Religion in the Public Sphere: Jews Among the Nations

The question of dealing with religion in the public sphere may not be Jewish in the same way that it is a modern or contemporary question because of the differences between Judaism, certainly in its calssical form, from christiantiy. Dealing with the issue in Israel requires an understanding of this and of the fact that Israelis and others have been misled for years in thinking that there are only two categories of Jews in the country, a secular majority and a religious minority, when in fact, in terms of actual belief and practice, the majority of the Israeli population is traditional and only minorities on either end of the spectrum are orthodox or secular. This makes the question of religion in the public sphere a pragmatic one that needs to be answered in light of Israeli reality as well as the different expectations of the various population groupings. With regard to the diaspora, the struggle today is between Israel and American Jewry, almost entirely excluding the rest of the diaspora in Europe and elsewhere whose position on the issue is more like that of Israeli Jews but who are slowly acquiring the problems of American Jews. Those pragmatic solutions will have to involve both Jewish law and contemporary Jewish experience which will need to be reconciled so as to enable Jews with differing intensely held positions to live together as parts of one people.