The Orthodox establishment rests on laws, on regulations, and -- wherever there are lacunae in these -- on practices culled from the world of historical rabbinical prerogatives and Jewish sensibilities. Its mandate is twofold: (1) to keep Israeli Jews Jewish in their public affairs and personal status, and (2) to sustain the Orthodox collectivity specifically. Under the first rubric, for example, the establishment applies religious law (halakhah) in allowing or disallowing marriages and divorces among Jews of whatever persuasion; in certifying the kashrut (fitness) of food and food processing establishments; and, through municipal and regional religious councils, in providing municipal religious services, from burial to pastoral counseling.

In these activities, it has a formidable mandate in law. This monopoly, however, clashes with the democratic privileges that Israelis, and not only the ultrasecular, are increasingly inclined to demand. The opponents of the religious establishment have two slogans: resistance to religious coercion and assertion of the right to freedom from religion, as distinct from mere freedom of religion. Under the second rubric, the establishment has built the original "status quo" prerogatives into a web of support mechanisms for institutions and services that are geared to the Orthodox alone and are run under religious rules. This web flourishes for several reasons: inertia; a large clientele (some of it dependent); and the inherent ambiguities of a legal system that commits Israel to being at once a democratic and a Jewish state.

The establishment is most vigilant and sincere in retaining exclusivity in determining marital and Jewish status. Favoring it in this sense, apart from inertia, are:

(1) general acceptance of the original "status quo" argument: change rabbinical rules in these regards and you have created two Jewish peoples;

(2) the small number of Israelis who personally suffer from its restrictions; and

(3) a similar modality of state-sponsored clerical management in Israel's non-Jewish communities. Introducing nonrabbinical marriage and divorce for Jews would turn the Jewish state against the Muslim and Christian establishments a matter that few in Israel are willing to tackle. Thus, disputation on such issues tends to be confined to Jews alone.