There is a revolution underway in Israel—an upheaval that has nothing to do with rioting Palestinians, a burgeoning Arab birthrate, or Islamic fundamentalism.

Like the movement that gave birth to the United States, this is a revolution in the name of tradition. Perhaps counterrevolution would be a more precise term. Its leaders are orthodox rabbis whose bearded, Talmud-quoting followers have brought to Israeli politics a fervor associated with Hasidic prayer.

The revolution’s opening guns reverberated in the results of last fall’s national elections. Four religious parties achieved significant gains in the November balloting. But after weeks of intensive negotiations, a new Likud-Labor coalition formed, and the Haredi (literally, “fearful ones”—those who fear God—as Orthodox Jews in Israel are called) were relegated to junior partner status.

Still, their electoral advances are an indication of growing influence. In 1984, religious parties polled 206,501 votes, less than 10 percent of the total. In 1988, their vote swelled to 334,442, or 15 percent. Their combined representation in the Knesset increased from 12 to 18 seats.

They emerged from the 1988 election with the swing vote in the Knesset, enough to give either of the evenly divided big parties a parliamentary majority. They bargained for power—too much, some would say—and lost. In negotiations with Likud, the Haredi demanded control of the influential ministries of Education, Labor, and Housing, as well as support for their agenda.

Finally, frustrated by these exorbitant demands and anxious to demonstrate national unity in the face of the PLO’s latest challenge, Shamir turned to Labor for another right-left coalition, similar to the one that governed the nation from 1984 to 1988. The now-dispensable religious parties were awarded minor cabinet positions as consolation prizes.

Despite this setback, the rise of religious parties will have a profound impact on the country. Typically, the US media reacted with the disdain characteristic of its treatment of traditional religion, at home and abroad. Haredi leaders were branded wild-eyed fanatics, budding theocrats, kosher Khomeinies. Reflecting establishment incredulity at the election’s outcome, US News voiced shocked dismay that the next Israeli government might actually be selected by “a handful of tiny religious parties more concerned with Biblical injunctions than with the Mideast peace process.” We all know what weird sorts concern themselves with the Bible.

The New York Times assured its readers that “by far the vast majority of Israelis are non-observant.” This coupled with the contention that the “ultra-Orthodox” (what the press disdains, it often designates “ultra,” with the obvious implication of extremism) represent only 15 percent of the population leads to the erroneous conclusion that most Israelis are antireligious. Actually, Orthodox and completely secularized Jews are probably the same proportion of the population. The majority of Israelis fall somewhere in between.

Indeed, the religious parties drew substantial support from the non-Orthodox electorate, such as Sephardic Jews who might go to soccer matches on Saturday afternoon, but experience pangs of conscience over the lapse and listen to their rabbis on political matters. On the other hand, some Orthodox probably voted for Likud or one of the smaller nationalist parties, putting the land question ahead of

spiritual concerns.

Demographics is on the side of the Haredi. Alone among Israeli Jews, in obedience to those much-disparaged biblical injunctions, they have large families; nine children is not uncommon. Today Jews making aliyah, immigrating to Israel, are mostly Orthodox; they believe God requires them to live in the land he gave their people. Those leaving (the nation lost 21,000 in 1988) are secularists, whose noblest motivation is the desire for a comfortable standard of living.

The socialists who settled Israel had a pioneering spirit. Today, idealism is found primarily in the religious community, which alone offers a compelling reason to accept the sacrifices inherent to living in a state under siege.

Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz, leader of Shas (the Sephardic Torah Guardians party), attributes the growing attraction of Orthodoxy to “the general disappointment over the moral condition of Israeli society. The religious are not plagued by emigration, drugs, crime, and suicide. This makes people think and brings them to vote for religious parties.”

Like the conditions of their political ascendancy, the Orthodox agenda is widely misrepresented. Its position on amending the Law of Return, which permits any Jew immigrating to Israel to automatically apply for citizenship, was not accurately reported. It is, the line goes, an Orthodox power grab, an effort to delegitimize Conservative and Reform Jews.

To be precise, the issue is not who is a Jew, but who is a convert. (Not even the most pious Orthodox rabbi would deny the Jewishness of the most’ assimilated Jew.) The problem stems from the corruption of the conversion process by the modernist branches of Judaism. The Orthodox seek to amend the Law of Return to limit its application to those born Jewish, or individuals who have undergone an authentic conversion.

For 3,500 years the definition of Jewishness was well established: a Jew is the child of a Jewish mother or one who converts to Judaism hallachically (in accordance with Jewish law). Those accepted for conversion must manifest a sincere commitment to join their destiny to that of the Jewish people. (The desire to marry a Jew was never considered a valid reason for conversion.) There followed an extended period of intensive study. The potential convert had to agree to live according to the dictates of the entire body of Jewish law.

In the past generation. Reform Judaism (and to a lesser extent the Conservative movement) took upon itself to amend a process traditional Jews consider divinely ordained, hence immutable. Reform Judaism’s response to burgeoning rates of intermarriage was to facilitate conversion by the Gentile spouse. Many of the historic requirements for conversion were discarded, including, in many instances, circumcision for men and immersion in the mikvah—ritual bath—for women.

Some of these conversions approached Las Vegas weddings in their seriousness and attention to detail. (The late Rabbi Emmet Allen Frank of Miami advertised eight-hour conversions.) The Orthodox consider such ceremonies a sham. They are concerned about maintaining the historic unity of the Jewish people, and worry about a time when some Jews won’t be able to marry others ostensibly of their faith, due to questions about the validity of an ancestor’s conversion.

As an Israeli rabbi explained it to me, since the state has taken it upon itself to pass on who is a Jew, that decision should at least be based on Jewish law. Another area of controversy concerns the. application of the Sabbath laws. Again, the Orthodox are cast in the role of despots seeking to make the rest of the nation conform to their level of observance. The Haredi believe they are merely protecting their way of life in the face of a secularist onslaught.

They point to the status quo agreement, an accord between David Ben-Gurion and the leaders of Orthodoxy at the founding of the Jewish state. To secure their support for statehood, Ben-Gurion promised to preserve the religious status quo, including the cessation of public transportation and closing of businesses and places of entertainment on the Sabbath, in those communities where the custom then was observed. The Orthodox never pushed for Saturday closing laws in secular cities like Tel Aviv. But since secularists have begun to press for Sabbath movies and shopping in Jerusalem, religious Jews feel their activism is justified.

There are interesting parallels between the politicization of Orthodoxy in Israel and the rise of the religious right in America. Like their fundamentalist counterparts, the Haredi were essentially apolitical until threatened by an antireligious ethos. In the US, it was the attack on tax exemptions for church schools by officials of the Carter administration that animated the Christian right.

What formerly was disdained as too worldly was soon perceived to be a matter of grave importance. Every government system must reflect someone’s values. If biblical morality is confined to the precincts of church and synagogue, society eventually will be dominated by secularist dogma.

For the Orthodox, a Jewish state that denies Jewish law seems an absurd contradiction. While accepting the pluralistic nature of Israeli society, the Orthodox believe that in essential areas the legal code must reflect Torah values. Besides amending the Law of Return and enforcing Sabbath closing laws, this would include tightening restrictions on abortion and reinstating the ban on homosexual conduct that was repealed last year.

For their part, nonreligious Israelis need the idealism and commitment of the Orthodox. For a nation beset with economic problems and foreign challenges, Israel’s religious right provides a sorely needed raison d’etre.