• News
    • Business
    • Canada
    • Health
    • International
    • Israel
  • Perspectives
    • Ask Ella
    • Ask The Love Rabbi
    • Features
    • Jewish Parenting Wisdom
    • Opinions
    • Ideas
    • Letters
    • Personal Essays
  • Food
  • Culture
    • Arts & Entertainment
    • The Arts
    • Books & Authors
    • Canada 150
    • Jewish Learning
    • June 1967
    • Sports
    • Travel
  • Events
    • Contests
  • Supplements
    • Spotlights
  • Other Communities
    • En Français
    • Russian
  • Subscribe
  • Member Centre
  • Log Out
Search
  • Subscribe
  • Member Centre (eCJN)
  • Log Out
  • Newsletter
  • FaceBook
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
  • Instagram
CJN - Canada’s largest Jewish newspaper
April 26, 2018 - 11 Iyar 5778
CJN - Canada’s largest Jewish newspaper
  • News
    • Construction magnate Sydney Cooper dies at 98

      Anti-Semitic incidents rose in 2017: B’nai Brith Canada

      Israel suspends plans to deport African asylum seekers

      Will Europe’s Jews stop wearing kippot?

      Agreement sets up Quebec-Israel exchange program for women

      AllBusinessCanadaHealthInternationalIsrael
  • Perspectives
    • The holiday with tears in the eyes

      Jewish Parenting Wisdom: How to tame an out-of-control child

      Q&A with Rabbi Uri Regev: Pushing for religious equality in Israel

      Reset your comfort zone to feel alive

      Helmut Oberlander

      Bring the remaining Nazi war criminals to justice

      AllAsk EllaAsk The Love RabbiFeaturesJewish Parenting WisdomOpinionsIdeasLettersPersonal Essays
  • Food
    • The Shabbat Table: Happy 70th birthday Israel

      The Shabbat Table: A special post-Passover garlic shlissel challah

      Everyone gets gooey at downtown matzah bake

      Making matzah balls unites a modern Jewish family, says Phyllis Feldman

      The easy way out of Passover

      Bannock and matzah: our breads of affliction

  • Culture
    • Film on Oskar Groening trial to premiere at Hot Docs in Toronto

      Israeli Faces of Toronto

      TJFF founder honoured for decades of public service

      Duo’s debut film has satire, music and a dog — sort of

      Exploring the Jewish world at Hot Docs

      AllArts & EntertainmentThe ArtsBooks & AuthorsCanada 150Jewish LearningJune 1967SportsTravel
  • Events
    • Jewish Music Week Contest

      Chai Lifeline’s Restoring Hope contest (Closed)

      The CJN Prize (CLOSED)

      BRITISH YIDDISH AND KIDDUSH CONTEST (closed)

      The CJN Prize for Young Writers Contest (closed)

      AllContests
  • Supplements
    • Home Beautiful

      CJL Magazine

      Passover Greetings

      Passover Greetings

      MTL Celebrations

      AllSpotlights
  • Other Communities
    • The holiday with tears in the eyes

      Israeli Faces of Toronto

      Limmud FSU delegation participates in leadership summit in Warsaw

      Canadian business accelerator lauded as one of the best in the world

      Quel avenir pour les Juifs de France ?

      AllEn FrançaisRussian
  • Subscribe
  • Member Centre
  • Log Out
Home Perspectives Opinions Israel’s urgent priority
  • Perspectives
  • Opinions

Israel’s urgent priority

By
The CJN
-
January 23, 2012
388
0
SHARE
Facebook
Twitter

CJN columnist Jean Gerber this week eloquently pours out her heart and a deeply felt bit of her wrath on the subject of the recent unsightly efforts by some extremist haredim in Israel to segregate women away from men in the public domain of Israeli life.

She writes, of course, as an aggrieved Jewish woman. But more poignantly, she writes, simply, as an aggrieved Jew who is worried for the future of Israel, the “wonderful, flawed state” that means so very much to her. 

“Israeli society has dangerous rifts that, unaddressed, will be more dangerous than 10 Arab armies,” Gerber writes, referring to the hardscrabble resentments and distrusts among and within the various religious groupings to their non-religious fellow countrymen and women.

Gerber aptly described the bullying of eight-year-old Na’ama Margolese and the subsequent aggressive protests last month in Beit Shemesh as “a public display of choleric fundamentalism.” 

And she was absolutely correct. 

The rowdy, crude, boorish behaviour we witnessed directed at Na’ama and her mother was shocking, an affront to our sensibilities as human beings, let alone as Jews. And we were ever more puzzled and wounded and angered because the justification for the behaviour was said to emanate from the teachings of the holy texts. 

Last week, in an op-ed essay in the Globe and Mail, the eminent Israeli commentator, writer, scholar Yossi Klein Halevi also condemned the extremist haredi behaviour. 

But he explained the recent boldness of the violent behaviour in terms that were new, not often, if indeed noted at all by social and political writers. 

“The haredi community is hardly monolithic and is divided by its attitudes toward the secular state. It is, in part, the growing involvement of some haredim in mainstream Israeli society that has led to an extremist backlash among others. This new wave of fanaticism isn’t a sign of self-confidence but of desperation.” (My emphasis)

Klein Halevi points out that the integrative steps that increasing, though still small, numbers of haredim have taken to find employment, to serve in the army, to join in the national public discourse are worrying some of the even more cloistered and insular haredim. And thus, the latter, such as the sect in Beit Shemesh, lash out with greater “religiously based” ferocity.  

In an essay titled Gender Troubles on the website Jewish Ideas Daily, Yehudah Mirsky makes much the same point. 

“But the mounting violence against women, no doubt reflecting sincere conviction… also seems to bespeak increasing internal tensions.

“Though traditionalist, they have internalized modern aspirations to remake society and strategies of ideological mobilization. Far from monolithic, they have their own internal kulturkampfen. Haredi singers perform before mixed audiences. Haredim serve in special military units – and often face community ostracism. Haredi women have made extraordinary educational and occupational strides. The response by some has been to send them, literally, to the back of the bus – and push them out of view elsewhere.” 

The harsh and ugly images we have seen of late involving the haredi violence in Beit Shemesh and Mea Shearim do indeed depict a certain truth of haredi attempts to manipulate public life to suit their own narrow mysogynist purposes. But as Klein Halevi and Mirsky – both astute and knowledgeable observers of Israeli life – suggest, the violence also depicts a certain turbulence stirring within the variegated stripes of haredi life.

Notwithstanding the sociological roots of the haredi violence, Klein Halevi, Mirsky and Gerber also point out that the key cornerstone of any ultimate response to the violence must be political. 

“Israel’s dysfunctional coalition system,” as Klein Halevi describes it, must be permanently reformed.

“The real threat to Israeli society comes not from the acts of haredi extremists but from the distorted relationship of the haredi community to the state. Haredim not only exclude themselves from the responsibilities of Israeli citizenship but demand that the mainstream subsidize their separatism.”

Klein Halevi concludes as so many others concerned for Israel have concluded: “The large major political parties [must] join together to change the current coalition system, which allows minority parties to force their will on the majority.”

As urgent a place as the Iranian threat, the rise of Arab Islamism in the Middle East or the moribund peace process with the Palestinians occupy on the national agenda of the State of Israel, so, too, should the subject of electoral reform. 

If the State of Israel is to be eternally for the citizens of Israel and for the people of Israel, the government of Israel must set to this task as a matter of the highest national priority.                                                 — MBD

 

SHARE
Facebook
Twitter
The CJN

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

Construction magnate Sydney Cooper dies at 98

Anti-Semitic incidents rose in 2017: B’nai Brith Canada

Israel suspends plans to deport African asylum seekers

  • Popular
  • Recent
Subscribe to the CJNSubscribe
RSS FeedView
5,528FansLike
856FollowersFollow
10,108FollowersFollow
198SubscribersSubscribe
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Subscribe / Member Centre (eCJN)
  • eCJN Archives
  • Supplements
  • Media Kit
  • Advertising Terms
  • Premiums

One on One at Comicon with Leo Leibelman

Purim 2018 on Toronto's streets

Baba Fira's CJN Prize Awards invite

  • News
  • Canada
  • Israel
  • International
  • Opinions
  • The Arts
The award-winning Canadian Jewish News (CJN) is Canada’s largest, weekly Jewish newspaper with an audited circulation of nearly 32,000 and read by more than 100,000 people each week.
© Copyright 2018 Canadian Jewish News
  • Comments Policy
  • Community Links
  • Contact Us
  • Media Kit
  • Privacy Policy
  • Subscribe
  • Admin

Week in Review...

Comes Right to You

Sign up for our Weekly Newsletter

X