In the parlance of modern Israel the Hebrew term for that part of the population regarded as secular is Hiloni. This is a rather derogatory term, as it seems to stem from the Hebrew word for profanation, as in Hilull Hashem, or profaning G-d’s name. The strange thing, is that this term is used by the secular population to refer to themselves. The use of this term would thus seem to exacerbate the divisions between religious and secular. A more useful etymology of the word is found in this week’s Parshah, or rather in its Aramaic translation. When the Torah talks of the prohibition of non-priests or strangers eating sanctified food, the Aramaic translation renders the word stranger as hilonai. The term Hiloni then, rather than meaning those who profane or are profane, could be more correctly rendered as those who are estranged. This etymology provides a far more constructive model for religious-secular relations than the simple Hebrew rendering. Rather than the religious world seeing those who are not observant as profaners, or active opponents of Judaism and Torah, it can view them as those who are estranged from the Torah or Judaism, in the same way as one can be estranged from family or friends. Rather than see secularism as a conscious, or even rebellious, lifestyle choice, it sees it as a pathology, a disease in the life of the nation that needs to be healed. Most importantly, perhaps, unlike the regarding of secular Jews as ’profaners’, seeing them as estranged carries no automatic apportioning of blame. People may be estranged for many reasons, not necessarily their fault, and indeed may be seen as victims rather the perpetrators. In fact, according to this understanding of the issue, it could be the religious or observant community that is at fault for the estrangement of the non-observant, and the solution to this estrangement lies mostly with them, rather than with the secular. This is not merely clever wordplay. How we perceive issues determines how we approach them. Do we see society divided into the good and the bad, or as an organic whole, containing spectrums of behaviour. Seeing the secular as ‘profane’ puts up a barrier to dialogue and splits society into mutually antagonistic sections. Seeing non-observance as ‘estrangement’ enables us to perceive the religious-secular divide as a problem of the whole of the society, to be addressed by working together. Above all it forces the religious to take responsibility: if people are estranged from Torah, maybe it’s our fault?

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