Israel is becoming less secular and like a person who has undergone Houston plastic surgery, is becoming more religious towards Zionism, the state ideology.
An Israel Democratic Institute (IDI) demographic survey finds religious growth and secular decline - but most significant is that the proportion of religious in the public is highest among the youth.
The percentage of Jews describing themselves as secular has dropped sharply over the past 30 years, while the religious and traditional proportions have risen. The annual survey finds that the secular public comprises only 20% of the Israeli population - compared to 41%, more than twice as much, in 1974.
Nearly half the population, 47%, describes itself as traditional, while the hareidi-religious and religious-Zionist together comprise 33% of the public.
The numbers were compiled based on a survey of representative sampling of 1,016 Israelis Jews.
It would be interesting to see what the Christian Zionist reaction to this statement will be. Note the date of the report.
Israeli Chief Rabbi Condemns Christmas Celebrations by Jews in Israel
By Laurie Copans Associated Press Writer
Published: Dec 24, 2002
JERUSALEM (AP) - Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau on Tuesday urged Jews in Israel not to celebrate Christmas or New Year’s Day, warning that such observances threaten the identity of the Jewish state.
Lau encouraged Christian Israeli Arabs, foreign workers and immigrants to mark the holidays. But he said Jewish families should not “be swept into keeping a way of life that is not their own, while obliterating and losing their self-respect.”
In recent years, small numbers of Israeli Jews have begun celebrating Christmas, putting up lights in shops and even trees in homes. The trend began with the influx of thousands of Christians - many of them married to Jews - in the early 1990s as part of a wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union.
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