Israel's Religious Left Has Long Claimed Faith Could Revive Its Camp. Now Comes the Test

Being left-wing in Israel once meant being secular and championing causes like public transportation on Shabbat. Today, the Zionist left is embracing religion, with openly religious and religiously-inclined leaders at its forefront for the first time. This is no coincidence

July 22nd, 20PM July 22nd, 20PM

In the years after the second intifada and the collapse of the Oslo process, what remained of Israel's battered and disillusioned Zionist left exchanged the cause of peace for a new animating concern. While the struggle against "religious coercion," against clericalism and fundamentalism, had been part of the left-wing agenda since the 1980s, it increasingly became the left's central cause, as hope for a resolution to the conflict faded.

What it meant to be left was (and, for some, remains) to be secular. For instance, Meretz – then the dovish and social-democratic party to the left of Labor – became the flagship party of Israeli anticlericalism, its representatives the strongest advocates for the separation of religion and state. While the party maintained its historic connection to the kibbutz movement and kept strong advocates for social justice and ending the occupation on its Knesset roster, its sociological niche was seen to have shifted to the arch-secular, highly educated, and largely Ashkenazi Tel Aviv bourgeoisie.

Although born in Soviet Lithuania and a resident of Petah Tikvah, Zehava Galon, who led Meretz between 2012 and 2018, was seen by many to epitomize a secular, Ashkenazi, elitist left out of touch with the cultural habits and traditionalist proclivities of much of the country's population. Her successor, Tamar Zandberg, completed the party's transition into one seemingly concerned chiefly with making public transportation run on Shabbat.

Today, the Zionist left's public relationship to religion has begun to change. On Monday, the Democrats – the party led by Yair Golan and formed through the merger of Labor and Meretz – held its primary election to determine its parliamentary list ahead of the October 27 election. For the first time, openly religious or religiously-inclined figures, many of whom hail from places far from Tel Aviv, are at the helm of the party's leadership.

Number two on the Democrats' list behind its leader Golan is Naama Lazimi, born to Moroccan immigrants and raised in a traditionally observant family in the former development town of Migdal Ha'Emek, in Israel's north. Behind her is Gilad Kariv, a kippa-wearing Reform rabbi and former leader of Israel's Movement for Progressive Judaism.

At number five is Yaya Fink, a left-wing religious Zionist educated in Orthodox yeshivas and one of the party's most popular politicians, who lives in the northern city of Yokneam. No less significant, at number ten, is Somaya Bashir, a hijab-wearing Muslim activist and therapist. If elected, she would become the second religious Muslim woman to serve in the Knesset, and the first from a Zionist party.

The religious left, in other words, is having its moment in the sun. That is not a coincidence. In recent years, and through intensive organizing, activists from groups like the Faithful Left – a movement of Israeli Jews that brings faith into its peace advocacy and anti-occupation work – have argued that the path to the Israeli left's revitalization runs through the creation of a new political language that looks to religious concepts and values as a resource, or even a foundation.

Now, with the Democrats as a platform at least partially giving voice to a left-wing religious perspective, this theory of change will be put to the test.

Read more about Israel

■ A Netanyahu stronghold near Gaza was ravaged on October 7. Will it go further right?

■ 'The Israeli government has an interest in disrupting the elections'

■ Democrats block right-wing Channel 14 from covering primary night event

■ Channel 14 was barred from the Democrats' primary. Cue the victimhood campaign

■ Why I'm happy about my confrontation with Israeli regime activist Mordechai David

■ In today's Israel, unity is too often used to silence criticism

Haaretz Today is our daily newsletter summing up the main events of the day in Israel and the region with a fresh perspective on the stories dominating headlines. Click here to sign up for the latest news from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, from Haaretz's team of writers and editors.