Politicized Secularism in Israel: Secularists as a Party to Communal Conflict Nadav Shelef Received: 14 January 2009 / Accepted: 22 January 2010 / Published online: 19 March 2010 Ó Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2010 Abstract Most of the attention paid to the religious–secular conflict in Israel has been devoted to the religious side. As a result, secular Israelis remain conceptual- ized as a residual category, as atomized individuals who share little but a lack of religiosity, and thus as passive subjects in the conflict. Drawing on lessons from identity politics, this article argues that secular fear of the religious, especially the ultra-orthodox, has led segments of the secular Israeli public increasingly to think of themselves as secularists, making their shared ‘non-religious’ identity politically relevant. To the extent that secularist social and political entrepreneurs succeed in bringing this about, the relationship between religious and secular is likely to resemble inter-communal conflict rather than tension between interest groups within a single community. Keywords Secular Á Religious–secular conflict Á Identity politics Á Israel Introduction Conflict over the role of religion in the public realm is a common feature of many contemporary societies. In diverse contexts, ranging from the United States, France, the Netherlands, Hungary and India, to Turkey, Egypt, Iraq and Pakistan, religious and secular visions of society contend for influence over the public realm. This is also true of Israel. The existence of a deep and abiding conflict between religious and secular conceptions of what the ‘‘Jewish state’’ ought to be is one of the reasons Israel is often characterized as a deeply divided society. While the Israeli case is not unique, it has something to teach us about the role of the secular in religious–secular N. Shelef (&) Department of Political Science, Harvey M. Meyerhoff Assistant Professor of Modern Israel Studies, University of Wisconsin, 414 North Hall, 1050 Bascom Mall, Madison, WI 53706, USA e-mail: shelef@wisc.edu 123 Cont Jewry (2010) 30:87–104 DOI 10.1007/s12397-010-9025-8