Hiloni

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Hiloni (

In the Israeli parlance, hiloni is used to identify Jews who observe fewer traditional practices than the other, more religious, Jewish subgroups (apart from that, the term may also be used as a derogatory epithet by observant Jews, or to be associated with secularism).^[1] Between 2002 and 2018, among Jewish adult respondents to ICBS polls, self-identified hilonim numbered between a maximum of 45% in 2005 and a minimum of 41.4% in 2009. In 2018, the figure was 43.2%.^[2]

Though hiloni literally means "secular", many scholars noted it is problematic in translation. Professor Yoav Peled preferred to render it as "nonobservant."^[3] Kenneth D. Wald and Samuel Shye commented that:^[4]

It is essential to recall that secularity in Israel is defined in reaction to the extremely stringent demands of Orthodox Judaism and does not necessarily entail a conscious rejection of Jewish religious identity or even necessarily connote indifference. Although their standard of observance is low by Orthodox standards, many of the ostensibly secular exhibit an array of religious acts that would mark them off as fairly religious in the American context. Though the term is misleading, "secular" is the common label to identify people who do not consistently practice the ritual behavior mandated by Orthodox Judaism.

The demarcation between the hiloni category and the nearest, the masorti or "traditional", is highly porous. Surveys demonstrated that it is not reliant on objective levels of belief or ritual observance, but mainly on socioethnic lines:

Israeli social scientists measure levels of religiosity/secularity among Jews in terms of practice, not faith, and use the category of "totally nonobservant" to identify the completely secular.^[6] In the 2009 Guttman Center survey, the most comprehensive on the matter, 46% of all respondents reported they were hiloni. About 16% of the entire sample, virtually all of them hiloni, stated they were "totally nonobservant". Almost all the rest of the hiloni were "somewhat observant", and a negligible minority stated "observance to great extent".^[7] As many ritual behaviours, like setting a Mezuzah, are part of Jewish-Israeli lifestyle and lack an overt religious connotation, the "totally nonobservant" often perform some. In the 1999 Guttman survey, only a third of them did not practice any of the ten common rituals studied.^[6] At the other end, Yaacov Yadgar and Charles Liebman estimated in 2009 that about 25% of the hilonim are highly observant, on par with the more religious subgroups.^[1]

In matters of faith, four surveys between 2009 and 2019 imply that on average, 60% of the hiloni respondents believe in God, 20% are convinced

• Irreligion in Israel
• Religion in Israel
• Jewish secularism

References