The spectacle of haredi -- that is, ultra-Orthodox -- thugs spitting on Naama Margolis, an 8-year-old schoolgirl in the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh has exacerbated the already frayed relations between the fundamentalist religious sector of the Jewish community, in Israel and elsewhere, and the rest of us, that is, Conservative, Reform, Modern Orthodox and secular Jews.
The Beit Shemesh incident was triggered not only by the zealots' belief that the child, a religious girl from an observant family, was immodestly dressed -- she was wearing a regulation school uniform -- but by their conviction that they have the right to physically and verbally abuse women and girls of whose attire, demeanor or behavior they disapprove.
Another haredi paragon, one Shlomo Fuchs, recently called Doron Matalon, a female Israeli soldier returning to her base, a "slut" on a public bus in Jerusalem. When the soldier pointed out accurately that she protects him and his way of life, Fuchs responded by saying, "She protects me? I sit at shul from eight in the morning till midnight and study, and she's protecting me? I protect her."
While one must not generalize and tar all ultra-Orthodox Jews with the brush of intolerance, the fact is that the antagonism displayed by haredim toward other Jews is becoming ever more extreme. Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, one of the most prominent ultra-Orthodox personalities in Israel, has called for increased isolationism on the part of his community. According to Rabbi Elyashiv, haredi Jews should not engage in any educational process other than Torah study. No university. No law school or medical school. Not even vocational school. "We must protest and warn of all sorts of trends from outside to strike at the cruse of pure oil, to alter the spirit and the essence of the ultra-Orthodox public," exhorted the haredi newspaper Yated Neeman.
It was not always thus. One of the greatest Hasidic masters of the 19th century, Rabbi Simhah Bunim of Prszysucha (in Yiddish, Pshyskhe), worked as a bookkeeper, then in the timber trade and ultimately as a licensed pharmacist before devoting himself full-time to his religious and communal pursuits. As far as he was concerned, "no Jew, however learned and pious, may consider himself an iota better than a fellow Jew, however ignorant or irreligious the latter may be. This is confirmed by the law that if a learned and pious Jew were commanded to slay the ignorant or impious one, or be himself slain, he must accept death rather than kill the other. No one can tell whose blood is redder, and whose life is more important in the eyes of God. If a man in this crucial moment has no right to deem himself superior to another, what right can he possibly have to do so on less critical occasions?"
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the widely revered Lubavicher Rebbe, who in his youth had studied at the University of Berlin and the Sorbonne in Paris, was adamant that science and faith could be reconciled. In a 1962 letter featured on the Chabad.org website, he wrote that "it is safe to assume that all we have learned in the field of nucleonics in the last few decades is very little by comparison with what we can confidently expect to learn in the next few decades."
My own grandparents were all members of the Hasidic community in their respective Polish hometowns. All four were devoutly observant, and yet my two grandfathers treated the women in their families with respect, even when this required a deviation or departure from tradition.
Before her parents married, my mother told me, her mother told her future husband that she would not wear a sheytl, the wig traditionally worn by married Orthodox Jewish women to cover their hair, and my grandfather accepted her decision without argument. In her memoir, my mother wrote that when she left to attend the University of Nancy in France to study medicine -- she eventually became a dentist -- her father told her "We are sending you off with all our love and may God watch over you. Remember, whatever times may come, you may lose all your possessions, but nobody can take away your education."
My father's father was equally tolerant. My grandmother died in 1919 in a flu epidemic that also took the life of the husband of my father's sister, Lea'le. My grandfather, Reb Mendl Rosensaft, was a prominent and highly respected disciple of the Gerer Rebbe, the largest and most prominent Hasidic dynasty in pre-World War II Poland. A few years after my grandmother's and uncle's death, an emissary of the Gerer Rebbe came to my grandfather and told him that the Rebbe wanted to marry Lea'le. Rather making a decision on his daughter's behalf, as would have been expected in Hasidic circles, my grandfather said that he needed to consult her. A little while later, my grandfather returned to tell his guest that he was sorry, but Lea'le did not want to marry the Rebbe. For my grandfather, his daughter's feelings and wishes were of paramount importance.
The fact that the obscurantism that has taken hold in the haredi world was not inevitable makes it all the more tragic. Before this schism becomes irreparable, those ultra-Orthodox rabbis and leaders who still adhere to the concept of Jewish peoplehood would do well to ponder the words of another Hasidic master, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, as taught by Elie Wiesel, "We are going farther and farther away from the light at Sinai, yet we do not come any closer to the light of the Messiah!"
Menachem Z. Rosensaft is general counsel of the World Jewish Congress and the immediate past president of Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan. He teaches about the law of genocide and World War II war crimes trials at Cornell Law School, Columbia Law School and Syracuse University College of Law.
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He consistently recommended against any believing Jew attending university.
When asked about his own experience (of attending some of the great European universities, leading to his working as an engineer before becoming Rebbe), he likened it to falling out of a second-story window: while he may have survived unscathed, he could not recommend the experience to others.
In diaspora Jewish communities, the community supports the rabbi. If the population cannot support itself, it cannot support the rabbi. If the Rebbe had told Tevye to change his cows' food during Pesach as we Israeli dairy farmers have to, Tevye would have answered, "Sorry, no tithe this week." Today in Israel, the rabbi receives funding for his Yeshiva. He decides which students receive a stipend and a deferment from the army. Since the Haredi schools receive government funding despite not teaching the core requirements of English, math, and science, without this support a Haredi has no marketable skills.
The Haredim certainly have to take responsibility for a great deal of the extremism that we see today. But the rest of the Israelis have to take responsibility for allowing this dysfunctional system that rewards separatism and fundamentalism to continue.
The quote from Rabbi Elyashiv is problematic. He is 101 years old and ill. His signature on the quoted article is in dispute.
How is it possible to believe that reading (the Talmud, I assume) all day provides any protection for anyone ? I imagine that the teaching is that the world is wicked and God would destroy it immediately were it not for the handful of Jews who remain faithful - an idea along the lines of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
That doesn't explain why their faith should be expressed by compulsive reading of the Talmud. That remains a mystery to me.
I have never encountered such thought before - is my guess correct ?
Judaism does not hold that the world is about to be destroyed. Rather life in Israel is fraught with dangers and if a soldier iseven more so. What this fellow was saying is that he, by devoting his life to doing God's will, was contributing to a increase the sum of virtuous acts in the country, and this may protect us all and esp. those in danger. This is a common view, and sincerely held.
Yes, the core text of the Talmud (Mishnayot and Gemara) was written in the early Middle Ages, but centuries span its commentary from the Rishonim to the Achronim.
According to this view the preservation of humanity as a whole beyond those who reside in Eretz Yisrael and beyond even World Jewry depends upon this devotion.
This is a very important omission, since the ending makes it clear that the first (originally quoted) part is only a brief summary, rather than the "total basis" of anything. Rabbi Hillel was just giving the questioner something he could use as a guide to proper behavior until he could take the time to really learn.
But there is, in Israel, a significant rejection of this group, that has also its own historical roots. And some of the over interpretations one reads in the comments to this piece also suggest strong a priori negative sentiments. These account for the extraordinary echo given to this act.
Only a small fringe population of Haredim are spitting on 9-year-olds, but the population as a whole is living off of the rest of us -- and then turning around and telling us that we're "not Jewish enough." Is that enough of a reason to be angry? And I didn't even start on what they make farmers do so that our produce will be considered "kosher" by standards that were never thought of in the Torah.
Thank you for providing some balance to these posts.
Kol Tuv
…Whatever will ‘they’ do when Synagogues, Mosques & Cathedrals stand empty, as a result of the >>last
...My previous post got transected for some reason;
In the past, I brought a young lady in from an MVA.
"Type-N-cross-match for...”, was interrupted by a scream, in which the patient, extricated from a 'money-earner', ('head-on AND roll over' like in a movie), was a Jehovah's witness; she had her whole life ahead of her, was significantly injured but would have lived…
but for her refusal to accept blood to support her blood pressure, thus avoiding cardiac arrest and/or post-trauma disseminated intravascular coagulopathy, (‘shock lung’, which is what kills most of those who survive their initial ‘24-48, post incident’;
When you freeze your A** of in an upside-down winter-wreck, hoping the car doesn’t catch fire, &/or, some drunk doesn’t drive thru the site & cause a 2nd. wreck, (which I've also had), and the patient throws her life away like that, it REALLY pisses you off!
She put her money where her mouth was...
Even as a Catholic, (decades ago) I would’ve NEVER killed myself/another for-the-faith, excluding the ‘giving up the proverbial life-jacket to another’ cliché, which obviously isn’t the same thing…
I’m NOT criticizing the deceased; I’m just expressing that she’d almost certainly be here, as I type, and THAT's such a waste to me, as a NeoPagan…
I hope she achieved her nirvana…
I'm reminded of the Phelps clan who simultanousl claim to be prolifers AND extol the alleged virtue of I.E.D.'s as used to kill NATO & U.S service people, allegdly as a Deity-displeasure due to gay liberation...