Category Archives: Israel

Defining History Down

Under siege by some of his countrymen for seeming to have acknowledged the Holocaust, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani tried to walk that Chihuahua back at a forum this week sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society. Asked to clearly state his stand on the issue, he chose to condemn “crimes by the Nazis during World War II [including the killing of] a group of Jewish people.”

Another “defining down” of historical fact also recently appeared, this one emanating from a more respectable source, the New York Times, in a video on its website.  The background clip accompanied a print report about Jews who ascend the Har Habayis, or Temple Mount, thereby passively challenging the Muslim authorities to whom Israel has ceded oversight of the ancient Jewish holy site.  Those overseers forbid Jews from praying openly there; some of the Jewish visitors, apparently, dare to do so silently.

The second of the two holy Jewish national temples that stood on the mount for centuries, of course, was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E.  It was more than 600 years later, after the Islamic empire spread to the Holy Land, that a small mosque was erected there.  An earthquake destroyed the mosque, and a second one was subsequently built on the spot, although it met the same fate shortly thereafter.  In 1035, the grandiose mosque currently occupying the Temple site was built, and thus far survives.

The Times article itself, as it happens, hinted at something that deserved more prominence in the piece, namely that the most respected Jewish rabbinic authorities have forbidden all Jews, in no uncertain terms, from ascending the Mount, both for halachic reasons and to not give the mosque’s overseers and other Muslims any excuse to engage in violence. Charedi Jews are often the focus of news reports from Israel. In an article presented to millions that speaks of religious Jews doing something that some regard as politically provocative, it would have been proper to point out that the Jews at issue are decidedly not charedim, and that the latter disapprove of their actions.

But what was truly disconcerting was the narration of the Times’ video expanding on the article.  It referred to the Har Habayis as the place “that Jews call the Temple Mount…” and that “Jews widely believe was the site of the Temples.”  Italics, of course, mine.

Such subtle casting of long-accepted historical fact as mere popular Jewish belief is of a sort with the subtle devaluation of “Judaism’s holiest site” the Old Gray Lady has perpetrated in the past – like when it bestowed that honor to the Western Wall rather than to the Temple Mount that lies behind it.

Fact: Objective students of history – of all ethnicities – see no reason to not accept the Bible’s account that, approximately nine centuries before the beginning of the Common Era and nearly 1500 years before Mohammed’s grandmother was born, King Solomon built the first of the two Holy Jewish Temples on that Jerusalem site.  And that sacrificial offerings, as the Talmud and Roman sources alike recount, were brought on the altar there on behalf of both Jews and non-Jewish visitors.

That that history derives mostly from Jewish texts and Jewish tradition is no deficiency.  The meticulous preservation of history is the nuclear strong force of Judaism, and is what has preserved the Jewish nation for millennia. Jews the world over just celebrated, on Sukkos, the collective memory of their ancestors’ Divine protection after the exodus from Egypt; that exodus itself is mentioned hundreds of times each year by every observant Jew in prayers and rites.

He or she recalls the ancient Jewish Temple too, every single day of the year, in each of the silent prayers – recited facing the Temple Mount – that are the backbone of Jewish religious life.

On holidays, moreover, the special Mussaf prayer includes a lengthy bemoaning of the Temples’ destructions.

The words “Jerusalem” and its synonym “Zion,” the city whose holiness derives from that of the Temple Mount, passed my lips at least ten times this morning.  Before breakfast.

And that repast was followed by the grace after meals, which includes an entreaty of G-d to rebuild Jerusalem – meaning the Temple.

That rebuilding, to be sure, isn’t a call to human physical force. The Third Holy Temple will be built by the hand not of man but of G-d, the object of our entreaty.  That is likewise evident in the passive form of our prayer elsewhere: “May it be Your will that the Temple be [re]built.”  But that collective Jewish prayer will be prayed – our spiritual contribution – until its fulfillment.

In the meanwhile, however much mullahs or media may seek to distort inconvenient historical facts, people devoted to truth will continue to know better.  They will know that, just over 60 years ago, millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their friends. And that, over 2000 years ago, a Holy Jewish Temple stood on the hill that still carries its name.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Al Jazeera And The Jews

Even as Al Jazeera America – the new offshoot of the Qatar-based news organization – was making its broadcast debut recently on cable carriers in the United States, its parent organization back on the Arabian peninsula featured a commentary by former Muslim Brotherhood official Gamal Nassar, in which he claimed that the Egyptian military (and currently political) leader Abdel Fattah Al Sisi is a Jew.  He didn’t mean it as a compliment.

Mr. Nassar cited an Algerian newspaper (“All the slander that’s fit to sling”?) to the effect that Mr. Al Sisi’s uncle was “a member of the Jewish Haganah organization” and that the nephew “is implementing a Zionist plan to divide Egypt.”

The Al Jazeera commentator helpfully added that “Whoever reads The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the writings of [the Jews], including those who were writing in the U.S., realizes that this plot was premeditated.”

Maybe it’s not fair to visit the sins of the father – Al Jazeera in Arabia – so to speak, onto the son – Al Jazeera America.  The latter organization claims to be “a completely different channel from… all of the other channels in the Al Jazeera Media Network” and has its “own board and advisory board.”  And the American operation asserts that it will be delivering “unbiased, fact-based and in-depth journalism,” which, if true, will become apparent in time. But, with the baggage of its family name’s reputation, “AJAM”’s battle will be uphill.

As it happens, not long ago, in my capacity as Agudath Israel’s public affairs director, I was contacted by a reporter for Al Jazeera – the original, Qatar operation.  He worked for its English-language version, which is no longer accessible in the US, and was helping produce a television segment for the network, about the religious-secular divide in Israel.

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to become involved, even as a mere resource, with an Arab-centered, less-than-sympathetic-to-Israel operation.  A good friend of mine who also deals with media advised me to demur.  But I decided to interact with the reporter (who turned out to be very friendly, and Jewish, to boot) all the same, and offered him some background information about the topic he wouldn’t likely glean from most Jewish media, and some suggestions for whom he might wish to feature as guests on the segment.

A few weeks later, he sent me a link to a recording of the program, which I watched carefully.  The guests included a religious Israeli politician and an American proponent of dismantling the rabbinate and creating a more “democratic” state that didn’t favor Orthodox Judaism.

The segment, I had to admit, was excellent.  Both sides made their cases, of course, but the moderator was outstanding, asking informed, probing questions not only of the politician but of the activist too, and letting her guests know when they didn’t address what had been asked.  Another journalist on the program was monitoring personal media in real time, and the tweets and postings she shared with the audience were balanced, representing both sides of each issue.

Afterward, I sat back and pondered the contrast between mainstream Jewish media’s reportage of Jewish religious issues and what I had witnessed on Al Jazeera’s program.  When it comes to things like the segment’s subject, many media, including some major Jewish media, are transparently biased against Jewish Orthodoxy.  That’s not surprising, as most journalists, as a Pew poll several years back revealed, are less than sympathetic to religion.  And most Jewish journalists are non-Orthodox Jews with, by their profession, an interest in the Jewish community; hence they bring some personal baggage to their keyboards.  Al Jazeera, however, lacks any dog in the race, and so it addressed the subject in a refreshingly objective way.

That it did so recalled to me something I had said before an audience of my own, at the 92nd St. Y a few months ago.  In an offhand comment that drew some gasps (and, surprisingly, some applause), I asserted that the reporters most qualified to write for Jewish newspapers are non-Jews.  They, I explained, are less likely to be burdened by preconceptions or guided, even subconsciously, by agendas.

I know Al Jazeera – the parent, that is – well enough to not expect it to report objectively on Israel.  It doesn’t expend the effort to see beyond the Jewish state’s real or imagined warts, to its human face.  Nor would I expect it to feature – although it should – opinion pieces defending Israel against the libels regularly hurled at her by much of the Arab world.

But, optimist that I am, I wonder whether Al Jazeera America, which aims to focus mainly on American news, might prove itself, at least in the realm of reportage on Jewish religious issues, to be a breath of unpolluted air. Time will tell.

How disturbing, though, to have to be looking to an Arab news network for balance in Jewish issues.

Black Peril, White Knights

A lengthy piece in the New Republic asserts – or, more accurately, hopes – that “an unlikely alliance between Orthodox and progressive women will save Israel from fundamentalism.” The latter word, of course, is intended to refer to traditional Orthodox Judaism.

Heavy on anecdotes about charedi crazies harassing sympathetic women, the piece, titled “The Feminists of Zion,” details how demographic changes in Israel have brought the decades-old peaceful co-existence of secular and charedi Jews to something of a head.  The “once-tiny minority” of charedim “now comprises more than 10% of the population,” it informs. And it warns that “as their numbers have increased, so has their sway over political and civil life.”

That sway has resulted in things like “an increase in modesty signs on public boulevards and gender-segregated sidewalks in Haredi neighborhoods,” not to mention “gender-separated office hours in government-funded medical clinics and de facto gender segregation on publicly subsidized buses,” among other affronts.

In 19th century America, there was much anxiety about the “Yellow Peril,” the pernicious effect that Chinese immigrants were imagined to have on the culture of the union.  During the Second World War, the phrase was applied to Japanese Americans (iceberg, Goldberg, what difference does it make?…).  The New Republic writers, Haaretz’s Allison Kaplan Sommer and Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, seem to perceive what they might call (although they don’t) a Black Peril in Israel.  And the White Knight on the horizon who might vanquish the monster is the Jewish state’s “fighting feminist spirit.”

That spirit, the writers say, is championed by the Israeli Reform movement (and its legal arm, the Israel Religious Action Center, or IRAC) and by “modern-Orthodox” women in Israel who are fed up with charedim.  One group of such Orthodox feminists, Kolech, the article notes, has begun to work with IRAC on “a host of issues.”

The “highest profile example of the renewed fighting feminist spirit in Israel,” the writers assert, may be “the stunning success this year of Women of the Wall,” (WOW), the group of feminists that has made a point of gathering monthly at the Western Wall, or Kotel Maaravi, to hold vocal services while wearing religious garb and items traditionally worn by men, which offends the charedi men and women who regularly pray at the site around the clock.

Mss. Sommer and Lithwick, hopelessly hopeful, posit the possibility that “the rising tide of feminist activism… will ultimately engage Haredi women as well.”  Evidence for the unlikelihood of such cross-cultural contagiousness, however, lies no farther than the Kotel plaza itself.

For the past several Jewish Rosh Chodesh, or “new month,” morning prayer services, when WOW holds its untraditional services, the group and its supporters were outnumbered on the order of 1:100 by charedi women, young and old, who quietly prayed in a passive but striking assertion of their own convictions, those of the millennia-old Jewish religious tradition.  (Unsurprisingly, the media, dutifully summoned by WOW’s leaders to boost its public profile among non-Orthodox American Jews, focused on handfuls of idiotic, inexcusable and uncouth young men who jeered and even threw things at the successful provocateurs.)

The many thousands of women quietly praying at the Wall, while they made no sound, spoke loudly.  About who truly cares about the Kotel and the Holy Temple that once stood on its other side, and about true empowerment of women.  They know the inestimable value of their roles as wives and mothers and future mothers, as teachers of their children and of other Jews, as women like those at the time of the exodus from Egypt, the “righteous women” in whose merit, the Talmud teaches, the Jewish People were able to leave the land of their enslavement.

So yes, as the article states, there is indeed a challenge to Jewish “fundamentalism” – the Judaism of the ages – in Israel these days. The challengers are the American movement called Reform and its small but militant Israeli counterpart, comprised of American immigrants and a smattering of “progressive” native women.  And the challengers have indeed made some headway in Israel’s secular courts, and will likely make further gains as they file new lawsuits against charedim and their practices.

What is lost on many observers, though, is the fact that Israel’s charedim seek only to maintain their fealty to the Jewish religious tradition that, in the end, is the heritage of all Jews. They have made no moves to change the religious status quo that has been in effect in Israel since its inception.  The lawsuits and public campaigns have all been initiated by IRAC and its allies.

And so, while Israel’s secular courts, perhaps with subconscious envy of (or conscious aiming at) American-style religion/state separation, may well look favorably on the demands of the self-styled White Knights, one thing is certain: those “progressives” are the antagonists here.

And by mischaracterizing charedim as intent on trying to change other Israelis’ lives, by painting religious Jews as a sinister, growing Black Peril that must be arrested before it is too late, the modern-day crusaders miss a terrible irony: They are engaging in the very same sort of vilification that has been, at times similarly successfully, employed over centuries by enemies of all Jews.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

 

 

Musing: Two NYT Articles about Israel Say it All

Two recent articles in the New York Times conveyed as informative a picture of Palestinians and Israel as might be imagined.  One, on August 4,  profiled the “culture of conflict” nurtured by West Bank Palestinians, focusing on Arab teenagers’ delight in throwing large stones at Israel soldiers and Jewish residents of nearby communities, and younger boys’ games imitating their elders’ activities.

“Children have hobbies,” one teen, Muhammad, is quoted as explaining, “and my hobby is throwing stones.”

When a 17-year-old, arrested for his stone-throwing, was released in June after 16 months in prison, the article reports, “he was welcomed like a war hero with flags and fireworks, women in wedding finery lining the streets to cheer his motorcade.”

The second Times piece, the next day, described how, in its headline’s words, “Doctors in Israel Quietly Tend to Syria’s Wounded.”

Most Syrian patients “come here unconscious with head injuries,” said Dr. Masad Barhoum, the director general of one of the hospitals, the Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya. “They wake up after a few days or whenever and hear a strange language and see strange people,” he continued. “If they can talk, the first question is, ‘Where am I?’ ”

“I am sure,” he added “there is an initial shock when they hear they are in Israel.”

A 13-year-old girl, who had required complex surgery, was interviewed “sitting up in bed in a pink Pooh Bear T-shirt.”  Her aunt, who had managed to locate her and was happy with the treatment her niece had received, told the reporter that they hoped to return to Syria later this week.

“Asked what she will say when she goes back home, the aunt replied: ‘I won’t say that I was in Israel. It is forbidden to be here, and I am afraid of the reactions’.”

The two pieces, taken together, really say it all.

Addendum

A correspondent  had some complaints about my essay below “Meet Cindy,” and since the points he raised are important ones, I am sharing my slightly edited responses to him here.

He quoted the following paragraph from my essay:

“And a country that calls itself the Jewish one, it can well be argued, has a special responsibility to underwrite the portion of its populace that is willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism.”

And then commented:

The charedi community is not willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism. In classical Judaism – both in sources in the Gemara and Rishonim, and in actual Jewish history – people worked to support their families. Following the directives of Chazal, people raised their children with the skills, the desire and the motivation to work for a living. There was no system of mass kollel.

The charedi community is not willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism. It is willfully destitute because of its dedication to perverting classical Judaism.

My response:

Classical Judaism is, above all, hewing to the interpretation/application of the Torah’s timeless principles to each generation and place’s situation and needs.  The dorshov of each dor vi’dor [spiritual leaders of each generation] are the arbiters of what is required of us in each era of our history.

I may personally be (and am, in fact) a Hirschian in outlook, and be as puzzled as you at the seeming shunning of what seems to me to be healthy development for Klal Yisrael in Eretz Yisrael.  But even Rav Hirsch, in his day, recognized that his school model in Germany could not be “exported” to Eretz Yisrael.  To ascertain when we are correct and when we are not is what we have Gedolim [recognized spiritual leaders] for.

In the end, whatever my natural personal view, my emunas chachamim [trust in the judgment of the wise] trumps it.  When there is a consensus of the greatest and most recognized Gedolim that a certain departure from the historic norm (and the historical uniquenesses of our times are many), I don’t second-guess them, because I believe that Hashem’s will is that I follow the decisions of the judges “in my day.”

My correspondent then asserted that my analogy between charedim and my fictional creation Cindy was flawed.  He wrote:

1. Cindi is raising her children to be productive citizens, not to also require welfare.

2. Motherhood is something valued by everyone. Being charedi is not. (It’s not being a religious Jew that we’re discussing – plenty of people who work are also religious Jews.)

3. Cindi is presumably appreciative for the aid. She’s not part of a movement that disparages the government, refuses to serve in the army even in times of great national danger, and refuses to display any gratitude to those who defend her and those who financially support her.

4. Cindi’s situation is unplanned, unwanted, and she hopes to get out of it one day.

My response:

1)  Perhaps she is, perhaps she isn’t.  But if she isn’t, should we feel differently about her?  And if so, should we see ourselves as responsible public policy makers or as social engineers?  You may well disagree with my feeling that how Cindy raises her children should not matter, and I respect your point of view on that, but I reject it.

2) My essay wasn’t an attempt to convince a reader that the charedi way is right or wrong.  It was intended only to, through a thought experiment, help him/her to better relate to how charedim feel.

3)  Most charedim do not disparage the government (at least not any more than non-charedim or secular Israelis).  Their avoidance of military service is for principled religious reasons, not as some sort of eye-poking (and they contribute – at least to those of us who consider Torah-study to be protective of Klal Yisrael – much to the security of the state). 

And I explicitly wrote that charedim need to be makir tov [have and express gratitude to the state for what it provides them].

4) That is a valid difference.  Whether it makes a difference is another matter.  I don’t think it does.   

Meet Cindy

Meet Cindy.

A single mother living in the Midwest with her three young children, she’s deeply unhappy because of the news she received the other day.

Although Cindy does some sales work from her computer at home, her income is insufficient to cover the monthly mortgage payments for her small home and food and clothing for her family. Until now, though, she has managed to make ends meet, with the help of various social safety-net needs-based programs like WIC and food stamps.

Earlier this week, though, Cindy, and hundreds of thousands of others like her, received word that the government is ending those programs.  Budgetary concerns were one reason given but the letter Cindy received also noted that she could still qualify for some of the benefits she was receiving if she found and accepted a full-time job.  “When citizens like you, Cindy,” the personalized form letter explained, “are a regular part of the workforce, it benefits not only you and your family, but the economy as a whole.  And that is something that every loyal citizen should appreciate!”

Well, says Cindy to herself somewhat bitterly, I don’t.  The state of the economy is important, but improving it isn’t my main personal goal.  Raising my children myself is what I consider my immediate mandate. Spending my days in an office or behind a counter and entrusting my children to some sitter is not what I consider good parenting. Being a full-time mother, she tells herself, may not make me a model citizen, but it makes me, at least in my mind, a model human being.  My children are my most important asset.

The new bad news, moreover, came on the heels of some earlier unhappy tidings, the repeal of the federal mortgage interest tax deduction, which increased Cindy’s tax bill by a good chunk of her income.

Making Cindy even more outraged and despondent was the popular move to require that every American child join a “junior civil service program” where values she (as a conservative Christian) doesn’t endorse are taught.  And then, to top things off, there were the relentless media and public assaults on “welfare” single parents like her, the newspaper editorials and talk-show hosts labeling of them as “freeloaders,” “unpatriotic” and even “parasites.”  It made her angry enough to cry.

Cindy, of course, and her troubles, are hypothetical.  Our country still extends a generous safety net to its neediest citizens, and the mortgage interest deduction is alive and well. Children are not forced into any educational program and can even be home-schooled.  But can you relate to how hypothetical Cindy would feel if the nightmare scenario were in fact real?  If so, then you might better appreciate how charedim in Israel are feeling these days.

Over the past decade or so, their social services – primarily in the form of child allowances – have been drastically cut, several times.  Now what is left of the allowances is under the knife again. And charedim are being pressured to forgo full-time Torah-study, their “most important asset” and first priority.  They are told that they must enter the army, even though there is no need for them in the military (as its leaders have repeatedly stated) and they fear the impact Israel’s “military melting pot” will have on their lives.  They are vilified without pause, and cajoled to act not in what they consider their best interest (and the best interest, ultimately, of the entire country) but rather just to do what they are told.  All, of course, for “the economy” and the “greater good.”

No one, to be sure, can claim a “right” to social service entitlements.  And one can, if he chooses, take the stance that no citizen of any country should expect, for any reason, that the government needs to take care of him in any way. That’s a perfectly defensible position, at least from a perspective of cold logic.

But every compassionate country recognizes the rightness of assisting the poor.  And a country that calls itself the Jewish one, it can well be argued, has a special responsibility to underwrite the portion of its populace that is willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism (which, as it happens, is what kept the connection between Jews in the Diaspora and their ancestral land alive for millennia, and allowed for a state of Israel in the first place).

Gratitude for what one has received is a deeply Jewish ideal.  And Israeli charedim should indeed feel and express gratitude for all that the state provides them.  But absent are calls for non-charedi Israelis – or the rest of us –  to consider feeling and expressing gratitude for the charedi willingness to live financially constricted lives in order to remain immersed in Jewish practice and learning.  Instead, just the opposite is seen: Israeli charedim are used as political pawns, regarded and portrayed and treated as Israel’s misfortune.

Cindy would relate.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

A Piece of the Wall

I really must avoid spicy foods – even my wife’s scrumptious jalapeno pepper-laced cornbread – before retiring at night.  The recipe’s great, but for someone approaching 60, it’s a recipe, too, for indigestion-fueled nightmares.

The scene: the Kotel Maaravi, or “Western Wall” in Jerusalem.  The time: some future point, may it never arrive, when Anat Hoffman’s vision of the holy place has been realized.

Ms. Hoffman, of course, is the famously melodramatic chairwoman of the feminist group “Women of the Wall,” who has orchestrated countless demonstrations (with adoring media and bevy of cameras in tow) in the form of untraditional prayer services at the holy site; who has reveled in being arrested for her provocations by Israeli police; and who is celebrated by temple clubs and coffee klatches across the United States as the Jewish reincarnation of Rosa Parks.  She recently told a Jewish newspaper in California that the Wall should become, in effect, a timeshare.  “For six hours a day,” she explained, “the Wall will be a national monument, open to others but not to Orthodox men.”

Those “others,” in Chairman Hoffman’s hope, will presumably include not only the group she leads (and which she characterizes as praying in a halachic manner, although she is personally a Reform Jew) but any group seeking solace under the sheltering umbrella of “pluralism.”

Ms. Hoffman also serves as the executive director of the Reform group the Israel Religious Action Center, which laments the fact that “Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal, Humanistic, and secular Jews have no representation on the council overseeing the operations of the holy site” and declares that the current single standard there “must be changed.”

That’s what apparently fueled my nightmare.  In it, the timeshare model had apparently been found too cumbersome.  Each of the various groups laying claim to a “piece of the wall” wanted to express themselves without any time limit; and so a geographical solution to the pluralism problem had been instituted. The Kotel had been Balkanized.

One crowded sliver of the plaza continued to be a place of traditional Orthodox worship, men on one side of a partition, women on the other, everyone welcome.  But the area had been severely truncated, to make room for the others.

Nearby, the Reform service, comprised mostly of women in colorful talleitot and kippot, featured a folk guitarist and her choir.  (The Orthodox men next-door had resorted to earplugs.)

The Conservative service turnout was sparse, and most of those in attendance were on the far side of middle-age.

The Reconstructionist area was empty, but a sign designated its identity.

The Renewal spot was populated by various small groups of people, some quietly meditating in the lotus position, others dancing in a circle and others still seemingly lost in a daze of unknown provenance.

The Humanistic Kotel-space harbored a small band of people chanting “Hear O Israel, Humanity is holy, Humanity is One.”

There were other successful applicants for Kotel space too.  Over toward the end of what had once been the common plaza, was a Jewish animal rights group holding a “blessing of the pets” ceremony, which was followed by a noisy “bark mitzvah” celebration for a pug wearing a kippah.  And at the very end of the site were the Jewish Vegetarians of America, waving ceremonial stalks of celery.

At the other end of the pluralized plaza was the Jewish Global Warmist Alliance.  Its members were sitting on the ground, wrapped in sackcloth and singing dirges from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

At the back of the plaza, protesting the fact that they hadn’t yet been awarded a space of their own, were members of a “Hebrew-Christian” group, in Jewish religious garb of their own.

I woke up then, thankfully.  But not before I sensed a deeper, ethereal moaning, inaudible to human ears but causing the very universe to shudder, emanating from the other side of the Wall.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

 

Understanding the “Other”

It’s a story I tell a lot, since, well, its point comes up a lot.  Blessedly, my audience, at least judging from its response, hadn’t heard it before.

The psychiatrist asks the new patient what the problem is.  “I’m dead,” he confides earnestly, “but my family won’t believe me.”

The doctor raises an eyebrow, thinks a moment, and asks the patient what he knows about dead people.  After listing a few things – they don’t breathe, their hearts don’t beat – the patient adds, “and they don’t bleed very much.”  At which point the psychiatrist pulls out a blade and runs it against patient’s arm, which begins to bleed, profusely.

The patient is aghast and puzzled.  He looks up from his wound at the slyly smiling doctor and concedes, “I guess I was wrong.”

“Dead people,” he continues, “do bleed.”

I interrupted the laughter with the sobering suggestion that it’s not only the emotionally compromised victims of delusions, however, who see the world through their own particular lenses.  Most of us do, at least if we have strong convictions.  And the yields of those sometimes very different lenses are the stuff of conflict.

My brief presentation took place on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, as part of an April 23 panel discussion hosted by the 92nd St. Y and Gesher (in partnership with “Israel Talks,” a JCRC-NY initiative).  It featured former New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner, Gesher CEO Ilan Geal-Dor and me; the discussion was moderated by Professor Ari Goldman of Columbia University.  The topic: “Resolving Conflict with Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox Community.”

The point I sought to make with my little story and postscript was that a secular Jew and a religious Jew live in different universes, each providing its own perspective on reality.  The first step toward lessening the interpersonal tensions born of those alternate perspectives, I suggested, is simply recognizing that fact.  And the second is seeking – if you’re standing, you might want to sit down here – to occupy, if only for a few moments, the mind of the “other.”

That suggestion won’t sit well with those who imagine that all less-observant or non-observant Israelis are hateful, evil people, or with those who look down at the charedi community as a hopelessly backward and useless bunch.

But it’s a vital one for them, and everyone in both communities, to consider.  We charedim need to understand that many other Jews have never experienced a truly Jewish life and as a result have come to regard Jewish observance as a mere cultural heritage, and Torah-study as an unproductive vocation. No, not to accept those contentions, G-d forbid, but to understand  them, to perceive the roots of the secular disdain for Torah and for those who live and study it – giving us the tools to, at least where it can be done, change misperceptions.

Conversely, though, I continued, non-charedim, like most of the people I was addressing (though I greatly appreciated the presence of a handful of attendees who resembled my wife and me), do themselves a disservice if they don’t “try on” the perspective yielded by charedi convictions.  Again, not to succumb to the charedi mindset, just to better understand it.

And so, I touched on several issues.  We charedim really believe, I confided, that Torah – its observance and its study – protects the Jewish people.  Really.

We really believe, I continued, that what some call an “Orthodox monopoly” in religious matters in Israel is nothing other than an authentically Jewish standard – the only one that can preserve the oneness of Jewish people in the Jewish state.  Really.

We really believe that the peaceful spirit of Jewish unity that the Western Wall has evidenced for more than 40 years is threatened by those who want to change the mode of public worship there.  Really.

We really believe that traditional Jewish modesty is not misogynistic or prudish but as deeply Jewish an ideal as providing for the poor or caring for the sick.  Really.

Do any or all of those beliefs, I asked my listeners, strike you as bizarre?  “Of course they do!” I answered on the audience’s behalf.  (I read minds.)

“But you know what?” I went on.  “The non-charedi takes on security, pluralism, the Kotel and standards of dress are no less bizarre to us.”

The discussion that followed, primed by questions from the moderator and the audience, was an exercise in civility and intellectual give-and-take, particularly noteworthy considering the attempts of late by various parties in the media to bring a host of simmering issues to a boil.

At one point I mused how odd how it is that political conservatives tend to listen almost exclusively to Rush Limbaugh, and liberals, just as religiously, to NPR.  It really, I suggested, should be just the opposite.  After all, if you’re not listening to your adversary, you’re just listening to yourself.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

 

Musing: They’ve Uncovered Our Secret Weapon

Mehdi Taeb, who is close to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, recently revealed that the Jews are the most powerful sorcerers in the world today, and that they have used their powers to attack Iran.  While Iran has so far prevailed, he explained, the full force of Jewish sorcery has not yet been brought to bear.

“The [Jewish] people,” he confided, “believe that it is possible to…  even…  control G-d’s decisions, by using sorcery methods… ”

Don’t know about sorcery, but prayer and repentance have indeed long demonstrated the potential to merit Divine assistance.