Secular Israelis [Hiloni]
Secular Israelis [Hiloni] are more concerned with freedom from religion than freedom of religion. So long as religious institutions continue to affect but a few milestones – birth, marriage and death – in the life of the average Israeli Jew, then they are tolerable. Jewishness is either secularism, devoid of Jewish content, or radical and ritualized ultra-Orthodoxy.
Secular Israelis are mostly highly educated and make up a major part of the country's workforce. Ultra-Orthodox Israelis, however, do not view traditional core subjects like Math and English as necessities and instead prioritize religious study. As such, they are not qualified in many fields and represent a far smaller portion of the workforce.
The “Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty” describes the country as a “Jewish and democratic state.” The “2018 Basic Law: Israel – The Nation State of the Jewish People” determines, according to the government, that “the Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people; the State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish People, in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination; and exercising the right to national selfdetermination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish People.”
According to the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) classification system (2021 data), approximately 73.8 percent of the population is Jewish, 18 percent Muslim, 1.9 percent Christian, and 1.6 percent Druze. The remaining 5 percent consists of those the CBS classifies as “other.” This category includes those who identify as Jewish but do not satisfy the Orthodox Jewish definition of “Jewish” that the government uses for civil procedures and applies to many immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
According to the annual religion and state poll conducted in August 2022 by religious freedom NGO Hiddush, 58 percent of Jewish citizens do not affiliate with any religious group, 20 percent are “Zionist Orthodox,” 11 percent “ultra-Orthodox,” 5 percent “Reform,” 4 percent “Conservative,” and 2 percent “national Orthodox.”
Tension continued between the ultra-Orthodox community and other citizens, including concerns related to service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), housing, public transportation, participation in the workforce, and adherence to COVID-19 regulations. In its annual Israel Religion and State Index poll of 800 adult Jews conducted in July and published in September 2022, the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Hiddush reported that 64 percent of respondents identified as either “secular” (47 percent) or “traditional - not-religious” (17 percent) with regard to public policies on religion and the state, results that were consistent with its polling in recent years.
Donniel Hartman notes : "In the media and popular discourse, Israeli Jews have long been divided into the categories of “secular” and “religious,” or, in Hebrew, hiloni and dati. As opposed to North America, where denominationalism and diversity of Jewish beliefs and affiliations abound, Jewish identity in Israel is often perceived to be flat and dichotomous. In the minds of many Israelis, Judaism as a religion is synonymous with Orthodoxy, which generates an all-or-nothing approach to Jewish life that has served both camps well. The perception of Judaism as extreme and uncompromising has reinforced the secular rejection of religion, whereas the belittlement of secularism as Jewishly impoverished has permitted the Orthodox to perpetuate their cherished myth of being the sole carriers of authentic Judaism within the Jewish state."
The secular Jewish Hiloni tribe constitutes 30–35 percent of Israel’s Jewish majority. Its members do not reject Judaism outright but take a more subtle position. As negative stereotypes of Sephardim, propagated by the Ashkenazi elite, gradually declined, intermarriage between the two groups became common. This mingling of Jewish ethnic groups (edot) exposed secular Ashkenazim to aspects of Jewish ritual that had often been absent from their prior way of life. The major characteristic of this tribe lies in the fact that they do not see Orthodoxy as the primary carrier of Jewish religious identity or its most authentic representative. Secular Judaism, while having roots in the past, is fundamentally a new Jewish identity. For this tribe, the State of Israel, its land, culture and values, are the foundations of this new Jewish life, replacing the synagogue, religious belief and halachic observance.
The Israeli Hiloni tribe, which for many years dominated Israel’s cultural elite, does not want to see itself within Jewish categories. If, for the Secular Jewish tribe, Israeliness imbues the Jewish tradition with new meaning, for Secular Israelis it serves to replace Judaism altogether. This tribe prefers to refer to itself as Israeli as distinct from Jewish. Secular Israelis do not feel compelled by halachic obligation; unlike Secular Jews, they feel no need or inclination to participate in ritual either. This is a tribe devoid of all sentimentality toward Jewish life.
The Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) released a poll on 04 January 2023 showing that 70 percent of secular Jews in Israel are worried about preserving their way of life under Benjamin Netanyahu's new government, deemed the most religious and right-wing in the country's history. The survey, conducted by the Viterbi Center for the Study of Public Opinion and Politics, also found that about 75 percent of respondents believe that the influence of the ultra-Orthodox community on Israeli politics is very large or quite large compared to their share of the population. On the other hand, 57 percent of respondents said that the influence of women and the LGBTQ+ community on Israeli politics is lower than their representation in the country's population.
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