A little under two months ago, I sat with Naor Narkis in his cozy home in Neve Tzedek, Tel Aviv. After Israel’s latest election, when Israel’s most right-wing and religious government to date seized power, Narkis founded Enlightened Israel. This Israeli secular social movement seeks to push back against religious coercion and has been continually active in confronting initiatives like those encouraging men and boys to wrap tefillin in secular spaces, such as in front of Tel Aviv’s Habima Theatre and Dizengoff Center.
But Narkis didn’t stop there. He recently launched the initiative Hozrim B’Tvuna, which translates to English as “Return to Wisdom” or “Return to Reason,” an educational course with the stated goal to secularize Israel’s Haredi community and fast.
Hozrim B’Tvuna’s tactics — passing out pamphlets and erecting billboards in Haredi communities, uploading promotional videos online, and trying their best to get an “in” on mainstream Israeli television — have proven controversial, but in Narkis’s view, effective. Already, Narkis has received a plethora of inquiries and testimonies from young Haredi men and women in religious strongholds across the country. Hozrim B’Tvuna wagers that to change the demographics of the Jewish state, necessary to preserve and strengthen its liberal democracy, young Haredim must be directly approached on the issues that have led to insecurities within their communities: What if you desire to make a lot of money in the future? What if you are LGBT? What if you don’t believe in God or in the way God is characterized by the rabbis? What if you have a dream, a talent in a field other than Torah? What if you are simply curious as to what the secular world has to offer, including in the IDF?
In this wide-ranging and fascinating conversation, Narkis lays out his vision, deemed fanatical and heretical by Israel’s religious and right-wing powers at be, who have wrongfully dismissed Narkis as a Tel Aviv rabble-rouser or worse, as an antisemite. But Narkis is nothing of the sort. His values align with those of the early Zionist leaders, of the pioneers who worked to build and protect Israel, and of, we both would wager, most of the Israeli society who disagree with religion having such an outsized influence on their personal lives and the country’s political affairs.
Listen and share this exclusive interview encompassing Jewish history, contemporary Israeli politics, the war with the region and the Palestinians, immigration, education, indoctrination, philosophy, economics, personal freedom, and more.
(Apologies if the audio of this interview is not up to your standards. I never said I was a podcaster, but who knows, maybe that can change…)
Learn more about Naor Narkis and his initiative here:
https://x.com/NaorNarkis
