One day on the street I started talking to a man who was handing out oppositiion tshirts and as an afterthought asked him who he was voting for in the municipal elections. “Not the mayor,” he said.  “He makes deals with the haredis.”  I hadn’t thought about the high holiday services in Dizengoff circle before.  It actually seemed to me like a good deal.  But since there was a major confrontation about the establishment of a separation between men and women on Yom Kippur, the major has cancelled the permission of Rosh Yehudi to organize prayers in public spaces in Tel Aviv.   Regretfully, he said.

Right after the cancellation was announced I got a text asking if it was important to me that the mayor respect Jewish values in the same measure as he respects democratic values. 

I didn’t answer.

It was a loaded question, and sets up a division that has only come up for me in recent years – and only because of the rabbinate, not the religion itself.