ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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Since its declaration of independence, Israel has defined itself as a Jewish and democratic state. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, 75.4% of the population in 2005 were Jews, 16.9% Muslims, 2.0% Christians and 1.6% Druze. The remaining 4% were non-religious or belonged to smaller religious communities, such as the Baha'i.

Judaism

The State of Israel explicitly refers to the Jewish religion in its national symbols: the flag reminds of the Tallit, the coat of arms of the Menorah, a cult object of the Jerusalem Temple destroyed by Roman soldiers in 70. Jewish holidays are national holidays in Israel, the Sabbath is the public day of rest. For the Jewish people, Jerusalem has played a prominent role since ancient times. This has a national component, according to biblical traditions, Jerusalem was the capital of the Davidic-Solomonian Empire, as well as a religious one: on the Temple Mount stood the central sanctuary until it was destroyed in 70 AD. The Western Wall is a remnant of the outer perimeter wall of the Herodian Temple.

The law of return, formulated under the impression of the Holocaust, defines Jewhood in the sense of the Nazi racial legislation: “Whoever was called Jew by the National Socialists and sent to the death camps should find refuge in the newly founded state of Israel.” The right to immigrate to Israel was granted to anyone who had a Jewish grandparent and the spouse of such an immigrant. This meant that many people who have no personal connection to Judaism could still exercise this right of return. On the other hand, the purely orthodox Israeli Chief Rabbinate has a different, stricter definition of Jewhood, so that many immigrants under the right of return are not considered Jews in Israel and therefore cannot marry a Jewish partner: in particular, immigrants with a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, and immigrants who have converted to Judaism outside Israel, provided this happened in liberal or conservative synagogues that the Israeli Chief Rabbinate does not recognize. The Supreme Court has so far failed to take the much-desired step of recognizing conversions to Judaism carried out in non-Orthodox Jewish communities. An addition to the Law of Return ruled out persons eligible for immigration to Israel in 1970 if they had voluntarily converted to another religion (which is exactly a change of religion, the law did not explain). According to Jewish religious law, a convert is still considered a Jew.

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center (2014/2015), Jewish Israelis describe their personal religiosity as follows:

49 % secular (chiloni),
29 % traditional (masorti),
13% modern-