Is Jerusalem Dead? Will Israel Become Iran?

Though ostensibly none of my business, I would be with the counterdemonstrators marching against segregated buses in Jerusalem. Mullahs really do exist in all religions, evidently.

Randy Shiner

The First Word: A day in Jerusalem

By YEHUDAH MIRSKY 

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The sword without and terror within (Deuteronomy 32:25)

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ruled that mixed seating on public transportation was not erotic contact and that one who experienced it as such should engage in painful introspection.
Photo: Wikipedia

Nobody who has lived in Jerusalem in recent years needs any educating about the sword from without. A week ago Thursday I discovered the terror within. It coils through Jerusalem's streets, and us.

Usually I'm not one for rallies. I don't like to shout, and waving placards isn't me. But I went to the Shmuel Hanavi neighborhood on the outskirts of Mea She'arim for the counterdemonstration to a large haredi demonstration on behalf of the inauguration of several sexually segregated public bus lines.Tzniut (modesty) is a noble and crucial idea, an ethical relation in which I recede in another's presence and refrain from imposing myself and erasing his or her essential dignity. I have thought for some while that the relentless, in-your-face sexuality of Israeli society and the recent taking of the age-old ideal of tzniut to hitherto undreamed of extremes are two sides of the same coin.

And one of those extremes - sending women to the back of the bus - will be, I fear, just the beginning. Segregated public transportation, segregated streets, segregated stores, and this is not "separate but equal." Regarding all women as sexual objects, in all places, at all times, degrades them but it degrades men even more, making them into nothing but sexual predators-in-waiting.

The demonstration took place on the spot where a horrific bus bombing in August 2003 took 23 lives, mostly haredim, including seven children and one Filipino guest worker; in recent years, the bombings have come to be seen by some in the haredi community as, inter alia, divine retribution for the intolerable commingling of the sexes on Jerusalem's buses.

I WAS WITH a counterdemonstration, organized on very short notice by a law student, Avital Feldman. We were about 20 people, some religious, others secular. The de facto leader was newly-elected councilwoman Rachel Azaria from the Wake Up Jerusalem movement. We stood on the side of the large street on which the demonstration was taking place, its numbers swelling swiftly into the hundreds early on. A few had brought signs, some religiously-inflected ("We are also created in God's image"), others straightforwardly political ("Don't turn Israel into Iran") and one self-parodyingly intellectual ("Stop the eroticization of public sphere" - come to think of it, the one sign the haredim there might have agreed with).

Zehava Fischer from Har Nof had made copies of a responsum by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, a towering 20th-century halachist, permitting mixed seating onpublic transportation on the grounds that this was not erotic contact, and that one who experienced it as such should engage in painful introspection (Responsa Igrot Moshe, Even Ha'ezer, 2:14). I would not presume to call myself a disciple of Rav Moshe. But his responsum was a reminder that there can be more than one opinion, which doesn't sound like much but at times is radical enough. We began to try handing them out.

THE AIR FILLED with menace and fast. Our presence was provocative enough, but the responsum was a flash point, because we moved out of our circle to hand them out and because this seemed to turn us from merely depraved sex-maniacs into dangerous heretics. They were snatched from our hands and torn to pieces, amid shouts of "Heretics!" "Reformim!" "Hypocrites!" and a line from the Talmud: "A Sefer Torah written by a heretic must be burned." Pushing, shoving, screaming, all very quickly and before long it seemed it would get really ugly.

A few hesder graduates, braver than I, ventured into the heart of the mass. The large crowds around us moved away only when the speaker on the podium up front announced - wisely enough - that "shmiras eynayim" was in full force and so it was forbidden to look at the women among us, and besides we were best left ignored. Still more and more people poured into the street and we were surrounded.

The police wanted us to move to the far side of Route 1 and to get us to do it, took two of us into custody, releasing them only when we moved (and that, a couple of hours later). I understood the bind they were in, and their concern for our safety, even as I resented seeing once again that threatening violence gets you what you want, which in this case was us and our copies of Rav Feinstein's responsum out of sight.

We should have planned better. And perhaps we, or I at least, were naive here. But what really shook me up was the speed with which things got ugly and would have gotten even more violent had things gone a little differently, how the violence was like gasolinein the air, just waiting for a spark. Looking back across the avenue at the crowd, Zehava said to me: "If this is how they were with us, what would they do to a woman who didn't want to sit in the back of the bus?"

THAT EVENING I attended the wedding of a colleague at a kibbutz in the Sharon, and like so many Jerusalemites who venture out of our shell, the rich smell of the earth and succulent heaviness of the air just stunned me. Back in Jerusalem at midnight, I went to a dear friend's birthday party in Musrara, and the good conversation seemed to provide a welcome end to a long and exhausting day. At about 1:30 a.m. I headed to Jaffa Road to pick up a cab. Walking across Kikar Safra, seeing clumps of men sitting and drinking, I quickened my steps. As I came out of the plaza, right across the street from city hall, I saw four men jump, stomp and kick the daylights out of several others (Lord knows why) and run off.

I called for the police and waited for them to arrive as people ran out of the surrounding pubs to help the crushed victims, whose blood ran down the sidewalk.

First ambulances came - some of the EMTs were haredim, and some were women. Then came the police, and I reported to them what I'd seen. After the police left, some young haredim came up to me, hungry for details: Did you see fists? Did you see a knife?

I told them how earlier in the day their comrades had nearly done the same to me. "There was action at the demo? We missed it?"

We talked a few minutes more. One of them had never heard of Rav Moshe Feinstein. And when his friend assured him that this was a big rav indeed, and I said that he had ruled it permissible to ride on buses with women, he was incredulous and a little intrigued.

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ruled that mixed seating on public transportation was not erotic contact and that one who experienced it as such should engage in painful introspection.
Photo: Wikipedia

When I finally got home, at about 2:30 in the morning, my wife was, luckily for me, awake. I told her something that I had been thinking and scared to say for a long while: that the Jerusalem of my dreams, the Jerusalem where heaven and earth kiss, the Jerusalem of my father's childhood, is finally dead.

The writer lives in Jerusalem. He is currently writing a biography of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook.

Taking On Israel’s Chief Rabbinate

Taking On Israel’s Chief Rabbinate
A reluctant rebel’s challenge to the haredi establishment could make or break Israel’s Religious Zionist movement.

by Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher

Rabbi Benjamin (Benny) Lau does not look the part of a revolutionary.


At 47, his youthful appearance, warm smile and engaging personality have helped him become a popular Orthodox rabbinic figure in Jerusalem, where he has revitalized the Ramban community synagogue in Katamon and heads the beit midrash program at Beit Morasha, a communal and educational leadership institute for observant men and women.

He also lectures at Bar-Ilan University (where he received a Ph.D.) and teaches at both a boys’ and girls’ yeshiva high school in Jerusalem.

The rabbi is soft-spoken, but his message of late — in sermons, lectures, newspaper columns and interviews — is blunt and compelling, offering up sharp criticism of the Chief Rabbinate and its role in the deteriorating relationship between religion and state in Israel.

Rabbi Lau, himself the nephew of former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, is leading a campaign among like-minded, more tolerant Orthodox rabbis to wrest control of the Chief Rabbinate from the influence of a group of elderly ultra-Orthodox, anti-Zionist haredi religious leaders whose dictates often are followed by the two state-appointed chief rabbis.

Rabbi Lau says he and his colleagues, primarily from the rabbinic group, Tzohar (Hebrew for window), seek to restore a sense of compassion toward all Israeli Jews, no matter their level of observance.

“We can’t accept it,” Rabbi Lau says of the haredi style, which demands the strictest levels of adherence to Jewish law. “We are the Zionists and we should be the ones with the power. It’s not normal for the state to be the captive of the haredim,” who don’t acknowledge the authority of the state.

He says he would prefer that more senior rabbis in his camp take the lead in this campaign, “but I look around and see that the responsibility is on our shoulders, and it cannot wait. We are very close to the end of the relationship” between religion and the state, he says, as Israelis become increasingly disenfranchised with the Judaism they see practiced and adjudicated by the Chief Rabbinate.

“As a strong Zionist, I want to be part of the Jewish state,” he says. “I need to serve the needs of the people,” regardless of their level of observance.

Listening to what the rabbi has to say these days calls to mind Howard Beale, the fictional character in the classic 1976 movie “Network,” who as anchor of a major television network urged viewers to stick their heads out of their windows and shout, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

Israelis who care about the state of Judaism in the country don’t need much prompting — especially now.

The association between Israeli society and the Orthodox-controlled Chief Rabbinate has always been problematic, with many secular and less observant Jews resenting the control the rabbinate has over their personal lives in matters of marriage, divorce, conversion and burial.

What has changed dramatically in recent months is that more and more Orthodox Jews as well are adding their voices to those who have long expressed frustration and anger with a Chief Rabbinate that appears increasingly rigid and narrow in its outlook and rulings, to the detriment of Israeli society.

The two recent episodes that have become “the last straw” for many, particularly in the Religious Zionist/Modern Orthodox camp, were the Chief Rabbinate’s strict rulings regarding the current sabbatical (or, shmitta) year, and especially its rulings over conversion.

Shmitta, which falls every seven years, is the commandment that calls for Jewish-owned land in Israel to lie fallow. In the past, a halachic loophole was followed, allowing Jewish farmers to maintain their income by having their land symbolically sold to a non-Jew. But under pressure from haredi leader Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger gave rabbinic councils the option to disallow the loophole, in effect having people purchase produce from Arabs rather than Jews.

Even more upsetting was the rabbinic ruling that led to nullifying conversions permitted over the last 15 years by Rabbi Chaim Druckman, a Religious Zionist leader and head of the government’s special conversion administration.

Not only does such a move show the haredi leadership’s disdain for the Religious Zionist camp, but also for a society with an estimated 300,000 Russian immigrants who are not Jewish. Many of them probably would be willing to convert if the procedure was not onerous, but the haredi standard is for the convert to adhere to all 613 commandments.

Rabbi Lau says such actions by the haredim underscore their indifference, if not hostility, toward a modern Jewish state, and he says the time to act against them is now.

“Many secular Jews in Israel would respond positively to a rabbinate that shows openness and compassion,” he told me over the course of several conversations. “But the people have become alienated.”

He likens the haredi view to Noah on the ark, protecting his own family while the rest of the world drowns. Rabbi Lau prefers the model of Abraham, who even argued with God in an effort to save the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

“We can’t just live on the ark,” he said, noting that Israel is a vibrant society, not just an enclosed religious community.

That’s why the rabbi says he is leading an effort to try to gain control of the Chief Rabbinate, consulting with the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and his son, Yitzchak, who Rabbi Lau sees as open to a more tolerant kind of Jewish authority.

If the cooperative effort fails, there is the option of appealing to the Supreme Court to appoint a Chief Rabbinate more reflective of Israeli society and Zionist values. Rabbi Lau says he knows that could “open up the process” to include non-Orthodox representation, but he finds that healthy, and notes that he often cooperates in programs with Conservative and Reform rabbis.

A final option is for Rabbi Lau and his allies from Tzohar — a group of about 300 rabbis who seek to be more accessible and welcoming to non-Orthodox Israelis — to compete directly with the Chief Rabbinate, creating their own religious courts to deal more sympathetically with Israelis on issues like marriage, conversion, agunot and divorce.

Such a confrontation would be messy, Rabbi Lau acknowledges, but no worse than the current sorry state of affairs, he says.

Does he have a chance at effecting change? Not in the short-term, according to Israelis knowledgeable about the situation.

Prime Minister Olmert “needs the haredim in his coalition and he will not struggle with them,” notes Yair Sheleg, a reporter for Ha'aretz who covers the religious world. But he adds that “the feeling of crisis that Rabbi Lau, and others, express” may have a long-term positive impact.

Sheleg suggests that in the future, haredi parties may be more sensitive to public criticism, for fear of losing political clout, and/or the Religious Zionist camp may come to soften its stand on settlements so as not to weaken its support for change on social issues, like calling for a more tolerant Chief Rabbinate.

The outcome of this conflict could decide the fate of Religious Zionism in Israel — whether it will take on the mantle of leadership or bow to the clout of the haredim. And this brewing dispute may well determine whether the growing gap between religious and secular Jews in the country can be narrowed.

In the meantime, Rabbi Lau is ready to lead, though not sure how many rabbis will be with him.

“I feel I am doing the right thing,” he says. “The halachic tradition has always been about meeting the needs of the people. That’s all we’re trying to do. And we’re ready to take a stand.”