Religion for the Secular: The New Israeli Rabbinate

This article introduces two national religious‐oriented (dati‐le'umi) organizations that have emerged within Israeli society since the 1990s. Neither has openly called for the dismantling of the state rabbinate. Nevertheless, they challenge central aspects of its hegemony over religious life. Both are independent initiatives whose main mandate is to provide the average non‐observant Israeli with an alternative address for religious guidance and services. Beyond engendering a re‐conceptualization of the nature of the rabbinate in Israel, the article suggests that these new frameworks offer a window into broader realignments that began to emerge at the turn of the twenty‐first century both in regard to the relationship of the secular population to religion and within Israeli national religious Orthodoxy.