Israel is among the few countries in the world that decided, at time of independence, to refrain from drafting a formal constitution. Instead, Israel's founding fathers preferred to enact its constitution gradually, through a series of Basic Laws which would be adopted over the years. 2 There are various explanations for this decision. 3 One of the central explanations links the avoidance of writing a constitution to the deep disagreement in Israeli society between secular and religious perspectives of the Jewish state. 4 Sixty years later, the conflict over the appropriate relationship between Jewish religious law–the Halacha–and state institutions and regulations, is still considered one of the major obstacles to the adoption of a written constitution in Israel. In recent years, the debate over Israel‟ s constitution has returned to the public agenda. Since 2003, the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee has been working intensively on a proposal for a formal constitution, as numerous think-tanks, advocacy groups and organizations have produced constitutional drafts, covenants and future vision documents aiming at contributing their standpoint to the public deliberation over the emerging constitution. In 2007, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced his intention to promote the enactment of a formal constitution by the end of Israel‟ s sixtieth year. 5 The prospect of writing a new constitution was viewed by many secular Israelis as an opportunity for reforming the inegalitarian religious regulations that have evolved–partly