Discuss several aspects of the religious/secular cleavage in Israel

Résumé du document

In the play Jerusalem Syndrome, 1987, Sobol, seen by religious circles as "an Israeli hating Jews", uses the period of the Second Temple as a model for a destructive society and he warns against the fact that Israeli society is attempting to adopt this model which has two paths : that of Orthodoxy demanding that the State's citizens be cut off from all that is enlightened and liberal and that of self-destruction, of extreme Jewish nationalism.
Indeed, this model seems to correspond more and more to the Israeli society which is deeply divided between Orthodox and non-Orthodox.
Consequently, is the religious / secular cleavage the major threat for the existence of the democratic State of Israel?
Firstly, more and more secular Israelis denounce the weight of the religious sphere on the public sphere inherited from the Zionist compromise and the concessions in their favor. Secondly, the threat of self-destruction evoked by Sobol does not seem to be a nightmare anymore but a threat which is really merging.

Extraits

[...] Discuss several aspects of the religious/secular cleavage in Israel. Will this cleavage deepen in the future? Explain and give examples In the play Jerusalem Syndrome Sobol, seen by religious circles as Israeli hating uses the period of the Second Temple as a model for a destructive society and he warns against the fact that Israeli society is attempting to adopt this model which has two paths: that of Orthodoxy demanding that the State's citizens be cut off from all that is enlightened and liberal and that of self-destruction, of extreme Jewish nationalism. [...]

[...] That's the central contradiction in the haredi relationship to Israel. The gap between the haredi community and the rest of Israel constitutes a true challenge to the nation's integrative capacities. The haredim don't intend to be integrated. They reject modern Western society and proselytize for their own lifestyle as an alternative to secular Israeli culture. From the Haredi point of view, there is no validity to a secular Jewish identity: they are Jews _ they are not free, and if they are free _ they are not Jews”. [...]

[...] A century later, University of California Press KIMMERLING Baruch, The Israeli State and society, boundaries and frontiers, NY, State University of New York Press. PERETZ Don and DORON Gideon, The government and politics of Israel, third edition, Westwiew Press . The Knesset enacted the Party Law in 1992. It forbids the formation of any party whose explicit goal is to deny the existence of the State of Israel as both a Jewish and a democratic state. Nor can an ultra religious party be formed with the explicit aim of transforming the Israeli political system into a theocracy. [...]

[...] The weight of the religion on the public sphere. But the haredi way of life didn't disappear and the weight of religion on public life increased. Actually, the main controversy involves the application of Jewish religious law to the Jewish public. Secular Israelis characterize existing arrangements about the rabbinical monopoly over marriage and divorce as a form of religious coercion and call for a civil marriage. They complain that only in Israel, among all democratic States, they are subject to legal discrimination. [...]

[...] Because of this legal discrimination and the privileges of the religious community, the tension between religious and secular is very exacerbated. II. The threat of self-destruction Actually, the major threats to the stability of secular religious relations in Israel seem to be the rise of haredi influence within the religious camp and the strong link that has been forged between religious Zionism and uncompromising territorial nationalism. A. The refusal to recognize the state of Israel. Even during the Yishuv, the Ultra-Orthodox refused to deal with the Jewish authority and denounced Agudat Yisrael's agreement because they thought that dealing with the government legitimated an entity that deserved no legitimation. [...]