ABSTRACT
In contrast to the Likud governments, in which all the religious parties were almost permanent fixtures, only one religious party participated in the Rabin center-left coalition and it was a Sephardi one. The religious sector in Israeli society accounts for an estimated 20-25 percent of the Jewish population. This large percentage, together with the National Religious party's effective control of the state religious stream in education, indicates the significance of religious sector in Israeli public life. The Jewish community has been a "divided society" since its emergence in Mandatory Palestine, and consequently a power-sharing tradition evolved that was carried over to the state. A religious view of the Jewish state was integral, along with other approaches, in the Zionist movement, and these approaches together constituted the collective definition of the state. The latter parties accepted the ultimate authority and identified with the civic symbols and the rituals of the new state.
