Mention religious leftists in any conversation in Israel and you’re bound to elicit the following wisecrack: “You mean all 10 of them?”
It’s not that far from the truth.
Israel’s religious community – spanning the entire spectrum of Orthodoxy, from black hats and shtreimels to tiny knitted kippas – is overwhelmingly right wing. Surveys have shown that as many as 90 percent of those Israelis who identify as religious embrace right-wing views. The West Bank settler movement, a bastion of ultranationalism, is dominated by Orthodox Israelis.
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Even ultra-Orthodox (or Haredi) Jews, who for the most part don’t identify as Zionists, have been swinging far to the right in recent years, and hold the dubious distinction of being the most racist group in the country.
Never before has the religious right held as much sway in Israel. Of the six parties that make up the newly formed government, five are either ultra-Orthodox or religious Zionist – the closest equivalent in Israel to Modern Orthodox. Considering that only about 20 percent of Israel’s population is observant, that puts a disproportionate amount of power in their hands.
But a pushback is beginning, as evidenced by the growing number of leftists and moderates within the religious community who are finally finding their voices.
“It’s most definitely a watershed moment,” says Anton Goodman, a British immigrant active in various religious peace movements. “For lots of people who once believed they could live with the growing extremism in the religious Zionist movement, it seems that things have gone too far.”
Indeed, since the November 1 election, religious Israelis opposed to the new government’s antidemocratic agenda have become involved in a variety of grassroots initiatives – ranging from new Facebook and WhatsApp groups to petitions and protest letters – aimed at getting the following message out: The Judaism represented in this government is not our Judaism.
By far the boldest and most noteworthy was the launch this week of a brand-new religious leftist movement called Hasmol Ha’emuni (literally translated into “the religious believers” or “the religious faithful”).
The kickoff event on Monday evening attracted more than 650 participants – above and beyond the organizers’ wildest dreams. Given its counterculture flavor, many in the religious community noted with irony that the venue chosen was Jerusalem’s Heichal Shlomo synagogue – a symbol of the mainstream Orthodox establishment.
“I can only say that we were open and honest about what we were doing, and the folks at Heichal Shlomo had no problem with it,” says co-organizer Mikhael Manekin, a prominent religious left-wing activist.
When he took to the podium to open the event, Manekin scanned the jam-packed room in wonder before issuing the following request: “Can I just take a picture so that the next time I’m told there’s no one else like me out there, I have something to show?”
You won’t believe it
Even in the tiny world of religious leftists, considerable diversity exists. The crowd at Heichal Shlomo included ultra-Orthodox men and women (though they were far from the majority); a wide spectrum of religious Zionists; women with head coverings and women without head coverings; men with black kippas, men with knitted kippas, both big and small, and men with no kippas. A busload of participants arrived from the south and another busload from the north. There were kibbutzniks and city-dwellers (overwhelmingly from Jerusalem), and even a handful of settlers.
Divided over the question of who qualifies as religious or a “believer,” the organizers eventually decided not to extend invitations to members of the Conservative and Reform movements. Nonetheless, representatives of these non-Orthodox streams were also visible in the crowd.
At the meet-and-greet part of the event, held in the main foyer, a bunch of organizations affiliated with the left and the progressive religious community had set up information booths. These included the anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence (Manekin was one of its founders); the Center for Women’s Justice; Oz V’Shalom (a religious peace movement); and Tag Meir (a religious group dedicated to eradicating racism and violence against Arabs).
In virtually every conversation in the room, the following question could be overheard: “Can you believe how many people are here?”
Opening the main auditorium event, Manekin talked about the lonely predicament of the religious leftist.
“It’s hard to feel part of my religious community when it supports aggression and Jewish supremacy, and I often feel very much alone,” he said. “But I also often feel very much alone in my political community, where religion is seen as something that needs to be fought.”
The guest speakers included Adina Bar-Shalom, an educator and social activist who founded the first college in Israel exclusively for ultra-Orthodox students. Her other claim to fame is being the daughter of the late Ovadia Yosef, the former Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel.
“Overtaken by nationalism and extremism, Haredi society has undergone a transformation,” she told the attendees. “But this is not the way of the Torah. My father ruled that it is permissible to hand back territory in exchange for peace. Today, it is best not to mention the word ‘peace.’ And yet I remain a believer in humankind, in Israel and in peace.”
Leah Shakdiel, a prominent Orthodox feminist and peace activist, urged the crowd to wear the leftist label with pride. “There are moments in history that are black and white with no middle,” she said. “Are we part of the problem, or we are part of the solution?”
‘Disaster for the Torah’
Last year’s election was a wake-up call for many religious moderates and leftists. The most extremist government in Israeli history could not have come into being, many of them realized, without the massive support of members of their own synagogues and parents at their children’s schools.
Among the first to give voice to the creeping sense of trepidation was Itay Marienberg-Millikowsky, a faculty member at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er Sheva.
In a heartfelt essay published on a popular religious news portal a few weeks after the election, he admitted being too embarrassed to wear his kippa in public any longer. “I can no longer bear to be identified with the political and sociological camp that has co-opted this symbol,” he wrote.
The electoral success of the Orthodox parties, Marienberg-Millikowsky added, was a “disaster” for the Torah.
“The Torah in which I believe, in the light of which I was educated in outstanding yeshivas and which I teach my children, is in palpable danger,” he wrote. “We cannot accept this, and we must fight it. This great and urgent task requires courageous and comprehensive mobilization.”
Even before Marienberg-Millikowsky shook up the religious community with his “off with the kippa” message, a Facebook group had already been launched after the election with the Hebrew title “Not in my name: Religious Zionists against racism and xenophobia.”
With now close to 400 members, its mission, as explained on the group page, is to serve as an online community for “religious Zionists who believe that every person is created in the image of God and deserves respect – yes, yes, also Arabs and members of the LGBTQ community. Come, let’s make a change!”
That was followed by a letter signed by hundreds of rabbis and religious educators expressing deep concern about the direction Israel’s new government was headed. “Attempts to limit equality in the State of Israel, to enable the institutional discrimination of minorities, to grant the government unbridled power and to legitimize racism – all this is extremely dangerous in our eyes, especially when presented as coming from the Torah,” it said.
Yoel Kretzmer-Raziel, who helped draft the letter, said his target audience was young religious Israelis. “When a young yeshiva boy or a young girl from an ulpana sees that their teacher has signed a letter like this – that sends a very important message,” said Kretzmer-Raziel, who teaches at Achva Academic College in southern Israel.
Another petition, titled “This is not our Religious Zionism,” was published the day before the new government was sworn in late last month.
“What is being depicted these days as the Torah of religious Zionism is a fanatical Torah that threatens to bring about the destruction of the Third Temple,” it warned. Within 24 hours, more than 1,000 graduates of Orthodox schools and youth movements in Israel had signed it.
Definition discomfort
Until now, religious Israelis have not been particularly visible among the huge crowds attending the main anti-government protests in Tel Aviv on Saturday nights. Earlier this week, however, a brand-new WhatsApp group was formed with the express purpose of bringing them out. The plan is for them to march together, so they don’t feel out of place among the big secular crowd. Their WhatsApp group is called “Religious. Zionists. Democrats” and currently has more than 1,200 members.
As the group administrator noted in the opening post: “There’s a real expectation among those demonstrating for a Jewish and democratic Israel to see some knitted kippas in the crowd, standing shoulder to shoulder to them, just as we do in the army and just as we do at work. Religious Zionism was always the meeting point between Judaism and democracy, and it’s important that we maintain our place among those Israelis who see in our Declaration of Independence the cornerstone of the revival of our people in our land.”
Of course, not every member of this WhatsApp group – and certainly not all those who have signed petitions and letters expressing their opposition to the new government – would describe themselves as leftists. Most would probably feel more comfortable with terms like “liberal,” “liberal-right” or “mamlachti right” (loosely translated as non-populist right-wingers who put the interests of the country above the interests of their particular community).
This discomfort was evident even at Monday’s kickoff event for the new movement. As Bezalel Cohen, a prominent Haredi educator active in integrating ultra-Orthodox Jews into Israeli society, noted in one of the keynote addresses: “I don’t know if I would define myself as a leftist, but I definitely identify with the values of love for all human beings, democracy and liberalism.”
Before introducing Cohen and the other main speakers, event co-organizer Brit Yakobi recited the “Shehecheyanu” – a blessing that celebrates special occasions. Attempting to show how much those gathered in the audience shared, despite the differences among them, she proceeded to conduct an ad hoc survey.
“How many of you are graduates of Bnei Akiva and the religious Scouts?” she asked.
Hundreds of hands went up.
“How many of you don’t see eye-to-eye politically with your families?”
Hundreds of hands went up.
“How many of you, when asked how you’re doing, respond “Baruch Hashem”?
Every single hand in the audience went up.
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