What attitudes do religious Jews in Israel hold towards non-Jews?
How do Israeli religious Jews think about non-Jews? Although the human brain has a built-in preference for generalizations, any answer to this question will first need to carefully define “attitudes”, "religious Jews", and "non-Jews" as each of these terms is no more than a place-holder. After defining what I mean by each term, I will present some of the available data about attitudes of Israeli religious Jews towards non-Jews, and then argue that one of the reasons that exclusionist attitudes have taken hold of Israeli religious groups, is the elective ignorance they have been promoting about religious non-Jews, for far too long.
The concepts invoked are not conducive to a single answer
What do we mean by “attitudes”?
We should first distinguish between attitudes expressed in sacred texts, those expressed by religious leaders, and attitudes of lay-people. As an empirical researcher, I will limit myself in this essay to the latter, while noting that the corpus of Jewish sacred texts and their ensuing interpretations by religious leaders contain more than enough variance to ground the most exclusionist and the most inclusivist of attitudes. Our question is therefore, what do lay-people choose to read in these sacred texts and why.
When assessing attitudes of individuals, an important distinction lies between what people say they believe, what they think they believe, what they really believe and how they put these attitudes into action through behavior. In this essay refer only to what people say they believe, but in religious Israeli circles, this is usually enough. There is less of a need for the sophisticated Implicit Attitude Tests commonly used in the U.S. when assessing religious prejudice, because religious exclusionist attitudes in Israel are often blatant and unapologetic. The following anecdote will explain how patent religious prejudice can be – so much so that for some, there is not even a word to describe it. I was once teaching a small group of Haredi (ultra-orthodox) women at a religious college, when some of them shared their opinion that non-Jews should not share the same hospitals as Jews, nor teach Jews in any capacity. As my professional neutrality wore thin, I asked: "Are you aware that what you are expressing are racist attitudes?" - "What does ‘racist’ mean?" one of them asked quite innocently, the word being unfamiliar to her. I did my best to explain racism, and after mulling it over, the women said: "Well, if that's racism, then I'm proud to be one!"
These attitudes may not be comfortable to the Liberal-Western ear, but the question cannot be analyzed unless we hear them. At the same time, it is important to remember that Israel is a democratic nation with an independent judiciary system, which holds in check much of the prejudice expressed by individuals and does not allow it to turn into state-sanctioned discrimination. Thus, the attitudes we'll be looking at are quite a bit more extreme than their behavioral expressions. The patterns of religious violence in Israel are quite different from their underlying attitudes. For example, Haredim who consistently express some of the most extreme exclusionist attitudes, exhibit, on the whole, low levels of religious violence.
What do we mean by “religious Jews”?
Moving on, the term "Religious Jews" is a place-holder too.
Many religious Jews in Israel would never consider holding the kinds of attitudes I have just described. Some 20% of the Jewish Israeli population defines themselves as religious, but they belong to multiple and diverse subgroups including the Haredi, the National-Haredi, the religious Zionist and the liberal religious Jews. Each of these groups can be further subdivided. Attitudes in different religious streams towards non-Jews can differ significantly.
For example, in a study I once conducted on value ranking among Jewish Israelis, the liberal religious streams (Conservative and Reform) actually expressed higher levels of tolerance and universalism than secular, traditional and Orthodox. As Cannetti and colleagues (2009) recently found in Israel when examining the attitudes of Jewish religious settlers, when controlling for everything else, religiosity per se is not the factor which predicts exclusionism. Certain types of traits – such as authoritarianism, certain social contexts - such high conflict settings, and certain types of religiosity - such as fundamentalist – are better predictors of prejudice than the general term “religious”. It may be that these more nuanced religious attitudes have been driving the well-known religious-prejudice link, but being religious per se does not lead to being prejudiced. The data I will therefore present, may not apply to all religious groups, or may apply more to some than to others.
Which “non-Jews” are we referring to?
Israel's multicultural society harbors over 100 religions and denominations, other than Judaism. There is no reason to believe that attitudes towards all of these non-Jewish groups are the same. There are many ways of parsing out these attitudes towards different religious group, and one of them is the level of each religion's perceived threat. This is considered to be the single best group-level predictor of exclusionism and intolerance.
"Perceived threat" is a cognitive evaluation of how dangerous an outgroup may be to the goals of the in-group and it can be either realistic or symbolic. A realistic threat in the context of religion would be the belief that people of another religion threaten the life, land or resources of Jews in Israel. A symbolic threat would be the belief that a particular religion poses a threat to Jewish values or identity. While Muslims are viewed as high in realistic threat, Messianic Jews and other missionary groups are considered high in symbolic threat because they are perceived as trying to change Jewish identity “from the inside”. Other groups, such as the Druze who are both loyal to the state of Israel and are entirely non-inclusivist (forbidding conversion to or from the Druze religion), have a much lower level of perceived threat.
To sum up this first point, there is no single attitude of Judaism, of Jews or even of Israeli religious Orthodox Jews towards non-Jews, and all answers to this question must be qualified accordingly.
2. Attitudes to non-Jews in Israel are like a multi-layered cake
The next obstacle that we encounter in trying to determine religious attitudes towards non-Jews stems from the fact that the largest religious minority in Israel by far is the Sunni Muslim who are also, for the most part, Palestinian Arab. It is virtually impossible to separate attitudes towards Arabs as an ethnic group involved in an ethnic conflict with Israeli Jews, from attitudes towards Arabs as Muslims. It is impossible because for many, the two are perceived as deeply intertwined. Peter Berger (2008) tells a joke of the conflict in Northern Ireland which makes this point: An armed man jumps out of the entrance to a house, holds a gun to the head of a passerby and asks: "Catholic or Protestant?", "Well, actually" says the man, "I'm an atheist". "Fine", replies the gunman, "but what kind of atheist are you, Catholic or Protestant?"
So my second point is that the way to consider the attitudes of religious Jews towards non-Jews is sort of like a layered cake: There is an underlying level of collective Jewish anxiety which Yerushalmi (2012) aptly called "Zakhor" – the embedded memory of persecution. The fact that the state of Israel was founded in the wake of the Holocaust, merely highlights this existential anxiety.
Next comes the level of perceived socio-political threat which Bar-Tal (2000) calls the "intractable conflict" frame of mind. Israel has experienced more wars and conflicts in its sixty-eight years than larger states undergo in several centuries, leading to a second layer of high stranger-anxiety.
On top of that (or possibly at its base) come the religious injunctions towards non-Jews which are expressed in religious texts and practices. Religious Jews follow a set of rules which are meant to ensure that they do not intermarry. One example is the commandment to avoiding drinking wine which was handled by a non-Jew in its process of its production. Additionally, religious Jews fulfil the commandment to remember “Amalek”, the quintessential enemy of the Jews, on numerous religious holidays, prayers and ceremonies. This attitude is also part of popular religious culture. For example, one of the recent musical hits in the religious world [1] set a catchy tune to the classic Haggadah lyrics: "Not only one arose and tried to destroy us, rather in every generation they try to destroy us, and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hands".
The point is this: when you take a bite of this cake, you're biting into all of these layers at once. Part of the attitudes we record in studies may stem from a collective fear of persecution, part – from the socio-political conflict in the area, and part – from religious motives, but the three are largely inseparable.
3. The correlation between religious and exclusionist in Israel is clear; the causes - less so.
Now that I've made these qualifying statements, let's look at some data. Survey results of numerous large representative samples of Israelis tell a clear story of correlations, although the causality behind it is murkier. Here are examples from some of the recent studies:
The Israel Democracy Index for 2014, with a large, nationally representative sample, shows that the more religiously conservative a person, the less they are willing to grant equal rights to non-Jews. Similarly, when people were asked whom they would not like for neighbors the same pattern emerged: the more religious the group, the more rejecting of non-Jews they are.
When we look at another survey from 2014, The Beit Hillel survey of religious Jews, breaking down only the religious Zionist groups, we see that the national Haredi group holds similar attitudes to the Haredi in this matter. We also see that the modern Orthodox sector is far less exclusionist that all the other religious sectors.
We have multiple sources of data showing that the more religious a person, the less he or she actually associates with people of other religions, and the more negative stereotypes that person holds against people of that group. This may lead us to a hypothesis that unfamiliarity with the other may have something to do with religious prejudice.
In a survey by the Tel Aviv University school of education, 536 teenagers were asked if they would be willing to have a friend of the same age and gender who is Arab. Only 23% of the secular and traditional Jews but a full 81% of Haredi and Religious Zionist teenagers refused. Similarly, 82% of religious teenagers, versus 39% of secular and traditional ones believed that Arabs in Israel should not be granted equal rights.
Finally, a survey of 500 Jews conducted in 2008 by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, found much higher levels of ignorance and of prejudice towards Christians in Israel by religious Jews than by traditional or secular ones. For example, 85% of religious participants said that they did not know a single Christian person either in Israel or abroad, compared to 34% of non -religious Jews. 67% did not believe that Jerusalem is a central city for Christians, versus 31% of non-religious Jews, and 73% believed that Israeli students should not be taught about Christianity in school, compared to 32% of non-religious Jews.
What may be the cause of these exclusionist attitudes? As the data seems to indicate, part of the story lies in a choice to embrace ignorance. By refusing to befriend, learn about or even meet non-Jews, Religious Jews are cultivating a deep ignorance about religious others, and this ignorance comes at a price.
4. The price of elective ignorance
There are many kinds of ignorance. I am referring to two: not knowing people and not knowing ideas. The latter can be called elective ignorance: a choice not to know anything about other people's worldviews. When it becomes extreme, people don't even know what it is they don't know.
Let me share another anecdote from my experience of teaching Haredi students, to illustrate what elective religious ignorance looks like: I once brought to class some children's books to analyze for its developmental psychology content. We looked through some books, but as I showed one cover, I heard a collective gasp in the classroom. I looked at the book I was holding up - "Olivia" - and realized that the protagonist was a pig, a symbol of all that is “treif” (non-Kosher) in Judaism. Embarrassed, I apologized and set the book aside. But after class I thought that I should probably apologize in person to a small group of ultra-conservative Haredi students who were part of this class. I came up to them (they tended to hang out on their own) and said: "I want to deeply apologize for showing you that book in class today". But to my surprise, one of them replied: "Oh yes, what was that all about? We had no idea why some students were so shocked". I said: "Well, you know, Olivia is a… pig". The women looked at me in astonishment and finally one of them said: "So that's what a pig looks like!" They had never even seen a picture of a pig in their lives.
Peter Berger (2008) noted that modernity by nature is not a force of secularization. It has that effect at times but what it really does is foster diversity. Modernity creates a climate of many beliefs, attitudes, and worldviews, within a shared geographical or cyber space. What religions do with this diversity, with this plethora of others, depends. American religions for example, have turned this situation into a free-market of religions, with incredible numbers of people currently shopping among religions, switching and trying out new religious identities. In this climate, knowledge of the other is a commodity worth having. And one of its results is a weakening of religious prejudice, as Putnam and Campbell (2010) have demonstrated in great detail. Jews in the U.S., by the way, are consistently among the most religiously tolerant groups, and in one study at least (Ruttenberg, Zea & Seligman, 1996), Orthodox Jews actually top that list. However, in many other places in the world, Israel being one of them, the need to face so many "others" juxtaposed with the search for truth and meaning in a confusing postmodern world and in the context of political conflict, has led to a reaction of closing inwards and choosing not to know. In Israel today, there is a virtual lack of studies about other religious traditions in all educational frameworks, least of all in the religious sector. When others are unknown they are threatening, but when they become unknowable, our imagination can turn them into a nightmare of the ultimate kind.
Herein lies the importance of religious groups who strive for coexistence in Israel. we are all too familiar with acts of religious violence and extremism in Israel, but we must also take note of organizations which foster dialogue, interfaith and which battle racism in Israel. Some of these are led or run by religious Jews, including Rabbis for Human Rights, Tag Meir, the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, and the Kiryat Ono Academic College Law program, which runs the only program in the world where religious leaders from Druze, Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities study law together in the same classroom. This effort at learning with and about each other is done not despite religious sentiment but in its name. Although these are isolated efforts, they convey an important message: It is possible to know the other and retain a committed religious identity; it is possible to be deeply religious, proud of one’s tradition and actively involved in a particular religious community, while simultaneously rejecting all forms of religious exclusionism, prejudice and discrimination. Yes, religion and prejudice are correlated in Israel, but this correlation does not imply a deterministic causality. In sum, to argue that religion per se facilitates exclusionism is to simplify a complex story. It is more the choice of how one holds on to one's religion that dictates how the link between religiosity and exclusionism will play out.
References
Bar‐Tal, D. (2000). From intractable conflict through conflict resolution to reconciliation: Psychological analysis. Political Psychology, 21(2), 351-365.
Berger, P. (Feb. 2008). Secularization falsified, First Things.
Canetti, D., Halperin, E., Hobfoll, S. E., Shapira, O., & Hirsch-Hoefler, S. (2009). Authoritarianism, perceived threat and exclusionism on the eve of the Disengagement: Evidence from Gaza. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 33(6), 463-474
Hermann, T., Heller, E., Cohen, H. Be’ery, G. & Lebel, Y. (2014). The Israeli Democracy Index. Jerusalem: The Israel Democracy Institute.
Putnam, R. D., & Campbell, D. E. (2010). American grace: How religion divides and unites us. Simon and Schuster
Ruttenberg, J., Zea, M. C., & Seligman, C. K. (1996). Collective identity and intergroup prejudice among Jewish and Arab students in the United States. Journal of Social Psychology, 136(2): 209-220.
Yerushalmi, Y. H. (2012). Zakhor: Jewish history and Jewish memory. University of Washington Press
[1] Yaakov Shwekey and Yonatan Razel (2009) "Vehi She'amda".