The New Yorker:

Rafi Peretz, Israel’s new Education Minister, recently gave his first major television interview. Peretz, a former chief military rabbi and the founder of a military-preparatory academy in the Gaza Strip, belongs to a far-right alliance of parties and is a newcomer to politics. In the interview, Peretz was flushed and visibly nervous. He couldn’t stop smiling.

“Let’s talk about the L.G.B.T. community,” his interviewer, Dana Weiss, said at one point. Peretz was clearly caught off guard. He replied that he respected all people, but that “our Torah teaches us differently.” Weiss asked, “Do you support conversion therapy? Do you believe it’s possible to convert people’s sexual orientation?” By now Peretz’s smile had completely vanished. “I think it’s possible,” he said. “I can tell you I have a deep familiarity with this type of education, and I’ve also done it.” He went on to describe how he had counselled a student. “The objective is that, first of all, he should know himself well,” he said. “And then he will decide.”

Later in the interview, Peretz said that he wanted to “extend Israeli sovereignty to the entirety of Judea and Samaria”—to fully occupy the West Bank—without giving Palestinians any voting rights. It is saying something about how far to the right Israeli society has moved that this comment earned little notice. But Peretz’s embrace of conversion therapy proved too much for mainstream Israelis to stomach. After the interview aired, hundreds protested in front of the government’s Tel Aviv offices, holding signs with Biblical quotes about love and acceptance. Three thousand teachers threatened to strike. Thousands of parents around the country signed a petition stating that Peretz “shouldn’t be a minister of anything.” Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, moved quickly to disavow Peretz’s comments on conversion therapy, calling them “unacceptable.” But he didn’t fire the man he had entrusted with the education of Israel’s children.

Unlike the United States, which enshrined separation of church and state in its Constitution, Israel is defined, in its basic law, as a “Jewish and democratic state”—a muddled term that breeds near-constant battle over its meaning. Since its founding, Israel has had to rely on a series of fragile compromises between its secular leadership and its religious community. A letter known as the status-quo agreement, signed, in 1947, by David Ben-Gurion, who went on to become Israel’s first Prime Minister, guaranteed basic religious tenets, such as observance of Shabbat, while insuring that Israel would not become a Jewish theocracy. Marriage, divorce, and burial have, since the country’s founding, been under the auspices of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. But on matters relating to the work force, military, universities, or public schools, there has been a clear separation between religion and state.

Go to link