"Eh? Nu—"

Your bad luck, Jean, you're dealing with a Dead Chassid who's stood on barricades defending the immortal science of Reb Marx and the autonomy of the Talons Commune, and in the service of that they've faced up to an usurping idol who'd claimed to be equivalent to the One, True Infinite One that Lev devotes all their heart and all their soul and all their being.

... which is to say, the idea of religious as separate from political as separate from philosophical as separate from legal as fully and clearly separate from doing one's laundry and eating breakfast is completely foreign to Lev. You ever see someone who looks mostly human give you the kind of look a confused parrot might? Well, that's the look Lev's modelling. Especially when this ... person, who's not a lovek by how they feel, but who's got the bauplan, is insisting on calling them "Comrade". What gives.

"Well, Friend, isn't everything, nu? Religious, I mean. Ultimately."

They decide to go with the other translation of khaver, the one that to them feels more honest to the intent of the term.