I am a secular Israeli, do not deny my existence

"I think there is no such thing as a secular person who lives in our country," MK Simcha Rothman said in an interview on Daniel Dushi’s podcast.

By SUSAN HATTIS ROLEF DECEMBER 16, 2024 02:50

MK SIMCHA ROTHMAN, chair of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, speaks during a committee meeting last week. (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)

‘There is something very threatening in the territories of Israel to the secular world perception. It is difficult to be secular when you walk in the place where King David walked. It is difficult to be secular when you reach the tabernacle at Shilo, and it is difficult to be secular in the Cave of the Patriarchs. 

“It is almost impossible because this secular perception says: Whatever is written in the Bible is nonsense, and there is no God, and the people of Israel are not special... It is easier to be a secular who roams Tel Aviv, which is built on sand. But when one goes up to Jerusalem, or Beit El, or Hebron, or places in which the Hasmoneans roamed, [this position] is difficult.

“I think there is no such thing as a secular person who lives in our country. Therefore, when you say to me that there is no place for seculars [here]– I answer that there was never any place for a secular, that there were no seculars here, and that today as well, there are no seculars here.”

These words were spoken by no other than the chairperson of the Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee, MK Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionist Party) on December 10, in an interview on Daniel Dushi’s podcast.

Dushi had expressed his concern to Rothman about the effect of the judicial and other constitutional reforms that the government is ramming through the Knesset these days on secular liberals like himself.

MK Simcha Rothman, Head of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee seen during a meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem on June 20, 2023 (credit: OREN BEN HAKOON/FLASH90)

Rothman’s words were made in the last five minutes of the 1.5-hour interview, in which he presented a very eloquent and coherent account of how he, as a national religious politician, perceives the difficulties of the Israeli Right in our current reality in which the Left – a minority in the society – is still dominant in many power centers. 

The final part of the interview, concerning secular people in Israel, somehow managed to shake the entire logical and coherent structure he had put together about the allegedly democratic nature of his political standpoint.

Israel was promised by God

THE FIRST problem with Rothman’s finale is that, according to him, the essence of Zionism is an Orthodox religious state, based on a particular piece of land, promised to the Jewish people by God. This, of course, is a totally legitimate position for anyone to hold, but not the original intention and vision of the founders of modern Zionism, nor all the prime ministers of the State of Israel till day. 

Zionism sought to create a homeland or state as a haven for the whole Jewish people, who had experienced millennia of persecution and occasional pogroms (or worse) all over the world. “The whole of the Jewish people” referred to all feasible types of Jews: religious Jews of all denominations, traditional Jews, secular Jews, and Jews believing in all the legitimate political ideologies and social and individual forms of life.

The Land of Israel was finally chosen as the location of the homeland or state because a large part of Jewish history, including some 160 years of independent Jewish statehood in ancient times, took place here. To a secular Jew, especially one who is also agnostic, God has nothing to do with this choice. The Bible certainly has. 

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Secular Jews do not think that the Bible is all nonsense, as Rothman shamelessly claimed in his interview. They simply do not believe in the existence of God. They point to the fact that the Bible is written in numerous styles, and was written and compiled by many persons of unknown identity, based on unknown sources, and at different times.

Nor do they believe that everything written in the Bible is true, or accurate. Archaeology verifies the existence of many locations that are mentioned in the Bible. Some events are mentioned in other sources as well. There are events mentioned in the Bible that are not verified by any other sources, or by archaeological findings, which is not necessarily proof that they did not occur. 

How great would it be if a documentary series presented an accurate history of our people in ancient times. But of course, that is a fantasy that can never occur, and perhaps better so.

In the Hebrew Reali School that I attended in Haifa (where I was born in 1943), we studied most of the Bible in great detail as a historical and literary document, taught by teachers, most of whom were not religious. Our school emblem carried the biblical quote “Walk Humbly” (Micah 6:8), though the words “with your God” were left out of the original quote.

As a secular person, who does not believe in God, many ancient Jewish sites in Israel thrill me, not for religious reasons but for the same reasons that other peoples are excited by sites connected to their exclusive histories. 

In fact, I stopped frequenting certain Jewish historical sites that I visited with great excitement in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War. In the ensuing years, they have been taken over by the religious establishment, or separate religious groups, who treat them as their own private property, where non-religious persons are at best tolerated as outsiders. 

I refuse to be treated as an outsider in places I consider part of my historical heritage.

ROTHMAN DOES not say that we seculars are not welcome in his perception of the Jewish state, nor does he threaten to expel us should we fail to confront what he calls our alleged “identity problem.” He simply argues that if those of us who consider ourselves secular do not find our way back to some religious manifestation of our being Jewish, there is nothing to keep us here.

Sorry, Simcha Rothman, but that is an audacious proposition based on ignorance of the essence of the Zionism and liberal democracy I grew up on as a sabra and third-generation secular.

The complete interview with Simcha Rothman may be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo4k6zrUPUI, accompanied by a mechanical translation into English.

The writer worked in the Knesset for many years as a researcher and has published journalistic and academic articles on current affairs and Israeli politics. Her most recent book, Israel’s Knesset Members – A Comparative Study of an Undefined Job, was published by Routledge.