Yeshiva Students Research Articles

Cesarean Sections and Family Planning Among Ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews.

The elevated frequency of Cesarean sections (C-sections) in OECD countries not only burdens health systems financially but also heightens the risks for mothers and infants. This study explores the feasibility of reducing C-section rates by examining the Israeli ultra-Orthodox population, noted for its large families and low C-section rates. We analyze birth data from an Israeli hospital, focusing on ultra-Orthodox mothers with husbands who are yeshiva students compared to other mothers. Our findings reveal that all else being equal, mothers married to yeshiva students exhibit a lower likelihood of undergoing a C-section and a higher propensity to seek private medical services to avoid this procedure. This behavior is attributed to their preference for large families and the desire to minimize C-sections, which may restrict the number of possible future pregnancies. These insights underscore the potential effectiveness of initiatives encouraging mothers to opt for vaginal deliveries, thereby reducing healthcare costs and maternal-infant risks.

Script and Creating a Religious Identity: The Typography of the Talmud

Aim of the article. This article deals with the iconic typography of the Talmud page and focuses on the relationship between script and religious identity. It examines changes in design and typography in the modern editions of Steinsaltz, Artscroll, and Koren since the 1980s, and how they led to the removal of some of these editions from the yeshiva world, preventing yeshiva students from using them. Results. The Talmud is the central and most influential text in the world of Jewish law. Its study holds great spiritual significance, and many regard it as a means for self-expression and connection to the Torah’s oral tradition. During the second half of the 20th century, initiatives were taken to change the traditional layout of Judaic texts. The aim of these initiatives was to create a new “Israeli design” for Judaic texts while remaining loyal to the past. Designers sought to strike a balance between conservation and innovation in aspects such as book design, technological advances in the printing industry, accessibility regarding reading, studying, and prayer, and catering to broader target audiences. In most cases, new book formats were chosen, but at times, such changes generated strong opposition in certain Jewish sectors, resulting in those books being banned from study halls and synagogues. A case in point was Rabbi Steinsaltz’s project of redesigning the Talmud to make Talmud study more accessible for struggling learners. Rabbi Steinsaltz changed the format of the Talmud page to a more readable format, using new fonts, additional punctuation, and wider spacing between the lines. This change, however, was not accepted by the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) and parts of the National- Religious public. Scientific novelty. Existing research deals separately with the issue of Zionist Hebrew typography and the issue of the ultra-Orthodox society. To the best of our knowledge, so far, no research has directly linked the two issues to examine the ultra-Orthodox approach to design in general and to Hebrew typography in particular. This study contributes to previous research on Hebrew typography, emphasising its role in conveying a social, educational, and ideological message, regardless of the written text’s content. Conclusions. Judaic texts that are used in the ultra-Orthodox world are visually different in design from those used in the secular and/ or National-Religious world. While the ultra-Orthodox staunchly preserve the traditional Judaic book format (albeit with minor changes), the secular world and parts of the National-Religious public welcome books that have a variety of fonts, colorful designs and pictures, decorations, and didactic explanations to aid the reader. The Talmud is a book with a distinct typography and contains a wealth of information. The layout of a Talmud page allowed for a variety of different texts to be combined in one book, making it easier to study. The fixed template, which is exactly the same in all tractates, generates a visual representation of the text so that a large amount of information can be remembered through an “eidetic memory” of images. Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s edition of the Talmud (Koren), which changed the traditional page layout to make the text more accessible, remained only partially faithful to the original but brought about a true revolution. For some audiences, this innovative edition represents a pinnacle of Hebrew literature, while for others, it is seen as a violation of the sacred literature and should be banned. There has always been a strong connection between the ultra-Orthodox world and Hebrew typography, and it is still present on a daily basis. The Hebrew letters are cornerstones in the design of the Holy Scriptures. However, the attitude of the ultra-Orthodox world toward modern Hebrew typography as reflected in this study, is one of ambivalence, some acceptance but mostly strong reservations.

חייה וקיימא: סיוע הג'וינט לישיבות בישראל

From the very first years of the JDC's establishment, the organization supported Torah institutions. In 1920, it founded a designated cultural committee to coordinate activity which until the Holocaust, was religion-centric and devoted to Eastern Europe. However, from the 1950s onwards, most resources were directed to Israel. With the establishment of the State of Israel, the JDC believed that the responsibility for handling the yeshivas should be transferred to the Jewish Agency and the government. However, due to economic straits and the neglect of the state, the JDC continued to provide help to yeshivas and their students. The infrastructure and sanitary conditions of the post-Holocaust yeshivas in Eretz Israel were abysmal and visitors from the JDC became concerned about the nutrition and living conditions of students. The economic plan for Israeli yeshivas had been non-viable from the start, and as the number of yeshiva students increased, the institutions found it more and more difficult to provide them with the necessary resources. The situation necessitated renewed planning on the part of the JDC, and in 1954, the Cultural Committee decided to establish a special department to handle the yeshivas in Israel. The JDC did not see yeshivas merely as educational institutions but as communal organizations with social needs and as early as the 1940s, had supported their nutritional needs, constructed and renovated kitchens, purchased modern kitchen equipment, and provided them with guidelines regarding hygiene and food quality as well raw materials. The JDC likewise supported the introduction of occupational training programs for yeshiva students, thereby responding to their needs well-beyond the provision of financial support.

“God Has Wrapped Himself in a Cloak of Materialism”: Marxism and Jewish Religious Thought in the Early Soviet Union

Jewish religious life in the Soviet Union is typically the subject of dichotomous depictions that offer only a superficial rendering of this rich and complex environment. This paper aims to complicate this image by pointing out several religious thinkers who engaged with Communist and Marxist ideas and incorporated them into their religious thought, while upholding rabbinic culture. Among the figures and themes examined are Alter Hilewitz’s (1906–1994) Hasido-Marxism, Rabbi Avraham Yosef Guttman’s (1870–1940) crisis of faith, and Shmuel Alexandrov’s (1865–1941) use of Russian Nietzscheanism. Alexandrov was also the narrator who revealed these fascinating ideas to us in a rare collection of his letters, which possesses both a philosophical and a theological nature. These letters, which have received very little attention in previous studies, provide a small window into the conflictual world of rabbis and yeshiva students in the first decade of the Soviet Union. Reviewing the ideas generated in a struggle to make sense of one of the great crises of modern Judaism, and pondering questions of historical perspective and how empathy may distort it, this article wishes to go beyond the image of a defensive preservation of religious life and to re-envision this unique and innovative period of Jewish thought.

The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature by Marina Zilbergerts

Reviewed by: The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature by Marina Zilbergerts Wendy Zierler Marina Zilbergerts. The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2022. 184 pp. It has long been acknowledged that deep knowledge of biblical and rabbinic literature on the part of early modern Hebrew poets and prose writers played a vital role in the creation of modern Hebrew literature and the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language. As Benjamin Harshav notes, “Secular Hebrew poetry grew in the soil of Hebrew study in the religious society against which all Hebrew poets rebelled in their youth.”1 In light of this, Marina Zilbergerts’s new study of the yeshiva and the rise of modern Hebrew literature might seem, at first, like old news. Far from it, however. Whereas previous studies of this subject emphasized the role of Haskalah, Zionism, or secularism, Zilbergerts examines the rise of the modern yeshiva, with its elite ethos of Torah lishmah (Torah study for its own sake), as a way of explaining the seemingly miraculous rise of Hebrew literary culture. The book sets out to answer several questions from this vantage point: How and why did modern Hebrew literature come to be, and why in the setting of late nineteenth-century Russia? Given the utter impracticality of creating a literature in a language that no one actually spoke, and the ideological push in Russian culture for writing that was materially useful to society, how did these mid- and late nineteenth-century Hebrew writers make the case for their writing? Zilbergerts argues that the text-centeredness of the modern yeshiva led to an orientation where texts became more real than the physical world, where the “play and pleasure” of textual learning took on heightened importance. The result of viewing Torah as an omnisignificant literature to be interpreted and debated through a variety of hermeneutic and literary strategies was a blurring of the conventional boundary between sacred and secular Hebrew texts. All this laid the groundwork for these text-centered values to be transferred to secular Hebrew literary production once these young writers left the yeshiva. In addition to considering the autotelic value of text in yeshiva culture, Zilbergerts considers corresponding patterns of study and ideological dissent among nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox seminarians. Yeshiva and Russian Orthodox students alike experienced both the exhilaration of elite study and deep [End Page 240] despair over their lack of practical skills and economic opportunities, despite their erudition. Seminary-educated Russian nihilist writers such as Nikolay Chernyshevsky (1828–1889) and Nikolay Dobrolyubov (1836–1861) expressed deep dissatisfaction with their church education, along with a strong desire to achieve social usefulness. Nevertheless, these nihilist writers often mimicked the practices of Russian Orthodox hermeneutics in their critical writing, a cultural pattern that was reproduced by disaffected ex-yeshiva students. Indeed, even when yeshiva students abandoned their studies, they carried with them a reverence for textuality for its own sake. Under the pressures and influence of Russian nihilism, Hebrew writers such as Avraham Uri, Shaul, and Yiẓḥak Aizik Kovner attacked the maskilic Hebrew language and literature for ignoring the pressing material issues of society. Still, these same critics often resorted to the Hebrew wordplays and exegetical practices of the very rabbinic/maskilic culture they sought to critique. Even as these writers sought to detach themselves from the constraints of their yeshiva background, they kept returning to the practices and aesthetic models of Torah lishmah, redirecting these practices to the creation of their new secular Hebrew poetry and prose. Moshe Leib Lilienblum thus inveighs against the superstitions and backward practices of traditional Judaism, including kest marriage, and the failure of the yeshiva system to provide young men with a practical vocation, only to defend talmudic literature against maskilic charges of nonsense. Similarly, ex-Volozhin Yeshiva students Mikhah Yosef Berdichevsky and Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik produced literary works that decry the dead-in-life nature of text study, but also revel in it with a kind of sublimated sexual energy. “The freedom to engage with Jewish texts and ideas without exterior motive,” Zilbergerts argues, “along with the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, was arguably...

Chronotypes and well-being, comparing college students with ultraorthodox (Jewish) Yeshiva students in Israel

Chronotypes and well-being, comparing college students with ultraorthodox (Jewish) Yeshiva students in Israel

A Financial Education Program for Future Bridegrooms in Ultra-Orthodox Yeshivas: The Graduate’s Perspective

The Israeli ultra-Orthodox community is a segregated religious minority suffering from poverty, yet its youth do not receive financial education. This mixed-method research explores the effectiveness of a financial education program for affianced ultra-Orthodox men. 11 interviewees answered qualitative questionnaires, and 201 program graduates evaluated program effectiveness, financial conduct, and demographics, compared to 36 control-group participants. Qualitative results emphasize the program’s importance for yeshiva students. Quantitative results demonstrate better savings behavior and more consultation willingness of graduates. Culturally-sensitive programming can lead to improved financial conduct; therefore, governmental investment is essential for Israeli economic welfare and for the ultra-Orthodox community.

Introduction: Margin Release

Introduction: Margin Release

The <em>Hesder Yeshivot</em> as Agents of Social Change in Religious Zionism

Hesder yeshivot are post-high-school institutions within a unique branch of the IDF where religious Zionist yeshiva students spend part of their army service engaged in higher Torah learning and the remainder doing active military service. The hesder (meaning "arrangement" in Hebrew) yeshivot provide a solution to the long-debated issue of army service for religious youth, but they also play an important role as agents for social change in religious Zionist society. The article traces the history of the first hesder yeshviot during the 1960s and 1970s, based on hitherto unexplored archival sources, and assesses their influence on Religious Zionism and the extensive social and religious changes they introduced.

The Supreme Court, Yeshiva Students, and Military Conscription: Judicial Review, the Grunis Dissent, and its Implications for Israeli Democracy and Law

The Supreme Court, Yeshiva Students, and Military Conscription: Judicial Review, the Grunis Dissent, and its Implications for Israeli Democracy and Law

Learning from the Past: Considering the Ethics of Appropriation

Learning from the Past: Considering the Ethics of Appropriation

Lip-service to service: the Knesset debates over civic national service in Israel, 1977–2007

This article explores the social and political dynamics behind the various legislative proposals to establish a civic national service programme in Israel, and the role of Israel’s High Court as a catalytic force for changing policy on this controversial issue. The idea of civic national service for those not inducted into the Israel military has been a controversial issue in Israel since the early years of the state. While Jews and Druze were inducted into the armed forces, Israeli Arabs, religious women and ultra-orthodox yeshiva students were either exempted or deferred from service. Members of Knesset primarily from small parties in the opposition proposed private member bills to establish an alternative civic service for those not serving in the army; however, Israel’s governments rejected these proposals and only in the case of religious Zionist women did the government establish a voluntary programme. Political considerations and coalition politics as well as an interest in protecting the unrivalled predominance of the military (IDF) in Israeli society led successive Israeli governments to maintain the status quo. Only the intervention of the High Court obliged the government to review its policy and take action.

A Jewish Life on Three Continents: The Memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden by Menachem Mendel Frieden

Reviewed by: A Jewish Life on Three Continents: The Memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden by Menachem Mendel Frieden David B. Levy Menachem Mendel Frieden. A Jewish Life on Three Continents: The Memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden. Translated, edited, annotated, and with an introduction and afterword, by Lee Shai Weissbach. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. Pp. 520Cloth $60. ISBN 978-0-8047-8363-7. The memoir of Menachem Frieden (1878–1963) makes a significant scholarly contribution to the study of a tumultuous era influenced by Haskalah, nation building, mass migration from Eastern Europe to America, and the creation of the modern Jewish homeland in Israel. He depicts life in the shtetl, and the scope covers several generations of family history, his early years in a Lithuanian village, schooling and the life of yeshiva students, courtship, marriage, tensions between Hasidic elements of his family and anti-Hasidic Mitnagdic members, travel and the readjustment that comes with migration, his business experience as a peddler in the south of the United States and entrepreneurship in Norfolk, Virginia, and settlement in Palestine in 1921 through the middle of the twentieth century. While Frieden’s memoir seeks to transmit his own family memories, one of its strengths is that it also aims to place those events in historical context. Thus, for example, we learn through this deeply personal story aspects of the impact of the Arab riots of 1929, and of the functioning of early charity organizations in nineteenth-century Palestine. The memoir offers a window on the generation of Jews who lived through great transformations of Jewish life. Frieden’s identity is grounded by his refusal to forget his roots in the old country, and the folkways of Ashkenazic Jewry. His identity is not that of a self-hating Jew, as identified by Sander Gilman in On the Origins of Jewish Self Hatred (2012), but Frieden is rather outspokenly proud of his Jewish heritage. He openly bemoans the choices he made that took him away from Jewish tradition, and chooses to record his memoirs so that others may learn from his mistakes and avoid making them too. His voice is jaded; with the sadness of [End Page 195] abandoning his yeshiva studies and his admiration, valorization, and respect for learned rabbis, which meant the most to him. He clearly was a devoted family man, dutiful son, loving husband, and concerned and caring father but in the end, being a part of something greater than the self, being a part of a living tradition, is what Frieden values. He confesses that he regrets not accepting an offer to lead one of Norfolk’s synagogues, which he speculates might have led to his children being educated differently. Yet he states that he has no “Nietzschean” regrets about marrying a second time or making aliyah. His memoir also sheds light on the many Jews who came to Palestine but did not take up agricultural development. Frieden worked in banking, seeking to bring American “know-how” to help establish an urban entrepreneurial infrastructure in the Yishuv. He identified as a strong Zionist. Thus Frieden’s identity as family patriarch often gives him a pedagogic voice and role, to transmit to familial memories of religious rituals and customs that he wishes his heirs to remember. Some readers may be challenged in identifying individual personalities of his times, the geographic locations in eastern Europe, his allusions to rabbinic commentators such as the Maharsha, and his references to Yiddish novelists like Shomer that were a part of the common culture of the East European Jew. Frieden’s identity is informed by the concept of “yerida” (descent), which holds that each generation is of a lower stature than the previous one. Thus he takes on pedagogic goals: to transmit and keep alive the religious fervor, culture, and folkways of past generations for Jewish continuity. Frieden’s frequent moments of introspection about turning points in his life sheds light on his identity and what he valued in life: to take the best of the new but not forget the good of the past. He at times bares his soul so that readers may learn from his life experience. The fact that Frieden chose...

Rabbi 'Ovadia Yosef, the Shas Party, and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process

One of the prominent religious parties in Israel, intimately involved in political decision-making, has been the Shas party, led by the late Rabbi 'Ovadia Yosef. This article examines four components of Rabbi Yosef 's political stance: (1) his view of Jewish religious law as a factor that moderates the force of changes of seemingly historical and revolutionary significance; (2) his opposition to radical messianism; (3) his desire to adopt independent positions; and (4) his role in the development of a Mizrahi, ultra-Orthodox stream of Zionism.A bird's-eye view of the contemporary Middle East reveals the central role of religious parties in shaping the political agenda of the region. Israel is no different in this respect. While it is true that Israel is a nation-state founded by secular forces and that its secular elite is still strong, one cannot ignore two facts. First, religious parties play a leading role in Israeli governments. Second, religious parties' political positions have added weight in light of the fact that Israel is located on land to which deep religious significance is ascribed, both by the Muslim majority in the Middle East and by the Jewish majority in Israel. This fact, in and of itself, is enough to turn religious movements and their leaders into active participants in decisions of national significance. One of the prominent religious parties in Israel, intimately involved in political decision-making, has been the Worldwide Sephardic Association of Torah Guardians, an ethnic-based ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) party. It is better known to the Israeli public by its acronym, Shas.1Shas was founded in 1984 as an ethnic political home for Haredi yeshiva students and alumni of Mizrahi (Middle Eastern or North African) descent who felt discriminated by Ashkenazic (of Central or Eastern European origin) Haredi society. Since its inception in 1984, Shas has become a significant political-religious force in Israeli society. Its main electoral growth came in the 1990s. At its peak, Shas was the third-largest and third-most influential party in Israeli society. In recent years - due to changes in the Israeli electoral system, internal difficulties within the party, and the secular reaction to its influence - its electoral strength has declined. Nevertheless, Shas remains a significant political player in the Knesset and the government.Shas operates under the authority of its spiritual leadership, which directs the party and decides its path. From its inception, Shas's dominant spiritual leader was Rabbi 'Ovadia Yosef (1920-2013), one of the leading authorities on halacha (Jewish religious law) in contemporary Orthodox Judaism. Thanks to Rabbi Yosef's charisma, vast Torah knowledge, and reputation as a halachic authority, no one within Shas circles disputed his word. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Shas has developed from a party formed to represent Mizrahi yeshiva students into a party whose agenda, ideology, and goals were directed by one man. This is evident in the dominance of his halachic approach in Shas educational institutions.The fact that Shas has an ultra-Orthodox outlook and depends on a hawkish constituency places it in the rightist camp of Israeli politics. However, at least one thing differentiated Shas from the other right-wing religious parties in Israel. Its spiritual leader, Rabbi 'Ovadia Yosef, maintained an independent political stance and was prepared to make territorial compromises with Arab states in return for full peace. The fact that he offered a detailed justification for this position and did not rule out political cooperation with leftist parties, distinguished Shas from the veteran Ashkenazi Haredi parties as well. Whereas most Haredi leaders have tended to remain silent about regional political issues, speaking out only on rare occasion, Rabbi 'Ovadia Yosef was in the habit of reiterating his dovish views time and time again.This paper examines four components of Rabbi Yosef 's political stance: (1) his view of halacha as a factor that moderates the force of changes of seemingly historical and revolutionary significance; (2) his opposition to radical messianism; (3) his desire to adopt independent positions, and (4) his development of a Mizrahi, ultra-Orthodox stream of Zionism. …

Environmental factors potentially associated with mumps transmission in Yeshivas during a mumps outbreak among highly vaccinated students: Brooklyn, New York, 2009–2010

During 2009–2010, a large US mumps outbreak occurred affecting two-dose vaccinated 9th–12th grade Orthodox Jewish boys attending all-male yeshivas (private, traditional Jewish schools). Our objective was to understand mumps transmission dynamics in this well-vaccinated population. We surveyed 9th-12th grade male yeshivas in Brooklyn, NY with reported mumps case-students between 9/1/2009 and 3/30/2010. We assessed vaccination coverage, yeshiva environmental factors (duration of school day, density, mixing, duration of contact), and whether environmental factors were associated with increased mumps attack rates. Ten yeshivas comprising 1769 9th–12th grade students and 264 self-reported mumps cases were included. The average yeshiva attack rate was 14.5% (median: 13.5%, range: 1–31%), despite two-dose measles-mumps-rubella vaccine coverage between 90–100%. School duration was 9–15.5 h/day; students averaged 7 h face-to-face/day with 1–4 study partners. Average daily mean density was 6.6 students per 100 square feet. The number of hours spent face-to-face with a study partner and the number of partners per day showed significant positive associations (p < 0.05) with classroom mumps attack rates in univariate analysis, but these associations did not persist in multivariate analysis. This outbreak was characterized by environmental factors unique to the yeshiva setting (e.g., densely populated environment, prolonged face-to-face contact, mixing among infected students). However, these features were present in all included yeshivas, limiting our ability to discriminate differences. Nonetheless, mumps transmission requires close contact, and these environmental factors may have overwhelmed vaccine-mediated protection increasing the likelihood of vaccine failure among yeshiva students.

Hybrid Constitutionalism: The Israeli Case for Judicial Review and Why We Should Care

Fifteen years after the Israeli Supreme Court decided in Mizrahi that Israel's Basic Laws amount to Israel's formal Constitution and it enjoys the power of judicial review, the debate about Israel's constitutional development is far from over. This essay makes the following four propositions: First, the Israeli political branches have been debating the wrong question. Rather than lingering on the threshold question of whether or not Israel has a formal Constitution at all, they should be discussing what kind of Constitution is developing in Israel. Second, the consensus among scholars who recognize Israel’s formal Constitution is that its existence is best explained by the Constituent Authority theory. But they have adopted a myopic understanding of Israel’s constitutional development. Like so many other aspects of Israel’s national evolution, a single theory cannot adequately explain the existence of its formal constitution. Rather, this national rite of passage occurred incrementally, supported by four different, and at times conflicting, constitutional theories, each with its own strengths and weaknesses as suitable analytical frameworks. Third, depending on the theory one ascribes to Israel's constitutional development, present and future constitutional debates may be resolved differently. As examples, I illustrate how the theories diverge when applied to two contemporary constitutional matters: (1) whether referenda can be used to decide territorial concessions; and (2) whether Ultra-Orthodox Yeshiva students may be singled out for special financial treatment. Broader questions of judicial power are even more pressing, and I further explore how the various theories may affect the use of the legislative override power to overcome judicial review. Last, underlying my discussion is the assertion that there is a strong nexus between the process of enactment of a constitution and the kind of judicial review - whether strong or weak - that may emerge. This thesis deviates from the conventional view that the nature of judicial review is solely dependent on the mechanisms adopted in the constitutional document itself, rather than on the processes by which the constitution was adopted. I pursue this scheme in discussing the ramifications of the Israeli case study for Commonwealth constitutionalism in particular and comparative purposes more broadly.

Effective Teachers/Inspired Students: The Critical Role of Teachers in Yeshiva High Schools

Teachers are thought to be the backbone of any high school. Data indicating how students perceive their teachers was gathered from a questionnaire completed by 355 recent Yeshiva high-school graduates. Results show that Yeshiva High School teachers are thought of as open minded and tolerant (51.9%), caring (73.2%), and interested in developing the teacher/student relationship (77.2%). The 66% of Yeshiva students who viewed teachers as positive role models stood in sharp contrast to the 2.4% of the general high-school population reported in the literature who viewed teachers as positive role models.

Framing Religious Conflict: Popular Israeli Discourse on Religion and State

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

Youthful bodies rebel

One of the central aspects of the ideal model of the Haredi body is a hierarchical and dichotomous relation between the body as an aspect of the earthly reality, and the spiritual world. This dichotomy has also shaped the ‘division of labour’ between the Haredi and non-Haredi Jewish communities in Israel. The article examines the yeshiva students' responses to this ideal and hegemonic model. My claim is that as a result of a series of social processes, the notion of the ideal body is facing growing resistance and is being challenged by the students themselves. The students' resistance to the ideal male body is contributing to the destabilization of the traditional relations between the earthly and the spiritual and as a result, to the undermining of the ‘division of labour’ among the various parts of Israeli Jewish society.

Introduction

Introduction Gideon Katz (bio) The strain between the secular and the religious—and between secularism and religiousness—is one of Israel's basic tensions. It has been a controversial issue since Israel's inception, a constant focus of public debate, and the cause of political crises such as education; the question of "Who is a Jew?"; the status of the Reform and the Conservative movements; the recruitment of yeshiva students into the IDF; and the Roffeisen and Shalit trials regarding Messianic Jews and the Law of Return. However, this intensity blurs the fact that the various experiences that feed it—the secular and secularism, on the one hand, and the religious and religion, on the other—are not necessarily deadlocked in an eternal dichotomy. These are complex experiences, forever changing and influencing each other in more ways than one. In order to grasp the dynamic nature of this tension, it is important to understand that this tension is not only between various groups but also between worldviews. There is a profound disagreement between those who believe that God revealed his will to the Jewish people and that his demands are to be fulfilled by following the halachic precepts, and between various secular views, according to which the Jews are perceived as a collective that is to be organized within the framework of a secular state. As such, secularism is likely to set itself free from the tight grip of religion, and its unique spiritual contents should be perceived as its own creation, i.e., as culture. Secularism always implies a reaction toward a concrete religious tradition, which is why it makes sense to focus on Israeli Jews. Naturally, this does not mean that secularism is irrelevant to other groups within Israeli society. The tension between secularism and Judaism in Israel implies the presence of groups and camps that are inseparable from the various ideas and beliefs. In what way can we perceive the dynamic nature of the tension that characterizes these complex experiences? The ideas and the camps develop in relation to historical events and, to a large extent, represent reactions to processes and events. For example, the writings of Yeshayahu Leibowitz can only be understood in relation [End Page V] to the Six-Day War, and an important part of the writings of rabbis and legislators of the last generations reflect their outlook on the secular State. Secularism and the secular, on the one hand, and religion and the religious, on the other, are not two separate entities. They constantly influence each other in the course of their ongoing struggle. The deeply engrained patterns in the Israeli intellectual discourse about secularism clearly reflect this point, as seen in this issue. The articles in this special issue, written by scholars in history, anthropology, philosophy, and geography, shed an important light on dialectic tension between secularism and religion within Israeli Jewish society and highlight the historical and dynamic nature of their links. In Reconstructing the Past: The Creation of Jewish Sacred Space in the State of Israel, 1948–1967, Doron Bar describes how sacred space was shaped in Israel following the War of Independence. Secondary sites became central and in the 1950s Moslem sites were turned into sacred Jewish sites. He argues that sacred spaces are created by official and semi-official authorities, and by the public authorities in Israel. Nissim Leon in his article, The Secular Origins of Mizrahi Traditionalism, analyzes the development of traditionalism among Jews from Islamic countries. Leon presents an alternative paradigm for understanding this phenomenon: oriental traditionalism should not be analyzed through the model of East European orthodoxy; it can only be understood based on an understanding of its historical and social background, which includes Islam and the process of secularization that took place in Islamic countries. Gideon Katz, in his article Secularism and the Imaginary Polemic of Israeli Intellectuals, deals with the public debate on secularism in Israel. He describes the arguments Israeli intellectuals hold with the religious position, and explains why this can be labeled an "imaginary polemic". Instead of witnessing a genuine dialogue, claims are made against a religious opponent who is only a shadow enemy. Instead of clarifying the nature of this...