ABSTRACT
In classifying Israeli Jews by level of religiosity there is a significant difference between the way people define themselves religiously and what they report that they actually observe in practice. In the "historic partnership" between Mapai and the Mizrachi the Religious Zionist movement was clearly the junior partner. Mapai's greatest overture toward the religiously Orthodox was not aimed at the Religious Zionists, with whom it had an "historic partnership," however, but at the non-Zionist Agudat Yisrael, which had seceded from the yishuv when women were enfranchised in 1925. The stated rationale underlying the surrender of jurisdiction in this crucially important area to parochial courts and religious laws was the need to preserve Jewish national unity. Gush Emunim vehemently opposed any Israeli withdrawal as part of these disengagement agreements and demanded the removal of the restrictions imposed on the settlement process by the by now wholly discredited Labor government.
