ely by invasion and lasting Arab hostility, this cooperative modus vivendi in the face of a common enemy continued.
The spearheads of cooperation on the Orthodox side were the so-called religious Zionists, who were able to reconcile their nationalism with their piety. Following Rabbi A.I. Kook (1865-1935), the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Palestine, many believed that Zionism and Zionists, however secular, were nonetheless instruments of God who were engaged in divinely inspired work. On a more pragmatic level, under leadership such as that of Rabbi I.J. Reines (1839-1915), the religious, like the secularists, organized in political parties, such as the Mizrahi Party (see Religious Parties , ch. 4). They were joined in the political arena by the non-Zionist Orthodox, organized as the Agudat Israel Party. Although Agudat Israel was originally opposed to the idea of a Jewish state, it came to accept the rationale for it in a hostile gentile world (especially after the Central and East European centers of Orthodoxy were destroyed in the Holocaust). Because Orthodox Jews, like secularists, were organized in political parties, from an early date they participated - the religious Zionists more directly than the religious non-Zionists - in the central institutions of the Yishuv and, later, the State of Israel. Indeed, since 1977 and the coming to power of Menachem Begin's Likud, Orthodox Jews have been increasingly vocal in their desire not just to participate in but also to shape - reshape, if need be - the central institutions of Israeli society.
Judaism, Civil Religion, and the "New Zionism"
All varieties of Judaism - ultra-Orthodoxy, neo-Orthodoxy, the Reform and Conservative forms - together counted as their formal adherents only a minority of Jewish Israelis. Yet religion was a potent force, and increasingly so, in Israeli society. Traditional Judaism has exerted its influence in Israel in three important ways. First, traditional Judaism has influenced political and judicial legislation and state institutions, which have been championed by the various Orthodox political parties and enshrined in the "preservation of the status quo" arrangements through the years. Second, religion has exerted influence through the symbols and practices of traditional Judaism that literally pervade everyday life. Saturday is the sabbath, the official day of rest for Jews (although the majority do not attend synagogue), and most enterprises are closed. Jewish holidays also affect school curricula, programming on radio and television, features in the newspapers, and so on. Minority traditionalists, who extol halakah even if they do not observe all rabbinic law, also observe many folk customs. Through the years, much of the folk religion has taken on an Oriental-Jewish flavor, reflecting in part the demographic preponderance of Oriental Jews since the 1970s. Such customs include ethnic festivals such as the Moroccan mimouna (an annual festival of Moroccan Jews, originally a minor holiday in Morocco, which has become in Israel a major celebration of Moroccan Jewish ethnic identity) and family pilgrimages to the tombs of Jewish holy men. The latter have become country-wide events. Traditional Judaism has influenced Israeli society in yet a third way: Israel's political elite has selectively co-opted symbols and practices of traditional Judaism in an attempt to promote nationalism and social integration. In this way traditional Judaism, or some aspects of it, becomes part of the political culture of the Jewish state, and aspects of traditional Judaism are then enlisted in what some analysts have called the "civil religion" of Jewish society. Thus, Judaism speaks to Israelis who may themselves be nonreligious, indeed even secularist.
Of all the manifestations of religion in Israel, civil religion has undergone the most profound changes through the years, specifically becoming more religious - in the sense of incorporating more traditional, Orthodox-like Judaism. In the prestate period, the civil religion of Jewish society was generally socialist,