Students of Zionist and Israeli politics have been puzzled, over the years, by the accommodating, even subservient, attitude displayed by the Zionist movement and by the Israeli state towards Orthodox Jews, many of them non- and even anti-Zionist. Zionism, after all, has always proclaimed itself a secular national movement in the tradition of the Enlightenment, intending, in Herzl's famous words, to keep the rabbis in their synagogues and the soldiers in their barracks. Furthermore, Orthodox Jews have constituted a relatively small minority in the Yishuv and in Israel, and their political influence has been vastly disproportionate to their electoral strength.

In terms of the reckoning of rights and obligations implied by the concept of citizenship, Orthodox Jews, most of whom have traditionally shunned the pioneering activities of physical labor, agricultural settlement, and military service, have not only been awarded the full range of citizenship rights and, in addition, autonomy in education, but have also been given control of other people's rights, as in the areas of family and dietary laws and in regard to the observance of the Sabbath in the public sphere.