IN EISENSTADT'S opinion the situation is improving. "There have been fewer ethnic tensions in the last two years," he said. This was particularly apparent during the Six Day War, before which officials were worried that there would be problems calling up army reservists from among the immigrants. "It was the end of a recession," Eisenstadt recalls, and there was much unemployment in the development towns. "There was apprehension on how the morale would hold up" when the working man of the family would be called away, and no one knew how people would react to the tension of the war and "the preceding two weeks, which were really more tense than the war itself," he said. But, he continued, there was no problem, and "morale held up fine."

The hope for complete integration lies with the descendants of the immigrants. "The second generation is less segregated, and hopefully the third will be even less," Eisenstadt said, and there has been a slow but continuous increase in the rate of intermarriage between the two groups. Higher education is also a problem; Eisenstadt believes that not more than 10 per cent of university students are Oriental or Moroccan, but the army has instituted a new program where, after their period of service, immigrants who are qualified but "not quite prepared" for a university are given a pre-university training course. "This is the second or third year of the program, and it has been very successful," Eisenstadt said. "This doesn't mean there won't be more tension," he added, "but tension accompanies progress."

ANOTHER source of difficulty within Israel is the growing resentment for religious social law. The religious groups gained their prestige because the religious party was an easy coalition power in the formation of the state. "The most salient concerns" arising from this situation, according to Eisenstadt, are lack of provision fir civil marriages and the laws governing Shabbat (the sabbath, which in Israel is on Saturday).

The religious groups claim that civil marriages would break the unity of the nation, for it would be impossible to make certain of the Jewish background of potential wives and husbands. Because of this concern, remarriages after civil divorces which are not performed by the rabbis may result in "bastard" children, who, according to the religious groups, are out of the pale of Jewish life.

Eisenstadt does not accept the view that civil marriage would break up national unity, and he believes that the present situation creates unreasonably great difficulties for those involved in such divorces and for people married or converted by Converservative and Reform rabbis, who are not recognized by the religious institution in Israel.

Pressure is not great enough now to institute civil marriage, but a crisis and possible change will come with increased immigration of Conservative and Reform Jews and, also, if there is ever any large-scale immigration from Russia. "How many Jews since 1917 have been married by a rabbi?" Eisenstadt asked.

The second major problem is the laws governing the Sabbath. All stores and most restaurants and places of entertainment are closed, and, except in Haifa, public transportation is completely shut down.

"Ironically," Eisenstadt points out, "most of these laws discriminate against the poor, who have no cars to overcome the inconvenience of no public transportation and, in the case of marriage problems, can't afford to go abroad."

ISRAEL began as, and in many ways still is a country of pioneers, and as a country of immigrants driven by the pioneering spirit it parallels America in its youth. Eisenstadt recognizes this parallel and still finds a little of the pioneering spirit in contemporary American life: "There is still a strong missionary element in America, sometimes extremely shallow, but sometimes not. It is part of the ethos."

"I don't know how we'll feel at our 175th birthday," but right now "it is easier to feel the spirit in Israel, in large part because the country is smaller," Eisenstadt maintains. He also realizes the similarity between the immigrant nature of the original populations of the U.S. and Israel, but "hopefully, Israel will amalgamate more quickly, at less human cost." In terms of physical hardship, "there is less in Israel" than in the days of mass urban immigration into this country, and the fact that Israel is smaller and also largely of a "single identity" makes things easier.

But Eisenstadt can already sense a change in the pioneering spiirt of Israel just in the 20 years of the nation's existence: "There has been some decline in spirit, but there has also been a shift in the foci of the spirit. Previously, the spirit was centered on the kibbutz. Some old-timers still feel that the only way to contribute is to be in kibbutzim, but other want to find other meaningful pioneering goals."

This change, continued Eisenstadt, is especially evident in the new generation of sabras (native-born Israelis). "The new generation thinks the oldsters are great masters of talking but they don't want to talk about pioneering and the pioneering spirit. This doesn't mean that they are no longer committed; they just don't verbalize and idealize.