This term refers to an understanding that is reached between David Ben-Gurion, then the chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive and the religious parties in the pre-state period. In a letter to the religious party, Agudat Israel, Ben-Gurion stipulates that in the coming state, Shabbat would be observed; Kashrut, or Jewish dietary laws would be kept; family laws would remain under the jurisdiction of the rabbinical courts; and orthodox Jews would be granted full autonomy to educate their own as they saw fit.