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Comment by chmod600 | Hacker News Reader

Can someone provide context on what it means for Israel to be on this list?

I generally think of Israel as being defined by religion. It's in the "holy land", and it seems like almost every news article about Israel includes something about a religion.

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A small group of friends are doing a book club on I/P and I asked a couple of them who’ve been to Israel on birthright trips if they felt the population was religious or not. Their anecdotal perspective was that there is a large group (maybe majority) who are not religious.

Seeing my home country (New Zealand) rank higher in how important religion is I’m wondering how people are interpreting religious.

I’m thinking of friends and family in NZ who (outside of some weddings or funerals) never go to church or (I assume) pray or have a strong personal spiritual life. But these same people would classify themselves as ‘Christians’ simply because they put up a Christmas tree each year.

The same applies to all my Jewish friends I can think of, except that maybe a dinner with friends on a religious day that is more a reason to socialize than for any religious purpose.

it goes to the failure of the survey probably, as it might fail to define what it means to be religious. i.e. there are many many "traditional" Israelis, who might do a form of friday night dinner every week, with kiddush (blessing over wine) and all. They might then go to a movie afterward. They keep kosher in a sense, but not in a strict manner. However, they might not consider themselves "religious" because they are using the term relative to "orthodox" or "ultra orthodox" people, and they don't consider themselves "religious" in that context. Heck, my across the hall neighbors who don't consider themselves religious, due it almost every week with their kids. Personally, my observation is that in the US, we would consider someone who takes part in religious ritual every week to have a significant form of religious attachment.

It might also be that Israel has a large "secular" contigent. Some that consider themselves "jewish" but "agnostic/athiest", and some that don't consider themselves jewish at all. There's a large debate in Israel if this cohort is growing or shrinking. If one just looks at Tel Aviv, it seems huge, but Tel Aviv is a bubble, and there's a large amount of traditional people almost everywhere else. It just so happens that a very large portion of Israle's population is in the tel aviv area.

The majority of Israelis are not very religious, and Israel was never intended to be some kind of theocracy. Most of the early Zionists viewed the Jewish people as an ethnic group rather than a religious community. As it turns out, despite their growing influence in Israeli politics, a lot of Ultra-Orthodox Jews do not see Israel as a valid Jewish state because it was not established by the messiah (including some groups that live in Israel and enjoy various public benefits).

Many Israelis identify as being Jewish or Muslim, but for many of them it's a cultural identity or tradition far more than a religion.

> Many Israelis identify as being Jewish or Muslim, but for many of them it's a cultural identity or tradition far more than a religion.

Which is funny because a "cultural identity" is what being 'religious' meant in the past. Religion as a set of practices and beliefs that are 'separate' from everyday life would be quite alien to people in the ancient world, and for most of human history. Having religious and secular/public spheres of life is actually a quite Christian, and especially Protestant, way of view the world.

Tom Holland had a good talk on this:

> Books that take for granted the existence of Greek or Roman religion are everywhere. But did ‘religion’ as we understand the word today actually exist in the ancient world, or is it a word so freighted with Christian - and specifically Protestant - assumptions that to apply it to antiquity is to risk anachronism?

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeCTC_r4vMI

The separation of Church and State makes little sense in the eyes of most worldviews through history. There's a reason why the word "church" is used and not temple or mosque.

They have Israel at 30% "feel religious" but also 51% "religion is important in daily life". I imagine "belief in God" would be higher still. It all depends on which question you ask. Perhaps a lot of Israelis are not the "religiously inspired" type but they do believe it to be the truth.

Then what's the point in this list?

I was wondering the same thing. And particularly, why did they choose "feels religious" for their headline stat?

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