ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the general questionnaire surveys of religiosity and the anthropological studies of religious change among Jews from Asia and North Africa. The sociology of religion falls far behind the field of ethnicity and ethnic equality among Jewish groups or categories of origin from different countries and continents. With the establishment of the state, it was agreed between the political leaders and the rabbinate that the principal arrangements for religion that had been settled before 1948 should continue. The majority of Israeli Jews accepted, or became reconciled to, the formal institutionalization of Judaism in the institutions of the state. Anthropologists studying religious change in Israel have focused on Jews from the Middle East, and especially the more "traditional" immigrant groups from Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen. A regression analysis demonstrated that fathers' religiosity was the most important variable determining respondents' religiosity. The Orthodox establishment has succeeded in preventing the movements' incorporation into the institutional framework of public religious services.
