Judaismus a politika v Izraeli

Summary
Marek Čejka: Judaism and Politics in Israel

This book consists of four main parts: the first considers the Israeli democracy and its attitude towards religion; the second discusses the structure of Jewish society from the point of view of religiosity; the third gives a detailed description of those political parties and movements which incorporate religious elements into their policy; the fourth part provides a systematic survey of the radical formations which try to support their policy by employing a specific interpretation (or rather misinterpretation) of Judaism.
In the introductory part the specific subject is the relationship between Judaism and democracy in Israel. Here the author shows that even after more than half a century of existence of the State of Israel, the interrelation between these two systems of values has not yet been clarified. One of the aspects of this problem consists in the fact that while the majority of Israelis today still try to build and organise a liberal pluralist country in which people of all religious denominations can take part, a considerably smaller but quickly growing group of adherents of the orthodox currents of Judaism try to introduce into their country way of life which would be completely regulated by a narrow interpretation of Halakha – the traditional Jewish religious law. As a result of this phenomenon a kind of polarisation of two contradictory groups – the majority secular group and the minority religious group – has arisen in Israeli society which have both been very influential and politically successful at the same time.
The outstanding relationship between the State and religion and the conflict secular – religious have their roots in the unclarified problem of national identity and in an absence of a clear differentiation of the religious and national aspects of Jewishness. Is it possible to conceive Israel either as a state that emphasises the Jewishness (in which case ethnocracy rather than democracy is more prominent), or is it a modern and democratic State where the Jews are only a majority? The Zionist Founding Fathers of Israel were predominantly secular and in some respect even antireligious and treated the Jewish prevalence as nationality. However, with regard to tradition and for pragmatic reasons they made important concessions in religious matters, the most important of which is the consensus, known as the status quo. In the course of time, however, this situation brought about increasing problems.
Two considerably different conceptions of law exist side by side in Israel: secular law which incorporates significant elements both of AngloSaxon and Continental Law, and religious law which is, on the contrary, completely and specifically Jewish. Although on the one hand the religious law lays down many moral principles that can in the framework of the secular rules of law whither away, on the other hand the religious codices are frequently very dogmatic and archaic from the practical point of view. The Israeli legislation incorporated some regulations of the Torah directly into the Israeli Law. The administration of jurisdiction in the majority of such cases has been entrusted to the exclusive authority of the religious lawcourts and deals with marriages, divorces, funerals etc. The business transactions are limited during the Sabbath for religious reasons.
Substantial penetration of religion into the State (although without proper legal basis) brought about practical problems even during the past decades. Their solution, however, has been postponed, for the region is permanently exposed to wars and frequent conflicts; moreover these problems are being more politicised now than ever before. Within the last two decades the fragmentation of Israeli society has increased and the ultraorthodox religious parties, which predetermined the fate of many governmental coalitions, are ascending in the political life of the country; they have achieved remarkable concessions and they make every effort to achieve even more.
In Part Two – The Israeli Society and Religiosity – the author investigates in detail the structure of Israeli Jewish society from the religious viewpoint. The reader should take notice of the book´s reference to the notions Israeli population and Israelis which signify here persons of Jewish origin and not the Arab Muslims and Christians who are also the citizens of the State of Israel (they represent about 20% of the population).
The Israeli Jewish population has one idiosyncratic trait: it is an extraordinarily manifold society from the point of view of the ethnical origin of the citizens, their culture, their religion and last but not least from the viewpoint of the broad spectrum of their political opinions. This heterogeneity was influenced by the unprecedented circumstances of the origin of this State. At the same time the Zionist intellectual movement on which Israel has been founded is far from being a monolithic ideology; the reverse is the case: it is an astonishing miscellany of different ideas, secular and leftist on the one hand, and religious and messianic on the other. As a result of such heterogeneity, the Israeli society is divided by many lines of conflict (cleavages), the majority of which includes religious elements. The author concentrates upon them in detail. Most important is the controversy between the secular and religious Israelis, to begin with; this phenomenon is still not very known in our country. We have even less knowledge we have about dividing lines within the Israeli religious community, that is to say between the orthodox and ultraorthodox Jews (Haredim), or about the conflicts between the orthodox and nonorthodox currents of Judaism. The dichotomy of the Israeli leftwing and radicalright movements is also linked with the interrelationship between Judaism and politics. Especially in the latter case we are very close to the conflict between the Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. In a sense, the interconnection between Israeli politics and religion plays a keyrole in this conflict; it concerns the case of religious settlers in the Palestinian territories and the influence of various messianic political parties and groups upon the conflict, etc. Also the intraethnic differentiation of the Jews between the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim (or simply the “Oriental” and the “Western” Jews) has its connection with the interrelation between Judaism and politics. It has made a clear appearance in the rise of different Sephardimgroupings: first of all in the religious party Shas, which became the third strongest party in Israel in the 1999 elections (immediately behind the Labour Party and Likud).
Part Three of this book – Political Parties and Movements – is devoted to the Israeli political parties with religious elements. The author deals in detail with the majority of Israeli political subjects connected with religiosity, proceeding from the nonZionist parties (the coalition of the Ashkenazim ultraorthodox parties Yahadut HaTorah with its centre in the party Agudat Yisrael), to the Sephardim religious party Shas. Then the author investigates the Mafdal (National Religious Party – NRP) i.e. the party of the religious Zionists, especially of the Jewish settlers, and the moderate orthodox party Meimad. Both being the supporters of the religious Zionism. The author also briefly discusses this important topic in its contemporary context. The third part of the book also considers the conflicts between the leftwing and rightwing movements and the religious influences upon this complex of political problems.
The most contradictory role on the Israeli political stageplay is the radical right: the exclusive subject of the last part of this book. Although main part of radical right is very strongly connected with religion, nevertheless these rightwing groupings cannot be characterised as exclusively religious, though. What is distinctive for them is a reluctance to any territorial concessions from the part of Israel, a militant attitude towards Arabs, and an interpretation of Judaism that prefers dogmatism, isolationism, expansionism, and the theory of national exceptionality as the case may be. In the opinion of the author the parties Tehiya, Kach, Moledet and the religious movement of the settlers Gush Emunim belong to these rightist groupings.
Radicalism of the radical rightwing political subjects resulted in some cases in terrorism. This has its roots in the period before the establishment of the State of Israel when the Jewish radicals fought against the Arabs and the English. Recently the most conspicuous examples of Jewish terrorism are: the attempt to blow up the Moslem shrines at the Temple Mount; the Hebron massacre by Baruch Goldstein; and the murder of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. The last act has proved to be a major stumbling block on the way to what was a successfully developing peace process.

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Recenze v médiích

Dalibor Ňorek, metalopolis.net, 7. 3. 2009
Marek Čejka – JUDAISMUS A POLITIKA V IZRAELI
Asi málokterá země vzbuzuje v současné době tak protichůdně emoce, jako právě Izrael. Stát, který si za dobu své šedesátileté existence prožil tolik, co mnohé jiné nezažijí ani za celá staletí, je a nepochybně i nadále zůstane pro mnohé jedinou výspou demokracie na Blízkém východě a pro jiné zase černá židovská skvrna uprostřed arabského světa. Pravda, jak už to tak bývá, je opět někde uprostřed... více »