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 Posted by Aron on November 09 2002 (Saturday) : 02:19 AMOne thing even die-hard secularists often admire about Orthodox Jewish weddings,is the joyous singing and dancing that goes on. So one hardly knows how to react to this article about a new phenomenon in Israel: Young Orthodox Jewish youth singing songs of bloody vengeance against the Arabs and even dancing to these tunes while waving knives. Even worse,perhaps, are the quotes from the Rabbis who mildly condemn the phenomenon and praise the concept of vengeance. The truest reaction I can bring is that of my mother: "They have ruined the children." This article has deep personal resonance for me. We lived for 13 years in Kokhav Yair, so those dancing youth Yitzhak Meir talks about, are children who grew up with my own. Kokhav Yair is a beautiful, upper middle class suburb in Israel. It is a mixed community, of secular and religious Jews (the latter numbering about 10% of the population). The Orthodox Jews who live there are among the most open and tolerant you can find. They chose to live in a mixed community. They chose to live in a suburb which is not in the West Bank. So what happened to their children? I used to go to one of the synagogues in the community. Every Saturday they would pass out a little booklet from "Poalei Mizrachi." Mizrachi is the religious Zionist movement, and "Poalei Mizrachi" are the Mizrachi workers - the religious socialist Zionists, of which my mother was one in her youth. In the first half of the last century these religious youth took socialism seriously and even founded Orthodox kibbutzim. Every week in this little booklet, they would publish a commentary on the Torah portion written by one Rabbi Yithak Rozen, who is a leader in the settler movement. I want to share with you some of these, all written in the early 90s, at the beginning of the "Oslo" period. One week, Rabbi Rozen wrote that it is a well known fact that on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) God allocates a certain number of deaths for the following year. Now it is also well known that Israel has an incredibly high death rate from automobile accidents. So Rabbi Rozen argued, putting these two facts together, one can only conclude that car accidents are the price of the Oslo peace process. If Israeli society had the dedication to continue it's war against the Palestinians, the youth who died in car accidents, would die in war instead (after all there is that quota), but at least it would be in a holy cause. Another week Rozen was commenting on the first chapter of Genesis. Medieval Jewish biblical commentators ask why God began the Torah with the creation of the world? The answer is that it shows us the world belongs to God and he has the right to allocate the lands to whom he sees fit. Thus he chose to give Israel the land inhabited by the Canaanites. Now there is also a well known Rabbinic statement: "Derech Eretz kadma la Torah" - "Derech Eretz" is more important than Torah. "Derech Eretz" is a very hard word to translate. It literally means "the path of the land" or less literally "the ways of common folk." In its original context in the Talmud, the Rabbis meant that it is important to pursue a livelihood, and not exclusively study Torah. The Rabbis of the Talmud felt that the living Torah could only be understood in the context of day-to-day life among the people. Dedicating oneself to an exclusive community of study would inhibit a true understanding of God's word. (Unfortunately this idea got lost in medeival Poland where the idea of the Yeshiva - the Jewish equivalent of the monastery - took root). "Derech Eretz" can also mean civility, and this expression is often taken to mean it is more important to be a civil, decent person - in Yiddish a "mensch" - than to be a Torah scholar. Learning without good behavior is worthless. Rabbi Rozen had his own unique interpretation. Inspired by the commentary on Genesis, Rozen argued that the true meaning is that "Eretz" - the land - is more important than Torah. No value in Judaism is more important than attachment to the land of Israel. As you can imagine, these writings would get my blood boiling. But when I shared my reservations with the parents of the now knife-waving dancing children, they couldn't understand what bothered me. But I leave the worst for last. In Jewish law, there is a concept of "Rodeph". "Rodeph" literally means pursuit. And the law states, that if someone actively pursues you to kill you, you have the right to kill that person in self-defense. Yigal Amir, the murderer of Yitzhak Rabin said that he was inspired to kill Rabin, because Rabbis in the settler movement said the law of "Rodeph" applied to Rabin. But Rozen took this even further. In one Saturday's commentary he said that the law of "Rodeph" applies to all Arabs - men, women and children. In short, Rozen gave a moral justification for genocide against Arabs. Please remember this was written during the Oslo years. When I pointed this out to the other congregants, no one seemed to be shocked. They all felt I was over-reacting, being too sensitive. The worst they could say was that perhaps Rozen was being a bit immoderate. But many, of course, agreed with his thinking. I eventually stopped going to the synagogue in Kokhav Yair. It was hard for me to sit in the same room with people who supported genocide in the name of Judaism. Frankly, I find Meir's reaction a bit hypocritical. These youth are merely expressing more openly, the values they grew up with at home. < | >
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"Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz -- Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace" -Benito Juárez
"It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it." -Eleanor Roosevelt "Let them call me a rebel and welcome. I feel no concern from it. But should I suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul" -Thomas Paine | |
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Feature: Singing vengeance
