Research: yeshiva students are 'Israelis', but not 'Zionists'

The trend of integration of the ultra-Orthodox community in the country, being spoken about all the time, does not affect the ideological concepts. A new study finds that Zionism and Orthodox are still walking parallel paths, even when it comes to the younger generation.

Do Charedi youth see themselves as Zionists? This question, among others, was examined in a research conducted by Institute for Market Watch, to examine the Zionist awareness among youth in Israel.

The study was initiated by the Zionist Council in Israel, for the Youth Congress which began yesterday (Monday) in Upper Nazareth. He studied 300 subjects aged 15 to 18 (Yeshiva ages, roughly).

70.8% of ultra-Orthodox youngsters do not recognize the Oslo agreement (compared to 63.3% in the religious sector, and 48.2% in the traditional.) And in general, our right to the country - 79.3% believes that it stems from the Torah and the promise of G-d, compared with 59% in the religious and 44.6% in the traditional sector.

If there will not duty of recruiting - only 4.6% of Charedi youth will choose to join the army voluntarily.

34.4% of Charedi youth say they are "not at all Zionists." 60.7% divide the answer from "very Zionist," "quite a Zionist," and "not so much a Zionist."

Compared with the definition of "Zionist" which drags a degree of little solidarity among orthodox youth, the definition of "Israeli" gets higher results: 85.4% defined themselves that way. 14.6% are not willing to identify with this definition.

Other interesting statistics came when youth were asked to express their opinion about well known figures. 35.7% said Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook; the spiritual father of religious Zionism is "very Zionistic."

The Israeli poet Chaim Nachman Bialik, the Volozhin yeshiva student who resigned, had higher percentages. It may be due to the ultra-Orthodox youth sees Zionism as a secular movement and have difficult to identify it with a rabbi.

Among non-charedi religious youth the situation is reversed: 71.5% see Rabbi Kook as "very Zionist," while only 24.1% consider Bialik as such.

Head of operations in Israel and battle against anti-Semitism in the World Zionist Organization, Yaakov Hagoel, explained: "The survey findings show that Zionism is still alive and kicking and is still relevant today, and perhaps even more than ever. There is no doubt that Israeli youth are connected to Zionism and to Israel but there is also a need to strengthen and deepen the knowledge in the history of Zionism and Israel, especially in the charedi sector where there are significant differences evident in the knowledge foundations of Zionism and the recent history of the State of Israel."

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!