The Israeli business newspaper Calcalist reported last month about the plans of dozens of restaurants in Tel Aviv to stay open on the eve of Tisha b’Av, a significant fast marking the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. According to the report, the plans to stay open were meant, in part, to protest against the controversial judicial reforms that the government is currently passing despite widespread public outcry.
Not all of the restaurant owners were happy with how they were presented. Regardless, the publication of the article provoked a flood of responses that shows how much political and social baggage Jewish symbols have in the Israeli public.
What is there to say when justified anger at the government turns into a rejection of Judaism itself? How can I promote the value of Judaism to those who reject it when some of Judaism’s foremost defenders are themselves indefensible?
A lesson from Islam
To illustrate the sentiment that this situation can produce, let's take Islam as an example. Hebrew Wikipedia defines “political Islam” as “a political movement derived from the religious views of Islamic fundamentalism that wages a struggle against moderate Muslim local rulers and external elements affiliated with the West. At its ideological base is the assumption that Islam is not just a religion, but also a complex political system that dominates the legal, economic, and social spheres of the country.”
Many Israelis understand Judaism in Israel to be no different from political Islam. For the most part, they’re right. Jewish fundamentalism is not different from Islamic fundamentalism – it too opposes the liberal West and rejects its values, holds a discriminatory religious outlook, and does not accept the idea of a state that is both religious and democratic.
When the leaders of public Jewish life are such antidemocratic figures as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Housing and Construction Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf and others, Judaism is reduced to merely a political movement, in the style of Islamic fundamentalism. It is no longer a religion, a nation, or a culture. The rich and revolutionary civilization into which my grandfather was born – and for which he was murdered in the Holocaust – is reduced to its most fundamentalist, oppressive, and confrontational form.
In fact, figures like Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and Goldknopf are the minority. I am well acquainted with numerous liberal, humane religious Zionists and ultra-Orthodox Jews who are committed to derekh eretz, the Hebrew phrase for decency that extends beyond Torah law. In a genuine encounter, even people who appear to be extremists often turn out to be willing to compromise and find common ground. I spend my days dreaming about what this country could look like if people of this sort were more present in the public conversation, rather than the fundamentalists.
If these decent religious Zionists and ultra-Orthodox Jews, who I understand make up the majority of religious Jews in Israel, choose to align themselves with racist and homophobic religious extremists rather than with the “secular” liberal public, nothing will be left of Zionism.
What is needed in order to make this happen is not more egalitarian minyans. Although it is a worthwhile project, creating a more welcoming and tolerant religious Judaism will not provide an answer to the fundamentalism currently dominating the government. Instead, what is needed is a genuine secular Judaism.
A holistic secular Judaism
Secular Judaism. A secular Jewish lifestyle that is not simply Western atheism with touches of religious tradition. A secular Jewish worldview, that is, a set of values and ideas through which a secular Jew examines the world and formulates positions on it. Renewal of the foundations of liberalism and democracy, fraternity, liberty, justice, and peace, in light of Jewish thought, faith and history. A secular Jewish attitude toward what German Jewish philosopher Franz Rozenweig called the “star of redemption” – the interconnected relationships between humanity, the world, and God, through creation, revelation, and redemption.
In other words, a secular Jewish spirituality. Perhaps even a secular Jewish halakha, or law code, not one made up of mandates and prohibitions but a framework based on the sages’ radical stances on the dialogical shaping of individual and social life.
A secular Judaism that is not in opposition to its religious sister stream. An organically developing tradition that is not bound by the conclusions and opinions of previous generations or of “rabbis” and big names. Simply Judaism. A Judaism of individuals, individuals who are not isolated, who choose the community and actively commit to being part of a nation. A Judaism with traditions, holidays, and a literary canon, but without obvious practices or ways of life. A Judaism with a zeal for the uniqueness of the Jewish people and with an enthusiastic embrace of the works of all peoples and cultures. When God is no longer taken for granted, God’s existence and commandments can suddenly be argued about.
Traditionalism is an important source of inspiration for this secular Judaism I aspire to. But in and of itself, it is not the solution for secular Jews seeking their own path. The kibbutzim laid important foundations for Judaism of this sort, before they were drowned in a wave of materialistic capitalism. The organizations and individuals engaged in secular study of the Jewish canon are a crucial asset for this movement, but they appeal to a minority of intellectuals and they fail to produce a genuine sociology. The same can be said of the many cultural Jewish attempts to renew the Jewish calendar and life cycle in a secular spirit.
Remembering more than just the Temple
Why are these initiatives still insufficient? I find it difficult to put my finger on exactly what’s missing from them. My instinct is that their target population is too small and too distinct. Among those who choose to take part in this type of Judaism, there is simply not enough makhloket, the Hebrew word for conflict or controversy. Perhaps this problem could be addressed by founding a broad movement of joint study, dialogue, and shared life between secular and non-secular Jews (and also with non-Jews, although that’s another topic) as part of the creative work of defining democratic Israeli Judaism.
Unfortunately, a genuine secular Judaism barely exists. Creating one is the mission of members of this generation who take after my sociology. That mission is identical with the work of preserving and strengthening the State of Israel as a Jewish democratic state. Because only a Jewish democratic society will know how to maintain a Jewish democratic state. And without a strong secular Judaism, Israel's Jewish democratic society is meager – whether in its democratic commitment or its Jewish identity.
I'm not sure how important it is to me that Tel Aviv restaurants be closed on the eve of Tisha b’Av. I have no interest in the restaurants being forced to close or in them choosing to do so as a matter of respect. The religious people I know are not so sensitive as to be "offended" by a restaurant being open on the date of the Temple’s destruction.
But Tisha b’Av doesn’t only commemorate the destruction of a temple. It also commemorates the destruction of a city and the massacre of an entire population. I’m not sure that there were “secular” people back then in the sense that there are today, but there were devout believers and heretics, disbelievers and innovators, farmers and merchants, priests, Pharisees, scholars, and common people.
This destruction was not just a mythological event but an actual part of Jewish, Israeli, and world history. The fact that the secular public has no meaningful way of relating to this date, which so many generations have marked with tears, is in itself a small tragedy for which the time has come to redeem ourselves.
This article was translated from Hebrew by Leah Schwartz.
