The Jewish State or the State of the Jews?
It pains me to read headlines about Jews being arrested for holding the Torah, especially when the arrest occurs in Israel at the Kotel, the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s holiest sites. As I’ve noted before, if it happened anywhere else in the world, it would be labeled as the worst kind of anti-Semitism. In Israel, it’s just another day.
Anat Hoffman, Chairperson of the Israeli organization Women of the Wall, was arrested for allegedly reading from the Torah scroll at the Western Wall, which is forbidden for women under Israeli law, thanks to the stranglehold that the ultra-Orthodox have on Jewish religious life in Israel. She was later released and her organization claims she was not reading from the Torah, but merely holding it.
The official Orthodox Western Wall Rabbi, Shmuel Rabinowitz, has said that he would prefer to “distance politics and disagreement from this sacred place,” which means, status quo status quo status quo. In this view, women should not be permitted to pray from the Torah at this sacred site, because the ultra-Orthodox view of Judaism is the only legitimate view of Judaism. It seems, as Israel becomes more and more myopically a Jewish State, it is becoming less and less the state of the Jews, most of whom are not Orthodox, and many of whom are horrified by the increasingly illiberal policies of Israel.
The ultra-Orthodox are currently trying to rewrite conversion laws that would give them control over who gets to be a Jew, potentially alienating much of world Jewry from the Jewish state. Many converts would simply not be recognized as Jews. They already control the institution of marriage.
It is hard to witness these ridiculous acts of religious intolerance among Jews. I hope that the Israeli electorate will one day cast off the politicians who kowtow to the religious extremists in their midst. The Iranian people are currently fighting to be free of an insidious theocratic government that, among other things, wants to see the Jewish State destroyed. The Jewish people shouldn’t allow theocrats of the same mindset take over their country from within. What have the last sixty years been for if Israel is not a place where a Jew–any Jew–can fully live as Jew, even if she happens to have a different conception of what that means than the Orthodox?
We must show each other the respect we demand from others.
