According to an old joke, a Jew stranded on a desert island built two synagogues-one to attend and one to boycott. If there is any truth to this witticism, five million Jews cannot possibly construct a Jewishly harmonized State. In fact, they have not. Israel's Jewish majority is as famously fractious as the solitary Jew on his desert island. The term most frequently applied to the situation is 'Kulturkampf', 'culture struggle'. Commentators and headline writers often sort the kampfers into two warring sides, each determined to defeat the other even at the cost of the country's unity. Is this mere media convenience, or does it reflect a looming apocalypse - the disintegration of Israel from within, imploded by its internecine differences?

Notwithstanding the forceful rhetoric that emanates from all quarters, Israel at large is chronically indecisive about what it wants to be. Jewish? Almost certainly so, but agreement as to what constitutes the essence of Jewishness defies all efforts. Secular? Yes, according to a large plurality if not a majority, but the members of that plurality keep shifting into the opposing camp, only to be replaced by its dropouts. Within these two general constructs, Israelis maneuver deftly among their country's sociocultural crises and contain them in recurrent ways: disregard, localization, circumvention, deferral, denial. After half a century, the Armageddon frontal showdown has yet to occur. It seems, too, that two potential causes of such an all-out confrontation have been defused for the long term, if not forever, by the public's collective will.

This does not make the problem less threatening. No Israeli can avoid regular exposure, if only through the media, to painful social issues that corrode the unity and integrity of the whole when left without proper treatment. Here we refer to them as "pressure sores." At their most acute, they cause substantial harm to the lives of many individuals and enflame countless others. Added together, they could indeed rip the coun-try apart. Israel's salvation is that they have not added together-thus far. However, they flare up at various junctures, sometimes predictably, sometimes quite out of the blue. We explore some of these "tinderboxes" below. When one of them approaches its flashpoint, even compulsive kulturkampfers usually know to back off. They, along with the power centers and the rank and file, fear the consequences of going too far.