Save us from ourselves!

Rosh Hashanah is over, though lingering in my mind are its tunes (as well as my envy of those who can stand without resorting to their hands pulling on the pew in front or pushing down on the chair below. That ability is but a memory in my case.)

On Yom Kippur we are enjoined to ask forgiveness of those we might have offended. As a columnist, I have a greater opportunity to offend than most. I can’t tell you how many times people have stopped me to tell me that they enjoy my columns but that they disagree with this that or the other thing. Given the opportunity to talk, we do; if the opportunity isn’t there, I thank them and go on with whatever it was that I was doing. So, if there are those of you out there who by my columns I have offended, please don’t take them personally. The only difference between us is that I’ve been given this forum. You have the ability to write to me (many do) or to write directly to the newspaper which will print your letter if you ask. Dialogue is thus achieved with the opportunity of finding common ground. This is not exactly asking for forgiveness, but, hey, I’m imperfect and this is as close to asking for it as I can get this year. Maybe I’ll do better next year, given the opportunity.

OK, by a show of hands, how many of you think it is a really, really, really stupid thing for Muslims to want to build a mosque within debris range of Ground Zero? Whew, lots of hands. And how many of you think it’s OK to build the Park51 Muslim Community Center anywhere local planning authorities give permission? Just about the same number. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf , a Sufi Muslim, wants to build a 13 story Islamic Cultural Center two blocks from the World Trade Center. The facility would include a 500 seat auditorium, a theater, a performing arts center, a fitness center, a swimming pool, a basketball court and a child care area, a bookstore, a culinary school, an art studio, food courts, a September 11 memorial and, oh, by the way, a prayer space capable of accommodating between one and two thousand people. It’s this latter feature so close to Ground Zero that has raised the hackles of conservative opponents. (When Newt Gingrich argues that there shouldn’t be a Ground Zero mosque until a synagogue or church is built in Mecca he makes a very bad point. For all our faults, America is not, thank God, Saudi Arabia, and Mecca is a holy city while New York is as secular as it gets.)

Question: Do Muslims have a right to build a community center anywhere the law allows? The answer is yes. Does having the right to do something make it appropriate? Well, here we’re on shakier ground. The Taliban had the power, to destroy the Bamyan Buddhas in March, 2001, and so it did. The world is worse off for not having them any longer. Proponents of (a radical form of) Islam destroyed somebody else’s sacred object—as the Rev. Terry Jones was willing to destroy Korans. Why are we more upset with the one than the other? Perhaps because of the sacredness of the printed word, perhaps because Muslims take these things more seriously than Buddhists.

At Auschwitz, sacred (surely that’s not the right word, but what is?) to Jews, Carmelite nuns built a cross on land they owned, and Jews were outraged and eventually it was removed. (Is it a fair generalization to say that when Jews, who are few in number, are outraged they work the system, while when Muslims in the majority are—think here the Danish cartoons and the threatened Koran burning—they go berserk? Just asking.)

Another example of doing what you can but not thinking of the consequences (or caring about them) is when Ariel Sharon took it upon himself to walk on the Temple Mount. He was entitled to. There was no law to prevent an Israeli MK from walking anywhere in Jerusalem, but the fact that Sharon thought to bring a squad of bodyguards with him suggests that he knew he was stirring the pot. Is this the same thing as the Islamic Community Center near Ground Zero? In a way, it is. People with rights will want to exercise them regardless of consequence. And when the violence results they will point to the other guys and say, “Look, we didn’t cause the ruckus, they did.”

Avinu Malkenu, save us from ourselves.

The Haredi menace

I think of two Rosas—Luxemburg and Parks, and of the Grimké sisters—Angelina and Sarah. I think of Emily Pankhurst and of Susan B. Anthony. I think of Emilia Shrayer standing up to the Communist authorities in the old Soviet Union. I think of Nofrat Frenkel in Israel. All were women who knew something was wrong and risked everything to correct it. Some were killed, others were imprisoned, each was the object of ridicule. What do these women know about how things are or should be? Things are as they are because of divine ordinance. Read the bible. Slavery is divinely sanctioned; women must know their place because they are a pernicious, though necessary gender. “Now, I find woman more bitter than death; she is all traps, her hands are fetters and her heart is snares.” (Ecclesiastes 7:26) Enough said, right? Wrong. We also find “She is clothed with strength and splendor; she looks to the future cheerfully. Her mouth is full of wisdom, her tongue with kindly teaching.” (Proverbs 31: 25-26)

I think of the Women of the Wall and the arrogance of the authorities who arrested a woman for wearing a tallit at the Western Wall, still rankles. Granted, Nofrat Frenkel wasn’t stoned to death—for all their puritanical fussbudgetness the Haredim of Israel are not the Taliban. But they insist that they know the truth and that the truth shall deny others freedom. Just like the Taliban, just like the Puritans from whom Roger Williams fled. And we who are not ultra-Orthodox are asked to bend our wills to theirs, since they are the authentic Jews. Women must sit in the back of the bus, they insist; a 13 year old child converted by a Conservative rabbi has to be buried in a non-Jewish section of a cemetery in Spain by decree of rabbi Shlomo Amar, not a Spanish rabbi, but the chief Sephardic rabbi of Israel. So, not only do the Ayatollahs of the extreme right in Israel try to dominate in that country, they seek to extend their purview to the world. Recently mixed-group singing at the Wall was declared Vorboten so singing Hatikvah there to celebrate the return of the Old City to Israel is now a criminal offense. If I were a conspiracy theorist I’d suspect that the ultra-Orthodox who opposed the creation of the State of Israel have found a new way to destroy it—by alienating the vast majority of us who have entered the current century. It’s like supporting Hamid Karzai. Americans look at his corrupt regime and ask, for this we have to pledge our soldiers and our cash? For the Haredi we have to fight in Congress and the White House?

Avi Shafran, spokesman for the Orthodox Agudath Israel of America, has a strange argument. On the one hand “Israel is a country that has functioned with a certain understanding among its religious and not religious Jews. If the activists don’t want to alienate Jews, they shouldn’t thumb their noses at the traditional Jews in Israel.” The fault is all on the side of the progressives. On the other hand, it’s only a handful of the Haredi who protest the women and others who violate traditional standards. Most are in favor of a reasonable compromise, but there are always holdouts, he says. So, which is it—the fault is with the activists, or the fault is with the Haredi hot heads? Pick one. Oh, he also argues that the problem is with foreign Jews who are trying to impose their views on the traditional ways of Israel. Rather like Ross Barnett or George Wallace complaining about outside agitators coming to their states. The defenders of the benighted old ways always blame outsiders.

Modern Orthodox in America also feel the sting of their Haredi brethren who, not content to deny Reform and Conservative conversions, now challange the validity even of theirs.

Oh, lest it be thought that my ire is directed against the Haredi, it’s not. They are what they are. It’s Israel’s government which kowtows to them, allowing a minority within a minority to dictate public policy. That’s the shanda.