Fighting from the Pulpit: Religious Leaders and Violent Conflict in Israel

Religious leaders greatly influence their constituents’ political behavior. Yet, it is unclear what events trigger nationalist attitudes among religious leaders and why this effect occurs more among some religious leaders rather than others. In this article, I examine the content of Israeli Rabbinic rhetoric during different military and political conflicts. Drawing on an original collection of Sabbath pamphlets distributed to Synagogues, I demonstrate that religious rhetoric is highly responsive to levels of violence for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. I find that religious rhetoric and tone are more nationalist during conflict with the Palestinians and that this effect is mediated by religious ideologies toward the state. In contrast, religious rhetoric does not respond to military conflict in Lebanon or other internal Israeli political conflicts. These findings highlight under what conditions religious leaders infuse conflict with a religious tone, arguably making it harder to gain support for political compromise among the religious public.

宗教领袖对其信众的政治行为有很大影响。然而，尚不清楚是什么事件引发了宗教领袖的民族主义态度，以及为什么这种影响在某些宗教领袖身上比在其他宗教领袖身上更明显。在本文中，我研究了以色列拉比在不同军事和政治冲突期间的言辞内容。通过对分发给犹太教堂的安息日小册子的原始收集，我证明了宗教言辞对以巴冲突的暴力程度高度敏感。我发现，在与巴勒斯坦人发生冲突期间，宗教言辞和论调更具民族主义色彩，而且这种影响是由对国家的宗教意识形态所介导的。相比之下，宗教言辞对黎巴嫩的军事冲突或以色列其他内部政治冲突没有反应。这些研究结果凸显了在什么条件下宗教领袖会给冲突注入宗教色彩，可以说这使得在宗教公众中更难获得对政治妥协的支持。