IN DEFERENCE TO HER HUSBAND'S NEW AND INCREASING RELIGIOUS devotion, Yifat Elharar decided to clear out her closets. Tossing out her miniskirts and shorts was a symbolic casting-off of a more provocative secular life in favour of the forced modesty of the extremely religious. But her cosmetic moves toward Ultra-Orthodox Judaism were far from complete: she refused to hide her long auburn hair under a wig or a hat or to wear long skirts, opting instead for trousers, saying she just didn't have the necessary religious passion for the full uniform. Even though she agreed to send her two oldest children to religious schools and to observe the religious ritual of the sabbath, her defiance over her clothing threatened her marriage to Ilan, a championship soccer player who gave up a lucrative career in sport to study in a yeshiva (religious school) and chauffeur a religious member of the Israeli knesset.His rabbis urged patience, confident she would become more accepting of his ways. A year and a half later they were still together she was slowly giving in and adapting her wardrobe - another young couple raising a family in the jumbled atmosphere of Jerusalem, where Ultra-Orthodox Jews live in separate neighbourhoods from less observant and secular Israelis, where weekend traffic is detoured to accommodate the religious, and where secular teenagers spend noisy sabbath nights at funky bars while their more reverent cousins pray at the Western (Wailing) Wall - Judaism's holiest shrine - a few blocks away.The difficulties of one couple are symbolic and resonate across the state of Israel, where the divide between secular and religious Jews has never been so deep. The secular - those Jews who do not observe religious ritual - are increasingly vocal, almost panic-stricken over the growing political clout of the Ultra-Orthodox, who gained an unprecedented amount of power in the May 1996 general election that propelled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into office. Outspoken secular activists warn of an eventual theocracy, not unlike that in Iran, where the rabbis would wield the same control as the ayatollahs. Key members of the most significant religious party, Shas, unapologetically flog their vision of a state where all civil law is replaced by Halachic rules - the law of the Torah.The hostility is already quite public, from physical confrontations over the closing of roads on the sabbath to proposed new religious laws that would give the Ultra-Orthodox supremacy over the followers of the more liberal Reform and Conservative Judaism. These divisions and how they play out will influence the very shape, nature, and future of the state of Israel. They have the potential to threaten Israel's stability in a manner that is no less serious than Israel's conflicts with the Arab nations, to the point where some of the stumbling blocks in ongoing efforts for an Israeli-Palestinian peace can be traced to the animosity between religious and secular Jews.FROM CLOSED MINORITY TO DOMINANT INFLUENCEThe 1996 Israeli general election for prime minister and knesset seats resulted in an overwhelming victory for Benjamin Netanyahu; it also signalled a significant reform of consciousness for the Ultra-Orthodox (Haredim) society in Israel. Indeed, the Ultra-Orthodox, who make up eight per cent of the population, have always had strong political power, far exceeding their numbers among the electorate, because traditionally they have acted as a balance between the two main parties when either establishes a coalition. However, until the last election any social influence they had was indirect, measured in amounts of government money allocated for education and housing. Otherwise, Ultra-Orthodox society tended to isolate itself and did not try to influence secular or Masorti (traditionalists who keep the main observances of Judaism) society.This social balance collapsed when, for the first time in Israel, elections for prime minister took place in addition to and parallel with elections for knesset seats. …