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ARE NON‐OBSERVANT ISRAELI

JEWS HEBREW SPEAKING
“GOYIM”? Constructivist Cultural
Perspectives
a a
Zvi Bekerman & Marc Silverman
a
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Published online: 24 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Zvi Bekerman & Marc Silverman (1997) ARE NON‐OBSERVANT ISRAELI
JEWS HEBREW SPEAKING “GOYIM”? Constructivist Cultural Perspectives, Journal of Jewish
Education, 63:1-2, 41-49, DOI: 10.1080/0021624970630106

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 ARE NON-OBSERVANT ISRAELI JEWS
HEBREW SPEAKING "GOYIM"?
Constructivist Cultural Perspectives
ZVI BEKERMAN AND MARC SILVERMAN
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
In order to continue being an authentic Jew, the
secular Israeli Jew must be knowledgeable of
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the Jewish religious heritage. If he is an ignora-
mus regarding Jewish sources, unattuned to
their substance, he approaches the condition of
being an Hebrew speaking Goy (Hertzberg,
1995; 7).
This paper represents a cooperative effort to
explore new perspectives and shed a different
light on the ever elusive issue of Jewish iden-
tity in general and specifically in the context
of contemporary Israeli society by examining
it through an integration of two disciplines:
the social intellectual history of education and
cultural anthropology.
In the light of the controversial nature of
the issue being addressed, we would like the
reader to view the interpretations and asser-
tions presented below as tentative and par-
tial — worthy of consideration and at the
same time warranting further elaboration and
clarification.
Dr. Bekerman is a cultural anthropologist presently
teaching at the Melton Centre for Jewish Education,
Hebrew University. His major research interests
focus on acculturation, ethnic identity, and informal
education.
Dr. Silverman teaches contemporary Jewish
culture and education, and educational thought at the
Melton Centre for Jewish Education and the School
of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His
major interest is the nature and dynamics of the
interrelationship between contemporary education and
the Jewish past.
41
I. THE INDICTMENT OF ISRAELI
JEWS OF WESTERN LIBERAL
ORIENTATION AS HEBREW
SPEAKING "GOYIM" (NON-JEWS)
An indictment of the Jewishness of the non-
observant Israeli Jews who embrace a western
liberal ethos is being issued by four discern-
ible and distinct sectors of the Jewish people
living in and outside of Israel:
1. The Haredim, the anti-Zionist and non-
Zionist Ultra-Orthodox Jews, compris-
ing the sub-groups ofShas (Shomrei Ha-
Torah Ha 'Sefardim — The Guardians of
Torah of Sefardic origin); Hassidic,
Lithuanian and Lithuanian-Hassidic
groups of East-European origin, many of
them members ofYahadutHa 'Torah (The
Judaism of Torah) and some of them
politically unaffiliated, such as Habad,
Hasidei Satmar and others.
2. The Orthodox Religious Zionists repre-
sented politically by the Mafdal, the Na-
tional Religious Party, comprising two
major sub-groups, Gush Emmunim, the
Block of the Faithful, passionately com-
mitted to maintaining the parts of the
Land of Israel in Judaea and Samaria
"liberated" (according to their understand-
ing) in the Six-Day War and to settling
them— political hawks regarding the
peace process and supporting increased
religious legislation — and Meimad, fa-
voring the unquestionable Jewish value
of the ethical and social advancement of
 42 JOURNAL OF JEWISH EDUCATION
the people of Israel over the no less ques-
tionable Jewish value of retaining and
settling the entire land of Israel — politi-
cal moderates (and doves) favorable to-
wards the peace process and interested i
moderating the role that religion plays in
Israeli political life.
Regarding these latter two sectors, it is
noteworthy thata socially significant num-
ber of non-observant Israeli Jews, such as
well known players on Israeli national
soccer teams, popular entertainers (both
Downloaded by [University of Connecticut] at 19:15 11 January 2015
mainly of Middle Eastern origins), farm-
ers from the private sector and the Moshav
movement and simply "plain folks" lent
public support to and voted for ultra-
orthodox groups, particularly Shas and,
to a lesser extent, orthodox religious Zi-
onists.
3. Non-orthodoxreligionsmovementsin and
outside of Israel, such as Ha'Tenuah
Le 'Yahadut Mesoratit (the Movement of
Traditional Judaism), Ha'Tenuah
Le 'Yahadut Mitkademet (the Movement
of Progressive Judaism in Israel), the
Conservative, Reform and Recon-
structionist Movements respectively, in
western countries of the Diaspora, most
formidably in the USA.
4. A considerable number of non-observant
leading Israeli Jewish intellectuals, edu-
cators, writers, poets and artists who,
despite their professed secularism,
strongly believe that the culture of Israeli
Jews of liberal western orientation, par-
ticularly the younger generation, is not
Jewish because they are ignorant of the
rabbinic tradition and have neither an
existential interest in it nor an under-
standing of it. This position recently and
clearly was articulated in the Shenhar
committee's report sponsored by the Is-
raeli ministry of Education and culture on
the state of Jewish studies in the non-
religious Jewish public schools in Israel
(Shenhar Report, 1994).
Despite the very significant biographical,
sociological and cultural differences between
the members of the first three sectors, they
share the view that Jewish culture must be
grounded in the belief and in the affirmation
of a religious covenant between G-d and the
Jewish people. They all could agree with the
following words of Gershon Cohen, a leading
figure identifiable with the third sector men-
tioned above:
"Israel can occupy an indispensable place in
Jewish life only if it becomes and remains part
of an inseverable dimension of greater central-
ity— the centrality of the Jewish people. To
this I hasten to add that even the Jewish people
can perpetuate its centrality if it, in turn, is a
consequence of a higher mandate...namely the
Torah. Only a religious, that is, transcendent,
mandate can lead to a sense of consanguinity
between my children and Jews of Moroccan
origin living in Israel. Apart from that reli-
gious mandate, apart from the covenant that
underlies such a mandate, no demand of loyalty
on my part or anyone else's makes any sense"
(1977; 241, our emphasis).
The members of the fourth sector differ
clearly from those in the previous three in
their denial of the necessarily religiously re-
vealed source of Jewish culture. Nonethe-
less, from historical and sociological consid-
erations they identify knowledge and con-
scious and reflective appropriation of the Rab-
binic tradition as a prerequisite of the defini-
tion of Jewish culture. Though they do not
share his conservative religious viewpoint
they readily could comply with the statement
of Arthur Hertzberg — part of which heads
our paper — to the effect that:
"In order to continue being an authentic Jew,
the secular Israeli Jew must be knowledgeable
 ARE NON-OBSERVANT ISRAELI JEWS "GOYIM"?
of the Jewish religious heritage. If he is an
ignoramusregardingjewishsources.unattuned
to their substance, he approaches the condition
of being an Hebrew speaking Goy. Accord-
ingly, I am suggesting an idea that contradicts
most educational theories. The prevalent prin-
ciple is that education should aim at instilling
in young people a sense of satisfaction with
themselves and the society surrounding them.
I am recommending that Jewish education
aims at engendering in Jewish youth a basic
sense of Jewish discomfort and
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dissatisfaction...such discomfort should bring
more Israelis back to Judaism and more Jewish
to Israel" (1995; 7, our emphasis).
Accordingly, despite the very different
source of their contention and of their respec-
tive interpretations of it, the members of all
these four groups share the assumption that
the decisive parameter of the definition and
identification of Jewish culture is the histori-
cal religious tradition of the Jewish people and
the sensibility that the non-observant Jewish
Israelis' ignorance of the Jewish religious
tradition and disinterested or negative exis-
tential relationship to it represents a cultural
disaster.
This identification provides the background
to several of their most significant ideological
and educational positions. On the ideological
plane they contend that the present cultural
state of these Israeli Jews embodies a genuine
threat to the very existence of the State of
Israel and of the Jewish people as a culturally
distinct entity. In the way of an example,
according to the moderate orthodox Zionists
belonging to Meimad:
"...the presentation of the Jewish character of
the State of Israel is an existential
necessity....We believe that the loss of Jewish
uniqueness would endanger, Heaven forbid,
the very existence of the State" (Meimad,
1996 ;2).
43
On the educational plane, they claim that
the phenomenon of Israeli Hebrew speaking
Goyim, representing in their eyes as it does a
severe and pernicious crisis, warrants an in-
depth educational treatment. Considerable
resources should be invested in an all-out
effort to combat this process of Israeli Jewish
assimilation and in "turning" this Israeli Jew-
ish population, particularly its younger gen-
eration, back to Jewish sources, values and
norms. As one interesting illustration of these
sensibilities, we quote from a recent article
written by the renown Israeli author, A.B.
Yehoshua, a professed secular Zionist:
"If we wish to seek out the roots of our identity,
even as Jews who are clearly secular, it is our
duty to conduct this search by turning to sources
and texts mainly of a religious nature. Accessi-
bility to these texts can be well afforded by
those members of the religious national sector
who not only relate to these texts in a more
natural fashion but also share a common inter-
est with us to locate the components of a
comprehensive Jewish identity in them" (1995;
20).
To sum up, the members of these four
perspective sectors:
1. evaluate the Jewish cultural level of non-
observant Israeli Jews committed to a
western liberal ethos according to the
latter's relationship to the Jewish reli-
gious tradition;
2. regard these Israeli Jews' ignorance of an
alienation from this tradition as a cultural
disaster of Jobian proportions which
threatens the very existence of the State of
Israel as a Jewish State and of the people
of Israel as Jews;
3. call for educational policies and programs
aimed at Judaising these Israeli Jews,
particularly the younger generation.
 44 JOURNAL OF JEWISH EDUCATION
H. ASSAILING THE ASSAILANTS:
CONSTRUCTIVIST CULTURAL
PERSPECTIVES ON THE
INDICTMENT ISSUED AGAINST
NON-OBSERVANT ISRAELI JEWS
In this section, employing insights from cul-
tural constructivist perspectives, we propose
that the indicters' positions summarized above
rest on a partial and mistaken view of the
nature of culture. We will contend that the
indicters' understanding of culture does not
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take into account sufficiently its dynamic,
interactive and contextual nature. They disre-
gard the far reaching cultural implications of
the changing political and social contexts
engendered by the transformation of the Jew-
ish people from a collection of Diaspora com-
munities to a sovereign nation State. We will
propose that out of their thirst for continuity
with the historical religious cultural identity
of the Jewish people they severely underesti-
mate the powerful weight and influence of the
present national context. In their devaluation
of this present national context they discount
the Jewish cultural appropriations of these
Israeli Jews and are blind to the Jewish dimen-
sions of Israeli secular culture.
This devaluation is aided and abetted by
their unacknowledged assumption that cul-
ture in general (Jewish culture being no ex-
ception in this matter) is something contextu-
ally independent, "out there", approximating
an ideological or theological entity, perma-
nent, stable, static, "ready-made" and ready to
be transmitted and inherited. This static ap-
proach to culture leads them to an exclusive
identification of contemporary Jewish culture
with the traditional religious one. In this
exclusive identification the fluidity of the
cultural production emerging out of the con-
scious and no less important unconscious
dialogue between Israeli nationalism and the
Jewish past is ignored.
The Transformation to a Sovereign
Nation State: From Circumscribed to
Comprehensive Jewish Political
Responsibility
As an independent Jewish polity, state and
society, Israel has altered radically the scope
and nature of the human responsibility and
accountability of its Jewish inhabitants. Para-
phrasing Goethe, it can be stated that ex
definitio "nothing human is alien" to Israeli
Jews. Regarding this point it is worthwhile to
remind ourselves that from a critical histori-
cal perspective all Zionists, including the
orthodox, were motivated deeply by the urge
to overcome what they all perceived as the
unhealthy and disembodied nature of Jewish
life in the Diaspora. They sought a compre-
hensive Jewish life in which the distinction
between the secular tasks of human life and
the holy ones of Jewish life would be inte-
grated. As recent research on Zionist ideals of
the "New Jew" discloses, reclaiming land,
language, physical labor and prowess for Jews
were viewed as Jewish tasks of the highest
spiritual order (Rosenstein, 1985; Bringer,
1990; Gorni, 1990).
The comprehensive nature of Israeli Jew-
ish life seriously challenges the natural unin-
terrupted relevance and applicability of the
Jewish religious tradition to it. This tradition
historically was based on a very clear demar-
cation between religious spiritual Jewish tasks
and spheres of life in contrast to the political
material human ones. As several scholars
have point out, traditional Jewish culture was
based on the existential celebration and reen-
actment of the past or on the existential hope
of the messianic future in the present. Con-
temporary Israeli culture is based on the exis-
tential celebration and enactment of the present
for the sake of the foreseeable future
(Yerushalmi, 1988; Funkenstein, 1991).
In the context of this Jewish national trans-
 ARE NON-OBSERVANT ISRAELI JEWS "GOYIM"?
formation and its cultural implications, cul-
tural constructivist perspectives can provide
us with some important insight. As Barth
(1969; 38) forcefully contends, tracing
ethnicity is not one and the same with tracing
culture: "the elements of the present culture of
that group have not sprungfrom the particular
set that constituted the group's culture at a
previous time". In this understanding cultural
and national definitions are not a historical
legacy but dialogical processes in which inter-
nal and external forces manage, adapt and
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adopt meaning. Thus while Zionists "imagi-
natively" sought the national foundations of
territory and language to foster and sustain the
ethnic/national continuity of the Jewish people,
they did not intend that this continuity would
be identical with the traditional religious cul-
ture of Jewish as it was interpreted and prac-
ticed in the Diaspora. National identities —
Andersons' (1983) imagined communities —
are always at work inventing their traditions
(Hobsbawn, 1983) in order to sustain group
membership, legitimize their existence and
secure continuity.
Taking our cue from D'azeglio's state-
ment (in Billig, 1995; 24) that "we have made
Italy, now we have to make Italians", we
suggest that the Jews have made Israel and
that now they have to make Israelis. By mak-
ing this claim we are not suggesting that
nationalism always necessarily entails creat-
ing or inventing a people totally anew. Jews
have had a sense of ethnicity and peoplehood
for a very long period of time. This sense of
peoplehood was sustained by religious, rab-
binic, halachic talk. Over the past hundred
years with its move into a new national con-
text, a significant portion of the Jewish people
is in the process of creating a new vocabulary.
This vocabulary talks and voices Jewishness
in national terms along the side of religious,
Rabbinic and Halachic ones. Today nation-
hood and its talk, echoing at times the past, as
well, is taking over. These national terms are
45
frequently in opposition to these religious
ones; yet no less frequently they are voiced
along the side of and within them.
If as Gellner (1983; 6) states "a man has to
have a nationality as he has to have a nose and
two ears," then its only natural for Israelis to
be naturally national. The process of national
becoming is long and implies inventing, re-
constructing and deconstructing histories, as
Zerubabel (1995) has shown us. In the process
new narratives are created and every thing
seems to be open for reinterpretation. We
believe that this is the context within which
present non-observant Israeli Jewish cultural
expressions should be understood.
These new ideologies, in order to survive
and not be identified as nationalistic (in its
exclusivist negative sense), have to be kept
quiet, in the background, as if they are not
really there. As Gellner and Billig (1995)
clearly have demonstrated the political and
cultural principals of nationalism appear as if
they were natural, in a sense, banal. Thus for
the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews, in
the way of examples, the rhythms of the year
are determined naturally and unreflectively
by the Jewish traditional calendar; biblical
and mishnaic images and expressions inhabit
popular culture, etc. This "silent/banal" as-
pects of nationalism might provide a partial
explanation of the difficulties encountered by
non-observant Israelis in understanding and
articulating their national sensibilities and
sensitivities as truthful and legitimate expres-
sions of their Jewishness.
Dynamic Versus Static
Understanding of Culture
The inarticulate nature of these ever emerging
new Israeli national expressions of Jewish
culture and the indicters lack of recognition
and appreciation of them not only stems from
their insensitivity to the contextual changes
suggested above but also from a limited un-
 46 JOURNAL OF JEWISH EDUCATION
derstanding of the nature of culture and its
construction. Underlying their exclusive iden-
tification of contemporary Jewish culture with
the traditional religious one is their assump-
tion that culture in general is something con-
textually independent, "out there" approxi-
mating an ideological or theological entity,
permanent, stable, static, "ready-made" and
ready to be transmitted and inherited.
This understanding of culture has been
held in disregard for quite some time by most
of the social sciences. Such an understanding
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falls into the paradigmatictrap that Peel(1987;
205) has criticized as the ahistorical view
which is "inconsistent with a realistic concept
of what a society is and of human experience
within it" because it "eliminates change, in-
completeness and potentiality, memories and
intentions — in a word, historicity." In oppo-
sition to this paradigmatic trap the
constructivist perspective, we are suggesting
here, views culture as a dynamic and ever-
emerging product of human action and inter-
action (Bakhtin, 1981; Bourdieu, 1984;
Shweder, 1990).
As Maurice Godelier (1989) argues con-
vincingly, human beings do not just live in
relationship, they produce relationships to
live; thereby producing culture and creating
history. Accordingly neither culture "out-
side"— its material products, nor culture
"inside" — its ideational and affective prod-
ucts, entail the "stuff' of culture. Human
beings and their identities, Jewish ones being
no exception to this (Horenczyk & Bekerman,
in press), are neither plastic nor passive. In-
deed, they all do have histories but only in as
much as they actively create them within a
given socio-historical context. Accordingly,
culture is produced and constructed continu-
ously anew, "wrestled down" through dialogi-
cal human interaction (Harre, 1995), a dia-
logue of multiple voices— heteroglossia
(Bakhtin, 1981) and argumentation (Billig,
1995) within ever changing socio-historical
contexts. Unless this dynamic interactive and
interrelational nature of culture is acknowl-
edged it becomes hegemonic, dominating and
thereby dangerous.
These insights regarding the nature of
culture can help us understand why these new
Israeli-Jewish cultures, in whose construction
appropriations of the Jewish religious tradi-
tion play a discernible role are receiving such
very negative ratings by a high percentage of
Jewish rabbinical, intellectual and educational
leaders. We propose that it is the ever present
consciousness of the incontestable historical
fact that for close to 2000 years Jewish
peoplehood was inextricably linked to the
Jewish religion as interpreted by the Rabbinic
tradition that fosters and reinforces a reified
understanding of Jewish culture andprecludes
the possibility of adopting the dynamic one we
are offering.
An open acknowledgment of the no less
incontestable reality of Jewish cultures in the
making, in the context of an "open to the
world", democratic, independent Hebrew
speaking society, or a clear assent to the
proposition that Israeli-Jewish society has
established historically unprecedented possi-
bilities towards the definition of Jewish cul-
ture is diametrically opposed to the historical
consciousness referred to above. Specifically
such an acknowledgment or assent would
entail the recognition that:
• it is not possible, logically and existen-
tially, to be one and at the same time, a real
historical people exercising comprehen-
sive responsibility, and a community of
intellectual, spiritual giants and moral,
ethical saints;
• Jews are no more and no less than one
historically unique people among many
other historically unique peoples, they are
not a metaphysical entity;
• Jewish culture will take on and come out in
a myriad of different shapes and colors.
 ARE NON-OBSERVANT 1SRAELIJEWS "GOY1M"?
• a democratic society can not or should not
legislate cultural or religious identity.
It appears to us that not only the four
indicting sectors but also a significant number
of non-observant Israeli Jews find such impli-
cations very difficult and even unconscio-
nable. Indeed, we would like to suggest that
the widespread Jewish reluctance and resis-
tance to an acceptance of these implications
stems from a deep seated fear of committing
what can be called Jewish cultural matricide
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or patricide. We propose that it is this deep
fear which militates against an appreciation
of the Jewish dimensions of Israeli secularism
and fosters loyalty to the fixed and rigid
conception of what Jewish culture is and
ought to be.
Having presented the factors that militate
against an acknowledgment of the far reach-
ing cultural implications engendered by the
historical political context of Jewish sover-
eignty, we conclude by suggesting the explo-
ration of pedagogies grounded in the possibil-
ity that liberating ourselves from these fixed
conceptions of Jewish culture will pave the
way towards a more accurate and incisive
understanding of the complex nature of con-
temporary Jewish cultures. These pedagogies
would sensitize Jews, all Jews, to the dialogi-
cal interactive nature of cultural processes and
attune them to a careful listening and courte-
ous managing of the multiple voices emanat-
ing from ever emerging and developing con-
texts. They would approach each of the di-
verse sectors and individuals in Israeli/Jewish
society and encourage them to explore their
own biographical narratives; to find in them
accounts and instances in which their
Israeliness/Jewishness/Humanness could be
articulated, distilled, appropriatedand rewrit-
ten.
Narratives are powerful tools which by
being localized and temporalized coordinate
intersubjective processes. They afford indi-
47
viduals the possibility to construct, co-con-
struct and reconstruct coherently their cul-
tural identities and to acknowledge their own
loyalties, traditions and inherited roles
(Maclntyre, 1981). By providing multiple
possibilities and options these narrative modes
allow individuals and society to deal with
contingency (Fischer-Rosenthal, 1996). In
contextualizing the individual self s sense of
being, biographical narratives ground and
lend it coherence (Carr, 1981). This ground-
ing and contextualization support the recon-
stitution of socio-historical processes long
forgotten by modernity's analytical tendency
to objectivization and fragmentation.
As the recent works of Witherell &
Noddings(1991)andMcEwan&Egan(1995)
suggest, narratives as auricular devices are
powerful educational tools. They facilitate
and encourage an interpretatively open pro-
cess of "becoming" through dialogical and
interactive work(Silverman, 1996). The nar-
rative process illuminates the intricate ways
that knowledge, culture and social identities
are produced in a variety of sites, historical
contexts and the constrains of political powers
(Giroux, 1994; Williams, 1989).
We believe that the use of narrative meth-
odologies in the setting of Israeli Jewish edu-
cation has the potential of challenging the
hegemonic nature of the indicters' present
approach to the Jewishness of Israelis of west-
ern liberal orientation. These methodologies
would encourage the indicters to relate more
seriously to the genuine challenges posed by
this western liberal ethos and the contexts in
which it is located. Finally they would point
out that this hegemonic approach (to which
many of these non-observant Israeli Jews
consciously and unconsciously comply) ex-
empts these Israelis from any serious consid-
eration that the historical religious culture of
the Jewish people may harbor ideas, values
and norms of behavior that would be existen-
tially compelling and relevant to their lives.
 48 JOURNAL OF JEWISH EDUCATION
POSTSCRIPT
Having presented arguments on behalf of the
Jewish creativity of Israeli Jews, it is impor-
tant to us to conclude by stating that the
dialogic cultural approach we hold makes us
aware as well of the constraints and shortcom-
ings of the Western cultural perspective of
these Jews, such as their underestimation of
the importance of particular cultural memory
and their exaggerated belief in the individual
"self' and in the scope of this "self s" free-
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dom. Though limitations of time and space
prevent us from developing this critique here,
we would like to mention that this critique
follows the path of recent work in the field of
cultural studies which focuses on the analysis
of Western hegemonic powers and their influ-
ence on the very possibility of maintaining
cultural variety. The adoption of such an
analysis and its application to the Jewish
culture of western culturally oriented non-
orthodox Israelis will be pursued in a paper we
hope to write in the near future.
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