T Belman. If all these people voted for Bayit Yehudi, it would get about 25 seats and Bennett would be the next PM.
One-third of these say they aren’t religious, new study finds; growth of pro-settler camp explains growth of Naftali Bennett’s Habayit Hayehudi.
By Yair Ettinger, HAARETZ | Dec. 27, 2014 | 9:45 PM
Jewish men near the Dome of the Rock, on the compound known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, in Jerusalem’s Old City, November 2, 2014. Photo by Olivier Fitoussi
Twenty-two percent of Jews in Israel consider themselves part of the religious Zionist camp, although one-third of them do not identify as religious at all.
This surprising statistic, one of many in a new study about to be published by the Israel Democracy Institute, can explain the continued rise in the status of the national-religious sector in recent years – particularly in the era of Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, chairman of Habayit Hayehudi, which the polls predict will garner between 15 and 18 Knesset seats in the upcoming election.
The study, led by Prof. Tamar Hermann, was based on interviews on a variety of issues with almost 1,000 people who defined themselves as national-religious (out of 4,600 subjects in the entire study, representative of the Israeli population in general).
The study’s results cast doubt on the accepted idea that most of the national-religious community are of the “knitted skullcap” genre.
Only 49 percent of subjects identifying themselves as national-religious belong to the core group of religous Zionists, national-ultra-Orthodox and liberal Orthodox. The others defined themselves as secular (3 percent), traditional-religious (24 percent), traditional-secular (9 percent) and ultra-Orthodox (11 percent).
These figures are much different and more detailed than those of the Central Bureau of Statistics. According to the latter, 9.9 percent of Israeli Jews define themselves as religious, while 13.6 percent define themselves as traditional religious, and 43 percent as secular.
The dramatic figure of 22 percent defining themselves as national-religious was obtained after reframing a question on this issue. In April 2013, when researchers asked their subjects “Do you feel part of the Zionist-religious public?” they said they were surprised to discover that 28.7 percent of the Jews responded “to a great extent” or “to a very great extent.” They therefore decided to ask the question again in another way: “To what extent would you say you belong to the national-religious public in terms both of your lifestyle and your views?” to which 22 percent responded that they felt they belonged to a great or a very great extent to this group.
The researchers said that the fact that so many of the respondents placed themselves in religious categories that normally do not identify with the national-religious sector, from ultra-Orthodox to secular, “raised the possibility that in the discourse and thought of the Israeli Jewish population today, the national-religious camp is a social-political category affinity that is not based purely on religiosity,” the study states.
This finding conforms to the world view of Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who seeks to speak two languages simultaneously, both sectorial and beyond. Bennett, it will be recalled, brought the secular Ayelet Shaked to Habayit Hayehudi, and recently got a decision passed in the party institutions allowing him to increase the party’s secular representation.
Another surprise figure was the number of respondents among those defining themselves as religious who identified as national-ultra-Orthodox (“hardal” in Hebrew parlance) – only 6 percent, surprising because for quite some time this group has dominated the national-religious camp. The faction that represents this sector, Tekumah, negotiated hard with Habayit Hayehudi (with which it ran on a joint ticket in the last election), finally securing four “safe” seats on a joint roster in the upcoming election.
Prof. Asher Cohen of Bar-Ilan University, who is considered an expert in the sociology of the religious Zionist sector, did not take part in this study. However, his research also indicates that this group is negligible in terms of numbers, a finding for which he has been criticized by the national-ultra-Orthodox camp.
Cohen, who this week announced his candidacy for a seat on the Habayit Hayehudi roster in its upcoming primary, says: “Bennett intuitively realized some years ago the precise sociology of this group. Suddenly it turns out that there are masses of people who do not conform to the national-religious definition but do identify [as such]. This is a response to the rabbis who say: ‘If there are secular representatives in Habayit Hayehudi it is not a religious party … Habayit Hayehudi is an open camp with a religious Zionist foundation around which are very supportive circles. Some of those joining do not like elitism and extremism.”
In the last election most national-religious Jews voted either for Habayit Hayehudi or Likud-Beiteinu, with 8.7 percent of their votes going to Shas. Regarding the Ashkenazi nature of the religious Zionist camp, according to the study, “the national-religious camp paid a heavy political and social price for pushing Mizrahim [Jews of Middle Eastern descent] away from the focuses of power.”
@ bernard ross:
I agree with her. The wall was never a part of the actual Temple Mt. complex but an outer retaining wall. It has no intrinsic holiness and became a central part of Jewish tradition due to it’s proximity to the actual Temple Mt complex and that the Jews were not aloud by the Ottomans or the British from ascending the mt.
For me the Wall symbolizes Jewish defeat, Jewish weakness and The Galut mentality. What kind of Jews abandon their holiest site in favor of one with none, especially when we retain on paper sovereignty over the Mount????
Whoever controls the Temple Mt. control all of the Land of Israel. The Arabs understand that dictum the Jews don’t.
@ ebyjeeby:
EJ, I wear a wide-brim Australian-style hat with a leather strap for hanging it behind my shoulders when not in use. I make neither fashion-related nor religious preference related with my hat. It’s only function is to cover my head. And I don’t like those teeny-weeny size kipot because they are hard to keep on my head, and I refuse to use a feminine-type hairpin to keep it in place, because it would make me look like and feel like some sort of gay marriage faggot. In any case, when I’m doing Jewish services, that wide-brim is what I wear.
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Now for the rest of this topic of the growth of Jewish nationalism, both religious and not so religious. I understand that fully, because it describes me fully. My loyalty is to the Jewish nation, not day by day and hour by hour observances of hundreds of mitzvot. When my wife and I were awarded with separate graduate study fellowships than enabled us to live outside Netanya and in Jerusalem for some 18 months, and to get in a year of studies in our respective fields. Regular observance of religious Judaism was a lot easier in Jerusalem than it is in rural Dane County, Wisconsin. Everything shut down for shabat. Both of us did just that, and we didn’t whine about it like a pair of pampered tourists.
Will this political thrust of Jewish nationalism protect Israel from a leftist-defeatist government in the March 2015 Knesset election? Let’s just say it surely won’t hurt. But will it be enough to put somebody such as Bennett up for prime minister? I just don’t think so. Netanyahu has made a lot of enemies on the right, but people tend to vote for the better-known candidates. Anyway, all things considered, Likud, Yisrael Beitainu, the Jewish religious parties, and probably Kulanu and maybe a few from Liberman’s party should be enough to sustain a coalition. And remember, not even any leftist government back in the years Mapam and Mapai were running the show, did a Jewish coalition even consider giving the Arab parties blackmail powers over their coalitions. I don’t think that factor will change in preparations for the coming Knesset election, so Labor and the centrists are not likely to have enough Knesset seats to erect a coalition. On the other hand, I want the Jewish nationalists in the Knesset to have enough votes to blackmail Netanyahu when push comes to shove about settlements in Shomron and Yehuda, two-state solutions, and any other Obama-Kerry bullshit.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
What is the ‘“knitted skullcap” genre’? I see all kinds of yarmulkas at shul and never knew there was a huge difference between them.