The Religious Wars

By Lisa Beyer/Pardess Hannah

It was the frogs that Yossi Werzansky wanted to hear. In the evenings, they would start up, calling to one another in the swampy field just beyond Werzansky's new home in suburban Pardess Hannah. Then one day came a different cacophony. Werzansky's new, ultra-Orthodox neighbors had set up a loudspeaker and were broadcasting sermons from a rented house they had turned into a synagogue. Infuriated, the community's secular majority retaliated, organizing a weekly Sabbath-night disco in the next house to outblast the worshippers. A fire bombing and a melee soon followed.

Such is the state of relations, generally, between religious and secular Israelis these days. As Israel celebrates its 50th anniversary, its citizens identify the rift over religion as their No. 1 problem. With the country well established and peace in the region a growing reality, Israelis are fighting among themselves as never before. "For 50 years, we had an external enemy who obliged us to lower the tenor of our internal tensions," says author A.B. Yehoshua. "But the external enemy doesn't unite us anymore."

The ensuing struggle is nasty and getting nastier. Cars have been stoned. Religious centers have been fire bombed. Excrement has been thrown. People on both sides have been assaulted on the street. A Prime Minister has been murdered. Says Menachem Friedman, a sociologist at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan: "We are really near the edge [of] where people can tolerate each other."

The conflict is rooted in an old and unresolved question of national identity: Is Israel a Jewish state, with the emphasis on Jewish, or is it a state for the Jews, a regular, modern, democratic place where Jews are in the majority? Israel's Zionist founders were almost exclusively secular--in many respects, antireligious--and they saw Judaism principally as a nationality. But in deference to tradition, and as a way of securing the support of the Orthodox minority, they made certain concessions to religion: restricting commerce on the Jewish Sabbath, for instance, and leaving such matters as marriage and burial in the exclusive hands of rabbinical authorities. In the past 20 years, religious political parties extracted further allowances as they joined various government coalitions.

Today Israel's secular majority is signaling that it has had enough. Says Ronni Milo, the mayor of Tel Aviv and a leader in the secular vanguard: "We are talking here of the basic rights of people to choose their own way of life."

The secularists have been reinforced by the immigration to Israel in the past decade of more than 800,000 people from the former Soviet Union, the vast majority of whom are nonreligious. Today two-thirds of Israelis define themselves as secular. Included within the religious third are 10% of the general population who belong to the ultra-Orthodox, or haredim (literally "those who fear"), distinguished by the black hats and robes worn by the men.

The religious minority has also become more assertive. Because of a recent reform of the voting system, religious parties did better in the last election than ever before, gaining 23 of 120 seats in the parliament. Now they are testing their power. Plus, the ranks of the religious are growing, in part because spirituality is flowering in Israel, and because the devout are so prolific.

Pardess Hannah was one place where the push between the two groups came to shove. In a new, secular neighborhood of 100-odd houses called Neve Rotem, haredi rabbi Rafael Boublil launched an incursion. He rented a dozen town houses and moved his followers into them. One house became a synagogue. He placed three trailers in an open field and established a school for 12-year-old boys. He put up a sign just outside Neve Rotem announcing that this was "a religious neighborhood" and asking entrants to dress "modestly" and respect "the holy Sabbath."

The neighborhood's nonreligious responded with their own placards asserting that people "dress and behave as they wish" in "secular Neve Rotem." Every Saturday for four months they organized a noisy demonstration in the main street that attracted secular activists from all over the country. Then in December someone torched Boublil's school. In retaliation, his adherents went on a rampage, attacking secularists. Each side accused the other of conducting a "pogrom."

Mordechai el-Harar, a teacher in Boublil's school, says the animus toward his group is misplaced. "The rabbi isn't looking for a fight here," he says. "He wants his little patch of earth and to live a life based on Torah principles." Replies Shimrit Orr, Yossi Werzansky's wife: "It's impossible that they will come here and tell us how to live. Here, we draw a line in the sand."

The intolerance at Neve Rotem reflects years of simmering conflict across the country. The battle over the Sabbath has been particularly intense. Orthodox Judaism prescribes a day of rest and worship, but many secular Israelis prefer to travel, go to the movies or shop on their only day off from work. A number of suburban shopping centers have begun to defy blue laws, opening up on Saturdays to cater to the burgeoning consumerism.

The ultra-Orthodox have responded with fury. Haredi mobs have attacked cars traveling in or near their neighborhoods on Saturdays. In a December 1996 rally, Ovadia Yosef, one of the most influential haredi rabbis, proclaimed that Sabbath violators "will be killed." The comment was particularly offensive to secularists in light of the assassination, a year earlier, of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a religious fanatic.

The status of yeshiva students is another irritant for the secularists. At the creation of the state, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion agreed to exempt about 400 such pupils from army service, which is mandatory for most Israeli youths. Some 29,000 are taking advantage of the deferrals these days, much to the resentment of those who serve. What's more, because these students are supposed to be full-timers, they are not allowed to work. That contributes to the fact that 60% of the haredim live, at taxpayer expense, on welfare. Mayor Milo calls them "parasites."

The rabbinical monopoly on marriage and burial is increasingly controversial, especially in light of the mass immigration from the former Soviet Union. Immigrants who are not officially Jews, meaning their mothers are not Jewish or they have not been converted by an Orthodox rabbi, cannot get married in Israel. There are very few places where they can be buried. After one such teenager died in a recent terrorist attack, his corpse wandered the country looking for a final resting place. A man was dug up five years after his death when rabbinical authorities questioned his Jewish credentials.

Secular women are riled by Orthodoxy's chauvinism. Last June in Jerusalem rioting haredim pelted men and women with excrement for praying at the Western Wall in a mixed group. In 1996 haredi "modesty patrols" began attacking women on Jerusalem's streets for exposing their arms or legs. Secular women were offended last year when Rabbi Yosef pronounced that men should not walk between two women, just as they should not walk between two donkeys, lest they take on the attributes of these lesser beasts.

Relations with the Palestinians are another fault line. Some 56% of secular Israelis support the peace process, compared with only 9% of the haredim and 24% of the so-called modern Orthodox. One group of rabbis went so far as to instruct army soldiers to disobey any order to withdraw from parts of the West Bank, an invitation to insurrection. A survey last fall showed that 27% of religious teenagers condone the murder of Rabin.

Meanwhile, the religious fear that if their secular brothers continue to disobey the commandments of their religion, as they interpret them, they will stop being Jews. Says Friedman: "They fear that one morning they will wake up, and there will be no Jewish people anymore." Even some secularists are worried that too many in their ranks are being alienated from their heritage because of disgust with the behavior of the Orthodox. Says author Yehoshua: "I say, You, secular person, open the Talmud for yourself. We need the religious memory and tradition not to find God but to find the historical roots of our people."

While a number of activists on both sides are working to find a new accommodation between the communities, most Israelis expect relations to deteriorate further. A survey showed that 47% think the situation could lead to civil war. Haim Miller, the haredi deputy mayor of Jerusalem, believes the answer is segregation. "To prevent this conflict, the only way really at this point is some sort of separation," he says. "It's sad, but it's sadder yet if two Jewish people come to blows."

Boublil's followers, however, are not prepared to give up on the haredi presence in Neve Rotem. "This war will continue," says El-Harar, "until it is understood that we are in fact brothers, and we have to receive each other well." Until such a day arrives, the croaking of the frogs at dusk will continue to be only one of the sounds disturbing the quiet at Neve Rotem.