ligion-a decision which makes it clear that being Jewish is basically a religious thing. If so, the argument runs, how can there be a separation between synagogue and state? If Israel exists for world Jewry, if its main aim is to ingather these Jews who are organized as a religious community, how can the concept of a Jewish nation be separated from the Jewish religion? Indeed, those of us in Israel who fight for the separation of synagogue and state are constantly accused of trying to sever Israel from world Jewry, turning it into just another small Levantine state. Thus, not one of the big, old Zionist parties advocates such a separation. All of them declare state and religion, nation and religion, to be one in the unique case of the Jews.
The minority in Israel who are religious, therefore, have a power quite disproportionate to their numerical strength. Only about fifteen per cent of the population voted for the three religious parties represented in the Knesset, giving them seventeen out of 120 seats in the 1965 elections. But by Israeli law there is neither civil marriage nor civil divorce, these affairs being within the sole dominion of the Rabbinate (and the functionaries of other religious groups, as far as their people are concerned). A Jew cannot marry a Christian or a Moslem, nor can a Jew named Cohen marry a divorced woman. Cohens or those with similar names are assumed to belong to the ancient families of priests, who are forbidden by Jewish law to marry anyone but a virgin: in theory, they might be called upon someday to officiate again in a new Temple. One cannot abdicate this right even if one wishes to-once a Cohen, always a Cohen. (In fact, a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, a sophisticated man named Chaim Cohen, had to go to the United States in order to marry a divorced woman; and the validity of this marriage is extremely doubtful under the laws which he himself has to administer!) Neither busses nor the railway operate in Israel from sundown Friday until the first three stars appear in the sky on Saturday evening (but everyone can travel, in private cars and via a highly organ¬