The Van Leer Institute, which for the past few years has been analyzing polls on secular-religious polarization in Israel, says that the discourse about a "culture war" is shallow and does not reflect the complex reality.
"More people tend to define themselves using the 'extreme' categories [of] religious or secular, and fewer categories in the middle," Dr. Yochi Fischer tells Israel Hayom.
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Fischer, a senior researcher at the Van Leer Institute, says that in 2002, 28.4% of Israelis defined themselves as "traditional but not religious," whereas in 2015 23.8% of respondents picked that category to describe their level of religious observance. Fischer attributes this shift to a cultural change that took place within the group that formerly defined itself as "traditional."
"We claim that they're doing this became they want to assign themselves to one of the camps, kind of close ranks, and adjust themselves to discourse that is very polarizing, not to say belligerent"
Polls by the Central Bureau of Statistics, the IDI, the Pew Institute, and other research bodies conducted from 2009-2017 presents a picture of increasing polarization between the "religious" and "secular" groups. But the Van Leer Institute, whose work focuses on social tensions in Israeli society, draws a different conclusion from the data.
One of the data points Fischer uses to make her argument is taken from the CBS' social survey, in which 18% of Jewish respondents said that they were more religious than they had been in the past, whereas 16% said they were less religious than they had been. This would appear to indicate that the two groups were moving further to each extreme, but Fischer says it shows that most of the public is holding steady when it comes to their way of life.
"There is a very large discrepancy between the polarized discourse about religification and secularization and what is actually happening. The numbers contradict the reality, because society is much more complex and more in the center of the spectrum than it has ever been," Fischer says.
Q: But that contradicts some of the polls published in the same time period, some of which you [the Van Leer Intitute] also analyzed.
"Much of the polls are conducted in the context of the present day, when discourse is highly factionalized and people are being asked to place themselves on one side or another and assign themselves a clear identity. But the differences between the two sides aren't dramatic. For example, given the discourse, we would expect to see a large jump in the number of religious people, because of the supposed religification. In fact, other than the increase in the haredi population, which is nothing more than the result of demography [the sector's high birth rate], the past few years haven't seen any major rise, not on the religious side or on the secular side, and certainly not because of cultural and religious changes."
Q: On what do you base your assumption that the talk about religification does not reflect the reality?
"If you look at various sectors of Israeli society, you'll see that there are processes that express secularization alongside religification, and they don't necessarily contradict one another," Fischer says.
This week, Fischer is slated to take part in a panel that is part of a series of events the institute is holding in various bars throughout Tel Aviv to discuss the issues of "Israeli secularism." The panel is titled, "Thank God, Israeli is becoming secular." Fischer has a number of explanations and examples to back up the name: "There are more marriages and possibilities for burial outside the rabbinate. There is private kashruth certification and public transportation on Shabbat. Along with that, there are also more blatant expressions of religious observance, such as gender-separated events, which did not used to exist."
Q: How do those not contradict one another?
"Take the issue of gender-segregated public events. 30 years ago, the haredi public never went to public concerts – today, they take part in events that are considered part of secular culture, but they do so while trying to preserve their lifestyle in a manner that might be even more stringently religious than in the past. They are undergoing a process of secularization, but not in the sense of abandoning their religious lifestyle or the religious commandments.
"Another example is segregation in academia. We can see that segregation as increased religiousness or religification, but when we look at the big picture, this is a conservative population that is opening itself up and going to institutions that are essentially secular, like universities, and using a secular product, like education.
"Some people see that as religification, and some see it as secularization. The haredi public has internalized secular, liberal values like the right to self-fulfillment and to integrate into society. In the name of those values, they're asking for gender segregation. They are undergoing a process of secularization and within the secular sphere they want to do ti in a way that is comfortable for them."
Q: So why is there so much fear of religious coercion and religification?
"Here we have the difficulty and the paradox of the secular word. It isn't confused because it is being made more religious, but because its liberal boundaries are being tested. Generally speaking, secularism has been very successful and now it has to accept a lot more religiousness by individuals who are coming under its umbrella," Fischer says.
Fischer says that today, there is more flexibility and a bigger scale when it comes to religious observance.
"There is a spectrum of religious people and a spectrum of traditional people and a spectrum of 'believers.' There are important, bilateral processes taking place in Israeli society, both toward religion and toward secularism, and not necessarily toward extremism on either side. The wars over religification and secularization are shallow, and that discourse is part of the problem."
