Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter Four
In Israel are blended East and West, ancient and modern, religious and secular, traditional
and highly innovative. And although Israel's society is extraordinarily diverse, its sense of
community is also extraordinarily strong.
The Jewish population sets the predominant tone in the country. Jews have arrived with
distinct customs, languages, and religious practices fl avored by the places they lived for cen-
turies. Yet they have had a huge amount in common, and in Israel the emphasis has been on
building a united community in which such differences, though preserved to varying degrees,
are distinctly secondary.
While schisms within the Jewish population are signifi cant, it would be a mistake to char-
acterize Israeli society by religious and ethnic differences. As in other countries, habitat (ag-
ricultural village, small town, big city); region of residence; age; class; profession, and so on,
defi ne other differences. Many factors mitigate each of these distinctions. For example, there
are religious and secular people, but there are many somewhere in between, just as there are
important subgroups among the religious: Ashkenazim and Sephardim; Haredim and Datim;
Mitnagdim
and
Hasidim
within the Haredim.
Similarly, there are historical, political, and cultural distinctions between Mizrahim (Jews
of Middle Eastern origin) and Ashkenazim (Jews of European origin). Distinctions are also
refl ected in the variations of religious practice between Sephardic (largely Mizrahi) and Ashke-
nazic Jewish religious traditions. Yet a growing number of Israelis are descendants of multiple
groups owing to the increasing frequency of intermarriages.
Political loyalties, to the left or the right — in a specifi c Israeli meaning of these terms —have
been important indicators of differences in worldview. At one time, support for a specifi c po-
litical party would indicate which soccer team someone cheered, which publications someone
read, and which health fund someone joined. Much of this deeper cultural-ideological split
has fi lled in; the trend is toward a national consensus, pragmatism, and the political center.
All of these ideological, political, “ethnic,” and, to a lesser extent, religious-secular dis-
putes are not as salient now as in the past. While Israelis are well aware of some decline in
community-mindedness, along with a growth in individualism and materialism, reduced dif-
ferences have somewhat balanced out those trends. Israelis still have a strong sense of national
cohesiveness.
