Liberal progressivism seems to have already won the day in many parts of the West. But in Israel it continues to run up against the wall of Israeli conservatism and traditional Jewish values.

A prominent member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party in an interview with the Knesset Channel this week slammed parents who try to “turn their kids gay.”

MK Nissim Vaturi was being asked about Netanyahu’s decision to let coalition partner Avi Maoz, head of the far-right Noam party, oversee certain parts of Israel’s public school curriculum, in particular what is introduced by third party vendors and NGOs.

Maoz is best known for his stance against the LGBT movement and its influence in Israeli society.

Vaturi suggested that with modern secular society veering so hard to the progressive left, letting Maoz have the reins for a while was a kind of course correction.

“There are parents who encourage LGBT [values], they give a boy a doll because it seems to them that he should now be gay, but that is not right. No one should influence people, neither Avi Maoz nor secularists,” he said. “You don’t need to promote things, you don’t need to promote LGBT issues. Let the child choose what to be, whether he is religious, secular or LGBT. A person should choose his own path.”

Vaturi’s remarks, of course, sparked an uproar in the LGBT movement, which insists that a person is “born gay” and does not “become” homosexual.

See: A Messianic Jew Opens Up About Homosexuality

Gender-neutral Bible

In similar news, Safaria, an online library of religious Jewish texts, is facing a backlash after it uploaded a new version of the Tanakh (Hebrew Scriptures or “Old Testament”) that removes all masculine pronouns for God.

Throughout the new English translation, God is referred to only as “God.” Never as “He” or “Him” or “His.”

The parallel Hebrew text has been left untouched. Even so, many religious Jews were unimpressed by the new Revised Jewish Publication Society edition of the Bible.

“Messing around with [holy books] to conform to western ideas of equality is an unacceptable breach. If this is true, I can’t see people learning from an unholy source,” tweeted the editor of the ultra-Orthodox magazine Mishpacha.

Sefaria is a tremendous resource for the olam hatorah. Messing around with sefarim hakedoshim to conform to western ideas of equality is an unacceptable breach. If this is true, I can’t see people learning from an unholy source. https://t.co/MUMJSyNLLB

— Yochonon Donn (@Yochidonn) May 18, 2023