This week, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, Ram Ben Barak Mish Atid, was interviewed on Radio North. Among other things, he made some sharp comments and distinctions about the religious Zionist party. A more important place in our lives, which means that soon the TV announcers will be wearing a headscarf, and women will not be able to serve in the army.
That's where we're going(...) Gays will have to be in a very strong closet.
They won't be able to get any job, because they are considered animals."
Ben Barak is secular, and naturally feels threatened by religious extremism.
Of course, when it comes to his parliamentary assistant, Linir Abu Hazaz, he is much more liberal.
Abu Hazaz wears a hijab, she did not serve in the army and she participated in a seminar on Al-Aqsa, where one of the lecturers was the inciting sheikh Akrama Sabri.
Abu Hazaz was photographed smiling with Sabri, with Najah in Kirat, who was arrested several times for incitement, and if we forgot Sheikh Raad Fathi, a senior member of the northern wing of the Islamic movement - here we are mentioning him now.
In my estimation, none of them support the conscription of women, and it is possible that their views regarding gays are much scarier than those of MK Avi Maoz.
But the deputy head of the Mossad is not bothered by a nationalist religious Muslim.
He is troubled by the Jewish religion, and I believe that his fear of an Iran-style halachic state is completely real, and nothing can stop him.
The chairman of the religious Zionist party, Bezalel Smotrich, was already a member of the government and was even the minister of transportation, yet he did not throw LGBT people out of jobs, nor did he propose to impose head coverings on women.
But in Barak's mind it is a realistic option.
He lives in a self-made nightmare dream, and even reality fails to break down the walls of the nightmare.
It seems that in his imagination, women will be sent to the kitchen, on command, and he will be forced to stop for a minachah prayer on the side of highway 6. At any moment, predatory Judaism could forcibly dominate the values of his Muslim parliamentary assistant.
Ben Barak knows Judaism as well as he knows Islam.
In 1934, Berel Katznelson wrote the article "Destruction and Tearing Up", in which he lamented the decision of the "Machan Olim" youth movement to hold its summer camp on Tisha B'av.
"Is it true that we have the power to live and revive our symbols, to deepen their content, to fill them with the spirit of the generation and the needs of the generation? Is it true that we are only capable of using borrowed symbols in the circle, symbols with which there is nothing but copying and imitation, the main thing is approval from the outside? Is it true that we are only capable of fragmented life, of culture Slip and slip symbols?"
A member of the labor movement lamented even before the establishment of the state.
And here comes Ram Ben Barak, born in Nahalel, grandson of pioneer Zionists from the second aliyah, and proves to Tznelson that he has no problem with the borrowed symbols but with the original, real symbols, the ones that brought his grandfather here.
As Ya'akov Hazan, one of the leaders of Mapam, said: "We wanted to raise heretics, and we raised people of lands." Ben Barak proves that both are possible. And it is possible that he is not afraid of religious coercion, but of a free and democratic choice of Jewish values.
It is difficult to stand up for the roots of the left's rejection of Judaism, but Ben Barak did not invent anything.
Already in 1944, Natan Alterman responded to an event that took place in Hashomer Hatzair's Shaar Golan kibbutz: the parents of one of the members joined the kibbutz and brought with them a Torah scroll, in the hope that a synagogue, minyan prayers and Israeli holidays might grow around it.
The kibbutzniks reacted firmly and delivered the outrageous book to Tiberias.
Alterman wrote for them "The Little Cleric", about Marxist parents who discover to their dismay that their little son shows signs of religiosity, and even asks his parents "Is there a God".
The frightened parents rush to blame the grandfather, who denies anything to do with the matter:
"And during prayer he is so careful every day
that his grandson will not approach him with grace and peace.
And he prays with bated breath,
That his grandson will not hear the terrible name.
And the shack is completely closed and airtight,
That his grandson will not see him wrapped in a veil."
In honor of Rosh Hashanah, the Central Bureau of Statistics published a collection of data on the people living in Israel.
In general, the vast majority of us are completely satisfied - 89.3 percent, two-thirds of us, are satisfied with their financial situation, and after the age of 21, we must admit, we are a bit chubby.
Oh, and we're also a bit clerical, not about us.
Among the Jewish public, 45 percent define themselves as secular.
I don't know if secularists like Ram Ben Barak, because the peoples of other countries also like and sometimes respect the tradition, even if they don't make sure that it exists.
All the rest define themselves as traditional or religious or ultra-orthodox.
These are numbers that haven't changed much since 2016. The percentage of seculars remains the same, a large and respectable minority that enjoys much greater representation in the courts, at the top of the IDF, in the academy, and in the media. Nevertheless, there are those among them who believe that Judaism and democracy are in a head-on collision, and this must end in victorious defeat of Judaism. Otherwise, a completely monstrous and imaginary Halacha state will rise upon us for our brides.
Indeed, there are those who prefer Halacha, and as is customary in a democracy works to promote their values, just as Ben Barak works to promote his, and those like these will stand the test of the public.
This is also acceptable in a democracy.
But Ben Barak's nightmares, like the old nightmares of the members of the Golan Gate, cause them to formulate a distorted concept of democracy, just as they disrupt Judaism.
This changed over the years and gave up on the actual implementation of the stoning punishments for sins of various kinds, even without the intervention of the leftist parties for generations.
The rest - spending time on Shabbat, trading on Shabbat, kosher - have come up and will come up for discussion among the public and among its elected officials.
Just like in democracy, just like in Kibbutz Sha'ar Golan: in 2016, "mainly for Jewish youth from the diaspora hosted by us, and to the delight of a handful of traditional friends who supported the process" - a synagogue was established there.
And his name will be called in Israel: "Love of friends."
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