Amit Segal, longer than usual for his It’s Noon in Israel newsletter, posits the perennial faultline in Israel politics: Jewish vs Israeli.
“Jewish” and “Israeli” are simply the two tenets of Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish and democratic state — not in open contradiction, since most Israelis hold both, but forever rubbing against each other. Like asking whether strawberry-banana yogurt is more strawberry or banana, Israelis are endlessly asked, in one disguise or another, whether they are slightly more Jewish than democratic or the reverse. Once you see it, most of the news in the country — most push notifications, most studio shouting matches — dissolves into that same question, with a thin veneer of fresh event on top.
Segal himself straddles the divide nicely, as does the society writ large, part and parcel of the fading Ashkenazi/Sephardi divide. In my thin slice of observation, secular Israelis who delight in eating swine abroad now light candles and recite more complete prayers at home for Friday night dinner than they used to — indeed holding Friday night dinner itself is the gateway. And there are so many gateways.
I do however take issue with Amit’s characterization of the Israeli/left side:
Of course we are Jewish, the left answers — the flag is essentially a prayer shawl, the emblem is the Temple menorah, every kindergartner comes home Friday with a challah — but that is the décor, not the purpose; the purpose is to be the only democracy in the Middle East.
Instead, it seems to me that people on this side, those of the “villa in the jungle” view, would rather just forget about the jungle; being “the only X in the Middle East” is merely apologetics, not identity. Rather, it’s about being a liberal democracy simply because that is the enlightened, obvious, natural thing to be; anyone with a Yiddisher kopf can see that. And as for the Right downgrading democracy to merely being the operating system, well, that’s what Judaism itself arguably is too, so being the OS is no small thing.