THE UNJEWISH STATE: The Politics of Jewish Identity in Israel by Akiva Orr

Description

Published 1983 by Ithaca Press, London. 246 pages. In very good condition. Pencil marks on two pages.

From the Preface:
"This book describes the collapse of a cultural identity. It deals with the numerous attempts - and failures - over the last thirty years to provide a secular definition of Jewish identity in Israel.

The state of Israel is a secular state: its law, its legislative assembly (the Knesset), and the majority of its population are non-religious. This is hardly surprising as Israel came into existence due to the efforts of a secular political movement motivated by non-religious nationalism, namely, political Zionism. In its early days Zionism came into fierce conflict with religious Jewry. The Zionists rejected religious submissiveness; the religious saw the atheist attempt to create a secular Jewish state as blasphemy. Yet, a mere decade after Israel was established, the atheist majority in the Knesset accepted religion as the criterion for defining secular Jewish ethnicity, and imposed this definition - by law - on a Jewish population 80% of which is non-religious.

Chapters:
1. Founding the Jewish State.
2. Who is a Jew in the Jewish state?
3. Daniel in the Zionist Den.
4. Conscience Unsacrificed.
5. Conscience Sacrificed.
6. Religion in Turmoil.
7. The Hebrew-Speaking Gentiles.
8. Conclusion.

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