Statistics Don’t Tell the Whole Story about Israel’s Demographics

“The Looming War over Israel’s Law of Return,” investigates both a major debate facing the Jewish state in the coming years and the sociopolitical factors driving it. Yet for all the importance of this subject, I found the categories underlying this analysis inadequate. I don’t want to attempt here a thoroughgoing rebuttal, but instead I want to focus on some of the article’s underlying assumptions, and suggest that the chasm dividing Israeli society isn’t quite so vast and unbridgeable as it claims, and therefore may not be destined to continue widening.

The essay relies on extensive empirical data in its analysis. But these data express categories that are far less stable or clearly defined than pollsters would like them to be. Let us start with the simple question: who are the “secular” Israeli Jews? If we mean people who don’t believe in God, don’t go to synagogue, and never or very rarely engage in religious practices, there are very few indeed. I would estimate that they make up about 5 to 10 percent of Israel’s Jewish population. How is it then that repeated surveys of Israeli society find that either a plurality or a majority of Israelis define themselves as “secular”? It is simply because the term means something specific in the Israeli context that doesn’t correspond with the meaning of “secular” as it is employed internationally by sociologists and students of religion.

The category is of course borrowed from Christian societies (though I suspect even there it is inexact), and perhaps may even apply to Jews living in Western countries. There it is understood that a secular person lives a life entirely without religion, save perhaps putting up a Christmas tree. But in Israel the vast majority of the population, including most “secular” Jews, observe numerous religious practices, which in turn shape their values and family lives. Upwards of 90 percent of Israeli Jews attend Passover seders, put mezuzahs on their doorposts, and circumcise their sons. This means that the vast majority of “secular” Israeli Jews carry out these practices too. The same is true for less universal practices. We find, for instance that about 30 percent of “secular” Jews in Israel keep kosher homes, about 50 percent regularly light Hanukkah candles, and the same proportion testify to lighting Sabbath candles occasionally or even regularly. (Compared to about two-thirds of Jewish Israelis overall.) Thus, ironically, many more “secular” Israelis engage more regularly in religious practices than their “religious” European or American counterparts.