Eliezer Schweid on the Religious-Secular Rift

Among the many Israeli ideologues and theoreticians that have examined the conflict between religious and secular Jews in Israel perhaps no one has deliberated about the issue more thoughtfully and incisively than Eliezer Schweid, a Professor Emeritus at Hebrew University and Distinguished Professor of Jewish Though at the Schechter Institute. Much of his voluminous writings relate either directly or indirectly to this thorny and intractable problem.

Due to the complexity of Schweid’s treatment, a comprehensive analysis of his understanding of the rift and his prescription regarding it is beyond the confines of this article. However, I would like to examine briefly one aspect of his analysis: the relationship between secular Zionism and religion. Indeed, at the center of Schweid’s thought is a reexamination of the seemingly ambivalent or even antagonistic attitude of cultural Zionism to religion.

Eliezer Schweid argues that secular Zionism must embrace a more positive orientation to religious beliefs and even religious rituals. Indeed, although he is considered (and considers himself) as a secular Zionist, Schweid believes that secular cultural Zionism must assimilate religious beliefs and practices.

Drawing from the existential tradition, Eliezer Schweid depicts the modern person, and in particular the modern secular Jew, as suffering from loneliness and existential angst. In modernity, and even more so in post-modernity, human beings are groping unsuccessfully for personal identity and meaning. Their debilitating sense of loneliness, Schweid claims, derives from the disintegration of the webs of relationships that have traditionally encompassed the human being such as family, nationality, society and its cultural and religious moorings. Without the anchors of these social, cultural and spiritual frameworks, the human being is lost in his quest for significance and a sense of purpose.

Thus, Eliezer Schweid argues that the question the modern Jew is grappling with cannot be answered by focusing exclusively on the individual and his or her self-fulfillment and individual development. While beginning with the existential angst of the lonely individual, he emphasizes the importance of the human being’s national, cultural and even religious roots. The remedy for the modern Jewish form of loneliness is therefore a return [ teshuvah] to the family, nation, culture and God. In Schweid’s formulation one can only answer the question “whom am I?” by addressing the question “To whom do I belong?” and “whence have I come?” Thus, the secular Jew can only orient himself or herself in the present by representing the past so that it directs the future.

For Eliezer Schweid, the return is best initiated by the most accessible set of relationships, namely the family. More specifically, the turn from a concern with personal loneliness to an interest in the past is generally a product of parenting and educating children. Facing the responsibility and challenge of educating his or her children, the secular Jew discovers that he or she is part of a web of relationships. The secular Jew realizes that bequeathing something to his or her child demands receiving it from his or her past and people. This first step should lead to a complete reorientation regarding the relationship to the cultural and national past.

But for Eliezer Schweid the return of the secular Jew cannot stop with an affirmation of and engagement with his or her culture, history and nation. It must also lead to a return to God. In this sense, Schweid critics the prevalent form of cultural Zionism as it has manifest itself since the times of Ahad Haam. In particular, he focuses on two problems that plague the cultural understanding of Zionism and Judaism.

1. Cultural Zionism, estranged from religious conviction, was compelled to reinterpret the tradition in a secular fashion. It produced an understanding of Judaism whereby only ethical, nationalistic and cultural elements remained. Religion, however, was never tangential to the tradition as the ethical, nationalistic and cultural content of Judaism was always indivisibly linked with religion. Therefore their secular interpretation of Judaism expunged central elements from the tradition and perverted its true character.

2. The excising of religion from the tradition by cultural Zionists neutralized its obligatory nature. Secular Jews are seeking out a source of absolute normativity. They must therefore ground their cultural activity in firmer ground, such as religious belief and practice. Consequently, for Eliezer Schweid, the journey of the secular Jew for meaningful personal identity and communal attachment must lead to a reorientation regarding religion.

It should be stressed that Schweid’s understanding of secular Jewish identity as requiring religious belief and practice does not entail secular Judaism accepting the values and practices of Orthodoxy. He envisions a humanistic and nationalistic religion that is compatible with the worldview of cultural Zionism. However, Eliezer Schweid believes that this reorientation of secular-cultural Zionism (as well as a reorientation that he outlines for religious Zionism) is essential for grappling with the problem of the secular-religious rift in Israel society.

Dr. Ari Ackerman is a lecturer in Jewish Education and Jewish Thought at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies.