Religion and Nationalism in Israel: Forming and Sustaining the Ties that Bind

The relationship between religious and political institutions, or religious and national loyalties, is an eternally contested one. The justification for the creation of state of Israel was the Zionist argument that the Holocaust demonstrated that only a Jewish state could ensure the survival of the Jewish people. Moreover, at the founding in 1948, Jewish religious and political elites made strategic choices to link their religion with political institutions. This paper will outline the founding connections between religion and national identity and will ask whether those linkages remain strong some sixty years later for Jewish citizens as well as for religious minorities. To what degree does being a member of either a religious majority or minority affect the connection between religion and nationalism? We will use public opinion data from the 2003 International Social Science Programme (National Identity II) and from the 2013 Israel Democracy Index poll to measure generic nationalism, and we will examine the second survey to analyze views of the settlements. We hypothesize that multiple regression will find that practicing Judaism makes one more likely to support generic nationalism and the settlements, while belonging to a religious minority will reduce levels of nationalism and support for these communities. We will conclude that the contemporary connections between religion and nationalism are very much a product of the original fusion of the Israeli state and nationalism.