The following is a piece I wrote:
While much has been said recently about the phenomenon of discrimination against women, it seems that a new high (or low) was reached when on Friday reports broke of Haredi men in Beit Shemesh spitting on an 8 year old religious girl who apparently wasn't religious enough for their tastes.
While the Haredim claim that the reason behind this discrimination against women in the public sphere is because men are weak and easily tempted, there are some issues that loom even larger than just discrimination if that is the reason why grown Haredi men would abuse an 8 year old child.
I'm going to take a novel step here, and I'm going to claim that this entire fracas is not the fault of the Haredi community for religious extremism or the secular community for sticking its nose where it doesn't belong. I submit that both communities are to blame, but for entirely different reasons.
I would suggest that this entire story is nothing more than power games. The first Baron Acton wrote to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
Can we deny that Rabbis are great men? Some of the Rabbis today have knowledge that spans the entire width and breadth of both Jewish scriptures as well as modern philosophy. Therein lays the problem.
Many Rabbis and Yeshiva students have been studying for years to assume a position in the community as a leader. They have been told ever since they were young that by studying God's word and laws, they would be able to better themselves. All good and well, but what happened next is something that we should have seen coming, or at least taken steps against once we did see it coming: These Rabbis and Yeshiva students suddenly got the impression that bettering one's self by extension makes them better than everyone else. When the entire community believes that, who's going to tell them otherwise? After all, these young men are training to become the leaders of the community.
And so, for all the right reasons, the wrong results ensued. Indeed, hundreds of years ago and even well into the 18th century is was important for there to be a strong religious figurehead to lead the Jewish community in the Diaspora. With intermarriage, assimilation and persecution surrounding Diaspora Jews, the Rabbi truly was needed as a flag and banner that the community could rally around. But today, is that figurehead truly needed?
Today, every single Jewish child that wants a Jewish education has a myriad of options to choose from, many of them not far from where they live. Even outside of Israel one can't deny the immense and massive Jewish communities in France, the UK and the USA and elsewhere. One can travel to the farthest reaches of the globe (perhaps excluding the Arctic regions) and there will be Chabbad Hasidim there with kosher food and a place to touch base and reconnect with Judaism.
Looking back, however, as these communities grew, so did the power of the Rabbis, because no one had ever attempted to keep the Rabbis in check. Today the leader of even a medium sized Hasidic Hatzer has hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars at his disposal. The Satmar Hasidut has assets worth approximately half a BILLION dollars, yet Kiryat Yoel, the town in New York founded by the Satmar Rabbi after WWII holds the distinction of being the most impoverished city in the USA, with over two-thirds of the members of the community living below the poverty line.
I'm not suggesting that all Rabbis are corrupt robber barons who care nothing for the people who look up to them, but it's getting harder and harder to not reach that conclusion.
What was the secular community doing all this time? Absolutely nothing, and that is where they are to blame. They didn't limit the Rabbi's power once they saw there was no need for it anymore. Quite the contrary, the secular community encouraged this, starting with Israel's first leader, the extremely secular David Ben-Gurion. He needed the support of the religious leaders when the state was young, and in turn, those that studied Torah as their living were given a pass from serving in the IDF. Today that particular decision has led to thousands of the Haredi community not serving, while their secular and even their religious brethren put their lives on hold (and on the line) for 3 years in order to protect those studying.
That is just one example. What makes the entire matter worse, aside from the fact that the secular community allowed this to happen, is that now the Rabbis have so much power that even if they wanted to there's practically nothing they can do about it. The secular community has been hoist on its own petard.
There is but one course of action for both sides, and that course is change. The secular community must choose a side, either bringing forth all the power they can to bear on the Hasidic community and demand that they change their ways, which will lead to a war between the two sides, or they can choose to separate entirely from the Haredi community. All state run services will be denied the Haredi community and if they refuse to accept the government's demands, will no longer be granted the government's favor.
The Haredi community also has a choice to make: They can choose to change their ways from inside without external interference and intervening or they can choose to protect their right to decide how to live their lives until the very end, regardless of how backwards it is perceived as by the rest of the Israeli society, which while admirable is also quite foolish, from an objective point of view. Not all progress is good, true, but to willingly keep themselves in the past is even worse.
There is a third choice available to both groups, but it is highly unlikely that either group will choose to take advantage of it. This choice is the most logical choice, the one that guarantees both sides the most return at the end of the day for the least effort. Of course, I'm talking about compromise.
Given that the Rabbis have shown time and again that they consider themselves above the rest of not only the secular community but their own community as well, should it come as a surprise to anyone that the secular community is wary and tired of dealing with the Rabbis and the Haredi community? The Rabbis have shown time and again that they have no issues with abusing their power to further their own goals even against other religious Jews.
In conclusion, while it may seem a bitter pill, unless something drastically changes and soon, we are headed towards a civil war. It may not be as violent or as deadly in the physical realm as other civil wars or "regular" wars fought around the world, but the consequences will have much in common: Suffering, destruction of community and culture and plentiful amounts of sorrow to be handed out and received by both sides. Would that it were not so, but both sides seem eager for this confrontation, so all that is determined is to see who is left standing at the end and how the victors will feel with themselves once the dust settles.
While the Haredim claim that the reason behind this discrimination against women in the public sphere is because men are weak and easily tempted, there are some issues that loom even larger than just discrimination if that is the reason why grown Haredi men would abuse an 8 year old child.
I'm going to take a novel step here, and I'm going to claim that this entire fracas is not the fault of the Haredi community for religious extremism or the secular community for sticking its nose where it doesn't belong. I submit that both communities are to blame, but for entirely different reasons.
I would suggest that this entire story is nothing more than power games. The first Baron Acton wrote to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
Can we deny that Rabbis are great men? Some of the Rabbis today have knowledge that spans the entire width and breadth of both Jewish scriptures as well as modern philosophy. Therein lays the problem.
Many Rabbis and Yeshiva students have been studying for years to assume a position in the community as a leader. They have been told ever since they were young that by studying God's word and laws, they would be able to better themselves. All good and well, but what happened next is something that we should have seen coming, or at least taken steps against once we did see it coming: These Rabbis and Yeshiva students suddenly got the impression that bettering one's self by extension makes them better than everyone else. When the entire community believes that, who's going to tell them otherwise? After all, these young men are training to become the leaders of the community.
And so, for all the right reasons, the wrong results ensued. Indeed, hundreds of years ago and even well into the 18th century is was important for there to be a strong religious figurehead to lead the Jewish community in the Diaspora. With intermarriage, assimilation and persecution surrounding Diaspora Jews, the Rabbi truly was needed as a flag and banner that the community could rally around. But today, is that figurehead truly needed?
Today, every single Jewish child that wants a Jewish education has a myriad of options to choose from, many of them not far from where they live. Even outside of Israel one can't deny the immense and massive Jewish communities in France, the UK and the USA and elsewhere. One can travel to the farthest reaches of the globe (perhaps excluding the Arctic regions) and there will be Chabbad Hasidim there with kosher food and a place to touch base and reconnect with Judaism.
Looking back, however, as these communities grew, so did the power of the Rabbis, because no one had ever attempted to keep the Rabbis in check. Today the leader of even a medium sized Hasidic Hatzer has hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars at his disposal. The Satmar Hasidut has assets worth approximately half a BILLION dollars, yet Kiryat Yoel, the town in New York founded by the Satmar Rabbi after WWII holds the distinction of being the most impoverished city in the USA, with over two-thirds of the members of the community living below the poverty line.
I'm not suggesting that all Rabbis are corrupt robber barons who care nothing for the people who look up to them, but it's getting harder and harder to not reach that conclusion.
What was the secular community doing all this time? Absolutely nothing, and that is where they are to blame. They didn't limit the Rabbi's power once they saw there was no need for it anymore. Quite the contrary, the secular community encouraged this, starting with Israel's first leader, the extremely secular David Ben-Gurion. He needed the support of the religious leaders when the state was young, and in turn, those that studied Torah as their living were given a pass from serving in the IDF. Today that particular decision has led to thousands of the Haredi community not serving, while their secular and even their religious brethren put their lives on hold (and on the line) for 3 years in order to protect those studying.
That is just one example. What makes the entire matter worse, aside from the fact that the secular community allowed this to happen, is that now the Rabbis have so much power that even if they wanted to there's practically nothing they can do about it. The secular community has been hoist on its own petard.
There is but one course of action for both sides, and that course is change. The secular community must choose a side, either bringing forth all the power they can to bear on the Hasidic community and demand that they change their ways, which will lead to a war between the two sides, or they can choose to separate entirely from the Haredi community. All state run services will be denied the Haredi community and if they refuse to accept the government's demands, will no longer be granted the government's favor.
The Haredi community also has a choice to make: They can choose to change their ways from inside without external interference and intervening or they can choose to protect their right to decide how to live their lives until the very end, regardless of how backwards it is perceived as by the rest of the Israeli society, which while admirable is also quite foolish, from an objective point of view. Not all progress is good, true, but to willingly keep themselves in the past is even worse.
There is a third choice available to both groups, but it is highly unlikely that either group will choose to take advantage of it. This choice is the most logical choice, the one that guarantees both sides the most return at the end of the day for the least effort. Of course, I'm talking about compromise.
Given that the Rabbis have shown time and again that they consider themselves above the rest of not only the secular community but their own community as well, should it come as a surprise to anyone that the secular community is wary and tired of dealing with the Rabbis and the Haredi community? The Rabbis have shown time and again that they have no issues with abusing their power to further their own goals even against other religious Jews.
In conclusion, while it may seem a bitter pill, unless something drastically changes and soon, we are headed towards a civil war. It may not be as violent or as deadly in the physical realm as other civil wars or "regular" wars fought around the world, but the consequences will have much in common: Suffering, destruction of community and culture and plentiful amounts of sorrow to be handed out and received by both sides. Would that it were not so, but both sides seem eager for this confrontation, so all that is determined is to see who is left standing at the end and how the victors will feel with themselves once the dust settles.
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