There are many in Israel who complain that Charedi Jews are out of tune with the world, with their old-fashioned clothing and suspicion of secular society. Even if some of them have joined the workforce or gained a foothold in hi-tech, they are still mostly seen as outsiders in wider Israeli life.

They are largely anti-Zionist, refuse to be conscripted in the army, and many of the men do not work. They rely in many cases on their women to be their breadwinners, simultaneously denying the same women a right to join a political party, let alone putting themselves forward as candidates for political office. Their place is limited to the home and family.

What then can we say about their mirror image, the religious Zionists? They have become the leaders of the ultra-nationalists.

They dance and sing as if at a non-stop wedding. They pray for the return of the temple, the tradition of sacrifice and an active priesthood that would collect tithes from the rest of the community. They want to decide who is Jewish in their Jewish land and who should be denied citizenship.

There is, however, a common theme between them: that the present is somehow unimportant, or even antipathetic to their ideal of the Jewish State. In fact, when they look at the State of Israel, they no longer see a secular country but one which is potentially religious.

But what is it that is implied in the term “religious”?

Does it mean following the dictates of a diaspora Judaism of two or 300 years ago or, even more far-fetched, of reviving a state under the sovereignty of a descendant of King David? That seems to be in the minds of these groups who are now closer to political power than ever before in the history of modern Israel.

Let us first try to understand the role of Judaism in contemporary Israel. To use a hi-tech metaphor, Judaism is like a rocket fired into the atmosphere. In order to reach the heavens, it is accompanied by booster rockets.

As it climbs higher and higher, so the booster rockets fall away, allowing it to shoot ever higher. If the booster rockets remained attached to the main rocket, it could not climb. It would be stuck.

Similarly with Judaism. In order to free itself from the pull of gravity that made it earth-bound, it needed booster rockets: sacrifices, a temple, a monarch, an active priesthood.

But when it needed to climb higher, it had to abandon these aids. The Temple had to go — twice — and with it the priesthood, the sacrifices, the sweet smelling incense that covered the smell of the burning flesh.

Reverting to these practices merely slows down the central thrust of the Jewish rocket. It turns the “light unto the nations” into a blight unto the nations.

The Sabbath, the moral code, the obedience to the God of the universe, the God of all creatures born in His image: this is the Judaism that has to be maintained and developed. Looking backwards prevents this, big time.

When the only thing you can offer is history, then you are offering less than nothing. As the Bible has it, you should listen to the priests and judges “of your time.”

The role of diaspora living is now more apparent than ever. It was not just a divine punishment. It was a divine education.

See how others live, how they manage or mismanage their governments, their economy, their education, their social norms. From this you can learn what is the best way of doing things.

Don’t copy the bad. Copy the best and show the world how a society can run, with love and compassion, with tolerance.

To do this you must let go of the booster elements that brought Judaism to a certain level, but then fell away in order that Judaism could climb higher and reach levels not possible before these booster elements were abandoned for good. The temple is no more and there is no reason other than nostalgia for it to be revived.

Neither should the sacrifices or the incense be brought back. After all, the Jewish people and Judaism survived for 2,000 years without the temple.

The tractate known as Megilat Ta’anit details scores of days that were celebrated in and after the second Temple as days of joy.

But apart from two of these days — Purim and Channukah — the rest have been consigned to oblivion and are no longer relevant. To this could be added many practices which are no longer meaningful.

In fact the more we hang onto them, the more we are held back. Rocket science.
This is the situation with today’s extreme right-wing politicians. They ignore or deny the world around them for the sake of some ideal state buried deep in history.

It may appear to some of them that they are following tradition. In fact, they are denying tradition, which is always moving forward and always absorbing the best of what the world has to offer.

They, along with many of their ilk, refer to the taryag mitzvot, the 613 commandments that were given to the Children of Israel in the Bible. But this is a misnomer.

Even Maimonides wrote that over 240 of these commandments are connected to, and dependent on, the existence of a temple, the institution of sacrifices and an active priesthood.

They were the boosters, they helped us start, but when they had fulfilled their role they vanished and rightly so. How many of us are prepared to slaughter a multitude of livestock today?

This stale way of looking at things is inevitably creating a backlash from pluralistic, secular society, the results of which are to be seen in the street demonstrations Israel today.

Those politicians who yearn to turn the clock back thousands of years are now in power, seeking to realise a new vision of an ancient Israel.

And, as we are finding out, if power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.