In order to truly understand the background of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, indeed, of the entire Secular-Religious divide that has plagued the Jews in the Holy Land since the late nineteenth century, we need to examine the foundations of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel, and the place of religion at every stage.
There was never a time in the last 3,300 years, that Jews did not live in the Holy Land. After the confrontation with Rome in the first and second centuries CE, most of the Jews were either killed, or taken as slaves to Rome, and other parts of the Empire. The situation for Jews in the Holy Land was grim. Especially after Rome turned to Christianity in the fourth century, the persecution became not only ethnic, but religious and ideological. The vast majority emigrated. Others remained, under constant oppression. That oppression continued, becoming much less only after the Muslim conquest of the region. Jewish life under Islam has often been romanticized, but there was, in most times and places, persecution nevertheless. But it was far better than in Christian lands, where the Jews had no rights, but survived at the whim of the king. Under Islam, there were clearly defined rights, albeit as second class citizens. When the Crusaders conquered the Holy Land, Jews and Muslims fought side by side, and both were ruthlessly put to the sword in huge numbers in 1099 by the Christian soldiers. A small, devout Jewish community continued to exist, replenished by immigrants fleeing Spain and Portugal at the end of the fifteenth century and afterwards. Jews primarily occupied four cities; Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias and Safed. They were merchants and craftsmen. Some were farmers, especially in Hebron. Significant numbers of East European Jews came in the late eighteenth, and early nineteenth century. These were pious individuals, who believed that redemption was at hand. They were representing their brethren in Russia and Poland, and almost always lived on charity from the masses whom they had left behind. The Turkish authorities were always suspicious of these Ashkenazim. They suspected these Jews of continued loyalty to the Czar, while in Russia, the Czarist government saw a threat in Jewish institutions supporting a community in the Ottoman Empire. Already in the 1880s, groups of young, religious, apolitical Jews came to settle, occupying themselves with agriculture.
A turning point came when, in 1894, an assimilated, German speaking Jew named Theodore Herzl, covered the infamous Dreyfus case in Paris. Dreyfus had been a captain in the French Army. France had just lost a war with Prussia. Dreyfus had been framed as a collaborator and spy. Mobs ran through the streets of Paris yelling "death to the Jews". Herzl was terrified at the success of antisemitism in France, the land of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. At first, he advocated a mass conversion of Jews to Christianity, as a means of ending antisemitism. When he saw that his proposal won no support, he came up with the idea of a Jewish State. Ideally, it would be in the Land of Israel, but anywhere would do (Argentina and Uganda were at various times possibilities). His motivation was purely survival for the Jewish people, with no thought of religion. Herzl was a doer more than a thinker. He negotiated with leaders both in Western Europe and the Middle East, paving the way for a Jewish State. The real ideologue of Zionism was Max Nordau. The period we are speaking about was the Age of Nationalism. Empires were breaking up into small nation states. Every ethnic group wanted its very own country. The result of this movement was the First World War. Nordau reasoned that the Jews were first and foremost a nation. Moses had given them a religion to bind them together. As they went into exile, the rabbis had made the religion more demanding, so as to keep the nation together though scattered. At the turn of the twentieth century, however, religion had become a divisive force, and needed to be eliminated. A geographic focal point was now necessary. He saw Europe degenerating in every way, and envisioned a completely secular, egalitarian, classless society to be formed by the Jewish people in their own nations state. Many East European Jews were receptive to the messages of Herzl and Nordau, although their views were denounced by nearly all Orthodox and Reform rabbis. After all, the Orthodox saw Judaism as the raison d'etre of the Jewish people. Reform was, at that time, dedicated to the OPPOSITE ideal; we are not a nation but rather a religion.A Jew in France was a Frenchman of Mosaic belief. The so called "enlightenment" had, in Western Europe, taken the form of a Judaism in the image of Western ideals and culture. In Eastern Europe, it had taken the form of secular Jewish culture. Hebrew and Yiddish novels and theater groups abounded. Although the majority were still Orthodox, there were now many thousands who had abandoned religion.The dream of some to become accepted as equal citizens in Russia were dashed as pogroms, antisemitic attacks, became more and more widespread. Most adopted Socialism. Herzl and Nordaus's ideas struck a receptive chord. Secular, anti-religious, dictatorship of the Proletariat, were now the ideal. Until the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union was referred to by many Zionists as "the Second Motherland", and Josef Stalin as "the Sun of the Nations". As thousands flocked to the Holy Land, a confrontation with the Old Yishuv, the Old Settlement of devout East East. European Jews, was inevitable,