|
|
|
|
by Jonathan Rosenblum
Mishpacha Magazine
January 3, 2003
[posted with permission of the author]
The Erev Shabbos newspapers were filled with stories of the American billionaire who is pouring millions of dollars into efforts to lessen Tommy Lapid’s haul of Knesset seats. Every Jew living in Israel, religious and non-religious alike, has good reason to be grateful to this particular Jew. His foray into Israeli politics is but the most recent example – and probably the least significant.
Our billionaire friend recognizes that Lapid represents a serious problem that demands a serious response. Unfortunately, that is not an idea that has yet struck most of our community with much force. Our preferred explanation of the wave of hatred coming in our direction is that they hate us because they must hate us. It’s written into the cosmos. Just as Esav hates Yaakov so must our secular brethren hate us.
A neighbor accosted me on Shabbos to express his opinion that last week’s Roundtable discussion was a waste of paper: Whatever reasons the chilonim give for hating us are nothing but terutzim. Then he triumphantly brandished his proof: In American non-religious Jews hate religious Jews just as much.
I hope he wasn’t too disappointed when I told him, ``Mi’makom she’bata" you can bring a proof of the opposite. Such hatred of religious Jews by their co-religionists is largely unknown in America. Whenever I go into a store in a Jewish neighborhood wearing a kippah some non-religious Jew will always initiate a conversation about Israel as a way of letting me know that they too are Jewish. (The American equivalent of ``Saba sheli haya rav.")
True, much of the reason Jews get along better in America is that they have little contact with one another. Where they find themselves moving into the same neighborhoods, there have been tensions. Jew vs. Jew, after all, was written about Jewish relations in America. But the level of vitriol indulged by Israeli Jews is largely unknown.
I did not wish to disturb my friend’s Shabbos menuchah. For his explanation obviously has a number of great advantages, the most important being that we are required to do nothing, absolutely nothing about it. We are neither required to ask ourselves whether we bear any responsibility nor must we invest any time and energy in combating the phenomenon. After all, how much time have you spent recently trying to repeal the laws of gravitational attraction.
While I share the concerns of the American billionaire, my guess is that no matter how much money he spends in the final three weeks before the election, it will make barely a dent. Once Lapid reached his current level of popularity, we were simply too late. The climate that gave rise to him is the product of years of anti-religious propaganda, and that cannot be done overnight.
Instead of waking up on the eve of elections, we have to ask ourselves what long-range steps can we take to combat the media poison. None of Lapid’s tirades against the chareidi community – not even the army issue – so resonates with the secular population as the charge that chareidim are ``bloodsuckers," constantly extorting from the government a disproportionate share of the national resources. Shinui had Hareidi, Inc., a book length ``expose" of this phenomenom by Ha’aretz journalist Shahar Ilan, translated into Russian and distributed in the Russian-speaking community. Among Ilan’s fantastic charges is the claim that the average chareidi family is subsidized by the state to the tune of 17,000 shekels monthly. So far no full-scale refutation or analysis of Ilan’s data has been undertaken though the book has been widely cited in Israel.
A systematic, professional analysis of the national budget, as well as local budgets, is required to refute the claim of chareidi extortion. A few such studies have been made on the local level, including one dealing with the Jerusalem education budget. The study of Jerusalem’s educational budget demonstrated that contrary to the popular perception chareidi schools are the victims of significant discrimination. Many such similar studies, however, are required, if the chareidi community wishes to respond effectively to either popular perceptions or those of Treasury budget-cutters. But no funding has been forthcoming to do such projects in a credible fashion.
More than a year ago, a young rosh yeshiva approached me with a well-thought out plan to train volunteers to call into radio talk shows. (Unfortunately, most of those who do so at present cause more harm than good.) Others could be trained to enter the discussions on Y-net and other Internet news sources. Again the project died for want of funding.
If we had more funding for ongoing hasbara efforts, we would not find ourselves desperately casting about for ways to spend our money a few weeks before elections when the cow is already out of the barn.
Admittedly there are distinct limits on what we can do to quell secular anger. We will not fold our tents and stop being chareidim so that secular Jews stop attacking us. We will not send our eighteen-year-olds en masse to the army or empty the kollels so as to add to the unemployment roles. Nor would doing so entirely cure the problem. No doubt the type of hatred that Rabbi Akiva said that he felt for talmidei chachamim before he learned Torah is part of the cosmos.
(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of Tzemach Dovid)
If you would like to read other columns by Jonathan Rosenblum, please visit www.jewishmediaresources.org.
To subscribe to or unsubscribe from the Jewish Media Resources mailing list, go to http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/jmrlist
Because of the large volume of letters, Jonathan Rosenblum cannot answer each letter personally. He does, however, read each one.
|
|
|
|