ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to indicate some trends in the cultural processes that characterize contemporary ethnic developments in Israel, as demonstrated by the role of religion in the life of Middle Eastern Jews. Social scientists assumed that Middle Eastern Jews would tend to assimilate with the dominant Ashkenazi segment of Israeli society. The lack of powerful family and communal orientations may offer an explanation for the dominant patterns of religiosity among Ashkenazi Jews in Israel, which do not encourage the modes of "partial religiosity." A growing number of sociologists have been concerned with the social, economic and political factors that have led to the emerging ethnicity in Israel, but they have usually refrained from discussing more specifically the cultural elements that characterize Israeli ethnic divisions. The role played by religion in expressing social developments and political conflicts has again been recently demonstrated in various parts of the Middle East, Israel included.
