bohemians on masquerade

A war of the worlds.Two solitudes. Two visions, mutually exclusive and generally hostile to one another. Make that intensely antagonistic. One is religious, self-described as benighted by the almighty, and with it basically undemocratic and often sexist; the other Western and liberal and enamoured with the values of the Enlightenment and International Law as guiding force. Each side masking a sense of inferiority under the guise of religion or ideology. According to tradition, for the religious, life in the diaspora, the Exile, was a consequence and a punishment as well as the remedy for a spiritual failure only curable by the arrival of the Messiah.

On a pragmatic basis, life in diaspora gave Jews the opportunity to develop a life and identity exclusive of territory, nation building and politics. Power was cultural autonomy, the exact opposite of the Zionist ethos of moving battalions and erecting civic institutions, playing a role on the world stage and waging war when necessary, the working of a collective interest within the context of the political entity.

---An Israeli soldier kept guard as Israeli settlers wearing various costumes to celebrate the annual Purim parade on March 8 in the divided West Bank city of Hebron. (Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images) Read more: http://lollitop.blogspot.com/2012/04/festival-of-purim_12.html#ixzz2MIQTgV1v---

—An Israeli soldier kept guard as Israeli settlers wearing various costumes to celebrate the annual Purim parade on March 8 in the divided West Bank city of Hebron. (Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images)
Read more: http://lollitop.blogspot.com/2012/04/festival-of-purim_12.html#ixzz2MIQTgV1v—

Many religious Jews, exercised the view that Zionism, based on a European secular model would dilute Jewish identity from the spiritual to a strictly biological level, an unfortunate birth defect as weight on these copiers of the white Christian model. Zionism supplanting cultural power with a political and military one that had been so nefarious to Jewish interests in the past, and act as a replacement for Jewish culture and not a vitalizing force since political allegiance would dominate the narrative.

From the state’s ineption, it became apparent that it was in the interest of the ruling elite to engage in a practice of accomodation with the religious. This, reinforced their status as inferior, and once biting the bait, replied with the characteristic pattern of auto-colonization and even parasitism to a large degree. The classic recipe of inclusion and maintaining a status hierarchy complete with self-marginalization and exclusion, each side as a dangerous bacteria that must be kept at a distance.

The present source of Israeli insecurity seems to be based on the declining traditional Zionist ideology, the vein that Yair Lapid has plugged into, where disregard of the religious as former default position; but now the subversiveness of the religious even exerts some form of weird charm: the Israeli lefties end up parroting the ultra religious critique of militarism, and state institutions. Like these Occupy Tel Aviv profiles, the religious way of life has similarities: the anti-establishment rhetoric, bohemian demeanor, little symbolic value to career and advancement, anti-war, distinctive mode of attiring themselves which recalls the Haight Ashbury hippie movement making them close cousins to post-Zionist rebellion. The result is a bit disconcerting to the established norms of Israeli self-identity.

---Reuters FILE - An ultra-Orthodox Jew lies on the ground drunk during celebrations for the Jewish holiday of Purim in a synagogue in Jerusalem March 23, 2008.---

—Reuters FILE – An ultra-Orthodox Jew lies on the ground drunk during celebrations for the Jewish holiday of Purim in a synagogue in Jerusalem March 23, 2008.—

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