For years, the story of religious Zionism has included an inherent paradox. The more successful it is in Israeli society as a whole, in integrating into key positions in the state and implementing its ideology for the sake of everyone in Israel, the more its political power shrinks. The more it teaches its children to avoid sectoralization and inculcates them the idea of shared responsibility for "everyone" – the more it hacks away at its political power.
It is impossible to spend years "taking over" command positions in the IDF, "raising" leaders of the Shin Bet security agency, a deputy IDF chief of staff, generals, a police commissioner, presidents of universities and leading researchers, and showing off the knitted kippot that have become part of the landscape of our elite while continuing to operate in politics as a separate religious entity. It doesn't line up – these two paths, of integration and isolation, contradict one another.
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We cannot present the public with an isolationist vision while also telling them "the sky's the limit" in every other field. We cannot remain a separate sector in the world of politics while integrating in every other aspect of Israeli life.
For years, the national religious public has been the most scattered when it comes to voting. Many parties, and not all religious, enjoy votes from religious Zionists, whose electoral strength could be worth as many as 15 seats – some say 20. But the direct national religious political representation, which comes in the form of sectoral or semi-sectoral parties, comes in far below that number.
The 19th Knesset, for example, included 20 national religious (as opposed to haredi) MKs: 11 from Habayit Hayehudi; six from Likud Beytenu; two from Yesh Atid; and one from Hatnuah. The current Knesset includes, aside from seven MKs from Yamina, who have now split into two parties, five national religious MKs in the Likud (Yuli Edelstein, Zeev Elkin, Tzipi Hotovely, Shlomo Karhi, and Kei Shitrit); three from Blue and White (Yehiel Tropper, Orit Farkash-Hacohen, and Elazar Stern); and one from Labor (Revital Swid).
For years now, most religious Zionist voters have been "rebelling" against being put into boxes. Their political representatives, however, are asking them to stay in a certain political box, but it's not working anymore. The passing success of Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked as leaders of Habayit Hayehudi, who scored 12 seats for the party, stemmed from the fact that they too bucked the demand to stay sectoral and presented a version of Habayit Hayehudi updated for 2013 – one that represented both religious and secular voters and had aspirations that went beyond the needs of one particular sector. Shaked, when she was head of the Justice Ministry, and Bennett, as defense minister, are practicing exactly what they've been preaching for years, which happens to be to the liking of most of national religious Israelis.
Many of the kippa-wearing youth, unlike the haredim, see themselves first of all as Jewish Israelis, and only then as "religious." Their religious observance might be out in the open and deeply felt, but they aren't willing to tie it to a party. Many religious Zionist voters believe that they now have a chance to be part of something bigger and less sectoral. They are willing to accept differences, or as Rabbi Benny Lau put it, "Find themselves on the spectrum between one extreme and the other."
In what remains of the religious Zionist political sector, another process is taking place, one that undermines its political representation: willingness to listen and accept, to cooperate with people who might not be exactly like you, is waning. Those who aren't willing to pray with anyone who might be a bit different and those who aren't willing to send their children to schools that don't teach their exact preferred curriculum are also finding it difficult to serve in a party with anyone who isn't a carbon copy. Religious Zionism, which is so diverse, is fulfilling its destiny to take part in and even lead Israeli life. That is what they were taught to do. And they are paying a price for that, politically.
