Jewish New Age and the Middle Class: Jewish Identity Politics in Israel under Neoliberalism

Introduction

On 17 June 2014, during Israel’s Channel 2 TV morning show, between endless news broadcasts on the kidnapping of three Israeli religious-Zionist West Bank yeshivah students, an unlikely occurrence took place. Avri Gilad, a well-known TV host, covered his head with a big white knitted kippa (yarmulke) typically worn by the Breslav Hasidic sect, and invited viewers to join him and a guest rabbi in reading psalms and praying for the safe return of the abducted youths. His co-host reiterated by urging viewers to ‘scrape off their cynicism’ and take part in the mass prayers that were taking place simultaneously in the TV studio and at the Wailing Wall.

In the following days, TV critics, bloggers and social media users, usually from the secular left, protested against what they deemed the ‘religionisation’ of the media coverage of the kidnapping and the public debate that surrounded it. For these pundits, the public calls for prayer seemed yet another instance of the gradual permeation of the Jewish religion into the (secular) public sphere as well as the widening ideological–political gap between the religious and secular sectors in Jewish-Israeli society. Such popular commentaries coincide with the prevailing academic discourse on state–synagogue relationships in Israel. This scholarship tends to focus on the recent religionisation of the Jewish collective and its effects on the secular nation state (Leon, 2014).

Diverging from this perspective, we propose that what may seem to be cultural and religious pluralism or, arguably, evidence for the increasing power of religious fundamentalism in Israel is, in fact, part of a class-reproduction process. In this article, we wish to account for the growing engagement of secular ¹ middle-class Israelis with Jewish religiosity. Our case study is the nascent Jewish New Age trend (herewith JNA). JNA refers to a cluster of groups and activities that attempt to revitalise Jewish life by ‘New Aging’ it (Ruah-Midbar, 2012; Werczberger, 2011). We ask: Why would secular middle-class Israelis appropriate Jewish religiosity by investing it with the global glamour of New Age? And why particularly now?

Our analytic approach combines insights from the sociology of religion and cultural class analysis. Both religion and class still shape late modern, highly individualised societies. Thus, sociologists of religion emphasise the commodification and the public presence of religion (Habermas, 2008; Redden, 2011: 650). Sociologists of culture, on their part, insist that class ‘is not dead’. However, although the correlation between religion and material standing is a classic sociological issue (Keister, 2011), their current relationship remains largely under-studied (Dawson, 2013; Gerber, 2010; McCloud, 2007; van Eijck and Bargeman, 2004). It is the double overlooking – of class in the sociology of religion and of religion and spiritualities in the sociology of culture – that we address. Specifically, while New Age spirituality has been widely studied, its underlying middle classness as an individualised religious and cultural practice (Banet-Weiser, 2012; Dawson, 2013; Wood, 2007) has yet to be systematically analysed.

Our socio-cultural approach to current religious trends in Israel conceptualises religious practices ‘as not simply the result of religious beliefs or traditions, but also as forms of cultural consumption or production with a relatively precise social value on local prestige markets’ (Nelson, 2009: 53–54). In order to better grasp what we think is the changing social value of Jewishness, we start by reviewing the connections between religion and class under neoliberal capitalism. Next, we explore the social history and current meanings of Jewish and New Age identifications in Israel. We contend that New Age in Israel emerged in the late-1980s, the period when neoliberalism began to gradually gain dominance in the Israeli economy and public discourse. Furthermore, JNA was introduced in Israel as part of the global New Age culture. Representing globalism, JNA serves as a critique of institutionalised Judaism as well as its recent clericalism and ethno-nationalisation.

Based on ethnographic material collected in various JNA sites, we argue that JNA is an individualised, spiritualised and experiential version of Judaism. As such, JNA is a particularly middle-class phenomenon. As we show, JNA participants, already endowed with cultural capital, approach Judaism with playfulness and ease, gleaning various traditional Jewish elements and culturalising them. We then speculate why these middle-class secular Israelis turn to Jewish religiosity. We argue that, due to the increasing role of religiosity in identity politics struggles, Jewishness has become a valuable, and hence useful, cultural asset. Inasmuch as the Zionist nation-building project nationalised and secularised Judaism (rendering Jewish religiosity parochial and a symbol of backwardness), the recent rise in the cultural value of Jewish religiosity has opened a new vista for the middle class to exercise its power and further accrue cultural capital.

Our contribution to the debate regarding class and religion lies in our approach to identities and cultural difference in the context of the politics of recognition and redistribution. While most studies focus on stigmatised groups’ efforts to reclaim their cultural uniqueness and render it a political asset, they tend to conceive of identity politics merely as struggles for recognition and inclusion. We, however, turn to the next phase in this cycle, showing how it can become part of distributive struggles, and a source of middle-class power.

New Age, Neoliberalism and the Middle Class

While often referred to as ‘The New Age Movement’ (e.g. Heelas, 1996), New Age is rather a fragmented array of groups and practices with no central authority or leadership. New Age has ‘emerged from the 1960s counterculture before being extended through consumer culture. It is at once movement and marketplace, materialistic and spiritual, individualistic and bent on collective transformation’ (Redden, 2011: 650). Scholars identify several characteristics shared by New Agers, among them the anticipation of a spiritual cosmic transformation, the search for a spiritually fulfilling life, the use of various mind–body techniques to achieve such a transformation, psychological renderings of previous religious notions and the sanctification of the self (Hanegraaff, 1998; Heelas, 1996). As such, New Age methods are ‘continuous with wider consumer logic of enhancing individual quality of life through lifestyle choices’ (Redden, 2011: 654; also Banet-Weiser, 2012; Martin, 2012).

New Age’s high individualism is often understood as emblematic of the cultural logic of late-capitalism and as a coping mechanism for the material and cultural enmities of postmodern life (Dawson, 2013; Heelas, 1996, 2008; Martin, 2012; Possamai, 2003; Redden, 2011). This critical scholarship into ‘the spiritual marketplace’ perceives New Age as a lifestyle commodity through which self-identities are performed (Banet-Weiser, 2012; Gautier and Martikainen, 2013; Mulcock, 2001; Redden, 2011). However, this approach assumes a universal individualisation, and tends to overlook the fact that the coping with the ‘bads’ of late-modernity is, in fact, differentiated by class (see Skeggs, 2004; cf. Beck, 2013). Even if state-of-the-art New Age scholarship goes beyond a simple cultural critique, it nevertheless often fails to connect individualisation with the specifics of neoliberal political economy and class hierarchies (Gautier and Martikainen, 2013; Redden, 2011: 654–657; but see Altglas, 2008; Wood, 2007). It is this connection that we address.

Contemporary studies on class and religion tend to focus on institutionalised religion, often taking a quantitative, descriptive approach to exploring the socio-economic standing of particular denominations (Keister, 2011). Other works focus on theological, organisational and worship styles of socio-economically different denominations (McCloud, 2007: 841; Nelson, 2009). These works tend to over-emphasise marginalised groups’ religiosity, often implicitly linking it with less liberal world views. Gerber (2010) criticises the scholarly focus on marginalised religiosity, which she attributes to the dominance of secularisation theories interpreting lower classes’ religiosity as other-worldly compensation for this-worldly suffering. Evidently, this line of research finds it difficult to account for the predominantly middle-class personalised adherence to New Age religiosity (cf. Dawson, 2013).

New Age spirituality is perceived as a characteristically middle-class phenomenon in which participants ‘tend to be more educated than the population at large and work in the service sector, and a majority are women …’ (Redden, 2011: 652; see also Altglas, 2008; Sutcliffe, 2006: 162; Wood, 2007; cf. Mears and Ellison, 2000; Rose, 1998). In one of the earliest class accounts of the 1960s proto-New Age culture, Bourdieu (1984) noticed the new middle-class’s inclination toward self-exploration, self-searching and self-realisation and the popularity of new cultural themes such as ‘bodily attunement’ and ‘communicating with others’. He explained this appropriation of counter-cultural ideas in terms of a hegemonic conflict between supposedly ‘conservative, old’ and ‘modern, new’ middle classes. For him, adherence to mind–body–spirit techniques not only signalled the potentiality of the rising middle class to become the new cultural arbiters, but enabled it as well (also Binkley, 2007).

Recent accounts theorise New Age spirituality as inherent to neoliberalism in bringing ‘religious conceptions into personal life management’ (Gautier and Martikainen, 2013; Martin, 2012: 215; Redden, 2011: 656). New Age is part and parcel of the growing middle-class occupational precariousness and material risks that demand personal responsibility and constant self-performance. In this regard, New Age packages neoliberal ideals as commodities of ‘spiritual growth, self-discipline, happiness, achievement, purpose, freedom, harmony, results, enterprise, effort, success, improvement, and satisfaction’ (Martin, 2012: 216). These ideals inculcate emotional, social and cultural skills that may enhance middle-class employability (Altglas, 2008; Zaidman et al., 2009).

Still, notwithstanding the scholarly recognition that ‘class is still a powerful force that continues to shape religious identification and behaviors’ (Nelson, 2009: 45), and that New Age culture is predominantly middle class (Redden, 2011), rarely has New Age been explored as a middle-class practice in itself (cf. Altglas, 2008; Binkley, 2007; Dawson, 2013; Wood, 2007). As Mathew Wood (2007) contends, there is little empirical evidence to support the widely accepted connection between New Age and middle classness. Sutcliffe (2006: 163) argues that even if New Age does ‘signify a middle-class, white habitus’, these attributes can no longer be taken for granted and should be studied extensively. This is why we chose the specific yet representative case of JNA, aiming to bring forth participants’ feelings, justifications and motivations. We used ethnographic material collected through participant observations and interviews with members of two JNA communities that were active in Israel at the beginning of the 21st century, adding to our analysis some public writings of the communities’ leaders.

JNA in Israel

JNA is both part of the ‘post-secular’, global religious field, and a local phenomenon. The Jewish religious field in Israel encompasses manifold streams, schools of thought, beliefs, institutions and communities. Typically, the literature bifurcates this field into religious and non-religious segments, cascading from the ultra-orthodox (haredim), religious Zionists, traditionalists and seculars. We see two problems with this categorisation. The first problem is the tendency of the sociology of religion in Israel to perceive the religious/secular divide as chiefly a political conflict (Evans and Kaynak, 2015). This scholarship stresses overt, public and declarative dimensions of state–synagogue tensions, disregarding the less visible cultural underpinnings of religious conflicts and divides (Cohen and Susser, 2000). Second, this prevalent notion of a religious/secular divide in the sociology of religion has overlooked the continuum of religiosity and secularity, as well as emerging religious options, such as New Age (Ben-Porat and Feniger, 2014; Goodman and Yonah, 2004; Ruah-Midbar and Klin Oron, 2010). Our case of middle-class seculars who adhere to JNA challenges these two tenets.

Many secular Israelis today take part in New Age-related activities, such as alternative medicine, consciousness workshops, channelling, Eastern and indigenous techniques such as Buddhist meditation, yoga, t’ai chi and even neo-shamanism and neo-paganism. Interestingly, New Age culture has found its way into various Jewish streams as well, sometimes as intentional attempts to integrate Jewish tradition with New Age spirituality. Such is the case with several JNA communities influenced by the North American Jewish Renewal Movement (Werczberger, 2011), some of whose members were interviewed for this study. The North American Jewish Renewal movement is rooted in the counter-culture of the 1960s, and in ideologies typical of the new social movements of this era, such as the feminist and the environmental movements (Salkin, 2000; Weissler, 2005). JNA emerged in Israel only by the mid-1990s, in tandem with neoliberalism and the concurrent development of a local New Age culture. As such, and like the wider New Age phenomena, it presents a case for the consumerist neoliberal adaptation of counter-cultural ideas and practices (Binkley, 2007; Carrette and King, 2005; Heelas, 1996).

The JNA adherents we interviewed (aged 25–40 years old) typically grew up in middle-class families of white-collar, professional or state-bureaucracy parents. Most were academically educated and belonged to the professional-managerial class as lawyers, mid-level high-tech employees, and academics or were in holistic/therapeutic occupations (for a similar demographic, see Canetti-Nisim, 2002: 199, 239, 256). The middle-class background of our participants is not surprising, if only for the ‘fee-for service’ organisational model (Redden, 2011) and rather high costs of most New Age activities in which our interviewees actively participated. Yet more than merely economic capital, the middle-class background of JNA adherents is apparent also in regard to their cultural capital. Current approaches in the sociology of culture have shown that cultural capital is no longer bounded to highbrow artistic activities but is more eclectic and includes a breadth of cultural activities (Kaplan, 2013; Katz-Gerro et al., 2009; Ollivier, 2008; Skeggs, 2004; van Eijck and Bargeman, 2004). The following section develops the idea that middle-class cultural capital is increasingly premised on eclecticism, emotional engagement and experiential self-realisation and in this way it extends the cultural advantages of the middle class to new fields. We refer to this process, as it unfolds in the case of JNA, as the ‘culturalisation of Judaism’.

Culturalising Judaism

As noted above, until quite recently, religiosity has not been part of the secular middle-class’s repertoire. Hence, the involvement of middle-class Israelis in emerging spiritualities enables us to explore the ways in which the extant cultural capital of participants helps them navigate a relatively new field and ‘own’ it. We found three principal ways in which the cultural capital of our interviewees enabled them to ‘play’ with Jewish elements and create spiritual hybrids: early familiarity with Jewish texts, individualisation and experientialism. As will be explained, the three dimensions of culturalisation, as manifested in JNA, are meant to revitalise institutionalised Judaism.

First, although most interviewees were raised as seculars, they also stressed how easy it was to enter Jewish New Age circles and how natural it felt. Many interviewees explained they immediately felt ‘at home’ upon entering JNA networks. The early familiarity theme is apparent in Luna’s description of her initial encounter with the JNA community she subsequently joined: ²

At that time [the community] used to study Ecclesiastes once a week. I decided to join them … I wasn’t into the community thing at all. But really, I was drawn in very quickly. It was an enormous surprise for me … From the first meeting I had the sense of eureka, a true feeling of ‘this is it!’.

At least some of that eureka feeling stems from Luna’s childhood engagement with the Jewish tradition. Other interviewees also stressed their childhood familiarity with various Jewish canonic texts, usually mediated by a close family member. Sherry, another interviewee, explicitly mentions her relationship with her grandfather when describing her pathway to JNA:

I grew up on the knees of a saint. My mother’s father wasn’t religious and didn’t like religious people. But he was from Poland, and was ordained as a rabbi, and then the war came … [As early as two years old] he taught me Torah stories, Talmudic stories. When I was four years old I already knew how to read. So he taught me Kabbalah and Gematria. ³

Other interviewees stressed ‘classical’ highbrow indicators and middle-class cultivation practices in relation to Judaism such as reading habits and knowledge of Jewish canonic texts and culture. Says Efrat:

My father is a professor of Jewish philosophy … So although we are a secular family from a kibbutz, Judaism was present in our home. I grew up on stories about the ancient rabbis and the stories of Rabbi Nachman of Breslav that my father used to read to us before going to bed.

Indeed, despite their secularity, interviewees were anything but detached from their Jewish roots. Their prior knowledge yielded a sense of confidence and even a primordial ownership of the Jewish tradition, in which Judaism is constructed as a cherished yet personal ‘cultural heritage’. The words of Ohad Ezrachi, a leading figure and founder of a prominent JNA community, succinctly illustrate this sense of individual ownership:

As Jews we are all the ‘legal heirs’ of our mothers’ and fathers’ spiritual tradition and we do not need a guardian of this knowledge and wisdom nor the approval of the religious authorities. A legal heir, according to the Halachic definition is one who can seize his ‘father’s property, and do with it as he wills’. We need to develop in us this ability to better understand the spiritual property of our mothers and fathers so we can seize it and refurbish the Jewish home in the appropriate way for contemporary man looking for a spiritual self-development and who does not deny his true self (Ezrachi, 2000: 41).

This influential text frames Jewish tradition as a cultural property, an inheritance that is privately ‘owned’ by each and every Jew and is therefore available for personal use and individual interpretation. This personal ownership is different from the renditions of Jewishness as ethnic or national collectives.

Similar, individual sentiments are expressed by Nadav:

I am and was born a Jew. I am a son of this ancient tribe. My language is Hebrew and my citizenship is Israeli. I live in a state in which the members of my nation are the sovereign; I absorbed a legacy and way of life. And in this fashion, I formulate for myself my spiritual path … From my personal standpoint, it is inauthentic to formulate my new way other than through my heritage … This sort of culture is an inextinguishable deposit for finding a unique, personal road.

These words convey one of the most important and recurrent themes in the interviews: that Jewish spirituality, originating from a shared cultural heritage, is hyper-individualised. Religiosity becomes a private matter that every Jew is entitled to mold and reconstruct according to her own personal goals, values and aspirations. This view contrasts with institutionalised religion, especially the Orthodox and clerical variants of Judaism – the only state-recognised form of Judaism. Indeed, many JNAers stressed their capacity to choose a Jewish practice and utilise it as a form of self-knowledge and self-development. The de-institutionalisation and individualisation of JNA was rendered in the interviews as most appealing, and was usually associated with personal autonomy. This idea is expressed in the words of Meirav:

I’m interested in Judaism because it is in my spiritual genes. It is a place which is very open towards all spiritual paths. I could also be a Zen nun, or practice Buddhist meditation as part of my spiritual work. Good friends of mine chose that path, and I could have chosen it as well, very easily, yes? The fact that I didn’t choose it does not necessarily mean that I reject it. Not at all … Judaism is first and foremost a choice.

The ‘choosing’ rhetoric goes well with how people who are high on cultural capital engage with a panoply of cultural objects and activities (Bennet et al., 2009; Skeggs, 2004).

Finally, JNA is not only a primordial but also an individualised spiritual orientation. It is also a hybrid spiritual practice that incorporates affective and experiential elements of New Age culture. Such spiritual openness exemplifies a typically middle-class cosmopolitan orientation. As noted above, JNA has developed as a critique of Orthodox denominations. Hence, interviewees tended to present JNA as the spiritual alternative to institutionalised Judaism. ‘The problem with religion’, said Omer as he was discussing the advantages of JNA spiritual rituals, ‘is that it does not offer a space for the “here and now”. [In institutionalised religious rituals] all is dictated and preordained whereas the “here and now” [of spiritual rituals] is dynamic.’ Omer perceives JNA’s spiritual rituals as experiential: dynamic, flexible and spontaneous; elements that the religious-orthodox ritual lacks. Sherry says similar things regarding her decision to participate in a JNA weekend retreat:

I decided that I also wanted to experience [the] things that I have been studying for years. I also wanted the experience. So in a real quick decision I went there. And I have to admit that it was really beautiful. The experiential dimension really spoke to me. That is the link not only to the text, but going deeper, trying to decipher and especially to experience the sacred.

For JNA participants the move from a textually and legally based religion to a more experiential spirituality involved the hybridisation of Judaism. Practising JNA involves openness to various non-Jewish traditions such as Buddhism, Sufism and yoga, at times resulting in formalised hybrid forms such as Torah-Yoga or Hebrew Shamanism (Rothenberg, 2006; Weissler, 2005). Quoting Ohad Ezrachi again, here is how he describes the benefits of hybridisation: ‘My community wishes to incorporate into Jewish Renewal wisdoms and techniques from other spiritual paths, mostly from Eastern religions – movement techniques and ways of meditation. Their contribution to Judaism as a way of life is incalculable’ (Ezrachi, 1999: 15).

This openness towards non-Jewish emotive, corporeal and sensorial spiritual elements is especially evident in JNA’s prayer services that thoroughly revise traditional Jewish prayers. Whereas traditional prayers normally take place in synagogues, JNA prayers usually take place in simple, makeshift and improvised structures such as classrooms, lecture halls, and even tents, shacks or outdoor settings. Mattresses and cushions replace chairs. The walls, if there are any, are adorned with colourful pictures and posters. Upon entering the prayer space, participants take off their shoes and enter barefoot, similar to Moslem, Indian or Buddhist temples. When seating is in a circle, objects such as burning incense or crystals are placed at the centre. As opposed to the Orthodox service, men and women sit together on the floor. Typically, participants adhere to Israeli New Age culture’s dress codes, wearing white simple cotton shirts for the men and wide swinging long skirts for the women, barefoot or wearing flip-flops, with longer hair for both men and women.

JNA prayers incorporate many stylistic innovations that are contrastive to the textuality of the canonic Jewish liturgy and prosody. Tunes inspired by Eastern and Middle Eastern music accompany prayers, using oriental instruments such as darbuka (goblet drum), ney (Middle Eastern flute) or harmonium. Importantly, many JNA services incorporate Sufi and Hindu styles of devotional chanting. The chants typically consist of a single verse taken from the siddur (prayer book) or the scripture and sung repetitively, mantra-like. The chanting replaces the traditional Jewish prayer based on long paragraphs in Hebrew and Aramaic. By discarding siddur reading in favour of chanting and dancing, the act of praying becomes accessible to new secular crowds who are not so familiar with traditional Jewish prayer. The tunes of the chanting are especially important as they set the bodily and the emotive response of those who are praying. Slow, quiet, melodious tunes evoke a contemplative mood, with the worshipers sitting quietly, their eyes closed, meditating; at times supplementing this position by a rocking movement of the upper body, with a hand resting on the chest. Livelier music, accompanied by rhythmic beating on oriental drums, creates the atmosphere for dancing. Often, participants in the prayer sing and dance, embracing each other joyfully for hours. JNA’s prayer is thus designed to generate an intense, immersive experience, in which the conventions of Jewish worship are loosened and supplanted with spontaneity and expressivity, in ways that manifest an assuredness of one’s uniqueness.

The eclectic incorporation of New Age elements into the prescribed, canonic, Jewish prayer is in line with recent transformations in middle-class tastes. Studies persistently find that the middle class is more culturally eclectic than other classes as it leans towards cultural pluralism and openness and tends to participate in a breadth of cultural activities. These studies also suggest that such cultural pluralism does not mean the death of class. Instead, they propose that cultural superiority is no longer related to exclusionary tastes (as Bourdieu presumed) but, rather, to ‘… a sense of confidence linked to the ability to handle diverse genres and forms of cultural activity’ (Bennet et al., 2009: 66; also Ollivier, 2008; Skeggs, 2004).

Similarly, in JNA ritualising, various traditional components are reshuffled and renewed. While basic indices of traditional Jewish prayer remain and the service includes some of the key prayers of the Jewish siddur, the overall form, content and ambience of the ritual resembles New Age festivals and public events that celebrate self-transformation and human connectedness. Participants do not perceive these rituals as a parochial tradition but as ecumenical spiritual techniques for self-realisation. As Meirav pointed out:

You do not need to be religious [i.e. Orthodox Jew] to pray. There are other ways to pray than to stand in the synagogue holding a siddur … You can sing, you can yell and you can dance. For me this singing and praying are techniques for [self] liberation.

These words draw not just an aesthetic boundary between different styles of prayers, but also a moral boundary between types of individuals: those who conform with the preordained, religious and orthodox ways of life and those who are able to make praying personally meaningful. In this regard, the emphasis on individualised, cosmopolitan and eclectic experience can be perceived as a distinction mechanism that separates JNA middle-class adherents from those social groups that are fixed in their liturgical approach, namely, Orthodox and lower-class Mizrahi (Jews of oriental origin) ‘traditionalists’.

Yet, more than the delineation of the social distinction between those who practise chosen Jewish spirituality versus fixed Judaism, we were intrigued by the fact that it was through a certain turn to Judaism, that ‘seculars’ rehearsed their class power. The next section tackles the role of religion in class reproduction through the perspective of identity politics. We propose that in order for ‘religiosity’ to qualify as ‘cultural’, ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘individualistic’ – hence worthy of the attention of secular middle-class Israelis – it must first become symbolically significant for marginalised groups in their claims for recognition and inclusion into the collective.

JNA, Identity Politics and Class Reproduction

Although the term ‘identity politics’ is highly contested, it usually refers to identity-based political claims for recognition of marginalised social groups. These claims may be relieved by embracing stigmatised and inferiorised collective identities and rendering them positive and empowering. In this process, lack of material and symbolic power is compensated, even resisted, by the voluntary essentialisation of religious and ethnic cultures. Consequently, social appreciation, dignity and resilience replace feelings of alienation (Bernstein, 2005; Kymlicka, 2013; Lamont et al., 2013; Mizrachi and Herzog, 2012).

Whereas theories of identity politics tend to focus on the socially disenfranchised, we look at how the higher-ranked may use others’ essentialisation of culture and identities for their own advantage. We explain the secular middle class’s turn to Judaism as an attempt to reestablish or reclaim the social power they feel entitled to, under changing cultural, social and material conditions.

According to recent studies, the middle class in Israel is becoming more socially heterogeneous and economically polarised. Rosenhek and Shalev (2014: 37) assert that while the (neo)liberalisation of Israel’s political economy has burdened the Ashkenazi (European) middle class, ‘the classic ethnic divide among Israeli Jews is less relevant today than in the past in influencing the chances of young adults to enter the middle class’. Indeed, data show that Mizrahim now constitute about 30% of the income upper middle class (Nissanov, 2014) and the Mizrahi middle class has become a sociological object of inquiry (Abutbul Selinger, 2013).

Arguably, this perceived loss of hegemony possibly generates internal struggles within the expanded middle class. Whereas some research focuses on the political dimensions of these struggles (Rosenhek and Shalev, 2014; Sorek and Ceobanu, 2009), we focus on culture. The Ashkenazi, secular middle-class’s JNA appropriates multicultural ideals – such as diversity, pluralism and openness – and uses them in order to reproduce their (perceived) undermined advantages. As we show below, religiosity is a decisive cultural difference that marks Mizrahim and Orthodox Jews in Israel, and is the basis for their claims for recognition. JNA is one example of the way in which, despite the recent middle-class’s social heterogeneity, through supposedly pluralistic cultural practices, the hegemonic fraction is still able to maintain the hierarchical power relations (Selinger, 2013). It is a testimony to the cultural power of the middle class to transgress accepted cultural boundaries and to redraw them.

We qualify this claim by, first, considering the correlation between class, ethnicity and religiosity in Israel in an historical perspective. Researchers argue that ethnic categorisation prefigured socio-economic inequality in Israel (Cohen-Almagor, 1995: 474; Khazzoom, 2003: 483). The interplay between religiosity and secularism has been instrumental in further delineating ethno-class boundaries (Levy, 2011), leading to an overlap between ethnic and religious groups on the one hand, and class locations on the other (Ayalon et al., 1991; Ben-Porat, 1999; Herman, 2012; Khazzoom, 2003).

The crystallisation of the religio-ethno-class map during the first post-statehood decades relied upon a hegemonic discourse that determined degrees of belonging to the Israeli collective. Discourses of belonging, according to Anthias (2001: 849), shape ‘access to resources of different types such as access to full citizenship rights, access to welfare or access to jobs or particular levels of income’. It was principally the Ashkenazi ruling elite and middle-class technocrats, affiliated with the centralised state apparatus, who were identified as the nation-builders and the essence of Israeliness (Ben-Porat, 1999: 161–163; Kimmerling, 2001; Shafir and Peled, 2002).

According to Shafir and Peled (2002: 137), ‘Zionism has always proclaimed itself a secular national movement in the tradition of the Enlightenment’. De facto, however, the state has accorded Judaism a privileged status because it provided a historical justification for the Zionist project (Ben-Porat, 2000; Ben-Porat and Feniger, 2014; Cohen-Almagor, 1995: 469; Kimmerling, 2001: 102). This established an ethno-class hierarchy not only between Jews and non-Jews (Ben-Porat, 2000: 234), but also among Jews, which was based on the division between secular, civic-national on the one hand, and traditional forms of Jewish religion on the other. Against Judaism as a national identity, Judaism as a religious identity was perceived as a hindrance – first to the modernisation and later to the globalisation of Israel. In this hierarchy, Mizrahim and Orthodox Jews were rendered inherently parochial and backward and hence ‘deserving’ their own marginality (Ben-Porat, 2000: 235; Lehmann and Siebzehner, 2011: 88; Levy, 2011). ⁴ This lent a social and cultural worth to the Ashkenazi, secular middle class, which further enhanced and justified its privilege (Sabbagh, 2005).

Since the 1970s, however, ‘the meaning of what might be called Israeliness, the rules of the game, and the criteria for distribution and redistribution of common goods’ (Kimmerling, 2001: 2) in Israel ‘has been touched by identity politics’ (Lehmann and Siebzehner, 2011: 87; also Kimmerling, 2001; Ram, 2011; Shafir and Peled, 2002). The hegemonic core of Israeli society, represented by the Ashkenazi secular middle class, has been challenged from ‘below’. An emergent, if limited, multicultural system expanded the range of claims for recognition by ethnic and religious groups, lifestyles and identities, demanding the power to shape the core of Israeli culture (Cohen-Almagor, 1995: 478–479; Kimmerling, 2001; Lehmann and Siebzehner, 2011: 103; Ram, 2011). Some scholars explain this in terms of a deepening political antagonism between the ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ (Evans and Kanyak, 2015; Ram, 2008, 2011: 4). Yet, it is also possible to understand this reclaiming of Jewish religiosity by marginalised groups as more than merely political but a cultural process as well, that has consequently raised the symbolic value of Jewishness.

To be sure, religion has greatly facilitated Mizrahi political mobilisation, as exemplified by the Shas political party. Shas brings people of Mizrahi background to re-adopt a religious lifestyle. This type of ‘return to the fold’ is embedded in a claim for ethnic recognition (Leon, 2010), similar to Claire Mitchell’s claim that groups may ‘deliberately instrumentalise religion to bolster ethnic identity’ (2006: 1146). But more than electoral politics, Orthodox and Mizrahi religious cultures have recently become highly visible in the cultural scene, as is evident by numerous popular-culture artefacts that represent orthodox and religious ways of life (Seroussi and Regev, 2013). Furthermore, some high-profile celebrities, artists and musicians have recently embraced Jewish observance and an Orthodox lifestyle, while maintaining a high public profile. Finally, some Orthodox and religious groups do not necessarily exclude themselves from civil society but may be leading less segregated lifestyles (Leon, 2010). Arguably, then, Jewish religiosity is being absorbed into mainstream Israeli culture.

We propose that since ‘the definition of Israeli collective identity has become less civic and secular and more “Judaic” and religious’ (Kimmerling, 2001: 111), the symbolic efficacy of Jewishness transformed, as well. As one scholar suggests, ‘Judaism appears to serve as extremely strong “social glue” in Israel today. … In fact, it is so strong that it might well defeat “Israeliness” as the collective identity’s center of gravity’ (Herman, 2012: 7). Indeed, religious ideas may sometimes be rehabilitated and reactivated in response to social and political shifts. ‘Once these ideas are put “back out there”’, writes Mitchell, ‘they continue to have their own logic and reproduce patterns of social relationships, rather than simply signify them’, becoming ‘active identities’ in their own right (Mitchell, 2006: 1147, 1149). This ‘reactivation’ of religiosity is of special significance to the middle class who, in a late-modern culture that sacralises choice, is particularly inclined to ‘mix and match’ as part of its identity-work (Skeggs, 2004: 138–139).

Evidently, once certain Jewish elements were somewhat freed from their previous stigmatising implications and became more mainstream and culturally appealing, middle class Israelis began re-appropriating them. Whereas marginalised groups have been actively using their religious identity as a collective political tool, the middle class has started actively using it as well, but for the sake of individualisation. For them, Jewish religiosity has become a self-identity. Consequently, softer, cultural and individualised forms of Judaism are now being practised. Among these forms are the intellectual study of Jewish canonic texts (Sagiv and Lomsky-Feder, 2007), Mizrahi liturgy (Seroussi and Regev, 2013) and the more experiential New Age forms of Judaism described above. While the Israeli middle class has always included Jewish components in its identity-work, what has recently changed is that instead of the ‘nationalisation’ of Jewish symbols it is now preoccupied with their ‘re-religionisation’ of Judaism. In this regard, the engagement of middle-class Israelis with the hybrid and experiential JNA may be seen as a repositioning strategy within an increasingly Judaised society and expanded middle class.

Conclusion

This article posited that religiosity continues to play an important role in class relations. Focusing on JNA in Israel, we asked why middle-class seculars increasingly engage with the Jewish religion. JNA exemplifies how religion becomes a preferred site for the middle class to showcase their symbolic power to redefine the very meaning of Judaism as a self-actualising technique. This, by identifying what is new and authentic, and then be the first to pluralise and culturalise this authentic content. We identified two central mechanisms by which religiosity is enacted and performed as a self-identity rather than a political, ideological and collective identity.

The first mechanism is the culturalisation of Jewishness via religious eclecticism, emotionality and experientialism. JNA marks the cosmopolitanism of worshipers who feel at home with both global spirituality and local Judaism. This expands theories of religious commodification that perceive New Age as merely a self-chosen composite of various global religious influences. We argue that JNA’s hybridity does not only indicate a changing and more pluralised religious landscape, but is also part of a broader cultural transformation in which class distinctions have become infused with non-elitist, inclusionary notions of openness, pluralism and authenticity (Ollivier, 2008). Evidently, distinction is now less about monopolising culture and more about playing with, and experiencing, various cultural elements and states (Kaplan, 2013). Choosing skills and the ability to ‘experience’, increasingly act as indices of social worth. JNA’s personal growth rhetoric, and especially the active choosing it entails, are part of a neoliberal ideal of entrepreneurialism that marks contemporary middle-class propriety. In this regard, what may seem as cultural and religious pluralism is part of a broader system of class reproduction.

The second class-based mechanism we identified is the appropriation of Other’s valuable cultural and religious resources. Here Jewish elements are appropriated after they acquired cultural value through identity politics, and are recast as ‘culture’, ‘wisdom’, ‘mode of being’ and ‘spiritual tradition’. Paradoxically, it is the social marginality of religiosity that has imbued it with the ‘ruggedness’ and authenticity that the middle class seeks. Thus, if identitarian struggles may increase the value of what is at stake in these struggles – religious identifications for example – then the higher-ranked are able to reuse these very stakes for their own benefit.

In this regard, our work moves beyond the political explanation and the predominant approach towards religion as a field of political contestation. Such a perspective may regard JNA as the consequence of the crisis of legitimacy of Israeli nationalism and the concurrent attempt of the secular, liberal-democratic middle class to ‘reposition itself at the center of the political and social fields as the backbone of society’ (Rosenhek and Shalev, 2014: 44). According to such claims, the ethno-nationalisation of Israel after the failure of the Oslo peace process with the Palestinians made the middle class feel ‘it had been pushed to the margins by these dominant forces, which were orchestrating a full-frontal assault on the values and practices of liberal democracy’ (Rosenhek and Shalev, 2014: 44). However, from a cultural perspective, JNA’s spiritual hybridity may be also a good way to retain class power, by marking JNAers as, simultaneously, part of a cosmopolitan liberal community (Sorek and Ceobanu, 2009), without detaching from the local Jewish society. We see the ability of the middle class to latch onto identity politics an evidence of its (staying) power.

Most identity politics studies stress how the disenfranchised either succeed or fail in reclaiming their cultural essences and repositioning them as assets. But in this article we reconsidered the relationship between identity and class-based struggles. Ultimately, we proposed that identity politics are not necessarily challenging to class hierarchies. Some cultural practices that appear inclusive and pluralistic may actually foster class reproduction. In this ‘neoliberal multiculturalism’ (Kymlicka, 2013), cultural mixing and inclusion of difference establishes middle-class domination (Skeggs, 2004). We therefore perceive JNA as a dual practice of ‘marking and unmarking’ (Sasson-Levy, 2013; also Abutbul Selinger, 2013), allowing middle-class adherents to sometimes erase and sometimes emphasise the differences between them and the marginal groups. Inasmuch as Israel is an advanced-capitalist and a Jewish state, our middle-class participants have re-adjusted to the changing terms of belonging to the Israeli collectivity. In doing so, they may very well advance the ‘Judaisation’ of Israeli culture, yet not merely as an explicit political process, but also as a class distinction practice.