A Divided City?
Dr. Philip Bliss
APARTHEID CITY? Rabbi Dow Marmur
Haredi behavior may be radicalizing even liberals who normally don’t have much fire in their bellies and prefer to bitch at home to acting in public. Yet over a thousand of us came out on Saturday night to demonstrate outside the Prime Minister’s official residence in Jerusalem against the cumulative effect of haredi excesses.
The formal reason was to urge the government to stop gender segregated buses in the capital. These exist to yield to ostensible sensitivities of ultra-Orthodox men who don’t want to be contaminated and improperly aroused by the sight of women when they travel. As a result, several bus routes passing haredi streets now allow men to sit at the front while confining women to the back. Despite accusations by its enemies, Israel shouldn’t be described as an apartheid state that discriminates against Arabs, but Jerusalem may be moving toward an apartheid city that discriminates against women.
For non-Orthodox Jerusalemites this has become the latest sign of growing talibanization. It has prompted many of them to move elsewhere leaving the capital more and more to haredim, Palestinians and a relatively small number of Diaspora romantics like myself who’ve homes here but spend much of the year abroad.
The bus segregation is one of many signs that threaten to turn Jerusalem into a dangerous anomaly. The fiasco during Vice President Biden’s visit last week, when it was announced that another 1600 housing units were to be built in Ramat Shlomo, also has a haredi angle. This exclusively ultra-Orthodox neighborhood exists to accommodate part of their ever growing numbers caused by their enormous birth rate. They need space.
The recent attempt to introduce legislation in the Knesset that’s likely to give even more power to the Orthodox rabbinate in matters of Jewish status is another cause for alarm. The Knesset hasn’t yet voted on it because of a dispute between different haredi groups but it’s predicted that, whatever the compromise, the final outcome will further punish Israelis and dissuade Jews from coming to Israel.
And then, of course, there’re the periodic demonstrations by black-hat hooligans that turn violent. These are held against one thing or another they say desecrates the Sabbath and/or threatens the sanctity of the city. Add to this the alleged covered up abuses of and by individuals in haredi communities that include illicit sex, drugs and cheating the authorities of the “Zionist state,” which they despise with unseemly passion.
Even President Peres ominously lost it when a few days ago, in the course of a visit to an ultra-Orthodox yeshiva, he praised the government for exempting its students from army service and implying that the haredi way is the authentic Jewish way.
We’ve been wondering when ordinary citizens of Israel will say to the fanatics that enough is enough. The single demonstration has, alas, not turned the tide, but the support it got from Tzipi Livni, the Leader of the Opposition, suggests that there’re at last some stirrings. Perhaps one day even politicians in power will say No to the haredim.
That the Reform and Conservative movements combined forces to organize the demonstration is an indication that our common internal enemy is bringing us closer together and enables us live up to our claim of working to make sure that Israel is indeed the state of the entire Jewish people not to be destroyed by those who despise it. It’s not the purpose the haredim have in mind but mercifully God works in mysterious ways.
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