Israel's foremost Orthodox rabbis are making peace overtures to the heads of Hamas and other Arab Islamic groups, while simultaneously waging a religious war against Judaism's own Reform and Conservative movements.
Dr Eliahu Bakshi-Doron, the chief rabbi of Israel's 2.5 million Jews of Middle Eastern origin, the Sephardim, this week despatched an emissary to Gaza City to meet the recently-freed Hamas spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The rabbi offered to open a dialogue with the sheikh, a joint effort for peace between Jews and Muslims. And he urged Sheikh Yassin to use his influence to put an end to Hamas suicide bombings inside Israel.
"I am full of hope that Sheikh Yassin can solve this problem," Rabbi Bakshi-Doron wrote in a message to the Hamas leader. "I call on him as a believer in God." Sheikh Yassin quickly responded with a conditional offer of a temporary "truce". The terms - including a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem - may be unacceptable to the Israeli government, but they suggested a readiness by Sheikh Yassin to act as a moderating force within Hamas.
Rabbi Bakshi-Doron had conveyed previous suggestions for a Jewish-Muslim dialogue to Sheikh Yassin and, along with his counterpart, Dr Yisrael Lau, chief rabbi of Israel's Ashkenazi, European-rooted Jews, is understood to have sent conciliatory messages to other Islamic leaders in the region, including those in Iran.
The Sephardim chief rabbi is also reportedly now working to convene a three-way religious dialogue, involving an Egyptian Muslim cleric and a Vatican representative, possibly the Pope. However, Rabbi Bakshi-Doron is at the forefront of an intensifying struggle with the more lenient streams of Judaism, the Reform and Conservative movements - a struggle that is now threatening the stability of the Israeli government and fracturing relations between Israel and Jews around the world.
The battle is an old one, concerning efforts by the marginalised Reform and Conservative communities in Israel to win the right to perform their own conversions to Judaism, weddings and burials.
Until now, the Orthodox rabbinate, currently headed by Rabbi Bakshi-Doron and Rabbi Lau, has enjoyed a monopoly over such practices, and it insists on maintaining that monopoly. Earlier this year, the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, established a committee, comprising Orthodox, Conservative and Reform representatives, to try to find compromise arrangements.
Recent leaks from this committee suggested that a compromise was at hand. Proposals apparently include allowing Reform and Conservative rabbis to perform weddings in Israel, provided an Orthodox "supervisor" is present, and setting up a "conversion committee", involving officials from all three streams of Judaism.
But while these proposals were hailed by Reform and Conservative leaders as a historic breakthrough that would unify the Jewish people, Rabbi Bakshi-Doron, other prominent Orthodox rabbis, and their political representatives in the Knesset are horrified by them. Opposition to the more liberal streams of Judaism is so strong that Conservative and Reform Jews have recently been stoned by Orthodox Jews at the Wailing Wall, and their schools and synagogues have suffered a spate of arson attacks and other acts of vandalism.
The 23 Orthodox Knesset members are now vowing to bring down Mr Netanyahu's government unless a new law is passed within weeks unequivocally outlawing Reform and Conservative conversions.
Horrified, in turn, by the prospect of such legislation, Reform and Conservative Jews abroad speak of boycotting Israel, of withholding philanthropic aid, of a split in the Israeli-diaspora partnership. But Rabbi Bakshi-Doron, for one, is unfazed. The man pioneering the dialogue with Hamas declared this week that he wanted no dialogue with Reform Jews, since their interpretation of the faith "is a one-way bridge to assimilation", which, he said, had already seen millions of people lost to the Jewish community.