Print
PDF FormatThe personal and professional relationship between Bialik and his fellow writers Yosef Haim Brenner and the young Agnon exemplifies the cultural fecundity of Jews who, however different in outlook, nonetheless row the same river together.45 All three received a traditional religious education, but none of them stayed within the confines of the yeshiva world. Brenner’s break from halachic Judaism was a rebellion against his father, a furious settling of scores. Bialik’s movement toward secularism, however, was not fueled by Oedipal rage. Orphaned by his father at age seven, Bialik’s work reflects a longing for his lost parent and his once-happy childhood home. Agnon greatly admired his devout father, writing at age forty that “he imbued me with the spirit of poetry.”46 Agnon’s father taught him the Talmud, the works of the great Jewish sages, and European literature. One does not rebel against such a father. Rather, one is indebted to him, and aspires to make him proud. Indeed, Agnon never abandoned religion. On the contrary, his work proves that a religious way of life need not be incompatible with the writing of modern, secular prose.
A modern secularist, a talmudic secularist, and an independent religionist; each attempted to create a shared national culture, and none of them had any use for labels, whether for themselves or for others. They argued as they rowed, but never at the expense of moving forward. Moreover, they never felt the need to dip into other rivers. They each developed their own rowing style, but it is futile to wonder which of them rowed better. Together, they form the perfect example of what a multi-dimensional Jewish culture looks like: Neither secular alienation nor religious fossilization. Unity, not uniformity.
Those who abandon their heritage, on the other hand, grow rank and moldy in the swamps of one-dimensional identity. Secular ponds teem with Israelis whose identities are purely civic; religious ponds teem with Israelis who blindly obey their rabbis. The first group seeks to live only in the present, and pays no heed to the past; the second lives only in the past, and tries to ignore the present. Is it any wonder that both groups spend most of their days slinging swamp-mud at one another?
“Orthodoxy is today in a state of less God-fearing, and more fear of extremist humans,” warned the talmudic scholar Efraim Urbach in 1972.47 Perhaps, were he alive today, he would find reason for optimism in the rising status of Sephardim and women in Haredi and national religious circles. “The religious establishment of Sephardi Jews is far more liberal, far more open, and far more humane than its eastern European counterpart,” explained Eli Amir to fellow author Sami Michael on the occasion of Shas’ establishment.48 The religious feminist Tamar Ross recently pointed to the connection between “the relaxed, pragmatic, and non-ideological religious atmosphere which characterizes certain factions of Sephardi Jewry,” and the chance for halachic renewal with regard to women’s status issues.49 Indeed, there are growing signs that the male Ashkenazi halachic establishment no longer holds sway over educated women seeking religious equality, such as Alice Shalvi, Dvora Waysman, Hanna Kehat, Tova Ilan, Tzvia Greenfield, Bambi Sheleg, and Leah Shakdiel. In a similar manner, they are no longer able to dominate leading Sephardi rabbis such as Ovadia Yosef or Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, who devote considerable effort to finding halachic leniencies, as opposed to the Lithuanian rabbis, whose very faith, it would seem, lies in the strictness of their interpretations.
The growing influence of the Sephardi public and the feminist phenomena in Haredi and religious Zionist circles increase our chances of achieving a Jewish melting pot. Indeed, the more that halacha is refreshed and revived, the more tolerant and equal it will become.50 Likewise, the fewer draconian demands halacha places on those communities trying to live by its rules, the more secular interest in Judaism will increase. A secular Jew cannot respect a system that discriminates against women, condescends to gentiles, and preoccupies itself with nonsense such as wigs. Nor can he respect, as rabbi and scholar David Hartman wrote, “Jews who worry about public kashrut and Sabbath observance, but don’t seem to be bothered by the unjust treatment or exploitation of foreign workers or minorities.”51
Thus, instead of fearing Shas, it would behoove secular Jews to cheer on the revolution being waged in religious strongholds, a revolution leading us ever closer to a softening of the Haredi world’s sharp edges. And instead of fearing the religious Zionists, it would behoove secular Jews to recognize that the movement is not just about settlements. It is also the site of a feminist revolution from within, one that, according to Tamar El-Or, a scholar of Haredi society, will “create a massive change in Orthodoxy in a very short time.”52 Indeed, insists El-Or, the halachic changes currently being pursued by influential religious-Zionist women will eventually make the national religious community more egalitarian. It will also become more religious, “because it will include more individuals who are conversant in Tora, and more observant women keeping more mitzvot.”53
Very few women, and very few Sephardi Jews, participated in shaping Ben-Gurion’s melting pot vision. This is but one of the reasons for its failure, and one does not have to be a post-Zionist to say so. On the contrary: Today, it is finally possible to create a melting pot that is both religiously and ethnically egalitarian. But to create such a melting pot, we must want to create. Not to take things apart.
When we said our final goodbyes not long ago to the poet Natan Yonatan, the songwriter Naomi Shemer, and the novelist Moshe Shamir, we said goodbye to an era: The era of Ben-Gurion’s sabra, his secular, Ashkenazi “Hebrew man.” His melting pot vision was simultaneously deep-rooted and shallow; embracing and alienating; inspiring and infuriating-it all depends on whom you ask. But one thing is clear: It was not a national melting pot, because there is no Israeli nation. There is only a Jewish nation. Nearly six decades since the founding of the Jewish state, it is time we all awoke to this fact.
Assaf Inbari is an essayist, literary critic, and regular contributer to Azure. This essay was orginally published in the Hebrew daily Maariv on September 15, 2004, and afterwards in the book The Jewishness of Israel (The Israel Democracy Institute, 2007).
Notes
1. Aside, that is, from its Arab population.
2. Gadi Taub, “We Are Not a Fruit Salad,” Yediot Aharonot holiday supplement, April 5, 2004 [Hebrew].
3. Anita Shapira, “Ben-Gurion and the Bible: Creating a Historical Narrative,” Alpayim 14 (1997), pp. 207-231 [Hebrew].
4. For a complete retrospective synopsis of Yonatan Ratosh’s “Canaanite” vision, see Yonatan Ratosh, “The New Hebrew Nation (the Canaanite Conception),” in Ehud Ben-Ezer, ed., There’s No Serenity in Zion: Conversations on the Price of Zionism (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1986), pp. 232-260 [Hebrew].
5. Haim Nahman Bialik, Words by Heart, book 1 (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1935), p. 63 [Hebrew].
6. On the term “Hebrew culture” as used by Bialik, see Natan Rotenstreich, “Bialik on Cultural Matters,” in Abraham Kariv, ed., Knesset: A New Series, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1960), pp. 207-214 [Hebrew]; see also Eliezer Schweid, Towards a Modern Jewish Culture (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1995), pp. 213-234 [Hebrew].
7. Shlomit Levi, Hanna Levinson, and Eliyahu Katz, Faith, Observance, and Social Relations Among Israeli Jews (Jerusalem: The Guttman Center of Applied Social Research, 1993), pp. 38, 101 [Hebrew]. For more updated data on this subject, see Levi, Levinson, and Katz, Israeli Jews-A Portrait: Faith, Observance, and Values Among Israeli Jews, 2000 (Jerusalem: The Guttman Center of Applied Social Research, 2002) [Hebrew].
8. Aviezer Ravitzky, “Religious and Secular in Israel: A Post-Zionist Clash of Civilizations?” Alpayim 14 (1997), p. 80 [Hebrew]; see also Ravitzky, Engraved in Stone: Other Voices on Jewish Thought (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1999), p. 258 [Hebrew].
9. The Writings of B. Katznelson (Tel Aviv: Mapai, 1948), pp. 260-261 [Hebrew].
10. Abraham Isaac Kook, Orot, trans. Bezalel Naor (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aaronson, 1993), p. 90.
11. Kook, Orot, p. 165.
12. Kook, Orot, p. 165.
13. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, “A Renewed Halacha as a Constitution for the State of Israel,” Tora and Mitzvot in Our Time (Tel Aviv: Masada, 1954), p. 152 [Hebrew].
14. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, “After Qibya,” Tora and Mitzvot, p. 172 [Hebrew]. It is worth noting that this essay, appearing in one of Leibowitz’s earliest books, runs counter to the ideas expressed in previous articles included in the same work. It is this essay that Leibowitz declares his break with religious Zionism.
15. Leibowitz referred to worship at the Western Wall withthe disparaging term Diskotel, a conflation of the words “disco” and “Kotel” (the Western Wall). He coined the term in a letter published in the Hebrew daily Haaretz on July 21, 1967.
16. On Leibowitz’s early religious Zionist tendencies, see Aryeh Fishman, “The Movement Toward an Experiential-Religious Unity: The Early Essays of Yeshayahu Leibowitz,” in Avi Sagi, ed., Yeshayahu Leibowitz: His World and Philosophy (Jerusalem: Keter, 1995), pp. 121-129 [Hebrew]; see also Eliezer Goldman, “Zionism as a Religious Challenge in the Thought of Yeshayahu Leibowitz,” in Sagi, ed., Yeshayahu Leibowitz, pp. 179-186; Moshe Hellinger, “Modernity, Halacha, and Democracy: Rabbi Haim David Halevi and the Early Yeshayahu Leibowitz-A Comparative Analysis,” in Amihai Berholz, ed., A Journey Towards Halacha: Interdisciplinary Studies on the World of Jewish Law (Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot, 2003), pp. 354-384 [Hebrew].
17. Nissim Calderon, Multi-Culturism Versus Pluralism in Israel (Tel Aviv: Haifa University and Zmora-Bitan, 2002), p. 145 [Hebrew].
18. Anna Isakova, “The Jewish Problem of the Russian Migration,” Techelet 8 (Autumn 1999), p. 88 [Hebrew]; see also Anna Isakova, “Russian Jews in Search of the Jewish State,” Azure 8 (Autumn 1999), pp. 93-104.
19. Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, Theory and Criticism 12-13 (1999), p. 500 [Hebrew].
20. The dismal state of Jewish instruction in the secular public school system was analyzed in depth over a decade ago in the Shenhar Report, whose recommendations have not been implemented to this day. The report was commissioned on October 9, 1991 by then-education minister Zvulun Hammer on the recommendation of a special committee headed by Professor Aliza Shenhar. It was published under the title People and World: Jewish Culture in a Changing World-Recommendations of the Committee on Jewish Education in Public Schools (Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport, 1994) [Hebrew].
21. See Ruth Gavison, Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State: Tensions and Opportunities (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1999) [Hebrew]; Haim Cohen, “Values of a Jewish and Democratic State,” in Aharon Barak and Ruth Gavison, eds., Selected Writings: The Harvest of a Decade of Courage (Jerusalem: Nevo, 2001), pp. 45-95 [Hebrew].
22. Aharon Barak, “On the Values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State and on National Unity,” in Haim Deutsche and Menahem Ben-Sasson, eds., The Other: Between Man and Himself and Man and His Fellow (Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot, 2001), p. 214 [Hebrew].
23. Michael Sgan-Cohen, “Thoughts on the Possibility of a Jewish-Israeli Art,” in Tzvi Barmeir and Ada Tzemah, eds., Jerusalem: Commentaries on Literature and Philosophy (Jerusalem: Agudath Shalem, 1977), p. 80 [Hebrew].
24. Sgan-Cohen, “Thoughts on the Possibility of a Jewish-Israeli Art,” p. 80.
25. Sgan-Cohen, “Thoughts on the Possibility of a Jewish-Israeli Art,” pp. 80-81.
26. Sgan-Cohen, “Thoughts on the Possibility of a Jewish-Israeli Art,” p. 84.
27. Sgan-Cohen, “Thoughts on the Possibility of a Jewish-Israeli Art,” p. 85.
28. Meir Wieseltier, “Diving Aerial Photo,” Rooms 13 (1999), p. 11 [Hebrew]; Wieseltier, Slow Songs (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 2000), pp. 44-45 [Hebrew].
29. Sgan-Cohen, “Thoughts on the Possibility of a Jewish-Israeli Art,” p. 85.
30. Sgan-Cohen, “Thoughts on the Possibility of a Jewish-Israeli Art,” p. 83.
31. Adam Baruch, Agenda: Daily Life in the Mirror of Halacha (Jerusalem: Keter, 2000), p. 206 [Hebrew].
32. Baruch, Agenda, p. 158.
33. For a summary of Buber’s speech, see David Cassuto, “From Exile to Statehood: Milestones in the Creation of an Authentic Jewish Art,” in Yoav Elstein and Theodor Dreyfus, eds., Jewish Culture in Our Times: Crisis or Renewal? (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan, 1983), pp. 55-56 [Hebrew].
34. The competition was organized by the Adi Foundation, which was established in memory of the artist Adi Dermer.
35. Emily Bilski and Avigdor Shinan, eds., Limits of Holiness: In Society, Philo-sophy, and Art (Jerusalem: Keter, 2003) [Hebrew].
36. Avigdor Shinan, “Prologue: Limits of Holiness-The Story of a Competition,” in Bilski and Shinan, Limits of Holiness, p. 9.
37. Moshe Halbertal, “On Holiness and the Limits of Artistic and Linguistic Presentation,” in Bilski and Shinan, Limits of Holiness, p. 34.
38. See the Friedlander-Ofrat essay that accompanied the exhibition catalogue, “And You Will Make for You…”: The Revival of Judaism in Israeli Art (Tel Aviv: Zman L’omanut, 2003), pp. 7-84 [Hebrew].
39. Meir Wieseltier, “My Sympathies,” Something Optimistic: The Making of Poems (Tel Aviv: Zmora-Bitan, 1984), p. 48 [Hebrew].
40. Uriel Simon, “Secular-Religious Cooperation in Building a ‘Jewish and Democratic State,’” Alpayim 13 (1996), p. 163 [Hebrew].
41. Simon, “Secular-Religious Cooperation,” pp. 163-164.
42. Haim Nahman Bialik, “I Didn’t Win Light in a Windfall,” in All of H.N. Bialik’s Songs (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1966), p. 135 [Hebrew]. Psalms 130:1.
43. On a tentative suggestion for a Jewish cinematic technique, see Yitzhak Recanati, “Towards a Jewish Language in Film,” Mahanayim 11 (1995), pp. 330-336 [Hebrew].
44. Leah Goldberg, “In the Light of Mercy,” in The Courage of Secularism: Studies of Our New Literature (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Poalim, 1976), p. 171 [Hebrew].
45. This relationship was described by Haim Be’er in his work, Their Love, Their Hatred (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1992) [Hebrew].
46. From the letters of S.Y. Agnon to M.A. Jack (1927), collected in Shmuel Yosef Agnon, From Myself to Myself (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1976), p. 7 [Hebrew].
47. Efraim-Elimelech Urbach, On Zionism and Judaism: Studies and Analyses (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1985), p. 344 [Hebrew].
48. Sami Michael, These Are the Tribes of Israel: Twelve Conversations on the Ethnic Question (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Poalim, 1984), p. 42 [Hebrew]. The Shas, or Sephardi Tora Guardians, party is Israel’s largest religious party and the only one dominated by Sephardim.
49. Tamar Ross, “Orthodoxy, Women, and Halachic Change: A Teleological Examination and Interpretative Aspects,” in Berholz, A Journey Towards Halacha, pp. 392.
50. For challenging proposals regarding halachic renewal for the purpose of its broader, secular-Israeli implementation, see, for example, Hananel Mack, “Fixing the Halachic Reality in the State of Israel According to Halachic Principles,” in Nahum Ilan, ed., Tova’s Eye: Dialogue and Debate in Israeli Culture-The Fiftieth Anniversary Book in Honor of Tova Ilan (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad and Ne’emaney Tora V’avoda, 1999), pp. 705-724 [Hebrew]; Yedidya T. Stern, “Openings for Halachic Renewal Regarding Issues of Religion and State,” in Berholz, A Journey Towards Halacha, pp. 438-460.
51. David Hartman, Israelis and the Jewish Tradition: An Ancient People Debating Its Future (New Haven: Yale, 2000), p. 145.
52. Tamar El-Or, Next Pesah: Literacy and Identity of Young Religious Zionist Women (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1998), p. 17 [Hebrew].
53. El-Or, Next Pesah, p. 17.
