Posted on 06/17/2010 6:39:57 AM PDT by Zionist Conspirator
Editor's note: Israel has been in an uproar this week over the Supreme Court ruling forcing Ashkenazi parents to send their daughters to (a private) school track where they will be in classes with Sephardic girls. The parents refuse to do so, and the court ruled that they must be jailed. The issue is being framed by the media as racism and antagonism is running high. Moshe Feiglin has a completely different view:
The demonization campaign against the Haredim is pre-meditated - no doubt about it. Suddenly, everyone is very concerned over what subjects the Haredim are teaching their students. Suddenly the leftist, secular, Ashkenazi elites wake up and bemoan the small numbers of Sephardic girls in the Chassidic schools.
It is not too difficult to figure out where the source of this ugly wave of anti-Semitism hides. Those people who have everything to gain from the "secular" name-brand are Tzippy Livni and media-personality and aspiring politician Yair Lapid. The politics of hate are very effective. Ehud Barak waged an anti-Haredi campaign and became prime minister. Tommy Lapid won an amazing election victory with anti-Semitic tactics, Tzippy Livni also won over incited voters in the last elections and Tommy's son, Yair wants a piece of the action, as well.
The promotional firms and their well-funded clients are cooking up a political big-bang for the Israeli public. Recent history has proven that when Israeli society moves Right, hatred for the settlers does not bring in the votes. So who will be the bad guy? Which witch will the raging mob learn to hate and hunt down? Who else but the Haredim?
The problem in Emanuel is not Ashkenazi discrimination against Sephardic Jews. 30% of the students in the school in question are Sephardic. The real question in this case is: Who determines what education our children will receive - the parents, who ostensibly have the right to educate their children according to their beliefs, or the State and its justice system?
Manhigut Yehudit has always been an egalitarian movement that does not differentiate between Ashkenazic or Sephardic, observant or non-observant Jews. But this open approach must be a product of free choice and not of coercion. We believe that schools should unconditionally accept all children who would like to learn. But we can certainly honor the desire of parents who, in this age of permissiveness and rebelliousness, choose to keep their children in a more closed learning environment.
In Israel today, the Education Minister is the supreme authority over our children's education and can expropriate the parents' rights to determine the type of education they want for their children. This abnormal reality creates distortions, such as the attempt to force parents to send their daughters to an educational track that does not meet their educational/spiritual standards under the threat of fines and imprisonment.
There are thousands of children who illegally do not attend school in Israel. Some of them even illegally work for their parents, or work with their active consent. But these children are mostly Bedouin or Arabs, so no public storm clouds will burst over the issue and the "rule of law" will not have its way. But when the parents in question are Haredi and are doing their utmost so that their daughters attend school, the court will not hesitate to show them who is the boss. The media will accuse the parents of racism, the war drums will beat and the public atmosphere will become hateful and closed-minded.
Essentially, we are all in the same boat. The Supreme Court, which has nowhere near 30% representation of Sephardic Jews on its lofty bench, should not be allowed to force its values on the parents of Emanuel. Manhigut Yehudit is not in favor of segregation, but we are totally opposed to coercion of values in any realm - and certainly in the all-important educational realm.
The educational "seminar in jail" that the Supreme Court has imposed upon the Emanuel parents for their refusal to send their daughters back to school is reminiscent of the "educational seminar" to which the Jews opposed to the Expulsion from Gush Katif were treated by the courts. Now, when the media is hunting down witches and the flames of hatred are being fanned high, we must stand united with the Haredi public. This struggle is the struggle of every Jew who cares about individual liberties and the Jewish nature of this country.
NB: Please read all the articles at the linked site! They are all terrific this week!
If I were an Israeli, somehow I do not think I would be too bothered about whether the Jews in the trenches next to me were Ashkenazi or Sephardi.
Ahmadinejad and Bin Laden want both groups just as dead....
Did you read the article?
The issue is being defined as "race" by the Left. It's about the right of parents to control the education of their children without coercion.
We spent Shabbat at Avnei Eitan in the Golan Heights. Childhood friends who were driven out of Gush Katif now live there in a neighborhood of trailer homes. They have not yet received authorization to build a permanent home, but with no help from anyone, they did build three small guest cabins in their back yard. We packed up our extended family and set out to the north for some R&R in the small slice of heaven-on-earth that G-d has given our friends in the Golan Heights.
From the looks of things up north, tourism has become the main source of income for the farmers there. The state of Tel Aviv is in desperate search of some open countryside and clean air and farms that were once dangerously close to bankruptcy have a generous supply of both those commodities. Thank G-d, the tourism business up north is a success story. I pray that some of this prosperity will rub off on the Gush Katif refugees who I met in Avnei Eitan.
Where do these people, aged 50 plus, get the strength to start all over again, and in the Golan Heights, no less, which has been teetering on the edge of Israeli retreat for the past forty years? I did not ask them. Shabbat is not the time to open unhealed wounds. But clearly, a good part of the answer is that the Gush Katif refugees have an asset that most of the Nation of Israel lacks: Community.
Historically, Jews have always lived in structured communities. When we returned to our Land - and even more so, when we established our state - someone decided that the community was extraneous and its power and authority should be transferred to the centralized state of the Labor party (then called Mapai). The traditional communities were scratched and the Zionist melting pot boiled us all into one big "Mother of all Communities."
The lyrics to a popular song by the Dudaim Duo from about thirty years ago artfully depict the outcome: (freely translated)
Pushed and shoved into small cans of tin
Waiting for a bit of air
The people stuck inside knock and knock They want to get out
The people outside want to get back in
We don't see the blue skies
We don't see the rainbow in the clouds
There are no more holidays, just ordinary days
The entire world is black and white.
The individual bereft of community is a very lonely and hopeless person. Somewhere out there, in the government offices, there are faceless people who have been hired to run his life. But these clerks, even if they have good intentions, have no real ability to understand the individual's needs and no convincing reason to really help him. Modern technology has exacerbated the problem; who dares dream today of calling a large office and talking to a real person? It is impossible to reach the heads of the Mother of all Communities. The government offices have websites and you, Mr. Cohen, can talk to the wall - or to the computer screen.
In almost every democracy in the world, elections are district-based. District-based elections encourage the development of local leadership and motivate that leadership to take responsibility. In the US, every citizen has his congressman, alderman or precinct captain. Even the local police chief and the local judge are elected by the community. An elected public official presumably wants to be re-elected, so he will make sure to answer phone calls and to do his best to attend to the needs of his constituents.
In Israel, the political parties are more like large corporations. The individual does not vote for people. Instead he must vote for labels, who sit on high with one hundred percent power and zero responsibility.
Israel is becoming a wealthy state. Nevertheless, it is not able to properly care for its weak and underprivileged. State social workers routinely direct the needy to charity NGOs. The centralized government has no way to know who really needs help and who has learned to cynically take advantage of the system. As a result, over half of Israel's social security budget is allocated to Israel's Arab population - which is working and living well - while truly needy people are forced to turn to charity organizations.
Israel must re-invent itself as a community-based country. It must encourage the formation of small communities, allowing them to retain a large portion of the local taxes collected from its members. If that were the case, we could be sure that the local needy would not be abandoned; their problem would become the community's problem and responsibility - not the state's.
Those people who have had the privilege to live in active communities, like the settlers, for instance, know just how well the community model works. When a person in the community hits a tough spot, the neighbors know and enter the picture with genuine care. Together with their local leadership, they find the ways to help.
Welfare is the first responsibility that must be returned to the community. But it is certainly not the last. In principle, the only responsibilities of the state are security, justice and national infrastructure. "The king makes wars and metes out justice," Maimonides writes in The Laws of Kings. Today, the state does just the opposite. It interferes in virtually every aspect of the citizens' lives while ignoring its main responsibilities - security and justice.
The community is the missing link between the individual family and the state. We must urgently rehabilitate it. It should be the privilege and right of every citizen of Israel.
I suspect a lot of this has to do with the fact that so many Haredi are leeches off of the public dole, in part to raise their kids.
When on the dole, you become answerable to the State.
Is there a religious issue, too? Sure. But the hook is the state money. Get off the dole, they get off your back.
Once community has given way to Centralization there is no return short of total disintegration of the Center.
Ashkenazi parents certainly have the right to restrict their children's school on ethnic grounds, if that school is funded totally by private tuition and charity.
But I can't but find such a desire to be distasteful, in an environment where Israel's enemies would kill Jews without distinction as to their ethnicity.
I’m always uneasy about these kinds of articles on FR. Outsiders don’t understand the distinct differences between religious Ashkenazim and religious Sefaradim, much less other differences that are relevant in education. And there is much misunderstanding of how and why Israeli religious schools are funded and controlled.
Just thoughts.
Again, I am considering the perspective of the millions of would be Jew-killers just across Israel's borders, to whom these differences may not be particularly relevant.
I am tied up at work now but when I have more time I hope to come back to this and give you a better explanation of what this issue is about (and it is not religious discrimination by the Haredim).
In the meantime, if you can get past the “yeshivish” language, which mixes Hebrew words into English sentences, here is an article which, with the comments below it, does a good job of telling the religious side of the story:
Re: post 5. Very eloquent and informative. Thanks for the ping.
I hope you understand that my stand is that of a non-Jew who has always been totally supportive of Israel and her right to exist as a Jewish state.
When I read comments in the article you cite such as:
"You want to kill us, kill us.......This is the ultimate battle and we will not give in"
I wonder exactly who they think their mortal enemies are??
They think their mortal enemy is a state, whether Israel or Tsarist Russia, that forbids their teaching Jewish law in the manner in which their tradition has mandated that it should be taught.
In the 19th century there were rabbis who left their towns or districts in Russia, sometimes with community members, sometimes without, when the Tsarist government required them to teach secular subjects, or to send their children to school bare-headed, or to outlaw long chassidic frock-coats, or to place similar restrictions on their lives.
These people are happy to be living in the land of Israel, but they regard the modern secular-oriented State of Israel as a nation that at best tolerates their religious practices and often, particularly among the elites in the judiciary, is downright hostile to their religious needs.
Their attitude is that they will live their religious Jewish lives and they will sacrifice their lives, their freedom and their sacred honor to do so.
Feel free to respond later, at a time when you are not otherwise busy.
Thanks, I can handle single questions. It’s the big overview that requires reflection.
The Haredi schools place a very high value on morals and ethics in home life as well as in school. In New York, there have been parents who were called into the school and told that their child was going to be dismissed because there was a television in their home. I am aware of an individual who immigrated to Israel from Hungary/Ukraine, and whose admission to one of the most prominent yeshivas was revoked because they got reports that he was walking out into the distant fields with a girl and feared that this behavior, which they regarded as immodest, could bring down the level of strict observance of law and tradition that they require. The very word “haredim” means those who shake with fear over G-d and His commandments.
As the article points out, the school is 30% sephardic and 70% ashkenizic. The school apparently is under the aegis of the Slonim chassidim (in other words, a specific sect and not just generalized religious education). The parents and supporters are concerned that people (i.e., the sephardim who are the subject of the lawsuit) who want to come into the school from outside the Slonim tradition don’t live their lives to the same standards. They are willing to take these students if they make the same rigorous commitments in their lifestyle that the other students require, as I understand it. The problem is that this would require these new students to sever friendships and in some cases extended family relationships with people who live non-observant or less-observant lives and understandably those students and their families are opposed to this requirement.
It is a difficult situation to understand from an American perspective, but if you regard the haredim as a group that constantly feels itself under pressure to give up its way of life, then you can understand why they are unwilling to lower their standards to bring others into the school who, in turn, are unwilling to live up to the standards that are imposed by this lifestyle.
The one fact that comes out loud and clear from the article is that the notion that this is an anti-sephardic racist discrimination policy not only is false and defamatory, but is inflammatory as well. As noted above, 30% of the school is of sephardic background.
By the way, you may not know this, but sephardic Jews have many traditions that differ from ashkenazic ones, and in general the sephardic Jews have a history of interacting with less-religious Jews and with non-Jewish individuals, whereas the haredim do not. This is one of the reasons why the stringent rules required by the haredim for admission to their school may be so difficult for the sephardim to follow.
In fact, to follow my comment above, the haredi community, particularly in Jerusalem and Tsevat (and in Hebron before the 1929 massacre) was enhanced in the 1700s and 1800s by immigration of Eastern European haredim who moved there so that they could live full Jewish lives as they understood them. The haredim who live in Israel, regardless of when their ancestors came to Israel, regard themselves as spiritually aligned with those haredi purists.
By contrast, the State of Israel’s Zionist premise, as articulated in the late 19th-early 20th century, was that the Jews were persecuted throughout the world because they did not have a country to call their own. Once they had their own country they could live like everyone else.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (and forgive me if you are, in fact, a rocket scientist) to realize that these objectives for living in Israel are very different from one-another. This explains the ambivalence (at best) that many haredim feel toward the government of the State of Israel.
The inference I am drawing from the articles and comments is that the Haredi are insisting not only upon religious freedom (laudable) but government support for their schools (not so laudable).
The State of Israel provides funding for schools. Since Israel’s first prime minister, the secular David Ben-Gurion, Israel has included religious schools in its funding mandate.
The haredim believe that the supreme court, by mandating the the school accept children whose level of religious observance and personal lifestyles would not be acceptable to Slonim chassidim, is seeking an excuse to abandon a status quo that has been in place since the earliest years of the State of Israel (which was founded in 1948).
One would think that a decision to defund the haredi school system should be made by the Knesset, the legislature, rather than by the supreme court. Since the previous chief justice, Avraham Barak, the Israeli supreme court has asserted jurisdiction over pretty much any issue it wishes to decide. There have been many complaints since the 1990s about the activist court in Israel, and this is among them.
Here is another article you may want to read. It comes from the Jerusalem Post but I found it in a blog:
http://onthederech.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/the-real-truth-about-immanuel/
The missing piece of the puzzle. That makes sense to me.
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