Free Republic

Dec. 13, 2004 1:21 | Updated Dec. 13, 2004 13:20 Bye-bye, religious parties By ELLIOT JAGER Michael Melchior and Moshe Feiglin make strange bedfellows. Yet in talking to both men last week, I was struck by how much they had in common. They agreed that the era of religious political parties in Israel was coming to a close, that mixing politics and Judaism had been detrimental to civil society, and that an alternative way had to be found to instill Jewish cultural values into the body politic. The Danish-born Melchior is a velvet-yarmulke-wearing Orthodox rabbi and Labor-Meimad Knesset member. But...