Israeli democracy requires a shift from the politics of selective exclusion to one of strategic inclusion that embraces the majority of Israel’s Jews (and Arabs) for whom religious tradition is a bedrock of their identity, argues Sam Shube. ‘Ultimately, the left can only win if it accepts the partnership of those with radically divergent lifestyle choices, embracing difference with dignity and patient acceptance’.
Candles for the Baba Sali
Childhood memories take me back to the day of rejoicing for the [renowned Moroccan Rabbi] Baba Sali … Grandmothers and grandfathers, pious men and women would light hundreds of candles, praying in Arabic, Hebrew and French [at the gravesite]. The sounds and fragrances remain with me to this day.
Thus Carmen Elmakayes, feminist leader, LGBT social activist and political firebrand, in a recent Facebook post that might well trigger dissonance among secular Ashkenazim [Israelis of European extraction]. Elmakayes, after all, is neither ultra-orthodox nor right wing, but her cultural moorings remain anchored in the folk piety that helps shape the identity of hundreds of thousands of Israelis of Mizrachi [North African and Middle Eastern] provenance. At a 2015 election rally for the left, author Yair Garbuz pontificated against a ‘marginal group. People who kiss religious charms, worship idols and prostrate themselves at the graves of the pious,’ lumping them together with ‘those who scream “death to the Arabs” … promote violence … take bribes … destroy democracy.’ The Likud – no surprise – took those elections in its stride. Lesson: it’s time to revisit Marx’s insight that religion is no mere primitive vestige, but rather ‘the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.’
Garbuz’s foot-in-mouth performance continued a long tradition of condescension towards cultural identities that defy Israel’s dominant secular-European ethos. At a 1981 Labor Party campaign rally, comedian Dudu Topaz used a slur to ridicule Mizrachim who vote for the Likud after performing military service in units with less cachet than those of the Ashkenazi elite. Topaz snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, catapulting Menahem Begin to an unexpected electoral win. At another Labor election rally some 18 years later, thousands of demonstrators chanted ‘Just Not Shas!’ – urging Ehud Barak not to form a government with the Sephardic Haredi (ultra-orthodox) party (he did ultimately bring them into the coalition). This self-inflicted political wound signalled to observant Mizrachi voters that they would never be welcome in the precincts of the left-wing elite, presaging the failure of a potentially historic alliance that might have changed the course of Israeli politics. And in a moment of painful candor in 2022, popular musician Shlomo Gronich used the same pejorative term as Topaz had 40 years earlier, telling his audience how pleased he was that they were all Ashkenazim. They weren’t. Mizrachim have the sophistication that Gronich apparently lacks to appreciate musical genres across cultural lines.
Just Leather Straps
Tefillin are known in English as phylacteries. As a youth, I pondered the existence of a philological connection between the archaic prayer boxes with leather straps that adorn the forehead and upper arm during morning prayers, and prophylactics, those forbidden accessories that adolescents like me could only dream of putting to their intended use. Still, I regularly donned tefillin with my grandfather at the daily prayer quorum. Less a statement of faith and more a declaration of filial piety, I cherished those morning encounters with my elders that ended with a shot of Southern Comfort and a slap on the back. In Israel today, tefillin are just another battlefront in a never ending KulturKampf. Religious enthusiasts take to the streets, supermarkets and airport terminals, offering men the chance to fulfill this religious obligation on the run – much to the chagrin of secularists. Educational philosopher Nimrod Aloni, writing in the name of ‘the Jewish humanist, free-thinker or atheist,’ takes exception to such religious activities near public schools, deeming them a ‘real and present threat’ to liberal values. As someone who checks all three of Aloni’s intellectual boxes, I personally have no fear my child will reject the theory of evolution at the mere sight of tefillin. Neither, apparently, does Iftach Peretz, son of a prominent Mizrachi socialist politician. In a poignant Facebook post excoriating Netanyahu’s right wing government, Peretz also reveals how happy it makes him to don tefillin at a local kiosk .
In Israel’s intensely tribal political environment, electoral behaviour is as much about fear of tefillin as it is about fear of Hamas. And let’s face it. Secular Israelis cannot hope to lead a multicultural political landscape by themselves. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, just 45 per cent of Israeli Jews self-define as secular. A third are ‘traditional’ – a broad category heavily weighted towards Mizrachim – the rest being equally split between ‘religious’ Jews (a rubric that includes the settler right) – and haredim. Tradition is a wellspring of group identity for Israel’s Arabs as well. 68 per cent of Moslems in Israel told a 2016 Pew survey that religion was a very important part of their lives. The numbers do not bode well for secular Jewish hegemony. The centre-left may at times face off against Sephardic or Ashkenazic haredim, the settler right, the Likud, or the Arab parties. But it cannot oppose all of them all of the time and remain politically relevant.
A Kibbutz Leader Shifts Right
Sometimes the narrow parochialism of identity politics breaks through the thin veneer of ideological conceit. Outgoing Kibbutz Movement boss Nir Meir raised many a left-wing eyebrow with a recent Haaretz interview favouring collaboration with Orit Strock from the far-right Religious Zionist list. Strock, who has compared Israel’s security services with Russia’s Wagner Group for daring to investigate Jewish terrorists, says ‘The land of Israel will be ours in its entirety. There will be no Palestinian state because there is no such thing as a Palestinian people.’ Meir’s break from the left mirrors the social demography of today’s kibbutzim, increasingly home to middle class families seeking affordable housing rather than ideological coherence. Seven per cent of my own kibbutz, for example, cast their votes for Strock’s list in the last Knesset elections, and over 11 per cent voted Likud. The internal cohesion of these communities, Meir seems to feel, requires that they selectively screen their membership – and use of their public spaces – from inroads by anyone outside the secular, white tribe: Arabs in the Galilee or Jews from [largely Mizrachi] working class development towns. Meir’s brutal honesty is mortifying, but his politics of selective exclusion are transparent. In the marketplace of political alliances, partisans of settler apartheid are all that remains when you rule out everyone else.
Israeli democracy requires a shift from the politics of selective exclusion to one of strategic inclusion that embraces the majority of Israel’s Jews (and Arabs) for whom religious tradition is a bedrock of their identity. To be sure, it will require ongoing moral haziness on essential questions of gender separation, LGBT rights and military service for haredi men. No surprise here. Israel has never tried to enforce its own laws against polygamy on Bedouin society, or gender equality on haredim. Some changes must come from the bottom up. With 83 per cent of haredi women now working, and an increasing number of Bedouin women pursuing higher education, fundamentalist social mores may well lose their rigidity over time. Haredi parties, for their part, have had no problem serving alongside an openly gay cabinet minister – now Knesset chairman – Amir Ohana.
One secret of Netanyahu’s political vice grip on haredi parties has been his willingness to pay any budgetary price to secure religious backing. Flush with cash from a hi-tech economy where 10 per cent of the workforce provided a quarter of the country’s tax receipts, 15 per cent of its GDP and 43 per cent of its exports, Netanyahu was more than willing to sign generous coalition agreements that created disincentives to haredi workforce participation. Those days are over. The NIS 200 billion price tag of the Gaza war combined with the drop in Israel’s credit rating will perforce tame the profligate instincts of future governments. With thousands of large, haredi families struggling under the burden of poverty and coalition largess reaching its fiscal limits, their own political leadership may well choose to collaborate across party lines.
Cholent for the Marchers
It was March 2023 and the protest movement against Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul was in full swing. Thousands of protesters set out from Tel Aviv in a night time march to the ultra-orthodox town of Bnei Brak in protest against haredi politicians’ support for government policies. Secular Israel was branding haredim as a collective enemy in a demonstrative act sure to provoke antagonism. But while minor scuffles were indeed reported, marchers were surprised by locals who greeted them with tables full of sweets, pastries and pots full of cholent – a traditional, slow-cooking dish savoured by observant Jews on the sabbath. It was a reminder that Netanyahu’s reactionary strategy of polarisation is not mandated by Jewish law and an invitation, perhaps, to envision a new landscape of political alliances.
In an age when racist government ministers condone hate crimes in support of nationalist goals, secular Jewish Israelis must decide what fate they fear most for their sons: guarding illegal West Bank settler outposts or learning – God forbid – how to use tefillin. Strategic inclusion is not about who will form the next Israeli government. It’s about the long game, and how to build a sustainable base of support for Israeli democracy. Ultimately, the left can only win if it accepts the partnership of those with radically divergent lifestyle choices, embracing difference with dignity and patient acceptance.
