ABSTRACT
The largest of religious political parties, the National Religious Party, or in Hebrew acronym Mafdal, is name implies a religious nationalist party. The divergent fundamental ideological natures of the religious political parties are reflected in their different internal political structures, in the social composition of their votership and their leadership, and in their very different forms of political behavior within the system. The intense factionalism can be explained to a lesser extent in ideological and historical terms, and to a greater degree by personal and especially generational conflicts, the likes of which have been seen many times in Mafdal's past. The explosion of the Sephardi ethnic factor in the course of the initial Begin victory may be viewed as having engendered at least some of the serious ethnic vote losses of Mafdal, as Sephardi voters gravitated to newly founded Sephardi electoral lists.
