A dramatic High Court decision published last week determines that the state must fund non-Orthodox rabbis in Israel. This is a first and important step on the long road to repairing the injustice and discrimination that has reigned here for many years. The High Court put a stop to Orthodoxy's monopoly over Judaism and the abduction of Judaism in Israel by extreme groups that have turned our religion into a political mechanism. The same week the High Court made this landmark decision, Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein decided, in the name of freedom of expression, to close the investigation of rabbis from Yitzhar who wrote the book "Torat Hamelech" (The Way of the King), which gives Halachic permission to kill non-Jews. This step by the attorney-general lends a tailwind to the ugly, racist side of Judaism. We are in the middle of a crisis between two Jewish conceptions of the State of Israel's image: One side wants to present Israel as enlightened, modern, liberal and democratic, ready for peace and compromise. The other wants Israel to be fanatic and racist, nationalist, ultra-Orthodox, inciting people against anyone different from them and opposed to any diplomatic international settlements. This is a real battle. It is not just the Right against the Left, but rather between those who want to live in a democracy and those who want to dismantle democracy to establish a messianic rule, a Jewish-only theocracy. It is a battle pitting those who want to set an egalitarian rule of law that applies to all citizens against those who want the rule of a higher power, which would, in effect, foment ethnic discrimination. Jewish pluralism threatens these zealots. Establishing that all people are equal severely opposes their racist and superior outlook. The claim that men and women are equal, that Jews and Arabs can live side by side in peace and that refugees seeking shelter can request protection all of these are heresy in contrast to the deportation and persecution emanating from the mouths of fanatic leaders. Obviously the first condition for the existence of a free Judaism is the granting of completely equal status to the non-Orthodox streams. We must demand a complete separation of religion and state in Israel. We must end the unwanted and coercive monopoly of the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate, which sets unwanted precedents over the manner in which Jews in Israel live their lives. We must allow civil marriages in Israel, which would also allow for same-sex couples to marry, and recognize Reform conversions, not only extreme Orthodox conversions, which are abusive to anyone who accepts the burden of Jewish law. Untrammeled Judaism needs to allow for equal rights between men and women, without excluding women, as official Judaism here does. Official Judaism rejects women's testimony in rabbinic courts, and leaves women as agunot in divorce proceedings (lacking official certification of their divorce, called a "get," which must be granted by men). These courts humiliate women in front of religious judiciaries and prohibit them from taking part in the very judicial system in which they are obligated to be judged. In recent years, the State of Israel has become more Orthodox than democratic. Now is the time for the government to stand up and demand one rule: the rule of human law, not the rule of the heavens.