Jewish Fundamentalism in
Israel
by Israel Shahak and Norton
Mezvinky
Pluto Press, 1999, paper
p6
The customary two-way division of Israeli Jewish society rests
upon the cornerstone recognition that as a group Israeli Jews
are highly ideological. This is best evidenced by their high percentage
of voting, which usually exceeds 80 per cent. In the May 1996
elections, over 95 per cent of the better educated, richer, secular
Jews and the religious Jews in all categories of education and
income voted. After discounting the large number of Israeli Jews
who live outside Israel (over 400,000), most of whom did not vote,
it can be safely assumed that almost every eligible voter in these
two crucial segments of the population voted. Most Israeli political
observers by now assume that Israeli Jews are divided into two
categories: Israel A and Israel B. Israel A, often referred to
as the "left," is politically represented by the Labor
and Meretz Parties; Israel B, referred to as the "right"
or the "right and religious parties," is comprised of
all the other Jewish parties. Almost all of Israel A and a great
majority of Israel B (the exception being some of the fundamentalist
Jews) strongly adhere to Zionist ideology, which in brief, holds
that all or at least the majority of Jews should emigrate to Palestine,
which as the Land of Israel, belongs to all Jews and should be
a Jewish state. A strong and increasing enmity between these two
segments of Israeli society nevertheless exists. There are many
reasons for this enmity. The reason relevant to this study is
that Israel B, including its secular members, is sympathetic to
Jewish fundamentalism while Israel A is not. It is apparent from
studies of election results over a long period of time that Israel
B has consistently obtained a numerical edge over Israel A. This
is ,~ an indication that the number of Jews influenced by Jewish
fundamentalism is consistently increasing.
In his article "Religion, Nationalism
and Democracy in Israel," published in the Autumn 1994 issue
of the periodical, Z' Manim (no. 50-51), Professor Baruch Kimmerling,
a faculty member of Hebrew University's sociology department,
presented data pertaining to the religious division of Israeli
Jewish society. Citing numerous research studies, Kimmerling showed
conclusively that Israeli Jewish society is far more divided on
religious issues than is generally assumed outside of Israel,
where belief in generalizations, such as "common to all Jews,"
is challenged less than in Israel. Quoting the data of a survey
taken by the prestigious Gutman Institute of the Hebrew University
in Jerusalem, Kimmerling pointed out that whereas 19 per cent
of Israeli Jews said they prayed daily, another 19 per cent declared
that they would not enter a synagogue under any circumstances.
Influenced by the Gutman Institute analysis and similar studies,
Kimmerling and other scholars have concluded that Israel A and
Israel B contain hard-core believers who hold diametrically opposed
views of the Jewish religion. This conclusion is almost certainly
correct.
More generally, the attitude towards religion
in Israeli Jewish ~ ~ society can be divided into three parts.
The religious Jews observe , the commandments of the Jewish religion,
as defined by Orthodox rabbis, many of whom emphasize observance
more than belief. (The number of Reform and/or Conservative Jewish
in Israel is small.) The traditional Jews keep some of the more
important commandments while violating the more inconvenient ones;
they do honor the rabbis and the religion. The secularists may
occasionally enter a synagogue but respect neither the rabbis
nor the religious institutions. The line between traditional and
secular Jews is often vague, but the available studies indicate
that 25 to 30 per cent of Israeli Jews are secular, 50 to 55 per
cent are traditional and about 20 per cent are religious. Traditional
Jews obviously belong to both the Israel A and Israel B categories.
Israeli religious Jews are divided into
two distinctly different groups. The members of the religiously
more extreme group are called Haredim. (The singular word is Haredi
or Hared.) The members of the religiously more moderate group
are called religious-national Jews. The religious-national Jews
are sometimes called "knitted skullcaps" because of
their head covering. Haredim usually wear black skullcaps that
are never knitted, or hats. The religious- I national Jews otherwise
usually dress in the more usual Israeli fashion, while the Haredim
almost always wear black clothes.
p8
The basic tenets of the two groups of religious Jews need some
introductory explanation. The word "hared" is a common
Hebrew word meaning "fearful." During early Jewish history,
it meant "God-fearing" or exceptionally devout. In the
mid-nineteenth century it was adopted, first in Germany and Hungary
and later in other parts of the diaspora, as the name of the party
of religious Jews that opposed any modern innovation. The Ashkenazi
Haredim emerged as a backlash group opposed to the Jewish enlightenment
~n general and especially to those Jews who refused to accept
the total authority of the rabbis and who introduced innovations
into the Jewish worship and life style. Seeing that almost all
Jews accepted these innovations, the Haredim reacted even more
extremely and banned every innovation. The Haredim to date have
insisted upon the strictest observance of the Halacha. An illustrative
example of opposition to innovation is the previously mentioned
and still current black dress of the Haredim; this was the dress
fashion of Jews in Eastern Europe when the Haredim formed themselves
into a party. Before that time Jews dressed in many different
styles and were often indistinguishable in dress from their neighbors.
After a brief time, almost all Jews except for the Haredim again
dressed differently. The Halacha, moreover, does not enjoin Jews
to dress in black and/or to wear thick black coats and heavy fur
caps during the hot summer or at any other time. Yet, Haredim
in Israel continue to do so in opposition to innovation; they
insist that dress be kept as it was in Europe around 1850. A11
other considerations, including climatic ones, are overridden.
In contrast to the Haredim, the religious-nationalist
Jews of the NRP made their compromises with modernity at the beginning
of the 1920s when the split between the two large groupings in
religious Judaism first appeared in Palestine. This can be immediately
observed in their dress, which, with the exception of a small
skullcap, is conventional. Even more importantly, this is evident
in their selective observance of the Halacha, for example, in
their rejection of many commandments regarding women. NRP members
do not hesitate to admit women to positions of authority
in many of their organizations and in
the political party itself. Before both the 1992 and 1996 elections
the NRP published and distributed an advertisement, containing
photographs of various public figures including some women supporting
the party, and boasted more broadly on television of female support.
Haredim did not and would not do this. Even when Haredim, who
ban television watching for themselves, decided to present some
television election programs directed to other Jews, they insisted
that all participants be male. During the 1992 campaign the editors
of a Haredi weekly consulted the rabbinical censor about whether
or not to publish the above-mentioned NRP advertisement. The rabbinical
censor ordered the paper to publish the advertisement with all
photographs of the NRP women blotted out. The editors did what
the censor ordered. Outraged, the NRP sued the newspaper for libel
and sought damages in Israeli secular courts, disregarding the
rulings of Haredi rabbis prohibiting using secular courts to settle
disputes among Jews.
The religious-nationalist Jewish compromises
with modernity regarding women are exceedingly complicated in
many ways. The Halacha forbids Jewish males to listen to women
singing whether in a choir or solo regardless of what is sung.
This is stated directly in the halachic ruling that a voice of
a woman is adultery. This is interpreted by later halachic rulings
stipulating that the word "voice" here means a woman's
singing not speaking. This rule, originating in the Talmud, occurs
in all codes of law. A Jewish male who willingly listens to a
woman's singing commits a sin equivalent either to adultery or
fornication. The great majority of NRP faithful members, nevertheless,
listen to women singing and thus commit "adultery" routinely.
Some of the most strict NRP members, especially among the religious
settlers in the West Bank, have not only puzzled over this problem
but at times have tried to solve the problem of how to adjust
by developing creative approaches. In the early 1990s some of
the settlers founded a new radio station, Arutz, or Channel, 7.
For their station to become successful and to appeal as broadly
as possible to Israeli Jews, the settlers understood that the
songs of the fashionable singers of the day, some of whom were
women, would have to be broadcast. The rabbinical censor, however,
has refused to allow a breach of the Halacha whereby male listeners
would hear female singers and thus commit "adultery."
After further consultation with the censor, the settlers devised
an acceptable solution that is still being employed. Men sing
the songs, made popular by women; the male voices are then electronically
changed to the female pitch and are broadcast accordingly over
Arutz 7. A part of the traditional public is satisfied by this
expedient, and the learned NRP rabbis insist that no adultery
is committed when men listen to the songs being sung.
The Haredim obviously have rejected and
condemned this accommodation and to date have refused to listen
to Arutz 7. Even more importantly, the Haredim, after increasing
somewhat their political power in the 1988 elections, were able
to impose their position in this regard upon the whole state by
forcing a change in the opening of the new Knesset session. The
opening ceremony previously began with the singing of "Hatikva,"
the Israeli national anthem, by a mixed male female choir. After
the 1988 election, in deference to Haredi sensitivities, a male
singer replaced the mixed choir. After the 1992 election, won
by Labor, an all-male choir of the Military Rabbinate sang "Hatikva."
How can the Haredim, who altogether constitute
only a small percentage of Israel's Jewish population, at times,
either alone or even with the help of the NRP, impose their will
upon the rest of society? The facile explanation is that both
the Labor and Likud parties kowtow to the Haredim for political
support. This explanation is insufficient. The kowtowing continued
between 1984 and 1990 during the time that Labor and Likud had
formed a coalition. Currying favor from the Haredim for alignment
purposes was then politically unnecessary. The offered explanation,
furthermore, does not adequately take into account the special
affinity of all the religious parties, perceived since 1980 as
fundamentalist, to Likud and other secular right-wing parties.
This affinity, especially between Likud and the Haredi religious
parties, based upon a shared world outlook, is at the crux of
Israeli politics. (This affinity is analogous to that existing
between Christian and Muslim fundamentalists and their secular
right parties.) The relatively simple case of the NRP illustrates
this well. The NRP recognizes, although does not always follow,
the same halachic authorities as do the Haredi parties. The NRP
also adheres to the same ideals relating to the Jewish past and,
more importantly, to the future when Israel's triumph over the
non-Jews will allegedly be secure. The differences between the
NRP and the Haredim stem from the NRP's belief that redemption
has begun and will soon be completed by the imminent coming of
the Messiah. The Haredim do not share this belief. The NRP believes
that special circumstances at the beginning of redemption justify
temporary departures from the ideal that could help advance the
process of redemption. NRP support in some situations for military
service for talmudic scholars is a relevant example here. These
deviant NRP ideas have been undermined since the 1970s by the
expanding Haredi influence upon increasing numbers of NRP followers
who have resisted departures from strict talmudic norms and have
favored Haredi positions. This process has been counter-balanced
to some extent by the growth in prestige of the NRP settlers who
are esteemed as pioneers of messianism even though the assassination
of Prime Minister Rabin by a messianist may have momentarily increased
Haredi prestige.
The religious influence upon the Israeli
right-wing of Israel B is attributable both to its militaristic
character and its widely shared world outlook. Secular and militaristic
right-wing, Israeli Jews hold political views and engage in rhetoric
similar to that of religious Jews. For most Likud followers, "Jewish
blood" is the reason why Jews are in a different category
than non-Jews, including, of course, even those non-Jews who are
Israeli citizens and who serve in the Israeli army. For religious
Jews, the blood of non-Jews has no intrinsic value; for Likud,
it has limited value. Menachem Begin's masterful use of such rhetoric
about Gentiles brought him votes and popularity and thus constitutes
a case in point. The difference in this respect between Labor
and Likud is rhetorical but is nevertheless important in that
it reveals part of a world outlook. In 1982, for example, when
the Israeli army occupied Beirut, Rabin representing Labor, although
advocating the same policies as favored by Sharon and Likud, did
not explain the Sabra and Shatila Camp massacres by stating, as
did Begin: "Gentiles kill Gentiles and blame the Jews."
Even if Rabin had himself been capable of saying this, he knew
that most of his secular supporters in Labor, who distinguish
between Gentiles who hate Jews and those who do not, would not
have tolerated such a statement. They would have repudiated such
rhetoric as being both untrue and harmful.
Religious influence is evident in the
right's general reverence for the Jewish past and its insistence
that Jews have an historic right to an expanded Israel extending
beyond its present borders. More than other secular Israelis,
members of the Israeli right insist upon Jewish uniqueness. During
many centuries of their existence, the great majority of Jews
were similar in some ways to the present-day Haredim. Thus, those
Jews who today revere the Jewish past as evidence of Jewish uniqueness
respect to some extent religious Jews as perpetuators of that
past. An essential part of the right's emphasis upon uniqueness
is its hatred of the concept of "normality," that is,
that Jews are similar to other people and have the same desire
for stability as do other nations. Some cultural affinities between
secular and religious Jews of the Israeli right are not primarily
ideological. Many Likud supporters, whether Sephardic or Ashkenazi
in origin, are traditionalists; they view rabbis as glamorous
figures and are affected by childhood memories of the patriarchal
family in which education was dominated by the grandfather and
the women "knew their place." Although most pronounced
in those of the religious vanguard, such considerations also affect
secular Jews of the right. The right often exaggerates the beauty
and superiority of the Jewish past, especially when arguing for
the preservation of Jewish uniqueness.
p13
Those chauvinistic Jews who speak with utmost confidence about
Israel's power and ability to impose its will upon the Middle
East are most susceptible to such fears. The same people who predict
that a second Holocaust will almost immediately occur if Israel
makes any concession to the Arabs also often state categorically
that the Israeli army, if not restrained by politicians, by Americans,
or by leftist Jews, could conquer Baghdad within one week. (Ariel
Sharon actually made this claim a few months before the outbreak
of the October 1973 war.) The fear and the self-confidence co-exist
harmoniously. The belief in Jewish uniqueness enhances this coexistence.
Most foreign observers do not realize that a sizeable segment
of the Israeli Jewish public holds these chauvinistic views. The
schizophrenic blend of inordinate fears and exaggerated self-confidence,
common to the Israeli secular right and religious Jews, resembles
ideas held by anti-Semites who usually view Jews as being at the
same time both powerful and easy to defeat. This is one of the
reasons why attitudes of Israeli right-wing individuals toward
the Gentiles, especially toward the Arabs, resemble so closely
the attitudes of anti-Semites toward the Jews.
The secular right and the religious Jews
also share other fears. They fear the West and its public opinion.
They fear and condemn Jewish leftists, a term sufficiently broad
to include most Labor followers, for not being sufficiently Jewish,
for preferring Arabs to Jews and for living lives of delusion.
They view the left as dangerous because of its ability to attract
new recruits, especially from the ranks of the country's intellectual
elite.
The issue of normalcy most divides the
Israeli right from the left. The left longs for normalcy and wants
Jews to be a nation like all other nations. The entire Israeli
right, on the other hand, is united in its resentment of the idea
of normalcy and its belief, along the lines of the Jewish religion,
that Jews are exceptional - different from other people and nations.
Reverence for the national past allegedly solidifies this uniqueness.
Religious Jews believe that God made the Jews unique; many of
the secular right believe that Jews are doomed to be unique by
their past and have no free choice in this matter.
Another, but somewhat less important,
reason for the affinity between the secular right and religious
Jews is that the latter are capable of providing "convincing"
arguments for perpetual Jewish rule over the land of Israel and
for the denial of certain basic rights to the Palestinians. These
arguments are not only put in terms of national security but more
importantly in terms of the God-given right to these territories.
The secular Likud scholars and politicians are often far too alienated
from the Jewish past and Jewish values to talk competently, or
indeed even to understand properly, such matters. Only the religious
can provide an in-depth rationale for Likud's policies, which
are grounded not in short-term strategic considerations but rather
in the long history of the special relationship between God and
his chosen people.
p23
Although expanding steadily from the early 1970s, Jewish religious
fundamentalism in Israel attracted relatively little interest
in the dominant secularly oriented Israeli society until 1988.
Members of the various Haredi sects, generally self-contained
in residentially segregated areas of Israeli cities, led lives
absorbed by concerns and preoccupations that appeared exotic at
best to outsiders. Although some members of these sects clashed
sharply over specific issues with the secular part of Israeli
society and at those times acquired a bit of public attention,
they were mostly ignored. The sensational Haredi political success
in the Israeli parliamentary elections of 1988, predicted by none
of the professional pollsters, surprised many people. Because
of their continued political successes in succeeding elections
through the 1 990s, the Haredim put themselves into a position
at various times to be able to dictate to the Israeli secular
majority.
... Concern with education has provided
the major answer to both questions. The Haredi have on balance
successfully educated their own children and other Jewish children,
over whom they have obtained custody, in a manner guaranteeing
maximum continuity. The Haredi have influenced many Israeli Jews
in addition to their own by acquiring direct authority over several
school networks and by indirectly influencing numbers of other
schools.
Throughout the twentieth century, the
Haredim have attempted to continue Jewish education as it had
mostly existed in the diaspora before the Enlightenment influenced
Jewish society. The governments in the countries in which the
Haredim lived, however, have at times insisted upon some modernized
curricular content that was inconsistent with and in opposition
to what had previously been taught in Jewish schools. This was
the case in Israel until 1980. Since 1980, helped by generous
Israeli governmental subsidies, the Haredim have attempted with
some success to reimpose the earlier type of Jewish education
and the earlier school networking system in many poorer provincial
Israeli towns and in slum areas of larger Israeli cities. The
Haredi goal has obviously been to perpetuate their educational
influence upon an increasing segment of younger generation Israelis.
p29
The granting of special privileges for pursuing sacred studies
exists in modern Israeli society. One of the most controversial
issues in the State of Israel has been, and continues to be, the
deferments from military service for most students and graduates
of yeshivot. These students and graduates first receive a draft
deferment on the basis of declarations from heads of yeshivot.
When their deferments expire, the students or graduates are either
entirely exempted from army service or are inducted directly into
the army reserve forces after undergoing only brief and cursory
recruit training. They are disqualified from serving in any dangerous
or even unpleasant capacities. Their chances of being killed or
wounded in wartime are thus greatly reduced. Their deferments
mean that these students or graduates do not have to serve in
the army for the period of three years, which is compulsory for
all other Israeli Jewish males who are between the ages of eighteen
and twenty-one. In his analysis of this situation, Ehud Asheri
reported in his August 22, 1996 article, published in Haaretz,
that at that time 5 per cent of all Jewish males were so deferred.
The vehement passions aroused by and the
debates over this issue have antagonistically deepened the split
between Israeli Jewish secularists and the Haredim. Currently,
many secular Jews complain, as they and others have in the past,
that the Haredim do not share equally with other Israeli Jews
the tasks and burdens imposed upon society. The Haredim argue,
as they continually have in the past, that such reasoning is fallacious.
Influenced by their education, the Haredim are convinced that
all victories as well as defeats of the Israeli army are due to
God's intervention and that without doubt God takes into consideration
the numbers, progress in study and commitment of those Jews who
engage in talmudic study. The Haredim cite numerous passages in
the Talmud and in subsequent talmudic literature that are emphatic
on this point. Not only the privileged students and graduates
of yeshivot but also traditional Israeli Jews support the Haredim
and the cited sacred Jewish writings on this point.
The attitude of many secular Israeli Jews
towards sacred studies and the Talmud is the exact opposite of
that held by the Haredim. Secularly oriented parodies of the Talmud
have remained popular and still abound in Israeli society. Many
of these parodies revolve around the Haredi rationale underlying
the deferment and exclusion from military service. In December
1988, for example, during one of the recurrent disputations about
the deferment from service of yeshiva students, the Haredim pointed
to the talmudic version of the biblical account of the victories
of Yo'av, the general of King David. The Haredim quoted the talmudic
interpretation that these victories were attributable to David's
sacred studies, since in their view Talmud in an oral form dated
back to Moses and perhaps to Abraham and was written later. Some
secular writers responded publicly that David rather remained
at home and sent Yo'av to fight, because he was occupied in committing
adultery with Bathsheba and causing the death of her husband,
Uriah. One columnist in the Israeli press, certainly not Haredi-oriented,
opined that David was probably more keen about studying Bathsheba's
bodily curvature than he was about studying the Talmud. Such debate
has had, and continues to have, a bearing upon Israel similar
in some ways to the effect upon politics that similar debate had
in Christian Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. What
many foreign observers of Israeli Jewish society have not grasped
is that, even with the scientific and technological accomplishments
in Israel, the Haredim and most other Israeli Jewish fundamentalists
live figuratively in a time period that corresponds closely to
European Christian societies many generations ago. These fundamentalists
have not made the quantum leap, as have secular Israelis, into
modern times. The tension between fundamentalist and secular Israelis,
therefore, stems mostly from the fact that these two groups live
in different time periods.
Haredim often propound theories even more
extreme than those mentioned previously. Many Haredi rabbis, for
example, assert that the Holocaust, including most particularly
the deaths of one-and-a-half million Jewish children, was a well-deserved
divine punishment, not only for all the sins of modernity and
faith renunciation by many Jews, but also for the decline of Talmudic
study in Europe. The Haredim and their traditional Jewish followers
attribute the death of every Jew, including each innocent child,
not to natural causes but to direct action of God. The Haredim
believe that God punishes each Jew for his or her sins and sometimes
punishes the entire Jewish community, including many who are innocent,
because of the sins committed by other Jews. In 1985, when twenty-two
children, twelve and thirteen years of age, were killed in the
town of Petah Tikva in a traffic accident involving their bus,
Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz, one of the heads of the Shas Party and the
then Minister of the Interior, stated in a television appearance
that the children were victims, because a movie house was allowed
to remain open on the Sabbath eve. Many members of the Hebrew
press, predominantly representing secular Jews, attacked Rabbi
Peretz mercilessly for making this statement. The Shas Party,
nevertheless, in the next election did not lose but rather gained
votes in various places, including Petah Tikva. The Haredim held
and advocate similar beliefs about God's punishing and rewarding
Jews in many areas of life on the basis of Jews' either committing
sins or following God's word.
In the late 1 990s, the primary concern
of the Haredim is to expand their educational system, especially
in poorer localities wherein they successfully offer material
inducements such as hot meals. The Haredim strongly lobby the
non-Haredi public schools with their propaganda. In some places
these lobbying efforts are successful. In other areas the fierce
opposition by parents who are educated and politically effective
thwarts the Haredi propaganda and lobbying efforts. Haredi influence
is sometimes extreme in specific places. In Netivot, one of the
most religious towns in Israel, for example, the Haredim have
successfully opposed any public high school, because it would
be obligated to provide instruction in secular subjects. Netivot
is the only Jewish town in Israel without a high school.
In order to proselytize and to spread
their superstitions, Haredim often exploit the distress of people.
Relatives of terminally ill hospital patients, especially if they
are traditional, are often approached by messengers of a charismatic
rabbi, who first reiterate that the doctors cannot help and then
suggest that the relatives buy some sacred water, consecrated
by a certain rabbi, and smear the patient with it. The messengers
relate stories about miracles that occur after the use of this
sacred water, which is never distributed without a non-returnable
payment. The messengers, of course, never mention the failure
of sacred water miracles. The secular Hebrew press at times will
report on the failure of these miracles, especially when a large
amount of money is known to have been spent for the sacred water.
Such reporting, however, most often only deepens the chasm between
those who read and those who do not read but loathe the secular
Hebrew press. In their own press the Haredim not only attack the
secular press but also display their general hostility towards
secular Israeli Jews. Until the later part of the 1 980s, most
of the Israeli Jewish public paid little attention to the Haredi
press. Since then, general public attention has increased considerably.
Dov Albaum, one of Israel's foremost experts on Haredi affairs,
focused upon this point in two Hebrew-language articles, one published
in the August 30, 1996 issue of the newspaper, Yediot Ahronot,
the other published in the July-August issue of the bi-monthly
periodical, Ha'ain Hashvi'it (The Seventh Eye), which is published
by the Israeli Democracy Institute and is devoted to analyzing
the Israeli press. Albaum discussed the structure of the Haredi
press in Yediot Ahronot and then proceeded to a discussion in
Ha'ain Hashvi'it of the Haredi attitude as a whole towards secular
Israeli Jews. According to Albaum, the violent attacks in the
Haredi press upon Aharon Barak, the president of the Israeli Supreme
Court, attracted increased public attention. The Haredi press
called Barak "the most dangerous enemy ever to face the Haredi
public." Albaum pointed out that the earlier Haredi press
attacks upon the left-wing kibbutzim, the Israeli army, the secular
media and many other secular institutions and figures aroused
little general interest. The attack upon the Supreme Court, long
regarded as the holiest symbol of Israeli secular democracy, piqued
the interest of many secular Jews. The violent Haredi press attacks
upon Yitzhak Rabin, while he was prime minister, did not have
the same effect. Shortly before Rabin's assassination an article
in one of the most popular Haredi weekly publications, Ha'Shavua
(The Week) predicted:
The day will come when the Jews will
bring Rabin and Peres to the defendant's bench in court with the
only two alternatives being the noose or the insane asylum. This
insane and evil pair have either gone mad or are obvious traitors.
Rabin and Peres have guaranteed their place in the Jewish memory
as evil Jews of the worst kind. They resemble the apostates or
the Jews who served the Nazis.
Reiterating that secular Jewish interest
in Israel heightened after the attack upon Barak and the Supreme
Court, Albaum observed that increasing numbers of secular Israelis
are insulted when they read in the Haredi press that their lives
are garbage and their children are hallucinating, lifeless drug
addicts. Albaum explained:
Haredi journalists deliberately exaggerate
all marginal phenomena in secular society. They describe all murders,
cases of alcoholism and hard drug situations as characteristics
of secular Jewish society. In addition, they allege as facts incorrect
statements, engage in the wildest forms of slander and often use
the most derogatory terminology. Their aim is to condemn absolutely
the secular, Jewish lifestyle.
It is difficult to avoid considering such
depiction as analogous to the Nazi methodology.
p37
By design, Haredi rabbis and politicians select secular women
in politics as the primary targets of their attacks, even though
they could pinpoint secular men as much, if not more, for transgressions
of religious law. The Haredim repeatedly refer to Jewish women,
engaged in politics, as witches, bitches or demons. Although a
bit crude at times in the use of descriptive language, the Haredim
approach mirrors to a great extent traditional Judaism's broadly
based position regarding women. This position not only restricts
the rights of women but in many ways holds women in contempt.
Rule 8 in Chapter 3 of the Kitzur Shulhan Aruch (Abridgment of
Shulhan Aruch), an elementary textbook for Jews with little talmudic
education, for example, dictates: "A male should not walk
between two females or two dogs or two pigs. In the same manner
the males should not allow a woman, dog or pig to walk between
them. " A11 Haredi boys between the ages of ten and twelve
study and are required to observe this rule. (Few dogs and no
pigs can be found in Haredi neighborhoods.) Traditional Judaism
also prohibits women from playing even insignificant roles in
politics and/or in any public activities in which they may appear
to be leading males. Women are forbidden to drive buses or taxis;
they can drive private cars only if no males apart from those
in their own families or other women are passengers. These and
many rules are followed in Haredi neighborhoods. In these neighborhoods
women who are "dressed immodestly" are often insulted
and/or assaulted. Many traditionally religious Jewish males in
other than Haredi neighborhoods, who do not observe inconvenient
religious commandments, take the lead of the Haredim in resenting
and opposing participation of women in politics. These traditionally
religious males regard such participation by women as a threat
to their domination of their own families.
The numerous misogynistic statements in
the Talmud and in talmudic literature constitute a part of every
Haredi male's sacred study. The statement in Tractate Shabat,
page 152b, defining a woman is exemplary: "A woman is a sack
full of excrement. " The learned Talmudic Encyclopedia (volume
2, pages 255-7), written in modern Hebrew and thus understandable
to all educated Israeli Jews, devotes a section to the "nature
and behavior of women. " In this section the proposition
appears that the urge for the sexual act is greater among men
than among women. The evidence presented for this is that men
tend to hire women prostitutes because their urge for sex is greater
than the urge of women. For that reason the Halacha punishes a
wife who refuses to have sexual relations with her husband much
more severely than it punishes a husband who refuses to have sexual
relations with his wife. For the same reason a prospective husband
is obliged to see his wife-to-be before marrying her but a prospective
wife is not obligated to see her husband-to-be before marriage.
After seeing his prospective bride, moreover, the prospective
husband can send a messenger and conduct the marriage through
the messenger. Jewish folklore contains stories describing the
utilization of this procedure.
p40
Many Israeli Jews, who in their youth received thorough talmudic
educations, have later in their lives reacted antagonistically
against Orthodox Judaism's depiction and treatment of women. Some
of these Jews in reaction have written articles that are often
published in the Israeli Hebrew press but are almost never translated
into English. Kadid Leper, for example, a well-known Israeli journalist
who as a youth studied in a yeshiva for years before becoming
a secularist, wrote in his April 18, 1997 Hai'r article under
the title "Woman is a sack full of excrement," the following:
Beatings, sexual brutality, cruelty,
deprival of rights, use of a woman as merely a sexual object;
you can find all of this there [in the Talmud] ... For two thousand
years women had a well-defined place in the Jewish religion [Orthodox
Judaism]; this place is different from what the rabbinical establishment
describes; according to the Halacha, the place of women is in
the garbage heap together with cattle and slaves. According to
the Jewish religion [Orthodox Judaism] a man buys for himself
a slave woman for her entire life simply by providing food and
dress and granting to his wife the sexual act.
This kind of published article, together
with the many published reports of rabbinical harassment of women,
have not only firmed polarization in Israeli Jewish society but
have contributed significantly to the growing secular enmity towards
Haredim.
In many areas of Israeli Jewish society,
the Haredim continue to maintain their separateness and at the
same time assert that other Jews accept Haredi dicta. This is
well illustrated by an example from the area of medicine. In his
December 25, 1995 Yediot Ahronot article, Dov Albaum discussed
the request submitted two weeks previously by the Haredim to the
Israeli Ministry of Health:
Rabbi Yehoshua Sheinberger, the head
of the Medicine by Law Organization, requested what seemed to
be an innocent request that, as a concession to the religious
Jews, personal blood donations be permitted. Previously, a person
who donated a unit of blood for a patient undergoing surgery received
a document entitling the recipient of the donation to one unit
of blood from the general reserves of the Blood Bank. This new
request, if accepted, would create a situation in which blood
donors would be able to demand that hospitals or first aid stations
give their blood donations only to specific recipients.
Rabbi Sheinberger, supported by two other
important rabbis, argued that Haredim usually refuse to donate
blood but might change their attitude if this demand were accepted.
Albaum in his article discussed the additional motivation behind
this request:
Beneath the surface there is a completely
different problem that led to the rabbis' approaching the [Israeli]
Ministry of Health. Haredi religious law authorities have in recent
years dealt with the following issue: "Is it permissible
for a pious Jew to receive a blood transfusion from non-Jews or
from Jews who do not observe Jewish religious laws?" Haredi
rabbis fear that, receiving "tainted," secular blood,
or non-Jewish blood might cause a pious Jew to behave badly and
even, heaven forbid, harm his observance of the Jewish religious
laws.
Several months before the above-mentioned
request, Rabbi Ovadia Yoseph addressed this problem at length
in his new book, Questions and Answers - Statements: "Blood
that comes from forbidden [that is, non-kosher] foods may cause
a negative effect upon its Jewish recipients. It may produce bad
qualities, such as cruelty and/or boldness ... Therefore, a pious
Jew, who does urgently need a transfusion and who faces no danger
in waiting to receive blood from a strictly religious Jew, should
wait." Rabbi Yoseph offered similar advice for those pious
Jews needing organ transplants; he advised them only to accept
such donations from other pious Jews. This dictate erupted into
a serious dispute among rabbis in Israel and astonished many secular
Jews. In another published article, Albaum reported that Rabbi
Mordechai Eliyahu, a former chief rabbi of Israel, disagreed with
Rabbi Yoseph and stated: "When a secular Jew is born, he
is born with kosher blood and all the forbidden foods that he
later eats are dissolved and made marginal in his blood."
In regard to non-Jews, however, Rabbi Eliyahu mostly agreed with
Rabbi Yoseph and held that religious Jews should attempt to avoid
blood donations from them. Rabbi Eliyabu did not totally forbid
blood donations for Jews from non-Jews. He stated:
It is permitted at certain times that
Jews receive blood, or in the case of sucklings mother's milk,
from non-Jews, in spite of the fact that such blood is detrimental
to their Jewish characteristics and spirit. This is because blood
is transferred slowly and is made marginal in the cycling of Jewish
blood in the body. Nevertheless, when possible, a Jew should avoid
receiving such blood.
Rabbi Sheinberger finally admitted that
such rulings constituted the primary reason for his request: "The
Haredi community has a problem in this area. For the Haredim blood
from a Jew who eats only kosher food is preferable to blood from
a Jew who does not observe dietary laws." Other Haredi rabbis
agreed. Rabbi Levy Yitzhak Halperin, the head of the Scientific
Religious Institute for Jewish Law Problems explained: "Blood
donations from non-Jews or from Jews who eat forbidden foods are
a problem. Jewish religious law holds that a Jewish child should
preferably not be breast fed by a non-Jewish woman because her
milk consists of forbidden food and contaminates the Jewish child."
Such positions and statements antagonized secular Jews and met
great opposition from the great majority of members of the Israeli
medical profession.
In 1994 Rabbi Sheinberger ignited another
controversy and created scandal with a similar request. He met
with senior physicians from the Israel Transplants Association
and discussed with them the Jewish religious prohibition on organ
donations. In Israel Haredi Jews refuse organ transplants from
their and/or their relatives' corpses. On this issue the Haredi
position influences many people for superstitious as well as religious
reasons. Organ transplants in Israel are thus difficult to arrange.
Surgeons frequently request Haredi rabbis to appeal to their followers
to agree to organ transplants from corpses of their relatives
in order to save lives. The surgeons' argument is based upon the
Jewish religious law giving priority to saving Jewish lives. In
his discussion Rabbi Sheinberger put the condition that only a
Haredi rabbi could authorize such transplants. He explained: "Jewish
religious law states that it is forbidden to transplant Jewish
organs into either non-Jews or Jews who are not pious. It is obvious
that it is prohibited under any circumstances to transplant Jewish
organs into Arabs, all of whom hate Jews." Rabbi Sheinberger,
when asked for his definition of a Jew who is not pious, replied
that a rabbi must determine the status of every Jew. Sheinberger's
request caused a huge commotion and was rejected.
Many non-Haredi rabbis allow an organ
of a non-Jew to be transplanted into a body of a Jew in order
to save the life of the Jew. They, however, oppose the transplant
of an organ from a Jew into the body of a non-Jew. Some important
rabbis go much further in discussing and ruling about differences
between Jews and nonJews on medical matters. Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh,
an influential member of the Habad movement and the head of a
yeshiva near Nablus, for instance, opined in an April 26, 1996
Jewish Week article, reproduced in Haaretz that same day: "If
every single cell in a Jewish body entails divinity, and is thus
part of God, then every strand of DNA is a part of God. Therefore,
something is special about Jewish DNA." Rabbi Ginsburgh drew
two conclusions from this statement: "If a Jew needs a liver,
can he take the liver of an innocent non-Jew to save him? The
Torah would probably permit that. Jewish life has an infinite
value. There is something more holy and unique about Jewish life
than about non-Jewish life." It is noteworthy that Rabbi
Ginsburgh is one of the authors of a book lauding Baruch Goldstein,
the Patriarchs' Cave murderer. In that book Ginsburgh contributed
a chapter in which he wrote that a Jew's killing non-Jews does
not constitute murder according to the Jewish religion and that
killing of innocent Arabs for reasons of revenge is a Jewish virtue.
No influential Israeli rabbi has publicly l opposed Ginsburgh's
statements; most Israeli politicians have remained silent; some
Israeli politicians have openly supported him.
p55
In early 1974, almost immediately after the shock of the October
1973 war and a short time before the ceasefire agreement with
Syria was signed, Rabbi Kook's followers with their leader's blessing
and spiritual guidance founded Gush Emunim (Block of the Faithful).
The Gush Emunim aims were to initiate new and to expand already
existent Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories. With
the help of Shimon Peres, who in the summer of 1974 became the
Israeli defense minister and thus the person in charge of the
Occupied Territories, Gush Emunim in the remarkably short time
of a few years succeeded in changing Israeli settlement policy.
The Jewish settlements, which continue to spread throughout the
West Bank and to occupy a large chunk of the Gaza Strip, provide
testimony of and documentation for Gush Emunim's influence within
Israeli society and upon Israeli governmental policies.
Gush Emunim's success in changing Israeli
settlement policy in the 1 970s is politically explicable. Defense
Minister Moshe Dayan determined Israeli settlement policy from
the end of the 1967 war until 1974. He did not allow the establishment
of Jewish settlements in the bulk of the territories. The only
exception he made was to allow a tiny group of Jewish settlers
to live near Hebron. Dayan wanted to envelop the densely inhabited
parts of these areas by creating a settlement zone in the almost
uninhabited Jordan Valley and northern Sinai (the Yamit area).
In order to preserve the Israeli alliance with the feudal notables
who were in firm control of the villages (although not of the
larger towns), Dayan promised not to confiscate village lands;
he mostly kept his promise. Gush Emunim demonstrated its strength
by organizing enormous demonstrations in 1974 and 1975 opposing
the Dayan promise. These demonstrations were also directed against
United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for backing the
Dayan policy. Peres, who became defense minister after Dayan in
1974 in the first Rabin government (1974-77), initiated a new
policy which he called "functional compromise" and for
which he acquired Gush Emunim support. According to this policy
all the land inside the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that was
not being used by the inhabitants could be confiscated for the
exclusive use of the Jews. Palestinian political leaders who accepted
this new policy arrangement would be offered absolute rule over
Palestinians. The government of the State of Israel would control
only certain essential functions in Palestinian areas.
Prime Minister Rabin at first opposed
this policy. In 1975, Peres conspired with Gush Emunim and planned
strategy to combat Rabin's opposition. Gush Emunim organized a
mass rally in Sebastia, a disused railway station near Nablus.
Rabin forbade the demonstration, but Gush Emunim demonstrators
succeeded in circumventing the army roadblocks and assembled in
Sebastia. During the period of the ensuing lengthy negotiations
Peres lent some support to Gush Emunim. More demonstrators arrived
on the scene. Finally, a compromise settlement that favored Gush
Emunim was reached. Gush Emunim members were allowed to settle
in what is now the flourishing settlement of Kedumim. Operating
in much the same manner, Gush Emunim in 1976 with the help of
Peres founded the settlement Ofra as a temporary work camp and
the settlement Shilo as a temporary archaeological camp. Gush
Emunim also pursued similar policies and initiated settlement
beginnings in the Gaza Strip. The Gush Emunim settlements, agreed
to by Peres in 1975 and 1976, still exist and are flourishing.
Following the 1977 election of Menachem Begin as prime minister,
a "holy alliance" of the religious Gush Emunim and successive
secular Israeli governments occurred and has remained in place
to date.
Having achieved settlement policy successes,
Gush Emunim rabbis cleverly conducted a number of political intrigues
and were able to achieve domination of the NRP. From the mid-1980s
the NRP has followed the ideological lead of Gush Emunim. After
the death of Rabbi Kook the younger, the spiritual leadership
of Gush Emunim became centered in a semi-secret rabbinical council,
selected by mysterious criteria from among the most outstanding
disciples of Rabbi Kook. These rabbis have continued to make policy
decisions based upon their belief in certain innovative elements
of ideology not openly advocated or detailed but derived from
their distinct interpretation of Jewish mysticism, popularly known
as Cabbala. The writings of Rabbi Kook the elder serve as the
sacred texts and are perhaps intentionally even more obscure than
other cabbalistic writings. In-depth knowledge of talmudic and
cabbalistic literature, including modem interpretations of both,
and special training are prerequisites for understanding Kook's
writings. The implications of Kook's writings are theologically
too innovative to allow for a popularized presentation to an otherwise
educated Jewish public. This is probably the reason why so few
analyses of the Gush Emunim ideology have appeared. The one significant
a
p64
There can be little doubt that Gush Emunim has seriously affected
Israeli Jewish religious leaders and lay people. During the time
of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, for example, the military
rabbinate in Israel, clearly influenced by the ideas of the two
Rabbi Kooks, exhorted all Israeli soldiers to follow in the footsteps
of Joshua and to re-establish his divinely ordained conquest of
the land of Israel. This exhortation of conquest included extermination
of non-Jewish inhabitants.
p78
Media coverage of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories
has primarily focused upon effects on Palestinians and the threat
posed to peaceful resolution of conflict. From the prospective
of Jewish .fundamentalism the religious settlements should be
viewed from three standpoints: their standing as citadels of messianic
ideology, their present and potential influence upon Israeli society
and their potential role as the nuclei of the new society that
messianic leaders want to build.
Such discussion must be preceded by two
comments concerning the settlements, as viewed by Israeli society.
The first comment is that a great majority of Israeli citizens,
represented by Knesset members, favor Israel's retaining all settlements.
In early 1999, at least 100 of the 120 Knesset members, including
all the Labor Party members, almost certainly support this position
even though minor differences exist about the form of retention.
p113
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered for religious reasons.
The murderer and his sympathizers were and still are convinced
that the killing was dictated by God and was therefore a commandment
of Judaism. Comprehensive surveys, published in the Hebrew press,
of people in religious neighborhoods and especially religious
settlements indicated great sympathy for the murder. The polarization
of approval and disapproval in the Israeli Jewish community over
the killing of the prime minister of the Jewish state has increased
since the time of the murder.
p148
Pre-modem Judaism was characterized by many cases of interJewish
violence ... What occurred in Jewish fundamentalism is not dissimilar
to what occurred in other forms of fundamentalism. Some innovations
have been made, largely to disguise true intent. The predominant
wish ideologically is to return to the supposedly "good times"
when everything was seen and kept in proper order. In the case
of the Jewish messianic variety of fundamentalism, the idea is
to use modem methods to achieve the power to re-establish the
traditional way of life in an effectual manner. The dangers of
Jewish fundamentalism being established in Israel as at least
part of the ruling power are great. For non-Jews in the Middle
East, the Arabs and especially the Palestinians, the main danger
is in and with the messianic variety of Jewish fundamentalism.
This is most apparent in the role of the Jewish religious settlers
in the Occupied Territories. For Israeli Jews who will not accept
the tenets of Jewish fundamentalism, however, all varieties are
dangerous. The Jewish fundamentalist attitude towards heretics
is much worse than is the attitude towards non-Jews. This is analogous
to the situation in other religions. A contemporary example is
the attitude of the Iranian regime to Baha'ists, regarded as Muslim
heretics, which is much worse than the attitude towards Christians
and Jews. Our firm belief is that a fundamentalist Jewish regime,
if it came to power in Israel, would treat Israeli Jews who did
not accept its tenets worse than it would treat Palestinians.
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