So again, welcome. Good afternoon. It's a pleasure and a special delight to present the speaker to you today.
But first of all, Gideon Katz, who teaches philosophy at the university located in the Ben-Gurion Research
Institute in the Brooklyn Ghetto and is the author of To the Core of Secularism.
A philosophical analysis of secularism in its Israeli context came out in Hebrew in 2011 and the same year the pain God,
Israeli secularism and Spinoza. This philosophy of culture published by academic academic press.
Yeah, academic studies press. I'm sorry. I'm the editor. I should know.
It is also the co-editor of Music in Israel, a collection of fascinating articles about Israeli music,
and most recently, his book In Silence and OutLoud. Leibovich in the Israeli Context was published by the Open University Press in Israel,
and the title of his talk today is the fear of Judaism in Israeli culture.
Thank you so much. All right. So I would rather.
OK. This paper seeks to depict and examine a certain anxiety that finds expression in Israeli culture.
It is expressed by and attributed to Israeli secular sector.
This insight stems from a fear that religious Judaism will erase Israeli sexual identity because their identity and their sense of freedom is
based upon the notion that lives of human beings in general and Jews in particular should be conducted through political earthly authority.
Religion is seen as a threat. Their fear is part and parcel of Israeli secularism, its image of Judaism and secularism as consciousness of strength.
Strengths of weakness and particular about our depiction of this fear will make use of the works of Israeli literary figures,
utopia and dystopian novels, essays and critiques.
This is a phenomenological exercise that seeks to express the consciousness and experience of this sector.
Accordingly, I have dispensed with any abstract discussion of the definition of secularism.
The general characterisation provided above will suffice for our needs.
An overly detailed definition is likely to limit our field of vision.
It is important to note that what is written here about the Israeli sector community and
its fears is limited to their image and their fears as they appear in selected text.
According to my interpretation, of course, without noting this, many claims in this paper may seem like jarring generalisations.
As mentioned, a central element. Of the anxiety we are dealing with is the feeling that, second, our identity is in a bitter struggle.
With Titanic and stubborn Judaism. Dystopian novels specialise in describing nightmares like this.
In the nineteen eighties. And afterward, dystopian novels that depict the transformation of Israel into a dark and violent theocracy were published.
The secular minority of this fictionalised state are persecuted and oppressed.
Many amongst its ranks abandoned their identity and adopt a religious one.
The descriptions of these catastrophes. But emphasise on the cruelty of fanatical religious Judaism that knows no limits.
In the 90s, those Orthodox Judaism called to mind the Taliban.
In more recent works, the Islamic State. It makes no difference if the rulers are hiding the of dogs or national religious, that the enemy.
This cruelty is not just a manifestation of evil.
It is evidence of the obtuseness and perversity of Judaism in the eyes of secularism.
One might claim. There is no reason to make today the world's mentioned above seriously.
The doom and gloom of this genre to traverse in catastrophe show its limitations.
Yet what we find in this dystopian novels is found in many other places as well in newspaper columns, polemics and other writings.
This dystopian visions are unique only in the extreme and simplistic style.
Not in the concerns that are raised in them. I'm a collection of articles in the Land of Israel in fall 1982.
Opens with a visit to his childhood neighbourhood in Jerusalem.
His thought fit in neatly to the template laid out.
And this is a quote. Twenty years ago, my teacher told Saddam were very important and they were reversible.
And I think about the more that people more modern Jewish literature.
In a casual conversation said that Zionism is nothing more than a passing episode,
a temporary outbreak of the mundane, a political and historical disturbance.
But he, like Judaism, will come back and overcomes Zionism.
And absorb it into itself. In this neighbourhood in which I was born and raised, the outcome of the battle as already been determined,
Zionism has been driving out of here as if it never was.
Menachem Brinker, an Israeli philosopher, will also note that more than Hebrew literature.
Offer a different version of this regression.
Instead of regression in time, you speak of gravity and in place of pessimism.
He talks of heroic battles.
According to Bring, Secretary, identity was born out of a relentless effort to overcome an ancient, overbearing Jewish identity.
Basically, the secular of faith to pay for.
And never ending struggle against the rules of gravity that drove them to surrender,
they are more than just think this is the distinctive status for the historical theft of an ancient identity.
The brand felt and fear in secular circles over the perceived danger that religion poses is also seen in the reaction to the rise of Shas,
a religious political party. Menachem Mouna, professor from Harvard University's School of Culture and Law.
Brings many examples of this in the articles that are generally published in Haaretz,
the famous Israeli newspaper, which is like the Guardian on something like this.
I don't know the titles of these articles in and of themselves are enough to get a good sense of this phenomenon.
The darkness of Middle Ages, the culture war is already here, said light and happy darkness.
The academic and academic studies that were written in the 80s and afterwards about the
struggle to portray this image of or study Judaism also give testimony to this phenomenon.
The philosopher Gershon Vinyl in 1977 published his book Jewish Theocracy.
His claim main claim is that the principle of biological life necessarily precludes
Jewish survivability and therefore the struggle over religion in Israeli politics.
Is alive, for that matter, the story, and he got a lamb provides a similar analysis in his book The End of Judaism, which published in 2000.
A number of articles that addressed the relationship between Judaism and Israeli ness include images of this dangerous Judaism.
Dan Mirren's Dan Miron is a professor of very, very important figure in Israeli culture, mainly on modern Hebrew literature.
It is literature, Jewish literature and also wrote a lot about the Israeli culture.
Danny Barnes is one in one of his article provides and detailed analysis of the Movement for Greater Israelis open manifesto.
This manifesto was published a short time after the Six-Day War.
Within a separate signatures of central literature and cultural figures of the time, the most famous one is nothing out of the.
A the manifesto announced that the new period.
As arrived, Ben-Gurion's conception, the place, the state above the people as being turned upside down.
The state has been throwing the side to this lowest level.
The wholeness of the land and the nation have been placed above it.
Mitt Romney's explanation for the outbreak of the consciousness of the new era is important for our discussion.
This experience I bought, right? Did not flow.
From the BBC, the. In the life of the people of the state.
It didn't flow from any intentional ideological aspiration,
nor from any conscious political effort people sought after, and no effort is done to achieve it.
It was a surprise a revolution, an outburst from from some unknown death would erupt from there in the 60s.
Woe is the Jewish entity that forever lies underneath the surface, and that awakens with frightening immediacy.
The fundamental formulation is that is as follows Israeli secularism is in a struggle with an upstart,
fierce Jewish being to burst forth from the death to threaten to eliminate it.
To all this, we must add something. It is not a new Israeli.
Fear goes showrooms. When no letter about the religious content that would erupt from the volcanic force from the death of the secular
Hebrew language was written before the establishment of the state in Israel and expressed the same fear.
There are incidents where the depiction of this struggle is a bit different,
not a sudden takeover of Israeli secularism, but rather interference with it.
And this version, Israel, including secularism and secularist, cannot come to its full and proper realisation because of Judaism.
Explore one example of this state.
In 1980s, a big issue, a famous phrase Israeli right, to publish this book by virtue of normality.
It's analytic method is generally so psychologists like.
The exhibit existence is characterised by stagnation and inability to fulfil itself.
Did the result of the exhibit is an abstract Jewish existence?
Almost demonic and half frail. Zionism is intensive therapy for this pathology.
Israel is the remedy. It staples it, stand ready.
To all of this touch of fear, a faceless people, a concrete existence.
The conflict,
the conflict over territories is essentially a conflict between the existing tendency towards formless and aspiration for fulfilment in a real world.
The fact that Israel cannot mark its borders.
Is a symptom of the UN and the applications of exotic existence.
The differences between different authors are not significant here.
They all share the same fundamental cultural experience.
Whose route is the beta and perhaps even the tragic struggle of secularism with Judaism?
It rises up out of the centre in the some of the text.
The phenomenon, the phenomenon sloth in nature is mentioned explicitly.
In others, it appears between the lines, the fact that such important changes in Israeli life happened in a blink of the eye.
This defies the right in place of this obstruct you these.
The depiction of the fragility of Israeli life cannot be explained.
Through this, a component without this competence, something without some notion of Judaism as an unconscious identity entity.
People can overnight breathing in the dark.
No. No, you don't.
And this this description of the fragility of Israeli life cannot be explained without discomfort and without some
notion of Judaism as an unconscious identity entity that combines eternal best persons with lightning fast appearance.
The identity crisis described here as a culture, of course.
The natural the natural starting point for this explanation.
It was the content of the film. The fundamental trivial element.
Is the threat of Judaism, is that this the threat is Judaism as a religion?
That's the image of the religion. There are the features, it is frozen.
Absolute. As if it exists in another reality, and it is unknown on other closed off and masked.
As if it is unrecognised or the more that it is recognised, it is recognised as a threat.
It erupted contact. With it is bound up with regression.
Those who exposed to it, a strict of the former identity.
Those who imagine the entity described above.
And it's manner of manifestation in the word of no live contact within.
It's demonic character testifies that it is not a part of the collective consciousness, real experience with this,
the role and the importance of the psychologists, the image of the heathen entity of the unconsciousness.
Judaism is understood.
It allows the attribution of the demonic character to Judaism and to formulate it in a rational language to express the absence of contact.
Judaism is found within us. Belongs to us.
And at the same time, it is foreign and an unknown withdrawal from contact and counter.
Do useful burst is not just in a conscious method.
This is precise description of Israeli culture.
Including its roots and anxieties. I will clarify this matter by explaining by expanding the meaning of the absence
of contact in the Israeli culture and the meaning of contact in this context,
the dominant conception in Israeli separatism.
And to a large extent in Israeli culture in general is that Judaism is a national culture.
By the finding itself, and this way, it sees itself as an alternative to traditional Judaism.
The father of this idea, what he calls it with great clarity was a Haddam is fundamental approach wars and the transformation of religion content,
religious content to ideas and ideas into a nation on Earth.
The historic plain sight the had a deep impact on Israeli secularism, at least upon the basic,
is basically its basic assumption that could serve as an alternative to religious Judaism.
The conception of Judaism as a national culture alienate itself from the religious foundation of Judaism.
This is the source of the withdrawal from contact with the religious Judaism and their unstable self image of secularism.
And this in in the case of people.
With intensive religious character like the Jewish people, which and been maintaining itself in religious form for many,
many generations, the proposal of an alternative identity was bound to feel forced.
This secularism did indeed have a promising start.
It was supported by the critique of religion and of religion that had been heard in the Western, so.
For a few hundred years. It stems from the deep political social need to oppose traditional feelings and
superstitious beliefs and aspiration for liberation from the life of exile.
However, as inconsistent changed. Its internal contradictions began to be felt.
It sought to pave the path to religious tradition.
Why, why? Anything, it's of religious content.
It tried to draw close to that, which it had eliminated itself from,
and therefore in the end, it proved upon as unstable and frightening that identity.
This alienation from the spirit of religious Judaism belongs to the early stages of this secularism in the 80s.
He did another level of problematic. The alienation from Israeli society.
The political revolution of the rise of Mizrahi Jews.
Granted, religion, tradition, great way, the slogans of secularism, some fun, the crafters of this Israeli secularism.
It would provide to clarify. For themself,
the reason that they were being pushed to the sidelines and they certainly did not try to honestly engage with the new tradition on
a psyche that was washing over the society there a nation from Israeli society and ended on their previous and a nation of spirit.
And this reason became every more untenable and detached.
What is the proper response to this anxiety? I believe that it is to be found in re-engaging with the religious tradition.
An article by Assaf in Bali and Israeli writer provides us a precise formulation of Judaism without God is empty word.
Hebrew culture cannot be at East culture, just like it cannot be Orthodox culture,
Jewish renewal will only be a serious meaning when it grapples in you with Jewish faith,
just as it must open up to advance of statehood, aesthetics and all of other modern challenges that rabbinic Judaism is running from, so do.
It must open up to the metaphysical world without this.
Judaism is just that for growth. It will renew the face of Judaism if it offers new ways of understanding.
You have two days and. As any meaning that is not exotic and is not nationalistic, messianic Hebrew culture is the address for uncovering it.
But what is the meaning of new encounter with Judaism?
An important hint of this is provided by in Bali, the renewal of Judaism is the band on ascribing meaning to it that is,
neither get to know messianic and nationalistic.
The ghetto exotic model has no place in Israeli society is going to be free from that society.
They messianic nationalistic mode has no place in this society because it
aspires to undermine the political framework that it sees as a temporary stage.
Are the new modes of understanding Judaism that avoid those pitfalls?
I believe that the answer to this question is the mission of the cultural critic where the historian, philosopher or literary scholar.
And we need not a way for cultural creations to be produced in the future.
We can look of what is happening around us at this moment.
Since our time is short, let's look in one example.
The fraud machine built to token poetry and song scene.
In a cultural expression is a cultural expression that the press is very.
As a whole and as religious meaning is neither get off.
No, messianic, this religious music that is created in diverse social settings has become part of the larger society as it
brings in to the open voices of the multiplicity of Jewish communities over the generations for all purpose.
A passage that appears on the website an invitation to put.
Would be enough to make the point. I called every field and every play opens up many gates.
It causes a voice to traverse over time to our very days to be heard.
The people,
team and the press absorb longing and pain hopes and the joy of many generations and those who listen to these voices yearn to be connected to them.
And so an encounter with the Hebrew language, it's a beauty,
and it's clear lyrical mystery is forged and and an invitation to extend and to return to our roots,
to the Jewish culture, to the sake of the current good and to the cycle of life.
Song and music deepen the connexion of each individual to the community and of each community,
to the entire Jewish people in Israel, the entire world in the past and in the present.
The beauty scene is an example of an encounter.
It Grant Israeli, an opportunity to encounter the tradition without uprooting their identity.
Israelis are invited to discover the language and beautiful views.
The musical traditions, their religious roots outside of religious rituals,
they can do it on the National Library website, on the musical performance and the array of events.
In short, this is an example of the creation of new meaning,
neither ghetto nor messianic that belong to Israeli culture as it flows from Jewish tradition.
We don't have enough time, but I think the other example, just one example I can get through this,
but the show labour, which is a very interesting example of.
Creating or expressing voice, a public voice of Judaism and addressing the whole Israeli society, and I think it is.
Another example, interesting example, this case, what we have discussed up until now is connected to another matter that I can only mention briefly,
the Ashkenazi character of these very kind of, you know, a fundamental experience of Israeli culture.
The detachment from Judaism and fear of it that we spoke is tightly bound with the experience of Jews of the Jews of Europe.
My intention here is not to suggest. The writers who were mentioned in this paper are Ashkenazi by their names through this detail is not meaningless.
This experience is Ashkenazi, because it is it is it expressed.
The process of secularisation that took place amongst the Jews of Europe,
the psychology of Zionism rebellion and ensure the rupture of this community from the religious tradition, the arms of the proposal.
Which was mentioned above is only one expression of this shift.
The famous both the Chayefsky's two years of the hard.
Brian has mocking on the alarm and the religious sentiment, the images of the dying but middle class in Barry Bonds,
these are the type of government that feel that the vote did not anticipated.
These all other well-known examples of the deep fissure in the walls of these Jews.
This historical fissure continues to exist in Israelis.
In addition to the fear of returning to a frozen Jewish identity, one can add the fear of losing Jewish identity.
Many Israeli and even prime in the short period, they're speaking about it, for example, they said closing date on the day just to.
Some resolve about losing Jewish identity.
And these experiences do not reflect the wall of misery, the Jews who came to Israel from our plans for them.
There is continuous, intimate and flexible connexion to the religious tradition,
a connexion that was taken as another expression of their culture and for your team upon their arrival to Israel.
It is clear from the discussion of this paper that the encounter with religious tradition is important.
That's what I guess, but it is possible that it is even more important.
In particular, the comments about an encounter based on the word of Mr. Green here, I can only touch on this in a general way.
An encounter like. The one that is traditional beauty scene presents is an opening to a liberation
for Israeli culture from its formative anxiety and from its Ashkenazi character,
and allows for a comprehensive re-engagement.
It is an opportunity to discover the culture of righteousness of Mizrahim and to uproot the degrading image of them as a bereft of culture.
It is also opportunity to deepen the Hebrew language resonance.
And to create a life contact with dusty ancient layers and even an opportunity to open up to the Middle East by dint of.
Builds the connexion to the R&B musical tradition.
The rebranding of Israeli culture. And to put this into tradition isn't is and uncovering its past,
an invitation for self-discovery and an opportunity to encounter its Middle Eastern environment.
Thank you.