The Fear from Judaism in Israeli Culture

Abstract

The article deals with the deep sense of anxiety expressed by many secular Israelis that Judaism is liable to efface their identity. This anxiety is an inherent element of Israeli secularism – entailing manifold constructs of Judaism and secularism, an awareness of their strengths and weaknesses and peculiarities. To better understand this, I shall explore writings by various Israeli intellectuals (dystopias, essays and critical commentaries) and their efforts to convey the phenomenology of their experience as such. One aspect of the anxiety which I shall examine is the psychological representation of Judaism as a volcanic force deep within the collective unconscious which has threatened the seemingly stable secular identity of Israeli Jews. Such imagery appeared in Gershom Scholem’s famous letter to Franz Rosenzweig about the new Hebrew and continued to evolve in various ways over the century. This is discussed in Section II of the article. The final section deals with the role of psychological symbolism, the impetus behind its use, and what I see as a remedy for the persistent anxiety described here.