Sunday evening, a week ago, was the beginning of Yom Kippur, the most sacred day of the Jewish calendar. What happened then merits our attention now.
At Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv, an organization called Rosh Yehudi – a local group that seeks to bridge the gap between religious and secular Jews in a spirit of Zionism – was setting up for a traditional prayer service. This was primarily for people who are secular and not participants in synagogues but want a place to be on Yom Kippur. Rosh Yehudi, which has a synagogue nearby, was offering them the experience, beginning with Kol Nidre as the sun set. Some two thousand came.
Although Yom Kippur services – including use of a mechitza, a divider between the men and women’s section – had been held on this site by Rosh Yehudi for the last three years, this year the Tel Aviv municipality had declared the mechitza forbidden and a local court had supported this position.
Rosh Yehudi then substituted a string of flags between the men and women’s section and – please note – the police had signed off on this as acceptable.
However, a group of fiercely secular leftists, roughly 200 in number, protested that they found this offensive and crashed the services, causing disruption, sometimes violently. They shouted “busha!” (shame) at the worshippers. (This, we should note, is what the anarchist leftists routinely shout on the street during protests, but what was it the worshippers were supposed to be ashamed of?) The ugly look on the faces of some of the protesters was a painful reflection of what was going on.
Those who had come to participate were shocked and deeply upset.
Unable to hold their prayer services, most left, seeking services in the synagogue or going elsewhere.
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The bottom line is that attacking Jewish worshippers about to engage in prayer on the holiest day of the year is a shocker. It is forbidden. Period. It is not a question of it being “not nice,” not a matter of extenuating circumstances. It is wrong. The Jewish leftist protesters shouted “shame,” but the shame is theirs. All the more horrendous is the fact that this happened in Israel.
There is a great deal being written about how this could have been prevented. But this somehow puts the onus on Rosh Yehudi, and I do not believe that is where it belongs. That the protesters were offended by a division, even a permeable division, between men and women does not justify their behavior.
I do not imagine, remotely, that these are people who would have attended the service were it not for that gender division. It is not that simple.
And the proof of this is here:
“A report by the Tel Aviv Religious Council reveals severe disturbances in 18 minyanin [prayer groups] in the city during Yom Kippur, including prayers that received approval from the municipality.
“According to the report, 500 people participated in the riots and included, among other things, entering the chazan’s stand wearing a bathing suit, chanting “Nazis, child killers”, women seating themselves on the men’s side, and vice versa in the minyanim without a partition.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377837
They were disruptive even in prayer groups that had no mechitza! What is more, they were deliberately disrespectful and insulting.
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There are several factors to consider here:
[] There was, of course, nothing about the planned service at Dizengoff that was coercive. If you didn’t like it, you could find an alternative (or stay home). There are some 500 synagogues in Tel Aviv. Those who came to the Dizengoff service wanted to be there.
[] Prayer services and other events held for the Muslim population include gender separation. But there are no protests about this: The Muslims are left to do their thing. Protests by Jews are directed only at Jews.
[] The rationale is that separating out women is a form of misogyny, demeaning to women, and an insult to the men, as well. But protests are only against religious Jews holding gender-separated events, not against secular Jewish groups that hold women-only events. (And there are such events.)
This past Saturday night, an event for haredi women and girls in the Kiryat Menachem neighborhood of Jerusalem was cancelled because of a demonstration by men. The event was a movie night showing films produced exclusively for haredi women.
[] The leftists scream about “democracy,” which they claim is being destroyed by our current coalition. But for them, democracy means doing it their way. They do not respect women’s autonomy in deciding for themselves if they want to participate in all-women or gender-separated events.
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The Tel Aviv municipality has cancelled all Sukkot events planned by Rosh Yehudi for which the organization already had permits. The Tel Aviv court upheld this. Rosh Yehudi has not been successful in negotiating arrangements with the municipality.
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While the focus was on gender separation, the attack in its broadest sense was on traditional religious practice. It was anti-religious. Its goal was the elimination of public expressions of Judaism.
I have written in the past about attacks on Chabad booths that offer a chance to put on tfillin. Chabad does not coerce, its representatives ask, “Would you like to do this? And sometimes left-wing secularists embrace the opportunity, as this man from the far-left Meretz party did. He didn’t become Orthodox on the morrow, but he apparently was pleased with the experience. In Hebrew it is call kiruv (bringing close). This picture was taken in Tel Aviv.
Unfortunately, all of this is threatening to some die-hard secularists.
Tel Aviv is the proud and defiant heart of secular Israel and brooks no challenge to that status.
At the end of September, former Yesh Atid MK Orna Barbivai, who is now running to be mayor of Tel Aviv, decried the presence of young Jewish families in Tel Aviv, who sought to imbue a Jewish spirit in their neighborhoods. She declared: “Anyone who does not meet the standards that I will set in a liberal city will not stay here.”
This is a very distorted use of the word “liberal.” True liberals embrace the right of people to be different.
Her attitude was reflected in the extremely troubling words of Yesh Atid chair Yair Lapid (emphasis added):
“The Orthodox ultra-nationalist nucleus that came to the neighborhood decided to bring the war to us as well…
“We are the flagbearers of a Judaism that is not messianic, not racist, neither arrogant nor violent.”
Later Lapid backtracked on his statement, but his original words revealed a great deal.
War? Why speak of a war when the issue is prayer on a holy day? Violent? How could he imply that Rosh Yehudi was violent?
Calming the tensions was clearly not his goal. “Messianic” is a code word often applied by the left to the religious parties in the government: they are, cry the leftists, about to establish a theocracy. “Ultra-nationalists.” They are radicals who must be feared and defeated, declares the left.
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We come closer now to the heart of what was happening at Dizengoff Square on Yom Kippur. This was of a piece with the anarchist opposition to the government. Israel Zeira, the leader of the Rosh Yehudi group, said that he recognized many of those who came to disrupt the services as being part of the Kaplan Force, the group that leads the opposition coming out of Tel Aviv – and, I daresay, does so with violence on many occasions.
Whatever its pretense, that opposition is not about judicial reform per se. It is about the nature of Israel: Is Israel to remain a Jewish state, or become, as the leftists wish, “a state of all its citizens,” in which Judaism is sidelined?
I have not had a good word for MK Gideon Sa’ar, head of the New Hope faction of Gantz’s National Unity Party, for some time. On this occasion he surprised me, saying:
“Those who curse and humiliate religious Jews aren’t defending Tel Aviv’s liberal identity — on the contrary, they are increasing divisions between the parts of our nation.” He expressed concern about transforming the major protest movement against the current hardline government into a “war on religion and Jewish tradition.”
I fear, however, that the horse has already left the stable.
MK Moshe Gafni, head of the Degel Ha’Torah faction of UTJ, had this to say (emphasis added):
“When you pray Kol Nidrei in Dizengoff Circle, these people come and pull the fringes [ritual fringes of the tallit that is worn on Kol Nidre night] of those who are there, then we are in the middle of a religious war! That’s why we, members of Degel Ha’Torah, are not giving media interviews, because it won’t help anything.”
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We now have greater clarity with regard to the political opposition, and clarity is a good thing.
But there is something else that has happened that is good news, and this is what I will close with:
There is testimony in social media from one individual after another who had identified as leftist and supported the opposition but has now had a change of heart.
Avi Abelow, activist and editor, has shared a number of posts (translated from the original Hebrew), there are many, many more:
It’s amazing what one Yom Kippur can do to a secular Kibbutznik. From today on I will be wearing the traditional Jewish head covering, a kippa.
Antiochus failed (to destroy us), the Romans failed (to destroy us), the Muslims failed to destroy us. And you too will fail to destroy us.
Don’t touch my Judaism. You have crossed a line.
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I’m a non-religious Israeli Jew who lives in the city of Givataim.
Thanks to the religious Jews being expelled from Dizengoff square in Tel Aviv on Yom Kippur, I have decided to purchase tefillin and put them on.
Because of the horrific event at Dizengoff Square, it is important to me that my children, who live in a non-religious city, see their father putting on a tallit and tefillin every morning (like this), in order that they learn what Judaism is.
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I live in Tel Aviv. I stopped wearing a kippah 12 years ago.
After seeing the horrific events that took place in Dizengoff square on Tel Aviv, I’m seriously thinking about wearing my kippa again in order to associate with the religious community I come from, instead of the community that attacks them.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377563
And so, there is a bright hope for Israel.
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© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by independent journalist Arlene Kushner. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
