Women, Religion and Multiculturalism in Israel

תקציר

Israeli society has become preoccupied with the question of multiculturalism in recent years.' The issue is raised from several directions and within many contexts of cultural signifiers, including nationality, ethnicity and of course religion. It seems that the religious variable raises the most interest for the multicultural discourse, particularly in light of the definition of Israel as the State of the Jewish People in 1948 in its birth document, the Declaration of Independence, and as a Jewish and Democratic State in 1992, in the Basic Law:Human Dignity and Liberty. This article will examine the feminism-multiculturalism dilemma within Israel, and map the ways in which religion affects women in Israel. After a brief introduction to the conventional dichotomy of feminism and multiculturalism, this article points to the unique situation of religion and state relations in Israel which changes the conventional construction of the dilemma, and then analyzes the various levels in which religion influences the situation of women in Israel. Only the concluding case-study of multiculturalism in Israel captures the traditional dilemma of feminism and multiculturalism.