Israeli Judaism or Jewish Israeliness?: The remaking of ‘Israeli Jewish Renewal

• In Event: Political and Spiritual Renewal: 1960 to the Present

Abstract

In 2011‘Panim’- the umbrella organization of numerous Jewish pluralistic and (secular) Jewish renewal organizations - rephrased its goals and renamed itself as ‘Israeli-Judaism’. According to Panim’s website, Israeli Judaism (IJ) combines traditional and modern-Israeli values such as democracy, equality, humanism and Zionism. Inspired by the (liberal) Jewish world it attempts to build new models adapted to the Israeli experience.
This paper offers preliminary results from a work-in-progress on ‘Israeli-Judaism’ as a recently-emerging Jewish identity category. This study positions IJ in the context of two, interrelated processes that currently transpire in Israeli society. The first concerns the proliferation of new, non-Orthodox yet markedly-Jewish identities, such as Jewish New-Age identities. The second process involves what has become known as hadata - the process in which Israel is allegedly becoming more religiously-Jewish, and the mounting public debate over it. Drawing on Yaacov Yadgar’s assertion that studying hadata must “highlight the complex, context-bound, ‘hybrid’ and ever-developing nature of the interplay between tradition, modernity, secularism, religion and nationalism” (Yadgar 2012: 27), the proposed mixed-methods inquiry focuses on the meanings that secular Jewish-Israelis attach to their Jewish and Israeli belonging and the practices through which they construct, institutionalize and introduce IJ to Israeli society. The lecture will expound on some of the preliminary results of the research and attempt to offer tentative answers to the the question whether IJ is simply a new manifestation of the supposed conflict between (Jewish) religiosity and (Israeli) nationalism, or, converselys their interweaving. By doing so the lecture will offer a more nuanced cultural analysis of contemporary Israeli society and its complex interrelations between politics, culture, religion and identity.

Author

• Rachel Werczberger, Ariel University