Seeking a ‘pure relationship'? Israeli Religious-Zionist singles looking for love and marriage

Abstract

Research conducted over the past 20 years has found that there have been changes in attitudes towards romantic relationships in late modernity. Partners expect more of relationships, and they are abandoned more easily than they were in the past. Religious fundamentalists reject both late-modern and modern attitudes towards romantic love, but the question of how moderate religious individuals and groups are affected by these changes remains unexamined. The article addresses this issue by focusing on the case of Israeli Religious-Zionist singles. Using Anthony Giddens' model of a gradual progression from a romantic love to a confluent love ideal type, the article claims that while Religious-Zionist dating norms encourage the romantic love ideal type of relationship, singles have gravitated toward a confluent love mindset; the rabbis, in an attempt to remedy the situation, adopt the Ultra-Orthodox ideology that views romantic love as superfluous. The results indicate that moderate religious individuals are indeed affected by late-modern attitudes towards intimate relations, and this is a source of tension since they continue to espouse religious 'family values' as well.

Keywords:

• Religious Zionist
• romantic love
• Judaism
• intimacy
• religion
• late modernity

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Shaine Center, the Bloch family fund and the Cherrick Center for funding my research and writing. I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. Harvey Goldberg, and Prof. Ephraim Tabory for commenting on earlier versions of this article, as well as the members of the hevruta study group, the two anonymous readers and the editors of Religion for their helpful comments.

Notes

¹ Bayaat haravakut, literally, ‘the bachelor/spinster problem.’ There is no direct translation for the English social status ‘single.’ Instead bachelors (a word that in Hebrew can be applied to women as well), divorcees and widowers are referred to as such.

²According to the 2009 Social Survey of the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, among respondents aged 30–39 who defined themselves as religious, 15.8% were never married. It should be noted that Israeli Jews refer to RZs simply as ‘religious,’ while the Ultra-Orthodox are known as ‘Haredi.’ Comparatively, only 5.3% of the Ultra-Orthodox, and as much as 24.7% of the secular respondents belonging to this age group, were never married. For the religious population, this is a sharp rise from the 2002 survey, the earliest survey in which participants were requested to state their religious identity. In the 2002 survey only 5% of the religious respondents aged 30–39 were never married. In contrast, the percentage of the singles in the other groups has remained stable.

³Intimacy here does not refer to sexual ties, but rather to an emotional closeness that is based upon a willingness to ‘reveal concerns and needs to an other and to be vulnerable to that other’; it can exist in non-sexual relationships as well (Giddens 1992: 62).

⁴For explanations of why this may be so, see Engelberg (forthcoming).

⁵Yeshivas are Jewish religious schools.

⁶‘National service’ is a framework that was created in order to enable RZ women who would not serve in the military for religious reasons to serve the country by volunteering in civilian social-service programs.

⁷ Midrashot are RZ yeshivas for women high-school graduates.

⁸Most men and women rent apartments with members of the same sex, but establish social contacts with members of the opposite sex as well.

⁹According to Jamieson, disclosing intimacy is often more an aspiration than a lived reality, but it nevertheless has resonance in private lives (Jamieson 1998: 159).

¹⁰The question of whether planned single motherhood is legitimate for older single women is considered controversial in RZ society. Women like Meirav defy societal norms regarding the traditional family, in order to achieve another societal (and personal) goal, that of motherhood.

¹¹In fact these impulses may have roots within RZ ideology; see Fischer (2007).