Religious constraint and political constraint in Israel

Contrary to a widespread opinion, Israel is not a theocratic State. The type of relations maintained between the institutions and the religions leads, rather, to describing Israel as a multiconfessional State¹: a ministry of religious affairs is charged with relations with the 14 religious communities. Judaism, Islam, the Druze religion, and a dozen other denominations — notably the various Christian churches² — are recognized by the State and receive public subsidies. But quite obviously, it is Judaism that exerts the strongest influence. On the one hand, a genuine religious constraint is exerted on society, and on the other, the electoral system multiplies the influence of the religious parties in political life.

The Men in Black³

The ultra-Orthodox communities, which represent about 10% of the population, are rapidly expanding owing to a high birth rate⁴. The school system that takes in the children of this public already accounts for 23% of the country’s pupils. By all logic, this population should see its numbers double in a generation. But this tendency could be attenuated by two phenomena that are interesting to observe. The first is that of a greater participation of ultra-Orthodox men in the labor market, whereas until now most of them devoted themselves entirely to the study of the Torah. In this respect, the year 2015 can be considered historic, since it saw a majority (53%) of ultra-Orthodox men engaged in a professional activity, which was already the case for their wives, whose earnings came on top of welfare benefits. This better integration into the world of work, and its corollary, a lesser dependence on family allowances, could slow the birth rate. Another development is shaking up the world of the men in black: ultra-Orthodox Jews, particularly the young, are leaving their community⁵. The future of this movement — expanding, and reportedly already concerning a little more than a thousand individuals each year — is, however, uncertain.

Originally, ultra-Orthodox Jews, in their immense majority, were hostile to Zionism: the creation of a Jewish State in the land of Israel before the coming of the Messiah was perceived as a heresy. Even today, the ultra-Orthodox religious parties profess an antizionism of principle, but they sit in the government. This participation presents many advantages, notably on the financial level. Yahadout HaTorah and Shas make their support of the government conditional on the granting of stipends for yeshiva students, of subsidies for their charitable associations, their school networks… In other words, the antizionism of the ultra-Orthodox parties is largely attenuated by their “instrumental” vision (Ilan Greilsammer) of the State. The advantages obtained by the ultra-Orthodox are not recent. David Ben Gurion, in a letter of 19 June 1947, committed himself to ensuring that in the future State the Shabbat would be the legal day of rest, that kashrut would be respected in all public kitchens, that the rabbinate would control personal status, and that the ultra-Orthodox school sector would keep its autonomy. These concessions, which were followed by others, entail significant consequences in the daily life of Israelis. In practice, the rabbinical courts handle marriages and divorces, which results in a de facto prohibition of civil marriages and mixed marriages⁶. The Orthodox rabbinate also controls conversions. More than this, the exemption from military service, which originally concerned only 400 boys, today benefits several thousand of them each year.

Beneath the Knitted Kippa, Politics

Unlike the ultra-Orthodox, the men who wear a knitted kippa and their wives participate actively in the life of the country, and have done so from the start. Breaking with the antizionism of ultra-Orthodoxy from the beginning of the twentieth century, a whole religious current, at the instigation of Chief Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), interpreted the creation of the State of Israel as prefiguring the Redemption: far from being incompatible with religion, Zionism was to allow the Jewish people to assume its “divine vocation.” On this basis, the religious Zionists managed to build a compromise with the secular Zionists. Their party, the Mafdal (or National Religious Party), took part in all the Labor governments since the founding of the State. After the Six-Day War in 1967, its relations with the left deteriorated, the question of the future of the occupied territories becoming a subject of conflict. The Mafdal seized on a pretext in 1977 to put an end to its alliance with the left and to favor alliances with the right.

This does not mean that all religious Zionists are right-wing. There are still, among the wearers of the knitted kippa, voters for the parties of the left and members of the pacifist movements. But the pluralism of religious Zionism is a decoy: only a few individuals display open positions within an increasingly monolithic current — one whose influence, however, keeps growing.

First of all because the wearers of the knitted kippa and their wives demonstrate a number of qualities. They are endowed with a solid ideological formation: religious Zionism, founded on the alliance between the people of Israel, the Torah of Israel, and the land of Israel, presents a real intellectual coherence. This ideology is transmitted thanks to an intense educational effort for which the movement has established solid institutions. Disposing of a public school network, the public-religious sector (mamlakhti-dati), the movement is dominant in a good-quality university, Bar-Ilan (near Tel Aviv), and has set up a whole network of yeshivas, some of which combine Talmudic studies and military service (yeshivot hesder). Moreover, a youth movement, the Bné Akiva, organizes for children and adolescents leisure activities and summer camps with a declared ideological content. From this point of view, the success of religious Zionism can be understood as the reward of this continuous effort in favor of education. Furthermore, the individual conduct of the people formed in this school most often inspires a feeling of respect in the Israeli population. Far from playing the moralizers as the ultra-Orthodox do, the religious Zionists base their relations with their non-religious fellow citizens on tolerance and openness. They also bring significant support to disadvantaged populations, and often display a disinterestedness that contrasts with the materialism of the society surrounding them.

The influence of religious Zionism is increasingly visible in many sectors, and first of all in the army⁷. In all the security services, their presence is visible: the head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, comes from a religious family and was a yeshiva pupil, and Roni Alsheikh, the head of the police, wears the knitted kippa. For, urged on by their rabbis and their leaders, young religious Zionists fully intend to take on responsibilities in Israeli society, where for a long time their influence was limited. In this respect, one has been able to speak of a strategy of entryism. Organized or not, the movement is now very visible in many sectors of public life (ministries, radio and television…). Many observers consider that this rise to power of religious Zionism is going to lead to an ideological hegemony showcased by this new elite.

Even apart from any political will, the impact of religious Zionism on society will keep growing, notably for demographic reasons. The religious-Zionist population has a high birth rate. This development is perceptible throughout the country⁸, and still more so in the West Bank.

The Israeli Kulturkampf

Israeli Jews often define themselves in relation to their degree of religious practice⁹: secular, traditionalist, religious-Zionist, or ultra-Orthodox. The Kulturkampf¹⁰ is the cultural battle that has always pitted the men in black against the majority of Israelis, in particular against those declaring themselves secular¹¹ who, in view of the power acquired by ultra-Orthodoxy, have the feeling of living in a besieged fortress. Not without reason. The institutional immobilism supposed to govern relations between the State and religion — the status quo — masks an evolution that constantly goes in the direction wished for by the ultra-Orthodox parties. In 70 years, the “religious constraint” has strengthened.

There are, first, classic themes of the confrontation between secular and religious. The first is that of the Shabbat. The ultra-Orthodox parties often make their votes in the Knesset conditional on an increasingly complete observance of the Shabbat, with the halting of public transport, the closure of most businesses and leisure venues… The compromise proposals put forward, such as that of the closure of businesses and the opening of leisure venues whose purpose is not solely commercial, ran up against a categorical refusal on the part of the ultra-Orthodox parties. In January 2018, a controversial bill aiming to prohibit the opening of neighborhood businesses during the Shabbat was adopted by a very slim majority in the Israeli Parliament after weeks of twists and divisions. The text provides for giving the ministry of the Interior the possibility of rejecting local ordinances relating to the opening of businesses on the day of the Shabbat. Although the law makes an exception for Tel Aviv, where the way of life is particularly secular, its application has already led to confrontations, notably in Ashdod, where businesses open on the Shabbat were sanctioned, and where secular people organized demonstrations to defend their opening.

The second classic theme of confrontation between secular and religious targets the monopoly of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, today occupied by ultra-Orthodox. At the head of this fight are the Israelis who practice the religion in the liberal (liberal or reformed) and traditionalist (massorti or conservative) movements. This contestation has often been well received by the Supreme Court, which has decided, through resounding rulings, that rabbis belonging to these currents could also be paid by the State, or again that liberal or conservative women could use the ritual baths controlled by the Chief Rabbinate. Moreover, the compromise approved by the government on the question of mixed prayers at the Wailing Wall (Kotel) was called into question and provoked a crisis with American Jewry. The delicate question of conversions regularly fuels the polemic, all those celebrated abroad being recognized, whereas in Israel the Chief Rabbinate retains control of them. Apart from the liberal and traditionalist movements, a non-militant fraction of the public also contests in practice the monopoly of the Chief Rabbinate, by marrying abroad (in Cyprus or Greece), these unions being recognized by the State of Israel. One can also note, in the recent period, the establishment within the Orthodox rabbinate itself of an independent kashrut service (an attempt of the same type had already been made in the field of conversions).

A Fight against Privileges

The Kulturkampf does not have only a religious dimension. Many secular and even observant Israelis oppose the privileges obtained by the ultra-Orthodox public, and first of all the welfare dependency: whereas students at university must pay their tuition (about 12,000 shekels, or 3,000 euros, per year), most yeshiva students receive a stipend (on the order of 1,000 shekels, or about 250 euros per month, for the unmarried). This inequality of treatment is all the more poorly received in that the majority of young people enter university after having completed their military service, whereas, as we have seen, yeshiva students are exempted from it. For all these reasons, the ultra-Orthodox concentrate the criticisms of a majority of Israelis who reproach them for not “shouldering their share of the burden.”

As a result, the Kulturkampf today has a dimension as much social as cultural. And this on two levels. It is first a matter of participation in the labor market, which runs up against a major difficulty: having followed studies where the learning of fundamental subjects is often nonexistent, and being virtually absent from the universities, haredi men are hardly employable. The previous coalition (2013–2015), from which the ultra-Orthodox parties were absent, had managed to get adopted the principle that only schools offering pupils a basic education (English, mathematics, and science) could receive public funds. But back in the government, the ultra-Orthodox parties obtained the dismantling of this provision. At the same time, as the price of their participation in the coalition, the ultra-Orthodox managed to push the credits granted to yeshivas from 500 million to 1.1 billion shekels (about 260 million euros). As a result, in 2016, the share of ultra-Orthodox men participating in the labor market fell back to 51%.

There is then the attitude toward the army. Two questions are posed. On the one hand, the participation of the ultra-Orthodox in military service. The exemption from military service for yeshiva pupils, as we have seen, has existed since the creation of the State. But it is regularly called into question, reviving the tensions on a subject that has for years crystallized the dissensions between secular and religious. In 2014, a law called “sharing of the burden” came close to putting an end to it. But the ultra-Orthodox community managed to make the government back down, with an amendment voted in 2015. This amendment to the law was annulled by the Supreme Court on the basis of the principle of equality. The ultra-Orthodox members of parliament have made the adoption of a new text reestablishing the exemption the condition of their support for the laws presented by the coalition, thus jeopardizing the existence of the government. Another difficulty is raised in the religious-Zionist world, several rabbis having taken a stand against the mixing of the sexes in combat units.

The Ravages of Full Proportional Representation

The Israeli electoral system, that of a full proportional representation, favors the weight of small parties: without them, it is impossible to form a governing coalition. This the ultra-Orthodox parties have perfectly understood; they have not ceased to confirm their electoral weight and today dispose of a significant parliamentary representation. This is true for the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox of Yahadout HaTorah (United Torah Judaism), who counted 4 deputies in 1992 and in 1996, 5 in 1999, 5 in 2003, 6 in 2006 and in 2009, 7 in 2013, and 6 in 2015. At present, the polls credit it with 7 seats. That is already more than Shas. The Sephardic ultra-Orthodox party, which had made its appearance on the parliamentary scene with 4 seats in 1984, had reached as many as 17 seats in 1999. Since then, the polls have given it less than its current representation (7 seats), and, given the electoral threshold that has been raised to 3.25%, Shas is at present in a situation of survival. The reasons for this decline are multiple: the disappearance of Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Shas’s mentor, and the increasing isolation of Arieh Déri, the party’s historic leader, once again the object of an investigation for several corruption affairs. More profoundly, the Shas party, which played an important social role among disadvantaged Sephardic populations, finds itself challenged on this terrain by the Likud in the poor neighborhoods and the development towns. This electorate, now more “available,” especially in the event of Shas’s disappearance from the parliamentary scene, is also courted by HaBaït HaYéoudi (The Jewish Home). This party, heir of the old Mafdal, indeed seeks to broaden its electoral base, still very marked by its Ashkenazi origins and its influence in the territories (see below). Its leader, Naftali Bennett, by choosing as his number two a secular woman (Ayelet Shaked), has shown this will toward sociological (but not ideological) openness. More broadly, its parliamentary representation (8 seats in 2015) is closely tied to the balance of forces between the right-wing parties. One notes in particular a phenomenon of communicating vessels between the Likud and religious Zionism for two sets of reasons. On the one hand, within the Likud, the weight taken on by religion has grown, and many are the wearers of the knitted kippa among its militants and its leaders. On the other hand, a genuine ideological rapprochement exists, in particular on the question of the future of the territories: in December 2017, the central committee of the Likud pronounced itself unanimously for the annexation of the West Bank.

Religion and the Territories

Today, of the some 400,000 Israelis living beyond the Green Line in the 134 settlements recognized by the Israeli government, the religious-Zionist population numbers well over 100,000 people and is the majority in half of the settlements. Very logically, the dominant party in the West Bank is the HaBaït HaYéoudi party. Expressing itself less and less on religious questions, and more and more on those of security and the future of the occupied territories, this party can be considered that of the settlers, and indeed, many of its militants, its leaders, and its elected officials live in the West Bank. In the elections of 17 March 2015, HaBaït HaYéoudi obtained 25% of the vote, whereas at the national level it had to content itself with less than 7% (8 deputies). Yahadout HaTorah also obtains significant scores in the West Bank, owing to the composition of the population of eight ultra-Orthodox settlements: in 2015, this party obtained, across the whole of the West Bank, 17% of the vote, against 5% at the national level. This situation has important political consequences: whereas the ideology of Yahadout HaTorah, centered on the observance of the divine commandments, should not give a large place to settlement, the party’s electoral interest leads it to distrust any evolution in the status of the West Bank. Shas, which has hardly any voters in the West Bank, could have a more open attitude on these questions. Indeed, Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef had for a time defended dovish positions in the name of the “sanctity of life.” But the Shas public is very nationalist: the polls carried out in the nineties showed that of all the electorates, that of Shas was the most hostile to the Oslo accords.

All in all, the weight of the religious parties keeps bearing down on the life of Israelis. This had already been the case for a long time for all subjects touching, closely or remotely, on religion. It is now the case for the government’s agenda in domestic policy and even in international policy: any concession going in the direction of the two-State solution is presented as so many renunciations of the land of the Jewish people, an abandonment of the homeland. And as the support of these parties is often indispensable to governmental stability, their discourse often remains unanswered… and gains in influence on both sides of the Green Line.

Notes