Agudat Israel, etc.
All the above resulted in the creation of a large group of rabbinic
scholars of Oriental-Sephardic origin who had studied in the Haredi
yeshivot and who had internalized the Haredi religious worldview, but
because of their origin were marginalized in the world with which
they had been educated to identify. This social group is the mainstay of the Shas Movement. Yet it is doubtful if this group would
have coalesced into a sustained religio-social and political movement,
had it not been for the unique and charismatic gure of rabbi Ovadia
Yosef.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef s background is very dierent from that of
the Sephardic-Lithuanian Torah scholars described above.26 Rabbi
Yosef studied at the Sephardic Porat Yosef yeshiva in the Old City
of Jerusalem before this yeshiva became heavily inuenced by the
Ashkenazic-Lithuanian yeshiva world.27 He was recognized early-on

25
This sector, among other things, does not serve in the army and has no spontaneous meetings of couples nor the ideal of marriage as a result of courtship.
26
In recent years, two doctoral dissertations have been devoted to Rabbi Ovadia
and analysis of his oeuvre: Benni Lau, 2002 and Ariel Picard, 2004.
27
Nonetheless, it should be remembered that the Porat Yosef Yeshiva itself was

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as outstanding in his studies and is today the pre-eminent Halachic

scholar as measured by mastery of the corpus of Halachic works
created throughout the generations. While his detractors intimate
that he lacks originality and simply rules mechanically according to
the views of the majority of past Halachic masters, this criticism is
not supported by a critical analysis of his writings. Even when he
himself declares that he is ruling merely according to the majority of the Halachic sages, this is but a rhetorical move. Rabbi
Ovadia holds that the power of the more moderate position is to
be preferred, and while he has issued quite a few conservative rulings, a signicant number of lenient and even innovative rulings
characterize his Halachic work, especially in his earlier decades but
also in more recent years.
Already as a teen-age yeshiva student in mandatory Palestine,
Rabbi Yosef felt that the traditional-religious world of Oriental Jews
had not received proper recognition in the Land of Israel, and that
there was a tendency towards the assimilation of Sephardic Jews into
European Halachic culture.28 He felt that this assimilation was a negative phenomenon. Moreover, in his opinion, it reected a shocking
Halachic injustice: according to halacha, a person who has left his
home community and made his permanent residence in another
place is obligated to accept the Halachic identity of his new location.
Therefore, everyone who immigrates to Eretz Yisrael should take upon
himself the norms of Eretz Yisraelwhich were formulated by Rabbi

controlled by one school among the Oriental Torah sages: the Aleppo school, that
tended towards religious conservatism with dierent characteristics than those of
European Orthodoxy. As to the approach of the Aleppo sages in modern times,
see my article: Activist Conservatism: Guidelines to the Socio-Religious Leadership
of Aleppos Sages in Modern Times, (1993) 5778.
28
It should be remembered that during the 1950s and 1960s it was standard
to pray from the Ashkenazic siddur in the State-Religious schools in Israel, to learn
the Ashkenazic Torah cantillations, and to learn the Halacha according to the
Abbreviated Shulkhan Arukh of the Hungarian Rabbi Ganzfried. Even in the army,
the unied version of prayer formulated by Rabbi Goren was a compendium of
Ashkenazi versions of prayer. To be fair, this was not a phenomenon only among
the religious sector, for the general cultural tendency in Israel during the time of
the Mandate and in the rst decades after the establishment of the State was characterized by positing the world of the European immigrants in general, and specically
of the pioneering socialist immigrants from Eastern Europe, as the general social
and cultural ideal for Jewish society; all this in the context of a declared and deliberate melting pot policy.

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Yosef Caro, the great 16th century Halachic master who resided in
the Galilean town of Safed and there authored the canonical Halachic
work Shulhan Arukh. The teachings of European rabbis were valid for
Jews who lived in Europe, but upon immigration to Israel, all Jews
must accept the ways of the Jews of Eretz Yisrael. In other words,
the Jews of Europe did not come to a culturally empty land but to
land with an existing Sephardic Halachic identity. Rabbi Ovadia
holds that there is, indeed, a need for assimilation and for determining a joint Halachic identity for all Israeli Jews. However, what
is required is assimilation in the sense of general acceptance by
all Jews in Israel of the rulings of the author of the Shulkhan Arukh
certainly not the opposite. On his view, all Jews should internalize
and display a strong Sephardic Halachic identity. In his rulings and
sermons since the 1950s and 1960s, Rabbi Yosef has sought to reinforce the Sephardic Halachic tradition and has negated any call
made in the name of unity for adoption of European Jewish norms
by all Israeli Jews.29 He believes that the Sephardic tradition of Eretz
Israel will prevail; indeed, it is that tradition that will ultimately be
vindicated by the Messiah himself.30
During the years 19731983, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef served two
terms as the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel and carried the title of Rishon Le"Zion. Despite the fact that he was clearly
the leading Torah scholar of Oriental Jewry in Israel, the Knesset
did not enable him to continue in his position, and did not change
the law (passed just prior to 1973) limiting a Chief Rabbi to two
ve-year terms of oce.31 Thus Rabbi Yosef found himself red
from his position in 1983 and barred from ocial leadership of the
Oriental-Sephardic religious sector, despite his stature as leading
master of Halachic sources.
29
Thus, he severely criticized the willingness of Chief Sephardic Rabbi Uzziel
to reach a compromise with Chief Ashkenazic Rabbi Herzog on certain Halachic
matters pertaining to the laws of personal status, since rabbi Uzziel agreed to shelve
the Sephardic Halachic tradition, according to which levirate marriage ( yibbum)
should be preferred to the halitza (release) ceremony even in contemporary times.
30
For an analysis and explication of rabbi Ovadias religious thought and the
meaning of his program of restoring the crown to its ancient glory, see chapter
16 of my book The Luminous Face of the East (above note . . .).
31
At the time, it seemed apparent that the refusal of the Knesset to change this
law stemmed from the political clout of Moshe Nissim, whose father, Rabbi Yitzhak
Nissim, was dismissed from the oce of Rishon Le"Zion in 1973. Rabbi Nissims dismissal had been facilitated by the willingness of Rabbi Yosef to replace him in that
position.

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Soon thereafter, the preparations for the 1984 elections to the

local authorities began. Several Sephardic political leaders running
in these elections asked for Rabbi Yosef s support and blessing; those
who received his support won. This proved to be a winning combination: a charismatic-religious leader, disaected by the religiouspolitical system and seeking to return the crown [of Sephardic
Judaism] to its former glory, joined forces with Oriental political
activists who succeeded (with the blessing of the rabbi and with his
encouragement) in reaching quite broad target audiences and earning their trust. Such success on the local level led to the organization of a national party that competed in the Knesset elections in
1984 and succeeded in winning four seatsan impressive achievement for a new party.32
Subsequently, Shas began to establish a broad religious-social movement whose target audience was the entire Oriental-Sephardic community, especially those whose economic and social situation were
relatively dicult. The activists who mobilized as the cadres of the
movement were mainly those young students of Torah who had
experienced discrimination in Haredi yeshivot and found in Shas an
arena for educational-religious-leadership and activity that had been
closed o to them in the Haredi yeshiva world. A wide network of
Torah lessons was established for people of all ages and all levels of
knowledge, including young pupils of kindergarten and elementary
school ages whom the existing educational system (especially the
State-Religious system) had failed to eectively reach. In addition,
other community activities of a more social nature were set up:
the establishment of low-cost food stores for the impoverished sector, free loan associations, etc.33
It is important to note that the religious, educational, and social
activity of the Shas movement was welcomed precisely by those segments of society for whom established governmental activities of the
State and the local authorities have failed. If not for this widespread
failure of the ocial systems of the State and its ocial religious
leadership, it is doubtful whether such a large sector would have
responded to the eorts of the Shas movement. In other words,
32
Shas reached its zenith in the 1999 elections with 17 seats in the 120-seat
Knesset. In the 2003 elections it lost a third of its strength, remaining with 11 seats.
33
On the social and religious-cultural activities of Shas on the grass-roots level,
see: Anat Feldman, 2001.

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a necessary (although not sucient) condition for the success of Shas

was the failure of the State of Israel to absorb many of the immigrants from Islamic countries in a manner respectful of their identity and their heritage, and to empower the immigrantsand their
childrenby actual success in educational achievement and in economic-professional activity.34 Two additional conditions were,
1. The existence of a cadre of young Torah scholars with ability
and enthusiasm, prepared to work daily, under dicult conditions, in the poorer neighbourhoods and towns throughout the
country.
2. The leadership of an outstanding Halachic scholarRabbi Ovadia
Yosefwho believes that the activities of the movement reect
authentic principles of Torah.
However, in light of our comparison of European and SephardicOriental Halachic identity, it is important to note a major problem
with regard to the type of Halachic identity propagated by Shas
amongst Israelis of Sephardic-Oriental extraction. The problem is
epitomized by the attempts by the leaders of Shas to gain public
support during election time, through the use of symbols of a populist-religious nature. I refer to the blatant use of amulets and oaths,
as well as the public use of a low/vulgar style in election speeches
and rabbis exhortations. While such phenomena had existed among
Jews wherever they lived, major Halachic sages, in both Islamic and
Christian countries, were critical of these phenomena and saw it as
part of their mission to raise the religious and cultural horizons of
the people to higher levels. At times they even unequivocally criticized such popular religious behaviour.35 The willingness of the
Shas leaders to endorse such patterns of popular religion as proper

34

On the social and economic factors contributing to the success of Shas, see
also Yoav Peled (ed.), Shas.
35
Thus, Rabbi Rafael Yosef Hazan, one of the greatest middle-eastern rabbinical scholars at the turn of the nineteenth century, and who subsequently served as
Rishon Le"Zion, greatly opposed the popular customs surrounding the Lag BOmer
celebrations at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai in Meron; Rabbi Rafael
Aharon ben Shimon, the chief rabbi of Cairo during the years 18911921, vociferously opposed the traditional carnival-like folk celebrations of Simhat Torah in
Cairo and mobilized the heads of the community to change these patterns (on rabbi
Ben-Shimons activities see The Luminous Face of the East, above note . . ., pp. 141144).
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef himself, in pre-Shas times, had expressed opposition to the
Mimouna celebrations held in Israel.

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manifestations of religious culture represents a break with Sephardic

Halachic identity, besides causing signicant denigration of Judaism
in the eyes of secular and educated segments of Israeli society.
In more general terms, there exists a deep gap between the education and Halachic identity of the Shas cadres, and the cultural
ideal that they seek to represent. Focusing on the slogan To Return
the Crown to its Ancient Glory, the party advocates leading the
Oriental-Sephardic sector of Israeli Jews back to religious observance,
i.e., to the religion, Torah and the cultural heritage of their forefathers. However, the European ultra-Orthodox Halachic identity and
ethos that the movements cadres internalized, are radically dierent
from the Halachic identity and traditions of the Sephardic-Oriental
Torah sages in the Middle East and North Africacharacterized by
openness to general education, Zionism, new political trends, etc.
In other words, the Halachic identity of the political-intellectual
leaders of Shas (except, perhaps, for Rabbi Yosef himself ) is in dissonance with the cultural-religious heritage and identity that they
invoke, and the glory of which they seek to restore.36 Not only
Maimonides and other great medieval Sephardic rabbis would have
found it dicult to recognize the religious culture and Halachic identity of todays Shas leadership, but so would most prominent Sephardic
scholars of the twentieth century, such as the chief rabbis of Jerusalem
rabbis Ya"acov Shaul Eliachar, Ya"acov Meir and Ben Zion Uzziel.
Conclusion
In this article I argued that one aspect of Jewish identity is Halachic
identityidentifying as a Jew by identifying with the guidelines of
halacha and by living according to those guidelines. I noted that
Halachic identity was not uniform and monolithic, and characterized two major modes of Halachic identity in modern times: European
Orthodox and Sephardic-Oriental. Finally, I focused on one group
in contemporary Israeli society, the cadre of the Shas movement,
and pointed out the dissonance between the Halachic identity they
internalized during the course of their socialization and studies in

36
It is worth noting that Sephardic Torah sages of the classic school did not
support Shas; examples of such sages are Rabbi David Chelouche of Netanya and
Rabbi Haim David HaLevi of Tel-Aviv.

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ultra-Orthodox yeshivot, and the Halachic identity that they glorify

in their political campaigns.
I realize full well that the subjects I raised merit further consideration and analysis and hope that I have made a small contribution to discussions of Jewish identity by identifying the notion of
Halachic identity as relevant to such discussions.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ULTRA-ORTHODOX, ORTHODOX, AND

SECULAR WOMEN IN COLLEGE
Lior Ben-Chaim Rafael
Introduction
This study, completed in 2003, probes the implications of the diusion
of higher education among women in Israels ultra-Orthodox (Haredi)
sector, in reference to these womens values and images, from a comparative perspective. The study compares the experience of female
students who identify as nonreligious (secular), Orthodox (nationalreligious), or ultra-Orthodox and who are enrolled in higher education, which is, per se, an essentially secular endeavour. The research
explores the encounter, replete with potential or actual tensions and
conicts, between two main focal points in contemporary society:
religion and tradition on the one hand, and modernity on the other.
The arena of secular higher education, as an important signier of
modernity, exposes those who experience it to new worlds of knowledge, perceptions, and patterns of behaviourand subjects traditional values and patterns to unavoidable inuences. Moreover, since
the participants in the encounter are women, the question of womans
status is an important dimension of the problems explored. The
higher-education experience exposes female students to new gender
perceptions, equips them with an important resource for social mobility and, therefore, may animate far-reaching changes in their attitudes toward gender relations in the public and family arenas. By
so doing, the experience not only gives women an opportunity for
personal change but also allows them to become agents of change
in their surroundings.
This study takes a particular interest in women in the Israeli ultraOrthodox sector because this sector tends towards cultural and social
separatism and for many years ruled out secular academic education for women. At most, Haredi women were encouraged to attend
Haredi teachers colleges in order to work later in the Haredi school

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system. Today, as the ultra-Orthodox sector is increasingly exposed

to its surroundings, Haredim (the plural of Haredi) are increasingly
receptive to various aspects of modernity, including the principle of
womens acquisition of higher education. Moreover, because men
are often lifelong students in yeshivot (institutions of religious learning),
many Haredi women are expected to participate actively in generating household income. Indeed, a signicant number of Haredi
women become principle household breadwinners. Such women must
adapt to the labor market which, today, demands higher education
for any attractive position and possibility of advancement. Thus, the
expansion of academic higher education among Haredi women has
become a salient phenomenon in recent years. My own estimate is
that about 14,000 Haredi women attended institutions of higher study
in 2003180 percent at Haredi teachers colleges and 20 percent at
other colleges and universities. The programs they took were quite
diverse, including social work, communications, accounting, computers, management and economics, business administration, law,
and architecture. These women encounter not only new worlds of
secular knowledge but also new social settings in which they mingle
with non-Haredi students and teachers.
This situation, as suggested above, should in turn aect the attitudes and predispositions of these women as they undertake family
roles and act within their own communities, especially after they
complete their studies and embark on occupational careers.
We should expect these developments among Haredim to contrast
with those among members of other population groups that have a
dierent attitude toward religion. For modern-Orthodox women,
whose communities believe that modernity and Orthodox Judaism
do not clash, higher education should reinforce the sense of social
rootednesseven though, in some respects, one may nd here, too,
some traces of the special attitude of this milieu toward religious
practices and values. As for the secular female students, whose attitudes most closely approximate the orientations of liberal Western
modernity that are predominant in Israeli society, they should

1
According to calculations based on gures in the Statistical Abstract of Israel, published by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics ( Jerusalem: 1999), one may speak
of 11 percent of the female Haredi population aged 18+ as being students in higher
education, as against 7 percent of students in the total Israeli Jewish female population aged 18+.

ultra-orthodox, orthodox, and secular women

153

experience higher education as an integral aspect and a determining component of normal lifestyles. It is in the context of these
expectations that this study observed and compared the attitudes of
female students of dierent kinds of religiosityHaredi, modernOrthodox, and non-religious. The aim is to uncover contrasting attitudes toward modern higher learning and its signicance in view of
the dierent modes of religiosity.
Theoretical Background
In the context of this work, it is rst necessary to consider the concept of modernity and some theoretical attitudes towards it. Sociologists
agree that one of the underlying social processes of the modern era
is the development of modern science and the spread of secular
higher education. Overall, the cultural-modernity project instilled new
basic perceptions about individuals and their relationship with society. Central among these perceptions is the principle of personal
autonomy and acknowledgment of the individuals right to shape the
social realitythe endeavour that Wittrock (2001) and others call
human agency. At the micro level, individualism has become a
central cultural code. Not only is the individuals right to act on the
basis of rational motivation stressed, but self-determination and the
ability to eect self-change have been vested with crucial importance
(Arnason, 2000). These developments are associated foremostly with
sweeping change in the status of religion. Modern society has expedited the process of secularization and banished religion from the
public domain into the private domain (Berger, 1974). The tension
between modernity and religion today stems from the value contrasts between them. The modern code, in contrast to the systematic truths of religion, stresses the reexivity and autonomy of the
individual, who is expected to shape his/her surroundings on the
basis of rational considerations, values, and beliefs (Boudon, 2000).
A recent outlook known as the multiple-modernities perspective
(Eisenstadt, 2000; 2001) attacks the functionalist assumptions about
the homogenization of societies under the inuence of modernity
and the unavoidable contrast of religion and modernity. This new
theory argues that various societies dene and undertake a range of
modernity projects that create dierent integrations of particularistic
and modern-universalistic cultural elements. This theory also allows
for cross-fertilization between religion and modernity (Gole, 2000)

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lior ben-chaim rafael

and the possibility of dierent models of tension and interconnectivity. This study wishes to apply the multiple-modernities perspective, as the literature applies it for the comparison of contemporary
societies, to the investigation of a multicultural reality in one societyIsrael. The multiple-modernities concept may be able to express
the convergent nature of the modernization process as diverse cultural groups are exposed and become receptive, to varying degrees,
to main aspects of modernity. It is this condition that modies the
cultural and social boundaries between them. This concept may also
be able to shed light on the dierentiating and divergent nature of
this process, which prompts dierent cultural groups in one society
to construct diverse versions of modernity. The specic question in
this study is whether women in one societyIsraeli societywho
belong to sectors dierentiated by religious allegiances construct
dierent visions of modernity under the inuence of the higher education to which they are exposed.
Studies on the intersection of religion and modernity point explicitly to the singular role of educated religious individuals as agents of
change who redraw the boundaries between the two horizons. This
is especially true in respect to non-European societies, where intellectuals are described as being driven by ambition to take part in
the universalistic modern world without abandoning all components
of their traditional culture (Eisenstadt, 2000). In this context, Eickleman
(2000, 2001) developed the concept of intellectual market forces to underscore the inuence of intellectuals who draw nourishment from both
religious and secular sources on cultural development in Islamic countries. Other scholars have noted parallel processes in Japan and China
and have challenged the accepted dichotomies of tradition versus
modernity, West versus non-West, and local versus global (Shiloni,
1989; Weiming, 2001). The literature also makes reference to the
singular contribution of educated religious women toward the structuring of new realities of modernity in modernizing societies; it tends
to describe such women as predicating their own modernity on a
call for reinterpretation of relevant elements of the religion and tradition at issue (Afshar, 1998). In Muslim societies, for example, women
who have access to sources of both religious and secular knowledge
are becoming active players in the integration of religion and modernity (Gole, 2000). Studies about American Orthodox Jewish women
give evidence of various congurations of interaction between the
worlds of Orthodoxy and modern feminism. Some describe this

ultra-orthodox, orthodox, and secular women

155

integration as an act of conservatisma swathing of conservative

contents in modern terminology (Myers and Litman, 1995)while
others depict it as an act of innovation, powered by women, that
seeks the best of both worlds, the traditional and the modern, and
transforms the women into agents of change in their communities
(Greenberg, 1976; Kaufman, 1987).
In respect to the Israeli reality, studies indicate that modernOrthodox women are inuenced by feminist outlooks that encourage them to challenge various traditional patterns that are solidly
entrenched in their surroundings. For example, they increasingly
demand access to religious education, positions of community leadership, and the right to participate in religious ritual (Shashar Aton,
1999). Some scholars even term the spread of Jewish studies among
women and the recently published innovative theological constructions a quiet feminist revolution (El-Or, 1998). Academically educated Orthodox women have been moving into the professional eld
of rabbinical pleaders and their demands for equal opportunity in
this context attest to a new gender consciousness (Shamir et al.,
1997). Salient aspirations for gender equality are also evident in the
occupational domain and in career expectations (Yishai, 1996;
Hartman, 1993). The picture in the household sphere is not as clear.
Some studies point to a negative correlation between religiosity and
egalitarian attitudes (Hartman, 1993); others point to similar gender
expectations among national-religious and nonreligious women (Yishai,
1996). Be this as it may, national-religious women have more liberal attitudes than national-religious men (Yishai, 1996).
As for ultra-Orthodox women, some scholars claim that they are
still a conservative force despite the reversal of gender roles in ultraOrthodox society that has transformed many women into the main
breadwinners and their husbands into perpetual yeshiva students.
Womens status in the family and the community has not changed
even though women are better schooled and have become their families main breadwinners. This is explained by factors such as early
age of marriage, large numbers of children, gender segregation, and
the denition of womens vocations as secondary to the male pursuit of religious (Torah) study (Atzmon, 1995; Friedman, 1999). Other
scholars, however, believe that educated Haredi women are in fact
expediting their societys rapprochement with modernity. In their
opinion, gender segregation and the focus of the male identity in
religious study have actually accelerated this trend by prompting

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women to create their own subculture, an act that encourages the

nurturing of autonomy and new aspirations (Starr Sered, 1992; 1994).
Thus, Haredi women are found to be much more open than Haredi
men to Israeli society and various aspects of modernity (Simon, 1978).
They display new leisure patterns and receptiveness to secular media
and literature (Rotem, 1992). At the personal level, Haredi women
are branching conspicuously into additional elds of endeavour
(Shilhav, 1991). Studies about their integration into occupations that
are new to them, such as nursing (Binkowicz, 1990) and social work
(Garr, 1999), speak of creative coping with the conictual cultural
encounter. Thus, in reference to the implications of these changes
in the occupational domain for the family domain, some point to
an absence of gender change (Rotem, 1992) while others argue that
womens power is steadily rising (Sheleg, 2000).
Research Questions and Methodology
In view of the foregoing review of the literature and the multiplemodernities perspective, this study wishes to answer eight research
questions:
The rst research question concerns the extent to which the women
students in the three groupsnonreligious, Orthodox, and ultraOrthodoxare structuring dierent visions of modernity. To answer
this, the study attempts to evaluate the modern and traditional
orientations toward aspects of various contextsvalue, vocational
studies, familial, womens status, and the relation between the sector at issue and society at large. This research question also looks
into the general orientationsmodern and traditionalin terms
of their interrelations and the correspondence of duration of studies with each orientation.
The second research question gauges the students wish to attain secular social mobility, i.e., academic schooling and secular employment. To answer this, the study examines the students academic
aspirations for themselves and their children and their aspirations
to a secular vocation for their children. Where children are at
issue, sons and daughters are examined separately. Finally, the
question probes the correspondence between duration of studies
and students aspirations to secular mobility for their children.

ultra-orthodox, orthodox, and secular women

157

The third research question asks how the students view the costbenet aspect of their studies. The discussion here uses the socialexchange perspective as its point of departure. Accordingly, the
nature of the gains that is stressedindividualistic, instrumentaleconomic, and collectivisticis examined for each group and contrasted with the nature of the costsenvironmental, cultural,
economic, and familial. In this line of inquiry, the study also considers how each group balances the exigencies of higher education with those of family life, and asks whether the group views
these spheres as conicting with each other.
The fourth research question pertains to desired gender images
egalitarian versus non-egalitarianin regard to the division of roles
and power in the family, in three main family spheres: breadwinning, education, and household.
The fth research question concerns the groups gender consciousness in respect to the following dimensions: perception of gender
disadvantage, motivation to advance womens status in the private
and public domains, and attitude toward individualistic and collectivistic practices of change.
The sixth research question explores the students relationship with
Israeli society in the following dimensions: social solidarity; desired
arenas of public inuencecultural, economic, and political; and
the desired directions of the inuencemodern-universalistic,
national, and traditional-religious.
The seventh research question explores the groups attitude toward
the religious sectors to which the students do not belong, at three
levels: aective, cognitive, and social. Accordingly, the following
dimensions are probed: intersectoral aective distance, intersectoral
images, and three respects of intersectoral social distance: familial,
intercommunal, and occupational.
The eighth research question gauges the students self-perception as
agents of change in their sectors, on two levels: promotion of secular mobility (secular schooling and employment) among women
and men, and rapprochement between the religious and the nonreligious at large. These issues are tested from two perspectives:
personal and in comparison with male members of the sector. This
question also examines the relationship between a modern orientation and self-perception as an agent of change.

158

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In regard to methodology, the study uses a correlated cross-sectional

design. The target population is composed of 1,445 nonreligious,
national-religious, and Haredi women who attend ten institutes of
higher education of various sectoral aliationsfour Haredi, three
national-religious, and three nonreligious. The women in the various sectors are represented in the sample on the basis of numerically identical quotas. The sampling of students was based on a
combined method of strata, clusters, and discretion in view of institutional constraints. The data were gathered by means of a structured questionnaire, in which most items were at the level of ordinal
measurement. Measurement scales were devised for most of the
research concepts in order to enhance the measurements and facilitate multivariate statistical analyses. The statistical techniques employed
were tailored to the level of measurement of the variables. However,
to reinforce control, the main methods used were multivariate of
variance and multiple regression analyses.
Findings and Discussion
The ndings pertaining to the rst research question show that the
three groups of women students represent dierentiated versions of
modernity that include various blends of aspects of tradition and religion, on the one hand, and of modernity, on the other hand, in reference to the contexts examinedvalue, vocational-study, familial,
womens status, and outlook on relations between the sector and its
surroundings (see Table 14.1).
Hence, we see that in respect to value orientations, both religious
groups share an allegiance to traditional values. As for appreciation
of modern values, the Haredi group displays a medium level and
the national-religious a high level. The nonreligious, in contrast, have
a medium appreciation of traditional values and a high appreciation
of modern ones. In regard to the benets they expect to gain from
their studies, both religious groups expect moderate benets in terms
of traditional norms (religious self-fulllment and dependency on religious guidance regarding professional issues). However, they also
stress the benets of their studies in terms of modern lifestyles
although the national-religious emphasize this point more2 than Haredi
2
When we use relative terms such as more or less and the expressions
positive/negative correlation, we refer to a statistically signicant nding that

ultra-orthodox, orthodox, and secular women

159

students do. In the realm of family life, both religious groups expect
to have large familiesHaredim expect to have more children than
the national-religiousand a traditional household division of labor
between wife and husband. However, they also share an egalitarian
gender outlook on childrens education and family breadwinning. As
for the status of women, both religious groups sustain the traditional
gender-segregative pattern in various social contexts but are eager
the national-religious more so than the Haredimto advance womens
status in the community. In their attitude toward Israeli society outside their community, the national-religious are more open to the
nonreligious although they favor only moderate use of secular media.
Haredi students are much more prone to self-segregation and are
more sharply opposed to the use of secular mass media. They do,
however, favor cooperation with people outside their community
where professional interests are concernedthough less than the
national-religious.
Summing up the orientations of the dierent groups regarding
modernity and tradition in a variety of aspects, we nd three dierent
models. The modernity vision expressed by the nonreligious is noted
for polar asymmetrya strong modern orientation and a weak traditional one, although the two are not mutually exclusive. (There is
no signicant negative correlation between these orientations.) The
vision elicited from the Orthodox women is symmetricmoderate
and negatively correlated traditional and modern orientations. The
modernity vision presented by the ultra-Orthodox women is mildly
asymmetric, composed of a strong traditional orientation and a moderate modern one with no signicant negative correlation betweenthem.
The presence of these diverse visions of modernity, which integrate modernity, religion, and tradition in dierent ways, does not
necessarily result in mutual exclusiveness between religion and modernity, thus supporting the multiple-modernities perspective. This perspective is additionally reinforced by the nding that a longer term
of studies, which are intrinsically modern, not only leaves the modern
orientation unscathed but also fails to weaken the traditional orientation and, in the case of the Haredi women, actually strengthens it.

responds to p < 0.05. When the terms similar or equal values or absence of
correlation are used, the nding at issue responds to p > 0.05.

lior ben-chaim rafael

160

Table 14.1. Modern Orientation (MO) and Traditional

Orientation (TO) of the Groups
Aspects of
modernity/
traditionalism*

Nonreligious
MO TO

National-religious Ultra-Orthodox
MO
TO
MO TO

Values1
Studies/profession2
Family3
Status of women4
Society at large5
Measure consistency
General orientation
Models

85
46
74
6
88
9
70
6
84
6
92
70
68
18
Strong MO,
weak TO

69
90
67
49
78
67
49
69
81
40
91
87
57
63
Middle-range
MO and TO

65
94
62
48
74
84
36
98
60
62
88
91
53
82
Strong TO,
middle-range
MO

* The numbers in this table and in all subsequent tables represent the average
value of a variable among the respondents of the individual group. The variable
may receive values from 0 to 100; we take the average value as an index of a
high, moderate, or low level of the variable within the group in accordance
with the position of the value in range of variancehighest third, middle-range, or
lowest third. Moreover, numbers that refer to several variables represent their means.
1
Modernity refers here to individualism, support of democracy, and pluralism.
Traditionalism refers here to religious lifestyles and emphasis on the performance
of religious duties in the public domain.
2
Modernity refers here to an emphasis on self-fulllment, a career orientation, personal autonomy, and ambitions for advancement in the community. Traditionalism
refers here to religious self-fulllment and recourse to a religious authority as a
source of guidance for professional issues.
3
Modernity refers here to an emphasis on gender equality in major areas of family life and favoring of democratic education practices. Traditionalism refers here
to an emphasis on the wish to have a large family.
4
Modernity refers here to an emphasis on the favoring of the enhancement of
womens status in the private and public domains. Traditionalism refers here to an
emphasis on gender segregation in various social contexts.
5
Modernity refers here to an emphasis on willingness to cooperate with individuals from dierent sectors in the professional domain. Traditionalism refers here to
an emphasis on social segregation and rejection of secular mass media.

As for the second research question, concerning aspirations for modern secular mobility (see Table 14.2), dierentiated models were
again elicited by the three groups and may also be interpreted as
the products of diverse modernity visions. The nonreligious mobility model wishes to apply modern mobility criteriaacademic schooling and secular employmentto men and women alike (as indicated
by their aspirations to mobility for their daughters and sons). The
Orthodox mobility model approximates the nonreligious model but

ultra-orthodox, orthodox, and secular women

161

has somewhat higher secular expectations of women than of men,

who are encouraged to take part in the alternative mobility arena,
religious studies. The mobility model of the ultra-Orthodox women
radicalizes this tendency by dichotomizing the arenas of mobility
along gender linesmodern for women and Torah-centric for men.
The groups are also dierentiated in terms of the extent of secular
mobility that they desire. Ultra-Orthodox women wish to limit this
extent and channel it more to the occupational context than to the
scholastic one, while both the Orthodox and the nonreligious do not.
At the same time, only the nonreligious women tend to exhibit rising ambitions for their childrens secular mobility as the duration of
their own studies lengthens. Accordingly, the groups converge around
the modernistic discourse in respect to the mobility aspiration for
their daughters. Yet, the groups remain dierentiated in mobility
aspirations for boys in their sector and in terms of the desired extent
of secular mobility, in view of their dierentiated relationships with
tradition.
Table 14.2. Aspirations for (Nonreligious) Scholastic and
Career Mobility
Respondents
Aspects of social mobility Nonreligious
Aspirations to further
Academic study
Aspirations to mobility
of daughters1
Aspirations to mobility
of sons1
Desired span of mobility

Nationalreligious

UltraOrthodox

77
98

68
94

59
77

99

78

32

Equally wide for Wider for

studies and for
studies than
career
for career

Wider for
career than
for studies

* See explanation of index in Table 1.

1
Average of expectations from academic studies and nonreligious career.

In respect to the third research question, the groups dierentiated

perceptions of the benets of their higher education (see Table 14.3)
are also structured in view of their dierentiated relationships with
tradition, which result in dierent visions of modernity. The nonreligious model values the individualistic principle of self-fulllment,
career involvement, etc., more than both religious groups. It also

162

lior ben-chaim rafael

attributes collectivistic benets (future professional assistance to people and to the community) to higher education and, by doing so, it
reects a liberal modern orientation that associates a commitment
to personal development with good citizenship. The Orthodox
model treats the collective benet as the most important outcome
but also strongly values the individualistic and instrumental economic
benets of higher education. This should be understood in view of
the symmetric modern and traditional orientation of Orthodox women,
as found in this study. The ultra-Orthodox womens model stresses
the instrumental economic benets of higher education above all,
i.e., it takes a practical attitude toward higher education, an approach
consistent with the Torah-centric and moral justication of these
womens scholastic activity (helping to support the family so that the
husband may devote himself solely to religious study). However, this
model does not dismiss the importance of the individual benet,
assigning it a moderate value. Thus, although the groups are clearly
dierentiated by their dierent allegiances to tradition, they move
toward each other in the importance they attribute to values of
modernity in the context of their studies. This conclusion is sustained
by the fact that even though religiosity has a positive eect on the
perception of the cultural costs of higher education (perceived negative cultural inuence of studies) and the social costs of this activity (perceived lack of support of ones milieu), these costs remain low
in the opinion of all three groups. As for ultra-Orthodox women,
cultural and social costs also correlate inversely to the duration of
their studies.
The multiple-modernities perspective also helps to explain the
dierences found in the students attitudes toward the relationship
between higher education and the family sphere. Thus, the more
religious the respondents, the more they valued the economic importance of higher studies for the family. By the same token, both religious groups complain less than the nonreligious about the cost of
studies to the family in terms of diculties in issues such as childrearing, spousal life, and the need to defer marriage.
Thus, both religious groups express a more complementary approach
toward the nexus of higher learning and family life. In their opinion, social mobility and religious exigenciesincluding the centrality of the familyare far from contradictory. This stance may also
be understood in view of their wish to maximize the advantages
preservation of relative strength in the family sphere on the basis of

ultra-orthodox, orthodox, and secular women

163

Table 14.3. Perceived Benets and Costs of Higher Learning

Benets and costs of
higher learning
1. Benets
Individualistic1
Economic-instrumental2
Collective3
2. Costs
Cultural4
Environmental5
Familial6

Nonreligious

Nationalreligious

Ultra-Orthodox

74
58
78

67
67
77

62
75
68

7
13
45

10
13
41

14
15
41

* See explanation of index in Table 1.

1
Self-fulllment, career development, independence, and personal social status.
2
Contribution of studies to household income.
3
Assistance to people and to the community.
4
Negative cultural inuence of studies.
5
Lack of support from social environment.
6
Diculties related to childrearing, spousal life, and deferral of marriage.

traditional rewards, and consolidation of strength in the scholastic

arena on the basis of modern rewards. In contrast, the nonreligious
women, following a feminist outlook, have a conictual view of the
relationship between higher learning and occupational career, on the
one hand, and the requirements of family life, on the other.
Concerning the fourth research question, it seems that the groups
also construe the family gender images of the desired division of
spousal roles and power as manifestations of dierent visions of
modernity (see Table 14.4). The nonreligious model stresses gender
equality and spousal partnership in all aspects of family life that were
researchededucation, breadwinning, and household. The nationalreligious model stresses equality in education (like the nonreligious
model) and breadwinning (though less than the nonreligious model)
but shows a slightly traditional non-egalitarian inclination in the
household realm. The ultra-Orthodox model combines an egalitarian attitude toward education (though less emphasized than in the
two other models), a traditional gender image in the household, and
support for a breadwinning pattern in which the wife assumes most
responsibility. These models indicate that the religious groups, particularly the ultra-Orthodox, have created a synthesis of modern and
traditional outlooks. Be this as it may, the convergence of the groups
dierent modern discourses is expressed in the context of acceptance

164

lior ben-chaim rafael

of the principle of gender equality, primarily in respect to education

and secondarily in regard to breadwinning (in consideration of the
variations found). On the other hand, the groups tend toward
dierentiation in the household domain, where the inuence of traditional outlooks correlates positively with the level of religiosity.
It is important to stress two tendencies that are common to the
groups and that indicate convergence among them. The rst is the
order of domains that are given importance in terms of gender equalityeducation rst, followed by breadwinning and household. The
second is the fact that gender equality corresponds more to spousal
decision-makingdistribution of powerthan to spousal division of
labor.
Table 14.4. Desired Equality in Spousal Divisions of Roles and Power
Areas and aspects
1. Education
Equality in role division
Equality in power2
2. Income
Equality in role division
Equality in power
3. Household
Equality in role division
Equality in power

Nonreligious

Nationalreligious

Ultra-Orthodox

98
98

99
100

95
98

93
100

84
96

90
89

90
92

76
80

60
64

* See explanation of index in Table 1.

1
The higher the score, the more egalitarian the gender orientation of respondents.
2
Division of power refers to decision-making by husband and wife.

As for the fth research question, concerning gender consciousness

(see Table 14.5), the feminist secular model shows staunch support for the advancement of womens status in the public and private spheres by means of individual and collective praxis. The
Orthodox model favors the advancement of womens status more
moderately and encourages it mainly by individual praxis or within
traditional segregated womens settings. The ultra-Orthodox womens
model is the most disapproving, although in its moderate way it
upholds the importance of womens advancement, by means of personal mobility, mainly in the public domain. The fact that religiosity has a negative eect on gender consciousness, in all dimensions
examined, attests to the strength of traditional gender outlooks.

ultra-orthodox, orthodox, and secular women

165

Dierentiations aside, all the groups clearly share several tendencies. All three refuse to see themselves as genuinely deprived
(although a negative correlation was found between religiosity and
awareness of gender discrimination), probably due to the special status of learned women. Respondents in all three groups ascribe greater
importance to womens advancement in the public sphere than in
the private sphere. All three groups emphasize the value of personal
mobility rather than collective action, thereby expressing an active
orientation and an awareness of the importance of amassing personal resources for mobilitybasically a modern-secular approach.
The trend of rapprochement also stands out in the attitude of
Orthodox women toward nonreligious women, as shown in the nding
that their gender consciousness correlates positively with the duration of their studies.
Table 14.5. Gender Consciousness
Components of gender
consciousness

Nonreligious

Nationalreligious

UltraOrthodox

Awareness of gender
discrimination
Motivation for advancement
in private domain
Motivation for advancement
in public domain
Relevant individualistic change
practices1
Collective change practices2
General index of gender
consciousness

52

33

23

67

45

33

82

54

39

84

67

50

69
69

51
49

44
38

* See explanation of index in Table 1.

1
Mobility by ones own eorts and investment.
2
Advancing womens status by collective action and organization.

In regard to the sixth research question, concerning the groups connectedness with Israeli society (see Table 14.6), again three models
were obtained. The nonreligious model represents a modern-secular
outlook; that of the Orthodox reects a mitigated modern-traditional
outlook; and the model of the ultra-Orthodox women emphasizes
traditional elements more strongly than the others but does not ignore
aspects conveyed by the modern-secular model. All three models
reect a strong solidarity with Israeli society at largethough the

lior ben-chaim rafael

166

tendency is weaker among the ultra-Orthodox. Moreover, all groups

show a strong desire to be involved in and inuential on this societyeconomically, culturally, and politicallyalthough the nationalreligious are more assertive in their demand for inuence in the
latter two dimensions.
Table 14.6. Aspirations to Inuence Israeli Society

Kinds of inuence

Respondents
Nonreligious

Nationalreligious

UltraOrthodox

Solidarity
Economic inuence
Cultural inuence
Political inuence
Emphasizing modern perspectives
Emphasizing traditional and
religious perspective
Emphasizing national values

80
80
75
74
82
52

80
80
86
82
62
88

67
67
82
67
58
93

88

76

13

* See explanation of index in Table 1.

However, the groups channel the desired inuence onto dierent

paths. The nonreligious model stresses a nexus of the modern and
the national, the Orthodox model a nexus of the national and the
traditional, and the ultra-Orthodox model a nexus of the religious
and the traditional. The very wish to make ones sector inuential
in the public domain shows that all three sectors have a modern
orientation, and the two religious sectors wish to reinforce traditional matters may be viewed, from the multiple-modernities perspective, as a confrontation with the dominant nonreligious sector
over alternative visions of modernity. Support for this contention is
provided by the greater importance that the two religious groups
ascribe to cultural inuence than to political and economic inuence,
in contrast to the nonreligious group, which stresses economic inuence
above all.
In regard to the seventh research question, concerning the students relations with the population groups to which they do
not belong (see Table 14.7), the connection between the ultraOrthodox and the Orthodox sectors was found to be the strongest;
that between the Orthodox and the nonreligious fell in the middle;
and that between the ultra-Orthodox and the nonreligious was the
weakest at all levelsaective (feeling of closeness between sectors),

ultra-orthodox, orthodox, and secular women

167

cognitive (images of sectors), and social (existing and desired social

relations among members of dierent sectors). Here we nd a consistent symmetry3 in the perception of relations between the Haredi
and the national-religious sectors at the three levels investigated, in
contrast to the lack of consistency in symmetry between the nonreligious and both religious sectors.
In another salient nding, intersectoral relations gather strength
commensurate with levels of connectednessaective, cognitive, and
social, in ascending order. Furthermore, when we analyze the social
level more closely (Table 8), openness to social interaction is found
to be correlated positively with the degree of publicness of the sphere.
It is minimal in the family sphere (marriage relations), in which all
three groups wish to erect intersectoral buers, higher in the intercommunal (neighbourhood and socializing) sphere, and highest in
the public (occupational) sphere.
Here again we see a symmetry between the Haredi and nationalreligious sectors in all three sphereswith respect to desired and
existing relationsin contrast to the lack of consistency in symmetry between the religious and the nonreligious sectors. In the family sphere, the readiness of the nonreligious to widen the circle of
marriage bonds with the religious sectorsespecially the nationalreligiousis stronger than the corresponding attitudes of the religious groups toward the nonreligious. In contrast, in the intercommunal
sphere and even more in the occupational sphere, Orthodox and
ultra-Orthodox women are more interested in relations with the nonreligious than vice versa, and they even aspire to strengthen these
relationsas is evident when we compare the data about existing
and desired social relations . These ndings conrm the tendency of
convergence among the Haredi sector toward the mainstream of
Israeli society, as depicted by scholars (Ben Rafael, 2002; Ravizki,
1997). Moreover, these ndings are also consistent with a multicultural
reality that legitimizes cultural religious pluralism. Such a reality
entails a partnership among diverse sectors along mutually agreed
modern lines in the public domain but allows singular cultural ways

3
The notions of symmetry and lack of symmetry concern the similarity/dissimilarity between the values of the variables, irrespective of statistical signicance.

lior ben-chaim rafael

168

Table 14.7. Attitudes toward Intersectorial Relations

Types of attitudes
1. Aective attitudes1
Of nonreligious respondents
Of national-religious
respondents
Of Ultra-Orthodox
respondents

V-a-v the
nonreligious

V-a-v natreligious

V-a-v UltraOrthodox

42

36

12
57

32

55

67

55
70

67

69

33
76

70

2. Cognitive attitudes
Of nonreligious respondents

Of national-religious
55
respondents
Of Ultra-Orthodox respondents 38
3. Social attitudes3
Of nonreligious respondents

Of national-religious
69
respondents
Of Ultra-Orthodox respondents 52

* See explanation of index in Table 1.

1
Intersectoral feelings of closeness (the higher the score, the stronger the feeling of
closeness).
2
Intersectoral images (the higher the score, the more positive the image).
3
Existing and desired intersectoral relations (the higher the score, the stronger the
intersectoral relations).

or, in the language of multiple modernities, diverse visions of modernityto exist in the private domain, i.e., at the intercommunal and
family levels.
As for the last research question, pertaining to the students selfperception as agents of change in their sectors (Table 14.9), it was
found that even though the ultra-Orthodox women are a vanguard
in higher education, religiosity has a negative eect on students selfperception as agents of change in respect to the advancement of
womens mobility (secular education and occupation)although the
ultra-Orthodox women themselves express a moderate outlook in this
context.
In any event, from a comparative gender perspective, in all three

ultra-orthodox, orthodox, and secular women

169

Table 14.8. Interaction between Sectors: Ideal versus Real

Areas of social interaction
reported by respondents
1. Family (marriage)
From standpoint of
nonreligious
From standpoint of
national-religious
From standpoint of
Ultra-Orthodox
2. Intercommunal
relations
From standpoint of
nonreligious
From standpoint of
national-religious
From standpoint of
Ultra-Orthodox
3. At the occupational
level
From standpoint of
nonreligious
From standpoint of
national-religious
From standpoint of
Ultra-Orthodox

V-a-v non- V-a-v nati- V-a-v Ultrareligious

religious
Orthodox

As it is

As
As
As
As

9
16
12

50

12
24
50

As desired

20

As
As
As
As
As

it is
desired
it is
desired
it is

70
90
63

55
82

80

20
46
70
95

As desired

66

86

As it is

64

29

As
As
As
As
As

75
95
60
80

88

78
95

62
67
96

desired
it is
desired
it is

desired
it is
desired
it is
desired

* See explanation of index in Table 1.

groups, female respondents tend to think that women have more

inuence than men in their sector on their own mobility. This indicates their self-perception as wielders of power in their communities.
As for whether or not women see themselves as agents who encourage mens secular mobility, it is noteworthy that religiosity has a
negative signicance. While this role is strongly endorsed by the nonreligious and moderately so by the national-religious, it is quite weak
among the Haredi respondents. Nevertheless, the last-mentioned, like

lior ben-chaim rafael

170

Table 12.9. Self-Perceptions as Agents of Change

Areas of agency

Nonreligious

Nationalreligious

UltraOrthodox

Womens inuence on advancement

of womens mobility1

74

55

44

Womens inuence on womens

mobility compared with mens
inuence on womens mobility2

75

70

68

Womens inuence on advancement

of mens mobility

67

46

29

Womens inuence on mens mobility

compared with mens inuence on
mens mobility2

48

48

48

Womens inuence on promotion of

rapprochement between religious and
nonreligious

32

54

51

Womens inuence compared with

mens inuence on promotion of
rapprochement between religious and
nonreligious2

58

46

40

* See explanation of index in Table 1.

1
Secular education and occupation.
2
The values on this row should be interpreted as follows: lower values mean that
men are perceived as more inuential than women; middle-range values that women
and men are perceived as having more-or-less equal inuence; higher values indicate that women have more inuence than men.

the two other groups, consider themselves as inuential as men on

the determination of their lifestyles. This means that Haredi women
are actively involved in retaining the dierentiation of mens and
womens channels of mobility, i.e., religious study for men and secular careers for themselves.
Furthermore, it is in regard to rapprochement between the religious and the nonreligious that the religious groupsOrthodox and
ultra-Orthodoxpresent a cohesive self-image of agents of change,
in contrast to the nonreligious students, who hardly consider themselves agents of change in this sense. Thus, by general implication,
educated religious women are not only agents of change, as evidenced in their attitudes toward the various issues that crystallize
into new visions of modernity, but are also developing a consciousness,

ultra-orthodox, orthodox, and secular women

171

albeit partial, of being so. Moreover, the study indicates explicitly

that the stronger the overall modernistic orientation of the Orthodox
and ultra-Orthodox students is, the stronger their overall consciousness as agents of change for their sector.
Conclusions
We may now point to the theoretical contributions of this study.
First, the study breaks new ground in research about the growing
incidence of higher education among ultra-Orthodox women in Israel.
It sheds light on the perceptions and images that this specic segment of the population of ultra-Orthodox women holds in regard
to modernity and Israeli society, in comparison with educated women
in other religious/non-religious sectors. The comparison elicits a clear
picture: these women are agents of change with respect to themselves and to their sector, as they redraw the lines among modernity, religion, and tradition, and serve as boundary markers.
Another contribution of the study relates to its theoretical point
of departure. We obtained three distinct syndromes of modernity
that may be succinctly phrased as follows:
(1) Polar asymmetry among the nonreligious: strong modern and
weak traditional orientations;
(2) Mild asymmetry among the ultra-Orthodox: strong traditional
and moderate modern orientations;
(3) A symmetric vision among the Orthodox: moderate modern
and traditional orientations.
Each syndrome represents a distinct nexus of religion, tradition, and
modernity. When viewed as a whole, each syndrome supports the
multiple-modernities perspective, which rules out the necessity of total
convergence toward the Western modernity project or toward any
other form of modernity. This perspective also refuses to treat religion and modernity as mutually exclusive by denition. Instead, it
asserts the existence of diverse modernity visions that represent various combinations of particularistic aspects of tradition and modernuniversalistic characteristics. By adopting this approach, this study
reinforces the advantage of the multiple-modernities perspective in
analyzing the complexity of contemporary modern societies and the
possibility of applying this perspective to the analysis of individual
multicultural societies.

172

lior ben-chaim rafael

Above all, this study conrms the contention that Jewish ultraOrthodoxy can by no means be described as a stagnant and nonmodern niche of contemporary Judaism. The ultra-Orthodox group
may be viewed as such by nonreligious individuals who feel estranged
from people who voluntarily remain attached to a profusion of traditional markers. Yet this work converges with other studies to show
that ultra-Orthodoxy is actually a setting in permanent quest for new
adaptations to modernity and syntheses between its requirements and
the commands of tradition and faith. This study contributes to our
understanding of the complex role of women in these processes and
the way they experience and even actively enhance them. The
processes at issue actually transform their own condition rst and
foremost. In this context, the contribution of this study transcends
the analysis of Israeli society and ts in with a series of studies that
deal with understanding the unique role of religious educated individuals as agents of change in modernizing societies. It also sheds
light on the paucity of research on religious educated women as
agents of change around the world.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE CHALLENGE OF SECULARISM TO JEWISH

SURVIVAL IN ABBA HILLEL SILVERS THINKING
Ofer Shi
In 1926, the Menorah Journal, an organ of an American-Jewish cultural movement, presented a survey of the Jewish religious scene in
the United States. The leading articles were written by Horace M.
Kallen, a known secularist and one of the salient proponents of
the doctrine of cultural pluralism, by Eilliot E. Cohen, who was the
managing editor of the Menorah Journal, and by Henry Hurwitz, the
founder and editor of the Menorah Journal. All articles were quite critical of Jewish religious life in America, and portrayed it as incapable
of supporting a viable and vibrant Jewish community in the United
States. After publication, Mr. Hurwitz approached Abba Hillel Silver,
who was at the time a young and promising Reform Rabbi and a
Zionist, and asked him to write a rejoinder to these articles. Eventually
Silvers article, Why Do the Heathens Rage? was refused by the
Menorah Journal and was published in four weekly installments, beginning with the issue of July 23, 1926, in the Jewish Tribune.1 Examining
the article from a historical perspective may add an important aspect
to our understanding of Reforms inner discussion of the question
of Jewish survival. It may enable us to focus on the role of Jewish
religion (as attributed by Reform Judaism) in coping with the question of Jewish existence, either by regarding the Jewish religion as
a mere set of intellectual dogmas, devoid of ethnic-cultural characteristics, or as an emotional-cultural basis of an all-inclusive Jewish
aliation. It is especially noteworthy because of Silvers militant
Zionist advocacy and because of Reforms suspicious attitude toward
Zionism as a secular and anti-religious movement.2
1
Silver, Autobiography/Memoirs, Book 1, pp. L/17 [c. 1963?], Papers of Rabbi
Abba Hillel Silver, Microlm Ed., Ben-Gurion Research Ctr., Ben-Gurion University
of the Negev, Sde Boqer Campus, Series VII/A, Roll 211/1.
2
The Pittsburgh Platform, for example, sought to emphasize the uniqueness of
the Jewish perception of God in both religious and historical-development terms.

174

ofer shiff

In his article, Silver declared that religion was the sole reason
why the Jew persisted in maintaining his identity in the world. He
predicted that if American Jews abandon their faith, no quantum
of Jewish music and Jewish art or books on Jewish literature and
philosophy will be potent enough to save them, and they will swiftly
and surely assimilate. In spite of his strong Zionist faith, Silver rejected
Zionism when disconnected from the Jewish religion. He described
secular American Zionism as an articial entity, derived from the
segregated and compact Jewish community life of Eastern Europe,
and predicted that it can endure only until its ideology is dissipated
by the dissolving inuences of American life. He warned that a strong
Jewish commonwealth in Palestine will not preserve the secular
American Jew, just as the existence of a great German Fatherland
has not kept the Germans in the United States from assimilating.
In a similar way, and despite being an advocate of cultural pluralism as the desired strategy in dealing with the question of Jewish
survival in the United States, Silver bluntly rejected the non-religious
facets of this doctrine:
The Jew in the United States will not long remain a Yiddishist or a
Hebraist, in the technical sense in which the proponents of cultural
pluralism understand the terms. Only the religious Jew who will continue steadfast to his faith will conserve and carry on the culture and
the traditions of Israel. The rest will disappear, as they always have,
as they inevitably must . . .3

In summary, Silvers main criticism of the Menorah anti-religious campaign focused not on its attitude towards Zionism or towards cultural pluralism but on what he interpreted as the absence of an
emotional-religious aliation, which alone can support an all-inclusive
Jewish way of life. In his own words, Silver scornfully depicted the
authors of the Menorah articles as belonging to a small group of
alienated intellectuals . . . removed . . . from positive Jewish life . . .4
Signicantly, this line of criticism was quite similar to the one used
by Silver when targeting his own Reform movement. He often

The 1904 CCAR convention, for example, attempted unsuccessfully to forge a consensus in favor of the establishment of a Jewish-American synod that would exercise supreme religious authority, as an alternative to the World Zionist Congress.
See: CCARY (1914), pp. 116, 146161.
3
Silver, Autobiography/Memoirs, Book 1, pp. L/67.
4
Ibid., p. 1.

the challenge of secularism to jewish survival

175

criticized the eorts of nineteenth century classical Reform thinkers

and their contemporary disciples who sought to construct a positive
view of Jewish identity that is not based on an emotional-religious
connection with Old World Orthodox traditions. According to
Silver, advocates of classical Reform Judaism, many of them Jews
of predominantly American upbringing, were estranged from Jewish
rites and the intensive Jewish way of life. Many of those Reform
thinkers made extensive use of biblical criticism, attempting to stress
the foreign and non-Jewish origins of Jewish rituals and to dene
the universal-value angle as the only substantive factor that might
infuse these customs with authentic Jewish meaning. Silver criticized
the overuse of intellectual and scientic analysis by classical Reform
as a means to arrive at the spiritual and universalistic essence of
Judaism, especially when it became the sole indicator for judging the
value of various traditional Jewish customs and an almost exclusive
indicator of the possibility of modern Jewish existence in America
and elsewhere. Years later, in his memoirs, Silver summed up this
line of criticism:
I believed that the pioneer reformers and their disciples were too zealous to modernize Judaism . . . there was too much emphasis in their
thought and speech upon reform, change progress, too little
upon rebirth, return tracing back to God . . . For all their loyalty, learning and high-mindedness, many of the leaders of our movement over estimated the importance of their ritual reforms . . . What
is needed today is not the innovation or renovation or reformation or
reconstruction of Judaism . . . It is no longer a question of less or of
more. . . . But of Godlessness, secularism and materialism which have
blighted our people . . .5

In both cases, when criticizing the lack of an emotional-religious

basis of an all-inclusive Jewish aliation among Jewish intellectuals
or among classical Reform thinkers, Silver represented a distinct
viewpoint of second-generation American Jews. Since the beginning
of the twentieth century, these Jews joined the Reform movement
in increasing numbers with their Jewish identity anchored in intimate familiarity with the intensive Old World Jewish way of life.6
Characteristically of this group, Silver had been exposed from childhood not only to general American surroundings but also to the rich
5
6

Ibid., pp. D/57.

Ofer Shi, 2001 (Hebrew), pp. 8388.

176

ofer shiff

and intensive culture of the Jewish immigrants quarter in New York.

In his memoirs, he describes this Jewish environment as bubbling
over with the ferment of the old world ideas in their new world
bottles. Silvers education typies this integration of new and old;
he spent his mornings in a public school that exposed him to American
culture and his afternoons in a Jewish school (Yeshivat Etz Chaim).
Consequently, his Jewish identity was not a matter of impersonal
intellectual comprehension of Judaism. By its very essence, his identity was inseparable from both the all-embracing Jewish life in the
immigrants ghetto and the American way of life. In his later years
he described his childhood in the immigrants ghetto in New York
as a formative experience in an environment that while encouraging him to integrate into American society, also taught him a prerequisite for attaining this goal: loyalty to a revered [ Jewish] way
of life.7
Silvers commitment to the revered Old-World Jewish traditions
may be seen as the appropriate context in which to understand his
decision in 1911, at the age of eighteen, to embark on a Reform
rabbinical career and enroll at HUC (Hebrew Union College), the
rabbinical academy of American Reform Judaism in Cincinnati. By
joining the Reform movement, Silver was not expressing alienation
from the intensive Jewish culture of his childhood. On the contrary,
he regarded joining the Reform movement as a way of remaining
loyal to the Old World Jewish ways of life without having to distance himself from American culture. He described his choice to
become a Reform rabbi as the continuation of his fathers and grandfathers careers as Orthodox rabbis. He stressed that he had decided
to enroll at HUC because of my love for the home of my childhood and the religious way of life of my parents. In his eyes, the
Old World type of Orthodox Judaism represented the basis of an
all-embracing Jewish aliation that rather than being destroyed by
Reform Judaism could be reinvigorated by it.8
Silvers career within the Reform movement provides further evidence of the great importance he attributed to Old World Judaism
as a basis of an all-embracing Jewish aliation, and to the role of
Reform doctrines in preserving and reinvigorating this heritage.

7
8

Silver, Autobiography/Memoirs, Book 1, pp. A/13.

Ibid., pp. 45.

the challenge of secularism to jewish survival

177

Perhaps the earliest example was his valedictory address at the ceremony of his rabbinical ordination in 1915. At rst glance, his speech
attested to the internalization of the classical Reform perspective. At
second glance, however, it seems that in Silvers thinking the universalistic doctrine functions as an intellectual framework that would
safeguard the religious-cultural sense of belonging and make it a
legitimate part of the American Jewish identity. In his speech, Silver
dierentiated between two concepts: vision and dream. All great
religions, including Judaism, began with a vision, the creative and
revolutionary phase of the religion, at which the holy fervor . . . purges
them of all that is sordid and false. However, like all great religions, Judaism experienced a phase of aging and institutionalization,
in which the vision was replaced by a dream. The dream,
representing an attempt to preserve the past, enslaves the future and
makes the religion, which was originally meant to enrich and deepen
the human experience, a tool that limits it and threatens to strangle it. The correct response to this pitfall is to return to the universal-value signicance that, according to Silver, remained an
inseparable part of each evolutionary stage of Jewish history. It is
this core signicance that allows Judaism to absorb new truths from
all elds of human experience and to invest them with a high universalistic-Jewish interpretation of its own. Silver noted this in his
speech when he said:
Judaism found matter and gave it form. It took the superstitions of
primitive man and transformed them . . . It gave to the nature festivals
which it inherited from the agricultural Canaanites greater signicance
by investing them with an ethical-historical character. It elevated the
Festival of Unleavened Bread by making it a Festival of Freedom . . . It
took divination and transformed it into prophecy. It seized upon the
soul of sacrice and called it prayer.

Like most classical Reform thinkers, Silver put forward the universalistic element, not the national one, as the permanent and unifying core of Jewish history. Unlike them, however, Silvers universalistic
interpretation reected not estrangement from the intensive OldWorld Orthodox Jewish heritage but rather the basic Jewish vision
that might reinvigorate and enrich that heritage. Silver regarded
adherence to universalistic values as an envelope that might protect the traditional intensive Jewish heritage and allow it to reach
new heights as a legitimate part of general American culture:

178

ofer shiff
We wish to be true to this vision of our fathers by dedicating ourselves to a Judaism which shall ever echo the highest ideals of the
human soul, the loftiest truths of the human mind; a Judaism which
shall be the implacable foe of all reaction, the friend of all progress.9

It is important to note that Silvers emphasis on the role of OldWorld Orthodox Judaism was part of an inner Reform discussion
on the question of Jewish survival or how to attain the goal of establishing a viable positive American Judaism. A salient reection of
this inner Reform debate was the attempt to bring various types of
social and cultural activity under the umbrella of the Synagogue
Center movement inaugurated back in 1901. After World War I,
this movement was infused with new momentum in line with the
views of Mordecai Kaplan, then a Conservative rabbi and subsequently the founder of the Reconstructionist movement. Kaplan considered Judaism a culture that reects not only an intellectual or
social outlook but also an all-inclusive religious way of life. His
approach, based on his own religious interpretation of cultural pluralism, became increasingly popular in the Reform movement and
was embraced by second-generation Reform rabbis such as Silver.
In contrast to the melting pot, this philosophy stressed the need to
preserve and develop traditional Jewish heritages as the best way to
assure genuine social integration.10
The inuence of this outlook on the Reform movement was manifested conspicuously in 1917, when Silver delivered a sermon in
favor of preserving Old World Jewish heritage. The focal point of
the sermon was his explanation for why the Jew in this age of great
universalism [should] insist upon his social and religious particularism. He started his response with a provocative argument, stating
that the criterion for any value judgment of assimilation is the extent
of its contribution to society. If it is established that the Jew will
benet the world, culturally and religiously by assimilation, he
explained, then we must be ready to acknowledge that assimilation
is the great, desirable thing. Although this focus on the Jewish
contribution to society at large sounds like an updated version of
the classical Reform philosophy of a universalistic mission, it was

9
Abba Hillel Silver, Dreams and Visions, Valedictory Address Delivered in
the College Chapel, HUC, June 12, 1915.
10
For discussion of Kallen and Kaplans outlooks, see also Horace M. Kallen,
(February 18 and 25, 1915); Kallen (1932); Mordecai M. Kaplan (1934).

the challenge of secularism to jewish survival

179

actually anchored in the doctrine of cultural pluralism. Silver

explained the importance of Judaisms religious-cultural contribution
by describing the drawbacks of the melting-pot theory, which aims
to blend all cultures into a state of cultural homogeneity. Like Kallen,
who likened American society to an orchestra, Silver depicted the
world as a garden of diverse owers and argued that human society needed not the degeneration resulting from homogeneity but the
unique contribution of each and every culture. The greatest contribution that [the Jew] can make to the world, he stated, is to
retain his cultural life.
Silver added another aspect, emphasizing that just as Jews cannot
contribute to American society by assimilating, so American society
can contribute to the Jews nothing but comfort and material amenities unless the Jews reinvigorate the religious-cultural components of
their Jewish identity. A Jew who fails to do so may remain alienated and cut o not only from Jewish society but from American
society as well. To avert this menace, Silver said, an American
Judaism is needed that will combine both the universalistic Reform
ideas and the emotional-religious manifestations of Old World Orthodox
Judaism. Silver developed this idea in a 1918 sermon on the American
Judaism of tomorrow. The Judaism he envisaged would be dierent
from Orthodox Judaism, which underemphasizes the prophetic and
rationalistic elements in Judaism, but also very dierent from the
American Judaism that classical Reform advocated. The soul must
be kept purefree from all superstition and falsehood, and the
bodythe people, must be kept strong. In this specic sermon, he
wished to persuade the veteran American members of his congregation in Temple Tifereth-Israel of Cleveland that the Old World
heritage of Orthodox Judaism did not reect a negative, separatist
attitude. On the contrary, fostering it expresses trust in Judaisms
genuine ability to integrate in America.11

11
Abba Hillel Silver, Assimilation, November 25, 1917. It is noteworthy that
Silver gave this sermon at a time after had taken up the pulpit at Congregation
Tifereth Israel, known as The Temple of Cleveland. This was a large and important Reform congregation, most of whose members came from an American Reform
background; until that time, it had been headed by an anti-Zionist and anti-ritual
Reform rabbi, Moses J. Greis. Until Silver replaced Greis that year, the members
of the congregation objected to basing Judaism on Jewish culture, and to implement this resistance they had done away with the Friday night and Sabbath morning services and abolished study of Hebrew in the synagogues Jewish school.

180

ofer shiff

Another example of the rising inuence of the religious interpretation of cultural pluralism in the Reform movement was the
appointment of Emanuel Gamoran as director of the movements
education department in 1923. Gamoran, the scion of a hasidic family who reached the United States at the age of twelve, received this
appointment despite his declared support for Zionism and even though
he was clearly inuenced by Mordecai Kaplans thinking. Like Kaplan,
Gamoran considered Judaism a culture that reects not only theological ideas but an all-embracing religious way of life. He introduced a new educational policy predicated on the notion that
theological principles can only be taught within the context of a
Jewish experience of rituals, the study of Hebrew, and involvement
in events in the Jewish world.12 This educational approach was demonstrated several years before Gamoran took up his position, in a symposium on Jewish education that the movement held in 1916. Silver,
discussing the importance of Jewish community life in the education
of Jewish children, argued that the main role of the community was
manifested in adolescence and that the Jewish community should
utilize adolescent sensitivity to peer pressure to enhance the internalization of its religious ideals. Silver stressed that precisely because
this adolescent sensitivity could also be used for negative purposes,
positive focal points of religious identication acquire even greater
importance, as they give the youngsters exalted Jewish ideals that
may lead to the development of positive Jewish loyalty and solidarity. Thus, according to the educational approach of Silver and
Gamoran, the larger cultural and social context of the Jewish religious experience was regarded as instrumental in enabling Jewish
children, reared in American surroundings, to internalize the imperative all-inclusive type of Jewish religious sense that was considered
self-evident in the Old World Orthodox surroundings of the immigrants ghetto.13 To summarize, Silver repeated this notion in a quite
concise manner in his memoirs:
When I taught my people about Judaism, I spoke to them . . . of the
essentials and eternal values of their historic faith . . . Judaism, I often

These were the American Reform Jews to whom Silver delivered his sermon in
favor of preserving and nurturing Jewish culture. Thus, we may easily imagine the
magnitude of the challenge that he presented to Jewish leaders such as Morgenstern.
12
Robert J. Wechman, 1970; Michael Meyer, 1990, pp. 299301.
13
Abba Hillel Silver, The American Jew of Tomorrow.

the challenge of secularism to jewish survival

181

reminded them, is not a xed and inveterate set of dogmas, doctrines

and observances. . . . it is only the religious sense . . . which gives organic
unity to the faith which we call Judaism.14

This trend of thought, which was becoming increasingly inuential

in the Reform movement, was based on a kind of Jewish commitment that many classical reform thinkers of predominantly American
upbringing saw as un-American and threatening. The writings and
sermons of Dr. Julian Morgenstern, the President of HUC between
1922 and 1947, may serve as a good example of this counter trend
within the Reform movement. In a lecture in 1919, Morgenstern
stressed that an American Judaism could be made a reality only
by Jews who had fully internalized the American values and way of
life. Contrasting this ideal Judaism with the all-embracing ethnic
Judaism of the eastern European Jewish immigrants, he depicted the
latter as an imported product of an intolerant environment and,
accordingly, a foreign implant that could not survive for long in the
progressive and democratic American milieu. He quoted Isaac Mayer
Wise, the founder of HUC, and repeated his exhortation: We must
become American Jews as speedily as possible . . . we can not aord
to continue as aliens one day longer. To attain this goal, he even
advocated government control of the immigrants Americanization.
We welcome all foreigners, he explained, but we refuse to allow
them to continue too long as semi-foreigners. And even more, we
refuse to allow a hyphenated Americanism to exist in this country.15
In their criticism of the un-American aspects of Orthodox Old
World Judaism, Morgenstern and colleagues of like mind in the
American Reform movement especially emphasized the danger of
Zionism. The debate between Morgenstern and the Zionist Reform
rabbi Max Heller may demonstrate this. Heller described himself as
a child of the ghetto who, having experienced the Sabbath in the
ghetto, recognized the basic Jewish spiritual signicance that it
expressed. Equipped with this formative childhood experience, he
described Morgensterns contempt for the Orthodox Old World way
of life and the Zionist ideology as shallow. He also criticized
Morgenstern for overemphasizing Americanism and exalting it as
the ideal of perfection and above all other national loyalties.

14
15

Silver, Autobiography/Memoirs, Book 1, pp. D/8.

Julian Morgenstern, (1919), pp. 224, 239.

182

ofer shiff

Unlike Morgenstern, Heller regarded a return to the sense of belonging that the Sabbath in the ghetto once imparted as the mechanism
most likely to revitalize Judaism. In fact, Heller oered an alternative to Morgensterns outlook on Jewish belonging in American society. Although both thinkers advocated full Jewish social integration,
Heller argued that only modernization of the spiritual world of the
ghetto by means of Zionism might provide a genuine basis for this
integration. Like Silver, Heller believed that the ability to renew the
spiritual basis that the Old World ghetto had imparted constituted
the dierence between assimilation and positive integration.16
Thus, leading Reform thinkers fashioned two almost opposite
denitions of positive Jewish aliation. Heller and Silver regarded
the fundamentals of Old World Judaism as crucial elements of this
aliation, while Morgenstern wished to reinvigorate the concept of
a universalistic Jewish aliation. In his 1919 lecture on the legacy
of Isaac Mayer Wise, Morgenstern depicted the success of Zionism
as totally dependent on its foreign and segregationist outlooks. These
outlooks, he alleged, served eastern European Jewish immigrants as
a surrogate of sorts for the Orthodox way of life that they had failed
to sustain in the American environment. Thus, he charged, Zionism
was but a reection of their unfamiliarity with America and their
inability to internalize its values. The main challenge of Zionism for
American Jewry, Morgenstern claimed, was not the issue of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine but rather the question of whether
American Judaism had endogenous vitality or whether it might disintegrate the moment it failed to receive its injection of exogenous
vitality, that of the Jewish commitment to the Old World traditions
or to Palestine.17
The Zionist debate in the Reform movement reached its nal
showdown at the 1935 CCAR Chicago convention. It was at this
convention that the traditional anti-Zionist position of the Reform
movement, which was formulated exactly fty years earlier in the
Declaration of Principles of Reform Judaism known as the Pittsburgh

16
Ibid., pp. 299300. Morgenstern and Heller conducted a similar dispute in
1915, following Morgensterns lecture on the fundamentals of Jewish history: CCARY
(1915), pp. 287299. For the most recent study on Hellers personality and views,
see Bobbie Malone, Rabbi Max HellerReformer, Zionist, Southerner, 18601929,
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1997.
17
Ibid., p. 237.

the challenge of secularism to jewish survival

183

Platform, was altered and replaced by a position of neutrality. Prior

to the discussion, Dr. Samuel Schulman of Temple Emanuel in New
York and Abba Silver were invited to present their contrasting views
on the matter. Schulman, while acknowledging Zionisms importance
in strengthening Jewish consciousness, warned against its potential
danger of destroying the unique religious character of the Jewish
people as a witness to God, and making it a goy like other
goyim. In his speech Silver took issue with Schulmans thesis that
the religious mission of the Jewish people precluded the idea of
national restoration. He insisted that nation, race, land, language
were always vital and indispensable concepts in Jewish life, indissolubly associated with religion. He warned against anyone who attempts
to separate between these two components, whether emphasizing
only secular nationalism or Judaisms religious mission:
In recent years some zealous and mostly uninformed partisans have
attempted to reduce Jewish life to what is only a fraction of itself . . . to
race or nationalism or folkways or theologic abstractions . . . It is the
total program of Jewish life and destiny which the religious leaders of
our people should stress todaythe religious and moral values . . . as
well as the Jewish people itself and all its national aspirations.18

Silvers insistence on the desired harmony between Zionism and the

religious mission of Israel was closely related to his previously described
stand regarding the Menorah anti-religious campaign. In both cases,
he saw Judaism as an entity that reects not only an intellectual or
social outlook but also an all-inclusive religious way of life. In both
cases, he criticized those who would see Judaism in only one of these
two dimensions. This basic stand may add an important aspect to
our understanding of Silvers Zionist arguments, not only when
sounded in the CCAR and Reform conventions but also when voiced
in the general Zionist arena. After his victory over the universalistic camp within the Reform movement in the CCAR conventions
of 1935 and 1938, and notwithstanding his maximalist and often
militant Zionist advocacy,19 Silvers criticism was mainly directed

18

Silver, Autobiography/Memoirs, Book 1, pp. K/49.

Silver demonstrated his maximalist Zionist view in May 1942, when he, together
with Ben-Gurion, spearheaded the demand for Jewish sovereignty at the Biltmore
conference. A few months later, in a speech before the American Jewish Conference
in August 1943, he inspired the delegates to support Jewish sovereignty in the spirit
of the Biltmore declaration. In contrast, moderate Zionist leaders such as Stephen
19

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ofer shiff

towards his Zionist colleagues, American and non-American alike.

Two speeches by Silver in the 1940s illustrate this. The rst (1940)
discussed the spiritual Zionism of Ahad Ha"am and was devoted to
what Silver described as the universalistic crux of Zionism which can
only be attained by emphasizing its interconnections with Jewish religion. According to Silver, the correct interpretation of Ahad Ha"ams
philosophy was that the aspiration for a sovereign state cannot reect
the pinnacle of Jewish aspirations:
Two thousand years of heroic suering and martyrdom cannot nd
their compensation in the right to play the role of a pitifully small
state in a world of political intrigue, a pawn in the hands of scheming international diplomats . . . The universal humanitarian ideal has
been and must continue always to be an integral part of the ideal of
Jewish nationalism . . . The new Jewish State must be an expression of
the historic social idealism of the race . . . Palestine must become the
workshop of our peoples highest ethical aspirations and mankinds
experimental laboratory for social reconstruction.

Amidst anti-Semitic assaults in the United States and Nazism in

Europe, Silver warned against the inated importance that the concept of secular nationalism had taken on. Even at a time when
Judaism faces severe anti-Semitic and Nazi attacks, he said, one must
not forget that nationalism is a means and not an end. In the future,
after the Jewish state comes into being, he hoped, we shall not have
to lay so much stress . . . on the importance of nationalism. Moreover,
Silver states:
Hitherto wanting the full complement of the attributes of nationalism,
we were constrained to over-emphasize its virtues. Many of the spokesmen of our cause were driven to extol nationalism, per se, which is
after all a quite recent and, demonstrably, a quite inadequate human
concept. It is not mankinds ultimate vision. Certainly it is not the substance of our ancestral tradition, whose motif is not nationalism but
prophetism. Nationalism is not enough. It is minimum requirement,
not a maximum program . . .20

Wise attempted to form a consensus between Zionists and non-Zionists around the
demand to repeal the White Paper restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Silvers militancy stood out also with the American Administration. He is remembered for his interview at the White House in July 1946, where he angrily pounded
President Trumans deska meeting after which the president refused to meet with
him again.
20
Abba Hillel Silver, (1940).

the challenge of secularism to jewish survival

185

Silvers second speech, delivered in 1948, shortly after the state for
which he had fought uncompromisingly had been established, provides another example of this same outlook. Silver stated vehemently
that the future of American Jewry could not rest solely on identication
with the State of Israel. He issued a hopeful prediction that American
Jews would soon no longer have to invest all their energies in trying to ensure the very existence of the State of Israel; instead, they
would focus on reinforcing a pattern of thriving religious Jewish
existence:
The time will soon come when we shall be free to divert our energies largely to our synagogues, our schools, our academies . . . We shall
soon be able to put the emphasis in Jewish community life upon
religion . . .

Now that the most important Zionist dream was fullled, Silver
reminded his people that neither philanthropy, nor culture, nor
secular-nationalism, can serve as substitutes in Jewish life for religion:
There have been many false prophets . . . in our midst . . . There were
professional social workers . . . who announced that a full complement
of scientically administrated hospitals and orphanages and other social
agencies was a sucient vade mecum for the Jewish people, and
that the synagogue and religious schools were quite unnecessary . . . There
were certain educators who resented the instruction of religion in their
ultra-scientic curricula . . . There were those Jewish spokesmen who
oered Jewish nationalism as a substitute for Judaism, forgetting that
nationalism as such, unredeemed by a moral vision and responsibility,
had sadly fragmentized our world . . .

Silver explained that while philanthropy, culture and Zionism can

and must nd their rightful place within the general pattern of
Judaism, the pattern must be Judaism, the Judaism of the Torah,
the synagogue and the prayer book . . . He nished his speech by
urging his people to see Zionism and religion not as two opposites
but rather as two complementary tasks:
The upbuilding of a Jewish national home . . . is one great, urgent and
historically inescapable task of Jewry. The upbuilding of Jewish religious life in America and elsewhere throughout the world . . . is another.
One is no substitute for the other. One is not opposed to the other.21

21

Abba Hillel Silver, (November, 1948).

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE IDENTITIES OF JEWISH AMERICAN WOMEN

Suzanne Vromen
Introduction
This chapter is interested in the changing role women have played
both within the American Jewish community and in society at large.
The central questions this chapter deals with from a socio-historical
perspective are: 1) How did Jewish American women gradually break
the boundaries between the private and the public spheres, and with
what consequences? 2) How did they circumvent social limitations?
These questions will be addressed through an investigation of salient
issues relevant to the lives of American Jewish women and their
identity during three formative periods of time: First during the early
nineteenth century, then between the years 1880 and 1924 when
changes in immigration patters were vast, and nally from 1960 to
the contemporary period when American feminism took form and
had a lasting impact on the identity of Jewish American women.
Early Nineteenth Century
In 1819 Rebecca Gratz of Philadelphia created a charitable association called the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society. This organization fused two models of charity: the American model of voluntary
associations, which won high praise from the French Count de
Tocqueville during his U.S. visit, and the Jewish model of tzedakah.1
The Hebrew Benevolent Society was a memorable novelty because
it was entirely organized by women. Traditionally, Jewish ocial
institutions were the domain of men. Organizations that had a major

1
This chapter is reliant on the works of Diner and Benderley (2002), especially
part 2, to Hyman (1995) and to Hyman and Moore eds. (1997).

the identities of jewish american women

187

religious function and were directed by women simply did not exist,
with the exception of informal womens groups entrusted with preparing female bodies for burial. The Hebrew Benevolent Society aimed
to assist in various areas helping those in needs, for example the
organization arranged help for women giving birth, help to reduce
poverty, help to arrange marriages, and help caring for the sick. The
Hebrew Benevolent Society was not aliated with a specic religious institution and was imitated throughout the country, at rst
unocially, later formally. Its existence had important consequences:
it provided the women involved with the opportunity to speak out
publicly and gave them a level of independence previously unknown
in Jewish traditions.
The model of charity pursued by the Hebrew Benevolent Society
was very much in keeping with the Victorian model of what was
appropriate for women at the time. Reigning in the domestic sphere,
middle-class women were deemed exemplars of morality and charged
to sustain it. Helping the less fortunate was seen as a badge of
Victorian respectability and became the duty of well-to-do wives.
The unintended consequences, however, were that charitable organized women learned to make their mark on the larger community.
As benevolent charity societies spread across the country, they acquired
a signicant inuence within both the Jewish community and the
country as a whole. During the Civil War the focus of charity work
shifted understandably to needy soldiers families. On the whole it
was a way for women to wield some informal authority and yet
remain within the imposed societal boundaries.
Rebecca Gratz also created the rst Hebrew Sunday school in
1838, another novelty within the Jewish world though clearly an imitation of what was done in the major Protestant denominations. In
Europe formal Jewish education in heder and yeshivot was directed
exclusively by men and intended solely for boys. Jewish women rarely
read sacred texts, and they did not teach boys. While in the Jewish
tradition in Europe the halacha ( Jewish law) dominated both private religious life and public economic and political life, in the United
States the public sphere of work and business was separated from
the domestic sphere. This American separation of the spheres had
specic consequences for education. More specically, among other
consequences, the childrens education and their moral lives became
the sole responsibility of women.

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suzanne vromen

It is in this context that Gratz established the Hebrew Sunday

school, where the teaching was in English. Together with her friends,
she devised her own material, using catechism material and Bible
lessons published by Christian organizations. She and her teachers
covered with paper the printed answers that they considered undesirable for Jewish children. Those who graduated from Sunday school
then became the teachers.
Jews searched for a Judaism that was adaptable to American life.
So, for example in Charleston, shorter synagogue services and an
English translation were requested. The mehitza was removed in the
building bought from a Protestant church that had no balcony (the
traditional place for the womens section). The building did have an
organ and the Rabbis were presented with a fait accompli of choirs
and prayers for the whole congregation. Men and women sat together
in pews in a more modern conception of family worship; at the same
time such seating also had the pragmatic result of lling the synagogue. From about 1830 both churches and synagogues recognized
that women were increasingly at the center of their worship. The
synagogue became more feminized, as women began to constitute
the majority of the attendance. The public practice of religion in
the synagogue started to become a most important aspect of their
piety. There was little dissonance between their religious practices
and their everyday lives, in contrast to the lives of Jewish men. In
eect women transmitted a domestic Judaism. They became the
guardians of Judaism in the home and in the community while the
men limited their religion to periodic appearance in the synagogues.
This adaptation to American life was really the result of a choice
to remain Jewish rather than abandon Jewish identity, but to also
remain loyal to Judaism in a new fashion, one that would respond
to the new realities. In this new country, women reached an unprecedented public religious pre-eminence.
Changes between 1880 to 1924
The expansive European immigration between 1881 and 1924 fundamentally changed the Jewish community. With the inux of more
than two million people, the Jewish community became a large ethnic
group of diverse religious nuances that also included with secular
ideologies. The majority was also working-class and Yiddish speaking.

the identities of jewish american women

189

Women accounted for about 44% of Jewish immigrants, a proportion larger than for any other immigrant group except the Irish.2
Jewish men and women arrived with previous experience in urban
life, and in the United States they settled in dense urban areas. In
this process of immigration, family disruption often occurred when
married men emigrated rst and reunication with their family was
delayed, for example by World War I. Women then had to raise
children by themselves and became entirely responsible for organizing the familys transatlantic voyage.
Compared to all other women, Jewish women worked less outside the home. In the home they worked at piecework, took in boarders, and assisted their husbands in small stores while living nearby
and running back and forth. In ocial records, the women were
described as housewives, but their work was essential to the familys
economic well-being and signicantly complemented their husbands
wages. Some women became successful pushcart peddlers; Louis
Wirth described how, in Chicago, they were the majority in the
poultry, sh and herring stalls.3 Others ran restaurants or became
milliners. Household work in crowded cold water tenements and in
dicult economic conditions was demanding. Many autobiographies
and interviews report on the mothers coping strategies, self-sacrices
and central role in the familys emotional life.4
Adolescent girls and young unmarried women worked in the garment industry. Gender dened the type of work and the wages.
Women earned 60% of mens average wage, working in crowded
and unhealthy conditions. In addition they were also expected to
help in the household. Their aspirations also diered from those of
their brothers. Men saved to become self-employed and entrepreneurs, young women hoped to ameliorate their economic position
by getting a good marriage match.
In the absence of men, women with children were particularly
vulnerable. Widows with young children and without family could
not earn enough to sustain their household. Desertion was a frequent occurrence. The newspaper Jewish Daily Forward regularly published a list of absent husbands. In the early 1900s the Jewish
2

Diner and Benderley (2002) p. 155. Women constituted 53% of Irish immigrants.
Louis Wirth, (1928) The Ghetto, p. 236.
4
For example Alfred Kazin, 1951 A Walker in the City, Mary Antin, 1912 reprint
1969 The Promised Land, Shalom Asch, 1930 reprint 1970 The Mother.
3

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suzanne vromen

philanthropies spent a large part of their budgets on helping deserted

and widowed families. They created orphanages and a national
bureau for tracing deserting fathers. Fewer than 10% of children in
orphanages had lost both parents, but the surviving parent was unable
to feed the children.
While conditions were tough, the young women liked the freedom
they acquired through their work. They kept a small part of their
wages for themselves and cherished a sense of autonomy. Unchaperoned, they went to lms, cafes, theaters and dancing. The years
before marriage Americanized and politicized them. They preferred
working in large enterprises in which they experienced a community of peers. They participated in the workers movement that
became an important force in the immigrant Jewish community, and
they often confronted the authorities. In contrast to other young
women, they assiduously attended political meetings, discussions and
conferences. General working conditions and specic workers problems drew their interest. The Yiddish press took their side in political actions. Though the garment workers trade-unions did not accept
women as equals and discriminated against those seeking signicant
roles, the Jewish women galvanized the Jewish workers movement.
The revolt of the 20,000the mass strike of women in the garment
industry in 1909spurred a successful activist period for Jewish workers. Women were attacked and arrested on picket lines, and the
Yiddish press spoke admiringly about unzere vunderbare farbrente
meydelech. (our wonderful ery young girls).5
When these young women married and left the garment industry, they continued their local political activities and agitated around
the issues that aected them as domestic managers. When Margaret
Sanger opened a contraceptive clinic in a Brooklyn neighborhood,
Jewish women came in droves, though providing contraceptive information was illegal. Sangers pamphlet about contraception was translated into Yiddish. Jewish women organized boycotts against price
hikes by kosher butchers, and went on rent strikes to protest evictions and poor housing maintenance. The Yiddish press supported
them in their radical actions. When in 1915 and in 1917 New York
State queried male voters about womens surage, the Jewish women

5
Hyman, (1995; Chapter 3). Citation is on p. 113. Hyman and Moore (1997)
pp. 346354.

the identities of jewish american women

191

went canvassing door to door in their neighborhoods in order to

convince male voters that as women they had a moral right to vote.
Because women were less aliated with institutions than men, they
have often been forgotten in studies of the Jewish community. However,
it was in their local neighborhoods that the women found the sense
of community which sustained their political activities.
As for education, the Jewish immigrants kept their children in
school longer than other immigrant groups. They also invested more
in their sons education than in their daughters, frustrating those
women who had dened freedom in America as an unlimited opportunity to study. When Jewish families were doing well, they would
keep their children in school, so the younger children had a better
chance to receive an education. In The Promised Land, Mary Antin
described how privileged she was in comparison to her older sister.6
Gender shaped social mobility. Many sons of immigrants before
World War I did not nish secondary education and entered the
business world. Many daughters became white-collar workers in sales
or clerical work. When they could aord higher education, sons
became medical doctors or lawyers, daughters became teachers. Only
in certain cities like New York City were women allowed to continue to teach after marriage. Many became housewives after marriage, though they looked for work temporarily in times of economic
crisis.
Jewish women in large numbers attended evening classes and conferences organized by settlement houses, trade-unions, and Yiddish
cultural organizations. Education was the key to the freedom which
America symbolized. Sociological studies before 1914 and during the
1920s show the predominance of Jewish women in evening courses.
For example in Philadelphia in 1925, 70% of evening students were
Jewish women.7 They were eager to receive the secular education
they had been unable to secure in their country of origin, but many
were unable to achieve their educational goals because of their economic circumstances.
Regarding specically Jewish education, the traditional absence of
Jewish women from that education continued in the immigrant community. Only a quarter of the Jewish immigrant children received

6
7

P. 166.
Hyman, op. cit. p. 105.

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suzanne vromen

some Jewish education, the situation being particularly critical for

Jewish girls. A study of the Lower East side in 1904 showed that
there were 8,616 Jewish boys in the supplementary Jewish schools,
and only 361 girls. In 1917 the situation improved as a third of the
students enrolled in Jewish schools in New York City were girls. But
the girls education was much less substantial than the boys, and
often limited to the minimal curriculum of the Sunday school. This
state of aairs was eventually remedied as community leaders realized that in order to prevent the disappearance of Jewish knowledge
one had to take care of the girls. Since women were the transmitters of moral values to their children, the girls Jewish education was
crucial to ensure the younger generations Jewish identity.
In spite of their political activities, Jewish immigrant women were
considered obstacles to their families Americanization by Jewish and
Gentile social reformers because they were seen as transmitting the
values of the old world. A more complex view of adaptation to
American conditions has recently emerged. For example, the young
women working in the fashion industry were often the rst to wear
American fashions and inuenced family clothing purchases. With
the help of the Yiddish press, a tool to attract women as consumers,
women bought most household items. They introduced new American
products into their homes, and became savvy consumers, the ultimate badge of successful balebustes.
Social reformers, the middle-class descendents of previous immigrant waves, recognized the new immigrant women as potential
agents of assimilation but thought that they had to be taught the
appropriate values. The reformers prized cleanliness, order and deference. They were worried that Gentiles would not dierentiate
among kinds of Jews. The new immigrants were very numerous,
highly visible in their Yiddish-speaking ghettoes, and maintained their
radical politics. The reformers feared that these immigrants would
be the ones to capture the popular imagination, and would displace
the image of the settled, prosperous and respectable German Jews.
They were also worried that the very strangeness of the immigrants
would provoke anti-Semitism. Thus, they hoped that teaching middle-class behavior to immigrant women would halt deviant behavior and shape them into respectable Americans. Afraid that the
reputation of all Jews would be tarnished, the reformers concentrated
on Jewish prostitution. Relatively few Jewish women were implicated,
but 17% of women arrested for prostitution in Manhattan between

the identities of jewish american women

193

1913 and 1930 were Jewish, to the great consternation of reformers.8 These reformers were motivated as much by the desire to prevent anti-Semitism as by compassion for womens victimization. The
moral reputation of the Jewish family was at stake.
The reformers, with their social class prejudices, considered the
immigrants as inferior and wanted to teach them to respect their
middle-class superiors, and wanted women to show deference to men.
The educational programs of dierent institutions such as the Clara
de Hirsch Home for Working Girls and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum
reected this ideology, emphasizing domestic virtues.
The Yiddish press published many recommendations; advice manuals about education, fashion, and manners ourished. Men addressed
their advice specically to women: they felt that even if women had
not yet succeeded as agents of Americanization, they had the potential of introducing their families to middle-class behavior and tastes.
It was women who could be expected to transform husbands and
children into Americans. In fact, oral histories suggest that the immigrant women placed themselves as a buer between their homes and
the public world of school, work, and leisure. Daughters in particular commented about their mothers helping their aspirations and
desires for independence. Novels describe mothers as softening the
fathers traditional rigidity when daughters wanted the freedom to
choose a spouse or to leave home to study.
With respect to religion, Sisterhoods (mostly middle-class) were
organized within synagogues at the end of the nineteenth century,
and nationally in the 1920s. These sisterhoods as gendered organizations were an opportunity to apply womens domestic qualities in
the congregations without rupturing or dislocating hierarchies of positions and ranks. Thus, a new focus of religious public interest emerged
for the identity of Jewish women.
In a certain sense what was then conceived as success limited
womens aspiration. This was reected, for example, when a woman
took a paying job which resultantly encouraged the assumption that
her husband was an economic failure. Therefore, voluntary social
work became the main outlet for the creative energies of immigrant
women who acquired the leisure to look for a meaningful occupation. In fact, this was the continuation of patterns from earlier

Hyman & Moore, op. cit. p. 352.

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generations previously alluded to. Within this context, the National

Council of Jewish Women was created in 1893, Hadassah in 1912.
These were followed by numerous local organizations, hospitals, oldage homes, and child-care centers. Many of the hopes the immigrants had had for themselves were transferred to the younger
generation. As Hyman has pointed out, the National Council of
Jewish Women and Hadassah had a triple legacy: traditional Jewish
philanthropy, the Ladies Aid Societies of the nineteenth century, and
the club movement among American women. They were an expression of responsibility for a world larger than ones own. The social
aid associations of Jewish women were often more engaged in general civic aairs than were mens organizations. Through these organizations, Jewish women recongured the boundaries between the
domestic and the public spheres. They enlarged the space for the
behaviors considered acceptable for women; they provided models
of middle-class behavior for needy immigrants; they fought against
Jews implicated in the international prostitution trac; and, at the
same time, they provided Jewish education to their members.9
With the rise of anti-Semitism in the 1930s, a greater emphasis
emerged for womens Jewish education to enable them to ght assimilation. The ideal was that Jewish men should not only become rich,
but they should also resist Gentile women. By being charged to limit
assimilation, Jewish women were oered, at the same time, the opportunity to acquire more Jewish education, explore their Jewish identity, and bring their domestic responsibility increasingly into the public
domain.
Contemporary Feminism: 1960s to the Present
In the 1960s the second wave of American feminism emerged and
was consolidated through signicant events. President Kennedy established the Commission on the Status of Women; Betty Friedan wrote
The Feminine Mystique; the National Organization of Women was
founded; Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (prohibiting gender discrimination) was enacted and womens consciousness raising groups
proliferated. The positions and roles of American women in all areas

Hyman, (1991), pp. 234238.

the identities of jewish american women

195

of society, including religion, were scrutinized, found wanting, and

challenged. Inuenced by the feminist momentum, Jewish women
committed to Judaism and to their Jewish identity reevaluated both
their own place in the American Jewish community and their status in the Jewish tradition. They framed the issues in terms of equal
rights and equal access, the extension to women of rights granted
to men.10
A good example of how women changed their status in the religious tradition comes from the creation of Ezrat Nashim, a womens
study group of the Conservative movement whose members had
received excellent Jewish training. In 1972, Ezrat Nashim presented
a list of demands to the Rabbinical Assembly which intended to give
women equal religious rights and obligations. Eventually most of
their demands were met, so women could be part of a minyan for
example, be granted aliyot, and acquired the obligation to say Kaddish.
The demand for the ordination of women rabbis, however, created
a lengthy crisis which was nally resolved, and the rst Conservative
woman rabbi was ordained in 1985.
The Reform movement had supported equality for a long time.
Reform rabbis had declared since 1845 that women and men were
equals and had the same religious obligations. However, the rhetoric
did not overcome existing social norms in practice. Ordination, in
particular, was intensely debated. Eventually, the rhetoric became
reality and the rst woman Reform rabbi, Sally Priesand, was ordained
in 1972, the same year that the conservative Ezrat Nashim group
rst presented its list of revendications. By the turn of the twentieth
century, half of the student body of Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion, the Reform seminary, consisted of women.
The Reconstructionist movement, a quintessentially American Jewish
religious movement created by Mordechai Kaplan, established its
Rabbinical College in 1968, admitted women in its rst class, and
ordained its rst female rabbi in 1974.
Currently, there are about 700 women rabbis in the United States.
Hebrew Union College, the Reform seminary, has ordained 417
since 1972, the Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative) 177 since
1985, and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College 113 since 1974.

10

Lipstadt, (2001) pp. 291304; Hyman, 2004.

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suzanne vromen

Women account for less than one fth of the total number of American
rabbis.11
Since 1975 there are 165 Reform women cantors, about 40% of
the total, and 87 Conservative women cantors, about 20% of the
total.
From a global perspective, women rabbis are specically an
American phenomenon, inuenced by feminist challenges throughout
the society and facilitated especially by the fact that other American religious groups have confronted similar demands.
To be a woman rabbi is not an easy calling. Challenges to competence and paternalism are only two of the many obstacles. Complaints about being treated dierently from male rabbis are frequent.
Some women rabbis describe themselves as presenting a new model
of rabbi, in that they may be less formal and more approachable.
They see themselves speaking in a dierent voice.12
In order to gain some knowledge and to mark the twentieth
anniversary of its acceptance of female ordination, the Conservative
movement recently surveyed its women rabbis. Some of the ndings
are that women in the Conservative rabbinate are paid less, occupy
fewer senior positions and are more likely to be unmarried . . . They
also lag behind men when it comes to holding onto their rst jobs,
are less likely to occupy full-time positions and almost unanimously
say that they are uninterested in senior rabbinical posts at large congregations.13 The majority lead small congregations; none lead congregations of more than 500 families. Compensation packages dier
greatly, and even when accounting for full-time work, pulpit work
and congregation size, mens compensation packages on average still
led womens by $21,000. Men also reported being more satised
with their careers. The most startling statistic is that 91% of the
women surveyed said they did not want to be a senior rabbi at a
large congregation. The sociologist Steven M. Cohen, one of the
authors of the study remarked: women likely would want leadership

11
These statistics are from Hyman, ibid. except for the number of Conservative
women rabbis, cited by Rabbi Julie Schonfeld in a 2003 JTA press release, also in
JTA press release in The Voice, Sept. 2004, p. 46.
12
The expression in a dierent voice is derived from the title of Carole Gilligans
book in which she argues that men and women develop dierent conceptions of
morality.
13
The Voice of the Dutchess Jewish Community, Sept. 2004, p. 46.

the identities of jewish american women

197

positions more if they had a better chance to attain them. . . . One,

women may to some extent on average have dierent aspirations
for their professional careers than men; secondly, those aspirations
may be shaped by their assessment of the openness of the market
for their candidacy; third, the market may close o opportunity to
women.14 Thus a glass ceiling exists for women rabbis as in other
professional occupations. In reaction to the survey the Conservative leadership issued a policy memorandum calling for measures to
reduce the gender gap and to convince Conservative congregations
to give female candidates a fair hiring chance and real equality of
opportunity.
The Reform and Reconstructionist movements will probably want
to consider how the situation of their own female rabbis compares
with the ndings of the Conservative denomination. While the gender gap will probably be smaller, the congregational acceptance rate
better, and the level of satisfaction higher, there will undoubtedly be
room for improvement in that dicult trajectory toward equality of
opportunity and justice.
The presence of women has changed radically the curriculum of
the seminaries and the interpretations of Jewish traditions. For example, Rabbis are now trained not to ignore marker events in womens
lives and to handle subjects of importance to women, for example
domestic violence and body images. In a way the job description for
a rabbi has been reshaped by the inclusion of women, and the
emphasis on the need to help all congregants with life as it is lived
in all its aspects.
In Orthodox Judaism, feminism has also made an impact. Women
have created tellah (prayer) groups since the late 1970s, and have
persevered in spite of repeated rabbinical opposition; about 700 telah
groups exist worldwide, with the majority in the United States. The
Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance ( JOFA) was founded in 1997,
and supports meaningful participation and equality for women in
family life, synagogues, houses of learning and Jewish communal
organizations to the full extent possible within halacha.15 JOFA has
found rabbinical allies, and in particular it keeps the issue of agunot
a constant, visible and compelling agenda.

14
15

The Voice, ibid.

Hyman, 2004 op. cit. p. 9 citing the JOFA website, www.JOFA.org.

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The contemporary American Orthodox movement provides a

signicant Jewish education for girls, including the study of Talmud
in modern Orthodox institutions. Advanced study in classical Jewish
texts is oered to female students in a midrasha like Drisha in New
York City, the equivalent of a male yeshiva. By allowing women to
become learned, in a certain sense male religious authority becomes
attenuated and womens roles recongured. Blu Greenberg describes
this change in the following terms in a recent JOFA Journal: To"anot,
yoatzot, madrichot ruchaniot, congregational interns, shul presidents,
tora layners, executive directors, day school principles, mashgichot,
gabbaiot, scholars-in-residence, contributors to halachic journals,
megillah chanters, tellah organizers, ketubah readers-titles we never
imagined, words that did not appear in our lexicon barely a decade
ago . . . Taken together, the new titles and positions for women constitute a fundamental redenition of womens roles in traditional
Judaism.16
The impact of feminism in the realm of liturgy and ritual is
signicant, resulting from women trying to create religious ways conveying their personal experiences. They have devised spiritual and
ritual expressions, for example, for miscarriage, abortion, menopause
and infertility. All non-Orthodox denominations have challenged the
traditional images of and linguistic references to God in ritual and
liturgy, and have issued gender-sensitive liturgies. New ceremonies
have been created, such as adult bat mitzvah and Passover prayers
with special midrashic tributes to Miriam, sister of Moses (who led
the women of the exodus in song and dance). The most signicant
and the most widespread new feminist ritual is the naming ceremony for a newborn girl. Traditionally the birth of a baby girl was
hardly noted in the synagogue, the father naming her in passing
with a simple alyah, without the presence of mother and child. In
the 1970s, feminist parents began to celebrate the birth in communal settings, to mark the inclusion of their baby girl into the Jewish
community. The Orthodox revived a home ritual, the Sephardic
ritual of Seder Zeved Ha-bat, a home ritual. The unequal way in
which boys and girls were welcomed into the community was greatly
resented, so these inclusion ceremoniesinspired and led by lay
peoplebecame very popular. Rabbis then started synagogue naming

16

Blu Greenberg, 2004, p. 1., cited by Hyman, 2004 op. cit. p. 12.

the identities of jewish american women

199

rituals and made them an important communal event in which

mother and baby occupy a central place. This new ritual is an example of the rapid acceptance of a community celebration which benets
all.17
Conclusion
In conclusion, a few trends are recognizable in this short survey.
First, one is struck by the way in which changes in the wider society aect Jewish women and how these women adapt such changes
to their own purposes. It is the ideals of the ambient society that
penetrate charity work, it is the example of organization building
that in turn mobilizes Jewish women, and it is the impact of feminism at large that inuences those who wish to maintain in a new
context their Jewish identity founded on greater gender equity. Second,
the constant thread of activism and tikun olam is remarkable. Jewish
women are of this world. They act in it for themselves and for others, ever since their early and gradual forays into the public world.
Third, women have found new ways to highlight their identities, and
have been passionate about it. Assimilation has occurred, though
slightly lower among women than men. Those who have decided to
retain their identity are passionately involved in reshaping it. Jewish
feminism has given Judaism a larger signicance and has made it
into an object of great concern, perhaps in part because there is still
so much to accomplish. Finallynot as a trend but as a wish
what would be greatly enriching and illuminating would be engaging in a comparative analysis of the ways in which the identities of
Jewish women have evolved in other cultures and countries. Much
remains to be done.

17

Hyman, 2004 op. cit. pp. 1516.

PART III

IDENTITY, SINGULARITY, CONFLICT,

AND COOPERATION

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

JEWS AND SECULARIZATION:

A CHALLENGE OR A PROSPECT?
Guy Haarscher
The Debate Over Who is a Jew and the Issue of Secularizaton
Eliezer Ben-Rafael recently published a book on Jewish identities in
which he argues that, despite all dierences, Jews share what
Wittgenstein called family resemblance.1 In his book, he provides
the replies given by leading intellectuals of the Jewish community to
a question raised to them in 1958 by David Ben-Gurion, then Prime
Minister of Israel. The question was as follows:2 could the ospring
of mixed couples be registered as Jews, if it involves a non-Jewish
mother who has not converted to Judaism?3 A particularly dramatic
element of the inquiry was that often the Jewish fathers of these children were Holocaust survivors. Would a simple statement from the
parents suce regarding their childs ties to Judaism, together with
the assurance that the child was not being raised in another religion, or would it be necessary to have a religious ceremony in accordance with the prescriptions of Halacha ( Jewish religious law)?
The core of the problem relates to entry into the Jewish community for those not born to a Jewish mother or not having undergone conversion. According to Jewish law, if one is born a Jew,
1
Eliezer Ben-Rafael, 2001. For references to the air of family, see pp. 28 &
121124 (L. Wittgenstein, 1961, p. 148in his translation Pierre Klossowski used
the expression ressemblance de famille).
2
Ben-Rafael, op. cit., p. 135.
3
The Jewish orthodox movement constitutes a majority in Israel and dominates
religious institutions even though they perform . . . important social and civic roles.
Furthermore, it succeeds in providing an answeralbeit a purely theological rather
than civilto the question of what it means to be Jewish. The orthodox parties
want to impose their monopoly and are ercely opposed to any legal recognition
of conversions to Judaism by religious courts (whether reformist or conservative) as
well as to the right of the latter to make decisions in matters of marriage or divorce,
or even gain membership in local religious councils. (The unstoppable rise of the
men in black Le Monde diplomatique, February 1998).

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guy haarscher

he need not be practicing in order to be considered Jewish. The

only way that he will become an outsider is if he embraces another
religion.
The way in which the question posed by Ben-Gurion was phrased
clearly reveals the deeply intertwined relationship in Israel between
religion, on the one hand, and the State, citizenship and personal
status, on the other. This relationship can hardly be considered compatible with the principle of secularism. Secularism is a concept that
is, of course, much broader than the French interpretation, rooted
as it is in the laws on public education (the so-called Ferry Acts)
and the Act of 1905 on the separation of the State and the Church.4
In any case, the state must be neutral in regards to religion, guarantee absolute freedom of conscience, and shun any discrimination
on the grounds of aliation with any spiritual, or other, movement.
In this context, there has been a debate on the symbolic mention
of God in the future European Constitution (a reference which has
been rejected)5 and on the symbolic use of a reference to God in
public acts (which in the US is allowedbut only in a symbolic
way, although when a reference to religion results in tangible consequences, the position is highly separatist).6 Another recent debate
erupted over Article 51 of the European Constitution which provides for regular consultation with representatives of religious and
non-religious organizations on important ethical and political matters.7 The proponents of a more uncompromising brand of secularism are opposed to this article. It is worth pointing out that the
article in question only posits a vague kind of consultative power of
these churches and organizations. As far as the civil state is concerned,

For what follows, see Guy Haarscher, 2004.

The text of the Constitution, as it was adopted by the European Council on
June 18 2004, states in the preamble that: Drawing inspiration from the cultural,
religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom,
democracy, equality and the rule of law, (. . .) (Treaty establishing a Constitution
for Europe, 25 June 2004, http://europa.eu.int/constitution/en/ptoc1_en.htm#a1).
This phrasing is perfectly adequate and corresponds entirely to John Rawls concept of overlapping consensus, which I shall use later on in this article.
6
See Haarscher, op. cit., pp. 102105.
7
Recognizing their [The churches and non-confessional organizations] identity and specic contribution, the Union shall maintain an open, transparent and
regular dialogue with these churches and organizations. (Draft Treaty establishing a
Constitution for Europe, art. I51, 3).
5

jews and secularization: a challenge or a prospect? 205

contemporary democratic countries traditionally take the view that
only the state, in its capacity as the representative of the entire political body, is t to manage questions related to personal status since
it involves such a core component in civil law. It is also important
to point out that one of the milestones in the secularization process
in France was the fact that in 1791long before the secularization
of the school and of the state itselfthe Catholic Church was no
longer allowed to keep the registers of births, marriages and deaths.8
Public records are linked to the rights and duties of citizens which
aect the issues of legal capacity, legal age, marriage, divorce, succession, etc. In a secular state, these records can not be handed over
to the discretion of representatives of certain religions. Furthermore,
one has to assumeand this is by no means self-evidentthat those
representatives agree among themselves. On the ground, we see that
their appointment is no easy task in the highly divided religious communities of the modern age ( Judaism being a case in point).9
Thus, the problem raised by Ben-Gurion seems to be intractable
within the framework of even the most open variety of secularism.
Yet, in order to perform an act which, according to the secular presuppositions of public action, is a prerogative of the state, the religious community must be considered. The latter point is valid without
having yet addressed the issue whether Judaism can be reduced to
a religion, and whether Judaism can be viewed as a denomination.
In this respect, one can recall the numerous debates which divided
Judaism in the emancipation period when acute questions arose: how
should one deal with the national, or even state, element in Judaism?
How should one consider the emphasis on the Promised Land in
the Torah and Talmud traditions if the Jews are to fully integrate
into developing democratic states?10 One can also think here of the
concept of isralite in France which is a product of emancipation

8
Constitution of 1791: the law does not consider marriage a civil contract. The
Legislative Power shall for all inhabitants, without distinction, set forth the way in
which births, marriages and deaths shall be established, and appoint public ocials
who shall receive and keep the certicates. (see Haarscher, op. cit., p. 13).
9
See supra, note 3.
10
Many . . . saw a solution in a process of assimilation which, conceiving Judaism
as a merely abstract creed . . ., allowed for attachment to the Jewish religion . . . while,
at the same time, carrying with it a denial of all distinctive national elements in
Judaism. (Isidore Epstein, 1985 [1959], p. 291).

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guy haarscher

against a secularization backdrop; a Jew in private, a citizen of the

Republic in public.11
It stands to reason that the same problem of religious identity
arose for Muslims and Christians (as well as any other recognized
religion)12 in Israel as it did for Jews. In order to be registered, i.e.
considered a citizen of the state, one must meet the criteria imposed
by one of the established religious communities (again assuming that
they are not too divided on the issue). Avoiding the problems this
entails, Ben-Gurion did not seem to reject the complete secularization of the state in principle, but he did reject to it for security reasons,13 which are, unfortunately, still pertinent at the present time.
In short, Ben-Gurions argument was that the state, which is supposed to play an essential role in the saving of Diaspora Jews and
in the reconstructionperceived in secular or religious termsof a
people, must be able to recognize its own people. At the same time,
Israel is a democratic state, with independent courts and a Supreme
Court which has been known to make brave decisions in favor of
democracy. It is a state that guarantees the freedom of conscience
and non-discrimination, particularly on religious grounds.14
On the backdrop of Ben-Gurions inquiry of who is a Jew, a
question inherently linked to the issue of secularism, Ben-Rafael raises
the problem of Jewish identity. The replies by the sages to Ben11
The French Republic only recognizes the individual, denitely not peoples.
A few years ago the constitutional council rescinded an Act in which there was a
reference to the Corsican people. (Decision dated 9 May 1991). Individuals have
the right of association, even though one should hasten to add that associations of
worship, created on the basis of the Separation Act of 1905 were, at least initially,
subject to more restrictions than associations formed on the basis of the famous
liberal Act of 1901 (Haarscher, op. cit., p. 19).
12
There are 14 recognized religions. Though debatable, this hybrid system can
be explained by history, law and politics. The only ones to challenge it are the
Jews. Indeed, for the minorities in IsraelChristians, Muslims, Baha"is, Druze, etc.
these public religious tribunals are an ocialization of their autonomy. All these
religious groups, who are very aware of the reality in the Near East, feared that a
unique systemJewish religious or Israeli secularmight become an instrument of
assimilation with the majority population in society, i.e. the Jews. ( Julien Bauer,
Le Devoir.com, Internet ed. of the Quebec newspaper Le Devoir, 4 August 2003,
http://www.ledevoir.com/2003/08/04/33180.html).
13
From time to time, there are calls to rescind the civil state, or at least the
headings religion and nation, but for reasons of security . . . we have as yet been
unable . . . to accede to this request. (Ben-Gurion, cit par Ben-Rafael, op. cit.,
p. 134).
14
This statement is not intended to imply that there is no discrimination of Arab
Israelis, but it is not the religious dimension that is involved.

jews and secularization: a challenge or a prospect? 207

Gurions question varied greatly, in accordance with various ideas
relating to the question of what it means to be a Jew today, and
what Jewish identity is. According to Halacha,15 as mentioned, the
answer is quite clear: a Jew is someone born to a Jewish mother or
one who has converted in the prescribed way to Judaism. As a result,
the question of who is a Jew only arises when one takes into consideration the huge inuence by modernity on this traditional denition.
If one takes a look at the issue of identity on its own, without linking it to the question of Jewishness, it becomes clear that this identity comes in at least four guises, the religious aspect being just one
of them. Below, I shall examine these dimensions of identity in detail
with reference to the Jewish case: the religious, ethnocultural, nationalterritorial, and racial dimensions (the rst three were explored by
Ben-Rafael). We will begin with the fourth dimension, as it diers
signicantly in both its sources and incorporation into identity.
The Four Dimensions of Identity
a) Racial Dimension: Anti-Semitism and Identity through Rejection
The racial factor ensues from prejudice, i.e. the perception of the
racists. The biological-natural category that is their target is part of
the realm of fantasy; it is made up of hatred and nding a scapegoat.16 However, it is clear that the rejection of the racist impacts
the way in which the victim views himself 17even if one is able to
develop a kind of counterculture, transforming the status of being
oppressed into a historical-cosmic mission. If this counter-culture constitutes a kind of counter-fantasythat is to say if it is not based on
anything solid, and if it is nothing more than what American scholars refer to as therapeutic history,18 then the counterculture will easily
fade away once the cause is removed, i.e. the end of racial stereotypes and behaviour. It is in this sense that Sartre, in his Rexions

15
Halacha is rooted in the Torah, the reections of the Scribes from the period
of the Second Temple onwards, the Mishnah and the Gemara, but also rooted in
mediaeval rabbinical literature, Jewish philosophy, Jewish mysticism (the Cabbala),
and Hassidism.
16
See Pierre-Andr Taguie, 1987.
17
On this subject see the thought-provoking analyses by Albert Memmi, 1962
and 1973.
18
See Arthur M. Schlseinger, Jr., 1993 [1991], p. 80.

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guy haarscher

sur la question juive, argued that the modern Jew was constituted by the
racist, i.e. dened by the view of the Other.19 Naturally, this is a fear
that is very much alive within the Jewish community; if anti-Semitism
were to disappear, the external binding agent of identity, which creates indissoluble links between the persecuted in their common ght
against Evil, would also disappear. And, if the soft pressures of the
modern weaken the internal binding agent, the community would just
collapse. It is against this view that some have held that the emancipation of Western European Jews in the nineteenth century foreshadowed the disappearance of Jewish specicity, thereby inexorably
opening the door to assimilation. Though, in reality, this did not
happen. One explanation is the birth and development of modern
anti-Semitism, which is substantially dierent from Christian antiJudaism, but which was fuelled by what Jules Issac called teaching
of contempt20 (at least until Vatican II).
Did not Georges Friedmann predict forty years ago the normalization of the state of Israel and the assimilation of Jews of the
Diaspora would lead to the end of the Jewish people?21 To this one
could add that, often, the sense of belonging to a group (and Jews
are no exceptions to the rule) is more a question of pretence than
of the actual transmission of values. Was it not Alain Finkielkraut
who coined the expression of the imaginary Jew,22 i.e. the exterior
Jew, who exists solely for the Other, exploiting the memory of the
Holocaust in order to give himself some sort of depth? In this perspective, the Jew is actually empty inside,23 lacking any knowledge
of the very tradition that he proclaims so loudly,24 and ready to do

19
The Jew is a man that other men think of as Jewish ; there you have the
simple truth from which to start . . . it is the anti-Semite who makes the Jew, ( J.-P.
Sartre, 1973 [1954], pp. 8384).
20
See Jules Isaac, 2004 (Lenseignement du mpris: vrit historique et mythes thologiques
was rst published in 1962).
21
Georges Friedmann, 1965.
22
Alain Finkielkraut, 1980 (Points, 1983).
23
See Finkielkraut, op. cit., Lostentation du rien, pp. 103123.
24
In order to strike the happy medium, one could characterize these terms by
expressions taken from the Islamic tradition. In Jihad vs. McWorld (1995), Benjamin
Barber shows that globalization as it exists actually weakens democratic states and
citizens, awakening a desire among helpless people to return to hotter, more ethnic communities. Jihad is the symbol of those killing identities as Amin Maalouf
(2001) has called them. According to Barber, it thrives on the unchecked globalization and the loss of reference points it engenders. MacWorld is downward cultural unication towards the lowest common denominator, the era of emptiness

jews and secularization: a challenge or a prospect? 209

battle with the eternal anti-Semitism. What would this person do
if suddenly the adversary disappeared? He would have to face himself, his emptiness, normality and inner banality. The imaginary
Jew is the nearly perfect antithesis to the Israelite25 who is a Jew in
the inside, in conscience, and in his community, yet unrecognizable
as such on the outside (before the scientic anti-Semites ushed
him out).26 And when more recently Jean Daniel spoke of the Jewish
prison,27 this was also a warning of the dangers facing Judaism, particularly in its ability to transform into an ethnic group and retreat
into itself, relying on anti-Semitism in order not to have to dene
the inside.28
So, if the denition of Jewishness by anti-Semitism (which one
should clearly distinguish from the Sartrian idea of the Jew)29 constitutes a pathology, this pathology is very present, particularly with
the rise in anti-Semitism today. Moreover, it is impossible not to
take into account the way in which certain Jews dene themselves
and act accordingly.
b) Religious Identity
The other three aspects discussed here are the traditional and essential poles around which Jewish identity has manifested itself, albeit

(cf. G. Lipovetsky, 1989), individualism, consumerism, and entertainment. If one

wants to present things in a purposefully paradoxical manner, one could say that
the imaginary Jew is the Jihad Jew (what a paradox!) on the outside, MacWorld on
the inside.
25
Finkielkraut, op. cit., Le Juif et lIsralite. Chronique dun dchirement, pp.
73102.
26
Thus the Jew was slowly pushed aside to make way for the Israelite, in other
words, for a Frenchman, a Frenchmen of Jewish faith. (Riccardo Calimani, 2002
pg. 93). However, even the Jew of French nationality, the one referred to as
Israelite, had to be treated as a semi-foreigner, or even a foreigner full stop, since
he was, by denition, considered, to be unassimilatable. (Encyclopedia Universalis
Vichy [rgime de]). See also Michel Wievorka, preface of Ben-Rafael, op. cit., p. 14;
Dominique Schnapper, 1980.
27
Jean Daniel, 2003.
28
Ibid., esp. pp. 45 .
29
To be sure, Sartre denes Jews by the perception of the anti-Semite, but it is
to wage a political and cultural ght against anti-Semitism and to free the individual who is considered to be Jewish by the racist Other from this stigmatization.
The way in which the liberated individual behaves in relation to the Jewish heritage depends on the person and is an entirely dierent matter. On the other hand,
the imaginary Jew relies, in a manner of speaking, on an eternal anti-Semitism
in order to parade a false identity and hide an inner void.

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to varying degrees over time and according to a variety of positions:

One God, one people, one (Promised) Land. In these three terms,
on which the foundations of Judaism rest, one can observe the rst
three dimensions of identity: religion, the ethnocultural community,
and the territory. The intertwining of these three dimensions results
in a complex picture of religious identity. The closest adherents to
this form of Jewish identity are the orthodox and ultra-orthodox
Jews. From their perspective, all three poles are based on religious
belief and there is a rejection of the reduction of Judaism to a
denomination. Indeed, the central pole for the religious identity
among the Orthodox is the Torah.30
c) Ethnocultural Identity
Ethnicity is a term that gained popularity in the nineteenth-century
by anthropologists who used it to refer to non-European societies
that were said to be without a history. The term enabled them to
make a distinction between sociology and ethnology, between the study
of civilized societies, and those called primitive. For the ancient
Greeks, ethnos referred to the village, the enlarged family, the tribe
(cf. the German Stamm, the branch-bearing trunk, like a genealogical tree),31 and was thus a community based on blood ties. An ethnic group consists of a group of individuals marrying among themselves
and through this transmit habits, customs, values and cultural features. One should add that the more closed the group is regarding
marital unions, the more genetic features are transmitted, resulting
in group members sharing certain specic physical characteristics.
These characteristics are often exploited by the racist in order to
stigmatize the group in question. The transmission of Jewishness
through the mother undoubtedly ensues from this dimension of ethnicity in the broad sense of the term: it is the mother who rst
See Ben-Rafael, op. cit., esp. pp. 48 .
The Greeks opposed . . . the ethn (sing. ethnos) and the polis (city). Societies that
grew out of their culture but lacked the organization into city-states were ethn.
The term is often translated by tribe (Stamm in German), or by tribal state.
According to V. Ehrenberg, it is likely [that the ethnos] is much closer to primitive
society. Ethnology taken literally would then be the study of societies that are apolitical and which, because of it, cannot be subjects of their own history. (Encyclopedia
Universalis Ethnie). According to Aristotle, a barabarous nation is an ethnos, a
coalition of scattered identical villages, and not a real organized polis. (Philippe
Nemo, 1998, p. 147).
30
31

jews and secularization: a challenge or a prospect? 211

raises the child and transmits the culture. Today, the term culture
is surrounded by a great deal of confusion and thus clarication is
in order.
Culture is this immaterial element whichespecially in pre-modern societies but also in modern groups that practise a kind of
endogamyis intrinsically linked to ethnicity. However, the more
societies open up, the more there is access to information about the
way Others live, and the more the family transmission of values
becomes subject to competition, for better or for worse, by the outside world. This was already a highly debated issue at the beginning of the Haskalah. The central divisions revolved around whether
the Jews should open up to the outside world with the risk that the
Talmudic and rabbinical culture that for so long had ensured a certain degree of cohesion among the Jewish people would be gradually abandoned. At the same time, it was held that if Judaism became
more cultural, in the sense of a reformed Judaism, it would be better able to take on the dimension of universality. It is not simply
that any great culture, as Charles Taylor said, is forced at some
point to face up to essential questions that every human being grapples with, and thus has something potentially universal to oer the
world,32 beyond strict ethnicity. In the case of Judaism, through the
notion of the chosen people, paradoxically, the tradition from its
origin aims at the universal, at least if one views this chosenness
as a constraint, an obligation to set the example. From the traditional religious perspective, the Jews were the only ones to accept
the commandments in the Talmudic tradition, whereas the rest of
mankind, who would also be saved by the arrival of the Messiah,
only had to respect Noachic commands, and in particular the one
that forbids idolatry.33
This perspective is obviously at odds with modernity, the secularization of societies (which tends to weaken religious identities), and
the advent of the principle of equality which makes the concept of
a chosen people, however interpreted, highly controversial. It is not
dicult to see that reconciling Judaism with modernity in a way that

32

See especially Charles Taylor, 1994.

The Talmud holds that all mankind must observe the Seven Precepts of the
Son of Noah, which have been deduced by the Talmudic authors from their interpretation of Biblical texts. The rst involves abstaining from idolatry (see Epstein,
op. cit., p. 141).
33

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would be in keeping with the initial universalist inspiration of the

Jewish faith, which would have to go through a culturalization, concomitant with the dis-ethnicization of Judaism.
There are, then, two ways in which Judaism can be considered a
carrier of a universalist approach: 1) as a culture with historical experience and a vector of lessons for humanity on how to live, 2) as
a culture that has been endowed with a universalist ethic since its
origins.34 At the same time one can, of course, contest this kind of
culturalization of Judaism and hold the view that the pressures of
the outside world, especially in an era of accelerated globalization,
will transform this opening into a weakness, resulting in assimilation
and standardization. That is, resulting in the disappearance of Jewish
specicity.
From the ethno-cultural dimension regarding Jewish specicity,
there is an emphasis on a way of life linked to a language practised
in all useful acts of everyday life. This is of course redolent of the
Bund, a movement created at the end of the nineteenth century which
was both socialist (and thus a rival of the Bolsheviks) and oriented
towards the cultural autonomy in the Diaspora of Eastern Europe,
especially in Russia (where it competed with the Zionists who stressed
the third dimension, that of territory). From this perspective, the
claim for cultural autonomy is always understood, even today, as
being situated beyond the claim for independence; it consists of
demanding collective rights in terms of education and use of the
minority language in dealings with the authorities.35 The example of
34
One may well wonder whether a civilization is not a culture that is open to
the universal. Usually, this is opposed to barbarism (violence, brutality, lack of control of instincts in the Freudian sense as expounded in the latters Unease in civilization [1930]), and identied with the renement of morals. However, this opening
up of cultures, the process of learning from enriching encounters with the Other,
teaches self-criticism and creates open, non-murdering (cf. Maalouf ) identities, i.e.
civilized identities. The question of knowing whether beyond ethnic or even nationalist identities there are great civilizations (eight in the case of Samuel Huntington,
The Clash of Civilizations.) is a totally dierent one.
See the critique of the concept of civilizations, in the plural, by Roger Sandall,
2003: For behind the claim that the modern world consists of civilizations (plural),
and not just civilization (singular), a lot of linguistic mischief is afoot. By degrading the concept of universal civilization and elevating a multiplicity of civilizations in its stead, Huntington mimics an already well-established and disastrous
precedentthe transformation of culture (singular) into a multiplicity of uncultures, noncultures, and unmistakable anticultures. (http://www.newcriterion.com/
archive/21/sum03/sandall.htm).
35
Seer Guy Haarscher, 2003.

jews and secularization: a challenge or a prospect? 213

the Bund gives us an additional point of comparison in the realm of
Jewish identity. This is well contrasted with the nineteenth century
French solution36 which promotes defending the individual rights of
Jews in the private sphere yet rejects a showing of this individuality
in public life. This policy was very much in keeping with the famous
words uttered by Clermont-Tonnerre during the Revolution: One
must refuse everything to Jews as a nation, but grant everything to Jews as
individuals. They must not form a body politic or political order within
the state. They must be individual citizens. . . .37 That is, a French
Jew is a Frenchman who is also a Jew; however, his/her religion is
a personal issue that does not involve his/her public life, activities
as a citizen, employee, consumer, etc. There is a kind of French
carapace, in which the language plays a crucial role and which
prevents Judaism, for better or for worse, in these conditions from
taking root in ethnicity.
d) National-State Identity
The third identity includes a national dimension38 which has its basis
in traditional Jewish belief of the Promised Land, the Return to it,
and the Messiah. The national dimension was revived with new
meaning in the nineteenth century by authors such as Moses Hess
and Pinsker before being extended by Herzl. In the orthodox community, but also among emancipated reformist, conservative, and
free-thinking Jews, it succeeded in eliciting widely divergent reactions. Some stressed Zionism as the fullment of a promise made
by God to the Jewish people whereby the creation of the Jewish
state is a step in preparation of the Messianic era. This was the view
of the Mizrachi movement which in 1955 became the National
Religious Party. Others, in fact the majority of the political pioneers
and leaders, adopted a far more secular view, without however turning
the new state into a normal state like all others. These pioneers
were drawn to the creation of a state which oered a renaissance

36
In his preface to Ben-Rafaels book, Michel Wieworka shows the extent to
which the situation has changed today, particularly after the Six Day War of 1967
(La grande mutation des Juifs de France, in Ben-Rafael, op. cit., 14 sq.).
37
quoted in Haarscher, La lacit, op. cit., p. 12italicized in the text.
38
On the history of Zionism, see, for instance, Shlomo Avinery, 1982; Zeev
Sternhell, 1996.

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of the Jewish people and included in the building of the state principles embodied in the kibbutz movement. From the secular Zionist
perspective, it is only in the land of Israel that one can truly live a
complete Jewish life. Additionally, the state saw itself as a promoter
of liberal values which can serve as a model to other nations. In
other words, the creation of the state for Jews would be the Light
on to the nations. Another position towards the national dimension
was that of some orthodox groups who rejected Israel for being an
ungodly state and a usurper of the rights of the Messiah. From
this perspective, some believe that Israel as a Jewish state does not
have legitimacy, an argument based on religious principles concerning
the Jewish sovereignty on the land of Israel and the Messianic era.
However, this national-state dimension, which contrasts with that
of ethnicity and culture (if one views the latter two as linked to the
possibility of Jewish emancipation in the Diaspora), has itself been
profoundly changed by the major transformations that took place in
the sociological structure of the population of the Jewish state. Here,
I am not referring to the theories that see the very dynamic of the
state of Israel as giving way to a new people, exemplied by the
Sabras and the use of dugri speech39 as markers for ethnic identity.
Rather, I am referring to the identity awakening of Mizrachi (Oriental)
Jews since the Likuds electoral victory under Menahem Begin which
marked the end of the Labor partys reign of power. The Oriental
Jews dene themselves by their history, by their rites, by their social
position (which is often at the lower end of the social ladder), and
even by the racism they encounter from certain European Jews who
sometimes view Oriental Jews with contempt. However, in this context, one should also refer to the mass arrival of Russian speaking
Jews,40 whose Jewishness has sometimes been problematic, and who
imported the use of their language as well as ways of life which also
stem from ethnicity. These dierent ethnic groups set up political
parties and were able to wield considerable inuence on the Israeli
political scene. It should be noted that their inuence is due in large
part to the proportional representation political system which sometimes

39
frank and direct: the language of the sabras (Israel-born Jews). See Ben-Rafael,
op. cit., pp. 73 .
40
Ibid., pp. 85 .

jews and secularization: a challenge or a prospect? 215

lends disproportionate weight to small blocs. (The religious blocs as
well have gained signicant political power as a result of this system.) To this discussion of ethnic identity that has formed in Israel,
we can also add the Ethiopian Jews (the falachas),41 who have found
it very dicult to integrate into a world so dierent from their own,
where their Jewishness raised suspicions and where they encountered
racial discrimination on the grounds of their skin colour.
Aside from the dimension of ethnicization of Israeli social and
political life, recent trends are also calling into question Zionism in
its religious or secular interpretation under which the state of Israel
is identied with the destiny and salvation of the Jewish people. Let
us take as an example those who call themselves Canaanites.42 This
term, if taken literally, constitutes a radical negation of Zionism.
Initially, the Canaanites created a right-wing movement intent on
breaking o all ties with the Diaspora and drawing a clear line
between those who were Hebrewsliving in the land of Israeland
Jews.43 The next generation of Canaanites adopted a left-wing ideology in which there was an attempt to de-Judaicize and secularize Israel in order to avoid any kind of discrimination against the
Arabs living in Israel. Naturally, this also implied that Israel would,
in eect, be de-Zionized.
Another group that would like to see the secularization of the state
is the post-zionists44 who feel that there is little sense in maintaining
the presence of Judaism in public life. One can imagine that as far
as they are concerned, Ben-Gurions problem of who is a Jew should
never have come up in the rst place. In the end, irrespective of
the excesses and illusions conveyed by these two latter movements,
their very existence at least raises important questions that cannot
simply be swept aside as they concern the future of Zionism and
the identity of Israel.

41
This took place between 1984 (march from Ethiopia to the Sudan) and
Operation Solomon (1991) for the repatriation of those black Jews, which are the
only Black Jews.
42
Ben-Rafael, op. cit., pp. 88 .
43
Yonatan Ratosch, for instance, very radically aimed for the normalization of
a Hebrew people detached forever from Jewish tradition. (quoted in Ben-Rafael,
op. cit., p. 89).
44
Ben-Rafael, op. cit., pp. 90 .

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Normalization of Israel
Post-Zionismwhose inuence should, once again, not be overestimated but which is viewed here as a symptomraises the question of the normalization of Israel in particular and the Jewish people
at large. Should Israel become a nation-state like the others, even if
this means gradually merging into larger entities like the European
Union to have an impact on the pressing issues facing humanity?
Or, should Israel preserve the specicity with which it was endowed
by both secular and religious Zionism? A concomitant question, one
that in fact dates back to the beginnings of Jewish emancipation and
the Haskala, is whether the Jews of the Diaspora should adapt to the
surrounding world in an attempt at normalization and preserve only
a certain cultural memory. Within the context of normalization,
however, two interpretations of the process arise: The rst is an
understanding of normalization as simply adaptation to the modern
worldwhich, in short, means that Israel becomes (some would argue
has already become) a state comprised of consumers where money
and entertainment reign supreme together with cynicism and violence. That is, Israel would adapt to a kind of mercantile and imperial globalization and entirely relinquish the idea of a mission. In
the now forgotten parlance of Herbert Marcuse, the philosopher of
the very Jewish Frankfurt School, Israel would let itself be absorbed
by the unidimensionality of the contemporary world, instead of preserving hope and the critical demand of another dimension, a bidimensionality.45 However, in this case, the people of Israel (together
with the Jews in the Diaspora) would symbolically become the stinecked people mentioned by God to Moses;46 a people who would
be exposed to terrible suering if it normalized, if it converted to
the worship of Baal,47 and, more generally, to the pagan and idolatrous rites of the surrounding world. This development would mark
the end of the ethical dimension of the Jewish people. That is, an
end to the very universality represented by a single non-incarnate
God, a concept that can easily be secularized and is today represented

45

Voir H. Marcuse, 1968.

Exodus, XXXIII, 3.
47
On the inuence of the cult of Baal and the attraction it held to the Hebrews
to the detriment of, for instance, the Prophets, see Epstein, op. cit., pp. 33 . &
40 .
46

jews and secularization: a challenge or a prospect? 217

by the demand for human rights associated often with a global
responsibility for the future of our planet.
The second meaning of normalizationthe more appealing one
involves attempts by any means possible to exterminate anti-Semitism
in the Diaspora and nally to create the conditions in which Israel
and the Palestinians can live in peace. In this context, the link
between the question of anti-Semitism and peace with the Palestinians
is indeed far more complex than is often claimed today. This form
of normalization would lead Israel to a rejuvenation of the prophetic
message, decisively secularized and wrested from the dogmatism that
is inextricably linked with every kind of political-religious aim.
The place of religion is an important point in the discussion on
forms of normalization. In this context, an aggiornamento would today
rst of all refer to the need for cultures to rid themselves of obscurantism, withdrawal, and intolerance which are in part characteristic of the religious dimension.48 In this context, secularization which
promotes a separation between religion and politics could be a change
in the direction of a more tolerant religion. John Locke, the great
precursor of the modern concept of the separation of politics and
religion, noticed the inherent weakness of coercion in matters of
faith, as it created hypocrites49 who only converted out of fear or
personal interest, rather than for reasons of inner conviction of the
validity of the imposed (rather than proposed) commitment. One
could use Jean Daniels and Alain Finkielkrauts words and transpose them to a totally dierent context saying that, in a way, the
idea of a Christian prison or an imaginary Christianity was nally
debunked by Locke and, in the same period, even more radically
by Pierre Bayle.50 Protestantism, which constituted the philosophical
horizon of Lockes thought, could only thrive on freedom of conscience and the independence of spiritual communities of the state.
The normalization of the Jewish people and Israel as a state comes
through a separation of politics and religion. One may even imagine
48
Gabriel Ringlet, a Catholic priest and holder of high oce at the Universit
catholique de Louvain, states the problem in very simple and direct terms: Even
if the Gospel does not escape these harsh words and can be merciless when intoning a painful litany of maledictions . . . there is, at the very heart of religions, and
uniquely the monotheistic religions, an aggressiveness, pride and exclusiveness that
is sometimes quite chilling. (G. Ringlet, 2002 [1998], p. 22).
49
On the Letter on Tolerance of 1689 and other texts by Locke on this issue, see
Patrick Thierry, 1997, pp. 29 . (esp. p. 31 on the hypocrites).
50
Ibid., pp. 58 .

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that in the somewhat distant future the very idea of a Jewish state
will be called into question, but indeed for very dierent reasons
than those heard both in the past and present. The secularization
of Israel was very fashionable some thirty years ago when the
Palestinian movement, which did not have its own (semi) aggiornamento, demanded a democratic and secular state. This calling brought
to the fore ideas that few modern-liberal people could, on the face
of the matters, disagree with. However, in reality this calling turned
out to be nothing short of propaganda, which was reminiscent of
the intellectual manipulations associated with the use of the expression popular democracies for countries in Eastern Europe that were
suering under the Soviet yoke at the time. It is clear that in a context of radical hostility, the underlying causes of which are the subject of much debate, the Jews of the Near East will for a long time
to come need a state to protect them against the violence and a
potential threat of annihilation. Though the call for a democratic
and secular state in the past was tainted with other directed propaganda, this does not mean that this form of normalization should
not be reected upon.
Let us suppose that the exterior pressures on the Jewish community start waning, that anti-Semitism disappears, and that there is
peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours. While this is a utopian
image, there are two pitfallsone seen by the realist and the other
by the idealist. For the realists, the precarious position of Jews has
led them to an approach (which often verges on pure cynicism) that
refuses to be seduced by the sirens of utopia since experience has
taught them dierently. They see in the democratic and secular
Palestinian state a cloak of the desire to destroy Israel and see the
Jewish community in the Near East as a cultural entity unprotected
by a state of its own. The adherents of this school are both right
and wrong: they are right since one can never be too careful, vigilant or realistic when one knows the hatred that has accumulated
in the Arab world and, connected with this, the persistence today,
albeit underground and weakened, of a teaching of contempt in
Europe. However, they are wrong in refusing to see the critical and
creative virtues of a utopia.
For the more idealists who truly believe in the ideals of peace
between Israel and its neighbours and an end to anti-Semitism, the
question that confronts them is: what are the negative and positive
eects of this utopia on Judaism and Jewishness. One might hope

jews and secularization: a challenge or a prospect? 219

that this peace will not bring on the type of normalization that is
full of mass consumption, entertainment, andin shortemptiness.
Moreover, the Jewish people would be at a juncture where they
would no longer be able to rely on exterior threats in order to avoid
introspective analysis. How will Judaism then be able to express its
vitality after having been jeopardized by the Jewish prison syndrome
or that of the imaginary Jew? It is possible that the result will be
what the great political philosopher John Rawls referred to as overlapping consensus.51 Rawls used the expression of overlapping consensus to show that it was neither necessary, nor advisable perhaps,
to aspire towards universalist ideals on the basis of the same motivations and traditions. He attempted to resolve the conict between
tradition and modernity that can be applied to Judaism in the modern day. His resolution stems from the clash between two major
philosophical movements near the end of the twentieth century: liberalism and communitarianism. Put in simple terms, liberalism posited
the ideal of a society based on individuals free to choose their direction in life, with the collective having the duty and power to make
those freedoms compatible, as well as broadening their eld of application and promoting the moral ideal of the universality of human
rights. Communitarianism, placed the emphasis on what humanity
would lose under liberalism: the wealth in traditions, depositories of
long periods of learning, a well of culture all which would be dismissed rst because of the dogmatic and oppressive elements that
they conveyed prior to the arrival of the Renaissance, and then
because of an increasingly dominating materialism and a disenchantment with the world that liberalism may entail.52
In short, liberalism is criticized for favoring individualism and the
era of emptiness while communitarianism is criticized for wanting to
maintain community traditions that could destroy liberties. In Political
liberalism, Rawls attempts to reconcile the two positions. He states
that liberalism does not aim to abolish traditions as if they were outdated relics or superstitions; rather, it must help liberalize them, i.e.
preserve what is best about them, what is most universalist.53 This
task can easily be imagined, and achieved, by religions of the Book,
51

See John Rawls, 1993, esp. pp. 150154.

See Alain Finkielkraut, 1999.
53
In essence, Bernard-Henri Lvy (1979) wrote that God is dead, but . . . he left
a will.
52

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guy haarscher

to the extent that (or maybe precisely because) universalism is an

integral part of monotheism. This is the case, even if, as Gabriel
Ringlet54 pointed out, universalism was under threat from the religions of the Book from the outset. In order to achieve the ideals of
the renaissance and political liberalism, or of secularism (which is
inextricably linked with them), everyone does not have to be motivated in the same way when promoting those ideals. Quite the contrary. The main problem of liberalism, if we are to believe certain
communitarian arguments, is that it may well lack motivational
resources because it uproots itself from its origin. Because of the
struggle against dogmatism in the name of the rights of the individual, the individual is left very much like the hero in Sartres
Nauseaalone, afraid, in the way of eternity.55 The overlapping
consensus means that the liberalized traditions can and must overlap within the framework of a common universalist aim, but in the
name of dierent motivations, taken from dierent traditions, each
carrying intellectual vitality, spiritual richness and new crossbreeding. An alternative to both liberalism and commuitarianism is to
return to the roots of traditionsa fundamentalist approach. Yet, in
this direction, the emancipation process resulting from the renaissance and the idea of secularism are at risk of being scuppered by
what Gilles Kepel has called the revenge of God.56
The Importance of Self-Criticism
The overlapping consensus which has been briey outlined above
can be well applied to the case of the Jews particularly for their
ability of self-criticism. The issue of identity is rst and foremost corrupted by the lack of self-criticism. Cultivating identity most of time
involves selectively re-writing history by casting oneself in the good
roles and the others in the role of the enemy or persecutor.
Communitarianism in the negative sense of the word is this regression in thought and behaviour that consists of turning oneself
and ones group into absolute victims, with the Other being the
absolute executioner. This connement in the group, the screening

54
55
56

See supra, note 51.

Jean-Paul Sartre, 1938, coll. Folio, p. 182.
Gilles Kepel, 1991.

jews and secularization: a challenge or a prospect? 221

of information, the rejection of anything that is disturbing and the
acceptance, without evidence, of everything that comforts the victim image of the group is the cancer of the policy of identity. It is
a negative return to a tradition of prejudice, comfortable dogmatism, connement in the prison of particularism, and of the right
to be dierent. This perversion, in which the Other is caricatured
as the evil oppressor, rstly aects the group itself. The culture which
it claims is transformed into a terrifying amalgamation of hatred and
arrogance, fear and panic, all of which combine to make the presumed sense of belonging and identity entirely imaginary, in the sense
put forth by Finkielkraut.57 What is lacking in the modern concept
of identity is precisely this liberalization mentioned above in relation
to overlapping consensus. But what does this mean exactly? First
and fore mostly, it requires ability for self-criticism and distance from
ones actions (and indulgence).58 It is when the evil comes from the
group itself that its members must denounce it, even at the risk of
being perceived as traitors in the eyes of the very defenders of the
pathological identity described above.59 In this vein, it was the
Communists who should have denounced the Stalinist perversion.
The Germans did do a tremendous job after Nazism and the Holocaust
in condemning their own acts; likewise, genuine Catholics strongly
denounced the compromises of Pius XII that have been highlighted
in Rolf Hochhuths Vicar; it was Taslma Nasreen, a woman doctor
born in Bangladesh, a Muslim country, who was forced to ee into
exile after bravely denouncing the violation of the rights of Hindus
by Muslims,60 and not the opposite, which would have turned her into a heroine of (pathological) identity.
It is in the quest for overlapping consensus, especially in terms of
self-criticism, that the Jews could be a model for the world. It was
precisely the prophets who vehemently criticized the sti-necked
57

These arguments are developed in Guy Haarscher, 2002, passim.

. . . I was led to systematically think against myself to the extent of measuring the evidence of an idea to the displeasure it was causing me. ( Jean-Paul Sartre,
1964, p. 210).
59
Without this rejection from within the group itself, without this distance in
relation to the dark moments in the history of a community, how can members
who recognize themselves in diverse identities trust each other and be reconciled
with one another beyond their belonging, i.e. integrate themselves (in the most ambitious sense of the word integration) into a common universalist project, rather than
simply coexisting by looking at each other like china dolls, so to speak?
60
See Taslima Nasreen, 1996.
58

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peoplepromising the worst kind of suering, which in the end

befell them because they let themselves be seduced by the worship
of Baal, paganism, particularism and, by extension, dawn to the worship of closed and pathological identities. In other words, they fell
victim to the prison of the imaginary identity. Last but not least,
one may also cite, among the many examples, the specic nature of
Jewish humour for its capacity of self-criticism which should render
(or should have rendered) Jews immune to any dogmatic and pathological identity cult.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SUBMISSION AND SUBVERSION BEFORE THE LAW

Rivon Krygier
Contrary to what may be assumed, a great number of those who
defend or promote secularism are keen on proclaiming that secularism can not necessarily be equated with anti-religion or irreligion.
Secularism does, however, imply anticlericalism, which is found on
an institutional and social level, due to its opposition to the bestowal
of privileges or powers upon a clergy or party. At the doctrinal level,
the opposition is rooted in the fact that secularism cannot brook any
authoritarian or dogmatic thought. The cornerstones of secularism
are the notions of free conscience, freedom of thought, of subscribingor notto a specic view of the world, and of being able to
make changes without let or hindrance. Based on this understanding of the terminology, the question that will be addressed here is
whether Judaism can be compatible with the requisites of secularism as described above. Is it possible for Jewish worship to legitimately incorporate the autonomous judgement of conscience even if
this means opposing the authority of the divine Law?
In this chapter, this question will be addressed through various
examples extracted from the sacred texts that show Jewish worship
cannot be reduced to a mere instigation to the docile submission of
dened beliefs and practices. Many of the most classical and authorized sources, both Biblical and Talmudic, contain a clearly subversive dimension. That is not to say, however, that in any of those
texts, obedience to God, as such, is questioned; that would be nothing short of a rift with religiousness, with God. However, the nuance,
or subtlety if you will, lies in establishing the order of alignment
between the various echelons of divine will and, consequently, determining which is at the top and, thus, prevails. So, one degree is the
divine will as it is expressed through the codes of conduct set forth
by the Halacha, Jewish religious Law interpreted by scholarly rabbis. Yet, there is a higher degree, a meta-legal ethic (outside of situations provided for in the Law), and sometimes an anti-legal ethic

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which, in certain cases, warrants or even instigates a breach of or

opposition to the rules of conduct prescribed by the Law. In fact,
it may happen that man questions the explicit authority of a divine
law or ordinance for the sake of an implicit adherence to the higher
divine will and that this is recognized as being legitimate. This should
be viewed as an actualization of the antinomic initiative in situations
in which there is a conict between a rule and the voice of conscience. As such, it is clearly instigation, or education aimed at ethical principles deemed superior to the Law. In this context, we should
not forget that the midrachim are not simply there to decorate or
embellish points of law but that they have a paradigmatic value.
Let us consider a few examples from the Torah, itself:
Every child who is instructed in Talmud Torah grows up knowing the
story of the famous bartering by Abraham, who refuses to accept the
ineluctability of the divine decree to destroy the cities of Sodom and
Gomorrah (cf. Gn 18). Although the text nally proves God right as
the inhabitants of the two cities did not deserve to be saved, it remains
that God partook in the negotiations and did not in any way consider
it insolent to challenge His authority. Quite the contrary. In this regard,
it is important to note the explicit supreme principle under which the
divine decision to destroy the cities is questioned by Abraham in his
dialog with God: Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring
death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and
guilty fare alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the
earth deal justly? (Gn 18:25).

A second example, which is perhaps less known but just as signicant,

can be found in the Book of Numbers (Nb 27:111), where there is
a mention of a request made by Moses on behalf of the ve daughters of Zelophehad who died without any male ospring and as a
result of which the inheritance would be lost to them and their family. The girls claim their share of the possessions. Moses brings their
case before God who judges in favor of the girls. In passing, it must
be said that we have here the very rst feminist claim in Biblical
history, and one which was conferred from the highest authority, to
boot! Later on, in a second episode, there is mention of representatives from the Manasseh tribe intervening with Moses as they were
annoyed at seeing the land inherited by Zelophehads daughters passing to another tribe in case one of them should marry a member
of another tribe (cf. Nb 36). In this case, land reserved for the tribe
of Manasseh would indeed pass onto another tribe, which would
bring about disorder and rivalry. It is again the Eternal who cuts

submission and subversion before the law

225

the knot when he informs Moses of His decision, which is as follows: as the girls are in a similar position, they will not be able to
marry anyone outside their own tribe. Here the Law is challenged
for the sake of a principle of justice, and the case is won. It behoves
us to see the full force of these texts: Gods Law is perfectible. The
righteous one should not only obey the predened rules, but should
also respond to situations that arise on the ground, implying the
application of equity within this interaction with social reality, even
if it means making several attempts at nding the right balance, and
even if it means going back on a decision that was implemented
based on divine intervention.
The above reveals an attitude on the part of Moses, the very
paragon of piety, which is nothing short of subversive. As is well
known, when Moses sees his people worship the golden calf, he
breaks the Tables of the divine Law that had been entrusted to him
by God. We are so familiar with this story that the outrageous and
profane character often eludes us: how dare Moses on his own initiative destroy this sacred object, written with the nger of God
(Ex. 31:18) and delivered into his care! Evidently, there is no divine
punishment of this act, which makes it seem as if it was entirely
approved by God. The midrach leads one to understand that by breaking the Tables, Moses formally makes the charge disappear while at
the same time referring symbolically to the profound act of rebellion perpetrated by his people:
Thus, Moses deemed just he who made a decision based on his own
initiative. He says to himself: how can I transmit the Tables to the
children of Israel? In so doing, I will force them to submit to major
commandments, and I will, at the same time, have to declare that
they are punishable by death, thus it is written:
He that sacriceth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall
be utterly destroyed (Ex 22:19). On the contrary, I will break them
until they are in a better disposition. [. . .] Rabbi Yehuda, son of
Betira, says: Moses only broke the Tables because this had been
requested of him explicitly by God, Himself, with the following
words: With him will I speak mouth to mouth (Nb 12:8) (Avot derabbi Natan A:2).

It is clear to see the extent to which the midrach is ill at ease with
this initiative and is torn between the act being approved a posteriori by God and the fact that God, Himself, would have suggested
to Moses that he should do it, mouth to mouth when he entrusted

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him with the stones, at the prospect of the sin. Whatever the case
may be, Moses reacts to the circumstances and behaves in the way
that his judgement tells him to do, i.e. to break the sacred object
conferred upon him by God. The midrach wants to make it clear
that it is in no way to be considered an act of contempt, of illadvised anger, but, fundamentally, an act of obedience to God in
accordance with the higher principle identied through his judgement, whether or not inspired by above.
In the course of the same story, Moses intervenes and outright
opposes God. Upon observing the worshipping of the golden calf,
God says to Moses:
I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stinecked people; Now
therefore let me alone, that my wrath may was hot against them, and
that I may consume them; and I will make of thee a great nation. And
Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord, why doth thy wrath
wax hot against Thy people, which Thou has brought forth out of the
land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? [. . .] And
the Lord repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people. [. . .] And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses said unto
the people, Ye have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto
the Lord; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin. And
Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, Oh, this people have sinned
a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if Thou will
forgive their sinand if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book
which Thou has written. And the Lord said unto Moses, Whosoever
hath sinned against Me, him will I blot out of My book (Ex 32:733).

The midrach (cf. Tanouma, Ki tissa 22; Rachi, Ex 32:10) reads the
text at two levels, with a deliberate insinuation. Why should God
have told Moses let me alone, if it was not to impart to Moses his
power to prevent the waxing of the divine wrath? It would seem
that God wanted to destroy the people since this was required by
divine reason. God has to assume His role as the demanding source
and as such He cannot tolerate that His authority should be outed.
Man, on the other hand, can beseech God to be merciful and, based
on this, God can only approve this kind of move and allow this kind
of outcome, precisely because it comes from man. However, it is not
a game or mere stage scene: God actually proposes Moses to make
him and his descendants alone a sacred Nation, to which Moses
replies with a truly remarkable audacity, rejecting it, thus leaving
God very little choice: if not, blot me out of Thy book which Thou

submission and subversion before the law

227

hast written. Naturally, those wishing to minimize things will undoubtedly say that Moses only fullled the unexpressed wish of God.
Nevertheless, it still took a lucid and sensitive man to perceive it
and to resist the expressed wish.
Before concluding, I should like to refer to another episode involving the character of Moses in an even more audacious mode. The
following extraordinary story is recounted in Deuteronomy:
[God speaking to Moses:] Rise ye up, take your journey, and pass
over the river Arnon: behold, I have given into thine hand Sihon the
Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land: begin to possess it, and contend with him in battle! This day will I begin to put the dread of thee
and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven,
who shall hear report of thee, and shall tremble, and be in anguish
because of thee. [Moses, retorting:] And I sent messengers out the
wilderness of Kedemoth unto Sihon king of Heshbon with words of
peace (Dt 2:2426).

The divine order clearly says to start the battle, but, strangely enough,
the rst measure adopted by Moses is to send messengers with a
peace proposal! The Midrach rabba interprets this passage as follows:
Three words were spoken by Moses to God, to which God responded:
You have taught me something. [. . .] The third was when the Saint
may he be blessedordered him to wage war on Sihon: even if he
does not seek war with you, begin to possess it, and contend with him
in battle! (Dt 2:24). However, Moses did not proceed in this way, as
it is written: I sent messengers . . . with words of peace (Dt 2:26). To
which God says: Upon your life, I cancel my own words and adopt
yours, and so it is written: When thou comest nigh unto a city to
ght against it, then proclaim peace unto it. (Dt 20:10) (NbR 19:33;
also see NbR 19:27).

In short, Moses initiative is presented as an act of disobedience to

the divine order but, far from provoking the wrath of God, elicits
His approval to the point of making Him review his instructions
regarding the waging of war written in the Torah! This is a way of
saying that God is pleased to see that the prophetjust like Abraham
negotiating the saving of Sodom and Gomorrahsubordinates the
fervour of upholding the Law to mercy, even if it means going against
His initial instructions. In keeping with the spirit that prevails in the
Bible and the Talmud, God is pleased to see this turn of events as
it embodies high ethics, which merit, as much as possible, to prevail over any implacable conduct, even if it is justied by law.

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rivon krygier

Prior to this moral question of the primacy of values, there is a

more philosophical and epistemological question in this and the other
examples cited above: does God adapt to man, or vice versa? Is it
the same immutable Torah which gives dierent answers due to a
change in living conditions, or does the Torah modify its intimate
and profound structure as a result of the imponderables on the
ground? To the extent that there is evidently an interaction between
the Torah and reality, one cannot claim that the ambient reality
does not bend the very meaning of the law. This is what clearly
transpires from the above-cited examples, which give rise to a change
in the original rule dictated by God! However, since the Torah inherently instigates one to review the norm from an ethical point of
view, one may well wonder whether it is not subject to the eternal
and immutable self-regulation entrusted to the Wise and just. In fact,
it is by being faithful to immutable values such as justice and mercy,
which appear to be preponderant and at the very heart of the Torah,
that the practical application is modied.
The subject needs to be examined in much greater detail. For
instance, it should be extended to the legal exegesis of the Sages of
the Talmud which has considerably bent the severity of the Law.
Finally, I should like to take this opportunity to quote a particularly
apt Talmudic saying which captures a certain state of mind:
Rabbi Yoanan says: Jerusalem was not destroyed because they (the
Sages) no longer judged according to the (strict) letter of the Law.
Should one dispense justice according to other principles (such as those
of the megiston, [Greek]: men endowed with privileges of immunity)!?
No, the meaning of this is that the judges were conned to the rule
and no longer acted in a spirit of leniency (Baba metsi 30b).

Should one conclude from all of this that in Judaism there is a higher
authority, one which would translate the will of God to the highest
and which expresses itself only through the voice of conscience and
of adherence to the principles of justice? Absolutely. Incidentally, this
has been the object of an open-ended quest: are we able to appreciate the strictness of justice all the way to its application without
making any errors? Should the Law be bent each time we think it
is not just? Is man not at risk of misusing and corrupting the texts?
Who is man, so we are often told, that he should contest even a
minor edict of God? The answer to this question is not written
anywhere, yet it emerges from the dialectic ensuing from the

submission and subversion before the law

229

incessant opposition between, on the one hand, that which the Torah
leads man to understand from its divine source and, on the other,
human judgement which is compelled to evaluate the sense and purpose, based on intuitive and predened moral values.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

TRADITION OF DIASPORA AND POLITICAL REALITY

OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL
David Meyer
The title of this short chapter, in many ways, speaks for itself.
Tradition of the Diaspora and political realities of the state of Israel
immediately raises the issue which is at the center of what the state
of Israel is supposed to represent for us, the Jewish people: namely,
what is the Jewish identity of that state and how, in a Jewish way,
do we relate to what is happening there? While asking this question, I clearly assume that the state of Israel is Jewish in its essence
and not just in its demography. We all know that Israel is not a
theocratic state ruled by Halacha, Jewish codes of laws. However, we
do wish to see in the state of Israel something of a Jewish ethical
behaviour specic to our history and our people. The problem of
this relationship between Jewish ethical teaching and the political
reality of Israel comes to light when we understand that through our
history we have spent the last two thousand years in the Diaspora
and that therefore every rule, every code of behaviour, and every
ethical teaching that we have is based on a situation in which Rabbis
and Sages did not have the power associated to a state and a country. According to its own denition, Diaspora Judaism is the product of a sense of ethical thinking which is not associated with the
practice of power and to the responsibilities that go hand in hand
with it. The consequence of this statement directly relate to the following two questions:
1. How can the state of Israel today use Judaism to assess its own
political situation?
2. What impact can the policy of the state of Israel have on the
teaching of Diaspora Judaism?
Let me try to briey address the rst question: how the state of
Israel can base its political thinking process on the basis of Jewish
traditions. Two choices are in front of us. The rst choice is to go

tradition of diaspora and political reality

231

backwards towards a renewal of biblical Judaism, as this is the only

Judaism that has a certain experience of power. In other words, we
can try to by-pass everything that rabbinic Judaism has established
and all the teachings of Diaspora Judaism, and look back at biblical times in order to nd in them a model for todays practice of
power by the state of Israel. Though, in this case it would be wise
to remember that biblical Judaism has a very violent history. The
reading of the book of Joshua should be enough to convince us of
this fact. We must also remember that biblical Judaism is mostly a
huge failure, which ended with the destruction of the Temple, the
cities and the expulsion of the Jews from their own land. Therefore
it is highly problematic, quite apart from the violent aspect of this
history, to go back to a model of Jewish thinking which led to total
failure and catastrophe in the past. This leaves us to embrace the
only other option that we have, which is to use the wisdom of
Diaspora Judaism without the practice of power and then to be creative so as to nd new ways to adapt those Diaspora teachings into
a situation in which we have today the practice of power and the
responsibility that goes with it. Indeed, the sixty years since the creation of the state of Israel are not enough in order to nd a way
to adapt our old teachings to the new situation of the practice of
power. It requires time, courage, new thinking and the ability to
adapt the old to the new. Additionally, it requires the courage
to understand that the practice of power cannot be detached from
the ethical teachings that Diaspora Judaism seeks.
The second question is in a way a more dicult one, at least
from an emotional point of view. What impact does the political
reality of the state of Israel have on the Judaism of the Diaspora?
This question is indeed central. We do know that whatever Israel
does has an impact on the Jews of the Diaspora and therefore on
the Judaism of the Diaspora. We only have to look at the rise of
anti-Semitism in Europe to ascertain the depth of the relationship
between the policies of the state of Israel and the situation of the
Jews outside of it. But more important than this relationship is the
central fact that the state of Israel is seen by us, Jews of the Diaspora,
as the real test of Judaism. We do know that it is extremely easy to
look at rabbinic Judaism and talk about respect, tolerance, ethical
value, love and justice when one does not have the responsibility of
the practice of power. In other words, we can talk about justice and
ethical value as long as we dont have to translate this justice into

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david meyer

real acts and to behave in unethical ways in real life situations. As

long as we did not have the practice of power, it was easier to pretend being the barer of an ethical tradition. From that point of view,
the state of Israel, with its responsibility and with the power that it
represents, is the reality test that all of our Jewish tradition has to
face. If the state of Israel does not achieve putting into real practice those ethical values our tradition talks about, then everything
that would have been done by the Rabbis over the last two thousand years can be seen as pointless and futile, nothing more than
words. What counts are not just the words but the deeds. How the
state of Israel can transform those teachings into daily political values, even in the face of a dicult international and security situation, is what the test of Judaism is all about. If we do not succeed
in this test, then I am afraid we will have to witness the total failure of Judaism from its very beginning up to today. Let me conclude by this quote that Martin Buber in 1949 recalls during an
interview he had with the then Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben
Gurion who said: for the state of Israel La Raison dEtat can never
be sucient. This is what the test of Judaism is about. We do not
want to be a state like others. We must transform our ethical teaching into a political reality.

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE DIASPORA MUSEUM AND

ISRAELI-JEWISH IDENTITY
Dina Porat
The 1950s were years of search for a new identity in the young
state of Israel. The attempts to shape such an identity were reected
in a large number of areas in public life, from educational programs
to archaeological excavations, from the establishment of ceremonies
and symbols to historiography. It was during this decade that a public debate emerged between two of the most central gures of the
country, David Ben-Gurion, then Prime Minister, and Dr. Nahum
Goldmann, then president of the World Zionist Organization, regarding one basic aspect of Israeli identityits relations with Jewish identity. Ben-Gurions position was that Jewish identity, as an outcome
of many long generations of life in the Diaspora, should be categorically put behind, though not gotten rid of. Moreover, he believed
that the sources for identity, education, and history should be found
in the periods during which the People of Israel lived on the land
of Israel. Goldmann, on the other hand, held the position that the
worldwide contribution of Diaspora Jews to all areas of civilization
should be equally respected, taught, and commemorated. He also
believed that the cultural and spiritual bonds which link Jewish
communities in the Diaspora to Israel need a living expression.1
Indeed, towards the end of the 1950s the debate turned into a
confrontation. In the Zionist ideological gathering of 1957 which
took place in Jerusalem, the denition of the Diaspora, its essence
and character as regarded after nine years of statehood, was at center stage. Goldmann claimed that the Diaspora created indeed an
unfortunate historical fate, but the suering does not contradict the
value and importance of Jewish history and creativity during the
2000 years. Ben-Gurion could not contain his anger as he replied:

See the Beth Hatefutsoth archive, the Goldmann les, le 1969April 1971.

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dina porat

I cannot share Goldmanns glorication of the Diaspora. Each of

us admires the Jews for withstanding their suering, but the exile in
which Jews lived and still live in is in my view a miserable, poor,
destitute, doubtful experience, nothing to be proud of. On the contraryit should be negated by all possible negations. In short, BenGurion argued that the glorication of the exile cannot go hand in
hand with Zionism.2
Goldmann tended to speak about the Diaspora in the past tense
both because so much of it had already been destroyed in the
Holocaust and because the future of many Jewish communities worldwide, especially in Europe, including the Soviet Union, and in Moslem
countries, seemed bleak in the 1950s. Besides seeing the Jewish contribution to the world, Goldmann had some reservations regarding
the Diasporamore specically, an aesthetic reservation and an emotional one. The former was that Jews became talkative, noisy, and
conspicuous. The emotional reservation was that being a wandering Jew is a miserable pain-causing existence.
Ben-Gurion went far beyond the emotional level that Goldmann
expressed and conveyed a political reservation regarding the Diaspora.
In his view, the Diaspora is a state of mind that causes constant
concern regarding assimilation. Thus, Ben-Gurion refused to grant
exile and the state the same status and importance in the future
existence of the people; in this context he claimed that the exile cannot exist without Israel, while the opposite is possible. In short, the
debate continued as follows: Goldmann argued that the Diaspora
should be an equal partner and the state is but an instrument. BenGurion argued that it is a precious and most central instrument. In
refutation Goldmann claimed that the national states will come to
an end, and the world will continue without them.3
It is important to note the use of the two terms exile and diaspora alternately: exile (Galuth) means suering and destruction. It is
a divine punishment envisaged by the prophets; Diaspora (tefutsoth),
on the other hand, has a more positive connotation, pointing to dispersed communities, each carrying its cultural and traditional baggage. Indeed, the Diaspora museum in Tel Aviv which depicts the
2

Aharon Alperin, Nahum Goldmann, 1978, pp. 5464. Yeshayahu (Shaike)

Weinberg (undated).
3
See Nahum Goldmann, 1968, p. 16 (on Jewish characteristics), pp. 3741 (on
national states) and Hazut 4, 1958, p. 168.

the diaspora museum and israeli-jewish identity

235

history of the Jewish people according to Goldmans views (explained

later) is named Beth [home of ] Hatefutsoth, The Nahum Golmann
Museum of the Jewish Diaspora.
It should be noted here that Goldmanns views, to which he was
extremely dedicated, as observed by Sir Isaiah Berlin,4 had already
been crystallized in the early 1940s. Goldmann lamented the tendency of many Eretz-Israeli youngsters to limit their past into a
heroic story, continuing from Bar-Giora and Bar-kochva directly to
Trumpeldor and the Hagannah, as if hundreds of Diaspora years
never existed in between. He lamented as well about their tendency
to eliminate the Holocaust from the national identity of a free, proud
and self-condent new people, as if the Holocaust was merely a
source of shame. Such elimination, claimed Goldmann according to
Berlin, was a kind of barbarity, for civilized people should know
their origins and their past:
Those Jewish martyrs, who chose to live as Jews, were no less heroic
than those who struggled for the establishment of Israel and gave their
lives for her sake. He [Goldmann] opposed the notion that only in
Israel can Jews enjoy full human and civic rights, and that the loyalty
of Diaspora Jews to Israel comes before their claim to such rights in
their respective countries. Such a notion was in his eyes a total denial
of the Jewish tradition, the Bible and the Prophets, the Babylonian
Talmud and its commentators or the Golden Age in Spain, and should
be held as historically, morally and politically unacceptable to free individuals.5

Needless to say, such views were not welcomed in Israel of the 1950s.
Two years after the Ben GurionGoldmann confrontation in
Jerusalem, the 1959 World Jewish Congress plenary meeting in
Stockholm decided that an institute bearing his [Goldmanns] name
be established in Israel and serve as a living expression of the cultural and spiritual bonds which link Jewish communities in the
Diaspora to Israel.6 The question at that point was how to build
it and with which contents to ll such an institute so that it serves
indeed as a counter-balance to radical Zionism as represented by
Ben-Gurion, and contributes towards the forging of a balanced IsraeliJewish identity.
4

Isaiah Berlin, 1987, pp. 7378.

Isaiah Berlin, 1987, pp. 7378.
6
See the Stockholm decision in the B.H. archive, Goldmanns Files, le 1969April
1971.
5

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dina porat

The institute was built during the 1960s on the campus of Tel
Aviv University. Upon the completion of the building in 1968, a
long line of meetings and consultations were organized to raise ideas
for the institute, though no clear concept emerged from these meetings.7 In the early 1970s, Abba Kovner, poet and WWII partisan
who was then also a member of Kibbutz Ein-Hachoresh and winner of the Israel Prize for his literary and life work, was approached
regarding the plan for the institute. It immediately became clear that
Kovner and Goldmann, two personalities of very dierent personal
history and somewhat opposite character, saw the issues at hand in
the same manner, and that their encounter would give way to fruitful cooperation.
Little did Goldmann know at that time what the origins of this
similar attitude were: Kovner, who grew up in Vilna, the Jerusalem
of Lithuania, between the two world wars, had already developed a
kind of a Vilna model that was directly relevant to the deliberations regarding the contents of the empty building. During his youth
he witnessed in Vilna a vibrant Jewish community, as varied and as
heterogeneous as could beparties, movements, and ideologies of
the whole political spectrum; education systems, press, and literature
in a number of languages; artistic creativity, libraries, and scientic
institutes. Yet despite the dierences and rivalries among its sections,
Jewish Vilna constituted one community, equipped with its proper
organs and leadership. There was one framework for many opinions.
The dispute, wrote Kovner, is a corner stone in Jewish culture.8
Kovner tried to implement this model on later occasions: when
the Germans invaded Lithuania in 1941, he was among the founders
and commanders of an underground, the only one among those
established in the larger ghettos that was based on genuine cooperation and comradeship among traditionally rivalling movements.
Later, when they left liberated Vilna towards the end of 1944, Kovner
and the survivors he led southwards founded an a-political, nonpartisan entity, into which all survivors, of any political hue,
could be accepted. Additionally, while in the Givati Brigade during
the 1948 War of Independence, he fostered tight human contacts
among new-comers from all over the world. He always searched
for the unifying framework in which every Jew could be dierent.
7
8

See Dina Porat, 2000, pp. 335336.

See Abba Kovner, 1998, pp. 225232.

the diaspora museum and israeli-jewish identity

237

Kovner was always imbued with a strong sense of mission and

personal responsibility for the public he felt so much part and parcel of. A few years after the state was born, he decided to take leave
of his Kibbutz and family for a number of months and embarked
on a visiting tour of the Jewish communities in the Diaspora. On
his tour he tried to nd out whether this state has a people? [. . .]
what was left of the Jews abroad, in quantity and quality, and do
they really wish for a national existence? As aforementioned, the
situation of many a community at that time seemed shaky.9 During
his many travels, especially in the 1950s and later on, he crystallized the idea of establishing a visual enterprise, an everyman representation of the spiritual treasures of the Jewish communities lost
in the Holocaust or by immigration and totalitarian regimes. Therefore,
when Kovner and Goldmann met, the time was ripe, on both sides
for cooperation.
They seemed to be two opposites. Goldmann was a man of the
world, usually well-dressed, keen on enjoying what life has to oer,
travelling among large communities and cities. Kovner, a Kibbutznik
with his sandals and an eternal Tembel-hat, a seldom smiling survivor, was an adamant anti-establishment person. Yet what they had
in common was far more signicant: Both were born in Lithuania,
and had, as many Litvaks do, a very strong sense of a special brand
of Jewish identity; one built on reason, scepticism and analysis;
both carried from their childhood environment an enormous admiration for the Jewish religion and especially for the ancient traditions and customs; both appreciated the role tradition, not necessarily
religion, could still play in the modern world in the life of socialist,
secular and Zionist Jews as a unifying factor; both had an intimate knowledge of Jewish traditions and sources, though it was
Kovner who continued to enlarge his scope of studies every day of
his life.10
Besides their common origin and its continuing impact, there were
two more points of principle they shared: First was their objection
to the negation of the Diaspora as advocated by Ben-Gurion and
other adherents of the centrality of Zionism. According to Kovner
9

See Abba Kovner, 1981, pp. 291294.

For Goldmanns initiative to publish the Jewish Encyclopedia, see ibid., ch. 7.
Kovners accumulation of knowledge is best demonstrated in his Guide to the
Ocean of the Halacha, undated.
10

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dina porat

and Goldmann, who both considered themselves zealous Zionists,

Zionism and the Diaspora should complement each other. Zionism,
still in its rst steps as a society in formation, could integrate the
Jewish ceremonies and texts and folklore into a new synthesis that
would enrich life in Israel and abroad. Kovner slowly instilled into
his leftist atheist kibbutz a Passover night and a wedding ceremony,
Kaddish on a friends grave and presents during Purim. All of the
latter were newly shaped in accordance with the new Zionist reality, yet based on the old traditions.
The second point of principle they shared was their strong conviction that the Jewish people and its history are unique, hence no
one had the right to break its historic continuity arbitrarily into separate periods: before the exile (First and Second Temples periods,
one thousand years all together), two thousand years of exile, and
Zionism. Nor had any one the right to educate youngsters on the
from the Tanach to the Palmach notion, thus jumping from Biblical times to the struggle for the state of Israel. Civilization, as a
collective identity, as well as personal identity, is built in layers, one
leading to the other. When Ein-Hachoresh celebrated its fiftieth
anniversary, Kovner turned the dining hall into a shore, reached by
a ship on board of which were newcomers from 11 Jewish communities. In this he gave the message that those immigrating to Israel
are not reborn upon arrival. They each come from dierent communities, each carrying a name, a language, and a culture that one
does not have to abandon or cut o ones former roots. On the
contrary, the baggage one brings upon arrival is a treasure, and all
collected treasures create a rich new entity. He used to tell the story
of the Rabbi of Mezerich who, when still a child, told his mother,
weeping at the sight of their burnt down home and destroyed family
genealogy papers, that he would write her a new one. When he grew
up, the Rabbi would cover his face when remembering the incidence, ashamed for his childish arrogance, for no one can have a
truly new beginning. We all have a personal history; generation after
generation, from a forefather to a grandson, we are part of a chain.
These ideas were part of the vision created for the Diaspora
museum by Kovner and a team of architects, artists and historians.11
11
Architects Dora Gad and Ra Blumental, painter Dani Caravan, historians
Shlomo Simonsohn, Georey Vigoder and Eli Ben-Gal, art teacher Ida Huberman
and museum experts Bezalel Narkis, Karl Katz, and James Gardner, and manager
in chief Yeshayahu Weinberg were all part of the enterprise.

the diaspora museum and israeli-jewish identity

239

The permanent exhibition was aimed at reconciling Israel and the

Diaspora, Zionism and Jewish history, and thus created a tool for
the shaping of a reconciled identity. Let us rst describe the exhibition, and then turn to the debates it aroused when the House
opened its gates on the thirtieth Independence Day of the state of
Israel, 1978.
Parts of the exhibition represent Kovners vision. In fact, in his
will he stated that he wanted three inscriptions of his words written
on the walls of Beth Hatefutsoth which, in short, comprise of the
central theme of the museum. The rst inscription is near the entrance
and speaks about a nation dispersed among the gentiles, in various
countries and over many centuries, And They are One Family.
This is a primary message that was intended to be carried with the
visitor throughout his visit: the unity of this nation, everywhere and
at anytime. The visitor then crosses the sad sight of the Roman soldiers looting the burning Temple and faces an area that serves as
inner entrance. It consists of photographs of Jewsfaces of every
age, color, expression, and traditional head attire. The faces keep
changing, thus telling the visitor that very dierent people can live
together in one frame, in unity without uniformity. This is an image
that one could interpret as strongly resembling Kovners impression
of his lost Vilna.
As the visitor progresses through the central exhibition, he reaches
the rst gate, entitled The Family Gate. There the exhibition
demonstrates Jewish and Zionist holidays and family ceremonies
blended together, from Birth to the Kaddish, in their traditional as
well as in their new Eretz-Israeli version. On the wall of this room
lies the second inscription written by Kovner: There is no Jew lonely
in his Holidays. This statement tells the visitor that a Jew does not
live alone and does not create for himself only. He is, of course, an
individual, but he is always part of a public, and the creations of
this public are his because he has contributed to them. Kovner
dened Judaism as a culture of a public that does not serve as an
oppressing collective, but rather as a fertile protecting ground enriching the individual. Kovner, born and raised many years before
post-modernism, was convinced that creativity, performed by an individual for his own sake and needs, isolated from the public around,
is meaningless.
The visitor then arrives at the next stop in the exhibition, The
Community Gate, where the institutions of the Jewish public are
exhibited, from the Mikveh to Chevra Kadisha, from the Heder to

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dina porat

Bikkur Cholim. The variety of institutions that operated even in the

smallest of communities, proves Kovners pointa Jewish individual
is never alone, his public takes care of his needs. The next visual
in the museum is the Martyrological Colomn which cuts through
the Houses three oors. This symbolizes the individual, equipped
with the strength that he acquired at home, and in his immediate
surrounding, can now face suering. The visitor faces an impressive
column that reminds him of a cage, a prison or a camp, engulfed
by metal wire. A faint light, representing some scant hope, beams
from within. Next to the column lies a large book, entitled The
Scrolls of Fire, written by Kovner. This book is divided into 52
chapters, like the weeks in the Jewish year, and each is devoted to
another event in Jewish history, mainly the traumatic ones: expulsions, pogroms, libels and deprivation. On the adjacent wall a large
inscription blames the Germans and their accomplices for the
Holocaust. It does not blame the Jews of Europe or their leadership, nor does it refer to the Yishuvthe Hebrew community in
Eretz Israel, or the communities in the free world. Locked in the
ghettos they defended their souls as much as they could, and the
world stood by, silent.12 The respect for the Diaspora is here at its
utmost: the Holocaust is not a source of shame, and Jews should be
commended for their moral strength. In order to enhance the atmosphere of sympathy and the feeling of being in an environment of
suering, soft Hassidic music is heard in the background.
The next gates are those of Faith and Creativity. The sequence
of rst leaving the area of sueringthe column, the large ominous
book and the inscription, accompanied by the musicfollowed by
entering these two gates, a message is conveyed to the visitor: The
Jewish individual, forged by family and community, emerges out of
suering with an even stronger faith in his Judaism, and with the
sensitivity and scope needed in order to create. Faith is demonstrated
by a large number of exquisite replicas of synagogues, and by the
Isaiah Scoll, found in the Kummeran Caves. This symbolizes the
Bibles role in Jewish history and the bond between the people and
its land. Then comes an astounding demonstration of creativity, from

12
It should be mentioned that Kovners initial idea was much more Holocaust
oriented, yet he moderated it, and concentrated on the column-scrolls-inscription
combination. See Kovners les in B.H. archive, 03010105.

the diaspora museum and israeli-jewish identity

241

the canonized texts, Bible, Mishna and Talmud to the many generations of Rabbinical interpretations and innovations to modern
authors, poets, scientists, and Nobel prize laureates. It is a vast cultural contribution made by a people tiny in proportion. The visitor
is lled with amazement when facing the variety of press, education
systems, literary and artistic expressions, and if he is Jewishhe most
likely takes pride in this creativity. This was, indeed, the goal of the
team that created the exhibition.
Among the Nations is the title of the next gate in which the
history of the Jewish communities in exile is shown in detail. There
are 13 stations on the long way, the same number as on the way
from Egypt to the Land of Canaan. In each a community lived and
worked for a certain period of time, in better or worse relations with
its surrounding neighbours, until it was destroyed or until another
Jewish center overshadowed it, in another station. The last gate is
The Gate of Return, ending the exhibition with the return to
Zion. The subsequent rebuilding of Eretz Israel is a matter for other
museums. As for the Diaspora museum, focusing on the exile starts
with the Roman soldiers and ends with the Menorah, the symbol
of the state.
Having passed through seven gatesagain a symbolic number,
the visitor reaches the third and last of Kovners inscriptions:
Remember the past, live in the present, trust the future. With this
statement, the visitor leaves the museum knowing that Jewish history is a chain, made of past-present-future, and no one can presume to break its links, not even Zionism. Speaking on the inauguration
ceremony in 1978, Kovner warned more than advocated that if the
Jews will draw from their past knowledge of and love for their heritage, they will have the strength to open the gates of their future.
When Kovner came home that day, he sat down at his desk and
wrote that the exodus out of Egypt started when God told Moses
to let the Israelites know, that I [will be] hath sent me unto you
(Exodus 3/14). For God does not reside where a person says, I
was, neither where he says I am. As long as we can say Ill be,
in the future tense, we shall have a spark of the creator in us.
The permanent exhibition opened in 1978 and met both deep
prays of success and angry criticism; both of which are relevant to
the issue of Jewish identity. It should be remembered that when
Goldmann and Ben-Gurion had their arguments in the 1950s, and
when Kovner went to look for Jewish communities around the world,

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public opinion in Israel sided with Ben-Gurion that Zionism should

be a rebuilding of everything afresh, from scratch. The prevailing
spirit was one of shaping a new identity, as distant as possible from
the former one; a feeling of exhilaration engulfed these attempts. Yet
with time, towards the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the
1970s, educators and policy makers realized that the price paid for
an extensive root cutting was a high one, and that a new generation is indeed growing up with little connection to the history and
traditions of their people.
Kovner and Goldmann had already warned that new Zionist contents were slow to emerge and a danger of a vacuum was immanent. New educational programmes were developed, the most famous
among them being Jewish awareness (or Jewish consciousness), initiated by Zalman Aran, the education Minister, in 1959.13 The Six
Days War that swept Jewish communities with enthusiasm and the
Yom Kippur War which brought about a better understanding of
distress, choices, and desperate situations did their share in changing the attitudes of the Diaspora and the alleged uniqueness of Israeli
identity. This means that when the Diaspora museum was opened,
the public mood had already changed and the links between Israel
and the Diaspora seemed almost natural.
For about twenty years, until the end of the 1990s, hundreds of
thousands of visitors a year frequented Beth Hatefutsoth, the majority of whom consisted of soldiers, high school students, new immigrants and tourists. It became, alongside with yad-Vashem, Massada
and the Western Wall, a must see for visitors to the country. The
question of the identity that the house radiated became crucial, far
more than during the deliberations on the contents of the House. It
is perhaps best to follow this question of the Jewish identity portrayed by the House by taking a look at the criticism and controversies that emerged parallel to the continuing success of the permanent
exhibition and the activities the House oered. Some of these debates
in fact started when the exhibition was in the process of being built.
In the following we will trace six of the major debates.
The rst criticism concerned the ethnic representation, namely the
proportion of room allocated to each of the various Edot, the ethnic groups in Israel. The critics of the museum argued that it has

13

See for instance Porat, 1991, pp. 157174.

the diaspora museum and israeli-jewish identity

243

a very East European slant, emphasizing the culture and traditions

of the Ashkenazi communities. A place that was supposed to represent national unity, they said, did not live up to its promise.14 Indeed,
when deliberations regarding the contents of the house started in the
beginning of the 1970s, the rst idea was to populate the then empty
building with a special exhibition for each community worldwide.
But the idea, which rst seemed a fair one, giving a chance to all,
was rejected on the following grounds: how many histories of communities can a visitor see in one visit, and what would the dierence,
or the innovation actually be among the small exhibitions? Moreover,
there are richer and poorer landsmanschaften as well. Rivalry would
follow if the equal representation was adopted. In fact, having
taken a thorough look at the exhibition, one might say that the claim
that the house is too Ashkenazi is not fully substantiated, and the
Sephardi communities, especially the North Africa ones, have their
share, though a greater eort could have been invested in nding
more Sephardi authors and rabbis to mention in the exhibition. Also,
it should be remembered that in 1977, the year the Likud came to
power, the status of the Sephardi communities strengthened, and
they could aord to complain in a much more vociferous manner.
The end result of this debate was that the guides, who mediate
between the exhibition and the public, made a greater eort to
emphasize equality among the dierent sections, and unity of the
people as a leading principle.
Another issue of criticism was the fact that the exhibition ends
chronologically more or less in the middle of the nineteenth century. If it ends at that point in time, asked the critics, among them
Gershom Scholem, on the brink of modernization, where are the
socialists, the communists, the Bundistsall the leftists? And the secular, the assimilationists, reform and conservative, converts, the nonZionists? The territorialists, or the autonomists, followers of Dubnow
seeking cultural autonomy? A long line of opinions and ideologies is
missing, and it seems as if they were ignored on purpose. A new
wing is needed, it was (and still is) claimed, in order to host these
large groups and parties that were and are part of the Jewish people as any other. Indeed, the common origin and ideas of Kovner,

14
Authors note: I heard about this criticism from Ela Bar-Ilan, then in charge
of guiding the visitors.

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dina porat

Goldmann and others among those shaping the concept of the House,
is reected here: the exhibition is, in its deepest layer, a praise for
and a tribute to times when Jews were glued by the power of tradition, and still lived by the ancient cycle of life.
It was already in 1947 that, in a lecture delivered in Yad-Vashem,
Kovner spoke about the glue of tradition that melted with secularism and universal ideologies long before the Holocaust. He argued
that once the collective soul of the people was divided into many
fractions, it was actually murdered, and later on it would become
much easier to murder its body. It is as if Kovner harbored some
kind of animosity towards these ideologies and fractions, blaming
them actually for paving the way to Jewish weakness and lack of
unity prior to the Holocaust. Is this the reason they were not included
in the exhibition?
Goldmann wrote about the Jewish religion as contents and as a
way of life, without which no Jewish people would have survived.15
The exhibition is not, and was certainly not meant to be, a tombstone to cover the pasts grave. It is rather an expression of a quest
for another, more modern glue that would serve as a basis for a
renewed togetherness. And it is rather a call, a plea, to give traditionnot religiona second chance, in a renewed version, blended
with the Zionist attempts to create new ceremonies, texts and way
of life.
A third critic referred to the proportion of suering in all its forms,
in the presentation of the history of the people. Life should originate in the positive, not the negative, was the argument. Izmar
Schorsch, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, among
these critics, wanted a stronger emphasis on quiet periods of time,
when relationship between Jews and gentiles allowed for prosperity
and creativity. A nationhere he referred to the state of Israel
cannot be built on suering, and there is too much of it in the exhibition. One should take into account that Schorsch spoke from the
perspective of an American Jew, who cannot accept or live with
Kovners notion, that the exile, even if called Diaspora, is always
the source of all evil. Moreover, claimed Uriel Tal, one of the
founders of the study of Jewish history as a discipline at Tel Aviv
University, Judaism is a way of life, not of indulging in death.

15

See B.H. archive, Goldmanns les, le 1969April 1971.

the diaspora museum and israeli-jewish identity

245

A column of water should be added facing the martyrological column to extinguish its re. The Scrolls of Fire are an antithesis to
Jewish Halacha because they devote a chapter a week mostly to exiles
and pogroms, while the ancient Scroll of Lamentations, for instance,
combines days of commemoration and mourning into a few dates,
and forbids lamentation on others. In other words, the exhibition
aroused concerns that an identity of a victim, always an easy pray,
would persist despite the Zionist ending of the Scrolls and the exhibition, where ghting and struggle result in independence.
An additional question, associated with the latter one, is whether
the House leads to at least some kind of reconciliation with the gentile world, as if telling the visitor: here is what happened in the past,
but now, as the state of Israel is already thirty years old, the time
has come to rethink the hopes of the forefathers of Zionism. They
spoke about a normal political entity, a state much as any other that
has a periphery of immigrants outside its borders, and they are in
contact with it as the Italians and Poles in US are with their homelands. Being a normal entity, Israel would be related to as any other
state. Such an attitude could have worked towards the shaping of a
normal, or better said, balanced identity that puts victimhood behind
and is ready to integrate in the world at large. The known phrase,
used at that time by the Israeli right-wingers, all the world is against
us, would loose its edge, and would be replaced by all the world
is with us. But the House does not actually deal with the notion
of reconciliation. And when Kovner was asked, whether the place
is Zionist enough (for the exhibition ends with the Gate of Return,
that started in the 1880s, and does not go on into statehood and its
consequences, he used to answer: It is not Zionist enough? Nu, go
take a look from the balcony, facing the green grasses of Tel Aviv
university, the white buildings of the rst Hebrew city and the blue
Mediterranean, and have Zionism to your hearts content. In other
words, the House ends where it does, and discussions that are related
to the implications of the exhibition are, in fact, the responsibility
of the thinking visitor.
The question of reconciliation, more specically, is related to the
way the Holocaust was presented and worded by Kovner: Locked
in the ghettos, they defended their souls as much as they could, and
the world stood by, silent. The question that follows is, then, how
is reconciliation possible, if the worldwhich includes the Allies and
the populations under German occupation and inuence in Europe

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dina porat

stood by, silent. Therefore, if the Jewish people, whether in Europe

or outside at that time, cannot be blamed for the evolvement of the
Holocaust, and the blame lies with the world, not to mention the
Germans and their accomplices, then blame should be dened: how
long, or for how many generations, should the blame lie with those
who stood silent? How should this blame be treated by Jewswith
all severity, with constant or rather with temporary vows to ban
most of the nations of the world? When the House was being built,
the attitude in Israel towards the Jews in Europe, and the way they
withstood their fate, was already changing, mainly following the
Eichmann trial. Kovner was one of the rst and most persistent to
uphold the view that the Jews have nothing to be ashamed of and
that self-accusation is an unfair though understandable reaction, certainly in comparison with the ways other nations, who did not face
annihilation, withstood Nazi domination.16 By upholding this attitude
Kovner fullled an important task, for he anchored the plight of the
Jews in the realities of World War II, not in wishes of the Yishuv
or Israeli society. But by the same token, leaving the blame to lie
on the shoulders of most of the countries of the world, he left open
the issue of the duration and intensity of the blame, and of the
proper ways to resolve this open account. Thus, the identity of
an Israeli and Jewish youngster, facing Kovners inscription, is
bound to be at least slightly burdened with feelings of bitterness and
resentment.
Lastly, on a more general level, is the issue of the Houses framework. It is no doubt a Zionist one, for it starts with the expulsion
and ends with the Gate of return, ignoring the other options opened
for a Jew nowadays. The Scrolls of Fire carry the same narrative,
starting with the destruction of the Second Temple, and ending with
a few chapters on ghting during the Holocaust, Ha"apalah (coming
up to the Land of Israel), Hagannah (self defense) and the 1948 war.
So, the framework, as mentioned, is Zionist and should have contributed to the normalization of the people, righting the wrongs of
exile. But in between there is a long praise for and admiration of
the Jewish contribution to the world, and a very strong emphasis on
the uniqueness of the Jewish people, its achievements, and its history. The contradiction between normalization and uniqueness is

16

See his Scrolls of Testimony, 2001, p. xv: innocent of crime and unashamed.

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247

built in and, since uniqueness is already a fact, normalization is still

a wish though doubt is cast on the chances of reaching the normalization stage.
All in all, the Diaspora museum oers a number of binding principles, such as unity, being an integral part of a public, continuity,
cultural contribution, the possibility of mixing Judaism and Zionism,
and tradition as a tool. But it does not oer a clear-cut modern
identity, and perhaps it should not be expected to. It raises the basic
issues and leaves a lot of room for the visitors and the guides to
elaborate on them. It oers a picture of complexity and variety, of
a quest for meaning that is the essence of the Jewish people.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE JEWISH TRANSNATIONAL COMMUNITY AND

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM
Uri Cohen
Introduction
This discussion focuses on the organizational and ideological institutionalization that took place between the Zionist Movement and
Jewish communities in the Diaspora. This institutionalization resulted
in an unbroken structure of shared current needs and interests within
the framework of a transnational social space and in transnational
communities, under basic conditions that would seem more likely to
encourage mutual fragmentation and distance. I intend to show how
the concept of Klal Yisrael as a worldwide commonwealth of the
Jewish people took form just as the Zionist Movement coalesced into
a secular national movement that depicted, as one of its fundamentals, an aspiration to dissociate itself from the centuries-old pattern of Jewish existence. At the forefront of the Zionist consciousness
was an argument that a national way of life should be preferred
over life in exile ( gola). In the words of historian Ben-Zion Dinur:
The principle of the Zionist view of Jewish reality is negation of exile.
This negation is the prime fundamental of the Zionist ideology. The
problem of the Jews is one: exile. It embraces all the disasters and
woes, all the ills and aictions, the enmity of generations and the
hatred of peoples, the envy of the benighted and the contempt of the
enlightened. The exile is the cause of them all.1

In Dinurs opinion, a fundamental insecurity underlies the Jewish

dispersion even at times when the Jewish communities functioned as
well-developed autonomous entities. Therefore, the liquidation of exile
that Zionism oered was perceived as a return to political normalcy, in which Jews exist safely in a single political unit that they
themselves control.2
1
2

Ben-Zion Dinur (Dinaburg), 1939, p. 12 (Hebrew).

Ben-Zion Dinur (Dinaburg), 1978 (Hebrew).

the jewish transnational community

249

The purpose of this article is to show how acute dierences among

Diaspora Jewish communitiesowing from rivalries, tensions, disagreements, and disunity in view of the basic ideas and institutional
frameworks of the nascent Jewish nationalityevolved into cooperation and the establishment of an institutional common denominator, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This institution led to
organized and long-term action that points to the existence of values which promoted the development of uniqueness, responsibility,
and mutual commitment between Jewish communities that were territorially and ideologically distant from each other and the Zionist
enterprise. We will show that these values do not point to a harmonic continuity of relations; instead, they eect a merger that is
culminated in power struggles and protracted disputes surrounding
the reinterpretation of an ontological vision that the aforementioned
Jewish worldwide commonwealth shares.
At the empirical level, the purpose of this discussion is to investigate the mutual integration of the main elements in the Zionist
reality, which aspired to singularity and dominance in the Zionist
collective historical consciousness, and the self-organization of Jewish
inuence around the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a nationalcultural institution established in Palestine during the pre-independence era. My argument is that it was the Jewish communities,
especially those that did not identify with Zionism, that most frequently demanded a role in shaping the national society in formation. Furthermore, it was the communities clear intent to play a
decisive and inuential role in important aspects of the nationalcultural endeavor. We will nd that, for the Jewish communities, the
Hebrew University was an important medium that allowed them to
shape symbolic and institutional relations that were meant to dene
their identity vis--vis others in their surroundings. We will also
consider the nature of their relationship with and integration into
the national enterprise. I do not intend to claim that those who took
part in establishing and running the Hebrew University had identical interests and a uniform worldview; instead, I point to several
aspects of the modern Jewish eort to maintain an intertwining relationship between Jewish communities in modern societies and the
Zionist Movement.
In recent years, the school of new historians and critical sociologists in Israel has developed a research approach that depicts
relations between the Jewish national collective in Palestine and the

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Jewish communities around the world as an acute and protracted

confrontation stemming from the Zionist concept of negation of exile.3
The main argument of these scholars is that the Zionist consciousness is based on the invention of a modern national tradition that
served the Ashkenazi pioneering settler elite as a focal basis for the
crafting of a heroic, proactive new Jew in Palestine, as against the
suering and persecuted old Jew in exile. Scholars of this bent
depict the basic goal of this Ashkenazi national elite as the creation
of a new historical consciousness that demands disconnection from,
and structured banishment of, prior traditions that are termed Exilic.
These debates raised a continual dichotomy between the general
interest of the Jew and the particularistic interest of the Israeli (or
the Zionist); both of which ostensibly came into the world mutually
hostile and existed in a state of mutual exclusivity.4 One of the
most conspicuous manifestations of this outlook, which aims to drive
a wedge of estrangement between the Jewish Diaspora and the Zionist
Movement, is derived from the conception that modern Jewishness
can only be fullled on the basis of a relationship with the conceptual language of the dominant culture. In this setting, the Jew carries on as a minority that lacks sovereignty and, as a consequence
of this status, takes a critical stance toward the culture. In other
words, exile is the only authentic state of the Jew, since only in exile
can the Jew devise a symbiotic relationship of critical value between
the self-image of the Jew and the self-image of the non-Jew. Zionism,
in contrast, is depicted as an aggressive action that strives to obliterate the symbiotic relationship. Thus, it is essentially a mechanism
of cultural repression and induced amnesia based on the negation
of the Jewish past.5
The present discussion confronts these outlooks by noting the existence of a dierent and consistent modus operandi, in which, since
the rst half of the 1920s, there has been a systematic, centralized,
and substantial transfer of economic and symbolic resources by Jewish
Diaspora that is neither Zionist nor Zionistically inclined to the
prominent Zionist institutionthe Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
3
Tom Segev (1991); Idith Zertal (1996) (Hebrew); Yosef Grodzinski (1998); Moshe
Zuckerman (2001).
4
Anita Shapira, 2003, pp. 954 (Hebrew).
5
Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin (1993) (Hebrew). The second part of the article appeared
in Theory and Criticism, 5, Autumn 1994, pp. 113133 (Hebrew). See also George
Steiner, 1994 f1965, pp. 3238; and George Steiner, 1985, pp. 425.

the jewish transnational community

251

Apart from the qualities mentioned above, this transfer has not been
passive; it includes a demand for meaningful participation in the
management and development of the institution.6 Thus, the Jewish
communities have had a decisive eect on the formation of autonomous
academic elite; an elite that has consistently resisted the demands of
the political center in the Yishuv regarding academic structure and
curricula, thereby making it possible to establish basic conditions for
the activities of heterodox political organizations such as Brit Shalom
and Ihud.7 I will show that the negation-of-exile concept is not limited to the attitudes of various branches of the Zionist Movement
toward the Diaspora. We must also turn our attention to a response
by the exile thatin contrast to acts of philanthropy, support, and
rescuewas a model of involvement, partnership, and mutuality that
are the outgrowths of voluntarism. I also argue that the roots of this
model germinated in the era preceding the terrible and tragic ordeal
of the Holocaust and the attainment of territorial political independence by the Yishuv. One of the goals of this model was the sustaining of Jewish collective activity of a sort that would reect the
development of a meaningful political-culture consciousness in a
transnational community that intended to challenge the negation of
exile.
The transnational cooperation at issue formed around the protracted activities of Jewish personalities and Friends of the Hebrew
University (FHU) before the university was dedicated in 1925. It
became an important factor in encouraging the development of modern Israeli scholarship to this very day. We nd that between
19982003, some 1,900 donors in thirty-seven countries have raised
$762 million for the Hebrew University; half of the benefactors are
long-time donors; others had no prior relationship with the university. Be this as it may, the university is verging on its 2004 target
of $1 billion. As for the distribution of the donations, 48% of the
revenue came from the United States; 2% from Australia; 10% from
Canada, 10% from Europe, 7% from Israel, 5% from Latin America,

Uri Cohen, in press (Hebrew).

On the status of the Hebrew University during the Yishuv (pre-independence)
period, see Anita Shapira, (1997). This article stresses the thesis of the marginality
of the Hebrew University relative to the Zionist Movement and the Zionist Labor
Movement. For an opposing approach, see Moshe Lissak and Uri Cohen, in press
(Hebrew).
7

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3% from South Africa, 11% from the United Kingdom, and 4%

from elsewhere.8 The pattern presented here is not unique to the
Hebrew University; it has been adopted by other institutions of higher
education in Israel. It shows that after the Hebrew University was
founded, a voluntary array, originating in a consciousness of solidarity between intellectual groups and well-heeled benefactors, has
created a stable and long-term relationship that is sustained by a
historical experience related to a particular territory and shared cultural characteristics. This has resulted in a sustainable framework of
collective loyalties and identities. As such, bonds that united the
Jewish collective were forged anew after having been transformed in
the initial phases of the modern era but managed to preserve a state
of ethnie that may be associated with pre-modern continuity. This is
very similar to the communities that Anthony Smith dened as a
population with one name that had myths of shared ancestral patriarchs, shared historical memories, elements of shared culture, an
attachment to a homeland, and some extent of solidarity, at least
among its elites.9
This presentation allows us to make a contribution toward explaining a phenomenon known as the riddle of Jewish historical continuity. Some of the riddle may be explained on the basis of the
existence of social space and transnational communities that include
social and symbolic ties,10 alongside dense networks of permanent
institutions and organizations. Medieval Jewry maintained such structures for centuries around the axis of halacha (the rule and praxis of
rabbinical law). Although progress and the consolidation of modernity caused these transnational structures to transformed, they managed to redesign and replicate themselves around the goal of nurturing
the civilizational dimension of Jewishness among nonreligious Jews.
They did so, primarily by adjusting themselves to pronouncedly
modern settings (such as a Jewish university) that were meant to

8
$762 million Collected, Toar, Journal of Alumni of the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, 2002, p. 20 (Hebrew).
9
Anthony D. Smith, 1986.
10
Social ties are a continuing series of interpersonal transactions to which participants attach shared interest, obligation, expectations and norms. Symbolic ties are a
continuing series of transactions, both face-to-face and indirect, to which participants attach shared meanings, memories, future expectations, and symbols. Symbolic
ties often go beyond face-to-face relations, involving members of the same religious
belief, language, ethnicity, or nationality.

the jewish transnational community

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institutionalize an intensive and permanent dialogue around the idea

of the shared historical fate of all mutually separate segments of the
Jewish nation.11
The Road to the Formation of a Jewish University
The idea of establishing a Hebrew-speaking Jewish university in
Jerusalem was a fundamental, a creation, and one of the pronounced
expressions of the Zionist Movement. It was championed with particular vigor by Ahad Ha"am, the progenitor of Cultural Zionism,
who in the early twentieth century expressed the view that establishing a large scholastic institution in Palestine for science or the
arts, establishing one academy there for language or literature, is
[. . .] a grand and exalted national enterprise that would bring us
closer to our goal than a hundred farming colonies.12 Ahad Ha"am
continued to profess this conviction after World War I and was
joined by an important political leader, Nahum Sokolow, who in
1918 stated, the Hebrew University embodies the meaning of
Zionism.13 The metamorphoses of the university idea give evidence
of a gradual maturation processes amidst comprehensive if not tumultuous debate among advocates of various Zionist outlooks about the
right way to produce the Hebrew intellectual.14
The common point of departure in the dialogue among the transnational Jewish communities over the establishment of the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem was twofold: negation of the Halachic fundamental as the organizing factor of Jewish intellectual life and, as
a corollary of this principle, negation of the monopolistic supremacy
of Orthodox outlooks in the shaping of Jewish education. Concurrently,
Jewish scholars were increasingly concerned that the separate segments of Jewry were steadily pulling apart15 and the Jewish communities were worried about taking any step that might make suspect
their allegiance to their countries of residence. The solution that
Ahad Ha"am proposed was unication around the establishment of
a national research academy:
11

Simon Dubnow, 1953 (Hebrew), p. 11, emphasis in the original.

Ahad Ha"am (Asher Hirsch Ginsberg), 1947 (Hebrew), pp. 173186.
13
Ahad Ha"am to Weizmann, Aug. 12, 1918, and Sokolow to Weizmann, Aug.
21, 1918, Central Zionist Archives, L4/114.
14
Israel Kolatt, 1997, pp. 374.
15
Israel Abrahams, 1908.
12

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The only salvation of Jewry as a nation, whose continued existence is
hardly imaginable without a spiritual national center in Palestine [. . .]
in view of the close relations that already exist and are still developing between Palestine and the Diaspora lands, there can be no doubt
that such an academy in Jerusalem would rather quickly become the
very national spiritual authority, the very powerhouse, the lack of which
we feel so acutely.16

The main issue in the debate, which continued with various degrees
of intensity for more than four decades until the university was established in 1925, was whether and to what extent the new academic
institution in Palestine would inuence the Jewish communities or
vice versa. If the negation-of-exile idea was the dominant underlying
factor in the goals of the Zionist Movement, the movement presumably would have determined categorically that the university
should apply its inuence and direct its activities solely toward the
needs of the Yishuv. As such, it would strive to attract students and
scholars who could not gain admission to European higher-learning
institutes for reasons of anti-Semitism. What actually happened was
dierent: the application of the negation-of-exile idea at the university-to-be was championed by a minority only, whose demands were
rejected repeatedly. The main issue actually debated concerned the
intensity of the relationship between the exile and the national
enterprise in the view of the coalescence of a transnational social
space. Here the Zionist Movement discussed ways to integrate nonZionist scholars, scientists, and funders into the project, assuming
that the Movement would continue to maintain dominance over
these personalities and the Jewish communities.
The university idea was born in articles by Professor Zvi Hermann
Schapira in the newspaper Hamelitz in 1882, before Zionist settlement in Palestine began. The import of Schapiras proposal was the
establishment of a combined rabbinical seminary, university, and
institute of technology that would help to counteract the problems
of loss of Jewish identity, internal fragmentation, and the Jews uncertain place among the nations. The Jewish higher academy, Schapira
wrote, would tackle the abandonment of the moral messages that
had shaped the essence and the universal human mission of Jewishness
by unifying the nation around the establishment of a Jewish intellectual authority that the higher academy would represent. The rst
16

Ahad Ha"am 2000 (Hebrew), pp. 318320. Emphasis in the original.

the jewish transnational community

255

faculty, for examplethe Divine faculty, in Schapiras words, would

focus on training teachers and rabbis; its teachers would be chosen
by groups of rabbis and Maskilim (secular-Jewish intellectuals) from
all over the Diaspora. On this basis, the faculty would serve as a
unifying and binding spiritual authority for the settlements in Palestine
and the Jewish people at large.
Later on, the Democratic Praxis faction of the Zionist Movement17
took up a salient role in 1901. The leading gure in this activity
was Dr. Chaim Weizmann, whose heart and mind, as Jehuda
Reinharz argues, were totally devoted to the enterprise that he
viewed increasingly as a personal goal and the most important mission of Democratic Praxis: the establishment of the Jewish university.18 Weizmanns rst plan was to establish a two-part academic
institute, a technical segment in Europe and a Jewish studies segment in Palestine. This, he said, would achieve a synthesis between
Yavne and Europe. A year later, he copublished with Berthold
Feiwel and Martin Buber a pamphlet titled A High Jewish Academy,
which described the ravages of anti-Semitism and the vitiation of the
Jewish spirit that had been caused by the systematic and far-ranging
exclusion of Jewish students and scholars from institutes of higher
learning.19 In his keynote address at the XI Zionist Congress, in
Vienna on September 2, 1913, Weizmann unveiled his conception
of a university that would be established in Jerusalem and would
teach all subjects in Hebrew from the outset. Turning to our topic
of concern, he stressed the university project as the factor that would
lead to the fashioning of a new Jewa proud, upright Jew who, by
dint of his creativity, would inuence the Jews integration in the
Diaspora:
We will all sense the immense value of an intellectual center where
Jews will be able to study, teach, and perform research in a convenient atmosphere, with neither restrictions nor pressure from non-Jewish
cultures, amidst national life saturated with the will to create new Jewish values and connect our great heritage with the values of modernity.

17

Democratic Praxisan internal faction of the Zionist Movement that was organized in 1901 by Chaim Weizmann and Martin Buber, who presented the V Zionist
Congress with a demand to defend the principles of secular Zionism against the
religious circles that were seeking to exclude cultural activities from the Zionist
Organization framework.
18
Jehuda Reinharz, 1985.
19
Martin Buber, Berthold Feiwel, and Chaim Weizmann, 1968 (Hebrew).

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This synthesis will give rise to an authentic Jewish enlightenment that
will be much to the benet of the Jewish nation. Such a center will
give the Diaspora a great deal of inuence and, thereby, will enhance
the self-esteem of Jewish intellectuals [. . .]. The university is of unimaginable value for the Diaspora [. . .]. It will bring the new Jew, proud
and blessed with creativity, into being. This national enterprise will
strengthen the Jewish people immensely and reinvigorate its intellect.20

The Congress instructed the executive council of the Zionist Organization to establish a committee to begin preparations for the establishment of a Hebrew university in Jerusalem. David Wolsohn, the
Hibbat Tsiyyon association in Odessa, and Isaac Leib Goldberg made
an important nancial contribution toward the project. The money
was used to acquire Sir John Gray-Hills land and buildings on
Mount Scopus, which have been the core of the university ever since.
Concurrently, Weizmann began negotiations with Baron Edmond de
Rothschild, who had agreed to support the project. Rothschild
explained that his goal was the establishment of an elite research
institute in Jerusalem, akin to the Pasteur Institute or the Rockefeller
Institute, where a small group of Jewish scholars would work. Weizmann, who had initially conceived of a full-edged university, adopted
Rothschilds idea in the belief that Rothschilds institute would evolve
into a set of research institutes that would eventually become a
university.
In these early phases of the initiative, Weizmanns main strategy
for action was manifested in public eorts to establish a minimum
common denominator for the university: it should use Hebrew as its
language of instruction and be located in Jerusalem. We are willing to compromise on everything else, Weizmann informed Magnes.21
Seemingly, then, the Zionist Movement narrowed its goals with regard
to the university. However, Weizmanns approach was meant to create a model for the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth, i.e.,
a ramied network of branches in Jewish communities around the
globe that would organize on behalf of a shared conceptual and
institutional project and exert an administrative inuence on its development as it integrated into the process of Jewish national coalescence. As Weizmann explained:

20
Central Zionist Archives, Chaim Weizmann, Minutes of the Eleventh Congress
(Hebrew), pp. 300308.
21
Chaim Weizmann, 1913a, p. 204.

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257

Those to be chosen for these subcommittees should be people from

the worlds of science, statecraft, and so on, who are not Zionists but
who accept our basic principles, i.e., Hebrew and Jerusalem. The subcommittees shall prepare a plan and engage in initial propaganda
only from person to person at rst. For this purpose, their members
shall travel from town to town and act among those who take an interest in the enterprise. Afterwards, we will begin to establish the Hebrew
University Association. The Association will have chapters all over the
world; there will be a central committee that will build and own the
university. . . .22

The modus operandi described here is one that aims to establish a

Jewish commonwealthan act of communal transnational selforganization around an ontological vision that creates a nexus between
consensual groups of intellectuals and outlooks that wish to regulate
the main arenas of Jewish social lifeby means of a national university. Jewish intelligentsia circles in Russia criticized the model,
arguing in 1914 that by so acting the Zionists were striving to achieve
the negation of exile, i.e., to abandon Diaspora Jewry and disregard its needs. Afterall, they reasoned, the university would be an
integral part of the Zionist enterprise and, as such, would be at the
expense of Russian-Jewish students. An important member of this
group of critics was the historian Simon Dubnow. Dubnow, like
Weizmann, believed it important that the intended university in
Jerusalem serve the nation as a spiritual and cultural center. However,
he argued that this academic institution should be only one of two
centers of the Jewish national culture; a Jewish university in Europe
should be established as well. What is more, the Zionists should favor
this. Another critic, Vladimir (Zeev) Jabotinsky, came from the Zionist
Movement itself. Jabotinsky argued that the goal should be to establish an academic teaching institution that would not focus on research.
His outlook rejected the view of the university as a Jewish spiritual
center patterned after elite research institutes in other countries; he
settled for a rescue center for Jewish students of poor academic quality who would focus on teaching only. Jabotinsky commented on
Weizmanns aspirations in 1913:
Dr. Weizmann wants nothing but research institutes where the teachers will strive to win the Nobel Prizenot a school where they teach
students. I wrote a protest letter to the central committee of the Zionist

22

Chaim Weizmann, 1913b p. 206.

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Organization of Germany in Berlin, and I even remember one of its
paragraphs: It is clear to me, too, that were not yet able to create
a good university. So what? Lets start with a bad university. Youll
see that it will have as much national and educational value as a dozen
top-ight research institutes . . . I demanded that the institutes plan
be rejected and that the principle of a high academy for studenttrainees be established.23

This approach gained support among members of the small general

council of Zionist Organization, who considered the university plan
a takeover of the Zionist Movement by Ahad Ha"ams teachings.
Weizmann opposed Jabotinskys approach vehemently, dening it
as reductionist since it viewed Zionism as a movement that wishes
to march again on the soil of faith in miracles, a Zionism that exists
by the kindness of antisemitism. The concern embodied in Jabotinskys
views, which prescribed the establishment of a teaching university
that would open at once without a solid academic infrastructure, was
that even if this institution managed to come into being, its success
would cause the Zionist Movement severe long-term damage by driving a wedge between Zionists and the bourgeoisie. The Jewish
intelligentsia and moneyed class would not soon support such a university that, from its outset, seeks to deal the bourgeoisie a stunning
blow. Afterwards, the university would be rejected by the others,
cognizant Jews who would realize that a Jewish university geared
for teaching only is not serious. Weizmann dismissed the idea that
it was possible to create quickly a suitable corpus of academic literature in Hebrew, on the basis of which academic personnel who
would function as a scholarly community could be recruited. In
Weizmanns opinion, it was important to prefer the research-institute
method and its kernel, the principle of academic excellence. Imagine
just one possibility that is denitely not utopian, Weizmann urged.
Imagine that one of the researchers at the institute wins a Nobel
Prize or, at the very least, that the works of the research institute
gain international recognition and its journal is found in important
academic centers.24
A third group that formed as an outgrowth of ambivalence toward
the university idea was composed of elements in the Zionist Labor
Movement. These Zionists regarded Weizmanns plan as part of a
23

Moshe Bella, ed., 1986, 40 (Hebrew).

Chaim Weizmann, Writings of Chaim Weizmann, First Series, Letters, Jerusalem,
19691979 (Hebrew) p. 362.
24

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259

zero-sum game, in which the eorts and resources to be invested in

promoting the academic project would be subtracted from the urgent
needs of agricultural settlement, land and labor. From this perspective, establishing a university should be the last step for the national
movement to take, not the rst. The rst step is the establishment
of the foundation: Jewish productivization that leads to productive
occupations and not the creation of a jobless academic proletariat.
Until the foundation is ready, there is no point in building the roof.
Thus, in 1914, Joseph Hayyim Brenner came to a rm conclusion:
those who promote the university idea fail to understand the nationbuilding processes. The Jewish people has no assured territorial base
to which it maintained a relationship of labor and a profound emotional connection. It also lacks a unifying language that its children
and teachers speak, thus, in his words, such a people has no right
even to think about a university.25
Others in the Zionist Labor Movement tended to favor the university idea in view of initiatives for the opening of non-Jewish institutes of higher learning in Palestine. They also considered it untenable
to base the whole idea of the university solely on Ahad Ha"ams
stance and believed in the existence of a direct relationship between
a university and national life. Aaron David Gordon, a leading Labor
Movement intellectual, considered intellectual eort an arm-in-arm
partner of physical eort and argued that the Zionist Movement
should strive to promote settlement and scholarship concurrently.
There is nothing about the national renaissance idea, he said, that
should exclude persons of higher learning.
Yet, the conventional wisdom viewed the university initiative as
an idea ahead of its time that would not serve the cause of consolidating the Jewish working class in Palestine. The fourth convention
of Po"alei Tsiyyon, held shortly before the XI Zionist Congress, took
an explicit resolution against the establishment of a university:
The economic and cultural conditions and the situation of the Jewish
population in Palestine today do not suce as a basis for a Hebrew
university in Palestine. This plan would divert the Zionist Organization
from its direct economic and cultural functions. The Congress shall
assure the establishment of public, vocational, and agricultural schools
in Palestine.26
25
26

Bar-Yohai [ Joseph Hayyim Brenner], 1914.

Ha-ahdut, D:4445, Sept. 26, 1913.

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During the seven years between the cornerstone-laying ceremony of

the Hebrew University ( July 1918) and the dedication of the university (April 1925), the Zionist Organization under Weizmann made
perceptible eorts to promote the idea of the university on the basis
of a Zionist claim to control and exclusivity in encouraging the project.27 The ocial Zionist view, championed by Weizmann, was that
just as the only proper organizational setting for control of raising
and investing capital in Palestine would operate under the auspices
of the World Zionist OrganizationKeren Hayesod, the foundation fundso too should a Keren ha-Universita, a university
fund, be in charge of the university. Louis D. Brandeis, the charismatic leader of the American Zionists, challenged this view by arguing that settlement in Palestine should be promoted on an economic
and business basis. Thus, he favored the decentralization of the
Zionist public funding system. Magnes rejected the belief that Keren
Hayesod should be an inclusive and integral fund that would receive
donations (voluntary taxes) for all sorts of Jewish public expenditures
in Palestine. Instead, he said, there should be two types of entities
that are structurally and organizationally separate: those engaging in
fundraising for expenses that had no expectancy of nancial return
and those dealing with investments that might generate prots. The
tension between the two outlooksdecentralization of investments
coupled with direct management and control, and centralization of
capital in the hands of the Zionist Movementled to a visible rift
between Brandeis circle and the WZO after the Zionist Organization
established Keren Hayesod in July 1920 as a central fundraising
mechanism for immigration and settlement. This action prompted
Brandeis to suspend the transfer of funds to the Zionist enterprise
and to secede from the Zionist Organization.28 The historian, Yigal
Elam, interprets Brandeis views in the following way: It would be
no overstatement to say that Brandeis belonged, both ideologically
and practically, more to the world of American non-Zionist circles
than to that of European Zionism.29
During the period preceding the establishment of the university,
non-Zionist Jews viewed their participation in the project with growing
27

Hagit Lavsky, 1997, pp. 120159 (Hebrew).

Jacob Metzer, 1978 (Hebrew). See especially Chapter 5, The Struggle for the
Nature of Keren Hayesod.
29
Yigal Elam, 1980 (Hebrew), p. 12.
28

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261

disapproval. This was reected in the wish of the Zionist Organization to organize a world conference of scholars in early 1920 as an
external, pan-Jewish consulting mechanism for the university. The
initiative was an abject failure; no such conference was convened.
Though, notably the group of scholars whom the Zionist Organization
contacted included leading personalities in academic knowledge and
creative endeavor in the world: the physicist Albert Einstein, the
mathematician Edmund Landau of Goettingen, the physicist Leonard
Salomon Ornstein of Utrecht, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud of
Berlin, the philosopher Henri Louis Bergson of Paris, the Orientalists
Ignaz Goldziher of Budapest, and Eugen Mittwoch of Berlin.
The failure was mainly in respect to budgeting and funding the
university when the Keren ha-Universita was established under Shlomo
Ginsberg, Ahad Ha"ams son, under the auspices of Keren Hayesod.
In March 1921, a delegation composed of Albert Einstein and Shlomo
Ginsberg went to the United States to raise fundsthis initiative was
unsuccessful. At that very time, foundations not controlled by the
Zionist Movement, such as that of the American Jewish Physicians
Committee, did rather well in fundraising. What looked like a schism
between the Zionist Organization and the non-Zionists, however,
was in fact a matter of tough negotiations over the regulation, control, and denition of shared codes for the participants in the establishment of the Hebrew University. In one of the climaxes of the
struggle against the dominance of the Zionist Movement, Louis
Marshall (18561929), an American Jewish leader and one of the
most important donors to the university, stated, It certainly will not
help matters to have the idea go forth that the Hebrew University
at Jerusalem is to be a tail to the Zionist kite; in other words, that
it is to be controlled by the Zionist Organization. If that should be
the result, it would be far better if the University had never been
created.30
I would argue that Chaim Weizmann, who led the struggle for
the establishment of Keren Hayesod, adopted Brandeis basic stance
in the case of the establishment of the Hebrew University, i.e., Jewish
communities that helped to fund the university would maintain direct
and intensive control over the universitys actions and development.

30
Marshall to Weizmann, May 28, 1926, in Louis Marshall, 1957, Vol. 1,
pp. 75960. This quotation can be found also in Arthur A. Goren (1996), p. 215.

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By implication, the Zionist Organization was willing to waive its

dominant status in regard to the development of an important enterprise of national culture. Thus, to circumvent the ontological crisis
that had built up around the founding of the university, Weizmann
(during his rst trip to the United States, in the spring of 1921)
established the principle that would govern the management of the
universitys nances: the management of the university and Keren
ha-Universita would be entrusted to a governing body composed
of representatives of the Zionist Organization and the funders, with
the latter having representation commensurate with the size of their
donations.31 When this step proved unsuccessful, eorts to raise personal donations for specic projects began. Due to this course of
action, the funders and the professionals quickly seized the initiative
and the non-Zionists, academics, and others were given a piece of
the action. Throughout these maneuverings, however, an eort was
made to leave room for the Zionist Organization as a senior partner alongside other senior partners. For example, the Institute of
Microbiology was established on the basis of fundraising by the
American Jewish Physicians Committee, but the agreement for its
establishment stated that the Zionist Organization and the Committee
members would be equally represented.32
Institutionalizing the Supracommunal Partnership in the Hebrew University
The person who did the most to clear away the undergrowth of tension between the American Jewish mainstream and the Zionist
Movement was Dr. Judah Leib Magnes, who moved to Palestine in
1923 and devoted most of his activity from then on to the establishment and consolidation of the Hebrew University.33 The importance of Magnes activity during the formative period of the university
lay in his ability to provide a crucial channel of communication
between the Zionist Movement and the non-Zionist American Jewish
leadership. Evidence of this surfaces in remarks made by Dr. Gershom
Scholem, one of the most important academic participants in the
establishment of the Institute of Jewish Studies:
31

Lavsky, p. 155.
Provisional Articles of the American Jewish Physicians Committee, May 1,
1921, Central Zionist Archives, A48/57.
33
Norman Bentwich, 1954.
32

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263

Several inuential people among the leaders of American Jewry admired

Magnes, with all his metamorphoses, as a man of strong character and
rectitude. They included Louis Marshall and his wife (Magnes sisterin-law) and Felix Warburg and his wife. Early in the spring of 1924,
the Warburgs visited Palestine to see what was happening there and
did so under the guidance of Magnes, whose views they often expressed.
They also took an interest in the university and visited the library,
escorted by Magnes, to see what was there and to hear what Bergman
had to say about our problems and woes. Warburg is from a banking family in Hamburg that observed the Jewish tradition at home,
and he and his wife have open minds about Jewish causes even though
they do not adhere to Zionism. As they left the country, they handed
Magnes a sealed envelope and said nothing about its contents. Inside
was a check for $100,000, a very respectable sum at the time. This
donation, meant for the establishment of the Institute of Jewish Studies
at the university, set the immovable stone in motion because when the
matter became known, three more good Jews opened their wallets and
the dream began to become true. A conference of renowned gures
in Jewish studies and their representatives from various countries was
held in London over the summer; its purpose was to make the rst
appointments at the institute and to prepare for its inauguration in
late 1924. One of the invitees was Hugo Bergman. Due to the special circumstances and the conditions of the time, Magnes became a
central personality. It was clear to Weizmann and his comrades that
after the destruction of Russian Jewry the institute could be funded
only by circles that favor the building of Palestine but do not identify
with the Zionist idea, and Magnes is a person who has inroads with
and inuence on these circles. (For several years, there was no Friends
of the Hebrew University association in the U.S. because they relied
on Magnes correspondence with the deep pockets).34

Magnes historical role as a provisional broker remained equally obvious after 1935 when he was forced out of the chancellorship of the
Hebrew University and into the largely ceremonial post of president.
It transpired then that the cooperation between Zionists and nonZionists was not fated to retreat, decline, and atrophy, since the
fundraising that had been based on Magnes personal connections
was now replaced by the institutionalized activity of a ramied network of societies of FHU around the world. The founder of the network was S. Z. Schocken, who chaired the Executive Committee of
the University. Our purpose in saying this is to show that a transition took place from the formative stage, in which a Jewish

34

Gershom Scholem, 1982 (Hebrew), pp. 219220.

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Commonwealth model coalesced around temporary non-Zionist

involvement of a totally personal nature, to a degree of permanent,
institutionalized, and organized supracommunal cohesion and purposefulness.
One of the most signicant parts of Magnes involvement was his
success in establishing the Institute of Jewish Studies in December
1924, in which three professors served, as a complement to the
Institute of Chemistry under Professor Andor Fodor and the Institute
of Microbiology under Professor Saul Adler. In fact, Magnes functioned as the representative inspector, so to speak, of a Diaspora
that ruled out the establishment of a teaching university onlyan
act that, in their opinion, might be adverse to the spiritual tradition
of the Jewish people. Instead, the Diaspora and Magnes favored the
foundation of a series of research institutes, even when this approach
clashed with the views of the Zionist Movement and public opinion
in Jewish Palestine, which demanded exclusive priority for the immediate needs of the Yishuv or of students in distress in Europe. A
comment in Universitys 1939 Yearbook illustrates the point:
From the outset, there was a large stream in Jewish public opinion
that opposed the idea [of developing a research university]. Those who
felt this way demanded mainly a Hebrew university that would have
as many faculties as possible, in which practical vocational schooling
in all elds of scholarship would be provided, even if this meant
sacricing the development of scholarly research. They felt that the
practical needs of Jewish students were more important. The thought
of a scientically mediocre or inferior university did not frighten them.
They were willing to leave the attainment of a high level of scholarship and research to a later period of development. However, the executive and the teaching faculty of the university refused to allow the
rapid expansion of the institute to take precedence over scholarly work,
and most of the universitys friends and well-wishers around the world
shared this view.35

The strong cooperative relationship between the founders of the

national project and non-Zionist personalities was reected in the
membership of the Executive Committee, the Board of Governors,
and the Academic Council in 1926.36 The list indicates that the
35
The Hebrew University of JerusalemIts Formation and Situation, Jerusalem, 1939
(Hebrew), pp. 45.
36
Members of the Board of Governors: Dr. ___ Ad.er, New York; Prof. Ahermann,
{} Berlin; Prof. Leonard Salomon Ornstein, Utrecht; Ahad Ha"am (Asher Zvi

the jewish transnational community

265

permanent institutions of the university absorbed members of the

Jewish scholarly elite in Europe, auent American Jews who could
support the university economically, and Zionist representatives.37 As
Norman Bentwich stated, The World Zionist Organization made a
small contribution to the library, but for the rest was content to
leave the support of the University to the non-Zionists.38
This reects a main tenet in the existence of a diaspora that coalesces in reference to the need to form long-term transnational institutional systems for activity around a code of common themes:
Consent and unanimity among the participants in these systems are
not necessary. In the case of the Hebrew University, the three main
groups that took part in establishing the institutionEuropean-Jewish
scholars, American-Jewish funders, and Zionistscoexisted amidst
acute tension and, occasionally, crisis in regard to determining the
proper model on which to base their university. Unlike the premodern (Medieval) diaspora model, which lacked an ocial and institutionalized center, the modern paradigm ostensibly had one obvious center, Jerusalem. However, this center was unable to set binding
rules for the behavior of Diaspora Jews; it oered itself as a setting
for dialogue that lacked unchallengeable authority.
The demand that the initiator of the project, the Zionist Organization
under Weizmann, limit its inuence over the new university found
Ginsberg); Prof. Albert Einstein, Berlin; Dr. Martin Buber, Hafenheim {}: Chaim
Nachman Bialik, Tel Aviv; Norman Bentwich, Jerusalem; Prof. Jacques Salomon
Hadamard, Paris; Prof. Josef Horowitz, Frankfurt and Jerusalem; Chief Rabbi Joseph
Hertz, London; Dr. Chaim Weizmann, London; Felix Warburg, New York; Prof.
Zvi (Hirsch) Peretz Chajes, Vienna; Dr. Y. {??} Liebman, New York; Prof. Edmund
Landau, Goettingen; Dr. Judah Leib Magnes, Jerusalem; Sir Alfred Mond, London;
Judge Julian Mack, New York; Nahum Sokolow, London, Sir Herbert Samuel,
London; Harry Sacker, Jerusalem; Prof. Sigmund Freud, Vienna; James D. Rothschild,
London, Dr. Nathan Rateno, {??} New York; and Dr. Max Schlesinger, The
Hague.
Members of the Provisional Academic Council:
Prof. Albert Einstein, Berlin (chair), Prof. Leonard Salomon Ornstein, Utrecht;
Prof. Aherman, {} Berlin; Prof. Jacob Nahum Epstein, Jerusalem; Dr. Martin Buber,
Hafenheim; Prof. Paris; Prof. Hadamard, Paris; Prof. Josef Horowitz, Frankfurt and
Jerusalem; Dr. Chaim Weizmann, London; Prof. Otto Warburg, Tel Aviv, Prof.
Hirsch) Perez Chajes, Vienna; Prof. Edmund Landau, Goettingen; Prof. Andor
Fodor, Jerusalem; Prof. Sigmund Freud, Vienna; Prof. Joseph Klausner, Jerusalem;
Prof. Israel Caligaler, Jerusalem; Prof. Shmuel Klein, Jerusalem.
Based on 1935/1936 Yearbook, pp. 67 (Hebrew).
37
Felix Warburg and his wife (New York), Solomon Rosenbloom (Pittsburgh),
and Philip Wattenberg (New York).
38
Norman Bentwich, 1961 p. 137.

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its main expression in the appointment of Magnes as Chancellor of

the university, a post that conferred the extensive powers of a president and a rector, and in the debate that took shape between Magnes
and Weizmann at the rst meeting of the Executive Committee after
the grand inaugural ceremony.39 The rst decision of the Executive
was that the Zionist Organization hand over the management of
university aairs to a Special Executive Committee that would be
totally independent of the Organization. Its second action was a
statement made by Weizmann and Sokolow that they would obtain
formal conrmation that the Zionist Organization would transfer to
the Executive Committee all university property that has belonged
to the [Zionist] Organization and all its rights within the university.
The third step involved the consolidation of the universitys nancial
aairs. Weizmann proposed that the Jewish Agency be the source
of support for the academic institute, by means of a substantial permanent donation from its funds, much like the British governments
assistance to British universities. In return, [T]he university constitution shall be put in order with the participation of the Jewish
Agency, and representatives of the Agency shall be given an appropriate place on the Executive Committee of the university. This will
also assure some permanence in the universitys labor aairs.40
Magnes responded to this by vehemently opposing the notion of the
universitys becoming a quasi-governmental institution, due to the
concern that this would infringe upon freedom of scholarship. Dr.
David Eder, a member of the Zionist Executive and chair of the
Zionist Organization in Britain, emphasized to the Board of Governors
the direction in which he though the Hebrew University should
develop:
The Hebrew University should not issue a large number of publications . . . The voice of the teachermore than of the peopleshould
be heard there. The question of teaching should be dealt with cautiously. In any event, the Board of Governors should tread carefully
in the matter of diplomas; otherwise, well easily nd ourselves with a
university of diplomas.41
The Executive Committee of the university held its rst meeting on April 12,
1925, in Tel Aviv, with the participation of Ahad Ha"am, C.N. Bialik, Chaim
Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow, and Shlomo Ginsberg. The meeting continued in
Europe on April 21, 1925, with Felix Warburg and Magnes in attendance.
40
Archives of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, minutes of rst meeting of
the Hebrew University Executive Committee, April 12, 1925.
41
Archives of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, minutes of Third Assembly
39

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267

A key personality in establishing the primacy of research over teaching was Professor Albert Einstein, the Jewish-German physicist and
1922 Nobel Prize laureate who, in his public activity, became closely
associated with the founding of the Hebrew University.42 Einstein,
as noted, had participated in fundraising campaigns for the university under Zionist Organization auspices, was a member of the rst
Board of Governors of the university, and chaired the Academic
Council, which was made up of Jewish scholars from all over the
world. The duties of the council were to supervise academic sta
appointments and monitor the appointees research works until they
could attain a level of scholarship that would allow the university to
establish an autonomous senate. Einstein regarded the modern university as a place where the universality of the human intellect would
crystallize and the establishment of a Hebrew university as a basis
on which an exalted spiritual center of the Jewish people would be
built.43 With this in mind, he insisted that research be developed at
the expense of teaching. This should be done, he said, by establishing research institutes that followed the German pattern, in which
the institute head is in charge of developing junior sta who will
focus on theoretical, as opposed to applied, research goals. The
appropriate supervisors of these processes, he said, are Jewish academics in the Diaspora. By so proposing, Einstein criticized the involvement of American Jewish funders, which he considered dangerous.
He sought to neutralize their inuence out of concern that they
would favor a low-quality university. These views led to acute crises
between Einstein and the Zionist and American representatives, resulting in Einsteins resignation in 1928 from active involvement in the
universitys aairs. He retracted his resignation ve years later, when
his scathing criticism of the behavior of the university under Magnes
management led to the establishment of the Research Committee,
the conclusions made by this committee set the university on new
executive and academic foundations.44
The worldview that saw a linkage among the Diaspora Jewish
communities at large came into clear focus in the report of the

of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, August 13,

1926, in London.
42
Zeev Rosenkranz, 1997, pp. 386394 (Hebrew).
43
Albert Einstein, 1925.
44
Uri Cohen, forthcoming.

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Hebrew University Survey Committee, which the Board of Governors

appointed in October 1933.45 Formally, the committee was to propose structural reforms for the university so that the institution could
better absorb Jewish scientists and scholars who had been ousted
from German universities.46 The report pointed to the pattern that
had developed during the universitys seven years of existence to that
time: Jewish communities had become the dominant players in the
institutions main elds of activity, with seventy-seven scholars active
in twelve research institutes, schools, and departments.47 As for the
economic aspect, American Jews had been the most conspicuous subventioners of the university from the time it was founded. Their
22,987 in pledges accounted for 65 percent of the 35,689 total
revenue in the 1933/34 academic year, even though the Great
Depression was in full swing. This manner of economic behavior
had been typical of American Jews since Magnes took up the chancellorship of the university. However, the relationship was not conned
to the nancial domain only; it expanded to include one of the basic
principles of the term Jewish Commonwealthan eagerness to
propose a common denominator between Zionist and non-Zionists.
Thus, the committee report stated in respect to the Institute of Jewish
Studies:
Zionists may dier from non-Zionists, Zionists may dier among themselves on the necessity or even the desirability of a University in
Palestine; there can, however, be only one view of the dire need of a
House of Jewish Learning on the soil from which it sprang. All the
other departments of the Hebrew University are primarily interested
in the needs of the country. The Institute of Jewish Studies attempts
to satisfy the demand of All-Israel.48

The concept of All-Israel at the Hebrew University took on nal

contours with the formation of societies of FHU, which assumed

45
The members of the committee were Philip Hartog, Dr. Louis Ginsberg, and
Redclie N. Salaman, who spent November 1933January 1934 in Jerusalem.
46
Herbert Parzen, 1974.
47
Institute of Jewish Studies; School of Oriental Studies; Institute of General
Humanities; Institute of Mathematics; Institute of Physics; Department of Biological
and Colloidal Chemistry; Laboratories of Inorganic and Applied Chemistry; Institute
of Palestine Natural History; Department of Parasitology; Department of Hygiene
and Bacteriology; Library; Extension Department of Music.
48
Hartog Philip, Louis Ginsberg, Redclie N. Salaman, Report of the Survey Committee
of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1934, p. 16.

the jewish transnational community

269

responsibility for the universitys existence and upkeep.49 In fact, the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem is unique among universities in that
it was able to exist during its rst decades due to the intense activities of transnational communities, i.e., with no support from the sovereign in its territory, the British Mandate, and without meaningful
economic support from the population among which it operated, the
Yishuv. Most universities base their budgets on revenues from governments and civil authorities where they are located, donations from
industrial enterprises, tuition fees, and local societies of friends. The
Hebrew University, in contrast, had negligible revenues from these
sources and sustained itself on donations from societies of friends
in the Jewish communities around the world.50
The societies of friends that these communities established raised
funds for the university in annual campaigns and information and
propaganda rallies. Some sponsored specic academic projects, resulting in a regular ow of information between them and the university. The rst societies predated the university. In 1921, the American
Jewish Physicians Committee was formed to raise donations for the
establishment of a medical school.51 In Poland, a Society of Friends
was established in 1922 and had 850 members in Warsaw alone by
1925. By the time Polish Jewry was liquidated, thirty societies were
active in Poland. In Australia, leaders of all factions in the Jewish
campZionists, Bundists,52 Communists, non-Zionists, and antiZioniststook part in festivities related to the tenth anniversary of
the university (1935), and even notable anti-Zionists who refused to
49
In 1939, permanent societies of Friends were active in Austria, Australia, Britain,
Estonia, South Africa, Palestine, the U.S. and Canada, Belgium, Germany, Denmark,
the Netherlands, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Luxembourg, Latvia, Lithuania, Egypt,
Norway, China, Finland, Czechoslovakia, France, Romania, Sweden, and Switzerland.
50
Ruth Klinov, forthcoming.
51
D. Kalinski, March 27, 1925.
52
The Bund, the rst Jewish labor party, was established in Vilna in 1897 as
a general alliance of Jewish workers in Russia, Poland, and Lithuania. The Bund
ercely opposed the Zionist ideology and regarded Yiddish as the only national language of the Jews. Thus, it vehemently rejected Hebrew language and culture. The
party in Russia was deactivated after the Bolshevik Revolution and some of its
members joined the Communist Party. In independent interwar Poland, however,
the Bund remained active and had an inuence on Jewish community life. Most
Bundists perished in the Holocaust, but the party continued to oppose the Zionist
Movement even afterwards. After the State of Israel was proclaimed, a Bund
International Coordinating Committee stated that the establishment of statehood
posed a grave danger to World Jewry. For expanded discussion, see Yoav Peled,
1989.

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join the Society of Friends, let alone the Zionist Organization, made
signicant donations. The exibility of the transnational communal
network in fundraising was demonstrated in the 1930s, when donations from South African Jewry increased steadily while the United
States was mired in economic crisis. In the U.S., the presidents of
the Society of Friends were important community personalities and
the Society became a mainstream mechanism that projected a message of high social status. The rst president of the American Society
of Friends was Felix Warburg, a leading communal gure in American
Jewry during the interwar years.53 The main channel of regular support from North America was a permanent annual allocation to the
Friends from community chests and welfare funds in various towns,
augmented by legacies and special gifts.54 In Britain, an integration
of eorts occurred due to the presence of Dr. Chaim Weizmann in
London; Sir Herbert Samuel; the rst British High Commissioner
for Palestine; and Dr. David Eder, an activist in the Zionist Organization of Britain: With the leadership of these three, the English
Friends were able to engage the support of all sections of the community, whether or not they were Zionists, whether Conservative or
Liberal in their synagogue.55 For many years (19261936), the
involvement of the English Friends was not based on meaningful
nancial donations; their main contribution was in strengthening
intracommunal relations by sponsoring joint discussions on the topic
of the Hebrew University. Thus, they organized lectures and encounters for teachers and emissaries from the university who visited
London, collected books, and subventioned several scholarships.56
Bernard Cherrick, director of the Hebrew University Department of
Organization and Information in the 1940s and 1950sa oce that
had been established to formalize relations with the Diasporanoted
the steadily rising scale of the Societys activity, especially after Hitlers
accession to power in Germany in 1933:
53
Warburgs successors were Dr. Abraham Rosenbach, a famous bibliophile and
bibliographer; Dr. Israel Wechsler, an eminent neurologist; Dr George Wise, subsequently chairman of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University; Daniel
Ross, a leading lawyer in New York; and, since 1959, Philip Klutznik, former Grand
President of the Order of Bnai Brith. The Canadian Friends have had one president since the formation of their society, Allan Bronfman.
54
Eliyahu Honig, forthcoming.
55
Norman Bentwich, 1961, p. 138.
56
Archives of the Hebrew University, le 47, England: English Friends of the
University (192530).

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271

From America, the idea of societies of Friends spread to all parts of

the world. During the course of the years, active and powerful groups
have come into existence. In Israel itself, in England, in the various
countries of the British Commonwealth, in all the dierent countries
of Europe, and indeed in almost every place where there is a Jewish
Community.57

The last issue in this discussion concerns the symbolic interrelations,

ideological premises and core symbols that surround the interaction
between the Diaspora Jewish communities and the Hebrew University.
What were the limits of authority and the responsibilities regarding
the establishment of the transnational Jewish collective identity that
legitimized the dominant role of the Jewish elite in the national academic project? In other words, what were the central origins of the
institutionalization of the vision around the new university which was
expressed in metaphysical terms and often described as of universal
signicance? The source of information in this part of the study is
The New Palestine, a weekly journal published in New York by the
Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) on March 27, 1925, under
the editorship of ZOA secretary Meyer W. Weisgal. The festive edition, published a few days before the inaugural ceremony of the
Hebrew University (April 1, 1925), carried many congratulatory advertisements and contributions by ninety-ve personalities, most of whom
were Jews who had taken part in establishing the university. Their
writings illuminate their ideological attitude toward the institution.
Felix M. Warburg, one of the universitys most important donors,
titled his article From Sura to ScopusThe Rebirth of the Jewish
Genius. Warburg emphasized the connection between the new university on Mount Scopus and institutes of higher schooling in the
distant past in Palestine, Babylonia, and throughout the Jewish
Diaspora. The erstwhile institutes, he wrote, integrated diverse disciplines into their teaching of Judaismgeography, history, and natural sciencesthat required prociency in mathematics, astronomy,
and foreign languages. Throughout the national dispersion, these
institutions continued to function but focused on Jewish studies only.
Now that the Jews are returning to the Holy Land, and in view of the
barriers that anti-Semitism was erecting against Jews access to higher
schooling in Europe, the Jewish people had to establish a university

57

Bernard Cherrick, 1950, p. 179.

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of its own. Warburg continued with an emphatically phrased categorical question: And what more natural than that Palestine, to
which many eyes were looking with longing, should be chosen as
the seat of this institution? Continuing, Warburg asserted that the
Hebrew University would develop modern disciplines that would further the Jewish settlement eort and benet the entire Middle East.
The eorts to establish the university are rooted in the ancient Jewish
tradition of fostering intellectual excellence, an inseparable part of
the self-perception of the Jewish Diaspora. This tradition, in turn,
will lead to a general unity of humankind that overarches all dierences
among religions and beliefs. [I]s it too much to hope that in these
sacred and solemn surroundings, and on the high plane of scholarship, Jew, Christian, Moslem and men of any other faith with high
and noble purpose may again meet, clasp hands and exchange ideas
to the glory of God and the betterment of man?58
Max Heller, a leading American Reform rabbi, described another
task that the Diaspora imposed on the Hebrew University. It derived
from the national settlement venture in Palestine which would lead
to the normalization of Jewish occupational life, largely shaped in
the Polish or Romanian Diaspora due to forced ghettoization. The
rst task of the national project, according to Heller, was to narrow
the gaps among geographically and culturally distinct Jewish centers
by means of a melting pot, i.e., by re-creating a pan-Jewish unity
of the sort being achieved by American Jewry, among whom distinctions were steadily disappearing. The national home should rise
to a leading position in Jewish religious life vis--vis the entire world
by adapting Judaism to the conditions of modernity and rationalism. This would also present the world with a national entity that
derived its nourishment from the spirit of universalism. The mission
would be accomplished by means of our university in Jerusalem,
which would grow not only around teaching disciplines but also
around a cluster of giant souls. The university should not become
a magnet for Jews who had been rejected by the Diaspora, those
who were being persecuted; it should attract only chosen spirits,
people such as Einstein, who had attained a level of global leadership without abandoning their Jewish loyalties. Only thus will the
university become a spiritual temple-center to the Jewish world,

58

Felix M. Warburg, 1925, p. 291.

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273

the true Zion from which shall go forth the law.59 Furthermore, by
becoming a repository of Jewish creative endeavor, the Hebrew
University would be a role model. The generation that endured
World War I saw how university professors had enlisted in support
of militaristic aggression; the Jewish national university, in contrast,
would be a place that preaches peace.
Albert Einstein, like most contributors to the journal, oered an
inclusive view that linked enlightenment and modernity with a university that embodies these values. On this basis, he wrote from a
point of departure that justies Jewish nationhood in view of the
intolerance, repression, and exclusion of Jews across Europe. The
main imperatives of the Jewish university, he said, were to avoid
restrictions in the admission of students and to grant its teachers
total academic freedom. By so doing, it would create a unique pattern that stems from the natural inclinations of the Jew, who has
always, without exception at any time in history, given education
primacy over all other goals.60 The main theme, cited by the contributors time and again, was an attitude of inclusive responsibility
for the institution and a demand, largely Utopian, that the new university be regarded as a comprehensive and a dramatic step that
transcends the establishment of a small and modest academic institution in a settlement with a population of 120,000 in Jerusalem in
1925 as against 63,000 in 1922, of whom 34,000 were Jews.61
Conclusion
I would like to argue that, contrary to what may be thought, the
Societies of Friends are not fundamentally an economic enterprise
designed to raise funds for the Hebrew University. The material
aspect is important in their activity, but the main aspect is an act
of social mingling meant to encourage regular and long-term transnational interaction among members of a diaspora who wish to participate in establishing and conrming power relations between
themselves and a nation-building processes that focuses on the resettlement of the ancient homeland. This is done primarily by establishing

59
60
61

Max Heller, 1925, p. 292.

Albert Einstein, 1925b, p. 294.
Gershon Swit, p. 43.

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basic attitudes in regards to a shared vision. The result was a modern Jewish rendering of the Jewish experience. It is tting in this
context to paraphrase a remark by the anthropologist Cliord Geertz:
it is a story that these Jews tell themselves about themselves by means
of a web of rituals and texts that is played out around the Societies
of Friends in their relations with the Jewish university in Jerusalem.62
The process of building a collective identity among dispersed Jewish
communities around the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has continued very successfully to this day, more than fty years after the
State of Israel was established. The Hebrew University describes itself
in its publications as the University of the Jewish People.63 Culturally
symbolic self-denitions of Diaspora have become institutionalized
and, however imaginary they may be, they have developed loyalties
around a shared network that provides patterns for a cultural platform and ethnic solidarity. Both outcomes, the platform and the solidarity, occupy an identiable space of their own that, in essence, is
not derived from the roots of identication with religious fundamentals but is rather based on ethnic components of the individual
or group identity.64 The success of the transnational model that has
evolved around the Societies of Friends of the Hebrew University
lies in its great exibility. A exibility which involves the intertwining of primeval components of Jewish identity, now being rebuilt, of
universal and civil components, and of the latter two with perpetual tension vis--vis the modern nation-state. Thus, the present discussion sheds light on an outlook that contrasts with the view of the
modern way of life as an unadulterated challenge to the Gemeinschaft,
the community, that erodes the social fabric by weakening group
loyalties and encouraging an individualistic, bottom-line approach
that focuses on facts and strives for ruthless and impersonal eciency.65
The analysis above indicates that the modern term worldwide
commonwealth of the Jewish people concerns, at least partly, the
structuring of a social space on the basis of the transnational communityexible, voluntary, ethical, and anti-hierarchicin which
components that help to dene the identity and singularity of dispersed

62
63
64
65

Cliord Geertz, 1973.

Arye Dayan, 2000, pp. 2021 (Hebrew).
Anthony Smith, 1981.
Toennies Ferdinand, 1963; orig. 1887.

the jewish transnational community

275

Jewish communities coexist. This social space has assimilated components of the traditional religious Jewish identity while adopting
new components that solidied in view of the signicant changes
that modernization has ordained. The self-organization of the modern Jewish commonwealth is leading to the formation of a network of relationships that lies somewhere between diaspora and
transnational community, in a zone that I wish to term a civilizational reality space. By this I mean the formation of an array
of institutions and intensive debates around unifying key issues shows
that, beyond the fragmentation and contrasts amidst which the Jewish
Diaspora communities function, the persistent functioning of transnational support systems powered by a shared ontological vision gives
evidence of combinations, some new, that become possible with the
assistance of dialogue in a diverse and supranational paradigm.
As we examined the establishment of the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem in 1925, we argued that a transnational social space had
been established. Within this space, Jewish communities and the
Zionist Movement interacted on the basis of give-and-take, coalitions, and crises so frequent that the university that came into being
there seemed at rst to have been built not on the basis of a logical process but in accordance with whatever circumstances and possibilities were available. However, two basic models lay at the focus
of the exchange and the polemics between the sides: a university
for the Jews and Jewish university. Viewing the matter from this
point of departure, one might say that the crux of tension concerned
the relative statuses of research and teaching at the university. As it
turned out, however, the intensive involvement of the Jewish communities, most of which were non-Zionist, led to the establishment
of a national academic institution that, at the beginning of its career,
considered it its main mission to express the unity of the Zionist
Movement and to symbolize the wish to view the Jewish university
as an idea that creates a spiritual center of all of Jewry.
The focus of such an orientation is the establishment of a shared
collective identity that concerns itself with evaluating a specic institutional arena and nding ways to behave and to apportion resources
in it. The institutional arena of the Hebrew University, however,
contains more than this. It emphasizes the primacy of the fundamental of inclusion in the Diaspora Jewish community, by means of
exible, in/out demarcation lines of cooperation, over fundamentals
of exclusion. This primacy of inclusion, however, is operative only

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when based on transcendental visions that emphasize the basic tension between a given world order and a transcendental order that
aspires to establish a new type of social elite. The elite in question
here is composed of the scholars and scientists at a Jewish universityan elite that is expected to function on the basis of the model
of a central social and cultural order for the formation of the modern Jewish collective identity.

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CONTEMPORARY DILEMMAS OF IDENTITY:

ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA
Eliezer Ben-Rafael
Jews more easily say that they are not religious than that they have no
religion; The religion that they do not have is necessarily the Jewish one,
and if it is another one, that means they are not Jewish.

Are Jews today still the carriers of a single collective identity and do
they still constitute a single people? This two-folded question arises
when one compares a Habad Hassid from Brooklyn, a Jewish professor at a secular university in Brussels, a traditional Yemenite Jew
still living in Sana"a, a Galilee kibbutznik, or a Russian Jew in Novosibirsk. Is there a signicant relationship between these individuals who
all subscribe to Judaism?
There are approximately 13 to 14 million Jews in the world, making the Jewish people one of the smallest peoplehoods in the world.
The largest community resides in Israel, with 5.5 million Jews, thus
representing 4042% of the Jewish people. According to the latest
census (Della Pergola, 2003), the American Jewish community comes
a close second with 5,200,000 members. Together, these two groups
make up 80% of the total number of Jews in the world. The three
or four million others are found in Russia, France, the United
Kingdom, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and elsewhere. The Jewish
communities in Israel and in Germany are the only ones whose
numbers are continuing to increase, especially due to the migration
ow of Russian speaking Jewsin Israel, an additional factor is the
natural population growth. Given the current situation, at this rate,
the Israeli Jews will outnumber all other Jews in the world in about
twenty years time.
Decades ago, it was stressed that one of the essential features of
the Jews is a preoccupation with collective identity (Marienstras,
1975). Over the past two or three decades, we can see this preoccupation among other groups that have also begun to illustrate
the concept of a transnational Diaspora, i.e. of a group dispersed in

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several countries but whose members retain links of solidarity with

each other and with their original homeland (Baubock, 1994).
Judaism subscribes to a coherent but complex view rooted in a
range of denitions of collective identity which, despite the dierences,
are for the most part recognized as legitimate in certain respects.
Historically, this identity residedand according to some contemporary denitions, still resides to an extentin the unshakable link
between three axioms: 1) the individuals commitment to the group
identied by the legacy of being the people of Israel (Am Israel ); 2)
the recognition of the singular character of this people in its faith,
in the God of Israel (Elohey Isral ), and in His Teaching (Torah); and,
3) the conviction according to which the land of Israel (Eretz Isral )
denotes both the origin and the destiny of the people (Ben-Rafal,
2003). According to these axioms, the people of Israel was not simply dispersed (Gr. diaspora), but also in exile (Gola or Galout in Hebrew).
Moreover, from this perspective the Jews are seen as the carriers of
a divine message and it is only through the accomplishment of their
collective mission that they can acquire the right to Redemption. By
acting in a way that brings forth redemption, the Jews pave the way
not only for their own salvation but that of all of mankind. Herein
lies the basis of the Jews biblical claim that they hold a status of a
chosen or sacred people.
The concept of a caste as dened by historians such as B. Smith
(1994) or anthropologists such as Dumont (1977) seems the most apt
in order to delimit this type of collective identity. The caste presupposes a group which, by its members social practices, is essentially inward looking and sees itself as being endowed with a crucial
role within the universe. Jewish self-representation of this nature,
which is diametrically opposite to the Jews quondam status of pariah
for many centuries, would come to be challenged by modernity and
emancipation to the extent that one may well wonder whether Jews
today still share the same identity.
In modern times, previously unshakable and eternal axioms have
given rise to a number of questions: to what extent does the notion
of a Jewish people living among non-Jews in the same community
still refer to an irreducible collective? How can one, within a secular society, dene the specicity of the people of Israel outside of
reference to their ancestral faith? Does the Jew always remain attached
to the Promised Land, insofar as any other land signies exile?

contemporary dilemmas of identity

281

Jews in the modern day have addressed the latter questions, which
signal both a perpetuation of the same preoccupation with traditional responses and a discontinuity of them, in primarily three ways.
Each way is linked to dierent sociological categories: The UltraOrthodox and a large part of the Modern Orthodox subscribe to
the extension of the caste model, insisting on a traditional approach
based on religious faith and its requirements. They are committed
to a world of the Torah and are supported in this by the religious
academies, synagogues and the network of community institutions.
Another set of responses, ranging from the Reformers to liberal
Judaism and even to secular and humanist Judaism places emphasis on the community and its cultural symbols (Wassertein, 1996), a
syndrome described here as ethnocultural. The proponents of this
school, who share views that are both idealist and individualist, construct new types of educational, social and cultural organizations of
the modern Diaspora in which the cultural center and the school
often have a greater inuence than the synagogue. Finally, an additional syndrome, which is an extension of Zionism, stresses the element of the Land of Israel and the nation that lives there. Among
the adherents of this school were the founders and guardians of the
State of Israel.
Thus, the notion of the Jewish people is given dierent signicance
among the latter three groups: for the ultra-Orthodox and a number of orthodox Jews, the Jewish people is fore-mostly a community
of believers more than anything else; adherents of ethnocultural
Judaism hold most important the idea of a community founded on
history and a culture; those who subscribe to the idea of a national
Judaism consider a territorial dimension as the most vital part of the
Jewish people today. Orthodox Jews continue to view the principle
of the Jewish faith and the Torah in a traditional light, i.e. as the
essential aspect of Judaism that conditions all others. The ethnoculturalists see Judaism as men and women marked by a history and
universal values to be disseminated across the world. In the nationalist view, the focus is on the new Hebrew culture and the secularization of traditional symbols within the framework of a sovereign
society. In each of the three syndromes, the Land of Israel holds
a central place, but its signicance is given very dierent interpretations: the ultra-orthodox school links Jewish territorialization to
Messianic redemption; Zionism places the territorialization of Jewish

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eliezer ben-rafael

identity at the heart of its programme; liberals and secularists regard

the call for territorialization as a metaphor for the utopia that explains
the universalism of Judaism.
These various syndromes are also expressed in distinctive registers
of language. The caste syndrome favors Biblical Hebrew, the language of the Holy Book, with many of its adherents remaining
attached to Yiddish as a vernacular, while only grudgingly accepted
Modern Hebrew. For a long time, they hesitated to use Hebrew in
everyday life for fear of committing sacrilege against the language
of the sacred texts. As for the ethnocultural school, it fully recognizes
the use of the national language/s dominant in the countries Jews reside
in, whereas the national syndrome is predicated on the vitality of
modern Hebrew as the ferment of the new Israeli culture and society.
Within each of these syndromes, one can nd multiple variations,
or expressions: Within the caste syndrome there is a distinction
between the tradition of Lithuanian Judaism and Hassidic types of
Judaism, which are themselves subdivided into divergent schools.
Initially, this division ensued from the relative importance attached
to the study of the sacred texts (vehemently supported by Gaon de
Vilnas disciples) in relation to the spontaneous religious experience
(enthusiastically praised by the Hassidim), and has been maintained
to this day through a multitude of customs and traditions (Friedman,
1986). Hassidism, itself, is divided into various schools each with its
own spiritual leader known as the rebbe. Furthermore, today it is
important to make a distinction between Israeli and Diaspora ultraOrthodox Jewry. Those in Israel have become Hebrew speakers,
though they retain Yiddish as well, and are involved in the national
aairs of the country. In many respects, these ultra-Orthodox are
already part of the national syndrome (Sivan and Kaplan, 2003).
This national syndrome, which was engendered by Zionism, is primarily aimed at Israelis though comes in a variety of guises. The
predominating view supports the existence of a Jewish secular democratic nation-state founded on an amalgamation of communities
(Avineri, 1981; Ohanna, 1998). Taking after the fashion of European
brands of nationalism, Zionism has hollowed out the sacred symbols
of tradition in order to appropriate them in pursuit of a national
project. As far as the Zionists were concerned, it was a question of
creating and consolidating a normal society, like any other. Yet,
far from exceeding the complexity of the Jewish identity, that which
has become known as the normalization of the Jewish people has

contemporary dilemmas of identity

283

not resulted in a normalization in any sense that Jews are able to

understand and has been marked by new dissensions and rivalries.
Besides the ultra-orthodox Israelis already mentioned, there are
other major movements within Israeli society that set themselves
apart and point towards other syndromes. For instance, there is the
faction of religious nationalism which includes a large group of the
settlers in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. Under the banner
of messianic Zionism this movement combats the predominant pragmatic view in Israel regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conict based
on a nationalist interpretation of the Bible. The central issue for this
movement revolve around the relation between, on the one hand,
the religious and the political in a Jewish state situated on the Land
of Israel, and, on the other hand, the solemn commitment by Jews
to this Land, promised and bestowed upon them by God who allowed
them to reconquer it.
Another rift, which is at once religious and ethnic, involves the
Shas party. This party has succeeded in politically mobilizing part
of the Jewish population of North African and Middle Eastern origins. The rallying cry of this group is the legitimacy of non-European
Jewish heritage and it aspires to leave a stronger mark on the national
collective identity. Shas stresses the importance for all forms of Judaism
in Israel of the Sepharadic heritage which has been cultivated by
religious academies on the land of Israel for nearly one thousand
years. Thus, one could argue that that Shas is the most Israeli of
all. It is on this platform that Shas itself justies its vocation as an
instrument of a national project (Leon, 1999).
At the same time, recent Russian Jewish immigrants aim to promote an expression of Judaeo-Israeli identity which allows them to
retain their cultural specicity while integrating into the nation. For
the most part, these immigrants do not have a strong Jewish culture. The lack of Jewishness among this group is not surprising given
the history of Jews in the Soviet Union where three or four generations lived in a Marxist-Leninist society hostile to the Jewish tradition and to Jews. In the Soviet Union, Jews were part of an urban
class most often associated with cultivated and professional milieus
where Russian culture dominated. Drawing on their allegiance to
Russian culture and language as central to their identity, Russian
Jews in Israel seek to retain these dearly held resources, while at the
same time learning Hebrew and becoming an integral part of society
(Leshem and Lissak, eds. 2001).

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Besides these divisions among Jews, Israel also has an Arab minority which demands equality between the Jewish and non-Jewish populations. This demand cannot be ignored in a democratic society,
particularly one which is concerned about becoming part of the
Middle Eastern space. The split between the Jewish and Arab populations is one of the most important elements in the analysis of
Israeli society. The Arab minority accounts for 18 per cent of the
entire population and holds a national identity that is tied to the
larger collective of Palestinian in the West Bank and Gaza who are
at war with the State of Israel. In general, at times when the conict
grows more bitter, so do relations between Jews and Arabs in Israeli
society (Horowitz and Lissak, 1989). This has resulted in a climate
of mutual distrust in which it is dicult to combat the aws in the
Israeli legal and political system which still allows discrimination of
the Israeli-Palestinian minority. Nevertheless, it is obvious that, in
the long run, Jews and Arabs can only live together harmoniously
when both sides subscribe to some version of an Israeli identity,
while recognizing each partys insistence on their Jewish and Palestinian
identities, respectively.
Even more pertinent in the current context is the fact that the
Judaeo-Palestinian conict also lies at the heart of post-Zionist demands
within the Israeli population aimed at promoting closer ties with the
Arab world. These post-Zionists (see Lissak, 1996) demand that Israel
de-Zionize, which also implies nothing less than the de-Jewishication
of the Jewish majority. Indeed, as long as the majority remains Jewish,
however tolerant it may be, because of Jewish identity, it is inevitable
that the Jewish majority relegate Israeli Arabs to the rank of a
national minority.
All these conicts of identity in a national and democratic state
have ultimately brought forth the emergence of a multicultural reality in which pluralism is a fact of life. However, this multiculturalism requires that the rules of engagement among rival options be
dened and that, most important of all, beyond the disputes there
remains a common basis which must be shared and respected by
all. This basis must include the following two central elements: the
Jewish and democractic nature of the state. Regarding the former,
there must be recognition of the unshakable bond between Jewish
and Israeli identities. Jewishness, in fact, constitutes a sociological
reality in Israel which individuals as members of a sovereign collective
are involved in, even if the latter is split by contrastive expressions

contemporary dilemmas of identity

285

of identity. Regarding the democratic nature of the state, it must

continue that everyone is invited to express their own preferences
and support of forces that ght over inuence and power.
Because of the prevalence of Jewishness and Jewish culture and
symbols in the public sphere, Israeli Jews can often only perceive
their Jewishness as Israelis. That is, the two aspects are so interconnected that Jewish Israelis have a dicult time separating what
is Jewish from what is Israeli. Thus, to them being a Jew and
an Israeli are one and the same. An exception to this is the case of
the ultra-Orthodox Jews for whom allegiance to Jewishness is the
only one that counts, their Israeli citizenship is of secondary importance. Another group that is an exception, and one that is the opposite of the ultra-orthodox, are the post-Zionists for whom being an
Israeli is the most, if not the only, important aspect. In short, the
Jewish Israeli reality is fundamentally dierent from that in the diaspora where a national identity is essentially dierent from a Jewish
identity.
In the case of the Diasporic ethnocultural syndrome, Jewish identity is expressed in very diverse ways, depending on whether one is
talking about Francewhere a sense of suspicion of anything that
is pejoratively described as communautarisme (Birnbaum, 2003;
Wieviorka, 2003) predominates, about Russiawhere the identication
with Judaism is only gradually substantiated by the rediscovery of a
legacy (Gittleman, 2003), or about the United Stateswhere congregational pluralism is the main axis of Jewish life (Feingold, 2003;
Liebman, 2003). Yet, everywhere, individuals retain a transnational
allegiance to the notion of the Jewish people, with Israel being, for
most of them, a topic of concern. For many Jews, their country of
residence is their home country, which excludes any sense of feeling as if in Gola (exile). To be sure, Israel remains to them their
remote country of origin, from which many symbols of their contemporary experience are drawn; yet, this loyalty in no way aects
their sense of belonging to the nations in which they are citizens.
The crucial challenge which this syndrome must address is the
issue of the survival of Jews amidst non-Jewish populations, as Waxman (2003) notes with regards to the United States. This becomes a
more acute problem for those not strongly committed to the Jewish
community. Jewish individuals living in the diaspora make personal
choices in terms of their aliations, degrees, and forms of Jewisness.
As has often been noted, outside of Israel, being Jewish is a choice.

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Some recognize that they are Jews, but do not feel the need to act
on it. Others consider Jewishness a varied set of possible models
from which one may choose at will. This element of choice may,
on the one hand, enrich elements of Jewish life from drawning on
a variety of approaches. Yet, on the other hand, it also weakens the
collective bond of singuarity. Thus, to a degree, these approaches
towards Jewishness explain the high rate of mixed marriages and the
gradual decrease in Diaspora populations.
Faced with this complex landscape both within Israel and in the
diaspora, we return to the initial question raised at the beginning of
this chapter of whether Jews throughout the world still make up a
people when their identities have multiplied, their cultures diversied,
and their allegiances have pushed them in diverging directions?
When considering the various aspects and complexities invovled,
there is one particularly apt notion that may help describe, or even
decipher, the reality of the Jewish world. Reference is made here to
Wittgensteins (1961) use of the concept of air of family, by which
he meant all the common features that appearalbeit not in equal
measure or systematicallyamong individuals of the same family
group, such as shape of the mouth, hair color, or the size of forehead. If we continue the analogy of a family group, we may refer
to the frequent rivalries that shake it and the intensity of conicts
that develop within it, precisely because it involves close relatives,
whereas solidarity also leads to more violent emotions and at times
less controlled reexes that come into play. Moreover, this kind of
group is often structured around certain individuals perceived as
being the center, whereas others are reduced to distant cousins
and may be tempted to abandon the group to the advantage of
other networks to which they also belong.
It is possible to make this analogy regarding the phenomena within
the Jewish space of identity insofar as there lie very dierent, if not
contradictory, expressions that are mutually competing yet at the
same time share common allegiances. Even when considering only
the above-mentioned three major syndromes, a comparative view
can easily identify the breeding grounds of tensions. Each of the syndromes contrasts with the others and, in some ways, challenges them.
The caste syndrome contrasts with the others by the innumerable
markers it preserves that are at variance with the civil and secular
styles of the proponents of the ethnocultural and national syndromes.
The national syndrome stands out from the other two regarding its

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287

reference to a collective residing in a clearly dened territory whose

day-to-day experience sets it apart from all other Jewish communities. The ethnocultural syndrome is in stark contrast with those of
the caste and the nation regarding the pre-eminent position it allocates to non-Jewish national identity as compared to Jewish identity.
Moreover, this syndrome also dees the other two by its enthusiasm
for generating innovationsespecially in terms of belonging to Judaismwhich are anathema to the caste syndrome and do not sit very
well with that of the nation. It should, however, be underscored that
the latter has its sights set on leadership of the Jewish world, which
stems from the fact that its point of departure is that of a condition
of Jewish sovereignty.
By the same token, this national syndrome cannot but yield to
the sensibilities of the Orthodox. In this respect one can consider
the current debate regarding adoption by Israel of the unlimited
legitimacy of non-Orthodox conversion. This change in favor of nonOrthodox movements could, in fact, bring Orthodox public opinion
both in Israel and the Diaspora to no longer see Israel as a Jewish
state. For the liberal Jew, on the other hand, there can be no denial
of the fact that being a Jew relies on certain criteria laid down by
Talmudic law. The national syndrome in Israel devalues the status
of Jewish liberalism by supporting in the orthodox monopoly in all
public oces of religious institutions. This confrontation of the national
and ethnocultural syndromes is all the more paradoxical since the
majority of the proponents of the national syndrome, the Israeli Jews,
are not observant, just as is the case among the Jews in the Diaspora.
Thus, this is viewed as a repellent attitude by the adherents of the
ethnocultural syndrome and one which reverberates on Israeli Judaism
in its preoccupation with leadership (Ben-Rafael, 2002).
These tensions tearing at the various syndromes should not, however, be allowed to obscure the fact that there are also points of
convergence. In Israel, all three recognize the intrinsic value of
Talmudic criteria, and, in so doing, refer to a large extent to the
same individuals, i.e. the same Jewish peoplewith the exception
of the small minority of Jews converted by non-Orthodox rites which
are not recognized by the Orthodox. Moreover, these syndromes
draw a large number of their respective symbols from the same pool
of traditions, have recourse to the same texts, and refer to the same
narratives. As a result, this precludes proponents of the various syndromes from feeling alienated from the others, while explaining the

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relations that are maintained between the syndromes, over and beyond
their dierences.
Finally, there are two facts that tie together the adherents of all
these syndromes and which to a large extent construct their common relations with the non-Jew. First of all there is the existence of
the state of Israel which through its dicult history constitutes a
point of cynosure and a major preoccupation for the vast majority
of Jews, independent of their attitude towards the Zionist ideology.
Secondly, there is the collective and to this day highly traumatic
memory of the Holocaust, which at all times proclaims the common
destiny of Jews worldwide.
All this leads to the conclusion that even in this era of multiple
Jewish identities, the Jewish people are, for the time being at least,
still one. After Wittgenstein, we can see that like the members of a
real enlarged family, the various expressions of the identity that personify the pluralism of Judaism simultaneously converge and diverge.
Although these various expressions cannot be described as being alien
from one another, it is in no way certain that they will wish to form
part of the same family, at all cost. This is a challenge that all syndromes and their supporters, the Jews, will have to face, regardless
of whether they live in Tel-Aviv, Moscow, Paris, New York, or
Brussels.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

WAS THE SHOAH THE SANCTIFICATION OF GOD?

Thomas Gergely
Was the Holocaust a sanctication of the Name, in the sense of
the Hebrew expression Kiddush Hashem?1 In other words, the six million or more Jews, among them one million children, who died martyredwere they martyrs? The question is not, in fact, as paradoxical
as it may seem at rst glance. It simply confronts the factual and
theological sides of the problem. To put it dierently, did the victims of Nazi barbarism who perished in the death camps die as martyrs, i.e. by sacricing themselves in order to give meaning to their
martyrdom?
The answer to this question is far from clear, even if from a theological point of view, whether Christian or Jewish,2 to interpret the
absurd end of these uncountable victims as some kind of consenting sacrice to honour of God means that certain disturbing, and
even unbearable, questions can be avoided.
Indeed, the Shoah invariably raises the issue of the non-existence
or existence of God and, in the case of the latter hypothesis, the
diculty of imagining a God who would allow such a tragedy. And
then there is, of course, the judgement of human nature that Auschwitz
compels us to make.
It is well known that Jewish history is marked by a series of persecutions and massacres. This particular feature of the Jewish condition3 has over the centuries resulted in behavioural patterns ensuing
from the answers provided in many situations of great distress.
1

The Hebrew phrase kiddush hashem literally means sanctication of the Name
(of God). In the Jewish tradition, martyrs were said to have sanctied the Name.
2
Cf. the recent beatication of Edith Stein, the German Catholic sister of Jewish
origin, who was honoured because she was deemed to have sacriced herself.
However, one should hasten to add that she was deported after having been in
hiding in the Netherlands since the Nazis considered her Jewish, in spite of the fact
that she had relinquished her faith. She was gassed together with her sister and
millions of others.
3
The rst anti-Jewish persecutions are generally said to go back to the reign of
the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175164), a staunch supporter of the
Hellenization of Judaea.

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Among these attitudes, one must mention those which, in the

absence of any possible eective resistance to attack, consisted of
adding the permanent risk of a violent death to the number of probable events in human existence. Maimonides, in his seminal work
The Book of Knowledge,4 stated the circumstances in which a Jew
should prefer to be killed rather than violate the sacred Law, and
those in which he would be obliged to breach the commandments
in order to escape death: If a pagan forces an Israelite under the
threat of death to breach one of the commandments set forth by
the Law, the Israelite must accept the transgression rather than be
killed. The verse, in eect, states: Let man execute (the commandments) in order to live by them. The text does not state so that
he dies because of them. So, if this man prefers to die rather than
commit a breach of the law, his death must be put down to him.
This provision applies to all commandments of the Law, with the
exception of three prohibitions regarding idolatry, illicit unions and
murder. Being faced with committing one of these three crimes or
dying at the hand of a pagan, the Israelite should prefer death to
transgression.5 According to Maimonides:
The principles only apply in normal times. However, in times of persecution (. . .) one prefers death to transgression, even if the latter
involves commandments other than those related to idolatry, illicit
unions and murder, and irrespective of whether one is presented with
the choice in the presence of ten Israelites or alone with the pagan.
Any person who has the ability to transgress in order not to let himself be killed, and who prefers death to transgression is responsible for
the murder committed against him. However, if a person who has the
duty to get himself killed rather than commit a transgression is killed
without breaking the Law, then he shall be deemed to have sanctied
the Name (. . .).6 Conversely, anyone who has the duty to get killed
rather than transgress and who prefers transgression to death, becomes
guilty of desecrating the Name.7

In short, when the danger went beyond the individual and threatened the groupwhich is what Maimonides calls the period of persecutionaiming, through the faith, at the source of its cohesion

4
5
6
7

Maimonides, 1961, pp. 6876.

Op. cit., pp. 6869.
Op. cit., p. 70.
Ibid.

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291

and survival, the rule was that priority should lie with the principles, even if this meant that some members of the community would
lose their lives. The latter would be choosing, in this case, as martyrs,
to lay down their lives for what was called the sanctication of the
Name.
It would seem that this is also one of the reasons, and an important one at that, for preferring the word Shoah, the annihilation,8
to holocaust, a term which implies the idea of a wanted sacrice.
Indeed, even though recourse to the sanctication of the Name has,
throughout the ages, preserved the remainder of Israel, this means
was only eective in the confrontation with ordinary enemies, such
as the Romans who, in an attempt to quell the revolt in a distant
province, thought they would succeed by stiing the faith of the
insurgents. Or, for example was also the case of the Torquemadas
inquisition, driven by an overwhelming desire to convert; another
examples is when the Jews faced the Tsars who attempted to solve
their internal political problems by launching pogroms in the name
of the holy Orthodox faith.
As it was considered an acceptable fact in response to these challenges, Jews did not think of death in terms of God, His existence
or His reasons, the latter being often explained as tests of the faith
of Israel. There is nothing of the actions of classical persecutors in
those of the executors of the nal solution; the latter were men
who for the rst time in Jewish and probably in world history set
out to destroy an entire people, for no reason other than its existence.
Few people, initially at least, knew the whole truth about the
deadly secret of Wannsee. Jews did not know more than anyone
else. In fact, many of them thought that they would, as usual, be
forced to pay the usual tribute, after which the rest would survive.
Contempt was a fundamental factor. In a perverted twist of fate,
recourse to the sanctication of the Name, far from saving anyone,
turned against its own creators, driving them, more or less docilely,
into the jaws of hell. At the same time, there emerged questions
8
In French, as in many other languages, the Hebrew word shoah, annihilation,
tends to be preferred over the Greek word holocaust, the controversial term that
is commonly used in English. Meaning completely burnt, it denoted sacrices, both
biblical and others, at which animals were entirely consumed by the ames. As it
involves sacrices oered by man to appease the gods, it is dicult to see, within
the context of the genocide, which priests would have attempted to appease any
god by immolating six million victims.

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about God, since some still thought of their deathunwanted though

it wasas being a sacrice, a sanctication of the Name, even
though the latter did not yield its eects. Quite the contrary.
Naturally, in some circumstances, people or groups of people did
choose immolation over survival. In so doing they performed a real
Kiddush Hashem in the traditional sense of the term. The best-known
exampleone of manyis that of Dr. Janus Korczak, the head of
the orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto whose life the Nazis had cynically oered to spare if he abandoned his two hundred little protgs at the doors of the railway carriages. Korczak refused and
preferred to die with the children.
However, in the case of very pious Jews, who were very much
aware that nothing would go according to the models inherited by
history, the ancient sanctication of the Name took on an entirely
new dimension, in keeping with the uniqueness of the situation.
Indeed, in the course of their long history, whenever they were threatened, the denial of their religion was the choice that Jews were generally given in order to survive. The victims of the Shoah were deprived
of this option. Yet, as performing the sanctication of the Name
is, within Jewish thought, connected with the mitzvah, the command,
many tried to regain the possibility of a choice, which is a necessary condition to observe this prescription. So, they substituted the
option, which did not exist anymore, between life and death for the
choice between an abject end and one accepted in the dignity of
inner peace. It was the possibility of adopting, or not, the latter attitude which at the time of the genocide constituted the new criterion of the sanctication of the Name. As the Jewish faith imposes
the recitation of specic benedictions prior to complying with a commandment, in this case the sanctication of the Name, the rabbis
at the time wondered which benediction should be uttered while
entering the places of execution.9 Should it be: Blessed art Thou,
our Eternal God, King of the Universe, who hath sanctied us by
Thy commands and ordered us in the matter of the sanctication
of the Name? Or should it be: . . . . Who has ordered us to sanctify thy Name? The rabbis decided that in view of the circumstances
the appropriate formula was: . . . and hath ordered us to sanctify
Thy Name in the face of multitudes. The nuance was signicant

See Irving J. Rsenbaum, 1976, pp. 6162.

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293

and clearly referred to a refusal to have the spirit broken. Naturally,

this eort was born out of despair. Yet, in many cases it enabled
the very religious to cope with their fate in a more tranquil manner thanks to the idea that they had at least chosen a way of dying
with dignity and, through this attitude, they were paying homage to
God, whose Name they were thus sanctifying. At the same time,
at the eleventh hour, they found some meaning to their death.
Better still, some interpreted the terrifying silence of God at precisely the greatest hour of need, as an excellent opportunity to sanctify him, by accepting, without demurring, His terrible absence.10
That, in short, was the situation for people of great faith. But
what about the others? Those who did not know how to, could not,
or would not transform this silence and who only saw in it proof of
an empty heaven? Some, like those of the resistance in the Warsaw
ghetto, revolted; others died even more desperate than their fellow
suerers who were hoping to honour God.
As for the survivors, they waited some twenty years before they
began to talk; such was the shock that had struck the Jewish spiritual universe. It was, in fact, through this acknowledgement of the
absence of God that the discussion began, thanks to people like
Richard Rubenstein, an American rabbi turned atheist whose ideas
shall be discussed later on since they are among a number of theories regarding the Shoah that have divided the Jewish community
over the past twenty-ve years.
These theories go as follows: the Shoah is comparable to other disasters in Jewish history and raises only the question of theodicy;11
the Shoah constitutes the deserved punishment for an accumulation
of mistakes;12 the Shoah is an expiatory sacrice oered for the sins
of other men, whose mistakes Jews atoned for by their deaths;13 the
Shoah is a kind of reproduction of Isaacs sacrice, a sort of faithtesting dementia;14 the Shoah is an example of hester panim, the veiling
10
This is the theory of the veiling of the Face, hester panim in Hebrew, which
will be discussed later on.
11
However, the Shoah was new in that the intent to murder that lay behind it
was both gratuitous and absolute.
12
But what would have been the sin committed by babies and children?
13
This is a view that goes back to Isaiah 53, the chapter of the so-called Suering
Servant. This is a kind of As it stands, it is a negative image of Christian theology of the Christ who died for the sins of man. Here, the Christs role is, paradoxically, taken on by the Jewish people.
14
But with what result? While the faith of Abraham was strengthened by the

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of the Face, a Hebrew metaphor referring to the temporary withdrawal of God from history at times when He is said to leave man
to his own devices;15 the Shoah proves the death of Godif there
were a God, He would denitely have avoided or prevented the
genocide;16 the Shoah is the height of human ignominy, and the price
to pay for exercising free will, of which it is said to be a horrible
accident;17 the Shoah is an unfathomable mystery, transcending human
comprehension and imposing faith and silence.
This selection of highly simplied explanations provides an indication as to the complexity of the debate within Jewish theology and
leads one to wonder whether Judaism, whose religious certainties
were aected, will ever be able to nd a satisfactory answer to that
intractable question of why? At the same time, this tangle of fragmented attempts does throw up a few meaningful analytical models
that merit further examination and which will be discussed below.
It took until 1966 for the rst unconventional Jewish commentary
on the Shoah to appear. This was the book, entitled After Auschwitz,18
by the aforementioned liberal American rabbi Richard Rubenstein.
In the book, which caused a great deal of furore, the author draws
a number of highly controversial conclusions when reecting upon
the evil incarnate of the extermination camps. Dismissing the reluctance and even taboos of other thinkers who, like him, were struck
by the inevitability of questions arising from what happened at
Auschwitz, Rubenstein addressed the core questions. If God is perceived as a being intervening in history, what is His responsibility
after Auschwitz? Were the Nazis instruments of His wrath?19 If not,
how could He have tolerated the unleashing of such evil?
These questions did not come to Rubenstein out of the blue. They
were the result of a meeting in 1961 with the German Protestant

test of the (near) sacrice of his son Isaac, that of the Jewish people emerges disturbed from the Shoah.
15
Hester panim; q.v. further down in the article.
16
Unless God, in spite of the kindness that is attributed to Him, allowed this
most heinous of abominations for reasons that are entirely unfathomable.
17
In this case, the perfection of God would not be questioned. Only the executioners would have dishonoured their inner beings.
18
Richard L. Rubenstein, 1966.
19
Isaiah 1057: O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the sta in their hand
is mine indignation. I will send him against a hypocritical nation, and against the
people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the
prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.

was the shoah the sanctification of god?

295

theologian Heinrich Grber, Dean of the Evangelical Church of

West and East Berlin, who had himself spent time in concentration
camps for helping Jews. However, when it was time to take theological stock of things, he held the view that Hitler was indeed the
rod of Gods anger as it was self-evident to him that nowhere else
was the presence of God more manifest than in the life and destiny
of the Jewish people.20 To Rubensteins question of whether it was
Gods will that Hitler destroyed the Jews, Grber replied by citing
Psalm 44:22: For Thy sake we are slaughtered every day,21 adding
that at dierent times, God uses dierent peoples as His whip against
his own people, the Jews, but those whom he uses will be punished
far worse than the people of the Lord. You see it today in Berlin.22
In short, as far as Grber was concerned, responsibility for the genocide lay with transcendence and unfathomable designs, not with the
perpetrators of the crime. Even though, theologically speaking, Grbers
stance had some basis in Scripture, it was, humanely speaking, untenable.23 Rubenstein, arrived at a dierent conclusion: If I believed in
God as the omnipotent author of the historical drama and Israel as
his chosen People, I had to accept Dean Grbers conclusion that
it was Gods will that Hitler committed six million Jews to slaughter. I could not possibly believe in such a God nor could I believe
in Israel as the Chosen people of God after Auschwitz.24
As a result, the only acceptable answer to the death camps was
rejection, the death of God, and a need to recognize the fact that
there is no direction whatsoever to our existence. To claim that the
Shoah was a punishment for the sins committed by the Jews would
be tantamount to blasphemy against man.25 And if in spite of

20
Rubenstein (1966), p. 54: In the past the Jews had been smitten by Nebuchadnezzar and other rods of gods anger. Hitler is simply another such rod.
21
Idem, p. 53.
22
Idem, pp. 5455.
23
This was also the view held by the countess von Rittenberg, the representative of the Evangelical Church in Bonn who said: Theologically this may be true,
but humanely speaking and in any terms that I can understand, I cannot believe
that God wanted the Nazis to destroy the Jews. Rubenstein (1966), p. 53.
24
P. 46.
25
During the Eichmann trial, Dr. Servatius, the defense counsel, had oered
the suggestion that the death of the six million was part of a higher purpose, and
in recompense for an earlier and greater crime against God, thereby joining the
modern trial in Jerusalem with one held twenty centuries before. Rubenstein (1966),
p. 55.

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everything, one were to accept Grbers views, it would still be necessary to determine the kind of mistake that would require six million deaths as redemption!
This sort of religious rationalization involving God, sin, punishment and instrument is, in Rubensteins view, absurd and there can
be only one conclusion: God does not exist. There was never any
alliance with Israel, for the simple reason that the party above was
not there.
And so the lesson to be drawn from Auschwitz and places like it
may be summarized by saying that life, in itself, is the greatest value
and does not require any transcendental reference. Nevertheless, if
God does not exist and if man can only count on his fellow man,
this is all the more reason to preserve the religious community since
it binds society. Rubenstein added that Jews could not at this late
date, invent a better medium in and through which we could remain
so united with our own and past generations.26 Rubenstein takes his
view to its logical conclusion, promoting the demythologization of
Judaism, i.e. the maintenance of religious ceremonies, preserved for
their psychosocial value, but devoid of all reference to transcendence.27
This is, in very simple terms, the position of Jewish atheists on
the Shoah. One can easily imagine that a stance as radical as this
one inexorably brought about attempts to adjust, or even refute it.
One such opponent was the German-born Canadian-Israeli Jewish
philosopher Emil Fackenheim, the author of the Gods Presence in
History, which was published in 1970.28
Conciliatory above all else, Fackenheim attempted to nd a medium
ground between, on the one hand, the absolute faith of the ultrapious, who were inclined to view the Shoah as nothing more than a
repetition of the past or the opportunity for a Dantesque sanctication
of the Name, and, on the other, the total rejection of God propounded by Rubensteins followers. According to the philosopher the
fact of saying that Auschwitz was punishment for the sins of Jews
(. . .) is to traduce more than a million innocent children in order

26

P. 119.
Pp. 227 . To this one may add that Rubenstein, the author of The Religious
imagination, a Study in Psychoanalysis and Jewish Theology (1968), has made quite a reputation for himself as a psychoanalyst.
28
Emil Fackenheim, 1970.
27

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297

to build a bad defence of God, whereas the claim that because this
calumny is inadmissible, the God of history is impossible29 is equally
debatable.
As Fackenheim rejected the resignation of the rst group and the
atheism of the others, he then had to try and place the genocide
within a divine Providence. In order to do so, he went out of his
way to prove that God was right there amidst the most heinous acts,
even though we do not know why he should have authorized, or
even wanted, this extreme atrocity. Fackenheims explanation hinged
rstly on his vision of history in general and that of the Jews in particular. Taking into account the succession of events that implied the
history of mankind, Fackenheim distinguished certain moments with
a special purpose. These are what he called founding experiences,
as opposed to epoch-making events.30
According to Fackenheim, founding experiences are those that
continue to have an inuence, long after the generations that witnessed them. The Sinai revelation would be part of this category.
Conversely, epoch-making events are neither formative, nor creative. Quite the contrary even, as they are said to defy the founding experiences by verifying, through their novelty, the ability of
these experiences to respond to hitherto unknown situations. Within
this view, the Inquisition episode, for instance, would be an epochmaking event, serving as a test of the faithfulness promised at the
foot of Mount Sinai.
The Shoah, too, would be one of these particular instances. However,
where to place it? Among the most negative epoch-making events
or founding experiences? Fackenheim dened it as an event capable of challenging, in a very dramatic fashion, the idea of a divine
presence in the history of the world. Having said this, the conclusion is still positive since, according to the author, this epoch-making
event should push believers to hearken the new founding experience which lies at the very heart of the horror and thus imposes
new commands on mankind as it is faced with absolute evil. It is
this which would oblige human beings to ght for survival, and thus
not to give in to iniquity; to keep their faith, and not to give in to

29
Op. cit., pp. 7071. Fackenheim ended his quote as follows: . . . a God concerned about Auschwitz must have decided Auschwitz, and that God is dead.
30
Op. cit., pp. 3544.

thomas gergely

298

despair; to believe in redemption, and not to give in to cynicism;

and nally to remember the victims. To relinquish one of these principles would be tantamount to entering into a pact with evil and
thus allow it ultimately to vanquish. If God were, in a way, to make
Himself heard through the experience of the horror, He would extract
from the latter the sacred obligation on man to survive and to persevere as a direct result of the wish for annihilation that they sometimes have to face. At this point, the nal solution, which aimed
at the total destruction of Judaism, becomes, paradoxically, the basis
for its legitimacy, or even necessity. Fackenheim thus retains God in
his system and endows the Shoah with a kind of educational purpose.
The views of Rubenstein and Fackenheim converge at times, as
is the case for instance in their refusal to interpret the Shoah as a
punishment for mysterious mistakes. In other areas, their positions
are diametrically opposite to one another given that what happened
at Auschwitz turned Rubenstein into an atheist, whereas it barely
aected Fackenheims faith.
Beyond these two schools of thought, there is that of the philosopher Eliezer Berkovits, the author of a more traditional analysis, entitled Faith after the Holocaust, which was published in 1973.31
Berkovits stated the problem in the following terms: the Nazi barbarism, in his view, does indeed support the theory of the absence
of a God, while, at the same time, highlighting the moral grandeur,
even sanctity of some victims. How else should one call people who,
at the very edge of the abyss, praised God for being one of the victims and not the executioners? However, Berkovits explains that this
is not new in Jewish history. The Shoah would, then, be unique by
its magnitude, not by its nature, the basic question remaining the
same, as ever: is the Shoah in keeping with divine moral perfection
and providence?
In order to deal with these questions, Berkovits, like Rubenstein
and Fackenheim, rejected the simplistic explanation of a just punishment. He felt that the Shoah was rst and foremost an injustice which
was all the more absolute in that it seemed sanctioned by God,
Himself. However, if this is the case, how does one t this agrant
manifestation of evil into the grand divine design? Berkovits referred

31

Eliezer Berkovits, 1973.

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299

to the ancient Biblical concept of hester panim, the veiling of the

Face, according to which, God, sometimes, turns away from man
for no objective reason like, for instance, human sins.32 This view of
the issue, in essence, translates the wish to maintain, at all cost, the
idea of a divine presence, irrespective of what happens in its absence.
But even if one were to accept this, there is still the question as to
why God, who is always there, should one day become indierent
to world-shaking events?
Berkovits answer was that only the withdrawal of God enabled
man to be a moral creature. By stepping back from history, God in
fact gave man his freedom, including that of choosing between good
and evil; if mankind was moral, God would not be able to stop man
in exercising evil just as He would not be able to stop man from
exercising good, even if His creature risked abusing this freedom.
However, as evil must nevertheless be stopped, Berkovits felt that
everything revolves around a kind of equilibrium of incompatibles;
as God must be absent for man to be able to act, so too must God
be present in order to prevent His creation from ultimately destroying itself.
This means that the liberating absence of God in history must be
seen as a sign of His presence and that, therefore, the Shoah was not
proof of the death of God, but a sign of His existence, even if this
implies necessary absences that ineluctably open the gateways to horror. In short, the Shoah would then be but a serious accident in
Jewish history, in which it would in no way constitute a culminating event.
Rubenstein, Fackenheim, Berkovits; the sanctication of the name,
the death of God, the Nazi agent of god, the epoch-making event,
the veiled faceone is faced with a multitude of explanations for
what remains, in spite of the refusal by some and the theological
approach of others, the single-most important experience of modern
Jews, with incalculable consequences to this day. Indeed, the Shoah
not only means the terrible loss of six million human beings and the
destruction of an entire civilization, but also represents a major traumatic experience for the survivors, who have been forever shaken
in the belief in their millenarian religious and cultural system as they

32

Op. cit., pp. 94 .

300

thomas gergely

are unable to nd a satisfactory answer to their questions, in spite

of, or possibly because of, the wide variety of hypotheses.
Most of the survivors, who generally reject interpretations according to which the genocide was a purifying suering, seem to remember from the Auschwitz experience the following lesson: the angels,
asked someone, do they ever arrive late? No, of course not, he was
told. They have the sacred duty to arrive on time. And yet, because
of Auschwitz we know that this is wrong; at that time, the angels
did arrive too late six million times. This teaches us that this sacred
duty has since then passed to man. It is up to them to want to be
on time, always and everywhere. That is the main lesson of the
Shoah.

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INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Activism 7, 199
Agudat Yisrael 79
Aliyah 8182
Alliance Israelite Universelle 137
American Jewry/Jews ix, 1, 1023,
174, 181182, 185, 244, 268, 270,
272
American society 19, 176, 179, 182
Anti-Israel 1, 21, 55, 71
Anti-racism 69
Anti-Semitism 1, 3, 2023, 2526,
48, 5254, 5960, 626671, 184,
19294, 2079, 21718, 231, 5455,
258, 271
Anti-Zionism 66, 83
Ashkenazi 6, 3133,122, 124
Assimilation 4, 13, 29, 32, 43, 48,
80, 103, 145, 178, 182, 192, 194,
199, 208, 212
Auschwitz xixii, 60, 65, 289, 294,
296, 298, 300
Belgian Jews 3, 27, 30
Betar 55
Beth Hatefutsoth 239, 242
Bible 8688, 110, 227, 241,
283; biblical criticism 175
Bnai Brith 51, 54
Bnei Moshe 79
Boniface report 2325
Bourgeoisization 9798
Brandeis 261
Bratianus National Liberal Party
50, 53
Brit Shalom 251
Bubers theo-political thought 8586
Budapest Jewish Congregation 4445
Bund 7879, 83, 21213; Party
7677
Canaanites 215
Catholic Church 22, 205
Central Council for Jews in Germany
36, 3839
Central Welfare Institute of German
Jews 38
Chosen people 76, 211

Communism 4, 44, 48, 5354,

5657, 60, 63, 138; the fall of
5758
Communitarianism/communitarization
2021, 25, 21920; conictual
processes of 22; top-down/
bottom-up 1617
Community: American Jewish 186,
195, 279; French Jewish 3, 23;
imaginary 19; imagined 17;
immigrant Jewish 190; Jewish 1,
3, 3334, 3638, 4041, 54, 5758,
60, 62, 67, 138, 144, 173, 180,
18788, 191, 198, 203, 208, 218,
236, 249, 251, 25354, 256, 261,
26869, 275, 279, 285, 287, 293;
Liberal Jewish 34, 38; national
25, Orthodox 213; Sephardic 34,
243,
Consistory/consistorial system 14,
2829
Contingency refugee act 36
Cultural pluralism 17374, 17880;
religious 167
Culture 2, 1516, 18, 38, 60,
11011, 119, 17879, 185, 21112,
214, 221, 238, 250, 281; American
7, 18, 176; Israeli 121, 129, 282;
Jewish 13, 113, 130, 285; national
262; Yiddish 80,
Curierul Israelit 53
Death camps 35
Decentralization laws of 1981 16
Democracy 13, 132
Diaspora x, 8, 9, 13, 34, 8384,
101, 103, 208, 212, 21417,
23031, 23334, 23740, 242, 244,
248, 25051, 25556, 26465, 267,
27075, 279, 281, 28587;
auto-emancipated 103; Jewish
communities 249, 267, 271, 275;
Judaism 8, 230, 231; multinational
2; transnational 2, 8, 279
Divine law 8, 22325
Dreyfus Aair 14, 21, 25; era 22,
26

314

index of subjects

Drisha 198
Dubnowists 76
Dutch Calvinists 32
Dutch Jewish Social Welfare
Organization 31
Dutch Jews 3, 31, 3435
Eichmann trial 246
Ein-Hachoresh 238
Emancipation 13, 20, 3233, 43,
101, 103, 205, 208, 214, 216, 220,
280
Enlightenment (see also haskala)
13, 134, 273
Ethiopian Jews 215
Ethnicity 20, 30, 38, 122, 126,
21011, 21314; Jewish 83
Ethnicization of politics 24
European Jewish Congress 67
European Jewry/Jews x, 12, 78,
143, 214
European Observatory of Racist and
Xenophobic Phenomena 67
Exile (galut) 5, 76, 82, 234, 238, 244,
246, 248, 254, 280, 285; nation 80
Ezrat Nashim 195
Federation of Jewish Communities 59
Federation of Mosaic Communities
58
Female Hebrew Benevolent Society
18687
Feminism 7, 154, 194, 19799;
American 186
Fourth convention of Poalei Tsiyyon
259
Franco-French wars 19
French Jewry/Jews 14, 16, 1720,
24
French Muslim citizens 24
French Revolution 1314, 16, 20,
75
French society 3, 17, 19, 2122, 28
Friends of the Hebrew University
251, 263
Gas chambers ix, xi
German Jewry/Jews 3839, 42, 192
Germany xii, 1, 14, 3637, 50, 66
Girondinization 17
Globalization 2, 212, 216
Great Synagogue of Tel Aviv 56
Hachomer Hatzair 56, 81
Hadassah 194

Halacha x, 83, 117, 13336, 139,

14142, 145, 187, 203, 207, 223,
230, 245, 252
Halachic: European culture 145;
norm 117; rules 38
Haredi (see also Ultra-Orthodox)
124, 12627, 12930, 144, 15253,
156,15859, 167, 169; women
15152, 15556, 170
Haskala 211, 216
Hassidism 86, 282; Habad 9
Hebrew Humanism 86, 92
Hebrew intellectual 253
Hebrew Sunday School 18788
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
8, 24850, 25253, 26063,
26575
Higher education/learning 15152,
15354, 15758, 16263, 168, 171,
191, 252
Histadrut 82
Holocaust (see also Shoah) 3536, 44,
5152, 58, 6566, 6971, 98, 208,
221, 23435, 237, 240, 24446,
251, 28889, 291; denying 23;
Museum 35; survivors 203
Holy Land 271
Hungarian Jewry/Jews 4, 4344
Identity: American Jewish 177;
collective 9, 15, 25, 110, 12526,
132, 238, 275, 27980; ethnic 27,
21415; ethnocultural 210; halachic
13336, 138, 14243, 14850;
imaginary 222; Israeli 85, 233,
242, 284; Israeli-Jewish 8, 233,
235; Jewish xiii, 5, 78, 26, 31,
3435, 4749, 6062, 69, 86, 93,
103, 109, 11416, 11820, 133,
136, 138, 143, 149, 150, 17576,
179, 188, 192, 19495, 199, 2067,
20910, 213, 230, 233, 237, 242,
254, 274, 282, 285, 287; Jewish
collective 27, 271, 276;
multicultural 108, 118; multiple
19; national identity 15, 85, 87,
92, 213, 235, 283; Orthodox 114;
particularistic 13, primordial 76;
religious 4, 48, 109, 206, 20910;
secular 94, 1034, 110, 114, 120;
sephardic halachic 146, 149
Ihud 251
Imaginary collectives 25
Immigration to Israel (see also aliyah)
122, 146

index of subjects
Individual: autonomy 96; will
1034
Individualism 1314, 17, 132, 153,
219
Institut Martin Buber pour lEtude du
Judasme 2
Integration 14, 2830, 37, 40, 182
Intellectuals 67, 7576, 84, 154,
203, 25657
Intelligentsia 77
Inter-Allied Control Commission 53
Intermarriage 14, 48, 128
International Jewish organizations 55
Islamic fundamentalism 64
Israel 1, 35, 1314, 16, 20, 2324,
36, 48, 5758, 6062, 6667, 69,
8485, 91, 102, 121, 123, 125, 130,
133, 136, 146, 154, 171, 183, 204,
214, 21618, 23031, 234, 23839,
242, 246, 252, 279, 284, 28687,
296
Israeli x, 70, 124, 282, 285;
independence 97; Jews 6, 121,
123, 132, 149, 279, 285, 287;
society 96100, 102, 105, 111,
11315, 12025, 130, 131, 144,
149, 152, 154, 15657, 159, 165,
167, 17172, 246, 28384
Israeli-Palestinian conict 66, 70, 85,
8890,130, 283
Iuliu Manius National Farmers Party
50
Jerusalem 61, 76
Jewish: civil servants 18; collective
116, 252; collective will 5, 96,
1001, 103; education 180, 187,
19192, 194, 198, 253; Frankfurt
School 216; humour 222;
national collective 2, 56, 9,
7576, 249; national movement 76,
53; thought 5, 78, 83, 85, 93;
nationality 38, 85; renaissance 42;
society 114, 179; tradition 46,
104, 11718, 195, 197, 232, 272,
283; University 253, 255, 25758,
27376; world 12, 9, 27, 83, 116,
180, 187, 287; worship 8, 223
Jewish Agency 266
Jewish commonwealth (see also Klal
Yisrael) 257, 26364, 268, 275
Jewish Daily Forward 189
Jewish Democratic Committee 52
Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance
197

315

Jewishness x, 5, 14, 34, 3738,

4850, 7778, 83, 126, 132, 207,
20910, 215, 218, 252, 254,
28386; versions of 6
Jewry of Muslim lands 138, 143
Joint Distribution Committee 51, 54,
58
Judaism 56, 13, 43, 7576, 78 116,
132, 17374, 184, 237, 244;
American 179, 18182; biblical
231; and democracy 131;
Conservative 8384, 19596;
ethnocultural 281; French 3, 16;
halachic 38, 110, 136, 138;
Hungarian 45; Israeli 287; Neolog
44; observant 16, 45; Old World
Judaism 17679, 18182; Orthodox
39, 44, 152, 176, 179, 197; rabbinic
231; Reform 39, 43, 8384, 136,
140, 173, 17576, 17879, 182, 197;
religious 8, 109, 111, 118; secular
10910; Sephardic 143
Keren ha-Universita 26062
Keren Hayesod 26061
Kibbutz 61, 9697, 214, 238
Klal Yisrael 1, 7879, 8284, 101,
103, 248
Knesset 14647
Labor movement 7879, 81, 98
Ladies Aid Societies 194
Land of Israel 5, 8082, 8689, 111,
14546, 214, 233, 24041, 28081,
283
Liberalism 13, 31, 95, 219; Jewish
287; political 220
Likud 243
Mapai 79, 82, 93, 9798
Marranos 31
Marxism 15, 77
Medieval Jewry 252
Memory 15, 60; cultural ixxi, 12,
216; Jewish xixii; of the Holocaust
35, 6062, 69
Menorah Journal 173
Messiah xiii, 5
Meta-legal ethic 223
Middle East Conict 37
Middle Eastern and North African
Jewry/Jews 1, 3, 20, 13637
Midrach 224, 22527
Mishna 241
Mizrachi 122, 124, 21314

316

index of subjects

Mobility 168, 170; personal 16465;

secular 157, 16061, 169; upward
14, 43, womens 168
Modernity 56, 8, 28, 93, 108, 132,
13538, 142, 15156, 15859,
16163, 166, 168, 17072, 207,
211, 252, 255, 27273, 280;
European 143; Western 152,
171
Modernization 134, 13738, 154,
182, 243, 275
Moses Mendelssohn Center 37, 39
Moslem citizens 3
Multicultural 6, 1314, 17, 19, 22,
30, 1058, 111, 115, 118, 120, 284;
Jewish 116; orientations 48;
theoreticians of 1516
Multiethnic 19
Multiple allegiances 1819
Multiple modernities 15354, 156,
159, 162, 168, 171
Muslim countries 13
Nahum Goldmann Diaspora Museum
8, 23334, 241, 247
Nation 5, 15, 85; state 15, 1718,
20
National Council of Jewish Women
194
National Organization of Women 194
National Religious Party 213
Nationalism x, 1, 71, 7577, 8082,
88, 103, 121, 132, 184, 28182;
secular 18385, 248; populist 21;
post 15
National-religious 155, 15859, 167,
169
Nation-within-the-nation 17, 25
Nazi xiii, 20, 32, 34, 36, 66, 70, 184,
221, 246, 292, 294
Negation of exile 25051, 254, 257
Neo-Ahad Ha"amism 83
Neo-Brennerism 83
Neo-Dubnowism 83
Non-European Jewries/Jews ix, 5
Non-Orthodox conversion 287
Non-religious/non-practicing Jews x,
153, 15659, 16162, 16667,
16970, 252; women 165
Ordination of women rabbis 195
Orienta/Sephardicl Jewry 6, 137,
142, 14547
ORT 54

Orthodox 7, 29, 31, 44, 8284, 123,

140, 143, 151, 154 156, 161,
16667, 170, 175, 198, 210, 281,
287; American 154, 198; European
136, 140, 142; modern 15253,
155, 281; women 155, 159, 162,
165
OSE 54
Palestinian 20, 70, 91, 98, 217;
movement 218
Parousia of Christianity xiii
Particularism 16, 28
Patrascanu Act 52
Pens National Front 22
Peoples Party 79
Philanthropy 185, 194
Philo-semitic 23
Pluralism 1057, 11112, 11516,
118, 284, 288
Pogroms xiii
Post World War I treaties 44
Post-war generation 31
Pro-Communist Jewish Democratic
Committee 53
Pro-Israel organizations 34
Promised Land 280
Public sphere 14, 16, 19, 21, 2325,
29, 165, 187
Rabbinical Assembly 195
Rapport de la Commission nationale
consultative des drois de lhomme
67
Rational will 9394, 101; collective
104
Rationalism 15
Reconstructionist movement 178, 195,
197
Red Army 50
Reform movement 7, 17476, 178,
18083, 195; rabbi 7
Religion ix, 56, 30, 38, 60, 7577,
79, 8082, 104, 111, 119, 123, 132,
151, 15354, 158, 171, 177, 183,
185, 188, 193, 195, 2045, 217;
and community 8586, 9092,
296; and conversion 38; and
education 136; and modernity
153; and nationalism 283; and
politics 217; and secular
tensions/cleavage 105, 113, 121,
125, 131; and state 13
Religiosity 43, 85, 111, 11819,

index of subjects
12127, 129, 132, 153, 155, 162,
164, 16869, 223
Religious Jews 7, 46, 83, 109,
12528, 130, 132, 157, 167, 170
Renaissance 21920
Republican: contract 14, 18, 22, 25;
emancipation 24; meritocracy 14;
model 17
Righteous Among the Nations xiii,
60, 61, 69
Rights discourse 1058, 11113, 120
Romanian Jewry/Jews 4, 5051, 53,
57; Union of 5154
Romanian Workers Party 51, 55
Russian Jewry 1, 3, 9, 36, 3841,
214, 263, 279, 283
Russian Jewry/Jews: immigration
3637; inux into Germany 3,
4041
Russian language media 40
Sabbath x, xi, xiii, 47, 18182
Salvation 5
Secular 6, 101, 12326, 12832, 151;
education 151,191; Jews 109,
11112, 114, 119; thought 100,
Secularism/secularization 4, 8, 14,
34, 44, 4648, 75, 83, 97, 101, 109,
11112, 11819, 122, 127, 134, 143,
153, 173, 175, 2036, 211, 21718,
220, 223, 244, 281
Sephardic 3133; rabbis 137, 139,
146
Shabbatean movement 32
Sharia 138
Shas 6, 133, 14344, 14749, 283
Shoah (see also Holocaust) ix, xixiii,
34, 9, 31, 3334, 289, 29199
Shulhan Arukh 146
Singularity 9, 65, 286; of the Jewish
people 86
Six Day War 62, 242
Social mobility 156, 191
Socialism 9596, 138; movement 33
Socialization 127, 149
Society of Friends 26970, 27374
Solidarity 25, 11516, 252, 280;
ethnic 274
South African Jewry 270
Sovereignty 9394, 98, 100, 119; and
identity 104; and Jewish xii , 5,
103, 287; political 5
State Jews 18
State of Israel x, 5, 78, 20, 25, 34,

317

57, 8485, 89, 9193, 96, 101, 103,

109, 143, 148, 182, 18485, 208,
21315, 218, 23033, 237, 239,
24445, 274, 281, 284, 28788
Synagogue 4, 20, 23, 36, 42, 46, 55,
58, 66, 69, 185, 188, 193, 198, 240,
281
Talmud 110, 198, 205, 22728, 241;
and rabbinical culture 211;
narratives 8
Tellah (prayer) groups 197
Tel Aviv University 236, 245
Tikun olam 7, 35, 199
Titel Petrescus Socialist Party 50
Toleration 1057, 11213, 118
Torah 87, 114, 116, 133, 13536,
13941, 14749, 185, 205, 210,
224, 22729, 281; studies 6; Torah
world 14344
Tradition 6, 28, 43, 47, 110, 119,
123, 12728, 132, 151, 154, 156,
15859, 16162, 17172, 247; and
modernity 219
Ultra-Orthodox 6, 109, 114, 123,
125, 128, 13132, 151, 156, 166,
170, 210, 281; community 114;
Israeli 15152, 283; Jewry/Jews
282, 285; women 6, 155, 159,
16162, 16768, 171
Union of Progressive Jews in Germany
39
Values 15; universalistic 7
Vichy era/regime 20, 26, 68
Voluntarism 9394, 98100, 251
Wailing Wall 82
Warsaw ghetto 65, 29293
Waves of immigration 19
West European Jewry 137
Women: American Jewish 7, 186;
and Jewish education 194;
commission on the status of 194;
and surage 190
World Jewish Agency 8
World Jewish Congress 36, 51, 235
World Jewry 2, 8
World War I 75, 137, 178, 189, 191,
253, 273
World War II 3133, 35, 50, 62, 246
World Zionist Organization 233, 260,
265

318

index of subjects

XI Zionist Congress 255, 259

Yad Vashem 69
Yeshiva 6, 144, 147, 150, 152, 155,
187
Yiddish 32, 60, 188, 190, 282; press
19093; ghettoes 192
Yishuv 81, 93, 99, 240, 246, 251,
254, 264, 269
Yom Kippur 4, 57; war 58, 242
Zionism 4, 6, 55, 57, 60, 69, 8890,

92, 1013, 110, 114, 123, 136, 138,

149, 17374, 180, 18285, 213,
21516, 23435, 23839, 24142,
245, 24750, 253, 258, 263, 28182
Zionist 5456, 76, 84; Labor
Movement 93, 9596, 25859;
movement 81, 109, 11112,
24851, 25358, 26062, 264;
Organization 5155, 260; thinkers
15, 85; Youth movements 57
Zionist Organization of America
(ZOA) 271

INDEX OF NAMES
Abicht, L. 3, 31
Adler, S. 264
Antin, M. 191
Antonescu 51
Aran, Z. 242
Artzi, I. 56
Bareli, A. 5, 93
Bayle, P. 217
Begin, M. 214
Ben-Chaim Rafael, L. 6, 151
Ben-Gurion, D. 8, 8990, 92, 98,
2036, 215, 23235, 237, 242
Ben-Rafael, E. 1, 9, 203, 2067, 279
Bentwich, N. 265
Benveniste, M. 56
Berdichevsky, M. Y. 7778, 83
Bergman, H. 263
Bergson, H. L. 261
Berkovits, E. 29899
Berlin, I. 106, 235
Birnbaum, P. 3, 13
Bodnaras, E. 50
Bonaparte, N. 14, 33
Bratianu, C. I. 53
Brenner, J. H. 7778, 8183, 259
Bruggen, C. 33
Buber, M. 5, 8692, 232, 255
Caro, Y. 14546, 149
Ceausescu, N. 51
Charpentier, P. 57
Cherrick, B. 270
Chisinevschi, I. 55
Clermont-Tonnerre 213
Cohen, E. E. 173
Cohen, S. M. 196
Cohen, U. 8, 248
Cwajgenbaum, S. 67
Daniel, J. 209, 217
Dinur, B. 76, 248
Dorian, D. 59
Dubnow, S. 77, 7980, 8283, 243,
257
Dulgheru 54
Dumont 280

Eder, D. 266, 270

Eickleman, D. F. 154
Einstein, A. 261, 267, 273
Eisenhower, D. 56
Elam, Y. 260
Eliachar, Y. S. 149
Elyashberg, M. 8081
Elyashberg, Y. 80
Ezer, B. 90
Fackenheim, E. xi, 29699
Feiwel, B. 255
Filderman 5354
Finkielkraut, A. 65, 69, 208, 217, 221
Fischer, J. 65
Fodor, A. 264
Forrester, V. 66
Frankel, J. 77
Friedan, B. 194
Friedmann, G. 208
Gamoran, E. 180
Geertz, C. 274
Gergely, T. ix, 12, 9, 289
Gheorghiu Dej, G. 5051, 5455
Ginsberg, S. 261
Glckner, O. 3, 36
Goldberg, I. L. 256
Goldmann, N. 8, 23338, 242, 244
Goldziher, I. 261
Gordon, A. D. 8182, 259
Gorny, Y. 1, 5, 75
Gratz, R. 18688
Greenberg, B. 198
Groza, P. 51
Grber, H. 295296
Ha"am, A. 7883, 110, 184, 253,
25859
Haarscher, G. 7, 203
Habermas, J. 15
HaLevi, D. 14142
Hayyim 141
Hazan, E. 139, 142
Hazaz, H. 110
Heijermans, H. 33
Heller, M. 18182, 272

320

index of names

Hertzberg, A. 35
Herzl, T. 213
Hess, M. 213
Hitler, A. xi, 70, 270, 295
Hochhuth, R. 221
Hurwitz, H. 173
Hyman, P. E. 194
Iampolschi, A. 56
Iancu, C. 4, 50
Israel de Haan, J. 33
Issac, J. 208
Jabotinsky, V. 25758
Jasper, W. 3, 36
Kallen, H. M. 173
Kaplan, M. 178, 180, 195
Karelitz, A. (Hazon Ish) 109
Kattan, E. 62
Katznelson, B. 7879, 8183
Kepel, G. 220
Kessler, J. 37
Kierkegaard, S. 117
Konopnicki, M. 4, 60
Kook, A. 109
Korczak, J. 292
Kovcs, A. 4, 43
Kovner, A. 23638, 239242, 4446
Krygier, R. 8, 223
Kymlicka, W. 15
Landau, E. 261
Lavi-Lwenstein, T. 55
Le Pen, J. 24
Leibowitz, Y. 117
Levinas, E. 106
Lvy, B. 65
Lvy, B. H. 65
Locke, J. 217
Lrrach 36
Magnes, J. L. 256, 260, 26264, 266,
268
Maimonides 118, 139, 141, 149, 290
Marcuse, H. 216
Mark, A. 56
Marshall, L. 261, 263
Marty, E. 64, 66
Marx, K. 104
Meir, Y. 149
Meyer, D. 8, 230
Michael 5051
Micle, T. 54

Mittwoch, E. 261
Morgenstern, J. 18182
Nacht, H. 56
Nasreen, T. 221
Neher, A. 71
Ornstein, K. 56
Ornstein, L. S. 261
Patrascanu, L. 50, 52
Pauker, A. 53
Peres, Y. 6, 121
Pinsker, L. 101, 213
Pinto, D. 1
Pius XII 221
Polak, H. 33
Porat, D. 8, 233
Priesand, S. 195
Querido, I.

33

Rabbi of Mezerich 238

Radescu 51
Ratzabi, S. 5, 85
Rawls, J. 219
Raz, J. 105
Reinharz, J. 255
Ringlet, G. 220
Rosen, M. 58
Rosen-Zvi A. 120
Rotenstreich, N. 5, 93104
Rothschild, B. E. 256
Rubenstein, R. L. xii, 29396,
29899
Safran, A. 5253, 58
Sagi, A. 5, 105
Samet 142
Samuel, H. 270
Sanatescu 51
Sartre, J. P. 207
Schapira, Z. H. 254
Schein, E. 56
Schocken, S. Z. 263
Schoeps, J. H. 3, 36
Scholem, G. 243, 262
Schorsch, I. 244
Schreiber, J. P. 3, 27
Schulman, S. 183
Schuman, R. 57
Schwerin 36
Shi, O. 7
Shor, S. Y. 135

index of names
Sibony, D. 67
Silberstein, L. J. 88
Silver, A. H. 7, 17375, 17780,
18285
Simonnet, D. 69
Smith, A. 252
Smith, B. 280
Sokolow, N. 253, 266
Stalin, J. 51
Stauber, R. 66

321

Vromen, S. 7, 186

Taguie, P. A. 70
Tal, U. 245
Taylor 108
Taylor, C. 15, 211
Tocqueville, A. 186

Wallenberg, R. xiii
Warburg, F. 263, 27072
Waxman 285
Weisgal, M. W. 271
Weizmann, C. 25558, 26063,
26566, 270
Wertheim, A. C. 33
Wieviorka, M. 6364
William, I. 33
Winock, M. 68
Wise, I. M. 18182
Wittgenstein, L. 203, 286, 288
Wittrock, B. 153
Wolsohn, D. 256

Uzziel, M. H. 14041, 149

Yosef, O.

Vadim, C. 59
Vinte, I. 54

Zissu, A. L. 56
Zohar, Z. 6, 133

6, 14445, 148