Hello Rabbi, why is this a foolish fight? It’s part of a struggle so that there won’t be legitimacy for something that, in their view, contradicts the cultural character of the state, which is supposed to be a Jewish state, and more broadly it’s part of a global process of dismantling fundamental values. Basically I’m asking two questions: A. According to their approach, does the Rabbi think this is a foolish fight? B. Does the Rabbi see any value at all in fighting against granting legitimacy? If so, how? If not, why not?

Because this struggle is disconnected from reality. A significant part of the public is there, and you can’t change that through technical fights over headings on forms. In general, coercion is neither justified nor effective. They aren’t forcing anything on anyone; they’re only asking for recognition in accordance with their position. And these rabbis want to impose norms on the general public that the public does not accept.
This does not in any way contradict the character of a Jewish state, unless you identify Judaism with religiosity. But on that, a significant part of the public is not with you. By the same token, you could refuse to donate blood to Sabbath desecrators and to those who have relations with menstruant women. This has nothing to do with struggles over a Jewish state. It’s just a taboo they still haven’t freed themselves from.

Okay, I understand, thank you.
Just:
A. A small note: “By the same token, you could refuse to donate blood to Sabbath desecrators and to those who have relations with menstruant women”—nobody argued, and nobody wanted, not to donate blood to LGBT people, God forbid (they were talking about changing “Parent 1” and “Parent 2” on the forms).
B. In terms of legislation (the status quo and the like), we see that the state at least back then did identify Judaism with religiosity. Is the Rabbi basically saying that since then the view of the majority of the public has changed?
C. So in the Rabbi’s opinion, what is the character of a Jewish state? How would it be expressed? Are there any laws in which this would be expressed? I’d be happy for a clear answer (because I already asked the Rabbi about this once and I didn’t completely understand the answer).
Thank you very much, Rabbi.

In C I meant: would be expressed in them (future tense) [that Jewish character of the state that the Rabbi wants]

A. I wasn’t making a comparison; I was using an example. The same reasoning could also be raised regarding donating blood to LGBT people and Sabbath desecrators. After all, in a Jewish state (according to your definition), for such transgressions one is liable to death.
B. The majority’s view never was that a Jewish state is obligated to Jewish law, even if Jewish law is part of Jewish identity.
C. There is no such character. Our state is not Jewish in any substantive sense (except for the mother of most of its citizens). One can define a state that is committed to Jewish law, but there is no Jewish state in a substantive sense. Of course there is a state of Jews in the ethnic sense, and the Jews who live in it will decide its character. There are no rules for this, and I have no opinion on this empty issue.

Yesterday I saw the following bit and I’m still in shock. True, I hadn’t invested too much thought in this topic, but still I’m amazed I didn’t think of this immediately myself?!
Listen to the beginning of the video, which deals with matters of Magen David Adom and Parent 1-2:

With God’s help, Minor Purim of walled cities, 5782

To the Director-General of Magen David Adom—greetings,

Since the honor and reverence due to father and mother are equated—am I allowed to show preference between them? How can I decide that one of them is “Parent 1” and the other is only “Parent 2”?

On this may your honor instruct us, and your reward will be great from our one Parent in Heaven.

With blessings, Simcha Feishel HaLevi Plankton

And I further ask: in “A Woman of Valor,” should it be changed to “Parent 2, who can be found? and far beyond pearls is his/her worth. The heart of her/his husband trusts in her/him, and he/she shall not lack gain”? And so on and so forth.

Another question for the page,

As is well known, Bedouin are permitted to marry up to four wives. Why then don’t they also mark “Parent 3,” “Parent 4,” and “Parent 5”? Are we not human beings whose feelings should be taken into account?

With blessings, Shams Razal, the faithful shepherd (Ra’am), of the holy community of Qubbat al-Najma

In practice, LGBT people don’t want recognition. They want to engineer consciousness. They are not liberals. They are interested in dismantling all of traditional human society. They are not some minority that just wants to be left alone and not oppressed. They are not willing to be exceptional. They want to be the norm, and therefore they fight the existing norm. As far as I’m concerned, it’s legitimate not to donate blood until all the forms say “Father” and “Mother.” And if that bothers someone, let them not donate. I am convinced that the percentage of donors among the “Father and Mother” camp is significantly higher than among LGBT people and their supporters on the left. The latter are driven by an ideology of individualism taken to the extreme—or by a lack of ideology, or anti-ideology—and therefore by egoism. So the educational effect here has significance that affects the very culture of giving itself.

All the discussions about non-coercion are irrelevant in this case. The left-wing public are the fathers of all coercers (Bolsheviks), no matter how large they are. And coercion can be fought—sometimes there is no choice—through counter-coercion. That’s what will create equilibrium. I don’t know what “general public” Rabbi Michael Abraham is talking about. He’s stuck in the 1990s. Very soon, most of the public in Israel will be religious, Haredi, Hardal, or traditional, and these are norms they do accept. He is so obsessed with his fight against religious coercion (which in practice isn’t coercion but Knesset decisions reached through bargaining among population groups on issues important to each group—and every group has its own religion. You don’t see him fighting the religious coercion of the other religions) that he also fights against defining Jews under the Law of Return according to Jewish law, even though he himself says there is no other meaning to the concept “Jew” besides the halakhic definition of that concept.

With God’s help, Minor Purim of walled cities, 5782

To Emanuel—greetings,

There is also a blessing in the madness, and in the incessant attempts to erase Jewish heritage as “religification” and to engineer consciousness to the point of erasing “father” and “mother” and the like.

The attempt to erase the heritage is leading more and more parents—both one-parent and two-parent—who define themselves as secular and traditional, to send their children to religious education. They don’t necessarily want their children to “become religious,” but they do want their children to know the heritage of their people, so that they can choose what to adopt from it; and they are fed up with the atmosphere of permissiveness and cosmopolitanism that the state school system is being dragged into by the “thinking people.”

See the article: “Freedom of Religion: The Secular People Who Choose to Give Their Children a Religious Education,” on the Arutz 7 website.

With blessings, Hanoch Henekh Feinshmaker-Palti

By the way, the child described as saying “my father and my mother” is “Immanuel” in Isaiah’s prophecy 🙂 The beloved in Song of Songs combines: “to my mother’s house and to the chamber of her who conceived me” 🙂 And of that one might say: Hurrah

With God’s help, Purim Katan, 5782

To Simcha—festive greetings,

Obviously the mother is “Parent 1,” for the Hebrew word for “parent” is related to the root for “pregnant,” and the mother is the pregnant one who carries the fetus in her womb. True, of the father too it says in Job, “a man is conceived,” because he causes pregnancy, but the father’s momentary contribution to the pregnancy cannot be compared to the mother’s ongoing contribution in carrying the pregnancy for nine months.

Even if we say that “parent” comes from the language of “instruction,” still the mother who cares for the child lovingly and devotedly in early childhood and instills in him the foundations of language and love of God and His creatures and all good traits—she is the child’s first “teacher,” and her teaching, which is the basis for life, is what is called “the Torah of your mother.”

Therefore it is clear that “Parent 1” is the mother.

With blessings, Penina the priest’s daughter, teacher of righteousness of the holy community “Tent of Leah,” author of the book “The Law of Pashmina”

Emanuel,

I don’t think the standard LGBT person is driven by the ideology you’re describing, or by any ideology at all. Usually these are people who are struggling for social recognition, for the desire to receive social tolerance because they are on the margins of society—a situation that is unpleasant for anyone, of course. Among other things, as you noted, traditionalism and religion are a consensus and an overwhelming majority in Israel in 2022 (not that from my perspective as a religious person that’s bad; it’s excellent). But there isn’t some desire here for ideology, just a simple human desire to belong. Just as I don’t think that the Russian who insists on being converted and accepted as Jewish is necessarily some angel of destruction who wants to be identified as Jewish out of an inner desire to destroy Judaism from within. Since you mentioned the Law of Return, it’s simply a person who is in a bad situation, living in a state whose entire social consensus is a fairly closed religious-national identity, and he just isn’t part of that people. (Try, for a moment, replacing LGBT people with a standard assimilated Jew in some European country, whose eyes would usually be turned toward the liberal side of that society—do you think the ordinary Jew has some rigid ideological intention to change the character of the state in which he lives? No, he simply has an existential need for society to be more inclusive and tolerant toward him.)

It’s not what you think; it’s reality. What is “recognition”? What nonsense is this? Homosexual marriage? Am I not allowed to think those are not marriages? Or that they are not equal to heterosexual marriages? Just as the humanities are not equal to the natural sciences. Even if human beings are equal, marriages and other abstract things are definitely not equal. There is a hierarchy. I am allowed to think that sex-reassignment surgery is mutilation, and that a transsexual male is not a woman but a mutilated man. The attempt to force thoughts on me by power is insolence and a declaration of war. And in a war against falsehood, whoever shouts louder will win. Force is the only thing these people understand.

Fine, people have a need for acceptance and tolerance, but tolerance is not obtained by force and shouting. I don’t owe these people anything. Let them be tolerant themselves first. Chutzpah. And disagreement, and acting on it, is not intolerance. Why are they trying to push themselves by force into the center of society? So they’re on the margins—so what? What’s the big deal? Did someone die? If an assimilated Jew lives in the U.S. and receives all the services that any other non-Jew receives, does he need to shove his Jewishness (which he himself denies) in the face of the nation he lives among?

And Jews are allowed, after thousands of years of persecution, to have a state that is only theirs.
Here is something I only read today:
https://e.walla.co.il/item/3489259