This was going to be about tolerance.
It could turn out to be about murder.

This was going to be about courageous steps taken by police officials and leaders of both the ultra-Orthodox and gay communities, to reduce the friction, the fury, the hurt feelings, and the possibility of violence in the dispute over the planned Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem.

This was going to be about the many gay activists who were concerned about the sensitivities of Orthodox residents of Jerusalem and worked to see that the parade would not be held in their neighborhoods.

This was going to be about a well-intentioned if ultimately futile attempt late Monday by members of the ultra-Orthodox Eida Haredit organization to calm tensions and curb rioting.

Members of the group used megaphones to try to stop Haredi youths who were pelting police officers with large stones, blocks, bottles, angle irons, and wood planks, telling them that the Torah forbade taking actions that endangered lives and declaring a curfew.

Then this.

"The Rabbinical Court has held a special session and discussed placing a pulsa danura on those who have a hand in organizing the march," Rabbi Shmuel Papenheim, editor of the Eida Haredit's weekly magazine "Ha'eidah" told Army Radio on Tuesday.

The curse could also be cast "against the policemen who beat ultra-Orthodox Jews," Papenheim added.

If words can kill, 'pulsa danura' is a weapon of mass destruction.

It may be said with certainty that Badatz, the Eida Haredit's rabbinical High Court, intends no physical harm to those connected with the parade or those charged with guarding them.

But there is an entirely inexcusable element of irresponsibility in citing the pulsa danura in connection with a powderkeg issue that mines and exacerbates political, religious and cultural tensions all at once.

The mere mention of the concept bears explosive force in the supercharged climate of woe and worry and fear of the Other - fear of the Other even if the other is, in fact, one of yours.

It's the hallmark of the tribalism of a Holy Land in which we're all related, though history, through blood, through Genesis, through the hourly news.

There is another point that we all know but take pains never to discuss, all of us who live in the Holy land and its holiest city: the high incidence of mental illness among our political fanatics.

Although frequently over-simplified and misunderstood as a Talmudically rooted kabbalistic curse of death, the contemporary meaning of pulsa danura - as a voodoo tool of the psychotic right - has taken on a deadly power of its own.

As a fringe group with worldwide adherents, Voodoo Jewry happens to hold many views that align with the far-right and very religious. But Voodoo Jewry, whether Kahanist or quasi-kabbalist or revisionist Hasidic in nature, goes well beyond.

Consider Avigdor Eskin, who told reporters that on the night of October 6, 1995, he pronounced the following curse on "Yitzhak, the son of Rosa Rabin," for signing the Oslo peace agreements and speaking ill of the settlers:

"Put to death the cursed Yitzhak. May he be damned, damned, damned!"

"Angels of destruction will hit him. He is damned wherever he goes. His soul will instantly leave his body," Eskin intoned, "and he will not survive a month."

Eskin's publicity-grabbing curses accompanied more descreet rulings by extremist rabbis, who cited the concepts of "din rodef" in implying that Rabin deserved to be put to death.

On November 4, 1995, Rabin was gunned down by law student Yigal Amir, who has since become perhaps the central role model, idol, and, for many, sex symbol, of Voodoo Jewry.

The lunatic fringe of Voodoo Jewry received further reinforcement when Ariel Sharon was stricken with a massive cerebral hemorrhage in January, six months after radical opponents of the then-prime minister's disengagement from Gaza gathered in a graveyard in Rosh Pina to ask the Angel of Death to kill him.

None of this deterred the Badatz from placing the pulsa danura on the docket.

Rabbi Papenheim was similarly unfazed. He told Army Radio on Tuesday that the ultra-Orthodox rioting in the streets of Jerusalem was not the exercise of violence but "conducting a campaign."

As for the parade and the pulsa danura, "We've done what we could to uproot this evil from Jerusalem. The moment we see that we've done all that we could from here, we will engage higher forces, with their Torah powers, so that they will take care of this matter, which we see as the most grave."

Moving the parade to another area of the city would make no difference, he continued. "First of all, we would not allow such a thing in Jerusalem, nor anywhere else in the world. This is against the halakha, against the Torah, and against all morality.

"In this case, when we're speaking of a public obscenity, and greatly harms our children and their upbringing, we've taken it upon ourselves to fight this with all our power."

According to the rabbi, the Badatz of the Eidah Haredit had not instituted the pulsa danura for 50 years, since Jerusalem opened its first pool for mixed swimming of men and women.

"We know that all those who had a hand in the Pool of Abomination did not end up well," Rabbi Papenheim said, noting that then-Jerusalem mayor Gershon Agron's life "did not last out the year."