re: #8 CuriousLurker

I wish you would leave it since you’ve apologized, corrected and clarified, but I understand if you don’t want to.

I can’t speak for the other lizards, but this is the ONLY place where I’m able to see Jewish people discuss religious matters in a way I can understand AND feel comfortable asking questions about. It’s is doubly true when the subject is something as distasteful as what this rabbi has written and/or said (or like the page Alouette posted a few days back).

The thing for you to take away from this, that I think is most important, is the secular/religious split in Israel.

Ha’aretez is the left wing paper. It is left wing in the same sense that the Guardian is. As such they love to inflate stories about “crazy religious Jews.” They feel they have evolved past their own culture and traditions while knowing little about it, and write against observant Jews with a fervent earnestness.

On the other side, there are creeps like Shapira, who should have been imprisoned long ago IMHO.

They represent the worst of religious Judaism in much teh same way that Fred Phelps is the worst of Christianity.

In the reality, most Israelis are somewhere in the middle on religious grounds. They are observant to whatever extent observance appeals to them. The joke they have is that the synagogue they don’t go to is Orthodox. Amongst the truly secular, most can at least respect the Tradition and amongst the observant, most are pretty well educated.

However, both sides have their utterly obnoxious extremes. Both sides are very good at presenting a false stereotype to the other that each abhors. Both extremes on either side are equally abhorrent - though for different reasons.