RALPH GENENDE: My pride in being a religious Zionist has been replaced by shame

I'm ashamed of the intolerance of Israel’s Zionist religious leaders to other Jews, their hatred of Palestinians, vitriol to homosexuals and women, and their undermining of the democratic scaffolding of Israeli society.

I have always been a proud dati (Orthodox) Jew and religious Zionist. But over the past few decades, my pride has been replaced by alarm and over the past few weeks it has been displaced by shame.

It was in South Africa that I became both religious and a Zionist. I was sent to a Modern Orthodox boys high school so I could receive bar mitzvah training. My parents got more than they bargained for.

I was fortunate to have some excellent teachers, youth leaders and rabbinic role models. Men and women who were as proud and principled in their Judaism as they were as members of wider society.

My exemplars, the Rosh Yeshiva of my high school, Rabbi Avraham Tanzer, the Av Beth Din of Johannesburg, Rabbi Moshe Kurtstag, and Leila Bronner, Orthodox feminist and associate professor at the University of Witwatersrand, were people of morality and principle, dedicated to Torah.

They understood that most Jews were not frum or likely to become religious but who were to be respected for who they were. They recognised the world around them and had a superb sensitivity to the complex wider society in which they were imbedded.

Bnei Akiva helped me to embrace the excitement of ideas from all sources, Jewish and non-Jewish, to have a social conscience, respect the other, especially the outsider - be they man or woman, black or Asian.

One of the golden threads of my religious education at school and Bnei Akiva was the love for and commitment to Israel and Hatikva sang loudly in my soul.