Framing Religious Conflict: Popular Israeli Discourse on Religion and State

Abstract

The role of religion in Israeli public life is hotly contested in the political and legal arenas, and conflicts over religious issues receive a great deal of media coverage. Recurrent news reports and commentary refer to the growing number of Israelis marrying abroad or choosing to live out of wedlock to avoid the state religious establishment, new immigrants, and others attempting to convert to Judaism but unable to satisfy strict rabbinic requirements, and legal clashes over official recognition of lifecycle rituals conducted by non-Orthodox rabbis. The media also cover conflicts over public observance of Sabbath and holidays (mandatory store closings and curtailment of public transportation), military exemptions for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, and public funding for religious institutions. Many scholars of Israeli politics and society have portrayed conflicts over the role of religion in public life as increasingly strident, characterized by extreme positions, and uncompromising. Baruch Kimmerling has argued that declining Ashkenazi secular hegemony has spurred a kulturkampf between religious, traditional, and secular sectors of Israeli Jewish society.1 Asher Cohen and Bernard Susser claimed that consociational arrangements that once mediated religious conflict have weakened and they predicted an “unprecedented collision” over the role of religion in the Israeli state.2 Eva Etzioni-Halevy described increasing cultural and social segregation between religious and secular Israelis and warned of the potential “break up” of the country.3 Seemingly supporting these assessments, the United States Department of State's 2009 report on religious freedom around the world noted that “animosity between secular and religious Jews continued during the reporting period. In particular, members of Orthodox Jewish groups treated non-Orthodox Jews with manifestations of discrimination and intolerance.”4