Country

Israel

Also Known As Israeli

Asia

Israel and the wider land it occupies are sacred ground for Judaism, Christianity and Islam alike, holding Jerusalem's Temple Mount and Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Dome of the Rock within a few hundred metres of each other. The modern state, founded in 1948, is religiously plural in practice, with a Jewish majority spanning secular, traditional, religious Zionist and Haredi communities, alongside Muslim, Christian, Druze and Baha'i populations, the last of which maintains its world administrative center at the Baha'i Gardens in Haifa. Jerusalem's status and access to its holy sites remain internationally contested and are treated here as disputed rather than settled fact. The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered at Qumran in the twentieth century, were recovered from this territory and transformed scholarship on Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity.

Facts

Law and State

Establishment Status

Declared Not Established 3

Defined by Basic Law as the nation-state of the Jewish people since 2018, alongside separate Basic Laws guaranteeing freedom of religion and conscience; the Temple Mount, Haram al-Sharif, is administered by a Jordanian funded Waqf under Israeli security control.

State Funding Mechanism

Israel funds Jewish religious services through a two-tier budget rather than a general religious tax. Around 129 local religious councils, each an independent public body under the Ministry of Religious Services, deliver kashrut supervision, ritual bathhouses, burial, marriage registration and rabbinical services; local authorities are required to contribute one and a half times the government's own allocation to a council, so a council's core budget runs roughly sixty percent local and forty percent national, with the annual state budget law setting the total sum the government may allocate to all religious councils, 952 million shekels in 2022. Salaries for the roughly 120 municipal chief rabbis and for religious council staff are paid out of this combined local and national budget rather than a separate clergy stipend; Reform and Conservative rabbis serving Israel's regional councils, outside the largest cities, began receiving state salaries on equal terms with Orthodox counterparts only from 2014, after decades in which this funding reached Orthodox rabbis alone. Muslim, Druze and Christian religious functionaries and courts in Israel are funded through separate government frameworks outside this Jewish religious council structure. 4

Apostasy or Blasphemy Law

Israel's Penal Law, Section 173, criminalizes publishing material liable to crudely offend the religious faith or sentiment of others, or voicing such words in public within another person's hearing, punishable by up to one year's imprisonment. The provision has drawn academic debate over whether it strikes the right balance between protecting religious sentiment and freedom of expression. 3

Registration or Recognition Regime

Recognition of a religious community in Israel runs through two tracks both inherited from before the state's founding: a Christian community recognized under the Ottoman millet system, among them the Eastern Orthodox, Latin Catholic, Armenian, Syrian Catholic, Chaldean, Greek Catholic Melkite, Maronite, Syrian Orthodox and Evangelical Episcopal communities, or a community such as the Anglican or Baha'i, recognized instead under a British Mandate era law. Recognized status brings its own religious council and jurisdiction over its members' personal status matters such as marriage and divorce; Judaism's own religious councils, some 133 of them, answer to the Ministry of Religious Services, while the Ministry of Interior's Department of Non-Jewish Affairs oversees the rest, including the Druze community's council. 3

Ban or Official Watchlist

Israel does not ban any religion, but it restricts one specific practice by law rather than banning any group outright. Section 174 of the 1977 Penal Law forbids proselytizing another person to change their religion by means of material benefit, and Section 368 forbids persuading or encouraging a minor under eighteen to change religion and forbids any conversion ceremony for a minor without the consent of both parents; the measure targets a method of religious inducement, not a banned religion or organization. 5

Concordat Basis

The Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Israel, signed in Jerusalem on 30 December 1993, established relations in two phases: an immediate exchange of Special Representatives at the rank of Apostolic Nuncio and Ambassador, followed by full diplomatic relations through an Apostolic Nunciature and an Israeli Embassy once the agreement entered into force, which took effect the same year. Its Article 10 has both parties jointly reaffirm the Catholic Church's right to property in Israel and commits them to negotiate a further, comprehensive agreement resolving unclear, unsettled and disputed property, economic and fiscal matters, intended to begin within three months and conclude within two years; that follow-on fiscal and property agreement was not concluded on the original schedule and outstanding issues between the parties continued afterward. 6

Disputed

Capital

Jerusalem is the seat of the Israeli government and the capital named in Israeli law; most UN member states and the United Nations itself do not recognize this, treating the city's status as unresolved pending a permanent settlement, and most countries maintain their embassies in or near Tel Aviv. 2

Jerusalem is named the capital of Israel in Israeli law and functions as the seat of the Israeli government, including the Knesset and the Prime Minister's office, but most United Nations member states and the United Nations itself do not recognise this status, treating Jerusalem's ultimate status as unresolved pending a permanent settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which Palestinians also claim East Jerusalem as the intended capital of a future Palestinian state. Consistent with non-recognition, most countries maintain their embassies to Israel in or near Tel Aviv rather than in Jerusalem, though a smaller number, including the United States since 2018, have relocated their embassies to Jerusalem, itself a contested diplomatic act read by Palestinians and much of the international community as prejudging the city's disputed status. The dispute is over whether a state's own designation of its capital is sufficient for international recognition when the territory in question is also claimed by another party to an active conflict, a question the CIA World Factbook's descriptive entry itself is not positioned to resolve.

Legal Status

Defined by Basic Law as the nation-state of the Jewish people (2018) alongside Basic Laws guaranteeing freedom of religion and conscience; the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif is administered by a Jordanian-funded Waqf under Israeli security control. 3

Israel's 2018 Basic Law, Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, defines Israel constitutionally in specifically Jewish national terms, standing alongside separate, earlier Basic Laws that guarantee freedom of religion and conscience to all residents regardless of the 2018 law's framing. The Temple Mount, called Haram al-Sharif in its Islamic designation, sharing the same physical site sacred to Judaism and Islam, is administered day to day by a Jordanian-funded Waqf, an Islamic religious trust, while remaining under overall Israeli security control, an arrangement in which Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian authorities actively dispute both sovereignty over the site and the specific terms of prayer access for Jewish and Muslim worshippers respectively. The State Department's report documents this administrative arrangement as the current operative status without adjudicating the underlying sovereignty dispute, which long predates the 2018 Basic Law and is bound up with the wider unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Resolution would require a negotiated settlement of that wider conflict rather than any change to religious freedom law specifically.

Demographics

Religious Composition

About 73-74% Jewish, roughly 18% Muslim, with smaller Christian (about 2%) and Druze (about 1.5%) minorities (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics; Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). 1

Government

Government Type

parliamentary democracy 2

Sovereignty Status

Sovereign UN member state 2

Established Year

1948 2

14 May 1948 (following League of Nations mandate under British administration)

Geography

Latitude

31 degrees north 2

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.

Longitude

34.9 degrees east 2

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.

Government type (class)

Parliamentary republic 2

Location

Learn More

Religion and History in Israel

Israel is home to a Jewish majority of roughly 73 to 74 percent alongside an Arab minority of about 21 percent, mostly Muslim with smaller Christian and Druze communities, according to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics and reflected in Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020. The land holds sites central to Judaism, Christianity and Islam alike: the Temple Mount and Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City, venerated by Jews as the site of the First and Second Temples; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, marking the traditional site of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection for Christians; and the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site, commemorating Muhammad's Night Journey.

Jewish presence in the land predates the Roman era, with the Second Temple's destruction in 70 CE beginning a long diaspora; the modern state was established in 1948 following the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate period, drawing Jewish immigration from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Christian communities include ancient Eastern rites, Latin Catholics and Protestants, while the Druze, an offshoot of Ismaili Islam with a closed esoteric theology, serve in the Israeli military distinct from other Arab citizens.

Contested Sovereignty at Jerusalem's Holy Sites

Jerusalem's Temple Mount, called Haram al-Sharif in Arabic, sits at the center of one of the world's most contested religious arrangements: since 1967 Israel has held security control while a Jordanian-funded Islamic trust, the Waqf, administers day-to-day religious affairs there under a long-standing status quo arrangement. Jewish prayer at the site itself is restricted under this arrangement, directing Jewish worship instead to the adjacent Western Wall, though visits and calls for expanded Jewish prayer rights have grown more frequent and more contested in recent years, drawing sharp Palestinian and wider Muslim objection.

Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity and Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre operate under a nineteenth-century Ottoman arrangement called the Status Quo, dividing custody among Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Armenian Apostolic authorities, with Ethiopian Orthodox, Syriac and Coptic communities holding smaller rights; disputes over this division have occasionally produced physical altercations among monks. Israel's Basic Laws provide freedom of religion and conscience while defining the state as Jewish and democratic, a formulation addressed at length in the country's Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, enacted in 2018, whose balance remains a live constitutional and political question.

Connections

Ancient and Historical Regions

Ancient Israel

Source World History Encyclopedia: Israel

Galilee

Source GeoNames: GeoNames search results for Galilee

Judea

Source GeoNames: GeoNames search results for Judea

Samaria

Source GeoNames: GeoNames search results for Samaria

Western Asia

Source United Nations Statistics Division: UN M49 Standard country or area codes for statistical use: geographic regions

Associated With

Shemini Atzeret, 22 Tishrei

This source names Israel directly: "In Israel it is kept as the same day as Simchat Torah, the Torah reading cycle's completion; in much of the traditional Diaspora, where a second festival day was historically kept, the two..."

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Shrine of the Book, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Digital Dead Sea Scrolls

This source names Israel directly: "This is the Israel Museum, Jerusalem's own Shrine of the Book resource, the museum's digital presentation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the Great Isaiah Scroll, and of the surviving portion of..."

Source Shrine of the Book, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Digital Dead Sea Scrollsthe holders' own account

Siddur Sim Shalom (1985)

This source names Israel directly: "the creation of the State of Israel as a theological reality and the Holocaust as a moral tragedy directly into its liturgy."

Source Siddur Sim Shalom and Jules Harlow (The Forward and JTA)The Forward and Jewish Telegraphic Agency obituary staff; the Rabbinical Assembly

Simchat Torah, 22 Tishrei

This source names Israel directly: "second of Tishrei in the Land of Israel, immediately after Sukkot and combined with Shemini Atzeret in Israeli practice, marking the completion of the annual cycle of public Torah reading before it..."

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Statement From Agudath Israel of America on the Supreme Court Ruling Regarding Same Gender Marriage (The Yeshiva World)

This source names Israel directly: "dated 26 June 2015, reporting Agudath Israel of America's statement on the U.S."

Source Statement From Agudath Israel of America on the Supreme Court Ruling Regarding Same Gender Marriage (The Yeshiva World)

Statement on the Supreme Court's Ruling Regarding Same Sex Marriage (Agudath Israel of America)

This source names Israel directly: "Agudath Israel of America's own statement on its official site, dated 26 June 2015, responding to the U.S."

Source Statement on the Supreme Court's Ruling Regarding Same Sex Marriage (Agudath Israel of America)the holders' own account

Syria's Interim President Signs Constitution Enshrining Islamist Rule for 5 Years

This source names Israel directly: "March 2025 and read via The Times of Israel, on interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa signing Syria's transitional Constitutional Declaration on 13 March 2025, which keeps the requirement that Syria's..."

Source Syria's Interim President Signs Constitution Enshrining Islamist Rule for 5 YearsGhaith Alsayed and Kareem Chehayeb

The Aleppo Codex Online (Yad Ben-Zvi Institute)

This source names Israel directly: "the surviving portion now held at the Israel Museum, with direct institutional authority over these custodial facts."

Source The Aleppo Codex Online (Yad Ben-Zvi Institute)the holders' own account

The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia: From Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century

This source names Israel directly: "standard scholarly history of the Beta Israel, the Ethiopian Jewish community, from its earliest documented period through the twentieth century."

Source The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia: From Earliest Times to the Twentieth CenturySteven Kaplan

The Caiaphas Tomb in North Talpiyot, Jerusalem

This source names Israel directly: "Greenhut is an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, and this Atiqot article is his excavation report on the tomb and ossuaries discovered in 1990 in the Peace Forest, Jerusalem..."

Source The Caiaphas Tomb in North Talpiyot, JerusalemZvi Greenhut

The Evolution of the Ethiopian Jews: A History of the Beta Israel (Falasha) to 1920

This source names Israel directly: "is a scholarly history of the Beta Israel, the Ethiopian Jewish community, tracing their history up to 1920, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press."

Source The Evolution of the Ethiopian Jews: A History of the Beta Israel (Falasha) to 1920James Quirin

The Golden Dawn

This source names Israel directly: "This is Israel Regardie's own compendium of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn's rituals, knowledge lectures and correspondence tables, compiled and published by a former member of the order..."

Source The Golden DawnIsrael Regardie

The Golden Dawn Tarot (U.S. Games Systems listing)

This source names Israel directly: "deck's correspondences directly from Israel Regardie's published Golden Dawn material rather than developing them independently."

Source The Golden Dawn Tarot (U.S. Games Systems listing)Robert Wang, from Israel Regardie's Golden Dawn material

The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th edition

This source names Israel directly: "Israel Regardie's published compilation of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn's own internal papers, the primary documentary record of the order's actual rituals and teaching materials rather..."

Source The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie

The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide

This source names Israel directly: "remains at each site it covers across Israel, Palestine and the Sinai from earliest times through the Crusades, giving each site's own excavated evidence and historical context rather than a..."

Source The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological GuideJerome Murphy-O'Connor

The Israel Museum (institutional record)

This source names Israel directly: "This is the Israel Museum's own institutional account of its founding, governance and its Shrine of the Book building, the structure purpose-built to display the Dead Sea Scrolls."

Source The Israel Museum (institutional record)the holders' own account

The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel

This source names Israel directly: "Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel, published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1995, is a sociological study arguing that the modern Israeli narrative of mass suicide at Masada, a..."

Source The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in IsraelNachman Ben-Yehuda

The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel

This source names Israel directly: "The Menorah, From the Bible to Modern Israel, published by Harvard University Press in 2016, is a scholarly cultural history of the Temple menorah, tracing its depiction on the Arch of Titus..."

Source The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern IsraelSteven Fine

The Orit Scroll of Kes Abba Yitzhak Aysu

This source names Israel directly: "manuscript codex of the Orit, the Beta Israel community's most sacred text, comprising the Five Books of Moses together with Joshua, Judges and Ruth, written in the Ethiopian liturgical language..."

Source Koret Center for Jewish Civilization, "The Story of the Spiritual Treasure: The Orit Scroll of Qes Abba Yitzhak Eyassu at the ANU Museum"Koret Center for Jewish Civilization

The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel

This source names Israel directly: "A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel, published by Eisenbrauns in 1997, is the standard monograph devoted specifically to the Urim and Thummim, the priestly objects used for divine consultation..."

Source The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient IsraelCornelius Van Dam

Treaty of Peace between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

This source names Israel directly: "Treaty of Peace between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, signed in 1994 and read here from the Avalon Project's hosted text at Yale Law School, is the primary diplomatic..."

Source Treaty of Peace between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of JordanState of Israel and Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Wikipedia: Baruch Lanner

This source names Israel directly: "the verdict and the sentence; and that Israel's Interior Ministry denied him citizenship in 2022 on the basis of the conviction, reported independently by Haaretz and the Times of Israel."

Source Wikipedia: Baruch LannerWikipedia contributors

Showing 51 to 72 of 72 in Associated With, page 2 of 2.

Contains

Acre

Beit She'arim

Source The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological GuideJerome Murphy-O'Connor

Caesarea

Capernaum