Half the world hates half: When disputes break out in a wild dance on the streets of ultra-Orthodox cities

September 23, 2018   

"Our father, our king, remember your mercy and your wrath and the destruction of the land and the sword and the famine and the captivity and the destruction and the wickedness and the pestilence and the evil plague and every sickness and every affliction and every strife and every kind of oppression and every evil decree and your unmerited hatred against us and against all the children of your covenant.""

The memory I have of my first mullah in yeshiva is the "Avinu Malkinu" which was recited in the Chasrat Shatz in the blessing of Modim on Yom Kippur.

That Elul and that Yom Kippur was also the first of the yeshiva itself, the Grodna-Yismach Moshe Yeshiva (later Be'er Yaakov) after the split from the yeshiva in Ashdod. When they all said the same Avinu Malchinu together and reached the words "and hate for free," the walls trembled and the eyes watered. That situation was for me, a young man who did not fully understand that controversy and its essence, a shocking situation.

This year, eighteen years later, I don't know who cried that "Father, our King," but the gratuitous hatred not only did not leave us, but became common in the divided Haredi public. There is no city or community that can be said to have been spared.

The loss of unified leadership in the Lithuanian and Spanish public presents the ultra-Orthodox politicians with a difficult challenge, in that support for their party is no longer absolute, confronting them with another option, with others who believe that this option is the legitimate one.

Instead of recognizing this, understanding that the agreement they receive from their majority will no longer be binding on the entire public, and that in order to be elected again and again as before, it is necessary to seek what is common and not what divides, they prefer to turn a blind eye and cling to their positions and basic strength, which actually fuels the fire of controversy even more, when entire publics feel that certain forces do not count them.

And this is not surprising. After all, those public representatives are not accustomed to serving as figures in their own right. After all, in the past, when everyone together voted for their party, the public did not vote for them, but for the great men of Israel who appointed them. The voters then were not concerned with the political figures, but with fulfilling the commandment "and do whatever you are told.".

Now that the enormous task and responsibility for the integrity of the public has suddenly fallen on their shoulders, they are unable to internalize the change and the duty imposed on them, and they are immersed in power struggles, when it is not at all clear that this power still exists for them.

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On the eve of the municipal elections, when all those disputes are dancing wildly on the streets of the Haredi cities, when broad "deals" are being made for one candidate or another, the essence of which is purely political, some may be mistaken in thinking that the power of those businessmen is still in their hands, and that they have the power to achieve their goal, even without those parts of the public that have split from them.

However, this is a complete mistake.

It is similar to the parable of a condemned man who was sentenced to die of starvation in a glass cell in the city square, and when a few days later he passed by and was surprised to find that this famous condemned man was eating meat, he was explained that he was eating his own flesh. In this way, that dying politics indeed appears alive and well, but the truth is that these are its lowest moments, when it seems as if it is re-establishing itself but in fact it is eating its own flesh.

If they fail to multiply peacefully instead of through war, to compromise instead of demonstrating strength, to act for the common good instead of doing politics, it will not be long before the factions become sub-factiones, fragments and fragments, such that they cannot be healed, and in the same breath their power will also wither.

If those engaged in the work sit down and try to find common ground despite their different worldviews, despite the need to share their power with those who do not think like them, if they also listen to the public's concerns, and not just to the concerns of the cauldron they are stirring, then the power of unity will stand by them and will sweep even those who do not naturally side with them.

If not, they will probably be gone soon.