Opinions on Regev’s motives — as with every subject in Israel — are split. In the media, Regev is often portrayed as an unwitting crusader for a cause more sophisticated than she is. She is a recurring character in a popular satirical Israeli show, in which a male actor plays her as a primitive loudmouth. “The way they see it, Miri Regev is the ultimate freha,” says Ron Cahlili, a documentary filmmaker and self-described Mizrahi leftist who supports Regev’s agenda. “In the fact that she’s a woman, first of all; in the fact that she’s Mizrahi; that she comes from Kiryat Gat. In the fact that every Friday she posts pictures of herself making pots of spicy fish. That she lights candles with a head scarf on, and kisses mezuzas, and talks about the Temple Mount and about tradition. And is right wing! Really right wing. This combination releases all the possible stereotypes. The white Zionist left can’t take it.”

For Mizrahi activists like Cahlili, Regev is an unequivocal good. “For once in 67 years, a culture minister is speaking the truth,” Cahlili says. “Even if she does one-tenth of what she has set out to do, we’ll have a historic correction of injustice.” But others see her as hurting the Mizrahi cause. “The danger of the Mizrahi struggle is that it will fall to a place of unjustified hatred, where there’s no grace and no compassion, and where there’s an inability to accept a multiplicity of voices,” says Mati Shemoelof, a Mizrahi writer and editor. And many on the left see an inherent hypocrisy in the gap between Regev’s words and her actions. Ayman Odeh, the leader of the Joint List, an alliance of Arab political parties, told me: “You can’t reconcile this seemingly liberal and egalitarian approach with an attack on Arabs, which is what she’s doing.”

“All of this is new,” Regev said late one morning. We were in Kiryat Gat, less than 20 miles from the Gaza border. She pointed to where the housing project she grew up in once stood; it was demolished last year. “We slept four in a room, in bunk beds. My grandmother had the bottom bed.” Her eyes brightened; her smile widened. Despite her talk of hardship, she was in her hometown, and it felt as though she were taking a victory lap of sorts — while making sure it wouldn’t be lost on me just how far she had come.

From her old neighborhood, we drove to the wealthier part of town, where her husband, Dror, was raised and where his parents still live. Dror is an engineer in the aerospace industry. They met when Miri was 16 and he was in his early 20s — he spotted her at the city’s central bus station — and they now have three grown children. Dror’s grandparents immigrated from Russia and Poland, and at first Miri felt intimidated by them and their European ways. “They were all teachers and spoke high Hebrew, and I was afraid that I wouldn’t fit in. But everything was O.K. It was all in my head. Because I came from a culture that hugs and touches and kapara and ‘What do you want to eat?’ and huge pots of food. And at his house things were different. There was less touching and less — it’s not that there isn’t love, there is — but it’s different. The combination between the cultures isn’t an easy one.” Nevertheless, she added, she and Dror are proud that their children are now “really Israeli” and “have both the Eastern and Western in them.”

Regev’s driver stopped, and we stepped into the thick heat of the day. She was dressed for an event that evening: high heels and a short black dress that flattered her recently slimmed-down figure. Her neck was burdened with heavy necklaces, one a blend between a Star of David and a sheriff’s star.

“Shalom!” a neighbor stopped her. “What did we do to deserve this?”

“Shh, don’t tell Dror’s parents I’m here,” Regev laughed before enveloping the woman in a hug.

In her hometown, Miri Regev is better known as Miriam Siboni, her maiden name. Her mother, Mercedes, immigrated from Spain as a teenager in 1957 and still watches Spanish entertainment news every afternoon. Her father, Felix, who is from Morocco, worked for years as a welder; he lost two fingers in a work accident. Among themselves, the Sibonis usually converse in Spanish and like to listen to Julio Iglesias and Mercedes Sosa. They brought up Miri and her three younger brothers in a household that was neither secular nor religious but masorti — traditional. This is commonplace for Mizrahim in Israel: an adherence to certain Jewish commandments but not to all. It may mean keeping kosher and saying the Kiddush, but turning on the television after the Shabbat meal. Or walking to synagogue on Friday and refraining from lighting the gas, but still driving to meet friends on a Friday night. It’s a form of observance that is heavy on ritual and sits somewhere between the two poles of Ashkenazi life: staunch secularism (the kibbutzniks; the sushi eaters of Herzliya) and strict religiosity (the kipa-wearers and the ultra-Orthodox).