RIVKA BAR-YOSEF
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traditionally oriented. There is enormous pressure within the religious
community to become more religious. I as a secular, along with many of the
seculars, always look toward the liberal reform community. But as long as
there isn't going to be a strong American
aliyah
there won't be a reform
community. The reform community is alien to the Israelis. From America we
are getting the extremely religious, like Kahane and Lubavicher. Other
Americans are coming and the reform community is growing, but very
slowly.
There is a sort of fashion to become religious, not in very large
numbers, but there has been a sort of
chuvah
to become more religious,
especially by some people who were well-known - some bohemians, some
artists who tried out everything including drugs and were looking to find
themselves. After that they went to the yeshiva.
DM:
You make it sound worse than drugs.
RB-j:
No, no.
DM:
But it seems to me the particular bias . . .
RB-j:
They were very well-known, and that made the difference. The
Sephardim were never really secular, they were traditional, not part of the
religious establishment. But since their integration into society, they are
entering more and more into the political arena. That also means that
religiosity has received political expressions.
So
they strengthened the political
parties. The religious political parties in the past were purely Ashkenazis; in
this election for the first time there was a Sephardic right-wing religious
political party.
DM:
Zevulun Hammer was not Sephardic?
RB-j:
No, Zevulun Hammer is Ashkenazi, Israeli Ashkenazi. No, Deri,
Peretz, are coming up from the Sephardics. Hammer is not He
was
ready
to
go with the Labor party but could not because the religious establishment
would not allow it.
So
I don't think that I look upon them as all ofone color,
but it's becoming more ofone color. There is less differentiation in ideologies,
the differentiation remains on the political level.
Cynthia Epstein:
Maybe this was a conversation we had several years ago
in Israel, when you were pointing out that part of the problem was this sort
of tolerance for the religious parties on the part of secular Israelis, particu–
larly with reference to the inequalities in regard to women; the maintenance
of religious courts that had jurisdiction over the domestic sphere and what–
ever fallout came from that. Do you feel that that's continuing in the same
way and that the secular affirmation of the rights of the religious groups is
part of the problem? Do they still have dominance in that sphere, or some
disgrundement?
RB-j:
There is a sort of double-bind, because very few among the seculars
would like to have an Israeli society where there is no sign ofJewish religion.
In a study I did I had a long list of all kinds of
mitzvot,
and I asked people
