Social inclusion and legal exclusion in a Jewish or democratic state: intermarriage in the Zionist movement and the early State of Israel

Abstract

ABSTRACT Zionists grappled with the implications of intermarriage from as early as the beginning of their movement, though the tensions surrounding intermarriage, religion, and the Jewish nation were amplified with the establishment of Israel in 1948. While many Zionists advocated for the social inclusion of non-Jewish spouses (and their children) in the nation, Zionist support for religious control of personal status law allowed for de facto legal exclusion of these same non-Jews. Early Zionist and Israeli policies therefore exercised ‘functional ambiguity’ regarding intermarried families in national life. By celebrating the inclusion of non-Jewish family members—and particularly non-Jewish wives—Zionists underscored a secular Jewish identity and the ostensibly democratic nature of the Jewish state. Yet by allowing for their legal exclusion through religious law, and by highlighting a limited criteria for national inclusion, they maintained the Jewish nature of the state and the prevention of a civic, ‘Israeli’ national identity shared with Palestinian citizens.