Two readers almost convinced me to be against me this week. They actually sounded right at first. The first attacked me for supporting Ruben Rivlin.
""Friends, I really hope to read from you this week a harsh condemnation of Reuven Rivlin, the candidate you ran for president. You devoted so much space in your column to convincing us and the undecided MKs in Likud, Bayit Hayehudi, United Torah Judaism, and Shas to vote for him just because he is the right candidate and he will be a 'Jewish-style' president, as you put it. How you have slaughtered the other candidates and the MKs who thought of voting differently.
So, today your Jewish president wished the famous couple Mahmoud and Morel 'health, peace and joy.' True, at the beginning of his press release he wrote 'not everyone must rejoice in their joy, but everyone must with their honor,' but he did not stop at condemning the violence (on this point I of course agree with him) but went further.
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He sailed and talked about how we are a free people in our country, and this is Jabotinsky's teachings, and so on and so forth. 'Mahmoud and Moral from Jaffa decided to get married and maintain their freedom in a democratic country,' your candidate writes, and for some reason in this message he does not mention, as always, that he is a proud descendant of the Gra's students... So there you have it, you don't have to be a descendant of the Vilna Gaon to know what the Vilna Gaon, or just a simple Jew, would think about such a 'wedding.'.
"The fact that the president of the Jewish state is careful in his announcement to avoid outright condemning the phenomenon of assimilation – which until this week I thought was a national consensus – obliges him, and indeed you, to explain.".
Before the show could even begin, another caring reader sent me the following email: "Just a few weeks ago, Gideon Sa'ar was described in your column as a fighter for the Sabbath, who even began to observe the Sabbath in his personal life. The title of the column was 'All praise to the minister,' and you told how Sa'ar, who has also recently been studying Torah, fought bravely for the most sacred, most basic, and most elementary thing in Tel Aviv and in general: the right and obligation to rest on the Sabbath. Truly, all praise.
I'm just wondering if after this song of praise for the Minister of the Interior, you'll also find a place to express your opinion on his decision this week. Sa'ar decided to also grant Zakkai's "spouses" the Law of Return to immigrate to Israel with them. The Law of Return is already too broad, and everyone knows that because of it, complete Gentiles immigrate here who sometimes have no connection to Judaism. So instead of closing this loophole, Sa'ar opened another loophole here. And what loophole... and what does he write about this in his decision? And that it is a realization of the purpose of the Law of Return, which is 'and their children returned to their borders.'.
To me, as an observer from the sidelines, it looks like a well-calculated zigzag: he made one conservative decision, then one mega-liberal decision, so that neither side would attack him too much. Well, forget Sa'ar, I'm a member of the Likud Center and what I have to say to 'Gideon Mukir Shabbat' I'll say in the primaries. I ask what about you. Let's see if you have the courage to back off now and explain to us whether it's still 'Kudos to the Minister'..."'
First of all, it's nice to have such caring readers. It's better than responses like "Great!!!". And apparently they're also completely right, they just forgot one detail: Rivlin and Saar are politicians. And sorry if I didn't warn you in advance, but every good word I say about a politician is very, very specific. It's only nice for that moment and that statement, speech or bill. Wherever he is. It never expresses admiration for his entire personality and work.
Even people I greatly respected in politics (Hanan Porat and Rabbi Avraham Ravitz, for example, both of whom are deceased and even deceased) – did not impress me because they were members of Knesset, but because of things they said, wrote, and did not necessarily in the Knesset, but on other important fronts.
I can admire rabbis, teachers, creators, shoemakers (there's one on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem that I can watch for hours at the skill with which he pulls nail after nail out of his mouth and hammers it into the sole with one blow), but politicians? At most, I'm willing to praise a certain decision of theirs, as mentioned, or during elections to think that they are superior, slightly or greatly, to another candidate (and by the way, I'm indeed glad that Rivlin is the president and not Meir Sheetrit, because Sheetrit would probably also have gone to the wedding with a festive blessing, as Minister Yael German of Yesh Atid did).
I have forgiven Saar and Rivlin for very specific matters, and I never thought for a moment that they would never let me down. After all, if there is one thing that the last few years in politics have taught us, it is not to trust politicians and especially not to get too enthusiastic about them. I still remember my joy, along with many others, when Ariel Sharon defeated Ehud Barak by an overwhelming majority (thanks to those waves of sympathy – 62% support – he was also later re-elected for a term in which he crushed Gush Katif).
I assume that each of the readers has his or her own list of political hopes and disappointments, and in the center parties this is even more pronounced than in the right-wing-religious-ultra-Orthodox public. Every time a new center star disappoints, and still these wandering voices continue to pin their hopes on the Messiah on duty. We all remember the enthusiasm for the late Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and his late Center Party, and then for Shinui, and for the Pensioners, and for the Kadima Party, and then for Mish Atid, and now suddenly we are talking with shining eyes about Moshe Kahlon. And even though he may delay, despite all this, I will wait for him and vote for him.
Rabbi Shlomo Wolve, zt"l, one of the greatest supervisors in the yeshiva world and in the Mussar movement of our generation – by the way, he has never disappointed me! – writes about exactly this point in his book 'Between Six and an Asor'. This name is based on the phrase "Between Six and an Asor," as the Sages call the Ten Days of Repentance. It compiles talks by Rabbi Wolve that were given on "Sheshet" (the Six-Day War) and "Asor" (the Yom Kippur War).
In the sources, this period of time, "between a year and a decade," was considered ripe for repentance, and Rabbi Volba claimed that these two wars also opened up a rare opportunity for a mass repentance movement. He then went out to the kibbutzim, youth movements, and the most remote IDF bases, in order to make the voice of the moral movement heard there.
After the Six-Day War, he wrote that the heart was opened towards faith and Judaism because of the great miracles, but after the Yom Kippur War a new stage was added: "The war suddenly revealed the helplessness and frivolity of leaders who had been crowned with an aura of heroism and victory until then. The shattering of idols continues... I believe with complete faith that the recent wars have come to awaken and unite, to turn us from false values to the truth of the eternal people.".
But here, in the introduction to this special book, Rabbi Volba presents an important condition. Notice who should speak to the people. He addresses precisely those who sit within the fortresses of the Torah to come out "because they are called to assist in this process of the people's return to the Torah and the mitzvah. It depends only on them, the rabbis who have already absorbed Shas and poskim and have already been privileged to enter the Torah's orchard. The masses are waiting for them - not for politicians. The masses are tired of hearing ideologies sewn on them like election ballots. Only the Torah scholars who have dealt with parties do not have a people - they are charged with bringing together and revealing the light in the Torah.".
What an accurate definition: an ideology tailored to the size of the ballot box. After all, that's what they usually do there, in the long meetings with all the publicists and strategists and pollsters and speakers. They formulate an ideology that will ultimately lead to the most votes on the ballot. Rabbi Wolve is not writing here about specific politicians, nor is he attacking the democratic mechanism; he is merely asking that other voices be heard on the public ballot, who are not constantly thinking about Election Day.
The politicians' honor is in their place, but why, for example, are they the ones who filled the studios on all the open air waves in the past month? Every junior MK has become a senior interviewee, while much more interesting and significant people have been left out.
But one MK, in conclusion, I really must praise. Miri Regev. Don't laugh. After all, we agreed that it is possible to look at politicians on a case-by-case basis, by decision.
So I somehow stumbled upon a live broadcast of a debate that took place this week in the Interior Committee, which she chairs. The topic was conversion, I don't really know much more than that, but Regev conducted the meeting with a firm hand and a self-confidence that I don't think an MK from a religious party would dare to demonstrate.
""Your proposal is tearing the people apart," she told representatives of the Ministry of Justice. "You have no coordination with the Ministry of Religious Affairs. I suggest that you work for the unity of the people, and not the other way around." In front of a line of rabbis, experts, and lawyers, and of course religious and anti-religious MKs, Regev led an independent line, and even said: "I am not religious, you know me. But I have respect, and I am not willing to bring about further divisions and polarization in the people. It is impossible to open a path that will be officially opposed to the Chief Rabbinate. The Chief Rabbinate today has a desire to be accessible and solve problems, why bypass it?
"I don't understand why not sit down with the Rishon LeZion and come back to me here with an agreed-upon text. This is a fundamental Jewish matter, and even if you want to make arrangements, you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's possible to reach agreements, come back to me with clear understandings between all parties!""
We are so used to apologetic and polite discourse that there was something very refreshing about the famous Likud MK's approach to this issue. She looks at this issue as a traditional Jew and speaks simply, from the heart, without making a fuss. If we keep talking about "loving Judaism over the people," then here she is, the people, and that's what she says. Applause.
Just one request: don't send me an email against me the next time Miri Regev makes a joke.
• The column is published in the newspaper 'Bisheva''
