(JNS.org) Gesher, an organization dedicated to creating programs unifying different communities in Israel under one identity, has released a new survey measuring attitudes about unity in the Jewish state.
The “Israel Unity Index” was commissioned as part of the inaugural Jerusalem Unity Prize, which was recently awarded in memory of Jewish teenagers Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar, and Naftali Frenkel, who were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas terrorists during the summer of 2014. The annual prize’s stated mission is “to perpetuate the spirit of unity which existed across Israel and around the world during the days following the boys’ kidnapping.”
The survey—conducted by the Zofnat Research Institute—gathered data from 511 Israelis over the phone and online, and was made possible with the support of the UJA Federation of New York. Forty-six percent of respondents agreed that “disunity” is a significant social problem that they think about frequently. There survey also illustrated a relationship between concerns over disunity and the level of respondents’ religious observance. Fifty-three percent of secular and traditional Jewish respondents expressed concern about disunity in Israeli society, compared with 40 percent of “religious” survey participants or 27 percent of haredi respondents.