Secular Zionism and Israeli Politics - Essay Example

Secular Zionism and Israeli Politics [The Writer’s Name] [The Name of the Institution] Secular Zionism and Israeli Politics Introduction The presence within Israel, a small but ostensibly modern state, of four component religious political parties is a phenomenon which is both intrinsically interesting to students of Israeli politics and potentially instructive for the comparative study of the relationship between tradition and politics in general. While the question of religion and politics in Israel has been examined before, the religious parties themselves have not been rigorously studied. As a result, the discussion of religion and politics in Israel has largely been issue-oriented, concerning itself with particular manifestations of this most basic of Israeli political problems and with vague generalizations on the broader implications of the question, rather than with its fundamental causes and its chief vehicles, the religious parties. Because of the lack of historical or analytical focus, the latter are usually lumped together indiscriminately, distinguished largely by the degree of "extremism"1 they are supposed to represent. The inability to identify the parties as discrete political entities is symptomatic of the essentially hostile ideological approach which most writers on Israeli politics bring to bear on the subject. More generally, it is characteristic of the tendency of many Western political scientists to view all aspects of tradition as obstacles to the modern state. Where such traditional vestiges exist, they are to be grudgingly tolerated or carefully manipulated at best, or systematically uprooted at worst. It is the aim of this paper to examine the case of Zionism as the reflection of secularism existing in the Jewish history of identity and its impact on politics of Israel historically and analytically. Before proceeding to evaluate the implied impression of secular elements found and observed in the roots of Zionism and its present and future role in the Israeli political system and to derive whatever comparative insights they may afford. I, personally assume no prescriptive, normative stance toward the issue on either side. I begin only with the assumption that the several religious parties of Israel constitute different and ongoing responses of tradition to the challenges of modernization, particularly to modern Jewish political nationalism, or Zionism. My empirical analysis of the assumption is that secularism is included in the foundations of Zionism with certain hidden agenda and still exists there, though undeclared. The discussion begins with an investigation of the particular historical circumstances under which they arose. As Maurice Duverger has cautioned, "parties are profoundly influenced by their origins.'' 2What were the challenges presented by Zionism, modern Jewish political nationalism, to traditional religious life in Europe, where the two forces first confronted each other? What were the responses to it by different groups of orthodox Jews? How were the demands of modern life accommodated, if they were? What ideological positions were formulated? What patterns of behaviour predicated on these ideological assumptions were initiated? Specifically, how did the different religious groups view the idea of cooperation with secular Zionists? In order to evaluate the Zionist Secularism, I think, first of all, we have to reconsider the role of religious parties and their political role in Israel. Although the initial reactions to challenges and their formulations in ideological and behavioural terms have been of cardinal importance for later developments in the parties, no deterministic "inevitability" is implied. On the contrary, the founders of the religious parties had great freedom in their early actions-perhaps greater freedom than their descendants today-even while they took account of the various forces and interests in operation at the time. But however voluntary the decisions of any "founding fathers" may have been, they seem to take on an aura of inviolable sanctity as time passes. This attitude tends to limit the options and choices of later generations. Thus, the legacy of Israel's founding era remained strong, even into the state period and even on specific issues. I see through the historical outlook that once the state had been established, these ideological positions and behavioural patterns had to be accommodated to the reality of a sovereign polity. They operated as institutions within the system. An examination of specific issues and institutions is necessary here to evaluate the different reactions of the religious parties and their effect on the political system in general. These ideological values and behavioural patterns are transmitted to the next generation through the process of socialization, which is a key to understanding why this "vestigial" traditionalism has not yet disappeared and what its future prospects are. In order to determine how effective the political socialization is, we must ascertain who the voters for the religious parties are, how many there are, and where they live. Whatever regular voting patterns can be discerned may in turn reflect the more fundamental sociological and ideological bases of the different parties.3 But one must ascertain how many of these voters are actually party members and whether the concept of membership is applicable in the same way to each of the parties. The central question here is whether the religious parties fit any of the models for parties in the modernization secularised scenario posited by many political scientists. 4If they do not lend credence to the unidirectional model of modernization, they may be, as Giovanni Sartori suggests, 5 a unique case. However, they may also suggest a necessary modification of the prevailing theory. I would like to mention here some contemporary political theorists would dismiss Israel's religious parties as a curiosity, a quirk destined to be ironed out by the inexorable modernization process. Such writers as Gabriel Almond, James Coleman, 6 and G. B. Powell, 7 tend to view the passage from the "traditional" through the "transitional" to the "modern" (i.e., Western) forms of society and polity as inevitable and desirable. This unidirectional view, based on an exaggerated secular interpretation of the Western experience, discounts the possibility-much less the desirability-of continued, if modified, traditional influence on the politics of the developing countries. Where such traditional structures continue to exist, they are viewed as vestigial at best. Before examining the religious parties as responses to modern Jewish political nationalism, or Zionism, it is necessary to examine that wider phenomenon itself, as the context in which the parties developed. Israeli Politics and Zionism When I evaluate the religious and political scene of Israel, it transpires that by far, the largest of Israel's religious political parties, Mafdal is, as noted earlier, the product of the 1956 union of the Mizrahi party and its labour offshoot. While it has waged an incessant battle for religious causes both inside the government and out, Mafdal has generally participated in government coalitions since the establishment of the state. This propensity to participate cannot be viewed merely as a tactical preference or as an ideological weakness, however, for its methods of participation and the very nature of the issues involved are deeply rooted in the historical circumstances and social milieu in which the party arose and developed. The ideological choices made during its formative years in Europe relate to the central question of the accommodation to modernity, as embodied in modern Jewish political nationalism or Zionism. At this stage, I would like to recollect the formal enunciation of Zionism as a political movement at the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 touched a chord in the hearts of the masses of East European Jews, at whose core "remained the tradition, with its uniformity of religious practice and its elastic community organization, its historic and eschatological myth of Exile and Redemption, and its well established channels of communication to all Jewry throughout the ages and in all parts of the globe, the Hebrew language and system of traditional Jewish education." 8 Although the movement was dominated by non-observant Jews, a small group of East Europe's religious Jews and their leaders participated in it, actively if warily, because of their common concern with the redemption of Israel-a goal long since abandoned by most Western Jews-and, in a general, as yet undefined way, with Hebrew and Jewish education. The questions of education and culture acted as catalysts in the development of religious factions in the World Zionist Organization, factions which were the forerunners of the religious political parties of Israel.9 As early as the Second Congress (in Basel in 1898), religious Zionists demanded a clarification of the organization's attitude and relationship to Jewish tradition. They sought a positive affirmation of it, or at least a total exclusion of cultural questions from the Zionist program, fearing that any other type of cultural activity would be inimical to religion. The official response was that the Zionist movement regarded religion as a purely personal matter and took no formal position on it. 10 While this was clearly not the ideal answer to the religious Zionists, it was calculated to pacify both religious and secular elements and would have sufficed had the Zionist Organization remained a purely political-diplomatic body. However, in 1901 the Fifth Zionist Congress passed a resolution making educational work (defined in purely secular nationalist terms) compulsory for Zionists, 11 and this decision evoked deep seated fears of secularism among religious Zionists. They organized the first formally separate faction within the Zionist Organization, called Mizrahi, an acronym for Merkaz Ruhani, or "Spiritual Centre." The religious forces were joined by some nonreligious leaders who also advocated a "purely political Zionism" in order to preserve the young movement's strength.12 As reflected in the founding proclamation and the party program 5 issued at the founding conference of Mizrahi, held in Vilna, Lithuania, in 1902, the period between that conference and the first Mizrahi world convention, held in Pressburg, Hungary (now Bratislava, Czechoslovakia), in 1904, was marked by conflict between the religious and the secular "pure political" groups in Mizrahi. The political faction insisted that Mizrahi's purpose was negative and supervisory-to exclude cultural, educational, and all non political activities from the Zionist Organization-whereas the religious group opted for a more positive program, now that the Pandora's box of "culture" had been opened, and urged that extensive religious educational-cultural work be undertaken in Palestine and in the Diaspora. 13 By the time the first Mizrahi world convention met, the influence of the political leadership had all but disappeared. Although it still officially opposed cultural work by the World Zionist Organization, Mizrahi committed itself to such work in its own orthodox circles. The election as president of Rabbi Yitzhak Ya'akov Reines, who introduced such educational innovations as secular studies into the traditional yeshivah curriculum,14 indicated the path Mizrahi would take once the politicals were eliminated. As a transitional figure in the accommodation of orthodox Jewry to modernity, Reines laid both the theoretical and the practical groundwork for Mizrahi, and later Mafdal. In reiterating its acceptance of the basic tenets of political Zionism, the Pressburg convention's resolutions gave them a specifically religious coloration. In 1905 Mizrahi headquarters were transferred from Russia to Frankfurt, Germany. Unlike East European orthodoxy, the smaller West European orthodoxy, and that of Germany in particular, had turned to the device of communal separatism "to defend against the domination of the community by adherents of more liberal religious views internally''15 and against the combined onslaughts of religious reformism and modern political anti-Semitism externally, pressures which led large numbers of German Jews to convert to Christianity. 16 The atomization of German orthodoxy into small, self sufficient kehilot, or communities, and its alienation from the rest of Jewry caused the majority of German orthodox Jews to oppose any pan-Jewish undertaking, particularly the Zionist movement. 17 Mizrahi's pronounced nationalism was in evidence. Non-Jews were guaranteed "absolute freedom" to organize their religious lives according to their own religious laws, but only with government approval. The Hebrew language was to be the sole official language of the state, and the Jewish Sabbath and holidays were to be the official days of rest in the state, with complicated exceptions in certain localities. Finally, all Jewish education in the state was to be "in the spirit of the Torah of Israel and its traditions," though there the document noted that various types of Jewish schools could be encompassed within that definition. Berlin stated it was to achieve these essential points that Mizrahi had formed itself into a separate faction in the WZO. It would continue to battle for them in the upcoming Jewish state. Once Israel had been transformed from a voluntary political community to a sovereign state, the various political bodies had the opportunity to become full-fledged parties in an independent political system. They would bear the heavy responsibility of maintaining that system, whether in the government or in the opposition. The pressures to readjust their political thinking were particularly intense as a result of Mapai's drive toward mamlakhtiyut ("statism"), by which it set about nationalizing the parties' formerly autonomous spheres of operation. The religious parties, which had held that these were inviolate, altered their behaviour somewhat, but their basic orientations reasserted themselves after only four years. Each party, consistent with its distinctive ideology and history, viewed the rise of the state of Israel through its own particular lens.18 Mizrahi and ha-Po'el ha-Mizrahi saw the reestablishment of an independent Jewish political entity as an historic moment fraught with great religious significance. It retroactively justified their adherence to the Zionist organization, despite its secularist inclinations. But the secular spirit was now ensconced in the body politic of the state, and both groups realized that, barring a religious majority, the implementation of their ultimate goal-the establishment of a state run by Torah law, as well as the preservation of past achievements in the institutionalization of religion-would be difficult and gradual at best. They were heirs to the tradition of participation, bargaining, and compromise with non-religious Zionist parties, particularly Mapai, however, and their pattern of political behaviour was well suited to continued coalitional life in the new state. Orthodox Separatism At the turn of the twentieth century orthodox Jews in western and central Europe-Germany, Hungary, and Slovakia-had become a minority, and many, though not all of them, had turned to the device of communal separatism to defend themselves against such powerful social forces as secularism, religious reform, and assimilation. The forces of modernism had also made deep inroads among the millions of East European Jews, most of whom remained orthodox, though the device of communal separatism was not employed there. The differences in communal organization hampered any efforts at establishing an international orthodox organization until the appearance of a new "common enemy," 19the Zionist movement. With few exceptions, such as Rabbi Reines, the founder of Mizrahi, most orthodox rabbis saw Zionism as the epitome of those forces which had breached the wall of traditional Jewish life: secularism and assimilation. As proof, they pointed to the predominance of secular leaders in the WZO. While Zionism itself was ostensibly opposed to the assimilation of Jews into their cultural surroundings, its program of secular political nationalism was viewed by many of the orthodox as a form of national assimilation. 20They considered such nationalism a denial of the unique religious quality of the Jewish people and saw the practical program as a presumptuous attempt to force the divine hand into redemption. 21 Yet Zionism's focus on the return to the ancient Jewish homeland, unlike other social movements of the period, which had large numbers of Jewish adherents, had an undeniable appeal to orthodox Jews. Thus any opposition to Zionism had to reconcile its position with these religious ties. 22 Inherent conflicts were immediately apparent. German orthodox Jews had developed a philosophy and a behaviour pattern of acculturation in all but matters of religious observance. Most of the East European and Hungarian rabbis, in contrast, viewed secular academic education as the source of reform, secularism, assimilation, and all the other ills of the modern world and were therefore steadfastly opposed to it.23 The idea that clerical authority was to be paramount distinguished Agudah not only from non-religious Jewish organizations, and certainly from the WZO, but from Mizrahi as well. This concept underlay its fundamental opposition to the secular bases of the quasi-government of the Yishuv and, later, of the state of Israel. Breuer distinguished between the Zionists, who considered the nation as the central concept in Jewish life, with the Torah merely a product of the nation's creativity, and the Agudists, who viewed the Torah as central, with both the nation and the land as instruments to fulfil its commandments. He dismissed "the so-called Mizrahi" as "a faction of the Zionist Organization that attempted the impossible in trying to guide the Zionist Reform into the ways of God and His Torah" by maintaining a legitimizing aura of religion about it via such institutions as the chief rabbinate. Breuer argued that a Jewish state in Palestine should be "constituted from the very beginning in accordance with the commands of God and the Torah." Such a state could be achieved only if there were unanimity among the Jews on the fundamental nature of the state. Liebman and Don Yehiya24 point out, statism, the secular Zionist philosophy of the pre-eminence of the state over all other competing loyalties, has declined in recent years as the key operational philosophy of the state. Quite the contrary, the state itself now seeks religious symbols for its legitimacy. This is particularly true since 1977, with the rise of the "new civil religion," as Liebman and Don Yehiya refer to it,25 since the ascension of Begin. This development, in turn, has much to do with the political maturation of the Sephardim and their own inherent traditionalism. Thus, there seems to be no viable counter ideology to religion as a legitimating or motivating force within the polity today. Conclusion In the light of the above empirical analysis and discussion, I may conclude that Israel’s Zionist agenda has grown in the lap of secularism with rapid modernization, and intense external pressures is a tribute to their adaptive abilities. These are exemplified by their systems of socialization and recruitment, particularly in the areas of education and immigrant absorption. This growth also belies the contention that with the increasing modernization of society, there must necessarily be visible concomitant and undifferentiated secularization of peoples' attitudes as expressed in their political preferences. In modern times, classical Reform Judaism replaced the concept of a personal Messiah with the belief in a future Messianic Age of universal justice, a utopian era that will result from the efforts of human beings in perfecting the world rather than via a messenger sent by God. This movement attacked as too particularistic the traditional association of a return of the exiles to Zion and the rebuilding of the Temple. Instead of regarding the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jewish people as catastrophic events, they were viewed as valuable opportunities to spread the moral and ethical values of Judaism throughout the world. In contrast, Orthodox Judaism still firmly believes in the doctrine of a personal Messiah, a descendant of the House of David. Many Orthodox rabbis initially opposed Zionism as a “secular messianic movement” in which human beings were brazenly attempting to abrogate the divine prerogative of determining when the Messiah would come. However, after the establishment of the State of Israel, the general Orthodox view is that Israel represents the dawn of redemption. This was accentuated after the Six-Day War of 1967, in which Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem and for the first time in more than two millennia achieved Jewish rule over their entire biblically ordained homeland. Nevertheless, some extreme Orthodox sects do not recognize the political existence of the Jewish state, because the Messiah has not yet come to redeem the people. The religious parties' electoral success meant that they held the political balance of power between Labour and Likud insofar as they could determine who would be able to form a new government. Some--particularly Agudat Israel--overplayed their hand in the coalition bargaining by alternating between the two major parties to see which would offer the better deal in return for their coalition support. As a group, the religious parties provoked widespread dismay among secular Israelis, and especially among American Jews, and protests against changing the Law of Return which would delegitimatise the Judaism of an overwhelming majority of American Jews, as well as non-Orthodox Israelis. The ultra-Orthodox, opposed the many forms that Jewish acculturation took. For this reason, the ultra-Orthodox were totally anti Zionist. Zionism, or Jewish nationalism, represented another manner of serving or bridging the two cultures since it accepted, or asserted, the premise that the Jews were a nation that deserved secular sovereignty. Most important, the ultra-Orthodox opposed the secular nationalists as people who were forcing the hand of the Messiah by re-establishing Eretz Yisrael. Bibliography Amnon Rubinstein, The Zionist Dream Revisited: From Herd to Gush Emunim and Back (New York: Schocken Books, 1984) pp. 108-109. Aran Gideon. "From Religious Zionism to Zionist Religion: The Roots of Gush Emunim." In Studies in Contemporary Jewry, edited by Peter Y. Medding, 116-23. Vol. 2. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. Asher Reichel, Isaac Halevy: Spokesman and Historian of Jewish Tradition (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1969), p. 113. Avineri Shlomo. The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State. New York: Basic Books, 1981. 39 Ben Halpern, The Idea of the Jewish State, 2d ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 16, 17. Bingham G. Powell. Jr. and Gabriel A. Almond Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little. Brown 1966), ch. 11 Breuer, Isaac. The Jewish National Home. Translated by Miriam Aumann. Frankfurt Main: J. Kauffmann. 1926. Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. California Press, 1983). 50-52 Ehud Sprinzak, Gush Emunim: The Politics of Zionist Fundamentalism in Israel (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1986) p. 12. Ervin Birnbaum, The Politics of Compromise: State and Religion in Israel (Rutherford. N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970) 109-11 Fishman, Juda L. [Yehudah Leib Maimon]. The History of the Mizrachi Movement. Translated by Harry Karp. New York: Mizrachi Hatzair of America, 1928. Gabriel A. Almond and James S. Coleman, Eds... Introduction, The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), p. 63. Giovanni Sartori, " European Political Parties: The Case of Polarized Pluralism," in Political Parties and Political Development, ed. Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 160. Liebman Charles S. and Eliezer Don-Yehiya. Civil Religion in Israel: Traditional Judaism and Political Culture in the Jewish State. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989. 89-92 Lilly Weissbrod , "Gush Emunim Ideology--From Religious Doctrine to Political Action," Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 18, no. 3 ( July 1982) p. 273 Lustick Ian S. For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1988. 121 Luz Ehud. Parallels Meet: Religion and Nationalism in the Early Zionist Movement, 1882- 1904. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988. 175-77 Maurice Duverger, Political Parties, trans. B. and R. North. 2d rev. ed. ( New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1959), p. xxiii. Norman L. Zucker, The Coming Crisis in Israel: Private Faith and Public Policy (Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Press, 1973). 95-99 Peter Y. Medding, Mapai in Israel: Political Organization and Government in a New Society: (Cambridge: The University Press, 1972), p. 238. Rudik Yohai Baruch. Eretz Geulah: Ideological Roots of Religious Zionism, Gush Emunim, the Jewish Underground, and the System of Their Relations with the Secular World in the State of Israel. Jerusalem: Institute for the Study of the Teachings of Rabbi A. I. Kook, 1989. 13-15 Sprinzak Ehud. Gush Emunim: The Politics of Zionist Fundamentalism in Israel. New York: American Jewish Committee, Institute of Human Relations, 1986. 190-92 Read More