Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People - Rafapal

THE DISTINCTION 283
Ber Borochov and the young Ben-Gurion had hoped long before). In the latter
case, the world Zionist movement would probably have had to disband after
independence, and the Arab citizens would have been classified as Zionists.
There was no choice but to call the new state "Israel." Ever since then, all its
citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike, have been called Israelis. As we shall see, the
state would not be content with the Jewish hegemony expressed by the name
"Israel," by its flag, its anthem and its state emblems. Because of its ethnocentric
nationalist character, it would refuse to belong, formally and effectively,
to all its citizens. It had been created expressly for the "Jewish people," and
although a major part of this ethnos has failed to implement its right to selfdetermination
within its borders, the state has always insisted that it belongs
to this ethnos.
What is the Jewish ethnos? We have surveyed Jewry's possible historical
origins and, beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, the essentialist
construction of a "people" out of the vestiges and memories of this
variegated Jewry. But who would be included among the authorized proprietors
of the Jewish state that was being "reestablished" after two thousand years in
"Israel's exclusive land"? Would it be anyone who saw himself or herself as a Jew?
Or any person who became an Israeli citizen? This complex issue would become
one of the main pivots on which identity politics in Israel would revolve.
To understand this development, we must go back to the eve of the
Proclamation of Independence. In 1947 it had already been decided that Jews
would not be able to marry non-Jews in the new state. The official reason for
this civil segregation—in a society that was predominantly secular—was the
unwillingness to create a secular-religious split. In the famous "status quo"
letter that David Ben-Gurion, as head of the Jewish Agency, co-signed with
leaders of the religious bloc, he undertook, inter alia, to leave the laws of
personal status in the new state in the hands of the rabbinate. 52 For reasons of
his own, he also supported the religious camp's firm opposition to a written
constitution. Ben-Gurion was an experienced politician, skilled at getting
what he wanted.
In 1953 the political promise to bar civil marriage in Israel was given a legal
basis. The law defining the legal status of the rabbinical courts determined that
they would have exclusive jurisdiction over marriage and divorce of Jews in
Israel. By this means, the dominant socialist Zionism harnessed the principles
of the traditional rabbinate as an alibi for its fearful imaginary that was
52 See the letter in the annex to the article by Menacem Friedman, "The history of the
Status-Quo: Religion and State in Israel," in The Transition from "Yishuv" to State 1947-1949:
Continuity and Change, Varda Pilowsky (ed), Haifa: Herzl Institute, 1990 (in Hebrew), 66-7.