Israeli Jews in the context of Religious Zionism

Gush Dan (Hebrew: גּוּשׁ דָּן, lit. 'Dan bloc') or Tel Aviv metropolitan area is a major conurbation along Israel's Mediterranean coast. The term is commonly used by government bodies and the public, though its exact boundaries vary. It ranges from combining Tel Aviv with cities that form an urban continuum with it, to the entire areas from both the Tel Aviv District and the Central District, or sometimes the whole Metropolitan Area of Tel Aviv, which includes a small part of the Southern District as well. Gush Dan is the largest conurbation and metropolitan area in Israel and the center of Israel's financial and High technology sector. In 2021 the metropolitan area has an estimated population of 4,156,900 residents, 89% of whom were Israeli Jews.

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel (Hebrew: הָרַבָּנוּת הָרָאשִׁית לְיִשְׂרָאֵל, romanized: Ha-Rabbanut Ha-Rashit Li-Yisra'el) is recognized by Israeli law as the supreme rabbinic authority for Judaism in Israel. It was established in 1921 under the British Mandate and operates on the basis of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel Law, 5740-1980. The Chief Rabbinate Council assists the two Chief Rabbis, who alternate in its presidency. It has legal and administrative authority to organize religious arrangements for Israeli Jews. It also responds to halakhic questions submitted by Jewish public bodies in the Jewish diaspora. The Council sets, guides, and supervises agencies within its authority.

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel consists of two Chief Rabbis: an Ashkenazi rabbi and a Sephardi rabbi; the latter is known as the Rishon leZion. The Chief Rabbis are elected for 10-year terms. The present Sephardi Chief Rabbi is David Yosef, and the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi is Kalman Ber, both of whom began their terms in 2024.

Hiloni (Hebrew: חִלּוֹנִי), plural hilonim (Hebrew: חִלּוֹנִים; "secular"), is a social category in Israel, designating the least religious segment among the Jewish public. The other three subgroups on the scale of Jewish-Israeli religiosity are the masortim, "traditional"; datiim, "religious"; and haredim, "ultra-religious" ("ultra-Orthodox"). In the 2018 Israel Central Bureau of Statistics' survey, 43.2% of Jews identified as hiloni.

Israeli settlements, also called Israeli colonies, are the civilian communities built by Israel throughout the Israeli-occupied territories. They are populated by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Jewish identity or ethnicity, and have been constructed on lands that Israel has militarily occupied since the Six-Day War in 1967. The international community considers Israeli settlements to be illegal under international law, but Israel disputes this. In 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found in an advisory opinion that Israel's occupation was illegal and ruled that Israel had "an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities and to evacuate all settlers" from the occupied territories. The expansion of settlements often involves the confiscation of Palestinian land and resources, leading to displacement of Palestinian communities and creating a source of tension and conflict. Settlements are often protected by the Israeli military and are frequently flashpoints for violence against Palestinians. Furthermore, the presence of settlements and Jewish-only bypass roads creates a fragmented Palestinian territory, seriously hindering economic development and freedom of movement for Palestinians.

As of April 2025, Israeli settlements exist in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), which is claimed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sovereign territory of the State of Palestine, and in the Golan Heights, which is internationally recognized as a part of the sovereign territory of Syria. Through the Jerusalem Law and the Golan Heights Law, Israel effectively annexed both territories, though the international community has rejected any change to their status as occupied territory. Although Israel's West Bank settlements have been built on territory administered under military rule rather than civil law, Israeli civil law is "pipelined" into the settlements, such that Israeli citizens living there are treated similarly to those living in Israel. Many consider it to be a major obstacle to the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. In Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (2004), the ICJ found that Israel's settlements and the then-nascent Israeli West Bank barrier were both in violation of international law; part of the latter has been constructed within the West Bank, as opposed to being entirely on Israel's side of the Green Line.

Israeli Druze or Druze Israelis (Arabic: الدروز الإسرائيليون; Hebrew: דְּרוּזִים יִשְׂרְאֵלִים) are an ethnoreligious minority among the Arab citizens of Israel. Arabic is their primary language and Arab culture is an integral part of their identity. In 2019, there were 143,000 Druze people living within Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights; they comprise 1.6% of the total population of Israel. The majority of Israeli Druze are concentrated in northern Israel, especially in Galilee, Carmel and the Golan areas.

Before the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, Druze people were not recognized as a religious community, and were discriminated against by the local judicial system of the time. In 1957, the Israeli government designated Druze Israelis as a distinct religious community at the request of Druze leaders. Alongside the Jewish majority and the Circassian minority, the Druze minority is required by law to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. Members of the community have also attained top positions in Israeli politics and public service. As is the case for the Circassian community, only men from the community are drafted, while women are exempted, in contrast with Jewish women, for whom military service is mandatory.

Since the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, fixed-term military service has been compulsory in Israel. The conscription laws of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) apply to Jews (males and females), Druze (males only), and Circassians (males only). Because the Druze and Circassian communities are less populous, their women are exempted from mandatory military service altogether. Women from the Jewish community are not exempted, but serve for slightly shorter terms than their male counterparts. The IDF does not conscript non-Druze Arab citizens of Israel, though their men and women may enlist voluntarily.

Unique among the country's Jewish-majority population are the Haredi Jews, who previously enjoyed full exemption from the IDF through a special arrangement called Torato Umanuto, which was organized by Israel's founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion. The arrangement became increasingly controversial in Israeli society, with growing discontent towards the increasingly populous Haredi community not "sharing the burden" of national duty. In June 2024, Israel's Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Haredi Jews were eligible for compulsory service, ending nearly eight decades of exemption. The army began drafting Haredi men the following month.

Israelis (Hebrew: יִשְׂרְאֵלִים‎, romanized: Yīśreʾēlīm; Arabic: إسرائيليون, romanized: Isrāʾīliyyūn) are the citizens and nationals of the State of Israel. The country's populace is composed primarily of Jews and Arabs, who respectively account for 75% and 20% of the national figure, followed by other ethnic and religious minorities, who account for 5%.

Early Israeli culture was largely defined by communities of the Jewish diaspora who had made aliyah to British Palestine from Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Later Jewish immigration from Ethiopia, the post-Soviet states, and the Americas introduced new cultural elements to Israeli society and have had a profound impact on modern Israeli culture.

In Israel, the term status quo (or the secular–religious status quo) refers to a political understanding between secular and religious political parties not to alter the communal arrangement in relation to religious matters. The established Jewish religious communities in Israel desire to maintain and promote the religious character of the state, while the secular community sometimes wishes to reduce the impact of religious regulations in their everyday lives. Occasionally, one political side seeks to make changes to inter-communal arrangements, but these are often met by political opposition from the other side. The status quo preserves the established religious relations in Israel, and only small changes are usually made.

The October 2000 protests, also known as October 2000 events, were a series of protests in Arab villages in northern Israel in October 2000 that turned violent, escalating into rioting by Israeli Arabs, which led to counter-rioting by Israeli Jews and clashes with the Israel Police and ending in the killing of 13 Arab demonstrators and 1 Israeli Jew.

The Or Commission was established to investigate the police response to the rioting. Israeli media outlets refer to the episode as אירועי אוקטובר 2000 - the "October 2000 events" while the Arab community refers to it as the "October ignition" (Arabic: هبة أكتوبر, romanized: hibba ʾUktūbir).

The history of the Jews in Canada goes back to the 1700s. Canadian Jews, whether by culture, ethnicity, or religion, form the fourth largest Jewish community in the world, exceeded only by those in Israel, the United States and France. In the 2021 census, 335,295 people reported their religion as Jewish, accounting for 0.9% of the Canadian population. Some estimates have placed the enlarged number of Jews, such as those who may be culturally or ethnically Jewish, though not necessarily religiously, at more than 400,000 people, or approximately 1.4% of the Canadian population.

The Jewish community in Canada is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews. Other Jewish ethnic divisions are also represented and include Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, and Bene Israel. Converts to Judaism also comprise the Jewish-Canadian community, which manifests a wide range of Jewish cultural traditions and the full spectrum of Jewish religious observance. Though they are a small minority, they have had an open presence in the country since the first Jewish immigrants arrived with Governor Edward Cornwallis to establish Halifax, Nova Scotia (1749). The 1760s saw the first Jewish settlers in New France who arrived in Montreal after the British conquest of the city, among them was Aaron Hart who is considered the father of Canadian Jewry. His son Ezekiel Hart experienced one of the first well documented cases of antisemitism in Canada. Hart was consistently prevented from taking his seat at the Quebec legislature, with members contending he could not take the oath of office as a Jew, which included the phrase "on the true faith of a Christian". By the 1970s and 1980s, most legal barriers were removed, and Jews began to hold significant positions in Canadian society. However, antisemitism persists, evident in hate crimes and extremist groups.

Israel is one of only a few countries where military service is compulsory for many able-bodied female citizens. Under Israeli conscription laws, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) may draft recruits from three communities: the Jews, the Druze, and the Circassians. As the latter two communities are less populous, their women are not required to serve. Women from the Jewish majority are not exempted from the conscription laws, but serve for slightly shorter terms than male conscripts. All women who are exempted from the conscription laws may still enlist voluntarily. Jewish women who are called up for military service may apply for an exemption on humanitarian, religious, or certain legal grounds. Those who claim such an exemption will typically be redirected to Sherut Leumi, the alternative means of national service.

According to Israeli military statistics, 535 female soldiers had been killed while serving between the years of 1962 and 2016. The IDF's regulated integration of women is rooted in the days of the Yishuv, when Jewish women served in the ranks of various Zionist paramilitaries during the 1947–1949 Palestine War. In 1999–2000, an amendment was made to the Women's Equal Rights Law of Israel by which men and women became fully equalized — although separately — in the Israeli military apparatus.

Neo-Zionism (Hebrew: ניאו-ציונות) is a far-right, ultranationalistic, and religious ideology that appeared in Israel following the Six-Day War in 1967 and the capture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Neo-Zionists consider these lands part of Israel and advocate their settlement by Israeli Jews. Some advocate the transfer of Arabs not only from these areas but also from within the Green Line.

The term "Post-Zionism" entered Israeli discourse following the publishing of a book by Uri Ram in 1993. In the same volume, Gershom Shafir contrasted Post-Zionism with what he termed Neo-Zionism. In a widely cited 1996 essay, sociologist Uri Ram used the term Neo-Zionism to describe a political and religious ideology that developed in Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War. He considers it as an "exclusionary, nationalist, even racist, and antidemocratic political-cultural trend" in Israel, and that it evolved in parallel with, and in opposition to, the left-wing politics of Post-Zionism and Labor Zionism.

Torato Umanuto (Hebrew: תּוֹרָתוֹ אֻמָּנוּתוֹ, lit. 'Torah study is his job') was a special government arrangement in Israel allowing young Haredi Jewish men enrolled in yeshivas to complete their studies before they were conscripted into the Israeli military. Historically, it has been mandatory in Israeli law for male and female Jews, male Druze, and male Circassians to serve in the military once they become 18 years of age, with male conscripts required to serve for three years and female Jewish conscripts required to serve for two years.

Haredi Jews maintain that the practice of studying or reciting the Torah, when undertaken by great Torah scholars or their disciples, is crucial in defending the Israeli people from threats, similar to an additional "praying division" of the military. In practice, the Torato Umanuto arrangement provides a legal route whereby Haredi rabbis and their disciples can either enroll for a shortened service period of four months or otherwise be exempted from compulsory military service altogether.

In Israel, the mixed cities (Hebrew: ערים מעורבות, romanized: 'arim me'oravot, Arabic: المدن المختلطة, romanized: al-mudun al-mukhtalita) or mixed towns are the eight cities with a significant number of both Jews and Arabs. The eight mixed Jewish-Arab cities, defined by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics as those with more than 10% of the population registered as "Arabs" and more than 10% of the population registered as "Jews", include the following seven Israeli cities: Haifa, Lod, Ramle, Jaffa (now a part of Tel Aviv), Acre, Nof HaGalil (formerly Nazareth Illit), and Ma'alot Tarshiha. Approximately 10% of the Arab citizens of Israel live in these seven cities. The eighth city is Jerusalem, in which the Arab part of the city, East Jerusalem, has been annexed by Israel but is not recognized as such under international law.

The term "mixed cities" should not be confused with multicultural cities, nor understood to necessarily imply social integration. The eight mixed cities are the main places in which Jews and Arabs encounter each other, and very limited population mixing exists in Israel outside of these eight cities. As a result the topic has attracted significant scholarly focus over many years, and since the Second Intifada (2000–2005) it became the crux of social science scholarship in Israel.