T. Belman. This article is brilliant. The battle is not over judicial reform but over the kind of Israel the Israelis want. He sees no room for compromise. Read the whole thing.
I grappled with this issue eighteen years ago in my article, Particularism Before Universalism and made the case for “particularism.
“This raised howls of racism from some. But to deny your enemies certain rights is not racism, because it is not based on physical characteristics. It is self-defense, because it is based on their stated intention to destroy us.
“Paul Eidelberg, in his important book Jewish Statesmanship, stands against a loyalty oath as the solution, “It is the height of impudence, of conceit and even of stupidity to grant equal political rights to Arabs in the expectation that they will renounce their religion and 1,300 year old civilization for a ballot box.”
I am a secular nationalist but have no confidence in liberal or reform Judaism to survive. Look at the Jews in America. They are doomed. But I do believe that way can be found that allows for the two Israels to coexist.
The massive protests preceding Israel’s 75th birthday have resurrected a century-old question that now demands an answer: : A Jewish state or state for Jews?
Having just returned from Israel, the country where I was born and grew up, and of which I am still a proud citizen, I apologize for being the bearer of bad news: There will be no easy, sane, or rational end to the protest movement that erupted in response to the ruling coalition’s proposed judicial reforms. In fact, the content of those reforms has ceased to matter to anyone involved on either side. The government’s promise to temporarily halt the legislation and convene a broad-based committee tasked with finding a compromise under the supervision of President Herzog has barely registered with the protesters, and one major member of the opposition, the Labor Party, has already quit the negotiations.
Nor did a string of gruesome terror attacks, coming on the heels of Passover, shift the collective focus away from taking to the streets. What is going on in Israel now has passed from the realm of the political to the metaphysical, which means that compromise is not possible. Instead, day by day, the arguments are getting louder and more cutting, and animosity is everywhere on display.
This is because Israelis realize, consciously or not, that they’re no longer arguing about a series of proposed bills designed to change the balance of power between the executive and the judiciary branches. Nor are they arguing about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition. Nor does it matter whether Netanyahu continues to lead his coalition, or steps down, or offers Benny Gantz the job of defense minister. Nor does it have anything to do with Jewish or Muslim demography, or with a future Palestinian state—whether or not such an entity ever exists, or doesn’t exist, in any part of the West Bank or Jordan.
Israelis aren’t arguing about politics anymore. They are fighting about the future, not only of Israel but of Zionism, the miraculous movement that, in the span of one century, freed the Jews from their respective houses of bondage, returned them to their indigenous homeland, taught them the spells of sovereignty, and powered their miniscule nation’s growth from embattled weakling to global powerhouse. And as a result, this is strictly an inter-Jewish affair, one pitting millennia of Jewish particularity against the promise of universalism once embodied in the Catholic Church, then in the Enlightenment, and now in the technocratic politics that unite the civilized right and the progressive left in the club of advanced countries that has, with increasing misgivings, included Israel among their number.
It’s a fight that isn’t going to end quickly, or with anything remotely resembling a compromise, because it’s about a question so central even the brave and prescient founders of the country avoided answering it. Israelis must now decide if they want a state for Jews, or a Jewish state.
Writing in 1888, the critic and essayist Asher Zvi Ginsberg, better known as Ahad Ha’am, or One of the People, argued that merely ushering scores of Jews to Eretz Yisrael would achieve little. Unless the Jews created a robust Jewish culture, he thundered, their experiment at self-government would produce just another diaspora, this one more tragic for taking root in the sacred soil of the Promised Land. Israel, he concluded, needed to become a spiritual center, a state unlike any other on Earth.
To today’s protesters, even the decidedly secular Ahad Ha’am’s answer sounds like more of a threat than a promise. Late at night at a Tel Aviv sidewalk cafe, I asked one of the leaders of the massive demonstrations now entering their 15th week to share with me her vision for Israel’s future. She declined to be identified by name—the movement’s leaders are reluctant to talk about who is organizing what, or paid for by whom—but she was happy to answer my question. “We’re here because we want this to be a normal state, you understand?” she said, “just like the United States or France or Germany. We don’t want this country to be taken over by those fanatics with their beards and their religion.”
This insistence on normalcy, on being a state like any other, is at the heart of the Second Israel theory, popularized by the academic and journalist Avishai Ben Haim. Israel’s defining political struggle, Ben Haim argued in 2022, wasn’t between left or right, or even the religious and the secular, but between representatives of the First and the Second Israel. In Ben Haim’s analysis, the First Israel comprised the country’s traditional elites, the largely socialist and largely Ashkenazi milieu that presided over Israel’s coming into being, while the Second Israel included Israel’s Mizrahi Jews and its growing Orthodox population. While the two Israels might coexist uneasily for however long within the same body politic, they were in fact fundamentally different and opposing entities.
The First Israel measured success by how closely it resembled the West, which meant celebrating everything from big IPOs to Netflix deals. The Second Israel realized it was very much a product of the East, which meant doubling down on family, tradition, and nation. For the First Israel, Jewish values were tolerable only as long as they didn’t interfere with the dictates of cosmopolitanism; for the Second Israel, democracy was just another name for the sort of compromises that Judaism, in its most moderate and open-minded iteration, generates naturally and with ease. For the First Israel, the long tail of Judaism is just a historically contingent addendum to the values and practices of other Western countries, such as modern techno-capitalism and 21st-century iterations of democratic elitism. For the Second Israel, the reverse is true.
These are not merely intellectual distinctions for professors and pundits to parse. They are, increasingly, concrete questions for policymakers, administrators, and judges to address. Take, for example, the case of Messiah in the Square, a large prayer event planned by several Orthodox organizers in the heart of Tel Aviv in 2018. Because most of the rally’s participants weren’t comfortable sitting next to members of the opposite sex, its organizers devised a solution: They informed the municipality that they’d like to create two distinct seating areas, one where men and women would be separated by a divider and another where anyone who wished to could sit together in an all-gender environment. The municipality refused; separate, it argued, was never equal, even if that was what event participants themselves requested, and even if alternatives were available to whoever wished to participate otherwise.
The court intervened, and the event was allowed to go on as planned, but similar lawsuits raising ever more vexing questions kept popping up: Could a private institution receiving no state funding offer classes open only to men or only to women? Did the government have the right to prohibit public transportation on Shabbat? Are immigration policies that favor Jews inherently discriminatory, or an essential part of both the raison d’etre and practice of a self-proclaimed Jewish state?
Lacking a constitution, Israelis of both camps are left with second-order quibbles over who gets the final say, with elected officials and the courts each offering arguments—sometimes valid, often imperfect—about why they ought to be the ultimate adjudicators. Nor is attempting to finally write out a national constitution, as some hopeful proceduralist types recommend, likely to end the question of what the State of Israel ought to be to its citizens: The task flummoxed generations of Israeli leaders, from David Ben-Gurion onward, all of whom eventually opted for deliberate ambiguity instead. The reason for their reluctance is simple: They were all dreading precisely the sort of showdown Israel is living through right now, one that calls for a decision between two fundamentally different sets of values and worldviews, neither one of which is willing or able to compromise with the other because they are, in fact, incompatible.
The fight that Israelis are engaged in now is about where they wish to live—not geographically, but within two radically different historical contexts, offering two radically different visions of Israel’s future. Israelis are choosing between, on the one hand, a state that offers Jews the freedom to live according to the dictates of their tradition, and on the other one that insists on strict adherence to universalist values as the price for the acceptance of Jews as a people like any other.
Liel Leibovitz is editor at large for Tablet Magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast Unorthodox and daily Talmud podcast Take One. He is the editor of Zionism: The Tablet Guide.
I have some serious disagreement with this Author.
1) The left has some serious Anti Semitic tendencies that can only exist among those born to Jewish Parents.They are George Soros,Henry Kissinger,Madeline Albright,Karl Marx types who hate
& resent their Jewish beginnings.
In Israel they don’t hate the observant Jews for what the observant Jews do to the secular Jews.They hate them because they,the seculars,hate being culturally connected to Judaism.
Judaism which is a bar to their being fashionable western Europeans! Fashionable western Europeans exiled from their beloved west Europe along with the unfashionable observant Jews.The observant Jews are no threat to the left on a cultural level because the observant Jews live in a local world.Most are not interested in what the Tel Aviv Jews do or don’t do unless they impose on the observant life style.which the seculars do!
The Tel Aviv seculars hate the observant Jews as Jews while the observant are culturally indifferent to the seculars.Except mzaybe for religious fanatics
2) another reason of mine is that only a blind person can’t see that the left is in deep collusion with foreign vested interests in destroying Israel as the home of Jews!
Among the reasons that the role of Jewish law and several other matters fits badly or not at all is that the rabbis and the Jewish people have not updated the legislative process of Jewish Law to be clear, accountable and cope with modernity. While rabbis squabble negatively and can not sort out the relatively simple agunah and divorce in general why should we entrust them with anything else. Running a state needs consultations with everybody in it – no taxation without reprresentatio as well as no representation without taxation – and military service. Historically that is the senior partner. Most seriously modern life requires clear decisions by set times and does not work welll under constant prevarication.
I liked this article better. https://www.jns.org/opinion/which-israel-are-you-celebrating-on-its-75th-birthday/
“By going against the decision of the defense minister and forcing the state to allow the entry of Palestinians into Israel to attend a controversial atlernative Memorial Day ceremony, the Supreme Court has hurt not only many of the bereaved families, but the entire nation.”
This is the most urgent reason judicial reform is needed. I could care less about the class, ethnic, cultural and religious conflicts involved.
“Compassion for the cruel leads to cruelty to the compassionate. – Maimonides
That’s why I call myself a gefilte fish Zionist.
“I can vouch for there being a type of Zionist who doesn’t care what kind of society our “state” will have; I’m that person. If I were to know that the only way to a state was via socialism, or even that this would hasten it by a generation, I’d welcome it. More than that: give me a religiously Orthodox state in which I would be forced to eat gefilte fish all day long (but only if there were no other way) and I’ll take it.”
– Jabotinsky 1940.
https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/high-court-stance-on-israeli-palestinian-memorial-ceremony-reflects-israels-distorted-system/
Please read my article linked to in the preface.
@EvRev
Well said but the chances of getting a new constitution in the US or Israel are nil. Israel doesn’t have a constitution because there is no consensus of what it should contain. And passing a constitution requires at least a 2/3 majority.
Upon further reflection…
Dear Leil
Your ‘Zionism’s Moment Of Decision’ piece is really good and certainly pertinent.
There is something that niggles me though. Maybe 2 things.
First, your highlighted interaction with the protestor seems to support your premise but misses the obvious anti-religious words to support your broader perspective, opposing ‘particularism’.
I feel you maybe missed the trees, for the forrest here.
She is plainly a ‘racist or religious-phobe against ‘their beards and religion’.
Many religious people in the Modern Orthodox or even Religious Zionism communities would likewise stand with aspects of her more universalist and globalist world view.
Yet these religious people mostly supported judicial reform.
She’s just a bigot – a jerk with a loud mouth and funding.
Not to say your analysis doesn’t have currency – it does.
But call out the bigots when they are in your face – let’s not ignore their bile for big picture stuff.
Second, after over 3 years of the covid response disaster and wholesale destruction of human rights, freedom, bodily autonomy, and dignity with people losing their health, lives, livelihoods and more to these dictates, mandates, ineffective and dangerous covid injections, removal of safe effective treatments like Ivermectin and the in your face bold censorship and outright media lying, you cannot write a piece like you have, ignore this world altering and continuing war, and maintain integrity.
None of you can.
Yet every right wing pro-israel writer from Melanie Philips to Greenfield, Glick, Blum and all the other JNS hacks, are doing the same.
It is this particular elephant that you cannot ignore to make your universalist view about particularism.
Brilliant article and ending but you maybe lost both the beating heart Trees and the Forest along the way in favour of the cold intellectual sociological modelling.
Upon further reflection…
Dear Leil
Your ‘Zionism’s Moment Of Decision’ piece is really good and certainly pertinent.
There is something that niggles me though. Maybe 2 things.
First, your highlighted interaction with the protestor seems to support your premise but misses the obvious anti-religious words to support your broader perspective, opposing ‘particularism’.
I feel you maybe missed the trees, for the forrest here.
She is plainly a ‘racist or religious-phobe against ‘their beards and religion’.
Many religious people in the Modern Orthodox or even Religious Zionism communities would likewise stand with aspects of her more universalist and globalist world view.
Yet these religious people mostly supported judicial reform.
She’s just a bigot – a jerk with a loud mouth and funding.
Not to say your analysis doesn’t have currency – it does.
But call out the bigots when they are in your face – let’s not ignore their bile for big picture stuff.
Second, after over 3 years of the covid response disaster and wholesale destruction of human rights, freedom, bodily autonomy, and dignity with people losing their health, lives, livelihoods and more to these dictates, mandates, ineffective and dangerous covid injections, removal of safe effective treatments like Ivermectin and the in your face bold censorship and outright media lying, you cannot write a piece like you have, ignore this world altering and continuing war, and maintain integrity.
None of you can.
Yet every right wing pro-israel writer from Melanie Philips to Greenfield, Glick, Blum and all the other JNS hacks, are doing the same.
It is this particular elephant that you cannot ignore to make your universalist view about particularism.
Brilliant article and ending but you maybe lost both the beating heart Trees and the Forest along the way in favour of the cold intellectual sociological modelling.
It is interesting that a protester wants Israel to be like the US.
The US is currently in a state of economic, judicial, political, and cultural meltdown.
The DOJ, FBI, CIA and ODNI (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) no longer pursue criminals such as Islamists who murdered innocent people at a nightclub, a synagogue, etc. They no longer pursue a man who was a serial child molester. They no longer lock up those who, in protesting, burn down Black owned businesses and throw bricks at police. Instead, they use the power of national surveillance to lock up conservatives, the people who are patriots, the people who support the police and the military.
Our Judeo-Christian values have been undermined, and both Jews and Christians have been attacked. While the government supports the agenda of people with gender problems at the expense of the heterosexual majority of the country. The streets in our cities have been made safe for criminals while law abiding citizens are at risk. Used needles and human feces line the streets. Shoplifting occurs regularly as these crimes are not penalized. People randomly beat up police officers because they know they can get away with it.
So whomever thinks that Israel should be a country like the US apparently has no idea what the US has come to be. We are no longer a representative republic due to widespread election fraud. Our government lies to us continually and has done so probably at least since 9/11/2001.
No, I don’t think Israelis should emulate the US. However, I do suggest that a political group form a working group to develop a Constitution. That Constitution, I suggest, should improve upon the US Constitution in specific ways.
Our Constitution was formed at a time when the founders feared the average person, or “mob” just as they feared the King of England. The founders were members of the elite, or at least most of them, including Madison were. As such the document they finalized did not settle the conflict on slavery despite the fact that most of the members of the Constitutional Convention wanted an end to slavery. And the Constitution as it was organized, did not protect the mass of Americans from elite interests that could agglomerate power to such a degree that their power rivaled that of the state itself. Monopolies and trusts were attempted to be dealt with around the turn of the century, but unfortunately, that effort led to the progressive movement, which undid the idea that government was to have only very specific and enumerated powers in order that the government not get bigger and more powerful to eventually become able to oppress the people. Much as FDR was/is revered, he saw to it that our government would become a leviathan, completely unresponsive to the American people they are supposedly hired by.
There is a current movement in the US for civil dissolution and for the creation of a new constitution that would resolve those deficits and create a new Democratic Republic. Those people who did not want to live in the Marxist states of America would have a new country and new constitution. https://civildissolution.com/
I think Israel would benefit from developing a constitution that would define the responsibilities and limits of the judges of the Supreme Court, and would define causes for dismissal of specific judges.
Better than a judicial reform package, legislation can be passed by the Knesset empowering a Constitutional convention to study and design a constitution that would address the conflicts unique to Israel, and protect its unique heritage and future. Once a Constitution is agreed to by the members of the Constitutional working group or convention, it could be presented to the Knesset for a vote.
“This is strictly an inter-Jewish affair”! I beg to differ.
There is a massive interference against Israel internal debate by the Western world against Zionism!
However, extremism from any side is intolerable!
The wisdom of compromise!
An opportunity for Israel (the Jewish people) to demonstrate its uniqueness!
Such a well written article and position. His certainly does seem to be the underlying ‘conflict’. So interesting his conclusion as the “particularist” & religious are the freedom fighters and the “universalist” & secular are the fanatic totalitarians. I believe essential to Judaism is the freedom to choose whether to do a mitzvah or keep shabbos etc and this freedom must be protected as it is from G’d. However, I also think that in the public square like at a hospital that the freedom to bring in chometz might need to be curtailed for 8 days. There must be the freedom to practice Judaism.
Although secular Jews tend to think that they are doing the right thing, they need to remember where they came from. They wouldn’t be Jews if their Jewish background weren’t in place.
On the other hand, the ultra orthodox Jews need to remember that their only chance to continue living in the land of Israel depends on those secular Jews to protect them on an on-going basis.
While all this is going on, the same obstinate members of both the secular and orthodox parties need to understand that only cooperation between them will lead to solution that all can live with.
With that said, we need to look at the scene on Israeli streets lately. It seems that external forces that smell badly of the Biden regime and the EU are advancing their plans to destroy the state of the Jews or the Jewish state (whichever you prefer), The fact that both the USA and the EU are essentially committed to a nuclear Iran is a big mistake they will only understand when they, themselves, are affected by their decisions.