This time of year from just before Rosh HaShana to Yom Kippur has a very special atmosphere here in Israel. Every conversation and every visit to a shop includes some variation of Happy New Year greetings. The shops are full of Chag essentials (and non essentials) and there is a general feeling of a national slow down caused by the broken weeks. The closest thing is the familiar December feeling in the UK except that here it happens in the early part of autumn and not in depths of winter. Of course here we all feel part of it; rather than being observers as we all do elsewhere in the world.
Of recent years it has become very trendy to undertake an overnight selichot tour. This is not at all limited to selichot regulars but has become a cross society experience. It involves visiting some of the alleyways of old neighbourhoods in Jerusalem, the Jewish Quarter and of course the Kotel. You can undertake the tour with a Jerusalemite friend, in a school group, with a professional tour guide and even experience re-enactments of various pivotal moments and inspirational leaders as you wander around Jerusalem in the dead of night. The residents hate it and the all night cafes love it.
So in this special and rarefied experience it was all the more shocking to wake up this week and discover that a mosque had been burned down in an apparent (price-tag) retaliation attack. Given the graffiti that was apparently found; it seems that we can rule out force majeure as the cause leaving only one of two options that it was indeed an attack or the other (less likely) that this was designed to frame the radical settler movement.
However, in both cases we are left with several uncomfortable questions: Who could bring themselves to burn down a place of worship in the state of Israel? How have we got to the situation where we can believe that (so called) religious people (who should know that everybody is created in the image of G-d) could do such a violent destructive and harmful act? Where did we go wrong that dissent is no longer just about talking or peacefully living in tents and marching but about extreme blasphemous violence.
Whilst we are on the topic how come it is acceptable to destroy olive trees that have stood the test of thousands of years of time? In my Bible it clearly states that "when you fight against a city you shall not use an axe against a tree - because you eat from it ... for man is a tree of the field" (my loose translation after Deut. 20:19) - I am not going to get into a halachic debate about all the minutiae - destroying olive trees in a price tag attack clearly breaches the spirit of the Divine word. And when did it become normal behaviour to take possession of a school in Bet Shemesh and intimidate primary school girls over a political (with pseudo-religious overtones) disagreement?
Normally, I prefer not to talk about these types of issues - frankly they make me embarrassed and the implied desecration of the Divine Name is too great. This week I heard an impassioned speech from my son's high school headmaster that convinced me that we have to talk about it - so that we reinforce the message to the next generations (what Chief Rabbi Sacks calls the next chapter in the book - see Radical Then, Radical Now) that it is wrong - unequivocally and unforgivably wrong. It is a desecration of Heaven and it goes against the letter and the spirit of everything that we hold dear.
I don't have any good reasons why all this has happened. For sure many here are passionate about the Land of Israel and believe that the end justifies the means. I am sure that they feel frustrated and marginalised (but don't we all over some issues?) For sure society adopts new norms even if they are bad norms and to make a statement next time a protestor needs to find ever more radical stunts. For sure everybody (of all political opinions) would agree that many mistakes have been made.
However, that is not the point in my opinion and these are excuses not justifications- the problem is that we now have a culture that (at least in part) is about power and anger and not about what is right. We need to adopt more of the principle of Talmudic debate - there are more than one (more than ten!!) ways of looking at a problem and sometimes that is enough in itself. We need to talk more and we need to listen more and we need to respect each other more but just like in Talmudic debate we don't always have to agree or even to be right (think of Beit Shammai).
We can blame THEM - the politicians, this group of people or that group of people, those who disagree with us, they who are wrong who can't see what we can see. But actually they are just another part of us. There are many wonderful things happening in Israel and we have many challenges - but WE need to take responsibility for building a better environment and better norm for understanding THEM.
I hope that for all of us who believe that G-d is with us; then we must remember that G-d is indeed with us. G-d is looking after us even (or especially) if we hold back and respect our fellow citizen who may have a different opinion. Next week we will celebrate Succot with the lulav and etrog - one of the famous parables is that the four species are all radically different - yet without them all being together there is no mitzva - so too Israel - there are many different types of people but without us all coming together there is no Israel.
Today we received better news - a new Israeli Nobel Laureate Professor Shechtman (Mazal Tov to him) - this doesn't happen every day; but every day we can all try and make the world a better place by listening and discovering. As I mentioned, selichot and certainly the High Holiday spirit are almost universal in Israel - I hope that we all be sealed in a the books of mutual respect, tolerance and that we can all find ways to sanctify Heaven in our daily actions (and in our conscious inactions.)
Gmar Chatima Tova!
Jonathan is a Mancunian and now a Jerusalemite. He writes frequently on the beautiful life in Israel and on Israeli tourism on the popular In Israel Blog - the latest blog can be found at http://www.israelinsideout.com/In-Israel-Blog/in-israel-blog-an-insiders...
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