Explaining Israeli Judaism

Explaining to Jews from Diaspora as well as to non-Jewish audience, what does it mean to be Israeli and particularly the Israeli interpretation on Judaism is not easy. Sometimes is not easy to understand either. Part of the discussions are often getting stuck on particulars which endangeres the outline of the bigger picture.

#IsraeliJudaism. Portrait of a Cultural Revolution by Shmuel Rosner and Camil Fuchs is one of the best books about this new cultural phenomenon: being Israeli. Shmuel Rosner is senior fellow at the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Institute and Camil Fuchs is a Tel Aviv University professor of statistics and pollster whose opinions are often read in the Israeli media - especially those days in the electoral context. 

With a focus on the big picture and the main cultural trends, based on various opinion polls made among both Jews living in Israel and diaspora, it explains at a great extent the dramatic differences that are often reclaimed and hardly accommodated between Israeli and other Jews. Such a cultural conflict takes place not only from afar, but manifests tragically when Jews born in diaspora are trying to make a living in Israel. 

Defined by the authors as 'a start-up enterprise in the service of the Jewish people' Israel evolved as a 'one big field experiment for Jewish culture'. The identity is not settled and has its specific dynamism whose specificities and cultural markers are clearly outlined by the authors. It follows the chore identity values of the predominant groups within Israel: Haredi, national-religious and secular. From a group to another, those values are in conflict and each and every one of the group appears to rather prefer to set clear borders instead of interacting with each other. Personally, I might think that members of the national religious group, inspired by the writings of Rav Kook who outlined a certain openness towards all the Jews are by far the most open to other influences and interactions with secular and Haredi publics. However, as the latest elections demonstrate, the national religious block is going through a serious crisis therefore too much focus on specificities will hijack the main focus of the research anyway.

As Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, quoted in the book mentioned, the Jewish religious law was not written for a Jewish state. What happened in the last 70 years was a permanent adaptation of traditions - as diverse as those brought up by the Jews from Ethiopia, Romania or China - to the challenges of modernity while maintaining a permanent religious background checking and in some cases pressure too. Public transportation is not working on Shabbat and there are no civil marriages in Israel, but there are restaurants open in Tel Aviv on Shabbat and many secular persons would do the bar mitzva of their sons although that's the only way they will go in a synagogue in years. When you are living in Israel, you feel Jewish. In Diaspora you struggle to keep your identity, including under the permanent anti-Semitic pressures. There are sometimes two different realities that are often coming in conflict.

This book helps a lot to understand the root of the conflict while accepting that identity is not given, but a dynamic process. Being 'Jewsraeli' might have a completely meaning in a decade time. Electoral cycles and old and new elites might outline a direction or another. The elections about to hapen tomorrow might contribute to such a change too.

Rating: 5 stars