By Yair Sheleg   /21/12/08

Anyone who is accustomed to thinking of religious Zionism as a public that is totally extremist - both with respect to politics and religion - should have been in Givat Shmuel last Tuesday. At the initiative of Ne'emanei Torah Va'avodah, one of the liberal religious-Zionist organizations, a stormy discussion was held there about the path of the Bnei Akiva youth movement.

Furious parents came from all over the central region of the country to attack the secretary general of the movement, Rabbi Binyamin Nachteiler, for what they see as Bnei Akiva's drift toward extremism. Again and again, the examples came up: increasing separation between the sexes in national activities organized by the movement; branches that hold entirely separate activities; girls being prohibited from singing or dancing in the presence of boys, and only being permitted to dance in the dark, wearing phosphorescent gloves that show what they are doing; a group leader removing his glasses when he comes to movement activities so that he will not "sin" by seeing girls; and so on.

Nachteiler explained that the separation of sexes does not derive from a movement-wide policy, but rather from rules initiated by members themselves, in some branches, and therefore these rules should be taken into consideration in countrywide activities as well. The enraged parents interrupted him repeatedly.
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This event reflects two significant processes in religious Zionism. On one hand, it underlines the "optical illusion" that a move toward extremism characterizes the entire public in question. At least with respect to religious observance, it is completely clear that the silent majority is far from adopting an increasingly ultra-Orthodox approach. A survey carried out by Dr. Asher Cohen of Bar-Ilan University already showed a few years ago that only 9 percent of religious Zionists living inside the Green Line (the pre-Six Day War border) define themselves as "ultra-Orthodox national religious" (hardalim); 20 percent define themselves as "liberal"; and the rest say they are "religious," but their lifestyle is usually closer to that of the liberals than to the ultra-Orthodox national-religious way of life. The optical illusion derives not only from the vociferousness of the minority, but also from the fact that while the liberal religious consciously "spread themselves" throughout all areas of life, including the realm of business, the ultra-Orthodox national religious are more visible in the organized frameworks of religious Zionism - the education system and the religious political parties - out of a strong desire to influence the society around them.

More than by anything else, this phenomenon was emphasized by the words of Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, the head of the hesder yeshiva (combining religious study and military service) in Petah Tikva, who, at the meeting at Givat Shmuel, called upon the liberal religious to stop complaining and become involved in the religious education system.

This message has begun to have an effect in recent years and it is indicative of the second significant process that religious Zionism is undergoing. For many years the ultra-Orthodox national religious had a monopoly on challenging the religious mainstream. It was they who split the camp and set up frameworks tending to be more and more ultra-Orthodox. The moderates protested and sometimes succeeded in their struggles, but generally they gave in and sent their children to schools run by the ultra-Orthodox national religious. Moreover, at home they carried on with their regular life, but had a hard time facing children who wanted a clearer direction and were getting closer to the ultra-Orthodox national-religious path.

A revolutionary change has begun to occur: The liberals have also launched an offensive of their own. They, too, have begun to establish schools that have seceded from the standard religious educational network.

Institutions like the Shalom Hartman Institute's high school and the Pelech School for Girls, both in Jerusalem, have represented the liberal line for many years now. Recently, they have begun to serve as models for similar institutions around the country. The feminist organization Kolech, which is currently marking 10 years since its establishment, has also made its contribution by not hesitating to come out against the religious mainstream.

In the end, the split on the left - and not only the split on the right - has crossed the lines of politics and of the religious education system.

In recent years the challenge has reached as far as the synagogues, which had been considered the last bastion of coexistence between the ultra-Orthodox national religious and the liberals. Now new prayer quorums are being established, which are trying to stretch the limits of religious feminism to the maximum under rabbinical law, including Torah services for women, women cantors (at least for some of the service) and so on. In effect, with the establishment of these new congregations the process of the split in religious Zionism has reached completion. It is now divided into separate camps within the organized systems, whether political, educational or religious.

Only in Bnei Akiva are the two camps still in frequent contact, because everyone has an attachment to it and everyone wants to shape its path. The question is whether the challenge directed at the secretary general of the movement portends that eventually this framework, too, will split.