ABSTRACT
This book aims at filling a significant void which exists in both public and academic discourses regarding Jewish identity – or, rather, Jewish identities – in Israel. This void stems from the overbearing dominance of what I shall term “the religious vs. secular discourse”, which presents a bipolar, binary model of two mutually exclusive opposites. These opposites are supposed to define the horizon of possibilities available for the construction and maintenance of Jewish identity. As far as this discourse is concerned Jewish-Israelis can (and should) be “either religious or secular”. These are, allegedly, the only real, substance-filled, coherent, and consistent alternatives available for the definition of Jewish identity in the modern age. As such they define the borders and, thus, the form of the field of Jewish identity in Israel. As I will argue below, this discourse, which owes much to the thesis of modernization and secularization, is based upon erroneous assumptions and misinterpretations. One could go so far as to say that this model not only fails to help better understand Jewish identity in Israel, but also distorts our view of the social, cultural, and political reality.
