‘Religion’, ‘Secularity’, and ‘Tradition’ in Public Thought in Israel

Abstract

Studies of identity in Israel habitually divide the Jewish population into three categories: ‘religious’, ‘secular’, and ‘traditionist’. However, some of these studies, most notably the series of the Guttmann reports (the Guttman Institute: 1993, 2000, 2012) reveal inconsistent uses of these three categories among the interviewees themselves, therefore questioning the explanatory power of these concepts. To map these diverse uses more systematically, the article suggests discerning three levels: practices, beliefs, and group identification. Next, the article analyses intellectual and public interpretations of the Guttmann report, which portrayed a social map of the Israeli Jewish identities. The analysis points at traditionism as the culture of Israeli mainstream, which deals asymmetrically with religion and secularity: whereas the former is perceived as an institutional and communal phenomenon, the latter is perceived as a non-institutional ethical demand that basically lacks institutional organization.