Jewish, Jewish, Everywhere, & not a drop to drink
Monday, March 03, 2008
Justifying Israeli homosexuals by attacking Haredim
A proud father of a gay son
By David Fogel
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959968.html
Mon., March 03, 2008 Adar1 26, 5768
Full disclosure: I'm the proud father of a gay son. And I'm not the only one. Our prime minister, Ehud Olmert, is the proud father of a gay daughter - a daughter who has become a symbol, the pride of the community, for being an open lesbian and a brave fighter for equal rights for the homosexual community.
And because I know, from personal acquaintance, that Ehud Olmert is a warm and loving father, I am angry at his thundering silence in light of the nonsense and incitement against the homosexual community by several leaders of Shas.
As long as the leaders of this party were content robbing the public coffers, as long as they adopted the extortion methods of the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox parties, we somehow accepted it; after all, this has been going on since the establishment of the state. It's true that there has been a certain innovation here: To date, the MKs of the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox parties have not been convicted of criminal offenses or served prison terms - but we have become accustomed to this, too.
But the Shas wheeler-dealers are no longer satisfied with reaching into the public coffers. As faithful representatives of worldviews that were common during the Middle Ages, they have pulled out a new "winning" card - as far as they are concerned, nothing less than an ace - the homosexual card.
I have no desire to repeat their nonsense, or to try to diagnose the psychological problems that lie behind these statements. I only know that in this difficult country, where hooligans mercilessly beat up helpless elderly people, there has been an increase - so my son and his friends tell me - in hooligans also beating up homosexuals who are walking innocently in the city streets, minding their own business. We can assume that some of these hooligans draw encouragement and confirmation from the contemptuous words uttered by the Shas wheeler-dealers.
I return to Ehud Olmert.
Olmert is a sophisticated and experienced politician, as evidenced by the wisdom and the cunning behind his extraordinary success at maintaining his coalition. There probably has been no prime minister who did that as well as he does. And still, we can also expect him to understand that there are far more important things than survival. For example, the dignity of his children.
Therefore, if I were Ehud Olmert, I would convene all the Shas MKs in a closed room and tell them the following: I have no intention of preaching morals to you and explaining to you what damage you are causing my daughter's community. As far as I am concerned, you can continue to think whatever you wish. But if you dare once again to utter such nonsense in public, you will find yourselves outside the coalition.
The writer is the chair of Fogel-Ogilvy Advertising Ltd.
Labels: Gay pride parade, Haredi Judaism, Homosexuality, Homosexuality in Israel, Israeli gays, Israeli Jews, Israeli society
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Homosexuals provoke Haredim in Jerusalem
Shas MK: Gays are causing Israeli society to self-destruct
By Shahar Ilan, Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/949273.html
Wed., January 30, 2008 Shvat 23, 5768
As a Knesset panel deliberated Tuesday on proposals to ban all gay pride parades in Jerusalem, MK Nissim Ze'ev (Shas) accused the homosexual community of "carrying out the self-destruction of Israeli society and the Jewish people."
Ze'ev also said homosexuals were a plague as "toxic as bird flu."
The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee met to debate two bills presented by religious party members which would amend the Jerusalem municipality's Basic Law to prevent gay pride parades from being held within the city limits.
The bills were presented by MK Eli Gabai (National Union - National Religious Party) and MK Yitzhak Vakhnin (Shas).
Both bulls were passed in a preliminary reading in the Knesset plenum and have have now been brought for committee deliberations ahead of a first reading.
MK Zahava Gal-On (Meretz) said in response to Ze'ev's comments that "when I hear concepts like plague and self-destruction, I don't believe they are in the lexicon of expressions. The capital city does not belong only to the ultra-Orthodox."
The chairman of Israel's LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) organization, Michael Hammel, called Ze'ev's words embarrassing and frightening.
"The right to march in the capital city is not a local 'Jerusalemite' matter," he said. "This is a culture war, where politicians are trying to turn Jerusalem into their private property."
Committee members decided that public figures from the religious and homosexual communities in Jerusalem would meet to discuss the gay pride parade on a separate occasion.
MK Yitzhak Levy (NU - NRP) said, "the current situation is that this is a crippled and small protest: once you close a stadium, once you give 100 meters. There should have been a discussion to find new ideas, thus I am calling for a discussion."
Noa Setet, who runs Jerusalem's Open House - the organization which has initiated the parade - seconded Levy's suggestion, but added that the group had scheduled two meetings in the past and Levy's aides had canceled both of them.
Levy denied having canceled the meeting and said he intended two recruit other public figures from the religious community for the future discussion.
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Haredi court places curse on upcoming Jerusalem Gay Pride parade
By Yair Ettinger, Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/869201.html
Tue., January 29, 2008 Shvat 22, 5768
The ultra-Orthodox rabbinical court, Haredi Badatz, placed a "curse" Sunday on the participants in the upcoming Gay Pride parade scheduled to take place next week in Jerusalem.
The court also cursed the police officers who will be maintaining order during the parade.
Badatz rabbis plastered warning posters on Jerusalem city walls saying "All those involved in the matter, those of impure souls and those helping them and guarding them, they will feel in their souls a curse, a bad spirit will come over them and haunt them, they will never be cleansed of their sins, from the judgment of God, in their bodies, their souls and their finances."
The ultra-Orthodox leaders plan to stage a "large demonstration which will shake the foundations for the sake of Jerusalem's holiness." The demonstration will likely take place next week, but the warning posters disseminated Sunday afternoon are perceived by the ultra-Orthodox community as a green light to begin protests even sooner.
The rabbis decided to try to bring about the cancellation of the parade through protest after their "diplomatic efforts" to negotiate the cancellation with the Jerusalem police failed.
The leader of the Haredi community, Rabbi Izhak Tuvia Weiss told the police that he was opposed to mass demonstrations, and asked senior police officials to rescind the authorization it had given to the gay and lesbian community to hold its Gay Pride parade in the streets of Jerusalem.
According to some Haredi officials, Rabbi Weiss was disappointed by the meeting he had last week at his home with the chief of the Jerusalem district police force, Major General Aharon Franco, who refused to cancel the parade.
In the wake of his diplomatic failure, Rabbi Weiss agreed to join the more militant members of the community in supporting the mass demonstration against the parade.
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15 arrested protesting against Jerusalem Gay Pride parade
By Yuval Yoaz, Yair Ettinger and Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873070.html
Thu., June 21, 2007 Tamuz 5, 5767
Fifteen arrests were made as hundreds of ultra-Orthodox protesters threw stones, prompting police to use water cannons against them at a demonstration in Jerusalem early Thursday, against the Gay Pride march planned for later on Thursday.
The protest erupted after Israel's High Court cleared the way for the march on Thursday by dismissing an appeal against it by right-wing groups.
The High Court decision was published late Wednesday. The parade is set for a short route past the historic King David hotel to a nearby park, where a gathering is to be held.
Every year, the parade sparks a heated reaction from religious Jews, Christians and Muslims.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews have rioted repeatedly against the march over the past week, burning tires, assaulting policemen and damaging police cars. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said 22 policemen were injured in the riots, and 110 people were arrested.
Jerusalem's annual Gay Pride parade has been a relatively modest affair, with none of the flamboyant costumes or nudity common at similar events elsewhere in the world, or even in the nearby Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
At the 2005 march, an ultra-Orthodox man stabbed and wounded three marchers.
The 5,000 marchers expected Thursday will be guarded by 7,000 law enforcement personnel, Rosenfeld said. Because of security concerns, he said, the parade route is only 500 meters (yards) long.
Last year, security concerns led to cancellation of the parade. Instead, gays held a closed festival at a Jerusalem sports stadium.
Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski implored the court to cancel the parade in a personal message, though this contradicts the municipality's official stance. "The Jerusalem municipality's management regards this parade as a severe provocation, harmful to the delicate balance between the different interests of the city's various population groups," said Lupolianski's note. "The city's management therefore calls upon the court to cancel the parade and prevent violence."
Underscoring his views, ultra-Orthodox demonstrators protesting the parade confronted police Tuesday night in the capital's Mea Shearim neighborhood.
Earlier this month, however, the municipality adopted an official stance that runs contrary to Lupolianski's position: It decided that there was no reason for the city to prevent the parade from taking place.
Jerusalem police work to combat threats of violence
Jerusalem police on Wednesday detained three men in their 20s who were suspected of preparing caltrops and planning to place them on the road during the Gay Pride parade.
Police also found 60 tires hidden in the Gilo neighborhood and suspect that residents were planning on burning them at the parade.
The police have completed security preparations for the event, which will begin at 17:00 on Thursday. The parade will commence at the intersection of Hess and King David streets in Jerusalem and continue towards Liberty Bell Park.
They have also completed security preparations for the Ultra-Orthodox counter-protest which will take place at the same time at the intersection of Jaffa and Sarei Yisrael streets.
A temporary police headquarters will be established near the parade's route.
The High Court refuses right-wing petitions against parade
The High Court on Wednesday cancelled three petitions for the parade's cancelation which were under review since Tuesday. One was filed by the Kochav Echad nonprofit organization, the second by Industry Minister Eli Yishai, who heads the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas, and the third by right-wing activists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel. All three petitions demanded that the parade be canceled on the grounds that it would offend the religious community's sensibilities.
Ben-Gvir and Marzel initially requested that their petition be reviewed by a different bench, but their request was rejected. Originally, they claimed, the panel was to have comprised Justices Edmond Levy, Elyakim Rubinstein and Joseph Elon - all of whom are either religious or from a religious family - but an "unknown party" replaced that panel with one comprised of Deputy High Court President Eliezer Rivlin, Justice Ayala Procaccia and High Court President Dorit Beinisch. Before rejecting their request for a different bench, Beinisch told Ben-Gvir and Marzel: "You may consider yourselves honored to have your request reviewed by the current panel."
During the hearing, the justices urged the Jerusalem Open House to give the event a restrained and modest character.
Ben-Gvir argued that "a march through the streets of Jerusalem would almost certainly generate violent rioting. The parade would offend hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox and traditional Jews, as well as Christians and Arabs."
As police were completing their deployment in Jerusalem in an effort to ensure the safety of tomorrow's parade, ultra-Orthodox activists from the fundamentalist Edah Haredit sect continued to stage violent protests in Mea Shearim. In contrast, leaders of the mainstream factions of the ultra-Orthodox community instructed their followers to refrain from participating in protests against the parade, citing "educational damage to the community."
Jerusalem municipality still has not hung up Gay Pride parade flags
The Jerusalem Municipality has yet to put up Gay Pride flags along the route of the planned Gay Pride parade scheduled for Thursday, despite what the Jerusalem Open House called an "explicit promise to do so by [Wednesday] morning at the latest."
City officials said they had intended to hang the flags on Thursday morning, for fear anti-Gay Pride protestors will vandalize them overnight, but following a threat by the Open House that it would file a petition with the High Court of Justice, agreed to hand out the flags Wednesday afternoon.
In a letter sent to Mayor Uri Lupolianski, Open House attorney Gilad Barnea accused the mayor of "trying to disrupt and sabotage the ongoing preparations" for the parade.
The Jerusalem Municipality said in response that it was acting in accordance with High Court decisions
In recent years, the municipality has repeatedly committed itself to hanging the Gay Pride flags - as it does with the flags of other groups that hold events in the capital - only to fail to do so.
Shahar Ilan and Yair Ettinger contributed to this article
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Some 3,500 march in gay pride parade in Jerusalem
By Jonathan Lis and Yair Ettinger, Haaretz Correspondents and The Associated Press
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873597.html
Mon., June 25, 2007 Tamuz 9, 5767
Roughly 3,500 people marched in the much-contested gay pride parade in Jerusalem on Thursday evening, as some 1,500 ultra-Orthodox men and right-wing activists demonstrated against the event.
Some 500 ultra-Orthodox protesters marched along Jaffa Street in the city, in an attempt to intersect the march and confront the participants. Police blocked the demonstrators, however, arresting 12 of them.
"I am demanding my civil rights, including the right to get married and have children," said marcher Guy Frishman, 27. "I want to have rights like every other person."
One man evaded police to approach marchers, yelling: "Filth! Get out of Jerusalem!" He was escorted away by police.
The march took place under heavy guard, with more than 7,000 police officers protecting the participants. The Magen David Adom emergency medical service was expected to deploy 45 ambulances and 200 medical personnel along the parade route.
The number of participants was far less than the 5,000 people the parade's organizers had believed would take part.
The parade began at the junction of King David Street and Moshe Hess Street and ended in the nearby Liberty Bell Park.
Earlier Thursday, a resident of the ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim neighborhood in Jerusalem was arrested on Jaffa Street in possession of a small improvised explosive device.
Elsewhere in the city, ultra-Orthodox demonstrators set fire to garbage cans in Shabbat Square and disrupted traffic in the area. In Beit Shemesh, two ultra-Orthodox demonstrators were arrested by police.
Parade organizers petitioned the High Court of Justice on Thursday to instruct the Jerusalem municipality to station fire engines and sewage draining vehicles at the site of the post-parade rally, in order to bypass a firefighters' strike which threatened to bring about the cancellation of the rally.
Six days ago, some 1,500 firefighters went on strike and refused to secure events or grant licenses to businesses. The firefighters said they would not grant a license to the parade organizers.
Right-wing activist Itamar Ben-Gvir submitted a petition to the High Court earlier Thursday, citing fire code violations in his call for the cancellation of the parade.
Although the strike did not prevent the marchers from holding the parade, it did result in the cancellation of the post-parade rally.
Police limited the route of the parade, authorizing organizers from the Jerusalem Open House gay rights organization to hold a procession along a stretch of only several hundred yards.
Police began scouring the route on Wednesday, to prevent the possibility of extremists planting explosives or other means of injuring the participants.
The officers selected to participate in the operation had prepared for a wide variety of scenarios, ranging from stabbing attempts to terrorist attacks with multiple casualties.
Two years ago, an ultra-Orthodox demonstrator, Yishai Schlissel, leaped into the parade and stabbed three participants who sustained minor to moderate wounds.
On Wednesday night, 23 ultra-Orthodox demonstrators were arrested and two police officers were hurt in violent protests against the march. The protesters hurled rocks and firebombs at the police officers. Two police cars were damaged and one was set on fire. The police used water cannons to disperse the protests.
Jerusalem also saw demonstrations in Givat Shaul, Mea Shearim, Beit Yisrael and Bait Vagan. On some occasions, protesters threw stones at the police and set fire to garbage canisters. Four officers suffered minor injuries, and seven protesters were arrested. Police also found two dummy explosives, one in Beit Hakerem, the other in Ramot. The fake explosives included notes warning that the dummy bombs would be replaced with real ones unless the parade was canceled.
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They're here, they're queer - be proud of Israel
By Bradley Burston
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873728.html
Mon., July 09, 2007 Tamuz 23, 5767
JERUSALEM - I'm proud of the State of Israel. It may have more faults per capita than any nation in the world, faults which are duly broadcast, rerun, critiqued, and condemned as nowhere else. It may have more critics per capita than anywhere else in the world, in particular among its majority population of restive, instinctively kvetching, eternally disappointed Jews.
I know every criticism by heart. I'll see your every damning denunciation, and raise you 10. But I am proud of this country, and the gay pride parade in Jerusalem goes a long way toward explaining why.
I am proud of a country which - under the burden of a 24/7 threat of Islamic Jihad terrorism, under a daily Hamas barrage of Qassam missiles on a small town in the Negev, under an explicit Iranian threat of erasure in the future and client militia brushfire wars in the near present - deploys 8,000 police, nearly half of its entire active-duty force, to protect a parade in Jerusalem by a minority group that is routinely denigrated by many members of two of the holy city's largest and most vocal communities: the ultra-Orthodox and the Palestinians.
I am proud of the gay community, which made strenuous efforts to assure that the parade would be held in areas far from the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods and other areas where the march would serve to offend residents.
I am proud of the police for standing up to yeshiva students who, screaming "Nazis! Nazis! Nazis!" at the officers, pelted them with rocks, bottles, angle iron and Molotov cocktails, all the while breaking windows, smashing streetlights, and setting fire to tires and garbage dumpsters.
I am proud of ultra-Orthodox rabbis and yeshiva masters, who, though appalled by the parade and what they see as the abomination of homosexuality, publicly and unequivocally forbade their students from taking part in violent demonstrations.
I am proud of a country that scorns the slimy Meir Kahane disciple Itamar Ben-Gvir when he screams at gay celebrants in a Tel Aviv parade "the Nazis should have finished you off."
I am proud of the policeman on King David Street who, when asked by a passing pre-schooler about the flag with the rainbow colors, replied, "There are boys who love boys, and girls who love girls."
I am proud of a country in which the army's influential radio station airs the views of the daughter of the prime minister when she states that the right of gays and lesbians to march in their capital city is as inherent as their right to vote.
Just as I am proud of Israel's last Eurovision song contest winner, an acclaimed diva who began life as a man, who told a television interviewer why she believed that in the interest of respect for the holy city, the parade should not be held there.
And I am proud, as well, of the fact that Israel Television gave air time to a rabbi to explain his strong opposition to the march, and to the woman anchor who, asked by the rabbi what she would do if her son told her she was gay, said that she would hold him and be grateful for his openness.
There are many who argue that a Jewish country cannot countenance a public celebration of homosexuality. It is time for them to take the advice of leading rabbis, who placed this announcement in the Lithuanian Haredi newspaper, as quoted by the Jerusalem Post:
"Demonstrating should be done by each person in his place [by feeling outrage in the soul, by praying and beseeching (God) against the loathsome blasphemy]."
All of us who live here have our personal list of obscenities, perversions and abominations, as committed by our fellow Jewish residents of Israel. We may find their actions politically abhorrent, culturally unbearable, spiritually bankrupt, personally offensive.
They are a big part of the price of living in this country, riven along fault lines dividing and enraging left and right, secular and religious, Mizrachi and Ashkenazi, sabra and immigrant.
It may be the built-in flaw of a Jewish homeland, this infighting among the Jews it has brought home.
But as the gay pride parade proves, the most profound strength of a Jewish country are those Jews who strive to learn to live with the Jews with whom they so profoundly differ.
We're here. By definition, we are all of us, each in our own ways, queer. We should, all of us for our own reasons, be proud.
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Labels: Abomination, Anti-Torah, Gay pride parade, Gays, Homosexuality, Israeli society, Jerusalem
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Jews face off against Jews in Jerusalem
Haredi dominance of Beit Shemesh 'is only matter of time'
By Yair Ettinger, Haaretz Correspondent
Tue., December 04, 2007 Kislev 24, 5768
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/930995.html
"Hitler and the messiah. The two dominate the walls and souls here," Amos Oz wrote in his book "In the Land of Israel" after visiting the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Geula and Mea Shearim in the fall of 1982. "The battle has been won. Zionism has been pushed away from here, as though it had never existed."
In the next chapter, Oz stops at Beit Shemesh, where he meets a group of young men, "their faces distorted with rage" at Mapai (the precursor of today's Labor party), Shimon Peres and the elites.
Twenty-five years later it seems that the chapter on Mea Shearim could be transposed to a few neighborhoods in Beit Shemesh, a city whose population now reaches 73,000. "Taking part in the profane elections is prohibited," and "Israeli women must dress modestly," declare posters around the city.
Local resident Nati Shauli did not even consider filing a police complaint two weeks ago after his car was vandalized. He and his wife came out of the grocery store in Ramat Beit Shemesh A, a mostly religious neighborhood, to find that their tires had been slashed. Shauli is convinced that whoever is responsible wanted to keep bare-headed women like his wife away from the ultra-Orthodox shopping center.
"Life has become insufferable here," he said in desperation.
A month ago, the neighborhood's national-religious residents held a demonstration vowing not to give in to the "hooligans." But a tour of Beit Shemesh shows that the fanatic element here also has complex and tense relations with the ultra-Orthodox community, which is identified mostly with Agudat Yisrael, Shas and Degel Hatorah.
The resemblance between Mea Shearim of days gone by and Ramat Beit Shemesh, one of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, is not accidental. Some 15 years ago the housing shortage in Jerusalem drove the extreme, anti-Zionist Eda Haredit sect of Jerusalem's Haredi community to seek housing for young couples outside the capital. They chose Ramat Beit Shemesh B. Today these people are even more fanatic than those in Mea Shearim.
These extremists comprise an estimated 2 percent, no more than 15,000 of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox community. They are a minority in Beit Shemesh as well, but wield considerable power and influence.
The fanatics are mostly followers of Rabbi Shaya Rosenberger, a right-wing Satmar Hasid. Another group, a separatist group of Breslav Hasidim led by Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Marmelstein, is even more extreme. In recent years these groups have conducted a series of campaigns - posting billboards calling for "modest behavior," introducing sexually segregated bus lines and recently protesting plans to open a state religious school near their neighborhood and opposing the sale of apartments in the neighborhood to people who are not ultra-Orthodox.
Two and a half weeks ago, police officers headed by Jerusalem police chief Aharon Franco and Beit Shemesh chief Oz Eliasi secretly met the leaders of the town's Eda Haredit sect. On their way to Rabbi Rosenberger's house the officers passed graffiti blasting Eliasi and branding him "the Nazi" and "evil."
People in the neighborhood described the meeting a "surrender," saying the police were now officially afraid of entering the neighborhood. They said the police had promised the rabbis to refrain from any activity in the neighborhood without the rabbis' prior authorization.
District police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said the meeting was intended to "open channels of communication with the rabbis to restore peace to the neighborhood. Nothing was promised and no prior coordination was agreed on before any police activity."
However the fanatics' energy is mainly directed at the silent ultra-Orthodox majority. People in Ramat Beit Shemesh A say that men harass ultra-Orthodox women merely for walking in the supermarket with wigs, as women from the Gerer Hasidic group do. They hurl insults at other women because they refuse to send their small sons to the part of the bus earmarked for men.
"We operate our own bus lines to preserve our way of life," a Ramat Beit Shemesh B resident said.
Relations between the different ultra-Orthodox groups will be tested next year in the municipal elections. More than a year and a half ago in the Knesset elections, despite the fanatics' attempts to sabotage voting, the political strength of the ultra-Orthodox prevailed. United Torah Judaism received most of the votes, 22.2 percent, in a town that had been a Likud bastion in 1982. Shas came in second with 19.9 percent of the votes, while the Likud, Labor and Kadima lagged far behind.
Agudat Yisrael, Degel Hatorah and Shas are convinced they will obtain a solid majority on the town council, but may not field a mayoral candidate just yet. "It may take another term," a Degel activist said. "But it's clear that the ultra-Orthodox dominance of Beit Shemesh is only a matter of time."
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Simshalom's response:
So? Why can`t Charedim move anywhere they want...since for two thousand years Jews kept the Torah in the galut dreaming of returning to Jerusalem and Zion, and now that Torah Jews (such as Charedim) have made it to the finish line and are finally living and thriving in Zion and Jerusalem, they should be praised for upholding, validating and sanctifying the blood sweat and tears that the Jewish people went through in order to come and live in peace and harmony in the Jewish homeland.
It`s a disgrace that secular chiloni Jews think that there`s something wrong here, they are not thinking "Jewish" if they think that having Charedi Jews move into Jewish neighborhoods, in the Jewish homeland, is problematic.
Let the Charedi march go forth, they`ll win, and a word of advice to the Charedi-bashers and haters, if you can`t beat `em, join `em, the Charedim have many Kiruv Jewish Torah outreach programs designed to meet your needs which is bound to bridge the gaps and will help you feel better and more accepting. Remember: Ahavat Yisrael
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Irene's response:
Dear Sim, since you do not live in Israel, I assume you prefer the good life in the USA and therefore do not really know the true situation here. Be that as it may, why can people not live and let live? Maybe if the Charedim would use a gentler and calmer way of bringing the non-frum jews back to frumkeit. By the way, chiloni is a very derogatory word and as a Jew you should know not to insult people.
I was on a bus that was attacked by this mob and a yound girl sitting next to me said to me if this is how the frum Jews behave, why should I continue my studies to become frum?
If they want Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet to be chareidi, I have no problem with that, but then they must sort out their own bus service, electricity, water, garbage collection etc (which by the way is subsidised by the WORKING people in Beit Shemesh).
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Simshalom responds to Irene:
Irene...it`s not just Israel.
Hi Irene, thanks for responding. So you think I`m having an easy life in the US? Think again! You`re mixing up all sorts of information. You`re looking at hooliganism by a small minority of Charedim and their lack of paying taxes. So I agree with you about that. But that still doesn`t justify blanket hatred of Charedim by Chilonim (what else to call secular Jews in Hebrew? "Chachamim?)
It`s not just in Israel that Charedi population growth causes counter-attacks from non-religious Jews and in the US they have support from millions of non-Jews. So this isn`t a matter of geography or where one chooses to live (so far Jews live in all sorts of places, same reason Israelis leave Israel, but that`s a tangent.)
Chiloni Israelis do not study Torah and keep the mitzvot. Until they do, they`ll have nothing to stand on against the growth of Charedi families and communities, that for all their faults, and they have many, are based on Torah and Mitzvot with successful Kiruv Rechokim.
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Kipa Sruga in Beit Shemesh responds:
Until a couple of years ago all the different groups of people lived together peacefully in Beit Shemesh. Beit Shemesh is a traditional kind of place where even the religiously non-observant are religious. Then these zealot hooligans came and started telling us what to do in our town. I didn`t ask them to come here. If they don`t like it they should go somewhere else.
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Simshalom responds to Kipa Sruga:
Kipa Sruga: market forces will win in the end.
Jews have had to move many times from neighborhoods in the USA. Not only when it`s Blacks or others moving in, but also when groups of Jews, like the Charedim of Boro Park moved in & the Modern Orthodox didn`t feel comfortable and moved out. These are things that happen all the time. There is only one way to stop such things: the communities you belong to have more children & will automatically create a counter societal push. In the end, the media is miscasting this whole phenomenon, they like to scream "Charedim, Charedim" like "fire, fire" but that is just hysteria.
The truth is that all neighborhoods undergo socio-economic changes, & in this case even religious and cultural changes, & no amount of screaming or grandstanding will change it. The only advice is, if you don`t like it, & you see what`s going to happen down the line, find a neighborhood that you will be happy in. It`s not easy, but that is the only solution. The Charedim are just as wild & pushy as any group of Israelis.
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Where the ultra-Orthodox are the moderates
By Yair Ettinger
Wed., December 05, 2007 Kislev 25, 5768
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/930796.html
"Hitler and the messiah. The two dominate the walls and souls here," Amos Oz wrote in his book "In the Land of Israel" after visiting the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Geula and Mea Shearim in the fall of 1982. "The battle has been won. Zionism has been pushed away from here, as though it had never existed."
In the next chapter, Oz stops at Beit Shemesh, where he meets a group of young men, "their faces distorted with rage" at Mapai (the precursor of today's Labor party), Shimon Peres and the elites.
Twenty-five years later it seems that the chapter on Mea Shearim could be transposed to a few neighborhoods in Beit Shemesh, a city whose population now reaches 73,000. "Taking part in the profane elections is prohibited," and "Israeli women must dress modestly," declare posters around the city.
Local resident Nati Shauli did not even consider filing a police complaint two weeks ago after his car was vandalized. He and his wife came out of the grocery store in Ramat Beit Shemesh A, a mostly religious neighborhood, to find that their tires had been slashed. Shauli is convinced that whoever is responsible wanted to keep bare-headed women like his wife away from the ultra-Orthodox shopping center.
"Life has become insufferable here," he said in desperation.
A month ago, the neighborhood's national-religious residents held a demonstration vowing not to give in to the "hooligans." But a tour of Beit Shemesh shows that the fanatic element here also has complex and tense relations with the ultra-Orthodox community, which is identified mostly with Agudat Yisrael, Shas and Degel Hatorah.
The resemblance between Mea Shearim of days gone by and Ramat Beit Shemesh, one of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, is not accidental. Some 15 years ago the housing shortage in Jerusalem drove the extreme, anti-Zionist Eda Haredit sect of Jerusalem's Haredi community to seek housing for young couples outside the capital. They chose Ramat Beit Shemesh B. Today these people are even more fanatic than those in Mea Shearim.
These extremists comprise an estimated 2 percent, no more than 15,000 of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox community. They are a minority in Beit Shemesh as well, but wield considerable power and influence.
The fanatics are mostly followers of Rabbi Shaya Rosenberger, a right-wing Satmar Hasid. Another group, a separatist group of Breslav Hasidim led by Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Marmelstein, is even more extreme. In recent years these groups have conducted a series of campaigns - posting billboards calling for "modest behavior," introducing sexually segregated bus lines and recently protesting plans to open a state religious school near their neighborhood and opposing the sale of apartments in the neighborhood to people who are not ultra-Orthodox.
Two and a half weeks ago, police officers headed by Jerusalem police chief Aharon Franco and Beit Shemesh chief Oz Eliasi secretly met the leaders of the town's Eda Haredit sect. On their way to Rabbi Rosenberger's house the officers passed graffiti blasting Eliasi and branding him "the Nazi" and "evil."
People in the neighborhood described the meeting a "surrender," saying the police were now officially afraid of entering the neighborhood. They said the police had promised the rabbis to refrain from any activity in the neighborhood without the rabbis' prior authorization.
District police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said the meeting was intended to "open channels of communication with the rabbis to restore peace to the neighborhood. Nothing was promised and no prior coordination was agreed on before any police activity."
However the fanatics' energy is mainly directed at the silent ultra-Orthodox majority. People in Ramat Beit Shemesh A say that men harass ultra-Orthodox women merely for walking in the supermarket with wigs, as women from the Gerer Hasidic group do. They hurl insults at other women because they refuse to send their small sons to the part of the bus earmarked for men.
"We operate our own bus lines to preserve our way of life," a Ramat Beit Shemesh B resident said.
Relations between the different ultra-Orthodox groups will be tested next year in the municipal elections. More than a year and a half ago in the Knesset elections, despite the fanatics' attempts to sabotage voting, the political strength of the ultra-Orthodox prevailed. United Torah Judaism received most of the votes, 22.2 percent, in a town that had been a Likud bastion in 1982. Shas came in second with 19.9 percent of the votes, while the Likud, Labor and Kadima lagged far behind.
Agudat Yisrael, Degel Hatorah and Shas are convinced they will obtain a solid majority on the town council, but may not field a mayoral candidate just yet. "It may take another term," a Degel activist said. "But it's clear that the ultra-Orthodox dominance of Beit Shemesh is only a matter of time."
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Simshalom:
Why are Charedi victims portrayed as "aggressors" ?
It`s odd how a minority of Jews in Israel (Charedim) who are in real terms powerless (all the levers of power in the State of Israel are in hands of Chilonim) are constantly portrayed as if they were an invading force of "aggressors" when the opposite is true.
A Charedi Jew is limited where he can live whereas the Chilonim can live anywhere. Religious Zionists, while not Chilonim, also have more options than your average Charedi Jew who cannot separate from key institutions needed to survive, like yeshivas, chedorim, Bais Yaakovs for their children and communal organizations of religious life. Dress and lifestyle limit them.
Neighborhoods change all the time all over the world, as one group moves in and another moves out, based on essentially natural factors and forces, so the hysteria and crankiness generated against Charedim in situations like this are irrational reactions, when the real and Jewish thing to do would be to rejoice and celebrate that the Jewish people are expanding.
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Joe Sittizen responds:
Charedim aren`t victims, they`re the agressors
I don`t know how Sim defines "victim", but when a bunch of charedim go out and beat people up on buses (which has happened many times, not just on the Beit Shemesh line last month), they`re on the offensive.
Slashing tires, threatening people, attacking people, insulting people, throwing bleach on women - the rational reaction is to label these charedim as aggressors.
The only irrationality appears to be the small subset of charedim who think they are beyond the laws of the Torah, let alone the laws of the land.
The best place for the violent charedi aggressors is the same place as any other violent whacko be they religious or secular - behind bars to cool off for a few months.
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Simshalom responds:
Joe: Focusing on lunatic fringe does not tell the truth
Joe, I agree that ANYONE who commits crimes of violence against anyone, other than for self-defense, must be arrested, tried and punished. In any normal society if anyone attacks another passenger on a bus they must be arrested. Why are the bus companies allowing hooligans to get on the buses? and if Charedim don`t like the bus system, let them walk or start a Charedi bus company. But this is not what this article is about as it`s trying to paint ALL Charedim as the bad guys, which is just plain wrong.
Charedim are not monsters, and secular and religious Zionists are not all Tzadikim. If they`d stop the constant belittling, denigration, and dehumanization of Charedim, then the climate would change. These are your Jewish brothers and sisters drawing close to you and you should all be welcoming each other and not going for each other`s jugulars.
If the Charedim are all bad so how come so many Israelis of all ages are becoming Chozrei B`tshuva in so many places? Charedim must be good, no?
Labels: Haredi Jews, Israeli society, Jerusalem
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Skeletons in the Lubavitch closet
One brother became secular, the other was mentally ill
By Yair Sheleg
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/864748.html
Wed., May 30, 2007 Sivan 13, 5767
In the early 1990s, Prof. Menachem Friedman, a leading researcher of ultra-Orthodox society in Israel, decided to write a comprehensive study on Chabad Hassidism that would include a biography of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Friedman labored for almost a decade and traced every detail of the Rebbe's past, but in the end decided not to publish his book. Among other places, he searched through the archives of universities in Paris and Berlin to understand what precisely the Rebbe studied there during the 1920s and 1930s. His search yielded information about the so-called "King Messiah" that differs considerably from that publicized by his followers.
Friedman also uncovered interesting information about the Schneerson family: In order to preserve the family's distinguished lineage, there were many marriages within the family; these often led to the birth of mentally and physically handicapped children. The Rebbe himself had a mentally ill brother, Dov Ber, who was murdered by the Nazis in the Ukrainian hospital where he was hospitalized, and his memory has been obliterated from the history of Chabad Hassidism. Another brother of the Rebbe's, Aryeh Leib, turned secular, but Chabad followers tend to portray him as a very pious and righteous man.
The Hassidimim relate that Rabbi Menachem Mendel studied at the University of Berlin, but only after lengthy research was the Rebbe's name found in a list of people auditing classes at the university. It turns out that during his six years in Berlin (1926-1932), the Rebbe studied philosophy and mathematics for a semester and a half.
A similar search in Paris revealed the legend that the Rebbe had studied medicine and engineering at the Sorbonne was also far from the truth. In fact, he studied electrical engineering at Ecole Speciale des Travaux Publics, du Batiment et de l'Industrie (ESTP). As the younger son-in-law of the previous Rebbe, he was not the designated successor, and was allowed therefore to acquire a "secular" profession like electrical engineering.
Blocked archives
Despite the considerable effort invested, Friedman has yet to publish the book. "There were all kinds of excuses I told myself," he says, "such as, I have more pressing and important studies to work on, but the truth is that I didn't feel sure enough to publish the book. The Hassidim blocked access to several of their important archives, and I felt that without those archives, the work wouldn't be accurate. I had excellent material and I felt that I had indeed found the story of this life, and still I was concerned."
Instead of a book, Friedman published a lengthy article analyzing the messianism of the Rebbe, who was perceived by some as the Messiah starting from the early 1980s. According to Friedman, the messianic idea started back in the tenure of his father-in-law, the Admor (rabbi and leader) Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok, known by the Hebrew acronym, Riyatz. The Riyatz was convinced that his era was a messianic era because all the Lithuanian rabbis fled Russia during the period of the Communist revolution, and the Orthodox Jewish community in Russia was left under the control of Chabad, which became the leader of Orthodox Jewry in Russia.
But then Stalin started cracking down on Chabad activities, and the Riyatz was forced to flee, first to Poland and later on, with the Nazi invasion, to the United States. "He had to explain to himself the failure of his predictions, and therefore explained that everything that was happening in Europe was essentially intended to serve as a warning to American Jews to repent to be saved from a similar danger. He himself was saved to be a kind of prophet like Jonah, who warns them of the danger and brings them to repent," says Friedman.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe stayed in France at the start of the Second World War. He was saved thanks to an American visa he obtained through the concerted efforts of Chabad members in the U.S. When he arrived in the U.S., he was not in line to become the Admor. The "natural" candidate was his older brother-in-law, Shmaryahu Gourarie, who had the added advantage of a son - the Rebbe was childless. According to one version Friedman heard, the Rebbe himself was afraid to bring children into this world because of the "precedent" of his brother; according to a rumor among Chabad Hassidim, the Rebbe had a child who died young.
By the time of the Riyatz's death in 1950, things had changed, and he decided to make his young son-in-law, who turned out to be much more talented and charismatic than his older brother-in-law, the leader of the movement to bring people back to religion and "win over hearts" that he had begun to nurture. In addition, the fact that Gourarie had an heir was transformed from an asset to an impediment, because the son renounced religion and became a secular computer businessman, Barry Gourarie (later on, he even demanded the vast Chabad library for himself, in a scandal that created a storm within the movement for years). Friedman spoke at length with Gourarie and heard fascinating details from him about what goes on behind the scenes in the Chabad movement.
Schneerson was named the Admor, but not before there was a sharp clash between the two camps in the year following the Riyatz's death. Even after his selection, the widow of the previous rabbi did not accept the choice and "did not allow the Rebbe to set foot in her house and also did not agree to give him the Riyatz's shtreimel [fur hat]. That is how the custom began of the Rebbe wearing a fedora instead of a shtreimel." Retroactively, as happens with the Hassidim, Schneerson's perceived shortcoming in his childlessness was actually seen as proof of his being the messiah: "An entire doctrine was conceived, which the Rebbe developed already in his first speech as the Admor, around the fact that he is the seventh Admor of Chabad," relates Friedman. Because the number seven has mystical significance, the idea that it was not coincidental that he had no heir began to circulate - he was the seventh and last Admor and redemption would come through him anyway.
To mark Friedman's 70th birthday, Bar-Ilan University will be hosting an international conference in his honor in another two weeks.
He began to research the ultra-Orthodox world completely by chance: "I was taking a seminar with Prof. Shmuel Eisenstadt (the sage of Israeli sociologists - Y.S.), and every student had to write a paper on one of the parties in Israel. Because I worked hard to earn a living, I arrived late when the topics were assigned and Eisenstadt's assistant informed me that 'all the parties had already been taken.' In the end she said: 'Well, there is one party left that doesn't interest anyone.' It was Agudat Yisrael."
Out of that paper, Friedman created a new discipline, the study of modern ultra-Orthodox society from the end of the 19th century to the contemporary era.
Friedman was familiar with the ultra-Orthodox since his childhood. He grew up in Bnei Brak and his parents were both raised in hassidic homes and left them as young adults. In the wake of the Holocaust and the absorption crises he experienced in Israel, his father started moving back to the hassidic world he had left. "I think the encounter with modernity was so traumatic for him that he just went back to his father's house, to the shtibel [small synagogue], to Hassidism. He grew a beard again and went back to wearing a capote [caftan], which prompted very heated arguments with my mother, and he also sent me to an ultra-Orthodox Talmud Torah," recalls Friedman.
As far back as the 1980s, Friedman was the first to coin the term hevrat halomdim (society of the learners) as the primary characteristic of ultra-Orthodox society in Israel, a society where in an unnatural way, most of the men do not work, but learn. He was the one who long ago predicted its collapse, based on the assumption that a time would come when Israeli society would be unwilling, or unable, to finance an entire sector in which most of the men are unemployed by choice.
Ostensibly, Friedman erred in his analysis: Members of the ultra-Orthodox community suffered in recent years from the burden of cuts in child allowances, so many entered the labor market. Meanwhile, the community is not showing any signs of collapse. Moreover, in addition to the graph showing a decline in their economic situation, there is a graph showing the community's growing political power, which enables the ultra-Orthodox political parties to continue to force Israeli society to finance the "society of learners." But Friedman stands by his forecast and even argues that the stability of Israeli society at large is threatened.
A secular child in every family
Friedman says, "True, there is some entry into the labor market, but opposite this, there are two difficult questions: First, is the degree of economic crisis not more intense than the pace of entry into the labor market? Second, the requirements demanded by the labor market today are much stricter, and whoever did not learn any general knowledge until he became an adult will have a hard time closing the gap. I don't see Israelis being able to withstand the sight of Jews starving for bread, even if they are ultra-Orthodox. So the society will be tempted to continue supporting them, at least on a basic level, and then two things will happen: Many in the middle class will be fed up by the situation and they will leave the country, so the ones who stay will be in an even worse financial situation."
Friedman believes the financial collapse will also alter the religious character of ultra-Orthodox society. The mere necessity of entering the labor market will make the ultra-Orthodox increasingly resemble the religious Zionists: less separatism, and with a much higher percentage of people becoming nonreligious, something like "a secular child in every family." This fact will compel them to also change their perception of secularism, because it will become a widespread phenomenon in their midst. He speaks of the model of Eastern European Jewry in the wake of the crisis caused by the Enlightenment, when many families split up into ultra-Orthodox, Zionist and completely secular groups.
Other experts on ultra-Orthodox society present the American model as proof that the ultra-Orthodox's entry into the labor market need not alter the religious character of society - they will be able to maintain a model where a clear line is drawn between being a part of the labor market and maintaining cultural isolationism. Friedman responds, "whoever reviews the American ultra-Orthodox model in depth sees that it, too, is split, mainly between Lithuanians and Hassidim. The Lithuanians did in fact enter the prestigious job market, but they also acquire a high level of general knowledge during their high school years, something that I still don't see happening in Israeli ultra-Orthodoxy. The Hassidim for the most part live in dire poverty, similar to the Israeli ultra-Orthodox."
Given his pessimistic forecasts, Friedman suggests making the entry of the ultra-Orthodox into the job market a key goal for the ultra-Orthodox sector, including totally waiving the demand to do military service, even in the framework of the compromise in the Tal Law. "If we concede to them completely on military service, many of them will leave the yeshivas and enter the labor force. I'm aware of the intense inequality in this proposal, but it is preferable to the existing situation," he says.
Friedman himself sat on the Tal Commission and presented this suggestion to its members, but he says, "Judge Tal told me that his colleagues, the High Court of Justice judges, would for the sake of the principle of equality not let such a proposal pass. Unfortunately, it is possible that he is correct. At the time, I felt that the security situation allowed for the transformation of the entire IDF into a small, professional army. But the Second Lebanon War proved we still need a large people's army, and in the current situation I don't see who will concede in a sweeping and official way to the ultra-Orthodox on the need to do military service."
He concludes with a sigh, "political correctness, not just in this area, has become the curse of this generation. People cling to the slogans of 'correctness' even if they know that in the long term it will lead to greater damage and perhaps endanger their own world."
Labels: Haredi Judaism, Israeli society, Lubavitcher Rebbe, Messianism
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