China Open Source Observatory

Jewish Cultural Resilience and Israel

China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations

January 1, 2021

犹太文化韧性与以色列

中国现代国际关系研究院

Jewish Cultural Resilience and Israel犹太文化韧性与以色列

Note: this document was translated using machine learning technology. Learn more.

Originally Written By
China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations中国现代国际关系研究院
Publisher
Current Affairs Press时事出版社

Chapter Six

Jewish Cultural Resilience and Israel

犹太文化韧性与以色列

The Jewish people are a most extraordinary nation. Israel is the only state in the world today with the Jewish people as its majority. There are currently approximately 15 million Jews worldwide, distributed across countries around the globe. Of Israel’s nearly 9.2 million people, approximately 6.8 million are Jewish.

The distinctiveness of the Jewish people is expressed primarily through their unique historical, religious, and cultural traditions. Throughout history, the Jewish people were scattered across the world for nearly two thousand years, enduring untold suffering amid wave after wave of antisemitism. Jewish culture, confronted by the persistent rejection, assault, and even destruction wrought by external antisemitic forces, engaged in continuous struggle and adaptation. While preserving ethnic identity as its core value, it kept pace with the times, balancing closeness and openness, uniformity and pluralism, and demonstrated a tenacious vitality that has exerted a profound influence on Israel’s security outlook and security strategy.

During the period of diaspora and in times of war, the Jewish people’s powerful sense of ethnic identity—and the formidable national cohesion it generated—played a vital role in defending national dignity and unity, establishing the State of Israel, and safeguarding national security.

After the Middle East peace process began and Arab-Israeli relations eased, contradictions within Israeli society became increasingly prominent and acute. The resulting weakening of ethnic identity and decline in cohesion produced numerous negative effects on social stability and created hidden dangers for national security.

Who Is a Jew?

To understand the Jewish people, one must begin with Judaism.

The Jewish religious classic the Talmud records the following episode: During Passover—a Jewish religious holiday—a man came to Jerusalem. He claimed to be Jewish and was warmly received by the local people, who invited him to join a Jewish family’s Passover seder. After eating together the traditional Passover food of lamb, the man told his host that he wished to eat the lamb’s entrails, much to the host’s astonishment. It turned out that according to Jewish law, the entrails of a lamb may not be eaten but must be offered as a sacrifice to God. The Hebrew Bible—the Jewish religious canon, which Christians call the Old Testament—explicitly states that “no foreigner may eat of the lamb.” The host realized that his guest had violated Jewish religious law and handed the impostor over to the religious authorities.

This story conveys an important criterion for identifying a Jew: whether one observes Judaism. Historically, the formation and development of the Jewish people has been inseparable from Judaism.

The interweaving of historical fact and legend is a defining characteristic of ancient Jewish history. The long history of the Jewish people and Judaism are, as it were, thoroughly intertwined. As the renowned Israeli statesman and former Foreign Minister Abba Eban put it: “Israel’s history begins in the twilight, where fact and legend are intermingled and hard to disentangle. Legend has become an important part of our experience.” Indeed, the religious legends of the Jewish people have shaped the development and spiritual character of the Jewish nation more profoundly than the events that actually occurred. This can be seen in the process by which Judaism and Jewish national consciousness came into being.

As a branch of the ancient Semitic peoples, the Hebrew ancestors of the Jews were originally nomadic tribes living in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) under the influence of ancient Babylonian culture, practicing polytheism and idol worship. According to the Hebrew Bible, around 1900 BCE, guided by God Yahweh, the chieftain Abraham led the Hebrew tribal members to Canaan (present-day Palestine), where they settled and multiplied. Abraham’s wife Sarah bore him a son named Isaac; Isaac’s second son was named Jacob, and Jacob had twelve sons. Jacob once dreamed of wrestling with an angel and was given by God the name “Israel,” meaning “one who wrestles with God.” Hence the Hebrews were also called Israelites.

Later, drought and famine struck Canaan, and the Hebrews left their homeland to seek refuge in Egypt, where they lived for approximately four hundred years. Jacob’s twelve sons and their descendants multiplied continuously, gradually forming twelve tribes. According to the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible, unable to endure the enslavement of the Egyptian pharaoh, around 1445 BCE the national hero and prophet Moses, acting on God’s command, led the Hebrews out of Egypt.

The Hebrews then made their way to the Sinai Peninsula, where they wandered for approximately forty years. During this time, in order to break completely with the Hebrew practice of polytheism and idol worship, Moses launched a movement to unify religious belief. Invoking the name of a covenant with God, he established the Ten Commandments with his people at Mount Sinai. This event prompted the Hebrews—later the Jews—to complete the transition from polytheism to monotheism, and elevated God in the Jewish mind from a tribal deity to a national deity. It marked the birth of Judaism and laid the foundation of faith for the formation of Jewish national consciousness.

After Moses died, the Jews returned to Canaan under the leadership of another prophet, Joshua. In 1006 BCE, under the leadership of David of the tribe of Judah, the Jews defeated the local Canaanites and Philistines and established the Hebrew Kingdom. In 973 BCE, Solomon, son of King David, ascended the throne and built a magnificent temple in Jerusalem for the worship of God, known in history as the “First Temple.” From that point on, Jerusalem became the most important holy site of Judaism and the primary spiritual center of the Jewish people.

Unlike other peoples of the world, the Jewish nation possesses a unique quality of “unity of people and religion”—that is, cultural tradition and religion are so thoroughly fused as to be inseparable. The Jewish people and Judaism share an inherently interdependent, flesh-and-blood relationship. On one hand, unlike other trans-ethnic religions, Judaism is exclusively the religion of the Jewish people. On the other hand, as a people who profess Judaism, Jews are by nature imbued with a pronounced “religious temperament.” In a certain sense, without Judaism, the Jewish people might well have ceased to exist.

The name “Judaism” derives from the ancient Greek “Ioudaismos,” meaning the religious beliefs and customs of the Jewish people. It is the traditional religion of the Jewish nation, with a history of approximately four thousand years. The Hebrew word “Yahadut,” which carries a meaning close to Judaism, signifies “everything Jewish.” Its English equivalent “Judaism,” derived from the Greek “Judaismos,” denotes both religion and ethnicity. Beyond its religious connotations, it also reflects and emphasizes the daily code of conduct and way of life of the Jewish people.

It is thus clear that, whether considered from the standpoint of doctrinal foundations or religious festivals and other factors, Judaism is a religion that integrates religious and ethnic perspectives into one. This uniqueness of Judaism determines the distinctiveness of its religious ideas. This can be seen in the traditional mode of thinking—understanding God and seeking self-identity through ethnic history—and in Judaism’s “three worldviews”: the concept of the Chosen People, the concept of the Promised Land, and the concept of the Covenant.


The concept of the Chosen People. Jewish doctrine holds that the Jewish people are a special nation chosen by God from among all peoples. The Hebrew Bible contains the following passage: “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.” From this, Jews call themselves the “Chosen People.” Modern Jewish scholars hold that the concept of the “Chosen People” carries two meanings. First, being chosen implies a responsibility rather than a privilege. Holiness and glory can only be seen as a reward for faithful observance of the covenant, not as an unconditional gift or special entitlement. The Hebrew Bible hints on multiple occasions that being chosen means the Jewish people bear responsibility for other nations, even including suffering on their behalf. Second, it refers to the distinctiveness of the Jewish people—namely, their possession of superior wisdom and character. Although the “Chosen People” is purely a religious concept, over the centuries—especially in times when the Jewish people faced persecution and the threat of national extinction—this concept not only provided spiritual consolation to suffering Jews and allowed the culture of a displaced people to be transmitted in an unbroken line, but also drove Jews to pursue moral perfection unceasingly and to maintain a perpetually elevated spirit, regarding themselves as a great and outstanding people in the world.

The concept of the Promised Land. The “Promised Land,” also called the “Land of Israel,” refers to Palestine as the land God promised to give the Jewish people as an eternal inheritance. According to the Hebrew Bible, God Yahweh appeared to Abraham and promised: “The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” Based on this legend, the Jewish people regard this land as the “Promised Land,” and from this developed a distinctive attachment to their ancestral homeland. The most important significance of this concept lies in the spiritual bond between the Jewish people and the “Promised Land.” Especially during the periods of statelessness and diaspora, the “Promised Land” remained the “temple in the heart” and spiritual pillar of the Jewish people, and became one of the sources of Zionist thought.

The concept of the Covenant. This derives from the covenant God made with Abraham, the patriarch of the Jewish people, as recorded in Genesis in the Hebrew Bible: “Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just.”

The Book of Exodus recounts that after Moses led the Jewish people out of Egypt, he assembled them all at the foot of Mount Sinai and reaffirmed the covenant their ancestors had made with God, establishing the Jewish people’s collective commitment to God. From that point on, the Jewish people, as the “Chosen People,” bore the special mission entrusted to them by God. This covenant could no more be annulled than the movements of the sun, moon, and stars, and it was binding upon every individual Jew. Should a Jew “break the covenant,” punishment and suffering would inevitably follow—what is called “galut” (Hebrew for “exile” or “banishment”). Later, because the Jewish people failed to fulfill their mission—that is, to become “a beacon illuminating all nations with justice, morality, and peace”—they were indeed punished. This also became one of the doctrinal explanations for the suffering the Jewish people endured throughout history.

Yet the Jewish people also believe that as long as they sincerely repent and submit to God’s will,

that is, observe Jewish religious law (in Judaism, the law occupies a central position and governs the conduct of all communities and individuals), the Jewish people will still receive God’s salvation—what is called “geulah” (Hebrew for “redemption”).

Judaism’s “three worldviews” are deeply rooted in the hearts of most Jewish people and have simultaneously influenced modern secular Jews. For example, David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the State of Israel and its first Prime Minister, was a scholar of the Hebrew Bible, yet he described himself as a secular person rather than a believer. He explained: “Because I frequently quote Jewish scripture, I must make clear that I personally do not believe in the God of the scriptures. What I mean is that I cannot ‘appeal to God,’ or pray to a superhuman being living in the heavens. Nevertheless, although the philosophy I hold is secular, I deeply believe in the God of Jeremiah and Isaiah” (both prophets in the Hebrew Bible). “I do indeed regard this as part of the ancestral heritage of the Jewish people. I am not a believer, and most of the early pioneers of Israel were also non-religious. Yet their deep love for this land came from the Hebrew Bible.” He called the Hebrew Bible “the single most important book of my life.”

According to the Book of Exodus, the Jews who had fled to Egypt could no longer endure the cruel enslavement of the pharaoh and demanded to leave Egypt and return to Canaan. However, they were obstructed and harassed by the pharaoh at every turn. God therefore authorized the prophet Moses to bring down upon Egypt ten successive plagues—blood, frogs, lice, flies, livestock disease, boils, hail, locusts, and darkness—to compel the pharaoh to relent. Yet each time a plague was lifted, the pharaoh went back on his word. God then decided to act directly, striking down all the firstborn sons and firstborn livestock of the Egyptians. He instructed Moses to tell every Jewish household to slaughter a male lamb on the fourteenth day of the Hebrew month of Nisan (April in the Gregorian calendar)—in Jerusalem, Orthodox Jewish worshippers gather in synagogues to observe Passover, which continually reminds the Jewish people of their national suffering and keeps them vigilant, thereby continuously reinforcing Jewish national consciousness.

one lamb per household, and to smear the blood on the lintel and doorposts as a sign. When God saw this sign, he would pass over that household. After the Egyptians suffered this fatal tenth plague, the pharaoh finally permitted the Jews to leave Egypt. In gratitude to God, the Jewish people designated the seven days beginning on the fourteenth of Nisan each year as a festival. This is the origin of Passover—the oldest and most important holiday of the Jewish people.

Throughout the long journey of diaspora, the Jewish people lost the territory in which they had lived together as a people and lived for extended periods in unfamiliar environments with entirely different languages and customs. Yet none of this was able to erase the cultural and traditional memories deep within the Jewish heart. In this regard, Jewish religious festivals played a remarkable role. These holidays are closely linked to Jewish religion and history, and became special occasions for ordinary people to revisit their national teachings, reflect on the historical fate of their nation, and

Jewish Cultural Resilience and Israel

It is well known that overseas Chinese, though living in countries around the world, still observe Chinese traditional holidays each year—especially the Spring Festival. Every New Year’s Eve, China Central Television broadcasts its Spring Festival Gala live to Chinese people around the globe. Whether one observes the Spring Festival is one of the important markers of Chinese identity. The same is true of the Jewish people: wherever they go, they do not forget to observe their national traditional customs, and in particular to hold celebrations on their national religious holidays. The major Jewish religious holidays all derive from some experience of their ancestors and forebears, and cleverly weave Jewish national history into holiday celebrations and religious rituals. For example, Passover is primarily observed to commemorate the ancestors’ successful escape from the persecution and enslavement of the Egyptian pharaoh, with an emphasis on reflecting on the history of national suffering and God’s grace in delivering them, and on conducting education in national tradition. Sukkot reminds Jews not to forget the hardships their forebears endured while wandering in the Sinai desert and living in thatched huts. Shavuot places special emphasis on observing the law and educating people to fulfill their religious obligations. Yom Kippur has become a symbol of the annual Jewish practice of self-examination and striving for renewal. These holidays, which come around periodically each year and are observed by the entire people, have gradually become special occasions on which the Jewish nation revisits its own history again and again, receives its own religious education again and again, and reflects on its own historical mission again and again.

Throughout history, the Jewish state was conquered multiple times by foreign peoples, repeatedly bringing the national religious faith and cultural traditions to the brink of extinction. In 930 BCE, the Hebrew Kingdom founded by David split into the northern Kingdom of Israel (with its capital at Samaria) and the southern Kingdom of Judah (with its capital at Jerusalem). In 721 BCE, the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrian Empire. Having lost their original faith as subjects of the empire, tens of thousands of Jews were gradually assimilated by other peoples, becoming the legendary “ten lost tribes of Israel.”

In 586 BCE, the Neo-Babylonian Kingdom destroyed the Kingdom of Judah, captured Jerusalem, demolished the Temple, and took the Jewish people into captivity in Babylon as slaves—an event known in history as the “Babylonian Captivity.” At that time, the Hebrews living in exile were called “Jews,” meaning the survivors after the fall of the Kingdom of Judah. This name has persisted to the present day.

After the Temple was destroyed, Judaism lost its spiritual center, plunging the Jews living in foreign lands into a crisis of faith. Jewish prophets recognized that only by further establishing and consolidating the status of Jewish religious law as a guide to life—making it the “temple in the heart”—and ensuring that these “Chosen People” maintained a distinctive faith and way of life, could they avoid repeating the fate of assimilation. The prophets therefore launched a social and cultural movement premised on “God-centrism” and aimed at elevating ethical morality, which played an important role in preserving Jewish faith and tradition.

In 539 BCE, the Persian Empire destroyed the Neo-Babylonian Kingdom. The Jewish people were permitted to return to Palestine and rebuild the Temple, known in history as the “Second Temple.” In 135 CE, the Roman Empire suppressed a Jewish uprising, burned down the Second Temple, and expelled most of the Jewish people from Palestine. Having entered a state of diaspora, the Jewish people once again faced the crisis of losing their unified religious faith and cultural traditions, and even the prospect of national extinction. To prevent this catastrophe, the rabbis—the intellectual elite of the Jewish people (the Hebrew word means “teacher”)—through the unremitting efforts of several generations, jointly compiled the Talmud, a civilizational code known as the “Oral Law” (that is, interpretations of, supplements to, and implementing rules for the law). This accomplished the transition of Judaism from Temple worship to scriptural worship. Following the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud became the “second canon” of Judaism. It is simultaneously a guide to Jewish daily life and a crystallization of wisdom, and played an extremely important role in maintaining the national consciousness of diaspora Jews. After losing the most stable and enduring element of national history—a shared geographic territory—Jews scattered across the world maintained a common faith and way of life through uninterrupted study of the Talmud across generations, tenaciously holding fast to their shared cultural boundaries and creating the historical and cultural miracle of a people dispersed yet not dissolved. Before capturing Jerusalem in 70 CE, Roman forces had already begun wantonly destroying Jewish synagogues. A rabbi named Yohanan, foreseeing the catastrophe that would befall the Jewish people, feigned death in order to gain an audience with Vespasian, the commander of the Roman forces. He declared with confidence that Vespasian would one day become Roman emperor. The commander thanked the rabbi for his blessing and asked what he wished in return. The rabbi replied: “I have only one wish: leave me a school that can accommodate about ten rabbis, and never destroy it.” Vespasian considered for a moment and agreed. Shortly afterward, the Roman emperor died. Vespasian, relying on his power in the military, did indeed ascend to the imperial throne. He issued an order to the forces occupying Jerusalem: “Leave only one small school.” Thus, after the massacres and expulsions, an important channel through which Jewish religious culture and national tradition could be transmitted was preserved. This school, which survived by the narrowest of margins, was the renowned Yavne Academy on the coastal plain south of Tel Aviv. The Jewish sages who survived gathered there to discuss and deliberate, review and renew, codify the law, and reshape the Jewish religious and cultural traditions that had become difficult to sustain after the destruction of the Temple. It is said that the Mishnah—one of the classics of Rabbinic Judaism—began to be compiled there.

Jewish Cultural Resilience and Israel

As the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining: in the course of the Jewish people’s dispersal across the world and sojourn in foreign lands, Jewish religious ideas and traditional religious customs, while becoming the “bond” of ethnic identity and national cohesion, also provided a pretext for antisemitism.

The State Destroyed, the People Survive

Antisemitism refers to all thoughts and behaviors—arising from cultural prejudice, ethnic bias, and similar attitudes—that express aversion, hatred, exclusion, or hostility toward Jewish people. In the eyes of antisemites, the distinctive “Jewishness” of the Jewish people—especially their “clannish” behavior—is an important root cause of their being “hated.” Jews who strictly observe their unique religious faith and traditional customs inevitably create a cultural barrier with the countries in which they reside, and may even be entirely at odds with local culture, provoking resentment among local people and causing them to be regarded as “outsiders” cut off from mainstream society. This resentment, accumulated over centuries and reinforced by recurring waves of antisemitism, has produced increasingly severe racial prejudice against the Jewish people. Antisemites hold that, in essence, historically, racially, and by natural disposition, Jews are an inferior people of low ability and evil character, unfit for association, and deserving of condemnation or persecution.

An examination of antisemitism in different countries before the end of World War II reveals that the causes and forms of antisemitism varied, but overall displayed a pattern of gradual escalation, intensification, and increasing severity, reaching its peak during World War II.

Religious antisemitism. The Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible records the following story: In the fifth century BCE, in Susa, the capital of the Persian Empire, Haman, the prime minister of the Persian King Ahasuerus, was arrogant and domineering, compelling all court officials to bow and kneel before him. Among the court officials was a low-ranking officer named Mordecai, a devout Jew. Observing the Jewish commandment against bowing to any idol, he refused to pay obeisance to Haman. Haman vented his anger on all the Jews under the empire’s rule, and said to the Persian king: “There is a certain people dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom whose customs are different from those of all other people and who do not obey the king’s laws; it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them.” Having obtained the king’s consent, Haman devised a plan to massacre the Jewish people and used a lottery to set the date of the action as the thirteenth day of the Hebrew month of Adar. As disaster was about to strike, it was fortunately the Jewish woman Esther—who was queen—who stepped forward in time and, through courage and wisdom, persuaded the king to punish Haman and his accomplices, saving the Jewish people from catastrophe. To celebrate this victory, the Jewish people designated the fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar as Purim (the Persian word “pur” means “lot”). The Jewish people despise Haman with a passion, and during Purim they specially make a small pastry called “Haman’s ears” so as to “eat him in revenge.” This custom has been passed down to the present day. “Hanged as high as Haman” has become a proverb popular among the Jewish people, meaning “to be hoist with one’s own petard.”

In reality, most Jews living in diaspora were not as fortunate as Mordecai. By adhering to their own religious faith and cultural traditions, Jews frequently fell victim to religious antisemitism and were even stripped of their freedom of religious belief.

＜ The traditional Jewish holiday of Purim

Jewish Cultural Resilience and Israel

In 331 BCE, Alexander the Great of Macedon, coming from Greece, destroyed the Persian Empire and began promoting the Hellenization movement. In the eyes of the Jewish people, Greek culture was synonymous with idol worship, atheism, and paganism, and they therefore refused to offer sacrifices at Greek temples. As a result, in the later Hellenistic period, the rulers of the Seleucid dynasty adopted a series of harsh measures desecrating Judaism in an attempt to forcibly assimilate the Jewish people. These included ordering the abolition of Jewish religious festivals, prohibiting the observance of the Sabbath, and strictly forbidding circumcision; burning Jewish religious scriptures; placing a Greek sacrificial altar in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and using pigs—which Jews consider forbidden—as sacrificial offerings. Moreover, Jews were even forced to eat pork.

During the period of Roman imperial rule, because Jewish law explicitly prohibited any form of idol worship, Jews refused to participate in the regularly held rituals of loyalty to the Roman emperor, which was regarded as “an act intended to foment rebellion.” In order to eradicate the root of Jewish “disloyalty,” Roman rulers ordered the prohibition of all Jewish customs and even decreed that anyone who practiced circumcision would be put to death. In an address to the Jews of Alexandria, the Roman governor then stationed in Egypt spoke at length about the necessity of abolishing the custom of observing the Sabbath. He argued with great conviction: “If on a Saturday an enemy suddenly invades, the Nile suddenly floods, or a fire, lightning strike, famine, plague, or earthquake occurs, will you still sit quietly at home as usual? Will you still hold your sacred rituals in your synagogues as always, read your holy books, interpret their obscure passages, and deliver lengthy discourses on your philosophical views? I think you absolutely will not—you will immediately spring into action to rescue your parents, your children, your property, and everything useful to you. Very well, I am now all of these things—the storm, the war, the flood, the lightning, the famine, the earthquake, the disaster. You must abandon the bad habit of observing the Sabbath!”

In medieval Europe, Jews were frequently charged with fabricated crimes. “Blood libel” is a typical example: the accusation that Jews secretly murdered Christian boys to obtain the blood needed for Passover. In the summer of 1255, word spread in Lincoln, England: an eight-year-old boy named Hugh had suddenly gone missing. Someone claimed to have seen him playing ball with several Jewish children. Hugh’s mother searched frantically and eventually found the boy’s body in a sewage well near a Jewish residence. From the scene, it appeared quite possible that he had fallen in while chasing a ball. When the body was retrieved, a Christian bystander said to the onlookers: “I wonder if any of you have heard that Jews, in order to mock our Lord Jesus Christ who was crucified, are in the habit of murdering Christian boys?” With these words, people turned their suspicious eyes toward the Jews. Incidents of this kind frequently led to accusations against Jews and even sparked violence against them.

Christianity and Judaism are both monotheistic religions, and much of Christian theological thought derives from Judaism. In other words, Judaism is the “mother religion” that gave birth to Christianity. Yet due to doctrinal differences—and in particular the attribution of responsibility for “the death of Jesus” to the Jewish people—the early Christian church seemed to harbor an innate “resentment toward its mother.” After separating from Judaism, it showed nothing but contempt for the religion that had nurtured it: not only was it unwilling to acknowledge its own “origins,” but it was filled with hostility toward Judaism. In the fourth century CE, following the formal conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine, Christianity took its seat as the “state religion” and proceeded to join forces with the Roman rulers to implement a series of persecutions against Jews. These were expressed primarily as follows: the Christian church fabricated and spread a series of malicious slanders against the Jewish people, and decided that the date of the annual Easter celebration would no longer be determined according to the Jewish calendar, as a starting point for “a complete break with this abominable people”; Roman emperors enacted laws prohibiting Jewish men from marrying Christian women, with violators subject to the death penalty; edicts were issued prohibiting Jews from holding public office and purging Jews from the military. In addition, senior figures in the Christian church—including church fathers and bishops—spread antisemitic ideas through various means, inciting popular hatred of the Jewish people and sowing the seeds for subsequent large-scale antisemitic acts. The early Christian church had its reasons for practicing religious discrimination and persecution against the Jewish people: on one hand, the church sought to demonstrate the superiority of its own doctrine and attract more people to convert; on the other hand, some Christians wished to vent their dissatisfaction and resentment toward Jews who refused to convert to Christianity.

Social antisemitism. The “ghetto” refers to a street or district within a city designated by law as the compulsory residence for Jews. The word “ghetto” derives from Hebrew (ghet, meaning “to separate” or “to isolate”), and vividly reflects the historical reality that Jews were cut off from channels of communication with the non-Jewish society of their host countries and excluded from mainstream society. The earliest ghetto appeared in 1516 in the Republic of Venice, Italy—a district surrounding a cannon foundry that was designated by the authorities for Jewish residence, enclosed by high walls separating it from the rest of the city, with guards posted at the gates.

In the ghetto, the personal freedom of Jews was strictly restricted. Every evening after dark, the Jews living there could no longer go out. On the Sabbath, Jewish holidays, and Christian holidays, the ghetto gates were locked and Jewish residents were not permitted to take a single step outside. By regulation, the gatekeepers of the ghetto had to be Christians, and their wages had to be paid by the Jews. Once the boundaries of the ghetto were established, they were generally not permitted to expand, so as the population grew, the ghetto became increasingly overcrowded. Since housing could only be built taller and taller, the risk of fire was great and sanitary conditions were extremely poor. In addition to ordinary taxes, Jewish residents of the ghetto were required to pay the authorities a special poll tax. Furthermore, Jews in the ghetto were compelled to wear special identifying marks—for example, women had to wear one red and one green shoe of different colors and attach bells, so that others could see and hear them from a distance and avoid them in advance to prevent “contamination.”

Economic antisemitism. The Merchant of Venice is a Shakespeare play known to all. The scene in which the “Jewish villain” Shylock demands a pound of flesh from his debtor in lieu of repayment is particularly memorable. In a similar vein, a book published in the Soviet Union in the 1960s titled Judaism Without Embellishment contained an illustration depicting an elderly Jewish man with his sleeves rolled up high, arms extended over a plate, his bony hands clutching the banknotes and coins on the plate. The image was deliberately drawn to portray the greed of a Jewish moneylender, and typified the intense antisemitic sentiment prevalent in the Soviet Union at that time.

In the Middle Ages, there were specific reasons why Jews engaged in moneylending. As discrimination and persecution of Jews intensified in European society dominated by Christianity, the Christian church placed ever more restrictions on the scope of Jewish economic activity. The “popular trades” of the time—such as agriculture, handicrafts, and commerce—were all closed to Jews. Only moneylending, which involved charging interest and was regarded as a usurious activity contrary to social ethics—a “sinful” trade that Christians despised and were strictly forbidden from engaging in—was permitted to Jews. At the same time, because Jews were widely regarded as “foreigners” and “sojourners,” their right of residence in a given place was not inherent but conditional. The most important condition was to “buy one’s livelihood with money.” In some countries, Jews had to pay taxes far exceeding those of non-Jews in order to obtain the right of residence; they had to give special payments or donations to their “protectors” to avoid persecution; and when made scapegoats for natural and man-made disasters, Jews could only “pay to avert calamity.” Thus, money was not only the Jews’ “certificate of survival” but also the “insurance premium” for their personal safety. Under the rule that “life requires money,” money also became a “second God” in the minds of the Jewish people. From this, it is not difficult to understand their motivation to earn money by every possible means.

Political antisemitism. This was expressed primarily in the deprivation of Jews’ basic civil rights. In 1881, Tsar Alexander II of Russia was assassinated. During the investigation, the discovery that one of the suspects was a Jewish woman immediately gave rise to rumors, and the crime of murder was naturally transferred onto the Jewish people. Some Russian newspapers with antisemitic leanings seized the opportunity to sensationalize the story, ultimately triggering a wave of large-scale collective persecution of Jews. Jews in hundreds of towns and cities were attacked, resulting in casualties, with property either looted or destroyed. The Russian authorities also issued decrees explicitly prohibiting the construction of new housing inside or outside Jewish communities, permitting local rural residents to drive out “guilty Jews,” and restricting the number of Jewish students admitted to schools. The persecution plunged approximately 40% of Jews into poverty.

Racial antisemitism. In the 1930s, antisemitism reached its peak. According to the Nazi doctrine of “racial superiority,” Jews were an inferior race, and even those Jews who had accepted assimilation were regarded as “sources of racial contamination” that would cause the Aryan people to “degenerate.” The Nazis therefore determined that the fundamental solution to the “Jewish question” was the physical extermination of the Jewish people. From 1933 to 1945, the Nazis massacred more than six million Jews, accounting for more than one-third of the total Jewish population in the world at that time. Jews were stripped of even the most basic human right to survival and faced annihilation.

The pervasiveness, persistence, and violence of antisemitism caused the Jewish people immense suffering, plunging them into an abyss of misery. Yet antisemitism, as it grew ever more intense and added to Jewish suffering, also produced a “counter-effect”: it became a “reinforcing agent” that spurred the revival of Jewish national consciousness and a “catalyst” that accelerated the birth of Zionism.

Beyond its function of discriminating against Jews and isolating them from mainstream society, the ghetto inadvertently produced a remarkable “special effect”: it provided a relatively independent small world for the persecuted Jewish people. Within the ghetto, Jews could practice “self-governance”; births, deaths, marriages, and funerals could all be conducted according to Jewish traditional customs, while avoiding the risk of assimilation through intermarriage with other peoples. At the same time, the synagogues and schools in the ghetto not only provided places of religious worship, but also allowed Jews to continue studying the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, and other religious classics, and to give their descendants a Jewish education, thereby maintaining and transmitting the Jewish faith and culture. In the ghetto, Jews could also observe religious law undisturbed and celebrate their national holidays, ensuring the continuation of national religious customs. The ghetto thus also became, to a considerable degree, a “breakwater” against the tide of assimilation, playing an important role in helping Jews consolidate their religious faith and uphold their cultural traditions. In the discourse of the Hebrew Bible, all the worldly suffering experienced by the Jewish people—whether from foreign peoples, from within their own nation, or from nature—was ultimately attributed to the Jews’ own transgressions, that is, their rebellion against God. Sustained by this belief, the Jews of the ghetto, in the special environment of “isolation from the world,” practiced a spiritual elevation: enduring discrimination, persecution, and suffering, and through steadfast adherence to religious faith and national cultural traditions, sincerely repenting and awaiting God’s redemption.

At the end of the nineteenth century, a young Jewish man awakened by the pogroms and expulsions of Jews in Russia wrote: “Before this, I had no interest in my own bloodline. I considered myself a loyal son of Russia. For me, Russia was the reason for my existence and the air I breathed. Every new discovery by a Russian scientist, every new work of Russian classical literature, every Russian victory filled my heart with pride. I hoped to devote all my strength to the prosperity of my motherland and sincerely fulfill my duties. But they suddenly issued us an order of expulsion…”

After the eighteenth century, the spirit of European nationalism penetrated the minds of the Jewish people. Many Jews turned away from Orthodox Judaism and its way of life. Some even placed their hopes in converting to Christianity, seeking to completely shed their “Jewishness” and fully integrate into modern society dominated by Christianity. Yet antisemitism, like a specter, continued to appear in various forms, and while bringing great misfortune to the Jewish people, also became an important factor in awakening Jewish national consciousness. On one hand, the rejection and persecution of the Western world continuously prompted Jews to become more acutely aware of their ethnic identity, fundamentally shaking the so-called “sense of homeland” and rekindling a sense of estrangement and outsider status toward their places of residence. The inner confession of the young Russian Jew mentioned above reflects the painful struggle of Jews who had converted to Christianity between “hope and disappointment.”

On the other hand, even as the crematoria of the Nazi concentration camps belched their acrid smoke, people were astonished to find that tens of thousands of Jews who had harbored illusions were suddenly jolted awake. For those who had already been assimilated in particular, the Holocaust not only arrested their continuing indifference to their own Jewish identity, but rapidly brought the Jewish blood within them to a boil, recalling the Jewish genes that had been on the verge of disappearing into a foreign culture.

The Holocaust—a crime against humanity—not only won the Jewish people the sympathy and support of the entire world, but also prompted the Jewish people to unite as one, raise the banner of Zionism, and served as a powerful “shot in the arm” that accelerated the great cause of establishing a Jewish state.

Culture Forges a State

Dreyfus was a fully assimilated Jew born in France. After graduating from military school he joined the army, attaining the rank of captain in 1889 and beginning service at the French Army General Staff in 1892. In the autumn of 1894, French intelligence intercepted an unsigned letter addressed to the military attaché at the German Embassy in Paris, containing French military secrets. Based on “certain similarities” in handwriting, Henri, the head of the intelligence department who harbored antisemitic sentiments, identified Dreyfus as the suspect and had him arrested. In December 1894, a court found Dreyfus guilty of espionage, stripped him of his rank, and sentenced him. A series of subsequently discovered evidence proved that Dreyfus had been wrongly accused and framed. However, due to obstruction by antisemitic forces, it was not until 1906 that the judicial authorities retried the case and declared him innocent. This is the famous “Dreyfus Affair” that occurred in France, then considered the “most liberal and democratic” country in the world. This iron fact further demonstrated that assimilation could not serve as a shield protecting Jews from antisemitic persecution.

Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, had himself once been a staunch advocate of assimilation, believing that Jews could integrate into local society through baptism into Christianity and intermarriage with non-Jews. But the Dreyfus Affair struck like a bolt from the blue, jolting him into complete awakening and causing him to abandon his illusions, thereby bringing about the gestation and birth of a distinctive form of nationalism—Zionism.

In the eighteenth century, Jews in Europe gained “emancipation.” Yet the hope and joy of obtaining freedom and civil rights that this brought were intertwined with the disappointment and pain of continued exclusion and inability to integrate into local society even after assimilation, plunging the Jewish people into deep bewilderment.

In response, some Jewish intellectuals with modern sensibilities, represented by Herzl, engaged in deep reflection and exploration and reached the conclusion that the Jewish question was neither a religious problem nor a social problem, but a national problem. Jews living in diaspora were dependent on others and widely excluded, unable to become a normal nation. Only by living in a state of their own could the Jewish people become a normal nation. They argued that in ancient times the Jewish people had established a state in Palestine, but that Jewish state had subsequently perished. If the contemporary Jewish question were to be permanently resolved, rebuilding a Jewish state of their own was the only way out. This idea became Zionism, which later became the mainstream ideology of Israel.

The goal of Zionism was to establish a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. Driven by this powerful motivation, Jews from around the world responded to the call of the Zionist movement and, through immigrating to Palestine and establishing, building, and defending their own state, greatly promoted national identity and strengthened national unity.

The First Zionist Congress in 1897 adopted the Basel Program, putting forward a series of concrete action plans: systematically encouraging Jewish immigration to Palestine; undertaking the necessary work and efforts to obtain the support of various governments; and calling on Jews in all countries to unite and form close-knit organizations in accordance with the laws of their respective countries. This program marked the beginning of the Zionist movement as a unified, worldwide political movement, giving Jews around the world a new hope and goal.

The dissemination of Zionist ideas and their concrete implementation elevated Jewish national consciousness, raised national awareness, and strengthened national cohesion. As expressed in the lyrics of Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah” (The Hope), which give voice to the Jewish people’s aspirations: “The hope of two thousand years, to be a free people in our own land.” To realize the millennium-old dream of statehood and to live freely on their own soil, the early Zionists pressed forward one after another, undaunted by hardship and unafraid of sacrifice. In Hebrew, “aliyah” means “ascent” and specifically refers to Jewish immigration to Israel. Its meaning is that after Jews return from the diaspora to settle in the holy land of Palestine, both their spirit and body are “elevated.” Since the founding of the state in 1948, more than 3.3 million Jews from around the world have immigrated to Israel, accounting for more than one-third of the country’s total population. Moreover, the Jewish people’s love for their homeland is expressed most intensely in their struggle to defend national dignity and protect their country.

Masada is located to the west of the Dead Sea, an isolated hill on the Judean plateau rising 462 meters above the Dead Sea, with a flat plateau at its summit. After 103 BCE, the Jewish people gradually built a fortress on the summit, which had a water source and granary. In 66 CE, the Jewish people launched an uprising against Roman imperial rule and were suppressed by Roman forces. In 70 CE, after Roman forces captured Jerusalem, Jewish rebels retreated to the Masada fortress, where they were besieged for three years and refused to surrender. Finally, with their ammunition and provisions exhausted, they committed collective suicide. On the eve of Passover in 73 CE, the rebel leader Eleazar delivered a stirring speech: “We are the first to rise against Rome and the last to hold out. Thanks be to God for giving us this opportunity! When we die with dignity, we are free people. Let our wives die without being violated, and our children die without becoming slaves!… Our death is not due to lack of food, but from the very beginning, we have chosen to die for freedom rather than live as slaves!”

From that point on, the “Masada spirit” became a symbol of the Jewish people’s defense of national dignity and their indomitable character. Every year, new recruits of the Israel Defense Forces gather here and loudly proclaim the solemn oath: “Masada shall not fall again.”

After the founding of Israel, Jewish youth rushed to join combat units of the Israel Defense Forces to defend the world’s only Jewish-majority state. In wartime, joining the air force—and especially special forces—was the dream of many young people. The four Arab-Israeli wars produced countless “brave Jews.” When the state faced peril, they united against the common enemy and displayed a heroic spirit of fearlessness in the face of sacrifice. From the ace spy Eli Cohen, who operated deep within the Syrian leadership, to the soldiers who gave their lives in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, all are heroes in the hearts of Israeli Jews. In them, the indomitable “Masada spirit” found full expression.

In the subconscious of Israeli Jews, there exists another concept derived from the Battle of Masada: the “Masada complex.” It later became synonymous with being surrounded and isolated without hope of rescue, and has profoundly influenced the security outlook of Israeli Jews.

On June 7, 1981, fourteen Israeli warplanes took off and flew directly toward Iraq, arriving an hour and a half later at a nuclear reactor construction site on the outskirts of Baghdad. After a series of violent explosions, the main structure of the reactor was reduced to rubble. Afterward, the commander of the Israeli Air Force called Prime Minister Begin to report: “Every target hit, all returned safely, no losses.” Begin said only “Thank God” and went to sleep. While international opinion roundly condemned this Israeli “act of banditry,” 83% of Israelis expressed approval of this “quintessentially Israeli operation.”

Jewish Cultural Resilience and Israel 259

The historical experience of exclusion, expulsion, and massacre, combined with the precarious situation of being surrounded on all sides after the founding of the state, meant that the sense of crisis among Israeli Jews was not diminished by the establishment of a powerful state. After its founding, Israel came to regard itself as an “enlarged Masada fortress” surrounded by layer upon layer of hostile forces, facing four rings of encirclement: the first ring consisted of four Arab neighboring states (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon), which posed the greatest and most direct threat to its survival; the second ring comprised the other Arab states; the third ring was the Islamic world; and the fourth ring was the international anti-Israel and antisemitic forces. As a result, Israeli Jews generally felt they were living in an atmosphere of encirclement. None of them could ignore the fact that this world’s only Jewish state, bordered by the sea on two sides, was a tiny isolated island surrounded by the vast territories of Arab states. The “Masada complex” (also called the “siege mentality” or “island mentality”) of being trapped within ring upon ring of encirclement lingered and could not be dispelled, exerting a subtle and pervasive influence on the psychology of Israeli Jews. The intense sense of insecurity generated by the “Masada complex” and its derivatives determined the core of Israel’s security outlook: “security above all else” and ensuring “absolute security.” As founding Prime Minister Ben-Gurion put it: “I cannot help but see all things through ‘security glasses.’ Anything that is secure has everything. But if it is not secure, it has nothing.”

Guided by this security outlook, Israel is not only extremely sensitive to security issues but also tends to overreact. Its distrust of the outside world is intense, manifested prominently in going its own way and disregarding any criticism from the international community. There is also a powerful sense of self-reliance and “self-sufficiency”: when facing danger, Israel never complains or waits passively for others to act, but goes all out to save itself. Based on this distinctive character, Israelis are also called “cacti of the desert.”

Looking across all the Arab-Israeli wars, Israel has consistently pursued a military strategy of preemptive strikes and keeping the enemy beyond its borders. In responding to non-traditional security threats such as terrorist attacks and weapons of mass destruction, Israel has also steadfastly implemented its guideline of self-reliance.

On June 27, 1976, a passenger aircraft flying from Israel to France was hijacked during a stopover at Athens airport and diverted to Entebbe Airport in Uganda. The hijackers took 105 Jewish passengers on board as hostages, holding them in the Entebbe airport terminal and demanding that the Israeli government release 40 Palestinians in custody within a specified deadline, threatening to execute the hostages otherwise. The Israeli government quickly established a rescue team led by the military and formulated a plan for a long-range raid on Uganda. On the night of July 3, after flying thousands of kilometers through the airspace of several hostile countries, the Israeli rescue aircraft landed at Entebbe Airport immediately behind a British cargo plane. The rescue team rushed into the airport terminal and, while shouting “get down” in Hebrew, struck with lightning speed, killing the hijackers, rescuing all the hostages present, and safely returning them to Israel.

This was a classic case of a counter-hijacking operation. Through this action, the Israeli government declared to the entire world that it would never again entrust the fate of the Jewish people to any other person or state, but that it must—and was fully capable of—relying on its own strength to ensure the safety of its citizens. At the same time, this action once again proved that Jews were no longer the lonely exiles and persecuted victims of the diaspora, nor the lambs to the slaughter under the Nazi blade, because behind them stood a powerful state.

The Israeli government’s concrete actions in standing by its citizens in times of difficulty and danger—willing to take enormous risks to rescue them with all its might—constituted a vivid practice of patriotic education more powerful than any sermon.

One of the rescued hostages told then-President Herzog of Israel that the Entebbe operation had “finally made Jews whose lives were under threat understand that their homeland and their people were watching over them day and night.” She expressed from the heart: “Israel is a great country, and I love it deeply.”

A Crucible That Hasn’t Reached Full Heat

Contemporary Israel is a peculiar society that combines East and West, modernity and tradition, the secular and the religious, officially described by Israel as a “melting pot.” Israel’s founding Prime Minister Ben-Gurion once said: “We must melt down this hodgepodge of things and recast them in the mold of national spiritual revival.” Yet decades later, the “melting pot” seems to have produced far from ideal results. After the 1970s, as Arab-Israeli relations eased, the external security threats facing Israel relatively diminished. In an environment of basic national security and continuous economic development, contradictions among ethnic groups, between the religious and secular, and between different nationalities within Israel became increasingly prominent. The sense of Jewish ethnic identity began to fade, and identification with the state faced new tests. Israel gradually entered the “post-Zionist era.”

In 1996, Israeli media exposed a scandal: Magen David Adom, the state medical institution, had secretly discarded blood donated by Ethiopian Jewish immigrants and their descendants to prevent the transmission and spread of hepatitis B and HIV. This triggered a public uproar. Tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews gathered in front of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office to protest, throwing bricks and stones at police. Police used rubber bullets, water cannons, and tear gas to disperse the demonstrators. The clashes resulted in 41 police officers and 20 protesters being injured, and 200 cars belonging to Prime Minister’s Office employees were damaged. On January 18, 2012, more than 5,000 Ethiopian Jews held a protest march in Jerusalem against discrimination against their community and the unfair treatment they faced in various aspects of Israeli society. In early May 2015, after a video of an Ethiopian-Israeli soldier being beaten by police spread on social media, large-scale protests erupted in Tel Aviv and other cities against police discrimination and violence. Ethiopian protesters clashed violently with police, resulting in 30 injuries. This series of events essentially reflected the deepening and widening rift between Eastern and Western Jewish communities in Israeli society—a rift that proved difficult to bridge.

Nearly two thousand years of diaspora caused the Jewish people to differentiate into distinct ethnic communities. This is prominently expressed in the enormous differences in skin color, appearance, language, and lifestyle among Jews from different countries and regions. On the streets of Tel Aviv, one can see Jews of all kinds: fair-skinned, blue-eyed, blond-haired Jews of European and American origin; dark-haired, yellow-skinned Jews of Asian origin; and dark-skinned Ethiopian Jews. Alongside economic development and decades of demographic change and population movement, the differences in economic status, cultural attainment, and outlook among Israel’s various Jewish communities have continued to grow. They can be broadly divided into the following three major groups.

The first group is Western Jews (also called “Ashkenazim”), who have lived in Europe and America for nearly two thousand years. Influenced by geography, climate, environment, and lifestyle, their appearance is relatively similar to that of other European peoples. Many speak Yiddish—a Jewish language combining Hebrew and German, written in Hebrew script.

The second group is Eastern Jews—Jews who have lived in Asia and Africa for over a thousand years. Their ancestors can be traced back to the “Babylonian Captivity” of 586 BCE. Among the Jews taken captive to the Neo-Babylonian Kingdom, a considerable number did not return to Palestine but remained there, continuing to maintain their Jewish faith and cultural traditions. Over time, the descendants of these Jews gradually dispersed to Western Asian countries such as Iran and Yemen, with some going to Central Asia, India, and other places. In addition, some Jews had lived in Western Asia and Africa since ancient times, leading relatively stable lives and never migrating elsewhere. Some Jewish communities lived in relatively isolated areas with little contact with the outside world, and thus preserved some very ancient religious and cultural customs. For example, in Iraq and Yemen, the language, vocabulary, and unique religious rituals used by some Jews are said to have a history of two thousand years. In modern times, most Jews living in Western Asian countries no longer use the ancient Hebrew language but speak Arabic or other local languages. Long influenced by the local natural environment and climate, and through integration with local indigenous peoples, Eastern Jews also closely resemble local peoples in appearance—some look like Arabs, some like Indians, and there are also dark-skinned Ethiopian Jews who are indistinguishable from Africans.

The third group is the Sephardim. In the fifteenth century, the King of Spain ordered all Jews who refused to convert to be expelled from the country. It is said that approximately 200,000 Jews were expelled at that time; only a small number went to Italy and southern France, while most went to North African countries such as Morocco and Tunisia, with some entering the Ottoman Empire of that era. The descendants of these Jews are the Sephardim. Most are Orthodox Jews who strictly observe the various regulations and traditional customs of the law, including the rules governing the Sabbath—such as prohibitions on lighting fires, turning off lights, riding public buses, and engaging in various forms of work and entertainment.

The differences among the three major groups are expressed in every aspect of social, economic, and daily life. First, their motivations for immigration differ. Many Western Jews immigrated to Israel out of belief in Zionism. Driven by the idealistic goal of establishing a Jewish national homeland, they were willing to give up comfortable lives in Europe and America to come to the Middle East, with its harsher natural environment, to build and defend the world’s only Jewish state. Most Eastern Jews and Sephardim, by contrast, immigrated to Israel primarily for economic reasons—they lived in relative poverty in the Asian and African countries where they had previously resided, and coming to Israel could substantially improve their living conditions.

Second, there are disparities in social status. Because the early immigrants came mostly from Central and Eastern Europe, Western Jews naturally became the elite and leadership class of the state. For example, virtually all prime ministers have been Eastern European immigrants or of Eastern European descent. For a long time, Israel’s government, parliament, military, Jewish Agency, Histadrut, and other power structures were essentially controlled by Western Jews. Although Eastern Jews and Sephardim constitute the majority of the population, their representation in power structures has consistently been limited. In addition, the differences in educational attainment among the three groups are also very pronounced: the proportion of Eastern Jews and Sephardim receiving higher education is far lower than that of Western Jews, resulting in large disparities in employment and income. White-collar workers such as civil servants are mostly Western Jews, while blue-collar workers such as construction workers and cleaners are mostly Eastern Jews.

Third, there are differences in culture and outlook. As the pioneers of Zionism and the founders of the State of Israel, Western Jews established a modern, secular Western civilization system from the outset and attempted to “educate and reform” the “backward and primitive” Eastern Jews and Sephardim. Eastern Jews and Sephardim, for their part, strove vigorously to preserve their own religious and cultural traditions, and generally believed that Israel should build a pluralistic and equal Jewish society. They were deeply resentful of and resistant to the Western Jewish desire to “use a single mold to cast a Western society.”

The frictions and contradictions among the groups generated by these various differences have been unceasing. Eastern Jews and Sephardim have been deeply dissatisfied with their status as “second-class citizens”—politically powerless, economically disadvantaged, and culturally suppressed—and have expressed and vented this dissatisfaction through petitions, sit-ins, and protest demonstrations. In the 1970s, some young Eastern Jews even modeled themselves on Black Americans and formed a “Black Panther Party,” provoking trouble on the streets and confronting the government.

In order to narrow the differences among the groups and defuse the increasingly acute social contradictions, the Israeli government has adopted a series of measures in the economic, political, educational, and cultural spheres—such as implementing preferential policies for Eastern Jews and Sephardim in the areas of economics and education, and striving to preserve the cultural characteristics of different groups to varying degrees. However, social integration is a complex, tortuous, and lengthy systemic undertaking that cannot be achieved in the short term. Consequently, the status quo in which Western culture occupies a dominant and leading position will continue to exist for a considerable period of time.

In Vienna, Austria, Herzl, the founder of Zionism, one day happened to see on the street an elderly man dressed in the garb of an Orthodox Jewish believer standing in a corner weeping. Curious, he approached and asked what was wrong. The elderly man said through his tears: “Today is the Sabbath! My lifelong dream has been for my son to find an effective and beneficial way to earn a living. But when he finally found such a job in a factory, he was told that if he insisted on not working on the Sabbath—rather than taking the legally mandated Sunday off—he would have to give up the job. What am I to do? How am I to choose between my son’s future and our people’s Sabbath?” Herzl was moved upon hearing this and resolved to relieve his fellow Jews of this anguish of having nowhere to turn. He believed that as long as a Jewish state was established, problems of this kind could be resolved. But how could he have known that even now, in the State of Israel established decades ago, the “Sabbath dilemma” persists, reflecting the irreconcilable contradictions and conflicts between the secular and the religious in modern life.

In present-day Israel, approximately 20% of Jews strictly observe religious commandments, approximately 30% observe certain commandments according to personal preference and national tradition, and secular Jews who do not observe religious rules account for approximately 50%. This is already quite different from the earlier situation of complete unity of people and religion. According to the vision of Zionism’s founding father Herzl, the State of Israel should be a secular state with separation of religion and state. In Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), he wrote: “We shall keep our priests within the walls of their temples in the same way as we shall keep our professional army within the walls of their barracks… They must not interfere in the administration of the State which confers distinction upon them, else they will conjure up difficulties without and within.” Yet Herzl’s fears were unfortunately borne out. After Israel’s founding, the proportion of Orthodox Jews remained relatively stable, and Judaism has in practice attained the status of a “state religion.” Israel’s political and social life has been subject to serious interference by religious forces. The main reason for this situation is that Israel’s democratic system—and in particular the proportional representation system used in parliamentary elections—has provided Jewish religious forces with the opportunity to become a political force and to exercise influence disproportionate to their actual strength. The result is that the political representatives of Judaism—religious parties—can use their special position in the government to exert influence on domestic and foreign policy.

Jewish Cultural Resilience and Israel

In Israel, Orthodox Jews and some Eastern Jews and Sephardim from the lower strata of society are the loyal voters of religious parties, and their numbers and voting tendencies are relatively stable. Therefore, in every election, religious parties are able to win a considerable number of seats in parliament, making them a relatively stable political force in Israeli politics.

Under Israel’s Basic Law: The Knesset, any party that can win more than 50% of the seats in parliament (120 seats) may form a government. The basic political configuration of Israel is that parliamentary seats are too widely dispersed for any single party to form a government on its own, making it necessary to seek the support of other small parties to form a multi-party coalition government. Because religious parties have relatively stable political, economic, and religious platforms and parliamentary seats, and their political demands are easier to satisfy than those of other secular parties, Israeli governments have generally been willing to include religious parties. Moreover, in recent years the power of religious parties has continued to grow, giving them both the ability and the opportunity to directly intervene in politics—especially at moments when various forces are evenly matched and at an impasse, often playing the special role of tipping the scales with a small weight.

The disputes between Israeli religious parties and the government and other parties are mostly aimed at securing the interests of their own parties and voters. For example, the Shas party, whose religious schools have insufficient funding, strenuously lobbies for increased education appropriations. Disputes over religious issues frequently cause political instability. According to statistics, in the thirty years from 1949 to 1979, Israel experienced a total of 106 cabinet crises. Of these, 35 were triggered by religious issues—nearly one-third of the total.

Struggles over religious issues can even directly bring down a government. In late 1976, on a Friday afternoon, then-Prime Minister Rabin presided over a ceremony at an air force base to receive a batch of new American-made fighter jets from the United States. Because the sun had set and the Sabbath had begun, religious parties used the pretext of “desecrating the Sabbath” to introduce a vote of no confidence against the government in parliament, which actually forced the Rabin government to resign. This illustrates that the role of religious parties in Israeli political life should by no means be underestimated.

In the sphere of social life, the contradictions between religious forces and secular forces are very prominent over issues such as whether Orthodox Jews should work and serve in the military, and the Sabbath. In Israel, military service is the obligation of all citizens; all eligible young men and women who reach the age of 18 must serve in the Israel Defense Forces for two to three years. Yet for a long time, ultra-Orthodox Jews have neither worked nor agreed to serve in the military, and have therefore been regarded by secular forces as “parasites” living entirely off taxpayers’ money, drawing widespread dissatisfaction from all sectors of society. The Israeli government has attempted to use legislation and other means to abolish the

Jewish Cultural Resilience and Israel


Israeli Orthodox Jews praying at the Western Wall—the remains of the First Temple—privilege of exemption from military service for Orthodox Jews, but has repeatedly encountered fierce resistance. On March 2, 2014, to protest the Law on the Conscription of Yeshiva Students that was about to be put to a vote in the Israeli parliament, hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox believers took to the streets of Jerusalem in protest, causing severe traffic congestion on the city’s main thoroughfares.

On May 7, 2017, the Israeli parliament voted to pass the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People (abbreviated as the “Nation-State Law”), which contained two important provisions: the State of Israel is the national homeland of the Jewish people, and only the Jewish people have the right to exercise national self-determination; the official language of the State of Israel is Hebrew, while Arabic has a special status. The law triggered a public uproar within Israel.

The law established for the first time in legislative form that the State of Israel has a “Jewish character,” which means that the democratic nature of the state as established in Israel’s Declaration of Independence would be undermined. Since the founding of the state, Arabic has been one of Israel’s official languages and, together with Hebrew, a language of parliament. The law explicitly downgraded Arabic to a language with “special status,” carrying an obvious discriminatory character. The law was strongly opposed by Arab citizens of Israel, who condemned it as having “the sole purpose of enabling the majority people to impose a dictatorship over the minority, and of legally reducing Arabs to second-class citizens.”

The promulgation of the law and the reactions it provoked reflect the deep-rooted ethnic contradictions within Israel. Arab citizens of Israel—Arabs living within Israel who hold Israeli citizenship—are an extremely distinctive group within Israeli society. After Israel was founded in 1948 and the First Arab-Israeli War broke out, large numbers of Arabs who had been living in Palestine fled their homes and became displaced. But at the same time, some remained. When the First Arab-Israeli War ended in 1949, only 156,000 of the original 750,000 Arabs in Israel remained, accounting for 11% of Israel’s total population at the time. They subsequently all obtained Israeli citizenship. Today, the Arab citizen population of Israel has reached more than 1.9 million, accounting for approximately 21% of Israel’s total population.

As a minority within Israel, Arab citizens of Israel face various restrictions on their economic, social, and political status. Economically, the Israeli government has consistently pursued a guideline of prioritizing the development of the Jewish economy and has adopted discriminatory policies toward Arabs, expressed primarily as: arbitrarily confiscating or requisitioning Arab land based on national security needs; and in municipal construction and infrastructure investment, tilting resources toward towns and cities with Jewish populations. Because their land has been confiscated, Arabs have had to work for Jews, primarily in “lower-tier industries” such as construction and services. In addition, the Israeli government has also adopted a divide-and-rule policy toward Arabs, collectively calling them “non-Jews” and distinguishing them by religious belief or geographic region. Israeli law stipulates that all citizens must complete military service in order to enjoy economic rights such as social welfare, yet Arab citizens of Israel do not have the right to serve in the military and therefore cannot receive equal treatment in employment, university admission, health insurance, social security, and other areas.

In terms of social life, due to differences in religion, language, customs, psychology, and history between the Arab and Jewish peoples, Arab citizens of Israel tend to live within their own small circles. They have their own residential areas, schools, commercial service systems, and religious institutions, and largely maintain the traditional way of life of their own people. They go to work for Jews during the day and return to their own world at night—speaking Arabic, attending prayers, observing Islamic holidays, listening to broadcasts from neighboring Arab countries, or watching Arabic-language programs on Israeli television. In addition, due to the long-standing Arab-Israeli confrontation, Jews and Arab citizens of Israel maintain a strong mutual wariness. The Israeli government has even regarded them as a “fifth column” posing a potential threat to Israeli security, and has long subjected Arab residential areas, mosques, and other sites to “special management,” restricting their freedom of movement.

Politically, Arab citizens of Israel, as citizens of the State of Israel, possess the right to vote. Under Israel’s proportional representation system, Arabs—who constitute more than one-fifth of Israel’s total population—should hold more than 20 seats in parliament, but their actual seats fall far short of this. The reasons are: first, although Arab citizens have long been law-abiding, they have still been unable to obtain equal treatment in political, social, and economic matters, and many therefore harbor a sense of resistance toward political participation; second, Arab votes are dispersed, preventing many small parties from entering parliament; and third, Arab parties have never had the opportunity to join a coalition government. As a result, Arab political influence is very limited.

At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the influence of Arab citizens of Israel on Israeli political life—and on elections in particular—increased somewhat, and their votes even became at one point a decisive factor in whether the Labor Party could come to power. In April 1996, the Labor government led by Peres, under pressure from the election campaign, launched large-scale bombing of Lebanon that caused heavy civilian casualties. Many enraged Arab citizens of Israel refused to vote, causing Peres to lose the June election of that year by a narrow margin. In the 1999 direct election for prime minister, then-Labor Party leader Barak won by an overwhelming margin after receiving the support of 95.8% of Arab voters.

The introduction of the 2017 Nation-State Law dealt a powerful blow to Arab citizens of Israel, prompting them to “band together for warmth” in order to raise their political status. In the three consecutive parliamentary elections held between April 2019 and March 2020, Arab parties ran jointly and, aided by high voter turnout among Arab voters, leaped to become the third-largest party in parliament, greatly elevating their standing in Israeli politics and increasing their leverage for political participation—thereby triggering alarm among Israel’s right-wing forces. Right-wing camp leader and Prime Minister Netanyahu repeatedly warned his rival, Blue and White party leader Gantz, that he must under no circumstances form a coalition government with Arab parties, as doing so would create “a government of terrorists.”

After enduring the hardships of a thousand years of diaspora, the Jewish people then struggled for more than a century and finally realized the dream of statehood, building Israel into a regional power that cannot be taken lightly. Yet the reality that Israel’s “external threats” have not yet been eliminated while its “internal troubles” are growing day by day shows that the path to achieving national security, social stability, and national rejuvenation remains long.

In 2017, Oxford University Press published a book titled How Long Will Israel Survive? The Threat from Within. The book describes in detail the increasingly serious social contradictions in contemporary Israel and cites a warning from former Mossad Director Pardo that “Israel faces the risk of civil war.” Although this warning may be somewhat alarmist, it illuminates the historical trajectory and seemingly paradoxical historical law by which the Jewish people—under the pressure of early antisemitism—not only avoided assimilation and extinction but actually strengthened national cohesion. It simultaneously hints at the dangerous path that the State of Israel, though it may not be conquered by powerful external enemies, could ultimately take toward fragmentation due to “brothers at each other’s throats”—the continuous intensification of internal contradictions—sounding the alarm for the Jewish people.

References

1 Xu Xin and Ling Jiyao, eds., Jewish Encyclopedia, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 1998 edition. 10 Xu Xiangqun and Yu Chongjian, eds., The Third Temple: The Rise of Israel, Shanghai Far East Publishers, 1994 edition. 2 Theodor Herzl (Austria), translated by Xiao Xian, Der Judenstaat, Commercial Press, 1993 edition. 11 Kemal H. Karpat (USA), ed., translated by Chen Hefeng et al., Political and Social Thought in the Contemporary Middle East, China Social Sciences Press, 1992 edition. 3 Yang Mansu, ed., Israel: An Enigmatic State, World Affairs Press, 1992 edition. 12 Liu Hongyi, The Jewish Spirit, Nanjing University Press, 1995 edition. 4 Zhuo Xinping, Understanding Religion, Social Sciences Academic Press, 1999 edition. 13 Yang Haocheng and Zhu Kerou, eds., A Historical Exploration of Contemporary Middle East Hot-Button Issues: Religion and Secularism, People’s Publishing House, 2000 edition. 5 Pan Guang, Chen Zhaonan, and Yu Jianhua, Jewish Civilization, China Social Sciences Press, 1999 edition. 14 Zhang Qianhong, Predicament and Rebirth: The Modernization of Jewish Culture, Jiangsu People’s Publishing House, 2003 edition. 6 Ren Jiyu, ed., Dictionary of Religion, Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House, 1985 edition. 15 Yan Ruisong, ed., Israeli Politics, Northwest University Press, 1995 edition. 7 The Bible, published and distributed by the Three-Self Patriotic Movement Committee of the Protestant Churches of China and the China Christian Council, 2002. 16 Nadav Safran (USA), translated by the History Department Translation Group of Peking University, Israel: The Embattled Ally, Beijing People’s Publishing House, 1973 edition. 8 Abba Eban (Israel), translated by Yan Ruisong, My People: The Story of the Jews, China Social Sciences Press, 1992 edition. 9 Richard Nixon (USA), translated by You Biao et al., Leaders, World Affairs Press, 1983 edition.

  1. Xu Xiangqun, Cacti of the Desert: Sketches of the Jewish People, Xinhua Publishing House, 1998 edition.
  2. Xu Xin, An Analysis of Antisemitism, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, 1996 edition.
  3. Abraham Cohen (USA), translated by Gai Sun, Everyman’s Talmud, Shandong University Press, 1998 edition.
  4. Haim Herzog (Israel), translated by Fan Yuchen and Fan Shilei, The Arab-Israeli Wars, China Social Sciences Press, 1995 edition.
  5. Gregg Carlstrom, How Long Will Israel Survive? The Threat from Within, Oxford University Press, 2017.
  6. Neta Oren, Israel’s National Identity: The Changing Ethos of Conflict, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., USA, 2019.
  7. Gu Jun, The Incredible Jewish People, Zhende Books Co., Ltd., 2017 edition.
  8. Xiao Xian, A History of Israel, China Books Press, 2016 edition.
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