JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, already embroiled in corruption scandals, scrambled on Sunday to stabilize his governing coalition after an ultra-Orthodox minister in his cabinet, citing Jewish values, resigned on his rabbi’s orders.

Yaakov Litzman, the health minister, quit in protest over railroad repair work that was carried out on Saturday, the Jewish day of rest.

Though the government did not appear to be in imminent danger of collapse, the resurgence of the Sabbath wars, a perennial issue in Israeli politics, was just the kind of trouble that some analysts said could eventually unravel the coalition and lead to early elections.

“If some solution enabling him to return to the Health Ministry isn’t found in the next few weeks, his resignation is liable to herald the beginning of the end of the fourth Netanyahu coalition,” Yossi Verter, the political analyst of the liberal Haaretz newspaper, wrote on Sunday of Mr. Litzman’s resignation.