UNDERSTANDING ISRAEL - Israel: An Introduction - page 5

beliefs of a minority of the population, and wanted to ensure that religion did not gain too
much power over the society and national culture.
Thus, the generation of leadership that dominated the Yishuv and the early state reached
a compromise with the rabbinic leadership — which at the time was completely Orthodox —
and allowed religion to prevail in certain aspects of society. Today offi cial institutions ob-
serve the Jewish dietary laws; stores generally close on the Sabbath (although this practice has
eroded over time); the state observes Jewish religious holidays; marriage, divorce, and burial
are under rabbinical control; and full-time yeshiva (Jewish seminary) students receive mili-
tary deferments. The compromise is enshrined in the doctrine of the status quo, whereby the
existing balance of power between secular and religious is accepted by both sides and is thus
maintained.
Nevertheless, Israel is a largely secular society. It is most accurately characterized as a coun-
try in which concepts, customs, and history that originated in religion have been put into
a secular and national framework. In a sense, a similar process has taken place in Western
Christian-based civilization.
In the fi rst three or four decades of statehood, Jewish Israelis continued to think of them-
selves as sharply divided into separate religious and secular groups. By the 1990s, however,
they realized the existence of a broad spectrum of views and levels of religious observance. As
society became generally more secular and less ideological, a broad “traditional” population
of individuals emerged; they kept elements of observance but were committed to a basically
secular lifestyle. This approach is especially strong among Mizrahi Jews (Jews from the Middle
East and North Africa).
Religious political parties have existed since the birth of modern Zionism. Yet these parties
have not sought to transform the country. Instead, they are interest groups that seek to provide
their specifi c communities with jobs and funding while preserving the status quo. Their goal,
then, is not change but continuity. As a result, religious-secular confl icts, though sometimes
disproportionately passionate, have declined in importance over time.
This discussion of religion is an example of how Israel has worked out original solutions
based on its experiences, conditions, and the requirements of successful state-building, all of
which are often misunderstood by outside observers. The same formula applies to other as-
pects of Israel as a society and a polity.
Despite these multiple challenges, Israel today has a pluralist, democratic system designed
to accommodate different communities and viewpoints, though not geographical representa-
tion. The growing role of the Supreme Court has been controversial, as has Israel's electoral
system, which has no individual-member districts, has many small parties, and suffers from
the perception — not borne out in practice — that governments are unstable. In fact, during a
thirty-two-year period, only seven different people were prime minister, a small number con-
sidering that two left offi ce because of illness and one was assassinated.
Israel's economic system was also developed in tune with the specifi c conditions faced by
a people lacking fi nancial capital and modern institutions and trying to establish itself in an
underdeveloped country. Public companies and enterprises, initially supported by Jewish
capital from abroad, were the tools whereby the Yishuv's economy was created and jobs were