The Zionist movement, founded at the end of the 19th century, transformed the concept into a way of life, and the State of Israel translated it into law, granting citizenship to every Jew wishing to settle in the country.

The political, economic, and cultural basis of Israel's contemporary Jewish society was largely formed during the period of British rule (1917-48). Ideologically motivated by Zionism, the Jewish community in the Land of Israel developed social and political institutions which exercised authority without sovereignty, with every echelon mobilized toward consolidation and growth. Volunteerism was its political spine, egalitarianism its social glue.

The attainment of political independence and the mass immigration which followed, doubling Israel's Jewish population from 650,000 to some 1.3 million in the first four years of statehood (1948-52), changed the structure and fabric of Israeli society. The resultant social grouping was composed of two main elements: a majority comprised of the established Sephardi community, veteran Ashkenazi settlers, and Holocaust survivors; and a large minority of recent Jewish immigrants from the Islamic countries of North Africa and the Middle East.

While most of the pre-state population was committed to strong ideological convictions, a pioneering spirit, and a democratic way of life, many of the Jews who had lived for centuries in Arab lands adhered to a patriarchal social organization, and found it difficult to integrate into Israel's society and rapidly developing economy.

In the late 1950s, the two groups coexisted virtually without social and cultural interaction, with the Jews of North African and Middle Eastern backgrounds expressing their frustration and alienation in anti-government protests, which, in the 1960s and 1970s, became demands for greater political participation, compensatory allocations of resources and affirmative action to help close the gaps between them and mainstream Israelis. In addition to the tensions generated by the diversity of its population during these years, Israeli society was also called upon to struggle for economic independence and to defend itself against belligerent actions by Arabs across the border. Still, the common denominators of religion, historical memory, and national cohesion within the Jewish society proved strong enough to meet the challenges facing it.

Over the years, Israel has continued to receive new immigrants in larger and smaller numbers, coming from the free countries of the Western world as well as from areas of distress. The most recent wave of mass immigration was comprised of members of the large Jewish community of the former Soviet Union which struggled for years for the right to emigrate to Israel. While some 100,000 managed to come in the 1970s, since 1989 over one million have settled in the country. Among them were many highly educated professionals, well-known scientists, and acclaimed artists and musicians, whose expertise and talents are contributing significantly to Israel's economic, scientific, academic, and cultural life.

The 1980s and 1990s witnessed the arrival of two massive airlifts of the ancient Jewish community of Ethiopia, popularly believed to have been there since the time of King Solomon. While the transition of these 50,000 immigrants from an agrarian African environment to an industrialized Western society will take time, the eagerness of their youth to adapt will hasten the absorption of this long-isolated Jewish community.

As there is no clear separation of religion and state, a central inter-community issue has been the extent to which Israel should manifest its Jewish religious identity. While the Orthodox establishment seeks to augment religious legislation beyond the scope of personal status, over which it has exclusive jurisdiction, the nonobservant sector regards this as religious coercion and an infringement on the democratic nature of the state. One of the ongoing issues focuses on the elements required to define a person as a Jew. The Orthodox sector advocates determining a Jew as one born of a Jewish mother or who converts in strict accordance with Jewish law, while secular Jews generally support a definition based on the civil criterion of an individual's identification with Judaism.

These conflicts of interest have given rise to a search for legal means to define the demarcation between religion and state. Until an overall solution is found, authority lies in an unwritten agreement, reached on the eve of Israel's independence and known as the status quo, which stipulates that no fundamental changes would be made in the status of religion.

A unique social and economic framework based on egalitarian and communal principles, the kibbutz grew out of the country's pioneering society of the early 20th century and developed into a permanent rural way of life. Over the years, it established a prosperous economy, at first primarily agricultural, later augmented with industrial and service enterprises, and distinguished itself with its members' contributions to the establishment and building of the state.

 

Kibbutz: cowshed and young milkers