Mr. Israeli Leftist (MIL) looks over my knitted kippah, and techeilet-laden tzitzit and comes to the obvious conclusion: "Ah, you are an extremist religious-Zionist. Where are you from? Hebron, no doubt, eh?"

I respond that no, I am not from Hebron, although I will be spending a visit there for a number of days including Shabbat. He starts to visibly cringe at the thought.

"You seem like a nice guy," he says. "Why would you go to a place with a few hundred Jews surrounded by thousands of Arabs? To pray at a shrine? What, are the patriarchs helping us today with what's going on? Please. Let them have the Machpela Cave and the Peace House and the whole thing, and all the other territories where the trouble originates from."

I look at MIL and ask in an amused way if he really still buys into the notion that the "territories" and "settlers" who live there are the answer to the world's problems with Islamofascism, and that giving it all away will soothe the Arab breast and make peace break out in our time. Didn't he learn that we tried the give-back experience multiple times only to meet with abject failure?

"Well, then," he asks me, "What is your solution?"

I patiently begin to explain about the moral bankruptcy of all of Israel's secular leadership from year 1 through year 59. How each generation has gotten worse and worse, leading to our current gang of Ariel Sharon's thugs and bunglers. How the erstwhile Prime Minister, with a 3% approval rating and his Josef-Stalin-look-alike Defense Minister, is circling the wagons, post-Winograd-report, in a pathetic effort to hang on to the throne rather than doing the fall-on-the sword routine for honor and all that. I also explain how every problem this country has can be traced to a lack of faith-based leadership and why secular leadership no longer works here.

"So what, do we put the National Religious Party or the Chareidim in charge?" he says, looking at me in horror and beginning to tremble and appear physically ill. "I mean I know the 3% solution isn't really working, but come on now!"

"No," I say soothingly. "We need faith-based, non-coercive leadership that everyone can be comfortable with and that will eventually inspire people like you to start thinking seriously about Jewish Identity rather than reviling it."

I reach into my pocket and pull out a Manhigut Yehudit [Jewish Leadership] card - and it is as though I have aimed the sun into the vampire's tomb.

"Moshe Feiglin!" He screams out. "Oh my Gd. That extremist? No, no, no," he says, as he appears ready to either retch or pass out. But then, he suddenly becomes serious and looks at me, expecting another volley.

I ask him then what his solution might be, aside from the tired old leftist slogans we've heard before. "Where is your leadership? Ami Ayalon? Ehud Barak? Shimon Peres? Yossi Beilin? How about the Hadash party?"

He laughs. "Labor? Meretz? Please. They are almost irrelevant, even with a bright young guy like Ayalon who has bought into the fantasy of withdrawal-to-the-Green-Line-and-peace-will-be-ours. The others? Ha! Ready for embalming.

"Even the so-called Right - what a choice. Binyamin Netanyahu? Please. Is that the best you guys can do? NRP? National Union? Shas? Special interest groups, all of them. And besides, a kippah-wearing Prime Minister? C'mon. Really. Like we need a theocracy here."

I patiently explain that Feiglin and Manhigut Yehudit are not about coerced religion or theocracy, but then it hits me. I tell him it's not religion or a kippah-wearing candidate that he objects to - "It's something else, isn't it?"

"Of course, he admits. "I am worried a kippah-wearing or faith-based government, as you call it, will do to people like me what we have been doing to you religious types all along."

I smile and tell him quite frankly, "Vengeance is Gd's domain, and also, we will be too busy cleaning up your mess to worry about petty revenge issues." So, I put the question to him again as to whom he would vote for.

He smiles. "Feiglin," he replies, clearly enjoying the look of shock on my face. "Why? Because at least here is an intelligent man, untainted by corruption, with ideology, with a plan, a vision. I may not agree with it, I may spend every night at his home protesting his plans when he becomes Prime Minister, but at least I know I can have an intelligent dialogue with someone honest and forthright."

We shake hands to part and I ask him if I'll see him in Hebron soon.

"Not so fast," he replies. "What did Einstein say before he became nominally respectful? 'I am not ready to be delivered into the hands of the priests.'"

I smile and nod. "OK," I tell him, "then I guess the Temple Mount will have to do for now."