Israel: Secularizing, But Not Secular
About 15 years ago, the late writer and journalist Israel Segal, who left the ultra-Orthodox world at a young age, provided a pessimistic account of a secular defeat in a culture war: “In my view, the full-scale war has already ended in defeat for the secular people. . . . e are living under a regime of occupation imposed by a haredi (ultra-Orthodox) minority and this occupation is growing more intensive”. For many secularists like Segal, and for good reasons, secularization seems remote from Israeli reality. The entrenched Orthodox monopoly over significant aspects of public and private lives, the discrimination against non-Orthodox Jewish groups, inequality of women are just a few significant reasons to doubt the possibly of secularization in Israel. Secularists remain a minority and surveys indicates that more Jewish Israelis described themselves as...