In Tel Aviv, a city which prides itself on its secularism, it is shockingly simple to find traces of orthodoxy. Because of this, there exists tension to some degree between secular and religious Jews. Although known as the city that never sleeps, Tel Aviv still observes Shabbat to a large extent. Most stores and forms of public transportation, including buses and trains, stop running Friday afternoon and don’t reopen until Saturday evening. However, if a place of business is something that provides enjoyment or leisure, such as a cafe or bar, the municipality of Tel Aviv allows the business to remain open during Shabbat.
The level of observance on Shabbat is a contentious subject in certain areas of Israel. You would be ill advised to drive a car through an ultra-orthodox neighborhood during Shabbat as there is the possibility that strict observers would throw rocks at your car. On the other side of the spectrum, some secular Jews argue for more lenient rules on closing public transportation during Shabbat because of high rates of drunk driving on Friday nights. If youths still want to experience the Tel Avivian nightlife on Friday, but there isn’t public transit and they are forced to drive, it creates unnecessarily dangerous situations.
Walking down the street to the shuk, I see young Israelis decorated with tattoos and many non-kosher restaurants serving pork. When asking questions about types of meat on a menu, a waitress once told me about the pork options intentionally not written on the restaurant’s menu. In fact, in ulpan (intensive Hebrew instruction) we were taught that if you want to order pork at a restaurant you should ask for steak lavan, or white steak, and that this was often the code word to get pork at a restaurant. The number of people in Tel Aviv who actually keep kosher or observe Shabbat is surprisingly low compared to what I expected when I first headed for the modern Jewish state.
There is yet another schism between secular and religious Jews when it comes to the mandatory army service, which had been a heated topic at the beginning of my semester in Israel. Secular Jews believe that religious Jews have an obligation to the state of Israel and that if military service is mandatory in theory that it should be mandatory in practice. Religious Jews believe that by going to yeshiva and praying for the state of Israel, that they in actuality are performing a service for the state of Israel. In this case, there are two vastly different perspectives coming to the table.
Even though I have spent much of this blog post describing ways that Israel falls short of being an orthodox Jewish state, I have had a multitude of uniquely Jewish experiences here. A few weeks ago, we celebrated Purim, which is commonly explained to those unfamiliar with the holiday as “the Jewish Halloween.” In Israel, people walk down the streets fully or partially dressed in costume not just for the holiday, but also for the days surrounding it. There are parties for youths at synagogues and every bakery sells Hamentashen, a staple of Purim. I had the chance to experience a Passover seder with an Israeli family and see bakeries all over Israel clean and kasher for Pesach.
This paralleled existence of strong and vibrant secular and religious Jewish communities is something I found extremely interesting during my visit in Israel. It speaks to how diverse the Jewish state is on the spectrum of Judaism and to what degree kashrut and Shabbat are observed. Although there may still be points of contention about the level of Jewish observance between secular and religious Jews, Israel is the only country where you would be greeted with a “Shabbat Shalom” from people of all walks of life, from your ulpan teacher to the local cafe waiter to a member of the Knesset.