A few paragraphs from the interview that I’d be glad to get your response to:
Q: You argue that the source texts were always interwoven with hatred of strangers, misogyny, violence, and Jewish supremacy. But Jews in the Diaspora and in the early years of the state knew to treat them with limited authority and metaphorically, not as an action plan or an ethical code for behavior.

A: "Indeed, for hundreds of years Jews knew how to imagine, and engaged in what I call ‘the writings of a child crying into the pillow’—that is, to curse their enemies as they lay down to sleep as therapy for their pain, but without resorting to actual violence.

"All the important rabbis of Judaism engaged in this kind of writing. Every one of them without exception poured out grief and vengeance into texts. Because their hard experience was humiliation. It’s like a person in Auschwitz who, a moment before his death, cries out, ‘May you Amalekites be slaughtered.’ He can’t do it, but the cry is therapy."

"In that sense Rabbi Dov Lior is right—perhaps he even understates it. What is written in the sources, in halakhic terms, regarding non-Jews is that they have no soul, and therefore it is permitted to kill them. And even Rashi and Judah Halevi write this, those considered the most moderate. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’?—that applies to Jews only!

"But one has to understand that a hundred years ago rabbis would not have related to these texts at all in everyday life. Most people didn’t know them, but even those who did did not see them as practical texts, certainly not as an action plan."

Q: "You spoke about the equality that existed between women and men in the working Religious Zionism of the state’s early years. Today we see the younger generation, both Haredi and Hardal, adding more and more prohibitions and instructions for separation between the sexes. To the point of absurdity."

A: "In the Diaspora, the condition of Jewish women was better than that of non-Jewish women in the areas where they lived. Respect for women was more evident among Jews. Today, in separatist Haredi education, they teach in the schools that there are levels: living, growing, inanimate, and then ‘speaking’—the gentile. Above him is ‘the human being,’ who is a Jewish man. The woman is in the middle between the speaking gentile and the male human being. And in the pyramid her picture does not even appear.

"In the Hebrew Bible, you see writing that is very respectful toward women, and sexuality is described as a kind of feminist eroticism that recognizes the woman as equal in value. But in the canonical Jewish sources of the previous centuries, the writing was always very harsh toward women.

"In ‘Hayyei Sarah,’ in the Book of the Zohar, a Jewish woman during menstruation is described as more impure than Balaam, who had relations with a donkey, that is, with a representative of Satan. The gravest transgression described in the sources is wasting seed. More than murder, more than rape.

"And in kabbalistic literature, which in recent generations has become the main content world of Judaism, wasting seed does not refer only to masturbation but to any sexual act that is not with a person’s wife, including adultery or homosexual relations.

"In the past these texts were only abstract texts. Among the Haredim there was always a distinction between ‘ideal law’ and ‘after the fact.’ The written texts are the ‘ideal law,’ but the ‘after the fact’—that is, practical life—is stronger and more important than the texts. And therefore, ‘and you shall live by them’—among the gentiles.

"In the Diaspora, when a woman came to the rabbi with a chicken that had been slaughtered in a non-kosher way, the rabbi would permit her to eat it. What, was he going to let her starve? Of course not. The harsh reality caused people in day-to-day life not to be extreme, despite the extreme texts."

Look at what happens today: in the U.S., the Haredim continue to distinguish between ‘ideal law’ and ‘after the fact.’ Life is stronger than Jewish law. So Haredim there work with women, talk to them, the rabbis permit birth control. In Israel, by contrast, in recent decades the radicalized ‘ideal law’ has become a guide for life.

"We were shocked after the Meron disaster, when kabbalists said the disaster happened because women did not observe modesty. But after the Habonim disaster in the 1980s they also said that because of one woman with a slit, everyone died. Immodest women cause you to waste seed, and then disaster happens because all the demons are released. You have to understand the source of these statements. They are not slips of the tongue."

Q: "So when a young kollel man demands that El Al flight attendants seat him somewhere else so he won’t have to be near a woman, is he basically obeying the texts and the sources? It’s not just populist radicalization?"

"It is, but one has to look at it in the mirror of the larger picture. These extreme texts were not born in our own day. Kabbalah is a thousand years old. But in the past these texts were not practical. Forbidden to approach a woman? Fine—how were you supposed to make a living in the Diaspora? So they turned a blind eye to that Jewish law because you have to live.

"But here you have a state that surrenders to religious radicalization, so the boundary is erased. There is no room for compromise. In separate education there is no longer any place for the ‘child crying into the pillow.’ The texts about Balaam and wasting seed are taught in schools, and that is the reality rabbis are dealing with when suddenly their students outflank them. They come to the teacher and declare, ‘Wait, but it says here that you have to hate the stranger!’

"So if in the past the rabbi had to compromise with reality and give a practical answer that would make life in a shared space possible, now he has no answer to extremism. The younger generation is like an animal that was locked in a cage and has now been released into a safari without limits."

Q: "Some rabbis, certainly in the past, preached moderation. Rabbi Shach supported returning territories to the Palestinians, and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was moderate both politically and in the interpretation he gave to religious laws. Today the Haredim and the religious public have overwhelmingly aligned themselves with the political right, and it is almost hard to imagine cooperation with the left like Shas had in the Rabin government in its day, with Rabbi Yosef’s blessing."

A: "The problem with the moderates was that they were weak and feeble. They did not deal with the root issue, they did not reject the extreme canon and adopt an alternative canon. Even Rabbi Ovadia Yosef—he did not dare change the ‘ideal law’ arguments, but gave moderate ‘after the fact’ justifications.

"Take, for example, the Jewish law that saving a life overrides the Sabbath. For whose life is that law intended? A Jewish life, of course. Rabbi Yosef ruled that religious doctors may treat on the Sabbath. But what justification did he give? That this is a matter of danger to Jewish life abroad.

"Meaning, if people there hear how we behave here—they won’t treat Jews there. In other words, the rabbi was concerned with appearances. Even he, the progressive one, did not dare change Jewish law at its foundation.

"It’s like saying that a person must not rape, but not because rape is a terrible crime—rather because you’ll get caught. Only Reform and Conservative Jews came out against the canon for value-based reasons. The moderate Orthodox rabbis made do with practical justifications."

Is that all? I started answering briefly, but I decided to stop and I won’t do it. It’s impossible to respond to such a huge collection of quotations when you don’t number them and force me to quote everything and address every point. It comes out as a message the length of an encyclopedia. I suggest that if there is some point you want to ask about, raise it in a separate thread for each point, and explain what exactly your question is. Otherwise we’ll never get anywhere with this.