Zionism and the Right to Culture

Can Israel Be Both Jewish and Democratic?

Therefore, given that cultural neutrality is not, in Halbertal’s view, necessary for democratic liberalism—he believes in the existence of a “right to culture”—there is no inherent contradiction in the notion of a Jewish liberal democracy.

Zionism: while it is Israel’s obligation to defend the right of its minorities to their own cultures, it is also its right—in fact, its duty—to defend the majority’s right to Judaism. From this perspective, Halbertal argues, there is no difference between Israel and other culturally non-neutral European democracies, such as “Denmark, Finland, Norway, Germany, the Czech Republic and more.”

Omri Boehm, BOSTON REVIEW

Israel’s public education is not secular, but Jewish. David King.

In October of last year, the Israeli Supreme Court finally rejected the adjective “Israeli” as an official civil designation in Israel. According to the judges, the contenders did not “sufficiently prove” the existence of an “Israeli nation”; hence, unless legislation will change, the civil designation of the Israeli majority remains “Jewish.” (Arab citizens are often designated “Arab,” or sometimes, “Minority.”) Putting aside for the moment the irony involved in the fact that an Israeli court would make such a decision, the ruling certainly expressed an overlapping consensus in Israeli society: the country is, and ought to remain, Jewish. But then, can a state be both Jewish and a liberal democracy?

One of the clearest articulations of current liberal-Zionist thinking is that of the Israeli philosopher Moshe Halbertal. In an influential Haaretz article, he dismisses the question as irrelevant: there is no “big question,” he writes, as to “whether a state can be both Jewish and a liberal-democracy.” A serious political intellectual debate should turn rather on the question of “what kind of a Jewish state we want to have [in Israel]” (my emphasis). This position draws, albeit implicitly, on an earlier and controversial piece, “Liberalism and the Right to Culture,” which Halbertal published together with Avishai Margalit in Social Research. Especially these days, as the question of Zionism’s compatibility with liberal-democratic values has made a comeback, it would be worthwhile to revisit what Halbertal has to say.

In order to examine whether there is a contradiction in the notion of a Jewish liberal democracy, Halbertal writes, one must first “find out what a Jewish state is”:

It is possible, of course, to ascribe the adjective “Jewish” a nationalistic or a religious-fundamentalist meaning, and then to argue that a [Jewish-democratic] combination is impossible, but this would be a circular argument, and not very fruitful.

The charge of circularity is correct, but somewhat misleading. The question at stake is rather whether any definition of the adjective “Jewish,” and any definition of who’s Jewish and who’s not, would allow for a Jewish state that’s also a liberal democracy. This question isn’t posed in the essay quite so clearly, but a general answer to it does emerge from the text: Judaism need not be understood as a fundamentalist religion or as nationalist ideology; it can also be interpreted as a pluralistic cultural identity. Therefore, given that cultural neutrality is not, in Halbertal’s view, necessary for democratic liberalism—he believes in the existence of a “right to culture”—there is no inherent contradiction in the notion of a Jewish liberal democracy.

In “Liberalism and the Right to Culture,” Halbertal and Margalit argue that “human beings have a right to culture—not just any culture, but their own” (my emphasis). On their analysis, because one’s personality is determined, among other things, by one’s particular culture, one has the right to preserve this culture and ensure that it will flourish. Moreover, given this right, it is the sovereign’s duty not only to protect culture in some cosmopolitan sense of that term, but also to take off the gloves of cultural neutrality that sometimes characterize liberal democracies and actively defend its citizens’ right to their particular cultures. According to Halbertal and Margalit, “the right to culture in a liberal state permits the state to be [culturally] neutral, if at all, only with respect to the dominant culture of the majority,” and only “on the assumption that the dominant culture can take care of itself.” In his Haaretz article, then, Halbertal applies this same logic to the question of Zionism: while it is Israel’s obligation to defend the right of its minorities to their own cultures, it is also its right—in fact, its duty—to defend the majority’s right to Judaism. From this perspective, Halbertal argues, there is no difference between Israel and other culturally non-neutral European democracies, such as “Denmark, Finland, Norway, Germany, the Czech Republic and more.”

Even if cultural neutrality is not necessary for democratic liberalism, ethnic neutrality certainly is.

But despite the fact that Judaism is no doubt a culture, belonging to it still requires what philosophers often regard as the opposite of culture: nature, or blood. Religious Jews commonly subscribe to this ethnic condition, as do secular Jews, including those to whom religious Judaism is completely passé. Therefore, the comparison between a Jewish and, say, a Finnish state is idle. Even if there is no contradiction in the notion of a Finnish or German democracy, there is one in the notion of a Jewish democracy; for even if cultural neutrality is not necessary for democratic liberalism, ethnic neutrality certainly is. Quite simply, it is possible to be a Finnish or a Norwegian Jew, just as it is possible to be a German Jew or a Palestinian Christian. But for logical rather than political reasons it is not possible to become a Christian or a Muslim Jew. (It is true that one could also convert to Judaism. But even if Israel had recognized the progressive conversion practices of Reform Judaism, religious conversion would hardly be an acceptable civil bypass of the ethnicity condition imposed by the Jewish State.)

Neither is it possible to be a Muslim or an Israeli Christian, and not merely because the Israeli Supreme Court has rejected Israeli as a civil identification. As long as Israel is essentially a Jewish state, being Jewish is essential to being Israeli. A non-Jew can be an Israeli citizen, of course, and carry a blue identification card and passport, but she or he would not for all that be Israeli. Therefore, there is no telling analogy between the political-cultural standing of (say) an Italian Jewish minority and a Muslim minority in Israel. Whereas Jews in Italy can be inherently included in the political identity of that state, Muslims in Israel, because of their ethnic belonging, are excluded from Israel’s political identity. Hence, if there is no contradiction in the notion of a Jewish liberal democracy, there is no contradiction in the notion of a liberal-democratic ethnocracy. It makes little sense to attempt to use a philosophical argument to square this political circle.

• • •

Can a state that is officially Jewish discourage ethnic separations in its political institutions? In “Secular Anarchism in the Knesset,” Dov Halbertal, former top official in Israel’s rabbinical authority and Moshe Halbertal’s brother, writes, “In a recent media confrontation I had with one of the Members of Knesset . . . she told me that if she loved a gentile man, she would see nothing wrong in marrying him. I was shocked by the nonchalance with which she made this statement, as if such an intermarriage would be the logical application of universal and humanist principles.” What the MK “essentially said,” Dov Halbertal writes, is that “the Knesset is not at all concerned about the possibility of the Jewish people’s eventual disappearance. We will all assimilate and the Jewish nation will simply vanish from the face of the earth.”

Unfortunately, Dov Halbertal’s concern about the Knesset is unfounded. The Israeli Parliament certainly does care about preventing the ethnic assimilation of the Jews, and ensures through legislation their official separation. As we have seen, thesame is sometimes true also of the Israeli Supreme Court. Now it goes without saying that Moshe Halbertal rejects Dov Halbertal’s politics, and of course he is not responsible for anything that his brother happens to write. (Among other things, Moshe Halbertal publicly supports the institution of civil marriage in Israel.) But we must ask whether Israel can, as a Jewish state, reject Dov Halbertal’s awkward interpretation of “universal and humanist principles.” The worry is that, in the Jewish state that Moshe Halbertal envisages, institutionalized ethnic separations would follow from what he’d like to view as the majority’s “right” to its “own culture.”

Moshe Halbertal offers two criteria for judging whether a nation state is “liberal-democratic” rather than “fascist-nationalist.” The first is whether the state’s character as a nation state “harms the political, economical or cultural rights” of minorities. The second is whether the state “will support and grant the right of self definition and determination of other national groups living inside it.”

However, while these criteria are no doubt necessary and important, these shouldn’t be presented as if they were sufficient for democratic liberalism. Several problems arise here, perhaps most significant of which is overlooking the rights of the majority. One can certainly imagine a state of affairs in which the state’s non-neutral institutions harm the majority no less (and possibly more) than they harm the minority. Precisely because one’s personality is determined, as Halbertal and Margalit argue, by one’s culture, state neutrality is important for protecting one’s ability to relate critically and autonomously to culture and state. At its best, state neutrality is able to protect individuals from the culture into which they happen to be born; indeed a liberal state must at least provide a genuine possibility to leave one’s culture. A Jewish state would not be able to do that: as we have seen, giving up one’s Judaism, in a Jewish state, is giving up one’s equality as a citizen.

A state is deemed nationalist, then, not only by the way in which it treats the cultures of its minorities, but also and perhaps especially by the way it treats the culture of its own majority. Especially where the majority’s cultural identity is determined first and foremost by blood, insisting on the state’s right—in fact, duty—to protect the majority’s right to its own culture is in sharp contradiction with liberal politics.

CONTINUE