Sunday night, Ramat-e-Sharon, the city where I grew up. It's midnight now. Yiftach Grady is still alive. It's the seventh night of Passover, the holiday when the Red Sea parted. Interestingly, almost the entire Jewish people participate in the Seder night, which began the Exodus from Egypt, but after a week, the second holiday of Passover receives much fewer ratings. It is already considered "for religious people only.".
Some people stay up all night studying, or go together at midnight to recite the verses of the Song of the Sea, which were said thousands of years ago by the sea that had become land.
And so, at midnight, different sectors met on the city's main street, Sokolov Street. Some set out to tear up the sea, and others set out to tear up the city. I looked at the young people who were standing and catching taxis heading for the Tel Aviv clubs or the Raanana clubs. Traveling into the unknown. In an era where a generation changes every few years, I felt like their grandmother, even though it had only been about 15 years since I stood there like them, with other good kids from Ramat-Sharon, near that exact taxi stand.
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About three hours later, Golan fighter Yiftach Grady from Givatayim was murdered at the "Six" club in Ra'anana. In an era where murders are categorized ("on a romantic basis," "on a nationalistic basis"), this is probably a murder motivated by alcohol, ego, and boredom.
A Ramat-Sharoni father of two girls I met during the holiday in the city told what it looks like from his perspective: "I'm dying of worry, but they're angry that I'm worrying so much. So when they leave at midnight I have to make myself sleepy, and after they leave I get out of bed, read, pass the time, and mostly worry terribly. I can't help but ring the bell every five minutes. When I hear them coming back, at three or four, I run quickly to bed. When they come home I'm already making myself sleepy.".
The Haredi press world has also been working on a heavy and interesting package in the weeks leading up to the holiday. The result consists largely of Torah and moral discourses, interviews with cultural figures (from the rabbi known as "the milkman" to the Gat brothers), and magazine articles with ideological connections to Passover (for example, the women's magazine "Pninim" featured interviews with three women who "came out to freedom": one who opened her adoption case, one who converted, and one who retired from a demanding job).
Two supplements were particularly interesting: the first was called "The Claimants to the Crown," and it was included in the newspaper "Bakhila." The four presidential candidates spoke there, in a supplement that was at times interesting and moving and at times seemed satirical. Here are some sample quotes. Reuven Rivlin said: "We immigrated to Israel at the behest of the Vilna Gaon. I am proud to be a Jew, eat kosher, know a chapter of the Torah and pray regularly.".
Rivlin — who is truly close to the Haredim, not only during presidential elections — also displayed quite a sense of humor: "I should receive a medal, I am the only man who lost to Shimon Peres.".
Fuad Ben-Eliezer told the interviewer, among other things: "Tradition is in my blood. I built the largest synagogue in Rishon LeZion, named after my parents. The Haredi activists only need to remember who built the city of Elad and Kiryat Sefer. Who solved their housing crisis. Me. I received a lot of 'drops' on the cheeks from Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef.".
Candidate Meir Sheetrit continued the line: "I have a strong connection to tradition, I come from a family of rabbis and kabbalists, I am still a religious Moroccan boy who loves the synagogue. There is no Moroccan who does not know my uncles, the rabbis of Sari.".
And although Professor Dan Shechtman did not show off his prayers or his lineage, he was careful to declare: "I am not anti-Haredi, I am in favor of Haredim, and we need to get them into the labor market through dialogue and cooperation." When asked about Lapid, he says: "I believe in cooperation, not unilateralism. We need to do this together." And more from the Nobel Prize winner: "I recently visited the house of the Rebbe of Karlin-Stolin in Jerusalem to trace my family roots and also the house of the Rebbe of Shatz in Haifa.".
At the same time, the mega-conservative newspaper "Yated Ne'eman" presented its readers with the well-invested supplement "A View of a Place." The newspaper's writers were sent to 40 historical landmarks to check out what is happening there today. Secular Zionism does not deal with Herzl day and night, but the Haredim are still arguing with him. And so — along with places from Haredi history — the best Haredi journalists set out to search for the house where the historic meeting between Ben-Gurion and the visionary Ish was held, the basement of the King David Hotel that was blown up by the Irgun, the house on Ben-Maimon Street in Jerusalem where four prime ministers once lived, the beach where the ship Altallana sank, and the hall where the establishment of the State of Israel was declared.
This is not the end. The Ministry of Education would be happy for all its students to have such an interest in the history of Zionism. The writing is done from a critical perspective, but the supplement also sails on to the courtroom where the Eichmann trial was held, the scene of the bus attack on the coastal road in the 1980s, the plane in which Begin first flew to Egypt, and more.
In summary: the Haredim are on a journey following Zionism, the secular candidates are on a journey to the hearts of the Haredim.
This week's parsha, Parsha "Kedoshim", begins with a very pretentious command. Moses stands before the entire people and instructs them: "Be holy!" But then, throughout the entire long parsha, he begins to detail and explain what holiness is, in a sort of upside-down way: not separation and withdrawal from life, but the influence of that holiness on almost every possible area in the universe. He presents commandments between man and place (the prohibition of idolatry), commandments between man and his fellow man (honoring father and mother, the prohibition of lying and gossip), commandments of social justice (the prohibition of withholding wages, the prohibition of bribery), commandments related to the Land of Israel, the Temple, the relationship between a man and his wife, food, and so on. All of these details together probably explain the same demanding commandment at the beginning of the parsha. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the parsha named "Kedoshim", which sounds detached from the world, is one of the parshas in which the most practical commandments appear in the entire Torah.
Jewish status: ""You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (from this week's Torah portion)
• Sivan Rahav Meir's column is published inYedioth Ahronoth
