Religious Zionism: The Quest for Hegemony

There is general agreement that Jewish Israeli society is undergoing a process of religionization, or de-secularization, manifested in a growing saliency of religious personalities, religious themes, and the religious outlook in public life. We seek to explain the causes and significance of this process by looking at the two key aspects of it: (1) the increasing presence and influence of religious Zionists in various areas of social life – politics, the military, education, mass media – with particular attention to the field of visual arts, which has been largely neglected by previous researchers; (2) rising religiosity among Israeli Jews who previously considered themselves to be secular or traditional. Both processes, we will argue, are rooted in the decline of Labor Zionism's hegemonic position in the society since 1967 and signify the rise of religious Zionism to challenge it.