In the Israeli parlance,
hiloni is used to identify Jews who observe fewer traditional practices than the other, more religious, Jewish subgroups (apart from that, the term may also be used as a derogatory epithet by observant Jews, or to be associated with
secularism). Between 2002 and 2018, among Jewish adult respondents to ICBS polls, self-identified
hilonim numbered between a maximum of 45% in 2005 and a minimum of 41.4% in 2009. In 2018, the figure was 43.2%. Kenneth D. Wald and Samuel Shye commented that: The demarcation between the
hiloni category and the nearest, the
masorti or "traditional", is highly porous. Surveys demonstrated that it is not reliant on objective levels of belief or ritual observance, but mainly on socioethnic lines:
Ashkenazi Israelis, either native or post-Soviet immigrants, tend to describe themselves as "secular" even when they observe or believe quite substantially, and
Mizrahi and
Sephardi Israelis usually regard themselves as "traditional" regardless of lifestyle and conviction. Among Mizrahim and Sephardim, those who aspire to emulate Ashkenazim also tend to adopt the label
hiloni. Nevertheless, some
MENA-descended Jews, such as those who emigrated from Iraq and Algeria, have labelled themselves as
hiloni for other reasons, likely since they were influenced by
Haskalah and by Secular Zionism. Many surveys offer to the
masortim the sub-category of "not very religious/tending to
hiloni". Between 2002 and 2018, those who identified as such in
ICBS polls, ranged from a minimum of 21.4% to a maximum of 28.4% of the entire sample, or roughly two-thirds of all
masortim. Israeli social scientists measure levels of religiosity/secularity among Jews in terms of practice, not faith, and use the category of "totally nonobservant" to identify the
completely secular. As many ritual behaviours, like setting a
Mezuzah, are part of Jewish-Israeli lifestyle and lack an overt religious connotation, the "totally nonobservant" often perform some. In the 1999 Guttman survey, only a third of them did not practice any of the ten common rituals studied. At the other end, Yaacov Yadgar and Charles Liebman estimated in 2009 that about 25% of the
hilonim are highly observant, on par with the more religious subgroups. Pertaining to other supernatural notions, the Guttman surveys and other polls show that a considerable share hold various such: between 25% and 36%, believe that God revealed the Law and precepts at Sinai, that a higher power guides Jewish history, that the Jews are a chosen people and that there is a soul that survives death. Denominational identification, as known among American and other Western Jews, is mostly irrelevant in the Israeli context (
hilonim have no equivalent category in the American Jewish community). Yet, when asked in the 2015
Pew Research Center survey of Israeli society, 23% of the
hiloni respondents identified as Orthodox, 5% as
Reform and 2% as
Conservative. 64% did not identify with any particular movement. While
hilonim are often hostile to the
state rabbinate, fear the growth of the
haredi populace, and oppose further religious legislation in Israel,
secularism in the common sense of the word is rather rare in the country. Orthodoxy plays a central role in defining national identity, and religious issues like
conversion are regarded as crucial by the vast majority. When "separation of religion and state" is used in the Israeli context, it is mostly understood as a wish to abolish the many laws curtailing personal freedom, not actual separation. This innate tension led to a state of affairs dubbed by Professor Stephen Sharot as "secularization without secularism": since the 1990s, the demand of both
masorti and
hiloni Israelis for consumer activity on the
Sabbath (technically illegal), non-
kosher food and the like, considerably liberalized the public sphere, but barely affected religious legislation and did not introduce principled secularism into the political arena. ==See also==