Rabbi Ovadia Yosef condemns Women of the Wall
During his weekly sermon, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef lashes out against 'stupid women who come to Western Wall, don a prayer shawl, and pray.'

Women of the Wall in response: Rabbi invited to get to know us

Kobi Nahshoni
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3801872,00.html
Published: 11.09.09, 08:06 / Israel Jewish Scene

Some 20 years after they first wrapped themselves in prayer shawls at Judaism's holiest site, the Women of the Wall (WOW) were the subject of much criticism during the Sephardic chief rabbi's weekly Saturday evening sermon.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef came out on Saturday night against the feminist lineup at the Western Wall and called for the condemnation of its members. According to him, the movement is made up of "stupid" women who do not act "for Heaven's sake," but merely because "they want equality."

During this weekly lesson, which addressed the laws of Shabbat Kiddush (sanctification of the wine on the Sabbath), the rabbi noted that women are obligated to perform Kiddush and can fulfill their obligation either by hearing a man perform the blessing or by reciting it themselves.

On this subject he said, "Teffilin (phylacteries) she must be careful not to lay. There are stupid women who come to the Western Wall, put on a tallit (prayer shawl), and pray."

According to Rabbi Yosef, "These are deviants who serve equality, not Heaven. They must be condemned and warned of."

WOW Chairwoman Anat Hoffman reported to Ynet in response, "Rabbi Ovadia Yosef established negative motives for the group of women praying at the Western Wall without knowing even one of the women. Because the motive of the group is awe of God, I invite him in the name of Women of the Wall to meet us and get to know us."

The Masorti Movement Chairman Yizhar Hess, said in response, "It is a shame that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a talmid-chacham and Torah great, allows himself to disrespect the women's revolution that is taking over the Jewish street in Israel and the world. Torah scholars, be careful of your words."

Prayers at Robinson's Arch

Starting in the 80s, WOW held joint prayer services for women and men at the start of every Hebrew month. They first held the services in the Western Wall pavilion, and later – following a High Court ruling – at the nearby Robinson's Arch.

About a half a year ago, at the beginning of the month of Adar, dozens of women from Israel and the world marked 20 years of activism with a prayer service at the wall itself. For this, they were berated by worshippers and attendants on the spot. Attendants for the Kotel rabbi asked the women to disperse because they were not acting in accordance with the site's traditions.

Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch claimed in a conversation with Ynet that these are provocative actions that offend the sensibilities of male and female worshippers, desecrate the holy site, and are in opposition to the High Court decision. He added that "this is grave act worthy of condemnation."

Labels: Conservative Judaism, female rabbis, Feminism, Haredi Judaism, Israeli Jews, Jerusalem, Jewish feminism, Kotel, Masorti Judaism, Ovadia Yosef, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Western Wall, Women of the Wall

- posted by Izak @ 2:07 AM (2) comments

 
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.

----

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.

----

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

----

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.

----

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.

----

Labels: Abomination, Anti-Torah, Gay pride parade, Gays, Homosexuality, Israeli society, Jerusalem

- posted by Izak @ 8:32 PM (0) comments

 
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."

----

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

----

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).

----

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.

----

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.

----

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.

----

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."

----

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.

----

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.

----

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

- posted by Izak @ 1:55 AM (3) comments