Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira, a leading national-religious rabbi, has declared war on what he says is a neo-Reform stream within the religious Zionist camp. “This justifies tearing the clothes [in mourning – ed.] and tearing apart the public,” he told an audience of religious youth from the Ezra movement.

“To the best of my understanding, there is growing within us a new Reform movement – this is my opinion – and it has many of the characteristics of the first Reform,” he said.

“The Neo-Reform movement touches upon two things,” Shapira said, “romance and the limits of Halacha, and these are two things that we must not touch at all.” Neo-Reformism “destabilizes the sanctity of the Jewish home and the sanctity of modesty and purity (tahara) in the Nation of Israel.”