What bothers me about my last post

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.