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Pasit Siach, a high school teacher, said he dreams of an Israel where everyone — ultra-Orthodox Jews, atheists and anyone in between — feels free to lead the lifestyle they choose.
Pinchas Badush, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, has a different vision, in which public life dies on the Jewish Sabbath, civil marriage is not recognized by the state and the ultraconservative rabbi implements a strict interpretation of halal food regulations.
Competing visions of what Israel is and should be are part of the country’s defining battle for years, and have intensified since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office in late December at the helm of the right-wing and religious conservatives. administration in Israel’s history.
While the tension has long been felt throughout Israel, especially in the Springs Valley, a beautiful plain in northeastern Israel dotted with streams, rivers and Roman ruins where Ms. Siach and Mr. Badush live.
Here, in the fertile farmland between the Jordan River and the mountains that mark the edge of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the government’s supporters and detractors live at an uncomfortable distance, and disagreements sometimes boil over. physical confrontation.
One side is mainly drawn from the approximately 20,000 residents of Beit Shean, a hardscrabble town populated mainly by Mizrahim, or Jews from the Middle East, like Mr. Badush, who generally support the government. The other side is mainly made up of about 10,000 residents of the prosperous villages, or kibbutzim, that surround the city – mostly Ashkenazim, or Jews of European descent, like Ms. Siah.
For years, kibbutzim residents have controlled access to the area’s much-loved land and scenic riverbanks, a source of tension between the two groups. And Mizrahim Beit Shean have often been workers in farms and factories belonging to kibbutzniks, exacerbating the sense of class division.
That all recently broke down as groups from both sides of the community clashed over a controversial plan presented by the government that would allow them to gain more control over the Supreme Court – a body that both sides of the debate felt was key to determining. the future of Israel.
Beit Shean is a sleepy low-rise community where most restaurants are closed on the Jewish Sabbath. Many Mizrahim see the Supreme Court as an unelected elite – dominated by Ashkenazi judges – who unfairly undermine the people’s elected representatives. Others see it as an obstacle to the primacy of Orthodox Jewish practice in public life. Some see it as both.
Opposition to the plan comes largely from kibbutzim, gated communities that were founded as collective farms but often look like suburbs. Kibbutzniks often see the court as a guarantor of the secularism and religious pluralism envisioned by Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, and as a bulwark against government overreach.
In recent weeks, the division has led to open confrontations in the streets around Beit Shean. In March, dozens of government supporters, some of them from Beit Shean, took over the main intersection near the city and blocked drivers they suspected of being anti-government kibbutzniks, but they allowed Beit Shean residents and government supporters to pass.
Yair Ben Hamo, a Mizrahi resident of Beit Shean who helped lead the roadblocks, said he was motivated by issues “more complicated than reform.”
“It’s about who can rule the country,” said Mr. Ben Hamo, 37. Although the social gap between the two ethnic groups began to narrow decades ago, Mizrahim like Mr. Ben Hamo still have grievances against Ashkenazim. which dominated the country in the early years of the country and still often live, like kibbutzniks near Beit Shean, in the country’s most land.
“They always give us the feeling that we are second-class citizens,” said Mr. Ben Hamo.
Tensions in the region also have a religious dimension, fueled by long-standing national disputes over what the Jewish state of Israel should be.
Because of Israel’s electoral system, which generally forces large parties to form alliances with smaller ones, ultra-Orthodox Jewish politicians have long reigned supreme in Israel’s coalition governments. That increases the influence of the ultra-Orthodox on the government — an influence that the Supreme Court sometimes fights against.
Courts have tried — unsuccessfully, so far — to block a decades-old mechanism that allows ultra-Orthodox Jews to study Torah instead of completing military service like most other Israeli Jews.
Mr. Badush, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi from Beit Shean, said he was worried that if the judicial review did not proceed, the Supreme Court would eventually be able to strike down the exemption, forcing his three young sons to fight instead of study.
“The state of Israel needs to recognize the value of learning Torah,” said Mr. Badush, 46, who is also a member of the city council. “Our right to this land is based on Judaism, on the Bible, on Jewish tradition.”
“Otherwise,” he added, “what are we doing here?”
Without judicial oversight, Mr. Badush also hopes the government will have a freer hand in keeping ultra-Orthodox rabbis in charge of the process of converting people to Judaism, inspecting halal restaurants and authorizing Jewish marriages.
“If not,” Mr. Badush said, “in another 20 years, there will be no Jewish state.”
But Mrs. Siach, the teacher, fears that if the government destroys the courts, there will be no checks on the government’s power and no protection against religious coercion.
One of the parties Mr. Badush represents, Shas, quickly moved this year to ban non-Orthodox prayers and indecent clothing at the Western Wall, Jerusalem’s holiest site, before withdrawing the proposal after heavy criticism, including from government colleagues.
The son of Ms. 12-year-old Siach plans to celebrate his bar mitzvah at the Western Wall in the fall. Without the court, he wondered, would the government still allow men and women to gather on sections of the wall where mixed-gender prayer had long caused tension.
Ms. Siach, 43, also fears for gay rights because of the hostility some members of Mr. Netanyahu’s government have shown toward the LGBTQ community. She wonders if the state will still recognize her cousin, a lesbian, as the parent of her nonbiological daughter.
“We are in a country that is struggling to survive,” said Ms. Siah. “They want to impose religious practices on the entire population.”
If Valley Springs represents the division of Israel, it also highlights how the lines of division are often blurred.
Although most kibbutzim are established as secular communities, some are close to Beit Shean rather than being established for Jews who follow an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle. A large part of the population is also now Mizrahim.
At the roadblocks, some of the Mizrahi protesters, like Mr. Ben Hamo, are secular Jews who are not motivated by religious issues. In contrast, some of the drivers pulled over by the protesters were Mizrahim or religious – or both.
“This is what hurts so much,” said Osnat Cohen-Neuman, 45, an Ashkenazi married to a Mizrahi who stopped on his way home to his religious kibbutz.
“He looked at me and said, ‘He’s this or that,'” Ms. Cohen-Neuman. “They don’t see that I’m from a religious house.”
Ms. Siach is also a devout Jew. He observes the Jewish Sabbath, teaches Jewish philosophy and lives in a religious kibbutz that serves as a Jewish seminary.
He disagrees with Mr. Badush about what a Jewish state should look like.
Mr. Badush is worried that if the dominance of Orthodox Judaism is allowed to recede, it will undermine the foundations of the country.
“Now you start destroying it,” he said, “it will be a country like any other country. And if the country is like any other country, what gives you the right to live here?
But for Ms. Siach, pluralism is essential to the survival of the state: Minority rights and religious tolerance make Israel’s national identity as a Jewish state compatible with Israel’s political identity as a democracy.
A monolithic approach to worship is “ugly in my eyes, and not Jewish,” Ms. Siach said.
“The religion that I follow, and the Bible that I know, is full of references to treating non-Jews,” he added.
Myra Noveck contributed reports from Beit Shean, and Gabby Sobelman from Rehovot, Israel.
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