Whad’ya know, it’s election time again in Israel. And in election time, the rules of nature change.
While nearly everyone tends to look at things from the traditional “political left and right” point of view, it seems that almost every major political party tends to place at least one religious figure in its list of candidates. Sort of “there is no harm in trying”. You know.
This has gone beyond the manning issue, and actually penetrated our day-to-day language. A few days ago, our Minister of Home Front Defense, Mr. Avi Dichter, was interviewed and quoted saying that “The new president of Syria is not going to be a Rabbi”. As if a ‘Rabbi’ is a synonym for ‘the best person available’.
The hot figure nowadays is the right wing person, ex high-tech success, Mr. Naftali Bennett (Google to see, if you feel the urge to). And the recent hot topic in the news is the public discussion about his opinion in following (or rather not following) military commands, when it comes to potential evacuation of settlements.
Now, I really don’t feel like arguing about politics and the issue of settlements. Nor do I want to discuss Mr. Bennett’s specific words about this. What strikes me as odd about this story is the fact that there are other things Mr. Bennett also says, and no one seems to care.
Wearing a small skullcap (“kipa”), Mr. Bennett says every morning “Bless the one who has not made me a woman”. He also recites other unthinkable sentences as part of his periodic prayers. Actually he teaches his children that the sun and the moon were created three days after Earth.
Now, either Naftali Bennett says things in which he doesn’t believe himself, or he believes in things long doomed by the human race. Both ways, most of his critics don’t seem to give a damn about all these lasting sayings, but they repeatedly quote his single slip of the tongue in that interview. Is it because when it comes to the real issues, they also daily say the same things and have the same beliefs?