Cultural isolation is, however, a striking feature of totalitarian regimes. In contrast, free circulation and expression of ideas and information is one of the hallmarks of democratic regimes.
The warning bells were finally heard more clearly on the day, last December, when a man of apparently 40 years of age spat, full of rage, on the face of eight-year old Naamah Margolis, while calling her a prostitute.
The girl was walking to school on the sidewalk in front of the yeshiva where the assailant spends his days. It was not the first time that had happened, nor was the assailant the only regular goer of the yeshiva to abuse girls walking with bare ankles and Naamah was not the only girl to suffer abuse. The warning bells sounded strong because the event is far from being an isolated fact.
The warning signal was amplified by an interview widely disclosed, in which a man identified only as “Moshe” shouted that it was a religious duty to spit on girls who do not follow the dress code that the Rabbi he obeys finds appropriate.
The warning signals materialized in hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of texts written around the Jewish world condemning religious extremism and warning people of the danger it represents. Protests shook Israel staring from Beit Shemesh, the city where the aggression happened.
However, it seems to me that there is a general misunderstanding about what provoked the event and we must analyze it more carefully, delving into the root of thought of those who abuse children gratuitously. Only then will we be able to propose solutions to treat the disease.
Words are very important. We build images and consolidate opinions with them. It is imperative to call things by their proper names, since labelling them ambiguously, will fatally create misunderstanding, as professor Ruth Wisse taught us in an excellent interview to the Jerusalem Post (1)
“Religious extremism” and “fundamentalism” were profusely condemned. Yet I believe these are not the correct terms. The event is not an act of extremism, nor is it of religious nature and, likewise, has no relationship with fundamentalism.
Extremity is, by definition, something that is far from the center. A behavior must be situated, necessarily, within a certain value scale for it to be extreme, and yet it must be far from the more conservative behavior within that value scale. A behavior that does not share the same value scale cannot be considered extreme. It is, in fact, a foreign behavior, belonging to another dimension.
Respect for the individual choices of each human being is the starting point of a value scale, which substantiates people’s rights to wear what they want, move freely in public spaces, choose their relationships, etc. Acknowledging that the freedom of choice is an inalienable right of the human being is the seed of the democratic system that rules Israeli society, a system that also imposes limits to choices that are legally available to individuals, expressed in laws adopted by society’s consensus.
The attribution of police and legal power to people and legally inducted organizations originates from this same value scale. The girl’s assailant had no police power nor any legal power, not least the right to apply a legal code which is different from the one adopted by the state of which he is a citizen. The aggressor was following a code, specific for his group, in which there is no respect for individual choice. In which a human being is born with no rights, but many duties. In which the human being is obliged to follow blindly, from birth, guidelines from a superior authority. In which even getting dressed demands obeying guidelines by the community’s Rabbi.
According to political literature, Totalitarianism is a political system in which the State, usually under the control of one single person, faction or class, does not acknowledge limits to its authority and makes an effort to regulate all aspects of public and private life (2). One must recognize that the societal organization of some ultra-Orthodox communities, among which Beit Shemesh, follows this model. They are totalitarian societies, in which power is exercised by one class – that of the Rabbis.
The aggressor is not an extremist in the value scale that governs Israeli society. He belongs to another system of thought, which is not located at the extreme of the democratic system, but rather, opposes it directly.
The aggressor is not an extremist. He is a member of a totalitarian system.
As to the “fundamentalist” label, invariably used with a strong negative connotation, I believe it actually has a positive connotation, but the fact is it does not apply to the equation we are analyzing.
Allow me to explain: fundamental values, that is, those that cannot be changed, are part of all political systems in the world. All constitutions have eternity clauses and that is a good thing, since these fundamental values do not allow corruption of the system. For instance, maintaining the fundamental value of the sanctity of human life is positive. The same holds true regarding the right to individual freedom of choice within a legal framework, and so on.
Moreover, the issue is not whether the aggressor exceeded a fundamental value, but rather the fact that he rejected fundamental values that govern democracy.
Finally, as regards the label “religious”, one must note that there is no permission, in any of the many codes of the Jewish religion, to spit on children or adults, women or men, regardless of their behavior. Let us consult the Talmud from top down and from right to left. Let us read the replies of all the Rabbis. Let us search accurately the Shulchan Aruch until our eyes jump out of their sockets. We will find no insinuation that this behavior is acceptable. Quite the contrary, according to Jewish dictates, whoever humiliates a person is as if he were killing her.
The Talmud quotes, “Rabbi Elazar de Modiin would say, one who … humiliates his friend in public … although he may possess Torah [knowledge] and good deeds, he has no share in the World to Come” (3). The word “humiliate” (4) used in this text is a semantic change of “whiten”, because the face of the humiliated person turns pale. The Rabbis in the past formulated that to publicly humiliate a human being is analogous to shedding their blood, since the red color (blood) disappears from the person’s face, giving room to pallor (5).
Spitting on children is not a religious act. It is a political attitude committed with the purpose of segregating physical spaces for exclusive socializing of people submitted, voluntarily or not, to a totalitarian regime. With this attitude, they intend on chasing away from “their” streets people who do not follow the totalitarian system. They do this through fear, in a manner consistent with the strategy of terrorists.
It does not matter if the totalitarian regime states that its representatives’ authority comes from God, since anyone who claims this authority is a human being, given that, by basic definition, God does not manifest himself. A regime that denies the right of choice to human beings is a totalitarian regime, whatever may be its guise, including a religious one.
“The demand to create a segregated space within a democratic regime where democracy gives room to the practice of a totalitarian political system” is the true denomination of the phenomenon that rang the warning bells. It is a long label, without the impact of an advertising slogan. It does not have the simple and direct impact of “religious extremism”, for instance. However, in my opinion, it is the correct label. It is a complex label because the issue is complex.
Physical aggression to whoever crosses the space in this territory are appalling manifestations and thus, extremely visible. Yet there are many other manifestations, which, for being lighter, end up mistakenly labelled as “folkloric” or “inherent to a way of life”. For instance, people believe that the clothing that dates back to the 17th century is a sign of attachment to tradition, but the Jewish tradition has always been to adapt the clothing to local customs and climate. People wear fur hats and overcoats in the Israeli summer to state their dislike in participating in a democratic society and not because of any religious obligation.
Another sign of this phenomenon is the cultural isolation that the community imposes on its members. The warning in the photograph, posted at a yeshiva, highlights this issue.
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According to our Beit Midrash regulation (6),the entry of any kind of computer on its grounds and surrounding areas is strictly prohibited. Even if they are used to write Torah treaties or if they are not connected to impure sites. This prohibition also covers impure tools such as Blackberries, I-phones, I-pads, etc. The above prohibition is in force even for short periods of time and/or temporary situations. |
According to our Beit Midrash regulation, the entry of any kind of computer on its grounds and surrounding areas is strictly prohibited.
Even if they are used to write Torah treaties or if they are not connected to impure sites.
This prohibition also covers impure tools such as Blackberries, I-phones, I-pads, etc.
The above prohibition is in force even for short periods of time and/or temporary situations.
This isolation is not a religious imperative. Note that Maimonides, the great 11th century religious scholar, whose works quite surely are read in the Beit Midrash that forbids contact with the world, was a physician fully adapted to the Moorish society in Spain and Egypt, where he studied the Greek classics and contemporary Arab thinkers. He wrote part of his monumental Jewish works in Arabic. A more recent model is the 19th century German Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, founder of modern orthodoxy. He wrote in German and graduated in Law at the University of Bonn.
There are many other examples of Jewish religious leaders in the culture of their era. Our isolation, when it happened, was, as a rule of thumb, imposed from outside and not as a community option.
Cultural isolation is, however, a striking feature of totalitarian regimes, as Friedrich and Brzezinski observe when they identify absolute monopoly of mass media as one of the six common traits of totalitarian regimes (7). In contrast, free circulation and expression of ideas and information is one of the hallmarks of democratic regimes.
It is also important to note that Israeli society has been voluntarily and gradually giving ground to requirements by those who try to create a segregated territory for a totalitarian society, as the picture the author took in 2010 in Tel Aviv proves.
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The City Government’s sign establishes a special area on the public beach in Tel Aviv for people who do not accept swimming together with people of the other sex, dressed in modern bathing suits. It states the segregated days and times for men and women and requests that “modesty” be observed on the beach, a euphemism to prohibit uncovering, even minimally, women’s arms and legs. This may seem as innocent as establishing a beach for nudists, or men’s and women’s restrooms, but not quite. When one segregates a public area by virtue of users’ intolerance toward coexisting with the others, one creates a system that classifies citizens (that is, creates citizens of class A, class B, etc.), and this is intolerable. The naturist segregates himself so as not to offend others. Whereas, the ultra-Orthodox segregates himself because the others offend him, just because they nurture democracy. |
The City Government’s sign establishes a special area on the public beach in Tel Aviv for people who do not accept swimming together with people of the other sex, dressed in modern bathing suits.
It states the segregated days and times for men and women and requests that “modesty” be observed on the beach, a euphemism to prohibit uncovering, even minimally, women’s arms and legs.
This may seem as innocent as establishing a beach for nudists, or men’s and women’s restrooms, but not quite. When one segregates a public area by virtue of users’ intolerance toward coexisting with the others, one creates a system that classifies citizens (that is, creates citizens of class A, class B, etc.), and this is intolerable.
The naturist segregates himself so as not to offend others. Whereas, the ultra-Orthodox segregates himself because the others offend him, just because they nurture democracy.
However, the Israeli society is not only giving ground to a totalitarian group. When it supports it with its taxes, it is promoting its expansion. It is important to notice that a system in which part of society pays so the other part can engage in unproductive activities is not a religious imperative. Tens of thousands of people in Brooklyn keep a life style observant of the strictest mitzvot interpretations, while being as economically active as all the other inhabitants in the country are. The North American government does not contribute with their support, does not waiver their taxes nor are there any records of them attacking passers-by from outside their community. Still, they do not consider themselves less religious than the Israelis.
I see two dilemmas emerging from the realization that there is a part of Israeli society demanding a segregated physical space to live a totalitarian model there.
The first dilemma is the impossibility of including this population in the democratic system that governs Israel. Many ask for tolerance and acceptance of what is different. Yet, I believe it is impossible to interact with those who do not accept that the individual has freedom of choice, since it is the basis of the democratic system. The citizen surrenders the exercise of his citizenship when he relinquishes his capacity to choose.
The second dilemma, derived from the lack of solving the first one, is what to do with the people who choose to follow a totalitarian political model and as such, waive their citizenship. What alternatives do they have since living in democracies is impossible for them? They cannot establish a State of their own, for no country would give space to a new State with these characteristics. Neither will any existing country receive them.
I believe this is one of the unsolved problems of democracies. What can we do with the citizens who do not wish to experience it? In the same way as it does not seem correct to impose democracy against a person’s will, neither is it correct to allow them to destroy the democratic regime.
They begin to pose a threat to a country’s social fabric and democratic nature when they reach demographically important proportions, as Israel allowed to happen when it created subsidies and facilities for that kind of organizational model of society, under the illusion that it was respecting a religious option.
There is a limit to inclusion and we do not know what to do with those who self-exclude themselves. In my view, this warning bell sounded at the Beit Shemesh spitting incident. It is disturbing.
Especially since we know that, no country changes from democracy to dictatorship overnight. If this actually happens, the conversion of Israel into a theocratic dictatorship will be the extreme point of a path, which began with the exemptions granted in 1948 by the government to ultra-Orthodox yeshivot goers. Then continued with the tolerance for spitting on a girl, then segregated buses, and reached State control with a totalitarian group that participated in the democratic game despite rejecting it privately.
It is important to understand that coexisting with someone who self-excludes himself from democracy, injures democracy. This is evident when there is physical aggression, but not so clear when the demand is merely for a refuge to isolate and preserve a model of society.
Repudiation to the spitting incidence is a thousand times more understandable than the segregated beach, although both derive from the same principle. This is because the demand for an exclusive space is the result of a situation of self-exclusion from the greater society, which may seem harmless since apparently it only affects the people who exclude themselves. The aggression, however, is clearly inacceptable, because it implies in the withdrawal of the rights of third parties.
In my view, not understanding that both events derive from the same totalitarian thought is what has led the Israeli society to the unnerving point it has reached. This will get worse, if the phenomenon is not understood and rebounded while there is still time.
If what we wish for is a democratic regime, guided by legal codes that make the State of Israel a rule of law, then the aggression to Naamá demands a more vigorous action than just mere verbal repudiation, albeit vigorous. The State cannot support those who wish to destroy its soul.
(1) Interview posted in Jerusalem Post on 07/04/11: http://www.jpost.com/VideoArticles/Video/Article.aspx?id=227881.
(2) Robert Conquest, Reflections on a Ravaged Century (2000) ISBN 0-393-04818-7, page 74.
(3) Babylonian Talmud, Nezikin order (damages), Avot treaty (parents – ancestors), 3:11 (in some editions: 3:15)
(4) The word used is “malbin”, from the same root as “lavan” (white). Literally: “he who whitens”.
(5) Babylonian Talmud, Nezikin order (damages), Baba Metzia treaty (the middle portal), 58:b
(6) Building or room dedicated to study.
(7) Dicionário de Política de Norberto Bobbio, Niccola Matteucci and Gianfranco Pasquino, 11th edition, published in 1998 by Editora da Universidade de Brasília, ISBN 85-230-0308-8, page 1249.
