The 2 Israels: Court Crisis is the frontline for dueling visions of a nation’s future
Pasit Siach, a high school teacher, says she dreams of an Israel where everyone — ultra-Orthodox Jews, atheists, and everyone in between — feels empowered to live a lifestyle of their choosing.
Pinchas Badush, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, has a different view, in which public life comes to a standstill on the Jewish Sabbath, civil marriages are not recognized by the state, and ultra-conservative rabbis enforce a strict interpretation of kosher food regulations.
Those conflicting visions of what Israel is and should be are part of a decisive battle that has divided the country for years and has intensified since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office in late December at the helm of the most right-wing and religiously conservative government in the Israeli history.
While those tensions have long been playing out across Israel, they are particularly pronounced in the Valley of Springs, a scenic plain in northeastern Israel surrounded by rivers, streams and Roman ruins, where Mrs. Siach and Mr. Badush live.
Here, in the lush farmland wedged between the Jordan River and the mountains that mark the border of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, supporters of the government and its opponents live in uneasy proximity, and their disagreements have occasionally turned physical. confrontations.
One side is mainly drawn from the approximately 20,000 residents of Beit Shean, a harsh city populated mainly by Mizrahim, or Jews of Middle Eastern descent, such as Mr Badush, who largely support the government. The other side is mainly made up of the 10,000 or so inhabitants of the affluent villages, or kibbutzim, that surround the city – most of them Ashkenazim, or Jews of European descent, such as Mrs. Siach.
For years, kibbutzim residents have controlled access to the area’s most desirable land and scenic riverbanks, a persistent source of tension between the two groups. And the mizrahim of Beit Shean have often worked as laborers on farms and factories owned by the kibbutzniks, exacerbating a sense of class division.
That all came to a head recently when groups from both communities faced off against each other over a controversial plan devised by the government that would allow it to exert greater control over the Supreme Court – a body that both sides say is critically important. is to determine Israel’s future.
Beit Shean is a sleepy low-rise community where most restaurants close on the Jewish Sabbath. Many of the Mizrahim there see the Supreme Court as an unelected elite – dominated by Ashkenazi judges – that unfairly undermines the public’s elected representatives. Others see it as an obstacle to the primacy of Orthodox Jewish practice in public life. Some see it as both.
Opposition to the plan has come largely from kibbutzim, gated communities that were founded as collective farms but now often look more like leafy suburbs. The kibbutzniks often view the court as a guarantor of the secularism and religious pluralism that they believe Israel was aiming for. declaration of independence in 1948, and as a bulwark against government outreach.
That division has led to open confrontations on the roads around Beit Shean in recent weeks. In March, dozens of government supporters, some of them from Beit Shean, took over a major intersection near the city and blocked drivers they suspected were anti-government kibbutzniks, but allowed residents of Beit Shean and government supporters to pass.
Yair Ben Hamo, a Mizrahi resident of Beit Shean who helped lead the roadblock, said he was motivated by issues “much more complex than reform alone”.
“It’s about who gets to run the country,” says Mr Ben Hamo, 37. Although the social gap between the two ethnic groups started narrowing decades ago, Mizrahim like Mr Ben Hamo still harbor a sense of resentment towards the Ashkenazim, who dominated the country in the early years of the state and often still live, like the kibbutzniks near Beit Shean, on the best land in the country.
“They have always made us feel like second-class citizens,” Mr Ben Hamo said.
Tensions in the area also have a religious dimension, fueled by a long-running national dispute over what kind of Jewish state Israel should be.
Because of Israel’s electoral system, which generally forces larger parties to form alliances with smaller ones, ultra-Orthodox Jewish politicians have long played the kingmaker in Israeli coalition governments. That has increased ultra-Orthodox influence on governance — influence that the Supreme Court has sometimes countered.
The court has so far unsuccessfully tried to block a decades-old mechanism that allows ultra-Orthodox Jews to study the Torah instead of doing military service like most other Israeli Jews.
Mr Badush, the ultra-Orthodox rabbi from Beit Shean, said he feared that if the judicial review failed, the Supreme Court would finally succeed in overturning that exemption, forcing his three teenage sons to fight in instead of studying.
“The State of Israel must recognize the value of Torah study,” said Badush, 46, who is also a city council member. “Our rights to this land are based on Judaism, on the Bible, on Jewish tradition.”
“Otherwise,” he added, “what are we doing here?”
Without judicial oversight, Mr Badush also hopes the government will have more freedom to put ultra-Orthodox rabbis in charge of the process through which people can convert to Judaism, inspecting kosher restaurants and approving Jewish marriages.
“If not,” said Mr. Badush, “there won’t be a Jewish state in another 20 years.”
But Mrs. Siach, the teacher, fears that if the government undermines the judiciary, there will be no checks on government power and no protection against religious coercion.
One of the parties representing Mr Badush, Shas, briefly this year sought to criminalize non-Orthodox prayer and immodest dress at the Western Wall, the holiest site in Jerusalem, before withdrawing the proposal after strong criticism, including from government colleagues.
Ms. Siach’s 12-year-old son plans to celebrate his bar mitzvah at the Western Wall in the fall. Without the court, will the government still allow men and women to congregate on a section of the wall where mixed-gender prayers have long caused tension.
Ms. Siach, 43, also fears for gay rights given the animosity some members of Netanyahu’s government have expressed towards the LGBTQ community. She wonders if the state will still recognize her cousin, a lesbian, as the parent of her non-biological daughter.
“We are in a country fighting for its life,” Ms. Siach said. “They want to impose religious practices on the entire population.”
If the Valley of the Springs illustrates Israel’s division, it also shows how those lines of demarcation often blur.
While most kibbutzim were established as secular communities, a number of those near Beit Shean were instead established for Jews following an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle. A significant portion of their inhabitants are now also Mizrahim.
At the roadblock, some Mizrahi protesters, such as Mr. Ben Hamo, were secular Jews not driven by religious concerns. In contrast, some of the drivers pulled over by the protesters were either Mizrahim or religious – or both.
“That’s what’s very painful,” said Osnat Cohen-Neuman, 45, an Ashkenazi married to a Mizrahi who was stopped on his way home to a religious kibbutz.
“They look at me and say, ‘She’s this or that,'” Ms. Cohen-Neuman said. “They don’t see that I come from a religious family.”
Mrs. Siach is also a devout Jew. She observes the Jewish Sabbath, teaches Jewish philosophy and lives on a religious kibbutz that houses a Jewish seminary.
Her disagreement with Mr. Badush is about what a Jewish state should look like.
Mr Badush fears that if the dominance of Orthodox Judaism were to ebb away, it would undermine the foundations of the state.
“Once you start breaking that down,” he said, “it will be a country like any other country. And if it’s a country like any other country, what gives us the right to be here?”
But for Ms. Siach, pluralism is essential to the survival of the state: Minority rights and religious tolerance make Israel’s national identity as a Jewish state compatible with Israel’s political identity as a democracy.
A monolithic approach to worship is “terrible in my eyes, and not Jewish,” Ms. Siach said.
“The religion I grew up with, and the Bible I know, is full of references about treating non-Jews well,” she added.
Myra Noveck contributed reporting from Beit Shean, and Gabby Sobelman from Rehovot, Israel.