Shalom McWorld

On a friday night, when religious Jews are at home observing the sabbath, I recently took a Palestinian friend to a new nightclub in the heart of downtown Jerusalem. In front of us, to the pumping beat of heavy techno music, two Jewish transvestites in evening dresses and mascara gyrated their hips to wild applause. The atmosphere was thick with the scent of drunken sexuality.

For my Palestinian friend, the scene at the Q Club contrasted dramatically with the image of the crew-cut Israeli soldiers who have enforced Israel's occupation for more than 25 years. "It's like the last days of Rome," said my friend, both amazed and excited. "If this is where Israel is going, it may be that the Jews are losing the will to occupy us."

A few years ago, such a nightclub opening in the heart of Jerusalem would have been unimaginable. On the sabbath Jerusalem closed down-the restaurants, the bars and the cinemas. Any attempt to open after dusk on Friday was greeted by vehement protests from black-clad ultra-orthodox Jews.



The youth of Jerusalem fled down the hill to the more secular and cosmopolitan Tel Aviv for their Friday night fun; but no longer. The attempts by ultra-orthodox Jews to preserve the sabbath in Jerusalem have been defeated. Although their numbers are not declining, they have been forced back into isolated neighbourhoods-islands of intense religiosity in a rising sea of secularisation.

There is no greater symbol of that defeat in the battle for the religious soul of Jerusalem than the non-kosher McDonald's restaurant which opened in the heart of the holy city last year. The first non-kosher cheeseburger was met with only an insignificant protest by a handful of devout Jews.

But secularisation is just part of the social transformation which has reshaped Israel in the past five years of economic boom and unfolding peace. At the centre of this transformation has been the arrival of new wealth and consumer choice. The shopping mall has opened in every city; the traditional Jewish corner shop is becoming extinct. The collective life is contracting, the personal life expanding.

Once brought up on a simple, almost puritanical diet of Jewish cooking, nationalist folk songs and state controlled television, the new generation now eats in western fast food stores and surfs between 50 cable channels from MTV to CNN. One channel provides soft pornography on the sabbath. The explosion in mobile telephones has been so huge that recently the army had to ban their use during exercises. Israel's beaches have seen a dramatic increase in leisure toys: four-wheel drive vehicles, jet skis and micro-lites. In Tel Aviv, you can as easily eat sushi and tex mex cooked by Jewish hands as oriental food.

The new Israeli yuppy generation has flourished with the expansion of Israel as a centre of high-tech excellence rivalling California's silicon valley in telecommunications, software and printing. High salaries, frequent trips abroad and integration into the global economy are challenging Israeli culture.

The mass immigration of up to 700,000 Russian Jews from the former Soviet Union since 1988 has also profoundly affected the character of Israeli society. In the early days of the state, immigrants arrived with the zeal to build a new country. But the new wave of immigrants come with a zeal to build their own private lives and bank balances. They are more secular and avowedly anti-capitalist than Israelis. For most Russian Jews, Israel is a second choice to the US. Many, especially dependants, are not even Jews but Russian Orthodox Christians whose presence in Israel has exposed deep tensions over the viability of the ministry of religious affairs' monopoly on deciding who is a Jew and administering certificates of births, deaths and marriages.

Underlying these changes in the make-up of Israeli society is the peace process. Whatever its current difficulties, it has speeded the trend towards international normalisation, with Israel shedding its pariah status in large parts of the world community.

u u u

When Theodor Herzl first set out the idea of modern political Zionism in his book Der Judenstaat, the Israel of today would have been roughly what he had in mind. But the normalisation and americanisation of the society deeply worries the ultra-orthodox and the more modern religious Jews in Israel who see their lifestyle threatened by western decadence. Surprisingly, it also deeply bothers the more secular Zionists. When two youths were killed at a stampede at last year's pop music festival in Arad, secular President Ezer Weizman blamed the americanisation of Israel.

"I would very seriously recommend that we pay attention to the question of 'Israeliness' and Judaism," the president said. "We have to beware of the McDonald's, we have to beware of Michael Jackson and Madonna. We need not only culture, but culture that is specifically Israeli and Jewish."

It is the loss of self-sacrifice, of volunteerism, among the "new Israelis" which most threatens the traditional pioneer spirit of Zionism. Nowhere was this idea more directly expressed than in the kibbutz movement, the socialist collective farms which formed the backbone of the Zionist enterprise.

The kibbutzim led the drive to settle the Promised Land from the 1920s. The ideal kibbutznik worked the fields during the day, engaged in Zionist and socialist education in the evening and guarded the perimeter fence at night. For generations, the suntanned, strapping kibbutznik, with a pickaxe over one shoulder and a rifle over the other, provided a role model. The movement forged a whole generation of political leaders, including Israel's current prime minister Shimon Peres. But the kibbutzim, too, are in the throes of change.

Up in the sparsely populated Golan Heights, a group of dedicated Jewish pioneers are struggling to save their kibbutz from implosion. To a casual observer, the kibbutz looks as it always has: neatly manicured gardens, lots of public spaces and creepers spreading over harsh grey concrete homes. In the communal kitchen, young bronzed Israelis in dirty jeans and sandals mingle with slightly out of place but earnest volunteers from Britain and Germany. There are children everywhere.

But here, among the apple orchards and wheat fields, the 500 members of kibbutz Merom Golan are redefining their traditional way of life. For decades, the communal children's houses which separated children from their families were a hallmark of kibbutz life. Today they are extinct. Earlier this year, the kibbutz bowed to mounting pressure and introduced income differentials. Rules on private ownership of cars and other consumer durables have been relaxed. The officials who run the kibbutz are now more likely to engage in discussion about stock prices, career prospects and gearing ratios than Marx, Bakunin and Zionism.

In the 1990s, in the face of a mass desertion of young members (kibbutzniks today make up less than 3 per cent of Israel's population), the kibbutz must change or die. "Something very big has changed in Israel," said Gabi Coneal, economic secretary at Merom Golan. "Ten years ago, patriotism and Zionism were the most important things: the settlements, the kibbutzim, the flag, the army. Today the family, money, career and weekends are more important and we have to reflect these changes."

The Israeli army remains the last national institution which still encaptures the volunteer spirit. But even here, there are signs that tradition is crumbling. A recent survey found that absenteeism among reserves reached 40 per cent in 1995-marking a rise of 54 per cent from 1992.

u u u

The loss of volunteerism has become part of a much wider debate about the essence of Zionism and the possibility of a "post-Zionist" Israel. But this redefinition is not easy. Like other ideological movements, Zionism has been an extremely broad church. As originally conceived by Herzl in the late 19th century, it merely meant the creation of an independent state for Jews. Herzl had a minimalist definition of Zionism and only later in his life did he insist that the Zionist state should be created in Palestine.

In the 1920s and 1930s, before the creation of Israel, Zionism became intimately associated with socialism as many of the early Zionists emerged from European and Russian socialism. The kibbutzim and the Histadrut trade union were expressions of the fusion between Zionism and socialism.

Religious Jews were originally hostile to Zionism, believing that any effort to build a temporal kingdom would detract from the religious devotion necessary to hasten the coming of the Messiah. They even saw Zionism as an active rebellion against the will of God because the redemption of the Jewish people was in the hand of God rather than in the hand of man. But in the early 20th century, Rabbi Avraham Kook established a religious Zionism which accepted the role of a Jewish state under Jewish law.

Religious Zionism moved to the forefront of political Zionism under the Gush Emunim movement which led the drive to settle the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1970s and 1980s. These hardline Jewish settlers see giving up parts of the biblical land of Israel as a betrayal of God's command. As Israel has pushed ahead with the peace process, the tensions between right wing religious Jews and the authorities have grown more acute. Yitzhak Rabin was labelled a traitor to the Jewish people by extremist Jews who protested across Israel, portraying the veteran Israeli soldier turned politician and peacemaker in Nazi uniform. When Rabin was assassinated last year by a right wing Jewish extremist, the left wing blamed his death on the intolerant culture of vilification of the government by rightists.

Diametrically opposed to the religious Zionist settlement movement are some Israeli intellectuals who have simply proclaimed the end of Zionism. They believe that the peace process has revealed the fact that Israel has become a post-Zionist society. Uri Avneri, a provocative and controversial Israeli figure, first coined the term post-Zionism almost 30 years ago. In a minimalist interpretation of Herzl's ideas, he believes that as soon as Israel created a state in 1948 it began to enter the post-Zionist era: after all, had not the early political Zionists declared that as soon as Israel had created a Jewish thief, a Jewish prostitute and a Jewish policeman, this would mark the fulfilment of the Zionist dream? For Avneri, Zionism is marked by the creation of an Israeli rather than a Jewish culture and post-Zionism is marked by secularisation and normalisation.

But between the minimalist and the maximalist approach to Zionism lie the bulk of Israeli thinkers, the "new Zionists" who are trying to redefine Zionism to meet the challenges of the late 20th century. They refuse to accept the idea of post-Zionism and have set about redefining Zionism-putting more stress on individualism, spiritual revival and culture. This has been termed "the third way."

Professor Aviezer Ravitzky, a religious Zionist and supporter of peace with the Arabs, believes that the peace process is an important catalyst for the renaissance of the Jewish people because it allows Israel to begin to tackle issues no longer defined by borders and security. This renaissance is to be found in the flourishing of Jewish culture and literature, the rapid growth of yeshiva religious schools and the beginnings of the debate on how to define the constitution, laws and essence of a Jewish democratic state.

"For me Zionism is about revivalism not messianic redemption," says Ravitzky. "If the state of Israel brings the messiah that's fine, but unlike the religious Zionists, I can accept the giving up of land I know is part of the biblical Jewish homeland.

"The year 1948 created the conditions for the cultural revival of Judaism but wars then prevented it. It is amazing that after 19 centuries of exile we return to Israel and then teach our best and brightest boys how to kill. We had no choice. Eventually, if the peace process succeeds, I hope that our hero will be not the general but the writer."

The idea of the redefinition of Zionism as revivalism strikes an emotional chord in Israel-among religious as well as secular Jews. Both are imbued with a missionary ideal inherited from God's command to the Jewish people to be a light unto the nations. Secular cabinet minister Yossi Beilin believes that if Israel surrenders to late 20th century capitalism and global culture, it will be hard to keep the country together. "The Jewish nation must have a mission," he says. "We cannot simply raise families, make money and live the good life. We must do something for the outside world or we will lose the feeling that has infused the Jewish people for thousands of years."

Part of the problem, as Beilin accepts, is that it was easier to motivate the Jewish people around traditional Zionism because it dealt with physical, material goals such as building the state, settling the land, immigration and defence of the country. The new Zionism must deal with more esoteric, spiritual concepts. Beilin believes that one way to entrench the Zionist mission for the next generation is for Israel to become much more deeply involved in the third world-sharing technology and development expertise, particularly in agriculture.

To anybody who has lived in Africa, this idea seems absurd. Furthermore, divorced from the Jewish homeland, Beilin's Jewish-Israeli development force in the third world is unlikely to fire the imagination of a new generation. More likely, his ideas are a sign of the difficulty of redefining socialism and Zionism.

A similar case is Yehuda Harel, whose writings have influenced the kibbutz movement. Harel believes that the future for the kibbutzim lies in moving towards a form of anarcho-socialism-retaining collective ownership and the distinct communal and rural life of the kibbutzim, while running the economy as a capitalist and profit-maximising venture. He thinks this could provide an example for countries such as China trying to reconcile economic liberalism with socialist communal life.

u u u

At the Jewish Agency, the organisation charged with the Zionist goal of ingathering the Jews and maintaining links between Israel and the diaspora, Avraham Burg, its newly elected head, is also involved in radically reshaping the Zionist outlook. Like Beilin, Burg is part of Israel's dynamic younger generation of politicians. "Only a fool lives in the late 20th century with an ideological tool created in the 19th century," he explains. "We are not talking about post-Zionism but a new Zionism, a redefined Zionism capable of taking the Jewish people as a nation into the 21st century."

The traditional mission of encouraging immigration into Israel is coming to an end as the last great pool of potential immigrants, those from the former Soviet Union, relocate to Israel or the west. The trend towards assimilation of the 10m Jews in the diaspora, with intermarriage among the 5.8m US Jews reaching 52 per cent, makes any new influx into Israel unlikely. According to surveys, 74 per cent of Jews in the US have never visited Israel and one quarter say they have no emotional ties with Israel.

The Agency's traditional role of co-ordinating Jewish fundraising abroad for Israel is also under review as Israel climbs towards a per capita income of more than $17,000 and as Israelis find the idea of receiving donations from abroad embarrassing.

The arrival of what Burg calls the "post-rescue era" has led many Israelis to call for the organisation to be wound up as part of the post-Zionist reality. But Burg, like Ravitzky, believes Zionism can now be redefined through more spiritual goals: Jewish education and rescuing the diaspora from the assimilationist pressures which threaten Jewish identity.

Burg believes that the way diaspora Jews have defined their Jewish identity-essentially through fundraising for the Jewish state-and the way Jews have defined their identity in Israel-by reference to an external enemy-are no longer sustainable. The peace process has been critical in intensifying the gathering identity crisis. "For the first time Israel and the diaspora share the same agenda: can the Jewish people exist without an external enemy?" he asks.

u u u

But the greatest challenge of all to Zionism comes from the economy. The collapse of socialism and the globalisation of capital and culture offer an alternative to ideological striving which many ordinary Israelis find attractive.

The Histadrut trade union was once the dominant institution in the Israeli economy-Zionism's economic engine. Run by the socialist barons of the Labour party, it accounted for 30 per cent of national output and was the biggest employer outside of the government. It was so big that Israeli economists used to talk about the "Histadrut" economy; it was a state within a state and dictated policy to successive Labour governments.

The economic crisis in Israel which reached its apex in the hyper-inflation days of the mid-1980s exposed the mismanagement of Histadrut-owned companies, such as Koor Industries, Israel's biggest conglomerate. The economy was no longer able to sustain such a large corporation which believed that full employment and workers' rights were more important than profits.

The Histadrut was subsequently scaled back with most of its industrial assets sold off. Under Haim Ramon, now Israel's interior minister, the link between compulsory membership of the Histadrut and health care was broken in favour of voluntary membership. "We are trying to build a trade union which will be more like the German or the Scandinavian model. It will concentrate on defending the rights of workers rather than controlling their lives," says Ramon. "We want to become a normal social democratic society like most west European states."

The normalisation of the economy and the growing access to markets and international capital made possible by the peace process have been embraced by Israel's business community. Nobody is a greater advocate of the changes than Benny Gaon, the chief executive of Koor Industries, which accounts for 7 per cent of Israel's industrial output.

Since 1987, Gaon, a long time member of the Labour party, has overseen a phenomenal turnaround at Koor with big job cuts, restructuring, and tapping of the domestic and international capital markets. He is the quintessence of the new Israeli businessman, equally at home in the boardrooms of American and Scottish pension funds as on the shop floor in Israel. He has promoted the idea of Israeli companies going global and last year, after a US company became a main shareholder, he even abandoned Hebrew as the official internal language of Koor in favour of English.

The wider social and cultural debate about Zionism has been played out practically in Koor and Gaon does not flinch from being described as the tsar of normalisation-a post-Zionist model of doing business in Israel. Yet, for all his advocacy of globalisation, he also feels uneasy about the threat to Zionism from normalisation. "The Zionism of my generation is not going to be the Zionism of my kids," he says. Yet, while he has a flood of advice to offer Israeli businessmen about how to compete in the global market, he is much less clear about how to define a new Zionist mission for his children and grandchildren. "I am not sure what the mission will be," he says. "It is a problem which worries a lot of us."

u u u

Gaon is right to be worried. The ideas of spiritual renewal, a new volunteer Zionist endeavour, the yeshiva religious school or a new Jewish peace corps, are simply anathema to the late 20th century lives of so many young Israelis.

In the summer, every weekend I go to the beach with a group of Israeli friends. In the middle of the sabbath, we sit on the sand barbecuing kebabs, drinking cold beer and talking about who's up and who's down in the new Israel. My friends are deeply secular. They are in insurance, journalism and stockbroking. They could be sitting on the beach in Los Angeles or Florida. They say they have nothing in common with the black-clad ultra-orthodox; they have no desire to go back to the kibbutz or to enlist in a peace corps to go and mend the water system in Guinea-Bissau.

Yet despite their secularism, they remain ambivalent about their own identity. "I am totally secular and have more to say to you, a gentile, than I do to my cousins in Bnei Brak (an ultra-orthodox Israeli town)," says Tal Engel, a 34 year old who is a partner in a successful Tel Aviv insurance company. "But I feel that it is important that the religious continue to exist and flourish and that Israel remains a Jewish state. The religious are the keepers of our faith and identity. Otherwise what is the point of us being here in Israel? I might as well emigrate to the US."

But, almost in the next breath, my friend talks about wanting to be very rich and spend much more time abroad. Like many residents of Tel Aviv, he has no desire to visit Jerusalem; he would much rather spend his time on the beach than study Judaism.

Like Tal, the majority of Israelis are not ultra-orthodox or religious. But they are divided as to whether there should still be a Jewish mission and are obsessed with ideas about destiny and what will become of the Jewish people.

Standards of living in Israel will continue to rise, as will the trend to normalisation. More discos like the Q Club will open and the McDonald's non-kosher cheeseburger may become as important a part of the Israeli diet as the falafel. "There are a lot of unanswered questions about where we are going," says Dr Zali Gurevitch, sociology professor at the Hebrew University. After all the drama of Jewish history, of the search for identity, there is an overwhelming force saying: "Did we struggle for all those years in the wilderness just to end up with McDonald's burgers and cable television?"