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Secular Among the Religious
By Assaf Wunsch

Strange place it is, the Geological Survey of Israel. Located almost at the heart of the ultra-orthodox Geula neighborhood in Jerusalem, it is certainly an oddity in its environment: a governmental office with secular characteristics, in line with Yeshivas, Glatt Kosher restaurants, and shoe stores that display every shade of black known to man. I sometimes wonder whether the people who walk by “The Survey’s” dull entrance know that it is full of people that truly believe the world is older than 5767 years and actually work very hard trying to prove it. One of these people is me. On my five-minute walk from the bus station to work, I usually find that I am the only non-orthodox person on the street, save for a random soldier on his way to the Shneller Army Base—a slightly more noticeable ironic island in the heart of Geula.

As a non-orthodox person, this irony was reality for me for the four and a half years of my life in which I served in the Israeli army, a year and a half more than the mandatory (is it really?) three years. And my service didn’t end there. The familiar glee that accompanies receiving new mail is always stained with the fear of receiving a brown envelope that orders you to post for “the service after the service”—reserve duty.

During summer 2006, when the Second Lebanon War broke out, I watched my fellow students get drafted one after the other, and it was only a matter of time for me. Luckily, I wasn’t recruited. Yet in the three and a half years since my return to civilian life I’ve been called twice, including missing the whole last month of spring semester of my first year at university. The third time is planned for this May (2007), 25 more days in the army. I don’t know how many among the residents of Geula ever had to leave their families, their work, or their studies and physically guard the “Holy Land,” but I can take a good guess. Reading those last lines out loud naturally make me raise my voice, because yes, it makes me angry. It makes me angry that there is a whole sector that still holds on to the faint argument of “Lamut Be’Ohala Shel Torah”—“To die in the tent of Torah,” referring the way Yeshiva students “sacrifice” their lives praying for the ones who physically sacrifice their lives in the military. And why are Yeshiva students who refuse to work, who “dedicate most of their energy and time for studying the Torah, an activity which its importance is recognized by the State” (I’m not kidding, that’s an exact translation from a governmental site, http://www.israel.gov.il/FirstGov/TopNav/Audience/AYeshivaStudents/), eligible for income support (“Havtakhat Hakhnasa”) from the government? Why don’t I, a secular student, deserve such support? I dedicate most of my energy and time to studying as well, and I would have dedicated much more, had there been a nice governmental salary paid to me for no job done.

No, I am not a religious man. Far from it. True, I was circumcised when I was eight days old, I read from the Torah at my Bar Mitzvah when I was 13 years old, and broke the glass on my wedding day, but I grew up in a completely secular environment. My parents are secular, my grandparents are secular. In my house we used to celebrate the “important” Jewish holidays, i.e. the ones that meant a break from school, although Shavuot, for instance, wasn’t more than an excuse to eat more cheesecake than usual. Fasting was limited to the one primary day in Tishrei, but even then the hunger was a torture that should be overcome by reading or solving crossword puzzles—not considering past sins and asking for forgiveness.

As a secular Jew, I seem to be a part of the majority of Jews in this country, although one can argue what “secular” really means, because most people who define themselves as secular still perform a Jewish religious act here and there or on a regular basis. My feeling is that many secular Jews in Israel define themselves as such because the alternative to that is to be identified with a very strict form of Judaism, which is considered legally to be the right kind of Judaism. Legally, and that’s not my feeling or hunch but a true fact, a marriage ceremony performed by a Reform or Conservative rabbi, is not considered a Jewish ceremony, and thus the marriage is not considered Jewish. I know best because I was wed by a Conservative Rabbi, and the State of Israel refuses to acknowledge my marriage as Jewish. A “goy” (non-Jew) who wants to convert to Judaism and be recognized as Jewish by the State of Israel has to do it the ultra-Orthodox way. Strangely enough, in order to make “aliya,” all it takes is for one is to show his parents’ or grandparents’ ketuba (Jewish marriage contract) and a letter from a rabbi to prove his Judaism. Where am I going with that? I don’t know, it just makes me confused, because legally I can either be Jewish or not. How do I define myself? It doesn’t matter, it’s not for me to decide.

I could go on about many more things that bother me as a non-religious person, many inequalities and constraints that apply to me as a secular Jew, constraints that derive from the Jewish definition of Israel. Maybe the solution to my problems is to find a country that is not defined as such. It should not be so hard to find. But then again, is it really that bad for me here as a non-religious person? I can listen to my outrageous alternative rock music whenever I choose to, I can play tennis with no shirt on, I can kiss my wife in the middle of the street (and right on the mouth, too!)—I mean, G-d forbid, this is not Iran! True, I could do these things in every Western country. Yet where am I going to find a place with such a peaceful weekend?