“And so, all of Israel will be saved” Rom. 11:26a

SECULAR JEWS

Israel is a country of 6.4 million people, 80% of whom are Jewish. It is an immigrant nation with over 100 different countries represented among her immigrants. Many immigrants bring with them a diversity of cultural and religious expressions. This raises an important national question: “What does it mean to be an ‘Israeli Jew’? Only 20% of the Jewish population was actually born in Israel. So the vast majority has brought their religious and cultural ‘flavors’ from their former communities. The Israeli Jew therefore, suffers a type of identity crisis. Only 10-15% of the Jews clings to their religious heritage while the remaining 85-90% has abandoned faith and tries to find their expression in secular, humanistic Zionism. So, in this context, being ‘Jewish’ is regarded as an ethnicity not a religion. They struggle to etch out their existence and identity in the Land of Israel by the sweat of their brows and living by their own wits rather than through commonality of faith and through prayers. A rallying cry in Israel today is: “If I am not for me, then who is?”

The full Profile of the Secular Jews in Modern Israel:people-profile.pdf