Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Israel and Israeli groups send emissaries abroad to encourage immigration, teach Hebrew,
and do other things to strengthen the relationship with Israel. Diaspora Jews come to Israel
to study or visit in groups to gain understanding. A particularly interesting and successful
program is Operation Birthright, which brings to Israel young Jews who have never been there
before to develop stronger links to the country. Migration as such has become less important
than maintaining the continuity of the Diaspora communities and their links with Israel. A
complementary program has given Israeli youth more knowledge about the Diaspora by send-
ing them on organized tours of historic Jewish sites in Europe and Holocaust-era concentra-
tion camps.
RELIGION IN SOCIETY
What role should religion play in the Jewish state? Zionists had differing ideas. Zionism it-
self was overwhelmingly secular but never antireligious. There was respect for believers and
a readiness to accommodate their needs. Even groups on the left that were explicitly antireli-
gious neither sought to deny others the right to worship nor sought to impose their antireli-
gious views on the state.
Jewish national identity is so entwined with Judaism that the question of religion in the state
remains complex. For example, the holiday of Hanukkah celebrates the Jewish national victory
over a Greek-Syrian dynasty and the reestablishment of ancient Israel's independence, but
religious observance centers on divine intervention: a menorah (candelabrum) in the Temple
burned for eight days on one day's worth of oil.
Thereafter, the menorah became a central Jewish symbol and is indeed a symbol for the
State of Israel. So while Hanukkah was given religious signifi cance by the pious, it is viewed
more in terms of its historical national signifi cance in state schools and in the society in general.
The story of Purim, recalling the survival of the Jews in the face of a planned genocide in
ancient Iran, never mentions the existence or intervention of a divine being; yet this, too, is a
“religious” holiday celebrated by Orthodox and secular Jews alike.
Other holidays commemorate events of national signifi cance — the exodus from Egypt,
spring planting time, the harvest of the fi rst tree fruits each autumn, the main harvest — in
tandem with religious occurrences: the granting of the Torah and pilgrimages to the Temple.
The historical and cultural experience of Jews stands in sharp contrast to that of Western Eu-
ropean and North American societies, in which religion and nationality have often been at
odds and have led to organized anticlerical movements and separation of church and state.
For Jews, like most people in the Middle East, religious background is the main marker of
national-ethnic identity.
Given the central interrelationship between Jewish nationhood and Jewish religion, David
Ben-Gurion, one of Israel's founders, and leading rabbis worked out an agreement shortly af-
ter independence. According to this “status quo” arrangement, existing conditions governing
state-religious and religious-secular affairs stay the same; they do not change. The plan also
aimed to ensure that the religiously observant were not discriminated against in the new state.
The status quo structure defi nes both the authority of the religious sphere, headed by the
two chief rabbis — one Ashkenazic and one Sephardic — and the procedures of the state. The
