Israeli Secularism at a Crossroads: Between Scientific Achievement and Cultural Emptiness

Israeli secularism has much to be proud of. Historically, it played a foundational role in establishing the state, albeit with a messianic undertone - and succeeded in building both society and a formidable military. To this day, secular Israelis continue to lead Israel's economy and contribute significantly to its scientific and technological achievements.

Yet despite its cultural creativity and contributions, secular Israeli culture is facing a growing and deepening challenge: it defines itself primarily in opposition to religion, rather than by producing a compelling spiritual or cultural narrative of its own.

This vacuum helps explain the ideological fragmentation we now witness -manifested in gender theory, feminism, and an overarching obsession with sexuality. In the absence of a deeper developmental vision, secularism has come to view sexuality as its primary positive content, and anti-religiosity as its dominant spiritual expression.

This does not mean that secular Israelis lack heritage, values, culture, or accomplishment. But if secularism is to continue as a leading force in Israeli life, it must generate richer, more meaningful substance - spiritually and intellectually. One possible cause for this cultural stagnation is the fact that political power has long been handed to secular elites almost by default. This may have dulled the drive to renew and justify cultural leadership. When all that’s required is to play along with a prewritten script, it’s little wonder that few bother to write new music.

And so, in a state of half-vitality - economically and scientifically alive, but culturally dead, Israeli secularism continues to hold the reins of the state in some respects, yet has become a shadow of what it once was just fifty years ago. That earlier era, paradoxically, exhibited greater openness, tolerance, and even admiration for the very Jewish tradition it now treats with suspicion.

In the meantime, what increasingly fills the cultural void is a shallow and often intellectually inferior form of oriental traditionalism - while paradoxically, the ultra-Orthodox religious culture, though constrained within predetermined boundaries, is capable of offering profound depth.

Israel’s key secular institutions, the military, the judiciary, and the education system, still largely hold the reins of the state. Yet their representatives seem unable to provide meaningful spiritual or cultural substance, relying instead on hollow slogans that are repeated, often without reflection, by religious, traditional, and secular audiences alike.

This decline is not unique to Israel; it is part of a broader collapse within secular Western civilization, and by extension, among Israeli Jews who have tied their fate to it.

This deterioration is manifesting across governance, the arts, music, poetry, literature, gender dynamics, education, and beyond—hollowing out the cultural core of Israeli secular life.

One might have expected that, at the very least, the Israelis would draw on the remnants of their Jewish intellect to slow down this process of cultural death and growing irrelevance. But no.

This raises a philosophical question: is every secular philosophy that defines itself primarily in opposition to religion ultimately doomed from the start?

There is a growing sense that Israel is yearning for a real intellectual awakening - and one must ask honestly if it will be part of a secular movement, or perhaps part of a new light that'll shine.