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Part Four - Judaism, Culture and State

Introduction and Guidelines
Judaism and State – Distance to Foster a Liberty-Based Meeting

Identity Crisis

The Jewish religion developed from within the Torah of Israel to preserve the identity of the People of Israel in exile. In the unnatural state of the Temple's destruction, the loss of our Homeland, the disintegration of our nation into isolated communities and widespread dispersion throughout all the possible exiles, which were usually hostile to the Jews, the Jewish religion miraculously succeeded in preserving Jewish identity. However, once the nation returned to its Homeland, religion alone no longer sufficed - from a cultural and spiritual perspective - to support a complete and living people.

Moreover, a significant part of the movements,[1] which actually had the energy required in order to gather up the "dry bones" and to build a new a living body of a nation in its Homeland, saw religion and its manifestations as a stumbling block. The process of the Return to Zion and adherence to the Jewish religion were often viewed as contradictory – both by many religious Jews and by the secular Zionist pioneers.

In our time, all parts of our society find themselves in a fundamental crisis. In Zehut's eyes, this crisis is both the greatest danger to the future of the State of Israel, and its greatest potential for progress. Like all deep and great crises.

Coercion: The Dam that Creates a Dead-End

The main stumbling block preventing this dynamic from developing into a flood of healthy synthesis is coercion – cultural coercion, religious coercion, and secular coercion. All those involved have a common interest – an identity that is deep-rooted and meaningful for our country and ourselves. However, all the parties shy away from promoting it when one side imagines that another side is trying to force him to live his way.

Thus, on the one hand, there is a law in Israel that prohibits the sale of chametz on Passover, but anyone can sell chametz to his heart's content[2]. On the other hand, Israel has no law requiring Jews to circumcise their sons, and even so, an absolute majority gladly performs Jewish circumcision, which is not "religion" but simply "our identity". Similarly, the State of Israel funds artists who have nothing to do with the culture of the vast majority of the public, and on the other side, whole communities in the state continually feel culturally discriminated against, for the benefit of other groups.

The Concept of "Sawing" Religion from State

"The holy side starts with separation and finishes with connection"

–Zohar, Saba D'Mishpatim 95

Within the framework of the inner wisdom of Judaism, called "Kabbalah", there is an idea called "Nesira" (sawing)[3], which expresses the separation of things that are connected in the first place, to be reconnected in a complete, correct, and more moral manner.

This basic Jewish perception of the hidden good in separating things that are connected for the purpose of enabling a true and free meeting between them afterwards is our perception with respect to Israel, its culture and its Jewishness.

It is time to apply this kind of "sawing" between the State on the one hand and culture and religion on the other, and to allow them to reconnect on the basis of true liberty and true and vitAL expression.

Not a state of all its Citizens

We do not believe in a state of all its citizens, which is alienated from the Jewish People, its Torah and its culture. On the contrary, this idea is a complete distortion, and not truly possible, because it has no basis in reality. The State of Israel was established to be the state of the Jewish People in particular. As a national state, it is intended to reflect the Jewish nation and to be an expression of its values, its culture, its religion, its aspirations, and its path and purpose in the world. This fundamental stance does not need to be expressed the way it is expressed today.

Individual, Community and State

In the community chapter of the section "Governmental Structure", we introduced the simple and obvious truth that the place for most of the debate on religion and state is not on the axis between the individual and the state, but rather between the individual and the community in which he lives. The state has neither the tools nor the ability to define and regulate the culture and identity of its citizens from above in a satisfactory way, just as it does not have the ability to do so in the economic sphere.

The Opposite of the Status Quo

Thus, the way in which Israel's Jewishness has been expressed so far, as part of the famous status quo, is exactly opposite of what Zehut intends to promote. Instead of the Jewishness of the state being expressed less and less on the public and national level and more and more on the level of interference in the lifestyle of the citizen, we suggest the opposite. The principles of liberty, identity and meaning bring us to an understanding that in order for Jewish identity to be the heritage of the public in the State of Israel, and in order for a truly deep-rooted and living culture to grow here, the correct approach is:

The lifestyle of the citizen, his Shabbats, his marriages, his eating, his culture, his education, and his religion – are private affairs and the affairs of the community in which he chooses to live, and it is better to reduce state involvement in them.

By contrast, the official image of the state: law, economics, ethics of war, foreign policy, domestic policy, the ingathering of the exiles and conversion, the relationship to the Land of Israel, the state language and the conduct of official institutions – all of these are the arena in which the Jewishness of the state as a state should be truly expressed.

From these basic guidelines, we can look at the various aspects of Zehut's policies one by one.

[1] The intention is to the movements and their tendencies. The people who made up these movements were always varied in their positions. The distance between the People of Israel and its original identity was never as big as it seemed on the surface and from public declarations.

[2] Notably, this was done under the auspices of the High Court as well, which in a show of judicial activism significantly narrowed the definition of "public domain" in which it is forbidden to sell chametz, grossly distorting the intent of the legislature. On the problem with this type of conduct – see the chapter on the judicial system in Part 2, "Structure of the Government".

[3] The Torah says that man was created initially as a man and a woman joined together, and were later separated. The purpose of this process is the reunion of man and woman out of free will, face to face. This need to separate is due to the fact that the forced connection between man and women, in an involuntary manner, did not lead to the desired creation of a true and deep relationship of mutual respect between them. As it is written in the Torah: "And man did not find a helpmate." On the other hand, the fact that there was an initial connection testifies to and also entrenches the final desire in a more correct encounter. Kabbalah calls this process of separation of man and woman "sawing", and sees in it a general paradigm for cutting an artificial connection for the sake of a later true connection.