With fireworks in the sky, dancing in the streets, and triumphal blasts of rams' horns, Israel turned 50 this week. At first a dream of European, mostly secular Jews forged out of the ashes of the Holocaust, its birth greeted with war, Israel has now reached the half-century mark. It's a modern secular state with biblical roots for Jews and Christians and Muslims as well.By most measures, it's been a successful 50 years. The country, a major regional power, has grown from 800,000 people to almost six million, but today the peace process is stalled and the country wrestles with profound religious and secular internal divisions. So, as Paul Miller reports from Jerusalem in the first of a three-part series, Israel's 50th anniversary was marked by contrasting moods.
PAUL MILLER: In the end, Israelis did celebrate their jubilee anniversary. In a country under siege for most of its life, where people still refer to its existence as a miracle, there's cause to rejoice. But before the event, the atmosphere was different.Professor YARON EZRAHI (Author): There is a rather a grim atmosphere in Israel in the wake of celebration rather than celebratory mood.
MILLER: Part of that mood is based on the sense that Israel is seriously divided between religious Jews and the three quarters of the population that is secular. Some secular Jews who want Israel to be modern and western think the ultra-Orthodox want to make Israel a medieval theocracy. Some ultra-Orthodox say those who do not live by the Torah cannot be considered Jews.
Professor MOSHE HALBERTAL (Hartman Institute): I think we're heading, or the theory is that we're heading, for an almost violent clash between these two competing ideologies.MILLER: Another reason for the grimness is security concerns and anxiety about the peace process. It's been stalled for months. Israelis' ideas about their history with the Palestinians were challenged by a controversial episode of a television series that became one of the defining events of this anniversary. It's called TEKUMA, "rebirth." Its executive producer says the series challenged many cherished myths, and people didn't like it. The series contributed to a mood of introspection about relations with the Palestinians and what to do about Jerusalem, the Holy City of three major monotheistic religions -- introspection, too, about accusations that immigrant Jews were discriminated against, and about the splits in Israeli society between the religious and the secular, the rich and the poor, the Jew and the Arab. Some say the introspection is a sign of success, because Israel no longer has to worry only about security.
Prof. EZRAHI: Each of these groups, I think, is bound to learn that it cannot control the West. And in this context, the best thing that can happen to us is to increasingly understand that this state, as a democracy, is a framework for freedom to pursue our diverse, rich cultural, political, religious divisions.
I'm Paul Miller in Jerusalem.
