City of Light Becomes City of Darkness: Ultra-Orthodox Harassment and Intimidation in Bet Shemesh

Rabbi Neil A. Tow©

Bet Shemesh is the name of an ancient city and a modern city.  “House of the Sun”, a place where we might hope that everyone “sees the light”.  But of late there has been darkness in the city of the sun.  There has been rioting among the charedi, or ultra-orthodox residents of the city who wish to enforce a more global segregation of women and men in the public sphere.  One moment in the events of past days was the way male charedim spat on and harassed Naama Margolis, a grade school girl from an orthodox home, who attends an orthodox school for girls, who was not dressed modestly enough for their sensibilities. 

Bet Shemesh may be the flashpoint but these issues extend to other places in Israel.  A charedi man, joined by others, verbally harassed a female soldier on a Jerusalem bus because she refused to move to the back in order to sit separately from men.  Once again, one act, one moment that is symbolic of many more similar moments of mistreatment, of harassment.

The Israeli military has been caught up in a series of public debates about the ways that it separates men and women at events.  An Israeli soldier working in the communications branch could not even record videotaped messages of support to the Israeli army of random female citizens in their own voices – They either had to tell a male what to say or speak from behind a cloth.

Returning to the city of the sun…A long-time resident of Bet Shemesh said in an interview on camera that such harassment has been going on for a while, but did not receive any attention recently.  She said that harassment occurred in the past but no one did anything more than raise an eyebrow.

For us in the United States, a land with separation of church and state, acts such as the ones in Jerusalem and Bet Shemesh sound disturbingly similar to the way African-Americans suffered under segregation laws.  The female soldier on the bus transformed into my head into an Israeli Rosa Parks.

However, there is a critical difference.  In Israel there is no separation between synagogue and state, between religion and politics.  There are both religious and non-religious political parties.  It is a Jewish state – a state with many religions who live within its borders, but it is a Jewish state nonetheless.  Theodor Herzl did not project that Israel would be as tied up and roiled by the large presence of traditionalist Jews – the charedi group being a group that receives huge subsidies from the government and that largely receives exemption from service in the military.

Thousands of Israelis came out to Bet Shemesh to protest the move by the charedi community to further segregate, to further its strong stance on modesty in dress and segregation of public spaces.

All these stories have come to us across the airwaves and the internet?  What do they have to do with us as American Jews?

We must be aware of the potential for the divide between Israel and the Diaspora to grow even wider.  Life here and life there are so different, the structure of Jewish life here and there are so different that there is a real threat that Israel may become something other than a State that represents the varieties of all Jewish people of the world.  The Conservative-Masorti movement has made great strides to teach a traditional and egalitarian approach like the one we follow here (in Glen Rock and many other communities), but they receive little public money and orthodox groups dog their steps – When I lived in Jerusalem in 2004-2005 my wife and I davened with Mayanot, a Masorti community in Jerusalem, a community that wanted to finally build its own home after renting space for so long.  There was a piece of land designated for a synagogue in a nearby housing development and learned that the city of Jerusalem allowed the Shas Sephardic-orthodox group to cut in and overtake that land instead.

We want Israel to be a place where all types of Jews can find holiness and meaning, where men and women can realize the full potential of their Jewish spirits on the land that our people have called holy for thousands of years.  There is, for sure, enough holiness there for people of all faiths and all persuasions of Judaism to establish themselves in honor of God and our people.(Yes, even a place for the orthodox anti-Zionist Neturei Karta and others who do not believe there should be a Jewish State until the Messianic period since the ‘concept of a sovereign state’, they say, is ‘contrary to Jewish law.)

There is a place for everyone in Israel, and disagreements must be resolved in the spirit of unity rather than hatred and violence. 

And this week’s Torah portion Vayigash reminds us that in this discussion the voices of both men and women should be heard.  It was after all the immortal presence of Serach, daughter of Asher, one of only 2 women listed among the people who went down to Egypt with Jacob…It was Serach who the Rabbis taught was one of a very few Biblical characters who was immortal, and Serach who showed Moses where Joseph was buried so that Moses could bring Joseph back to the Holy Land to be buried.

Let us look to the eternal wisdom of Serach, the wisdom of a spiritual guide who still walks with us, to teach the charedi men in Israel about how to live, how to live out the mitzvoth – if they choose to harass police as they have and harass other citizens as they have, let them be the ones sent to the back of the bus, let them be the ones who must demonstrate ‘modesty’ in public, let them be the ones whom we denounce as violators of Torah law – for they have turned the city of sun into a city of darkness. 

And it is time for us to lend our voices and support so that all the citizens of Israel may once again turn on the light.