A People Who Live Apart: Jewish Identity and the Future of Israel

Since its establishment in 1948, the State of Israel has been torn by a deeply rooted conflict between secular and religious Jews. Although this internal culture war has not received the publicity of Israel’s violent conflicts with its Arab neighbours, it is every bit as serious. It concerns the very nature and identity of the Jewish state, and it pits an Orthodox minority who envisions Israel as a religiously conservative theocracy against Jewish secularists who are keen on ensuring that their country becomes a European-style democracy. Journalist and historian Els van Diggele portrays and analyses the complexity of this ‘quiet civil war’ through more than sixty interviews with a wide spectrum of religious and secular Jews, as well as lively and penetrating reports of key events that over the past two years have widened the schism. This nuanced, multifaceted portrait is must reading for anyone who wants to understand the State of Israel and the complexity of tensions in the Middle East.