Religious Ideology That Attempts to Ease the Conflict between Religion and State: An Analysis of the Teachings of Two Leading Religious-Zionist Rabbis in the State of Israel

This essay aims to highlight the contribution of two outstanding religious leaders towards moderating the religious and political conflict in a society driven by a highly complex identity. In today's Western-liberal world, there is a growing tendency to exclude religious language from the political discourse. This article argues for the opposite view. In a society divided into two camps, religious and secular, a significant contribution towards easing the tensions can be made through the efforts of religious authorities who are highly influential in their communities, are open to modern realities, and believe that it is possible to interpret classical religious texts in a way that strives to establish harmony, or at least to ease tensions, between religion and the institutions of the state. In order to examine this thesis, this essay explores the teachings of two very significant figures, both in terms of their thought and legal decisions, among the religious-Zionist rabbis in Israel: Rabbi Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel (born Jerusalem, 1880; died Jerusalem, 1953), the first Sephardi (oriental) chief rabbi after the establishment of the State of Israel, and his disciple, Rabbi Hayyim David Halevi (born Jerusalem 1924; died Tel-Aviv 1998), the Sephardi chief rabbi of Tel-Aviv from the 1970s to the 1990s.