The face of Israel is changing. As the country's old European-origin, middle-class and traditionally moderate secular Ashkenazi elite is waning, two other ethnic groups are rising in numbers and power.

One group is the Russians, who account for almost 15 percent of Israel's Jewish population. Although mostly secular, they tilt to the right; indeed, their politics reflect Slavic influences, a combination of nationalism mingled with suspicion of the state. Many of them are marginally Jewish, but naturally militant; as my Jerusalem-based journalist friend Lloyd Green put it, "They can put the hammer on Arafat and chow down on a pork chop with the same gusto."

The Sephardim, the Jews who came to Israel from elsewhere in the Middle East, are the other group and far exceed the Russians in number. They are Israel's largest ethnic group and comprise 2 million people, or 40 percent of the population. They have gained enormous influence in the past two decades, as part of their alliance with the dominant Likud party and they, too, lean to the right. They like their pork, in the national budget, not on their plate.

One such is Shlomo Benizri, a member of the Shas party, which is to the Sephardim what the Democratic Party was for the Irish a century ago in the United States -- the organized expression of their ethnic and religious clout.

So Shas adores everything that the Europeanized, secular and anti-religious Shinui Party abhors. Benizri, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's minister of labor, occupies an office that seems more like a political clubhouse in Brooklyn, N.Y., than a functioning government bureaucracy; nobody seems to be doing any work, but everyone has plenty of time for tea and talk.

I asked him about the military-service issue, since that was front-and-center in the current campaign, with Shinui leader Yosef "Tommy" Lapid calling for an end to the religious exemption and Shas campaigning for its preservation. Benizri, a bearded and brooding man -- he was an actor before he got married, fathered seven children, and launched a new career as rabbi and public speaker -- took instant control of the conversation.

First, he said, the Jewish State has always been "discriminatory"; as a Sephardic Jew -- his parents were born in Morocco -- "you feel it every place." Such discrimination, he continued, had led to the creation of a Sephardic quasi-underclass. The solution, according to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, founder of Shas, was old time religion -- literally.

As Benizri put it, "You have to give Jewish learning to the Jews." And that's what Shas is all about. Shas was doing "faith-based" social work back in the mid-1980s when current President George W. Bush by his own account was still doing whiskey-fueled oilfield work.

As his religious title suggests, Rabbi Yosef, the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, is not one of the humanist Abba Eban/Yitzhak Rabin-types many Westerners picture when they think of the Jewish State. Instead, he is akin to the anti-modernists in Mea Shearim. In August 2000, he described the Palestinians as "snakes," adding, "God regrets creating the Palestinians."

Such sentiments are hardly unique in Israel -- and that is the point. As the situation has worsened, many Israelis have defaulted into a kind of militant nationalism -- except, of course, that Shas wants to preserve the military exemption of its own supporters.

Yet Shas' conservative, pro-religious, anti-Arab message helped the party to rally the Sephardi vote. Having made an alliance with other ultra-orthodox parties, it voted its way into power and patronage. Indeed, even in 2003, with war clouds on every horizon, Benizri and Shas seemed mostly focused on domestic issues.

Benizri had openly pledged to use his labor post as a platform to discriminate in favor of Sephardim. And he kept his promise. Unlike the pious Politically Correct persiflagers I am used to in America, he did not shy away from the reality that discrimination in favor of one group meant discrimination against another group. Arguing that his people were still victimized, he declared to me, "If they do it for one side, then I must do it for the other."

One could argue, of course, that down that road -- the road of institutionalized, balkanized preference lies an Israeli version of Quebec, or worse, especially when systematic favoritism infects national security. I asked again: "So what about the military exemption? Benizri answered by telling me that when Moses was at war with the Midianites, he divided his men: 1000 to fight, and 1000 to study the Torah.

And that was that. Benizri was perfectly polite. He even thanked me for giving him a chance to practice his English -- but he had ministering, or maybe politicking, to do.

Outside his office, I told my friend Lloyd that I had to track down that Moses-and-the-Midianites tale in the Old Testament. "Don't bother," Lloyd answered. "The war against the Midianites is recorded in the Book of Numbers, but the notion of the military exemption is not recorded there. The exemption may be moored in Midrash -- part of the oral tradition -- not in written Scripture."

Of course, it has never been my game to match religious wisdom with anybody. So perhaps I can confine myself to a little secular common sense. If Israel becomes a country unduly influenced by illiberal politics -- the ultra-politics of religion and nationalism -- if it further cements a system of preferences, it will become an even more polarized and stratified society.

Such changes may be satisfying to the soul, but they will be costly to the wallet. Investors want rates of return, not the kingdom of heaven. And if religious reverie were ever to supplant technological wizardry, Israel's military margin of safety could be jeopardized, too. Yet that may be the choice that Israelis wish to make.