Land of milk and silicon Israel fuses tech and tradition

For much of the past century, the dominant theory of modernization held that as societies grew wealthier, they would inevitably become less religious. Industrialization would weaken traditional authority, urbanization would dissolve inherited social structures, and scientific progress would push faith steadily toward the margins of public life.

For a time, the theory appeared to be true. Across Western Europe, as incomes rose, church attendance collapsed. In Britain, the share of the population attending weekly religious services fell from around 50% in the early 20th century to single digits today. In France and the Netherlands, organized religion receded dramatically from public life. Politics increasingly revolved around technocratic governance rather than shared cultural or religious identity.

Among intellectuals and civic leaders, the assumption hardened into orthodoxy: religion belonged to the past, secularization to the future. Those who questioned this view were often dismissed as nostalgic defenders of a fading world. As the anthropologist Anthony Wallace once predicted with remarkable confidence, “the evolutionary future of religion is extinction.”

But history has produced a striking counterexample. Israel does not simply diverge from this trajectory — it inverts it.

Israel is one of the most technologically advanced economies on earth, producing an extraordinary concentration of startups, scientific breakthroughs, and military innovations. Israeli firms have played major roles in fields ranging from cybersecurity and artificial intelligence to medical technology and water management. Yet Israel is also a deeply traditional society, with a large — and growing — religious population. 

Far from being a weakness, this tendency increasingly looks like a strength. Israel and much of the developed world are moving in opposite directions — the one toward social fragmentation and economic stagnation, the other toward greater social vitality and economic dynamism. The problems that plague advanced societies, such as demographic decline, weakening civic participation, and erosion of shared meaning, aren’t prevalent in Israel, and the country is showing remarkable resilience. What if Israel is not the exception to the rule, but evidence that the rules are wrong?

While modernization theory emerged from Western Europe’s particular historical experience in the 19th and 20th centuries, a similar pattern occurred elsewhere. East Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea, and China industrialized rapidly while becoming increasingly urban and secular. Latin America’s most successful states — places such as Chile and Uruguay — also became its least religious. Even many states that only achieved middle-income status, such as Tunisia and Argentina, showed sharp declines in religious belief.

By the early 21st century, the modernization thesis had become almost axiomatic. Economic development, it was assumed, would inevitably coincide with declining religious authority, increasing individualism, and secularization of society — all of which were considered desirable.

Yet Israel’s modernization has not weakened its people’s religiosity. If anything, the opposite is true. As the country has become one of the most successful high-tech economies in the world, the proportion of Israelis identifying as religious or traditional has steadily increased.

The growth of religious influence is not confined to the margins of society. In fact, it is increasingly central to Israel’s political, cultural, and institutional life. Religious Zionists — once a relatively small minority — now occupy key positions in the military, government, and civil service, combining strong ideological commitment with high levels of education and professional integration. Traditional Sephardi and Mizrahi communities, historically underrepresented in the country’s elite, have become a major cultural and political force, shaping everything from electoral coalitions to popular culture. Meanwhile, the Haredi population, though more socially insular, is expanding rapidly and exerting growing influence through both demographic weight and political organization. Together, these groups are not only increasing in number; they’re reshaping the broader national culture — extending the reach of tradition into public life in ways rarely seen in other developed societies.

Even among those who consider themselves secular, religious traditions remain deeply embedded in everyday life. Surveys by the Israeli scholars Shmuel Rosner and Camil Fuchs show that while only about 30% of Jewish Israelis describe themselves as religious, nearly two-thirds light Shabbat candles and more than 80% gather regularly as a family for the meal on Friday evening. Ninety-six percent participate in some form of Passover Seder. These patterns suggest that even where formal belief declines, shared practices continue to transmit identity across generations.

Of course, these trends are not uniform. In Israel’s more secular centers — such as Tel Aviv and Haifa — public life has in many respects become less religious over time. Secular schools devote far less attention to religious study than they did in earlier decades, civil marriage abroad has become increasingly common, and public observance of Shabbat has eroded, with transportation and commerce now operating in areas where they once did not. Israeli society is, in effect, evolving along two parallel tracks: as religious and traditional communities grow in number and influence, more secular segments reduce their formal religious observance. Yet even within these groups, participation in core rituals — family meals, Passover Seders, and life-cycle traditions — remains widespread, suggesting that tradition continues to shape social life even where formal religiosity declines.

Israel’s example shows that modernization need not coincide with secularization. This is fortunate, because the latter seems to be fraying the social fabric of the nations where it has progressed furthest. 

Traditional institutions bring to nations’ populations what the sociologist Émile Durkheim described as “a unified system of beliefs and practices . . . which unite [a people] into one single moral community.” That shared framework promotes cohesion, a long-term perspective, and societal strength. When the framework weakens, the social bonds that hold societies together can weaken with them.

This much is evident in highly modernized societies today. As Robert Putnam famously documented of the United States in Bowling Alone and other books, participation in voluntary associations, community organizations, and local institutions declined sharply during the late 20th century. Today, alienation has replaced trust in governments, media, and public institutions in much of the developed world. Political participation increasingly takes the form of online outrage rather than sustained engagement. Population growth in most industrialized economies has reversed.

These trends suggest that while modernization theory may work in the short term, it overlooks a deeper possibility that is only becoming evident after many generations: over the long term, every society — no matter how rich — needs tradition and shared institutions in order to thrive.

Israel’s  unique fusion of tradition and modernity did not emerge accidentally: it was embedded in the country’s founding.

Zionism was one of the most modernizing political movements of the 19th century, yet it drew legitimacy from one of the world’s oldest civilizational traditions. The movement sought to create a modern nation-state while grounding its identity in a history stretching back thousands of years. As the French political philosopher Raymond Aron observed, Israel represented a rare historical phenomenon: a modern nation-state built in the name of an ancient tradition.

Many early Zionist leaders were secular, even militantly so. Figures such as Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, and Berl Katznelson — a prominent intellectual who played a major role in founding Labor Zionism — envisioned Israel as a modern socialist society shaped by agriculture, industry, and national revival. Yet even these secular pioneers understood that Jewish history and collective memory formed the foundation of the national project they were building. Katznelson, for example, famously wrote about the importance of balancing “rupture and continuity.” As he asserted, “Were only memory to exist, then we would be crushed beneath its burden and would become slaves to our memories…. [W]ere we ruled entirely by forgetfulness, what place would there be for culture, science, self-consciousness, or spiritual life?”

One of the most striking examples of how Israel grounded its identity in tradition is its revival of Hebrew. For centuries, the language had survived primarily in liturgy and religious scholarship. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Zionist activists transformed it into a modern spoken language capable of supporting science, politics, literature, and daily life. It remains one of the few successful examples in history of a language revived after centuries of limited everyday use.

At the same time, Israel invested heavily in education and technology. This included establishing several of the world’s preeminent research universities, among them Hebrew University and the Weizmann Institute of Science. Today, the country has one of the world’s best educated populations, and consistently ranks first globally for R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP, with recent figures exceeding 6%.

Israel also adopted modern democratic institutions — including a parliament, competitive elections, and an independent judiciary. Yet it kept the national holidays of the Jewish calendar and allowed religious authorities to retain jurisdiction over marriage and personal-status matters such as marriage and divorce. 

The state founded in 1948, therefore, carried both revolutionary and traditional elements — all of which have carried over into the Israel of today. The revolutionary ones helped create a modern, innovative economy. The traditional ones helped preserve the social cohesion that many affluent societies have struggled to maintain. In Israel, unlike most of the developed world, informal networks of family, neighborhood, and community are robust. Extended families often live in close proximity, and social life frequently revolves around shared meals, religious holidays, and community institutions. While around 20% of Israel’s citizens are Arab, and thus have their own distinct communal institutions and identities, many of the broader patterns of strong family structures and dense social networks extend across that population as well. 

Among Israelis, high levels of regular religious attendance, military service, and reserve duty cultivate a powerful ethos of collective responsibility. Volunteering rates also remain high, and civil-society organizations play a central role in addressing challenges that in many countries would fall primarily to the state. Zaka, for instance, is a mostly Haredi volunteer organization dedicated to responding to terror attacks, accidents, and disasters. After the October 7 attacks, it recovered and identified remains — often using advanced forensic technologies — so they could be buried in accordance with traditional Jewish law.

Deep cultural foundations, originally embedded in religion, underpin all these dynamics. Judaism places strong emphasis on communal obligation and collective responsibility. The Hebrew concept of arevut — the idea that all Jews share responsibility for one another — grounds many Israeli social norms. Nearly two centuries ago, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that religion often functions as a stabilizing force within democratic societies, acting as what he called “the first of their political institutions.” In Israel, this dynamic remains unusually visible.

This does not mean Israeli society lacks internal conflict. From the beginning, Israel has been prone to bouts of intense political conflict over the country’s direction. The early 1950s, for example, saw massive — and sometimes violent — protests against acceptance of reparations from Germany. In the 1970s, growing resentment among Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews erupted into a powerful protest movement that challenged the Ashkenazi-dominated establishment. In the 1990s, efforts to forge an agreement with the Palestinians produced intense societal polarization. Yet beneath these disputes lies a widely shared understanding that the survival of the state ultimately requires cooperation.

The events following the October 7 attacks once again illustrated this dynamic. Despite months of bitter divisions over judicial reform that had consumed Israeli society before the attacks, the country rapidly mobilized in support of soldiers, displaced civilians, and the broader war effort. Volunteer networks sprang into action. Civilian groups organized logistics, delivered supplies to military units, and provided assistance to communities near the front lines. Many of the initiatives leveraged technology to help heal societal wounds from the violence. ReGrow Israel, for instance, used sustainable techniques and enhanced infrastructure to restore farms. SafeHeart employed the latest in trauma research to support survivors. These efforts continue today.

Israel also stands out as an exception to demographic trends. Across much of the developed world, birthrates have collapsed far below replacement level. Countries such as Italy, Spain, South Korea, and Japan now face shrinking populations and rapidly aging societies. Governments increasingly struggle to sustain pension systems, labor forces, and economic growth. As the demographer Phillip Longman has argued, countries with shrinking populations face growing economic and geopolitical disadvantages as their workforces contract and their societies age.

Israel, despite having a highly developed economy, averages around three children per woman — easily the highest fertility rate among the world’s advanced industrialized democracies. Its population continues to grow rapidly even as populations in many advanced societies are contracting.

Part of this vitality reflects the influence of religious communities, where large families remain a deeply rooted cultural norm. But Israel’s demographic strength extends well beyond the Haredi and Religious Zionist parts of society: even secular Jewish Israelis typically have more children than their counterparts in Europe or East Asia.

The result is a society with an unusually young age structure for a developed country. Nearly 28% of Israel’s population is under the age of 15 — roughly double the proportion in many European states. This demographic carries significant strategic advantages: a younger population provides a larger workforce, a deeper military recruitment pool, and a more dynamic consumer economy.

Several factors help explain this pattern. In Israel, institutions and public spaces are unusually focused on or have adapted to the needs of children and family. Family life remains culturally central, and national identity is closely tied to demographic continuity. Raising children is widely understood to be not only a personal choice, but a contribution to a collective project — the endurance of a people and a state forged under extraordinary historical pressures. 

Traditional values have had a much larger impact than material benefits on the unusually high Israeli desire to have children. By embedding tradition within modern life, Israeli society has engendered a belief that the future is something worth investing in.

The adversity that has faced Israel since its founding is one key to this success. Israel has faced wars, terrorism, diplomatic isolation, and severe resource constraints. Few modern states have been required to solve so many existential challenges so quickly.

What is striking is not merely that Israel survived these pressures, but how it responded to them.

Again and again, the country has drawn on both halves of its social character. Tradition provides cohesion — a powerful sense of shared history, collective responsibility and national purpose. Modern institutions supply the tools: scientific research, technological innovation, and a culture of pragmatic problem-solving. The Israeli thinker Micah Goodman has described the result: a people who have mastered the high capabilities produced by modern individualism and technological development paired with a deep, premodern willingness to sacrifice for the collective good.

Together, these forces have repeatedly transformed adversity into capability. Military threats accelerated the development of advanced defense technologies, from missile-defense systems to cybersecurity innovations. Chronic water scarcity pushed Israeli engineers to pioneer large-scale desalination and highly efficient irrigation techniques that are now used around the world.

Crisis, in other words, became a kind of social training ground — continually reinforcing the country’s unusual blend of rootedness and innovation.

Israel often appears chaotic to outsiders, but instead it represents a different path to modernity. Within a few miles, one can move from the secular nightlife of Tel Aviv to the Haredi neighborhoods of Bnei Brak, where daily life for the large families therein emphasizes religious study. High-tech entrepreneurs building cybersecurity companies operate alongside communities that revolve around synagogue life and traditional religious observance.

Yet many Israelis move fluidly between traditional and modern worlds over the course of their lives. The result is a social dynamism unlike that of other developed countries, that contributes to the unique mix of rootedness and innovation. The political economist Albert Hirschman observed that social energy often emerges from tensions that are never fully resolved. Israel’s seemingly contradictory social structure has produced exactly that effect.

The lesson of Israel’s experience is not that other countries should replicate its institutions or history. Israel’s circumstances — its civilizational heritage, geopolitical environment, and founding narrative — are unique. But the underlying principles may have wider relevance.

Societies can achieve technological and economic success without secularizing or eschewing tradition. In fact, strong cultural foundations may provide the stability and cohesion needed to navigate growing uncertainty while sustaining modern dynamism over time.

Across the developed world, societies are searching for ways to rebuild trust and resilience — qualities that cannot be manufactured by bureaucratic policy alone. Israel’s experience suggests that modern societies may benefit not from abandoning their traditional foundations, but from integrating them into their modern ways of living. In a more turbulent world, such a synthesis may prove less paradoxical than prophetic.

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