Pounding Peretz

Regarding “Peretz should go” (July 15), I wonder whether we are still a democratic state or we are a democratic dictatorship where only one side of the political map can express an opinion or an approach to any issue.

Our new Justice Minister, Amir Ohana, has also expressed certain opinions about LGBT and no one said that he should resign. Education Minister Rafi Peretz didn’t say he would enforce the gay conversion therapy, he simply discussed it, which also seems to be forbidden.

In addition, he had the nerve to speak about the dangers of assimilation, which is eating away at most of world Jewry, to which the foolish response was that it is not a critical problem. What then is critical, Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz? Isaac Herzog, head of the Jewish Agency made similar remarks before he was silenced by the democratic dictators.

I believe in live and let live – but also in speak and let others speak.

YITZCHOK ELEFANT Chief Rabbi of Dimona

I take issue with your editorial “Peretz should go.” You have fallen into the trap of the general left-wing media for whom everyone who does not agree with their line of thinking is undemocratic and “everyone is entitled to my opinion!”

Rafi Peretz is a rabbi, a husband and a father of many children, an air force pilot, an educator and education minister. He has opinions that were developed and formed based on his experiences in all these fields. In my view, this demands that we give consideration to these opinions and not dismiss them out of hand with meaningless rabble-rousing platitudes such as (I quote your article) “he has scandalized the very notion of being an education minister” and “he has brought Israel into disrepute by slamming intermarriage and assimilation.”

So what is his crime? Well it is that these opinions and his “worldview” do not accord with those of the “enlightened” intelligentsia, with those who glorify the unnatural and condone the dilution and disappearance of the Jewish way of life that has held together our grandfathers and their grandfathers for over 2,000 years and has ensured our survival as a people. Can any Jew in Israel stand up and deny that his great grandfather was a God-fearing religious Jew?

Peretz is a man who has foresight based on hindsight and it is these eternal values of Judaism (not necessarily religious) and the sanctity of family and, yes, the Torah itself, which he justifiably wants to inculcate in the minds and manners of Israeli children now under his tutelage.

The media is still in the midst of the witch-hunt after Bibi, let it not now enter into a new one after Peretz. We still all remember the damage done to Yaakov Neeman, Yaakov Weinrott, the demise of both of whom was undoubtedly hastened by media witch-hunting.

LAURENCE BECKER

Jerusalem

I was shocked at the ferocity of your editorial.

You say Rafi Peretz “has scandalized the very notion of what it means to be an education minister.” On the contrary, he embodies what education should be – giving students the information and tools to learn how to think, yet setting certain red lines.

None of this “society says... therefore it must be so.” There are different groups, and many do not toe the liberal line. People rant about kfiya datit (forcing traditional religious values on others), but the attacks on Peretz constitute kfiya chilonit, attempting to force super-liberal values on him.

Psychologists and educators say that children need boundaries and guidance to make proper choices in life. As Peretz has tried to explain, he wants youths who are dealing with certain personal issues to know there is more than one way to go. He wants kids to endeavor to understand themselves and where this issue has come from and what is right for them. Not that “society” should dictate what is right for them.

As for the second attack, “bringing Israel into disrepute,” intermarriage is not a welcome phenomenon by any means. “Holocaust” is a strong word to use, perhaps too strong, but there is a spiritual tragedy going on, where Jewish young people, who have had no real education as to what being Jewish entails besides bagels and maybe a bar/ bat mitzvah party, don’t know why marrying Jewish is such an important thing.

Peretz is espousing true Jewish values that kept us alive for 2,000 years of exile.

“Comments... more appropriate to a country of ignorance than the hi-tech Start-Up Nation.” What in the world is the connection between a higher moral standard and the technological advances Israel has made? What, not teaching that everything goes, laying down red lines, and sticking to them, is leading this country to ignorance? Oh, please, spare me the hysterics.

Peretz is a “moral beacon,” not for the relative morality of today, but for the Jewish ethics and morals of yesteryear and eternity.

BATYA BERLINGER Jerusalem