There is only one thing that matters at the moment, only one thing that has real importance when uttered from the lips of a mayoral candidate. It’s not that I don’t care about the candidates experience in business, politics, public service or charitable organizations. It’s not that I don’t want to see a candidate who has charisma, who is a “man” of Bet Shemesh, who cares about all the residents. And it’s not that I don’t want someone who is a visionary, a do-er, who can deliver, someone with a track record of achievements. It’s just that this is no longer a game, it is serious business, Bet Shemesh is at a crossroads and we can’t afford to lose.
So what is it that I want to hear at this early stage? I want a candidate who is willing to step aside to avoid splitting the vote. The most important thing is to have just one candidate to stand against the mayor, this is our only chance. And it’s not just about standing aside close to the election, this would be disastrous, it’s about creating and backing a single champion from the beginning. It’s about generating hope and building momentum over time and across the city, something that can only be done with one single savior anointed from early on. And as hinted to above, a genuine candidate who truly cares about Bet Shemesh would stand aside despite knowing they are the best man for the job and despite the protests of their supporters.
And what if our candidates’ egos are greater than their love for the residents of Bet Shemesh? Yes, we are talking about humans and there is no real cut off point early on to force or encourage such a momentous and selfless decision. So I call out to the respected members of the community including those who get their hands dirty in local politics…devise a system now with the candidates, come up with a solution for choosing a single candidate, create a pact. I don’t have a solution for you but whether a telephone poll is used to call 500 random residents or a mutually agreed selection committee can be formed please do it and do it early.
They say in the start-up world “If you’re going to fail, fail fast” but in this election it is more than this. The best candidate may need to step aside to ensure that Bet Shemesh turns the corner and establishes itself as a thriving and attractive city.
While the good people of Sheinfeld have suffered in silence for some time from the aggressive nature of the cats, the news broke nationwide and quickly went global when a little girl was filmed by journalist pleading with her mother not to make her walk past a pach zevel area where cats may have been lurking. This genuine fear is rooted in months of torment by local cats who have both hissed and spat at young school girls. “I don’t blame her” said a local martial arts expert “I wouldn’t walk into a pach zevel area myself. I do all the home chores in exchange for my wife dealing with the trash”
A leading activist/politician who has dedicated much time to protecting the girls of Orot and people of Sheinfeld was very quick to point out that he has nothing against cats in general. “The vast majority of cats are domesticated” he diplomatically pointed out “They are happy to be around all types of Jewish people and are a great asset to the Jewish nation, their way of life is good and clean, yes they may be a little overly dependent on the generosity of Jews but they do contribute.” In a scathing response, on the Orot Banot facebook page, an outspoken far right Gad 1 resident pointed out that while the majority of cats in America are domesticated, in Eretz Yisrael this is certainly not the case and these cats have no interest in integrating with society and can be aggressive to anyone who enters their territory and potentially attack anyone in viewing distance. “In short they should all be put down, it’s a doriyta” he declared dramatically. Additionally, at a recent publicity seeking press conference, the mayor, known widely to be a cat lover, did not lose the opportunity to take a cheap shot at the activist/politician mentioned above, pointing out that he was once witnessed “aggressively” shooing a cat off a dining room chair when all it was doing was sleeping “peacefully”.
A proactive Sheinfeld resident published a message from his attic office to the townhouse list pointing out that the cats depend on the garbage which the residents dispose of and suggested that all townhouse residents refrain from putting out garbage until the cats change their attitude. After various shalom biyat issues emerged throughout Sheinfeld it was decided that it would be more practical and hygienic to close the lids of the garbage cans instead. This approach was adopted until it became clear that 98% of Sheinfeld residents are too squeamish to lift up the lid of a garbage can and garbage was instead being left on the ground next to the garbage cans.
There are various concerns, worries and complaints about the cats. Residents object to garbage being strewn in the streets when things get out of hand. Some worry that domestic cats are being negatively influenced, intimidated or bullied by their cousins. Others object to their treatment of females and how many kittens are seen crossing the roads unaccompanied. There are concerns about the cats moving into and taking over neighbourhoods in Bet Shemesh and others point to the cats’ high birth rate and the possibility of this becoming a national issue.
One Sheinfeld educator and resident has tirelessly worked hard to build bridges between the various local residents. A refreshing voice, she insists that stray cats are not vermin and has even pointed to instances of stray cats wandering into the homes of Sheinfeld residents in an effort to reach out to them. “Even wild cats can be domesticated, it’s an educational issue and if we can reach out to them, especially when they are kittens, progress can be made” she insisted while sitting at the Meuhedit kupat cholim waiting for a tetanus and rabies shot after a botched attempt to build bridges with a feline “friend”. She held a cross community meeting in her home on motsei shabbos which she claims was going very well until one of the more aggressive cats took advantage of her hospitality and started marking his new territory. “It took us hours to entice the cats to come into the house with a left over piece of free range chicken from shabbos and then all the conversation was unfortunately one directional until it suddenly ended with the pishing incident” a jaded neighbour who attended the meeting informed us.
Cat lovers are now referring to the mayor as the Pied Piper, as they believe that in no time all the rats will leave Bet Shemesh with the influx of many more cats to the new mayor sponsored cat havens. “In a few years not only will the rodents be gone but a rodent won’t even want to go near this town” one cat lover claimed. Local residents point out that elections are around the corner and things will be very different when a new mayor comes in. “It’s only a couple of hundred families of stray cats that are causing the trouble” an optimistic local resident commented “and every dog has its day”.
In my last post I suggested that we need to be demanding action from within the Chareidi community. The zealots may not be accepted by the Chareidi community but they live among them and use all their facilities, their shops, their shuls, their schools, their playgrounds and most of all their mikvaot. A situation where the 99% of good and righteous Chareidim could agree to bar the zealots and their families from these facilities would go a long way to tackling the problem. The theory sounds good but I have doubts that have been playing on my mind since my last post.
There has been a lot of recent debate as to whether the zealots are Chareidi or not i.e. should the greater Chareidi community condemn them or does condemning them imply that these break-aways are part of their community. This is all semantics and excuses and as Jews, the zealots’ direct neighbours have a responsibility to deal with the zealots to protect their own people, protect adjacent non-Chareidi communities and of course prevent future Chillul Hashem.
But is it black and white (excuse the unintentional pun)? Are there really two clear camps i.e. Zealots and Chareidim, or is it a continuum of blurring hashkafas within and between chareidi sects and types? I think that I can pretty much guarantee that no clean shaven, American Chareidi type subscribes to the use of violence against the Dati Leumi community. However, that same person might happily interact and even ask advice from a chosheva Chareidi rebbe who happily sends his kollel to say tehillim outside the Orot Banot girls school. Maybe that rebbe, while not encouraging intimidation and violence, will happily interact with those who do encourage it or take part in it. Of course I made a big leap from the American Chareidi to the rebbe but the fact that there are many more human/kehilla links to this chain, with subtle differences in hashkafa, compounds the problem.
The problem is that there is no cut off point. There is no doubt that 80% of the Chareidi community completely reject the zealots behaviour, but maybe from that point the hashkafas move closer and closer towards the zealots, from ambivalence to tacit agreement to support to action. Some of those who fall into that remaining 20% may be respected and powerful leaders and this just heightens the seriousness of the issue. In such a situation a policy of exclusion of zealots cannot be agreed and becomes impossible to implement, especially as they are most likely to live within areas predominantly populated by the 20% (who are most like minded).
On the positive side, the fact that there is a continuum of hashkafa between Chareidi communities and no break in communication means that there is a possibility of the 80% influencing and possibly even dictating to the 20%. This requires a) awareness by Chareidim that zealots can no longer be ignored as they are dangerous on many levels b) a recognition by Chareidim that the 20% is different from the remainder of the Chareidi community. The attempt to academically disown the zealots from the Chareidi community undermines this process as it disregards the fact that a significant part of the community, who are not zealots, may accept or even support this type of behaviour and in effect harbour the zealots.
There’s been a lot of discussion around why many of the Chareidi rabbonim have not condemned the actions of the sikrikim in Beit Shemesh. It’s resulted in a war of words but what’s the point? We’re Jews, Jews who are learned in Gemara, the most complex set of endless questions, answers, arguments, resolutions and arguments on those resolutions. Any Rabbi worth his salt can give a complex, clever justification for not condemning these actions and any bad Rabbi will.
Actions are what we need. Keep it in the realm of words and we’ll be talking until mashiach comes and every player will run to mashiach, like he is the Rosh Yeshiva, bragging about his svarah and how right he or she is. The condemnation issue is one of those tangential teasers that chevrusas will spend days getting excited pinning down (you know what I mean), except in this case it is a waste of time.
In my mind there are at least two remedies to the situation
1) The police taking the issue seriously for a period of years – this is not going to happen and even if it did the Chareidi community as a whole would inevitably be pushed towards the Sikrikim causing a bigger divide
2) The Chareidim of Beit Shemesh taking responsibility for those extremists who live within their borders, use their shops, their shuls, their schools, their playgrounds and their mikvaot
Maybe 2) is a pipe dream but this is what we should be asking for instead of wasting time arguing the toss on condemnations i.e. Mr Rabbi if you believe that terrorising members of the public is bad then organise the 99% of your neighbourhood that are just and righteous. Don’t let these men and their families into your shops, your shuls, your schools, your playground and most of all don’t let their wives in your mikvaot because you know what these guys really care about! Also their wives won’t be too happy travelling to Yerushaliyim to find a friendly mikva either and they’ll make that pretty clear.
Over 3 years ago the same people terrorising the girls of Orot Banot sent a letter to people living across the road from them. “We can see you have a t.v., move it away from the window as we will not take responsibility for what happens to your property or your family.” Do you think that these people really only intimidate the people of Sheinfeld? They are a menace within their own communities. They make good Chareidi peoples’ lives a misery and the Chareidi Rabbonim are not brave enough to speak out, work together and banish the evil from their midst.
Is there a way we can encourage this to happen? Is there a way we can support this from the outside? Can we at least agree with most of the leaders of the various kehillas in RBS that these guys are a menace to the local Chareidi population (as a starting point)? If this cannot be agreed then what hope do we have?
The following excellent articles helped my thinking on the current situation in Beit Shemesh (and Israel) and I encourage you to read them if you haven’t already:
When thugs run schools: http://www.tzedek-tzedek.blogspot.com/2012/01/bet-shemesh-when-thugs-run-schools.html
Everyone is fighting a different battle in Beit Shemesh: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=252080
The Curse of Violent Extremism – from the 10th of Tevet to Bet Shemesh: http://voicesoflss.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/the-curse-of-violent-extremism-from-the-10th-of-tevet-to-bet-shemesh/
Rachel Hershberg – Here’s my update…..: http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2720411183419&id=1651252257
David Ram’s thoughts: http://www.facebook.com/krulwich/posts/266012343458876
There is no community in Israel that doesn’t face its own serious problems, every community has its own pekalach, just like every person has their own pekalach. Part of life is about the journey towards overcoming these issues on a personal or community level. To believe that one community has a superior derech to another is just self righteousness. It’s simply a deviant way of making one feel good about oneself through promoting oneself above others. It is not by chance that we are all so different, each community has its positive role to play and serious issues to face. I stress this as I don’t want the following thoughts to be understood as a destructive attack on the Chareidi community. I can equally point to different, but just as serious, self destructive issues within the dati leumi community.
On reading David Morris’s article on violence against school children it reminded me of my first real encounter with the “off the derech” phenomenon in the Chareidi community. Ten years ago I ate with a Chareidi family in Telstone. The husband was an incredible Talmud Chocham, a man of immense intelligence and the wife was clearly a great woman. The eldest child, a 16 year old boy sat at the shabbos table in jeans and a t-shirt. It turned out that he went fully off the derech as he could not handle what he felt was the hypocrisy of children being beaten while being taught pirkei avot by their Rebbe. There was little that the parents could do to address the situation and I can only assume that this was due to some of the issues pointed to by David Morris in the article I referenced above. Interestingly these issues also result from or are connected to hypocrisy where community members preach Torah values but deviate from them where it serves their purpose. I think that analysing the role of hypocrisy might give us some understanding of the reaction to the Zealots’ abuse of Orot Banot’s girls and mothers.
The media story went viral on the week of Parshat Vayigash. I don’t believe that this was a coincidence. Many people are familiar with the Beis Halevi’s drosh on the midrash dealing with the intense, near war, encounter between Yehuda and Yoseph. It was a collision of two superpowers, two weltanschauungs, the pious learned Jew and the seeming rich state controlling goy (sound familiar?) and just as things were about to explode Yoseph reveals himself, “I am your brother, is my father still alive”. As their “living father” had just been discussed, in relation to how he could die if Binyamin was taken away from him, the brothers immediately knew that Yoseph was not asking after his father’s welfare but actually pointing out their deep hypocrisy i.e. you accuse me of being heartless but you sold our father’s favourite son into slavery and then told him that I was dead. Hypocrites he yelled! The brothers were confounded, they saw themselves for who they really were and suddenly saw through all their deviant moral justifications of their actions against Yoseph.
But when it comes to Yehuda and his lineage this type of hypocrisy is not an anomaly. It’s a recurring theme, one that maybe recurs until today. Look at Yehuda and Tamar, and look at King David and Batsheva. However we see something that leaves a lot of room for optimism and is very heartening, in every case “Yehuda” sees the error of his ways, addresses his hypocrisy and does teshuva. He needs to be shocked into it, but it happens none the less.
We know that there is mashiach ben Yoseph and mashiach ben David (Yehuda). We know that they both represent two very different hashkafas and I think it is obvious that these hashkafa’s align with the Dati Leumi and Chareidi communities. Mashiach ben Yoseph comes first. Yoseph is the secular malchut/kingship. He is the spiritual, knowledgeable and dedicated Jew who can integrate with and triumphantly face the challenges of the secular world. He is the light to the nations, the tikun of Eisav “the spark that consumes the flax of Eisav (secular world)” but sometimes like in the case of his twin neshama Deena he can get burned where he ventures too near to the secular. It is clear to me that the Dati leumi community holds this hashkafa, plays this role, risks this danger and too often unwittingly loses members to it. Mashiach ben David is the spiritual torah centric leadership, a King of Jews. Maybe he picks up the reins at a time in the future where the Jewish people have evolved (and are ready for him to reign) and more importantly at a time when hypocrisy has been recognised and banished from Torah Judaism. The Chareidi hashkafa is clearly aligned with Yehuda, it uses it insularity to nurture the Torah within its communities and protect them from outside influences. Is there a healthy limit to this insularity, can it be taken to an extreme? Well Yaakov was punished for keeping Deena in a box so that she would not have to marry Eisav and use her “Yoseph-like” qualities to help him do teshuva. So one can go too far in being insular for the sake of Torah but I think I am going off the point!
Why have the committed Chareidi world been so slow to condemn the violence (if at all) and why have the moderate Chareidi world done little in terms of “actions” to try and remedy the situation? I’ve heard 3 answers that make sense and currently I’m seeing it as a blend of all 3. The answers are apathy, fear and hashkafa. Apathy: It’s not my community. Fear: The zealots could come after me, my kids won’t get into the right school, I’ll damage shidduch potential. Hashkafa: We don’t agree with the violence but it serves our purpose i.e. it keeps zionism and modernity away from our communities and hashkafa, for some reason, trumps halacha in Eretz Yisrael. The presence of one factor, hypocrisy, emboldens these 3 drivers and if it was removed, these drivers would be significantly weakened and might even crumble. Only deep hypocrisy can allow frum Jews to be apathetic to 7 year old girls from other communities being targeted by violent extremists. Only deep hypocrisy would prevent moderate chareidim from attending the rally held months ago against the extremists terrorising our girls (and hypocrisy certainly allows major rabonim to attend the extremists counter rally). Only deep hypocrisy allows some Chareidim to turn a blind eye to this intimidation of young girls, which is clearly contrary to the Torah, as it serves their hashkafic interests.
So when will the Chareidi community as a whole suddenly look at itself, see the hypocrisy and mend it’s ways as Yehuda did. When is the beauty of the Chareidi way going to shine through and be a drawing light of Torah to the entire Jewish people. When will I once again find that beauty within the Chareidi world that I first thought I found over a decade ago. I’m waiting for you, I am Yoseph, I am your brother, I am a Jew and I love you.
citronthoughts 