Dangerous To Democracy And To Judaism

December 29, 2008

DANGEROUS TO DEMOCRACY AND TO JUDAISM

By Professor Naomi Chazan, President of the New Israel Fund

We must familiarize ourselves with the more obscure elements of the religious community in Israel in order to understand that the precipitous rise in extremism is not inherent in the Jewish tradition , but is instead a specific ideology and worldview foreign to the vast majority of Israelis and a threat to their democracy.

Israel’s extreme nationalists are escalating their activities. The planned—and mercifully cancelled, march of Jewish right wing extremists in the Arab town of Um el Fachem provides one example. Purposeful violence against the Palestinian residents of Hebron is another. Coupled with the rapid increase in expressions of Jewish fundamentalism, it is now clear that once again we are crossing the line of what is legitimate in the public arena.

The rise of Jewish extremism is visible in a variety of less publicized, but equally pernicious, cases. A complaint to the Attorney General, filed recently, demanded a thorough investigation of one of the latest editions of the popular weekly Torah commentary pamphlet “Shabbat Beshabbato,” which featured a regular columnist calling for the expulsion of all non-Jews from Israel, and included the phrase (sic): “We must exterminate also their females.” The author then proceeded to compare ‘non-Jewish souls’ to worms in a salad.

In such an atmosphere, many mistakenly conclude that religiosity, or at least the national religious camp, by definition comes together with a particular worldview that supersedes the values of human rights and democracy. In a white paper prepared by the New Israel Fund examining the issue of democracy and religious fundamentalism, an Ultra-Orthodox yeshiva student is quoted as saying that democracy is a foreign, Greek concept. “For us, the people of Israel”, he said, “the Torah is more important“. This study was produced six months ago as a response to the concern that profoundly dangerous processes are fermenting in Israeli society, and that these are rooted in an extremism that often seeks and embeds its justification in Judaism.

In contrast to these views, and in deliberate opposition to the ideology of hatred expressed in its extreme by the thugs on West Bank hilltops, there are many civil initiatives within religious quarters in Israel that set out to protect Israeli democracy and the rule of law, among them initiatives from national religious strongholds, and even from within Ultra-Orthodox society.

Thus, for example, in stark contrast to the insularity and bias in extremist circles as articulated by the Yeshiva student, the Yesodot Center for Torah and Democracy, which works to strengthen the connection between the Orthodox community and democracy, stresses the linkage between democratic principles and the biblical concept that humans were created in God’s image.

Indeed, it was another religious organization, Yudbet b'Heshavan, that responded to the outrageous events in Hebron deliberately and without ambivalence. Yudbet b'Heshvan, whose mission is to promote tolerance in an orthodox context, derives its name from the Hebrew date on which Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, and works to unite various groups and figures in the national religious world. It organized an emergency conference on December 11th, attended by dozens of public figures, rabbis and thinkers from diverse streams of the national religious movement and other civic associations “to protest the villainous acts perpetrated by Jews against innocent Palestinians.” Yudbet b'Heshvan was also credited with exposing the call to violence in the Torah Commentary weekly.

Many other organizations, in Orthodox society in general and the national religious sector in particular, are working to amplify moderate voices. There are those who struggle with difficult dilemmas but aim to mitigate the incitement promulgated by the extremists on West Bank hilltops. There also those who advocate even more strongly that the role of religion in modern life is not in shaping government policies, but in offering a spiritual path for individuals and communities. And there are also Orthodox organizations specifically committed to the cause of human rights, the most outstanding example of which is Rabbis for Human Rights, which operates on the ground to prevent acts of violence against Palestinians.

In these challenging times it is especially important to magnify these alternative and moderate voices; to assert and insist that the struggle is not between different factions in society not between secular and Orthodox but rather between irreconcilable worldviews. A sober analysis illustrates that for those who would reject democracy as the only acceptable governing system, religion serves merely as an excuse and justification for such rejection. Those who in their resistance to the democratic rule of law would also hurt another people--defenseless and deprived of even the most rudimentary civil rights--exemplify a Judaism that has lost its soul, its meaning and its reason for existence.

*This op-ed originally appeared in News1 on December 19, 2008.