On Sunday, Mina Fenton sat in her office, a stack of pornographic pictures in front of her, and thanked God for averting the Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem. She showed the pictures one after the other, pointing at them with one finger: a bare-chested woman (with black X's scrawled over each breast) against a backdrop of a Palestinian flag; nearly naked men hugging and kissing; men who look like women.

"Disgusting," said Fenton, pointing out more pictures she has in her computer. It's important for the public to see what they look like and what they do, said Fenton. She deliberately refers to them as "they" or "members of the community," and not as gays or lesbians.

This friendly 68-year-old woman is in her second term representing the National Religious Party in the Jerusalem city council. She views the rally that the "members of the community" were permitted to hold in the Givat Ram stadium in lieu of the parade as a "painful compromise."

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Mina Fenton was really the big winner this week: The battle against the parade brought her out of the closet of the 21st spot on the NRP Knesset list. One of the television networks is currently preparing a film about her and perhaps - who knows? - she may have finally laid the cornerstone for political collaboration between the National Religious and the ultra-Orthodox in the city, something she has been working on for four years now.

Fenton was born in Haifa, to what she describes as a very "National Religious" family. She attended the Reali School and then served in the army, where she attained the rank of lieutenant. She was a teacher, and is a mother of five and grandmother of 11. All the Gay Pride parades held in the city aroused her anger, but the worst was last year.

"We were standing there, having a prayer protest in Zion Square," she recalled this week. "Suddenly I see a rear column of members of the community coming down the Ben-Yehuda pedestrian mall, approaching us, starting to surround us. What do they want?! What do they want?! And I decided that it would be the last time," she said, rapping her finger on her desk. "The last time," she repeated.

She enunciates very clearly, like a teacher from the old days. "Every Gay Pride parade is a provocation to violence. Everywhere. In Amsterdam, in Tel Aviv. It's accompanied by nudity and sexual acts to which the secular public is also opposed. In fact, lots of secular people joined in the cause with me. Lots of them. The struggle is over the holiness of the city. Against a parade of abomination that desecrates and defiles the holiness of the city."

Would it be okay in Tel Aviv?

"I, Mina Fenton, am a member of the Jerusalem city council. I'm talking about the holy city." She picked up a small Bible from her bookshelf, the same edition that I used in high school, and began reading with perfect diction verses from the portion of Vayera. The chapters in this portion (Genesis 18-22) are indeed quite dramatic - rich in sex and violence of various kinds, including the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the binding of Isaac.

"This is the reference point that God set for Abraham," said Fenton, referring to Mount Moriah, the site of the Temple. "There was no planning committee in the time of King David, the reference point was given from Heaven, by Divine right, she adds with emphasis.

Now that you mention King David ...

"Don't go on. He did not lie with a man." Some Holocaust survivors had drawn her attention to the date that members of the community had chosen for their parade: "On the night between the ninth and tenth of November there was Kristallnacht. It was the moment when the Holocaust began. That was the moment, the moment!"

At that moment, the door to her office opens and a bearded man wearing a black skullcap enters in a state of great agitation: "Did you receive this?!" The man, Shlomo Rosenstein, represents United Torah Judaism (UTJ) on the city council. Yes, she also received, in a white envelope, several booklets in Hebrew and English, printed by Christian missionaries. Rosenstein says that there should be a bonfire right away in Zion Square and that the booklets should be burned. "Definitely," said Mina Fenton. "I'm with you."

Book-burning?

"Certainly. These are books against Judaism. They have to be burned."

Lewd lions

Once she resolved that there would not be another Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem, Fenton started planning the stages of the struggle, one after the other. She established a headquarters, put together a protest petition. Not since the sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans has there been such an act of provocation, she wrote.

First, she got other city council members to sign, then she moved on to the Knesset: 70 MKs signed. People from her headquarters printed the petition on special forms and distributed them throughout the country: Tens of thousands of people, maybe even a hundred thousand, signed. By e-mail and by Internet, too. Muslims signed, Christians signed, secular people signed. Her group conducted a survey that found that at least eight out of 10 Israelis said they were against the parade.

Then Fenton convened a meeting of activists. While they were meeting in her office, she was informed that ultra-Orthodox activists were holding a similar meeting at the same time. This was fairly unexpected. The ultra-Orthodox don't usually speak publicly about such things, so it was not easy for them to wage a public struggle. On top of that, they would not be expected to join forces with the National Religious camp. But Fenton took matters into her own hands: She placed a phone call from her headquarters to the ultra-Orthodox headquarters and invited them to come to her office. And, surprisingly, they agreed to come. "It was heartwarming. We sat there with the men on one side and the women on the other. It was a wonderful milestone."

She needed a great deal more political talent and diplomatic tact to get the various rabbis to lend their names to the cause. The Yesha Council of Rabbis was with her from the outset, and she was with them: In her home, the orange ribbons symbolizing opposition to the Gaza withdrawal were still proudly on display, she said.

But the ultra-Orthodox have their own outlook and language, and would not sign any leaflet previously signed by non-Haredi rabbis. Not everyone knows how to navigate among the various yeshivas and sects. Fenton managed to bring all the threads together until she achieved the most important thing of all: Rabbis Yosef Shalom Elyashiv and Ovadia Yosef, the preeminent figures in this world, supported the campaign.

Fenton denounced the shows of violence in the ultra-Orthodox demonstrations, but didn't want to talk much politics. She wanted to talk about the members of the community. They received money from the Ford Foundation. The "anti-Semitic Ford Foundation," as she put it, and was a bit taken aback by how taken aback I was by her remark.

"The community brings about terrible disasters," she said. "And each time these disasters lead to the postponement of the parade. The uprooting from Gush Katif. A terrible disaster. Terrible. The war in Lebanon. A disaster. And this time in Beit Hanun. It's all from Heaven, disaster after disaster, and it's all the fault of the community."

Why does God permit this?

"These are things that are beyond our comprehension."

The worst evidence of all is suspended right before her eyes, on the door of one of the cabinets in her office: a photograph of a municipal trash can imprinted with a lion, the symbol of the city of Jerusalem; someone had drawn another lion on top of it, engaged in the sex act. "Lion on top of lion," said Mina Fenton sadly, as if noticing the photograph for the first time. She paused and then said again, in an even sadder tone: "Lion on top of lion." An oppressive silence filled the room and Mina Fenton repeated for the third time: "Lion on top of lion."

Simply the best

David Dvash is God's troubadour. A religious penitent with a guitar, he lives between two settlements and two women, is a father of 11 and composes songs in praise of God. In the spirit of the Bratslav Hasidim, he believes that all is for the good. Or for the best, as he likes to say (hakhi tov, in Hebrew). He has many fans who know him as David Hakhi Tov. The giant Tel Aviv ad agency Adler, Chomsky & Warshavsky also took notice of him, using his name and several of his stories to advertise the services of the Ishi Yashir ("Personal Direct") insurance company. The actor Moshe Ivgi plays him in the best way possible, surpassing the original, as an optimistic little guy who really quite down to earth.

But the real David Hakhi Tov thought it would be best to retain the services of the best attorney for such matters, and settled on Gilad Corinaldi from Jerusalem. The trial dragged on for three years, with David Hakhi Tov fighting the advertising and insurance sharks from Tel Aviv like David against Goliath. Now the Jerusalem District Court has ruled that David Dvash is indeed the real David Hakhi Tov and is entitled to compensation.

With a 637-page protocol recording the appearance of 22 witnesses over the course of 13 court sessions, Judge Yosef Shapira thought it best to compose a 100-page verdict that begins with an excerpt from the writings of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. During the trial, there was discussion of Judaism's attitude toward good and evil; there was debate about the talmudic sage Nahum Ish Gamzu and whether the royalties that Adler, Chomsky & Warshavsky must pay should go to David Hakhi Tov or to God.

There was also discussion about ethics in advertising and about some of the fundamental elements of copyrights, which are so easy to violate yet so hard to understand and protect. The verdict is fascinating and best appreciated when read in full. It remains to be decided how much money David Hakhi Tov will receive, but one can already say that no one lost in this story. And that's for the best.

Regards from Markus Wolf

On Rosh Hashanah I got a call from Berlin from master East German spy Markus Wolf. He had never called me before. I was quite stunned. "The Man Without a Face" was once in charge of the East German espionage organization against the West, and it is widely believed that John Le Carre based the character of the protagonist in his books on him. I interviewed him in Berlin before the collapse of East Germany and again after the unification of Germany, when he was on trial; he had to report to the police twice a week then and used to let reporters from all over the world take turns accompanying him.

With his tufts of gray hair, raincoat with the collar turned up and red scarf, people recognized him on the street and greeted him as they would a celebrity, as if he had never been one of the pillars of the evil Communist regime. When it started to rain, Wolf opened his umbrella and remarked with spy-like humor: "A Bulgarian umbrella, of course." He had a Jewish father and I suspected that he also spied for Israel. He denied it.

He spoke with me on the telephone as if it were something we did every week. The grandkids are fine, he told me, they bring him joy; he recalled how I once took him after midnight to a matza factory in Mea Shearim in Jerusalem. Then, all of a sudden, in the most casual tone he could muster, he asked if I could perhaps obtain for him the phone number of Rafi Eitan, because he didn't know how to get hold of the minister these days. He said he wanted to ask him about something that had to do with the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann. I got the phone number for him and sent it to the e-mail address he gave me.

A few days ago, Wolf died at age 83. I asked Eitan if Wolf had called him. The two became friendly when Eitan was doing business in East Germany and Cuba. He had been the one who initiated contact with Wolf then, out of curiosity, and they became friends, he says, "on the basis of our common interest in professional matters, including the philosophy of espionage systems." No, unfortunately, Wolf hadn't called.