The Characteristics of Jewish Culture in Israel as Expressed by its Secularisation

Abstract

Throughout millennia, Jewish culture was imbued with an inherent religious component, which determined its exceptional nature and specificity. Hence one may venture to call it a Judaist culture. However, with the onset of the Jewish renaissance (the Haskalah) and in the wake of assimilation processes there appeared elements, which disrupted historical continuity, establishing new criteria of Jewish identity. Judaism understood as religion ceased to be a necessary attribute of Jewishness. Zionism, which laid the foundation of the Israeli state, strove by default to forge a “new man”, who was to be determined by secular culture. Its fundamental premises did not draw upon the Biblical Israel or the phenomenon of the Diaspora. On the contrary, the past and its burdens were to be abandoned, as Zionism aspired to create a future based on new paradigms. Yet not all postulates of Zionism came true. Contemporary Israel became both a territory where external foe is fought (the Arab world) and an arena where internal struggle for the nature of the state is taking place. The paper therefore attempts to draw a characterization of Israeli culture and demonstrate the manifestations of secularization to which traditional Jewish culture has been subject in the Jewish state. This is because one is confronted with the fundamental question, namely whether and in what sense Israeli culture is Jewish in nature?