In America, Israel’s Orthodox monopoly has sparked deeply felt outrage and a sense of alienation at a time when the relationship between the two communities is least able to endure the damage. The poisonous rhetoric of the Chief Rabbinate has left most Jews in America angry and disappointed. The rhetoric is so unforgiving that after a recent failed attempt at a compromise, which would have allowed Reform and Conservative rabbis a role in preparing converts, the Chief Rabbinate issued a statement in which it could not even refer to the other streams of Judaism by name. It simply denounced them as “those who do not believe in Torah from the heavens, who try to shake the foundations of the Jewish religion.” The statement also condemned “those who have brought about disastrous results of assimilation among Diaspora Jewry.”

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Reform organization that represents 876 congregations and nearly 1.5 million American Jews, has been out front in Reform’s battle to gain a foothold in Israel. “In America, it’s the synagogue that’s the heart of Jewish life, and American Jews believe they’re being put in the position of having to choose between their synagogue and allegiance to the state of Israel.”

Yoffie accuses Israel’s leadership -- on the left and on the right -- of a lack of courage and vision. “This could be a time for a significant national leader to galvanize the state of Israel and the Jewish people and to provide some direction. Where’s Ben-Gurion when we need him?”

Israeli leaders, Yoffie argues, forget they have a broader constituency. “They’re supposed to be the leaders of the Jewish world. If they only serve the Israelis, then Israel is only the state of the Israelis and has nothing to do with me,” he says, barely able to contain his anger.

“Netanyahu doesn’t have to be a reform Jew. But if he can’t even say, ‘I value what you’re doing; I understand that your movement is a significant force in promoting Jewish values and fighting assimilation; I see you as an ally in our battle to preserve the Jewish people’; if he can’t as prime minister come and visit a Reform synagogue . . . if those things can’t happen in 1998, we’re in deep trouble.”

For most Israelis, the issue has a different focal point entirely. The Reform and Conservative branches of Judaism, which essentially represent an attempt to preserve religious practice for those living in a modern, integrated society, have registered barely a blip on Israel’s spiritual radar. In the West Bank town of Efrat, for example, which was first settled by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, founder of the Lincoln Square Synagogue on the Upper West Side, there are 7,000 residents and 23 Orthodox synagogues. In the entire state of Israel, there are fewer than 50 Conservative synagogues. Of Israel’s 4.6 million Jews, just over 10,000 are Reform and 20,000 are Conservative.

The struggle in Israel is not between the various streams of Judaism but between the Orthodox and everyone else. Will Israel be a Western-style democracy that welcomes the diversity of the Jewish people? Or will it become a theocracy dominated by fundamentalism?

Will the government legislate Sabbath observance? Will there be more measures like the one that supports segregated public buses -- which women have to enter at the back -- that run through some ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods? Or will things go to the other extreme, as exemplified by a proposal from the Meretz Party that called for a new national anthem? The idea was that “Hatikvah,” the anthem since 1948, which speaks movingly of Jewish hope, might offend Israel’s non-Jewish residents.

These issues have so much ballast in Israel that a recent poll done by Tel Aviv University’s Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research found that only 30 percent of Israelis thought the conflict with the Palestinians was Israel’s greatest threat. This even though three out of four believed the peace process was going nowhere. Fully 60 percent believed that the primary dangers -- especially the Orthodox-vs.-secular battle -- were internal.

“The first 50 years was the era in which we dealt with survival,” says the Jewish Agency’s Gad Ben-Ari. “We were concerned with how to build the state and secure it. Now we are beginning to deal with issues we never had time for, like: What is the meaning of Israel as a Jewish state? This country belongs not only to Israeli citizens but to Jews everywhere.

“The positive thing about all this is that Jews in the Diaspora are now beginning to get involved in these battles. They are standing up and saying they are not happy with Orthodox dominance. They are standing up and saying, ‘Even if we don’t speak Hebrew, and even if we do not visit Israel twice a year, we still want a Jewish state that appeals to our Jewish identity.’ If they didn’t care,” says Ben-Ari, “they wouldn’t be in the fight.”