Confused? Change the Axes (Column 382)
Until now I ignored the elections we went through. After all, one can’t write a column every time there are elections, otherwise I’d never deal with anything else. Still, I have a few thoughts in the wake of the latest results, and I hope you’ll allow me to share them with you. I’m quite sure you won’t be surprised, but I do think some of you may find them useful.
The confusion
The results of the recent elections have sent our public discourse into a tailspin. Apocalyptic prophecies—or just embarrassments, confusions, and misunderstandings—keep popping up from every direction: Who won—right or left? Who are the good guys and who are the bad? What even is “right” and what is “left”? Who here is a racist-chauvinist lowlife, and who a postmodern lowlife? Who here is religious-Zionist and who is enlightened? (And are those really opposites?) Did minorities win or the majority? Who even are the minorities and who is the majority here? How exactly do Mansour Abbas and the Muslim Brotherhood join the religious-Zionist-racist-chauvinist pole and form a coalition with it for Bibi and Likud? How is it that so many people want and expect Bennett and Sa’ar—who are to the right of Bibi—to build with their own hands a left-wing government with Meretz and the Joint List?
Some think that Bibi the man created all this confusion with his own corrupt hands. The entire political split is for or against Bibi, and it dwarfs all the other axes of disagreement. If not for him, everything would have lined up according to the familiar axes, and there’d be no confusion. With all due respect to his abilities and talents and the strong feelings he evokes for or against, I find it hard to accept such a thesis. There’s something deeper here that needs clarification at the root. At most, Bibi helped reveal it; he didn’t create it.
Examples of confusion on two planes: the general political and the religious
This morning someone sent me what Amit Segal wrote on his Telegram channel:
| One Wish Rightward
The second round was a tragedy, the third a farce, the fourth is already a sitcom: the great dream of Israel’s left camp right now is to form a government headed by the man who brought the idea of annexation into Israeli politics. And the pinnacle of the right’s hopes is a coalition dependent on the grace of the Shura Council. You can also flip it: the left will mourn bitterly if an Arab party gains unprecedented influence, and the right will sit shiva if Prime Minister Bennett and his deputy Sa’ar take the reins of power. We live in wondrous times. After a week of sterile play in midfield, the picture is clearing: next spring, the only government that can arise is one supported by both Bennett and Ra’am. The numbers don’t add up for any other coalition. Both sides want Bennett, and he has formulated his demands. The first of them: at least a one-year term as prime minister, with him serving first in the rotation. The likelihood that this demand will be met is much higher in a coalition with the center-left than with Netanyahu. This is the point at which Bennett’s seven seats and rare bargaining position become wealth kept to the owner’s detriment: on the right, the Yamina chair is approaching the point where he will be burned permanently and branded a traitor. On the left, they offer him both a dream and a nightmare. His lifelong dream as a politician is to be prime minister; his nightmares as a right-winger are the government he is being offered to head: Meretz, Labor, Lapid, with Arab support. He understands well that this would be a short-lived and bloody-minded government, since any party could extort money and legislation at will. He is supposed to establish the government the left wants, and the left is supposed to choose the prime minister the religious right wants. Eshkol Nevo once wrote a book about a group in which each person got something other than what he asked for. Its title, by the way: One Wish Rightward. Netanyahu is offering him less: the Defense Ministry, a handful of portfolios, entry into Likud through the front gate, maybe also deputy prime minister. But Bennett still hesitates. Left-wing party leaders who spoke with him this week offered to recommend him to the president on condition that he publicly declare a final break with Netanyahu. In return, they heard a noncommittal hum. If he continues like this, Lapid will get more recommenders. In that case, the president will not be able to task Bennett with forming the government. It’s more likely he’ll go with the majority of recommenders, even if that means granting the mandate to Netanyahu. It’s not clear which of the two will be more astonished—the assigner or the assignee. |
That is a description of the confusion on the general political map. Within the religious map, the confusion is no smaller. Here is what the filmmaker Yair Lipschitz wrote on Facebook:
| It annoys me that I’m even thinking about the “Noam” party. Like, what do I have to do with it other than some biographical intersection somewhere in the past that is also receding away? And even then, when I was part of what we called (ironically but also a bit not) “our community,” Rabbi Tau was the antagonist, someone whose social power we recognized but also somewhat mocked, because it was clear his conservatism belonged to the past. Understand, kids: in the nineties the sense of time was such that progressivism marked the future. That’s gotten a bit scrambled since, but that’s how it was, believe me.
In any case, I remember that even then what struck me as odd was that in the split between Tau and the Har HaMor yeshiva and the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva—which was ostensibly over establishing a rabbinic training institute in the yeshiva—the rebels from Har HaMor belonged to the more conservative side. That was odd to me because somehow in my consciousness back then, revolution was supposed to lead forward and not backward—because, you know, kids, the nineties, etc. But it turns out that was the seed of a trend that then had barely sprouted. That same year I began my studies in the Theater Department at Tel Aviv University, and in the first class of “Introduction to Jewish, Hebrew, and Israeli Theater,” Prof. Shimon Levy read us headlines from that morning’s paper so we’d think a bit about where we live. Among the headlines was the report about the split in the Mercaz yeshiva, and he said something like, “And don’t think that what’s happening in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem isn’t relevant to all your lives.” And I, still part of “our community,” was surprised that in this secular stronghold he found it worth noting the marginal quarrel about a rabbinic institute in a conservative yeshiva. And here we are, 24 years and 948376598092398757 election cycles later, and it turns out how prescient he was. Time moves in stranger ways than I thought in the nineties. |
There are more voices from within the religious camp who feel confused in the face of the unholy and repulsive union between the musty religious diehards of the old NRP, the nationalists à la Smotrich, the racists à la Ben-Gvir, and the chauvinist-homophobes à la Avi Maoz, Rabbi Tau, and “Noam.” “Is this religious-Zionism?” they ask themselves. “Is that where I belong?” It seems to me (and maybe that’s just my wishful thinking?!) that a not insignificant portion of the six mandates that voted for this benighted and repugnant bunch feel such feelings, but belonging and identification lead them to vomit and, pardon me, diarrhea (!) that ballot slip into the box. When one sees the wondrous unity among all parts of religious-Zionism—a marvelous blend of chauvinism and racism with nationalist pathos—how can one stand idly by?! Who can behold this wondrous unity with the longed-for peace of generations and not join? Why, that would be betrayal of the camp.
It seems to me that the recent elections illustrated perfectly the words of the late Rabbi Steinsaltz:
The ballot box is one of two places one enters when no one is watching, drops something smelly, and leaves. It’s important, it’s necessary, but there’s no need to talk too much about what I did there.
A word hewn in stone. I fully agree—except for the four words: “it’s important” and “it’s necessary.”
In any case, this is a description of confusion on the general political plane and on the religious plane. New and surprising (apparently) coalitions are forming, and it’s no wonder that people are perplexed and find it hard to define where they stand, who is with us and who is against us. But before I get into the confusion itself, a few side notes.
My response to Yair Lipschitz
In response to Yair Lipschitz’s words, I wrote the following:
Nonsense. It doesn’t touch anyone’s life. And it’s also not about the split. Rabbi Tau was always like that; the only question is whether it’s mixed into Mercaz or separate from it. Finally, I have an update for him: there have been many revolutions in the past that turned backward. Maybe most of them. Communism didn’t, but in Zionism there’s certainly a return from exile to the Bible, and in the Reformation it’s all backward, and in Islam the main revolutionary thrust is backward. Classicism and romance of the past are excellent fuel for revolutions. Revolutionaries who invent values face forward, but revolutionaries who strive to realize existing values usually draw from the (idealized?) past.
I then added that I don’t understand the surprise and the intense reaction to the election results. None of this has anything to do with Netanyahu in any way. No one can deny that there’s a very large group in the public that espouses these views, whether or not it has political expression (marginal: one MK in a fringe party). Those who represent all these values more powerfully are the Haredim, and there are dozens of MKs like that. How does Avi Maoz change anything on the map? The Haredim also do not give women a place, are in favor of stoning gays (and certainly restricting their steps), and of course most of them are dyed-in-the-wool racists (because of their conception of Judaism). And I haven’t even mentioned the Arabs—particularly the Muslims—who also espouse all these exalted values. But for some reason we’ve gotten used to all those, and only Avi Maoz’s election is the new Shoah.
So what do we have here? The Hardal (Haredi-nationalist) segment with other traditionalist add-ons together with Haredi society and with Muslim conservatism comprise, in my estimate, at least 30% of Israel’s public (and that’s an underestimate, in my view). All these indeed espouse chauvinism toward women, restricting the steps of gays, and the Jewish part among them also restricting the steps of Arabs. Except that until now, all this had no expression in the political arena. Arabs aren’t heard in the public discourse, Haredim don’t speak about their views regarding women and gays because they’re more pragmatic and more intelligent than “our” obscurantists, and what remains is Avi Maoz of “Noam” and its satellites, who are ready to speak about it out loud.
If you look at it this way, then what happened up to these elections is the real surprise: they succeeded in silencing some thirty or forty percent of the public and denying them a political voice. Now one marginal MK walks in and says out loud what something like three million muzzled citizens have been thinking for many years already (truly Gideon Hausner, isn’t it?), and the feeling is that the Flood has come. Very odd.
And again, these views repel me. They are benighted and racist and ought to be fought with all our might. But silencing them is of no use. It only hides the problem and doesn’t solve it. True, our PC cousins think that if something isn’t said then it doesn’t exist, and therefore changing the discourse is the solution to all our ills, but I see no reason to adopt this drivel. On the contrary, it’s important to air things out and give them media and political expression so that we can contend with them and put forward counter-arguments. Unless you’re Don Quixote and Sancho—or Rabbi Tau—it will be very hard to fight against someone who doesn’t exist.
Changing the religious coordinate system
It seems to me that the main conclusion from all this confusion is the need to change our coordinate system. Many (relatively) religious-Zionists feel that as long as this exists among Haredim then it’s “them” and not “us.” But “Noam” is ours! It is the flesh and blood of religious-Zionism; that’s why it’s more worrying and infuriating. But this is, of course, a mistake. “Noam” is exactly the same “them” as the Haredim, only with a knitted kippah and one extra Hallel a year (plus ecstatic dances—avizraihu of idolatry—before a president, prime minister, and IDF chief on Jerusalem Day). They are nothing but Haredim with knitted kippot, with an added pinch of idolatry and a florid, pathetic language that reflects total disconnect from reality (what they call a “holy perspective”).
This confusion reflects a problem of anachronism in our conceptual framework. The ideological and religious groups are defined by a coordinate system that is not relevant today. “Religious-Zionism,” for example, is a term that reflects an uninteresting and irrelevant division between those who recite Hallel on the 5th of Iyar and those who don’t. But the relevant division is between modern religiosity (Modern Orthodox and liberal Haredim) and conservative religiosity (ideological Haredim and Hardalim). Just think where you would place R. S. R. Hirsch and Rabbi Breuer on your map. That is the more important and relevant axis in our day (let’s remind ourselves of a forgotten fact: the state has already been established), and when you look at reality through it, you discover that—at least in the religious sphere—the confusion disappears entirely. I’ve written about this more than once, and showed it clearly here, for example, in a discussion of the attitudes different groups showed toward the latest elections for the Chief Rabbis.
When you clarify the real coordinate system and don’t cling to slogans and ideas that defined the axes in the past, everything becomes simpler. A religious-Zionist should ask himself whether he is conservative or not, and based on that decide whether he should vote for Smotrich’s benighted racists or for some other party. He can reach the conclusion that although he recites Hallel on Independence Day, he is not prepared to persecute gays and see the New Israel Fund under every green tree, nor to adhere to the delusional writings and diktats of Rabbi Tau. Suddenly we understand that they are not “us” but “them,” and everything calms down. In sum, a very large conservative population in Israel received a minimal political expression. Nothing new happened. One can and should fight those views, but there’s no reason to panic over the election results, and certainly no reason to attribute this to Bibi. It’s unrelated to him, aside from the fact that he is the main magnet for excluded minorities.
Contrary to the demagogic excuses from the left (and the attacks on Avishai Ben-Haim), Bibi really does belong to a minority excluded from the media discourse, hence the strong identification with him. The votes for him and the coalitionary clustering of excluded minorities around him begin and end there—not in the “big,” classic questions of right and left. Whether you accept it or deny it, this is a war against the elites. That’s all.
And in general, apocalypticism always harms just causes. People feel that if they ignore the biased treatment Bibi gets in the media (and it seems to me in the judicial system as well), that strengthens their struggle. But no—it strengthens him. It paints him as a martyred saint and those against him as persecutors. Thus his image as the authentic representative of persecuted minorities is reinforced, and again and again he wins the most votes in elections. The apocalyptic magnification that “Noam” creates around the New Israel Fund and the liberal forces also works to its detriment. Seemingly it strengthens the camp and spurs it to act. But in fact it causes anyone who warns against PC and the calumnies of the New Israel Fund to look delusional. I, who share the feelings about bias against the right and about the violent silencing practiced by the LGBTQ community and PC discourse and its associated ills, am not prepared to identify with Rabbi Tau’s dark, delusional flyers and the axis of evil (there’s your apocalyptic amplification). The black-and-white sketch ruins every good plot of land; it dulls the discourse and the disagreements instead of sharpening them. It bears considerable responsibility for the confusion everyone feels after the elections.
Changing the political coordinate system
The same holds for the general political field, not only its religious dimension. The conflation of political conservatism with social conservatism creates confusion. The focus on security-diplomatic questions creates confusion. The traditional divisions between right and left (at least in Israel) come from the security-diplomatic field, but those aren’t very important questions right now. The question of what to do with the Palestinians is a halakhah for the messianic era, because nothing is on the table at the moment. The main struggle is over society in Israel, not the diplomatic arena.
When you see that the coalition forming around Bibi is a coalition of persecuted minority groups that all espouse social conservatism and receive no expression in public discourse, it immediately becomes clear what Mansour Abbas has to do with “Noam,” with Ben-Gvir, with Haredim and Hardalim. As I explained, voting for Bibi in no way reflects a diplomatic or security agenda. Anyone who wants the right should vote for Bennett and Sa’ar, not for Bibi (who, in policy and deeds, is a centrist—though in his demagogic rhetoric he, of course, winks at the right-wing electorate). But voting for him does not express right-wing worldviews—or worldviews at all—but rather a sense of exclusion and deprivation and a war against the elites (pardon me for stealing Avishai Ben-Haim’s very correct thesis)[1]. By the way, the same goes for voting against him.
The link between the two planes
From the previous paragraphs you could gather that there is a connection between the confusion in the two planes. The religious confusion is a special case of the general political confusion and entirely connected to it.
Rabbi Froman z”l spoke long ago about the natural coalition between Hamas and religious Judaism—two groups that can cooperate against secular liberalism (and I don’t know which of them frightens me more). His apocalyptic vision is these days taking on flesh before our astonished (and very worried) eyes. Fortunately, for now, Rabbi Tau and “Noam” are confused and are themselves captive to the mixed-up conceptual system that they themselves labor to maintain with great zeal. Hence they too (for now) are not prepared to enter a coalition with Abbas. But that could (politically) pass for them—or (ideologically) be adopted—and then “darkness will cover the earth and thick gloom the peoples.” For “the Lord will not forsake His people and will not abandon His heritage.” Give thanks to the Lord for He is good—He blinds the eyes of His enemies, keeps the feet of His servants, and binds the hands of His foes.
Suddenly it becomes clear and is laid on the table what was hidden from us in media and public discourse until today. Before our eyes stands proudly the fact that most of Israel’s public belongs to excluded minorities, and the clustering of these groups creates a worrying majority of dark fundamentalism. The problem is not that these minorities are finally given the right to speak and be heard and finally have political representation. That’s the good part of these election results and of broader processes happening in recent years also in the media and generally (as Kalman Liebskind wrote, there too, as part of the representation for excluded minorities, weeds are entering that have nothing to do with journalism). The problem is the very existence of such worldviews. In short, it’s not Avi Maoz and Ben-Gvir but their voters. Silencing these voices only strengthens them, and it seems to me it’s what brought us to this point. The way to contend with these dark views is not concealment and silencing but direct confrontation: examining our religious worldviews, and whether it is really right to cling to anachronistic, chauvinist, and racist interpretations—or whether we can refresh (and slim down) our tradition. In that sense I’m very happy about the new coalitions now forming. It’s time to demolish the old social and ideological structures and coalitions and update them for our time.
In this morning’s discussion with Chayuta that sparked this column, she raised Rabbi Kook’s well-known saying—when there is a great war in the world, the messianic force awakens. That messianic force means change, tectonic shift, and perhaps also renewal and repair. I have always thought that peace and unity of opinions are very dangerous (the Sages thought so too—hence they said that in a court where everyone rules death, the defendant goes free). This campish identification that strengthens at the sight of the wondrous harmony of opinions across the entire camp (each one contributing his ugliness to create the overall colorful picture) is, to me, a truly despicable process. War is great—down with unity. We already learned from Mohar”r Shauli that the only fitting solution now is a civil war (a wonderful bit—go watch).
[1] The criticisms and mockery of him also reflect a lack of understanding. They “prove” to him that Bibi is not an excluded minority, and not even Mizrahi. But none of that is relevant. Bibi, like Begin before him, is “Mizrahi” in the sense that he is the chief fighter against the Ashkenazi leftist elites that exclude him. In public consciousness (and in reality) that is entirely true, and it does not depend at all on the facts regarding Bibi’s economic and social status or background. The criticisms of Ben-Haim are simply a lack of understanding, at best, or demagoguery and disregard for the (cognitive and factual) reality, at worst.
Discussion
The most intriguing and puzzling part is the reaction of the liberal הציבור – instead of fighting Bibi’s problematic partners (Shas, UTJ, Ra’am, Noam, Otzma), they invest the full force of their struggle דווקא in Bibi himself, to the point of being willing to put on the shtreimel in order to depose Bibi.
Abraham B.H.’s thesis is certainly correct, but the phenomenon on the liberal side is still too baffling.
[It’s possible I’m one of the ramblers, but still. To my mind, the no-less-interesting division is between economically resilient groups and economically shaky groups (who receive transfer payments in a hundred different and strange ways). In the long run this is far more important than all sorts of so-called values that people enjoy climbing the barricades for, and it is also what I think underlies the stubborn refusal to fence off each sector within its own sphere as much as possible. The economy is the engine of every achievement in the world, and it is also what is actually shared by all citizens, even more than security, and it seems to me that in the end that is why everyone is constantly fighting. Therefore I am a fairly enthusiastic supporter of factionalism, polarization, and social fragmentation. Weakening the intertribal civic ties is, in my view, an important strategic goal, unlike the sticky excess of brotherhood that currently exists in our ridiculous country. The familiar idea that good fences make good neighbors also applies between sectors. Only because of the fiction that there is some greater shared thing do people take such a special interest in what is happening with the other. And if there were no economic sharing at all, no one would have any significant reason to be interested in the neighbor’s bubble any more than in the bubble of another country.]
[I probably missed your closing sentence, “War is great, down with unity.” But it seems that you are aiming at an ideological war in order to enrich the discourse so that in the end positions will become clearer and, hopefully, reach a broader common denominator. I would prefer to phrase it as “Distance is great, down with closeness.” War and unity are two sides of the same counterfeit coin.]
As someone who was part of the “sector,” but left it, and in my experience was expelled from it (though of course objectively that did not happen), and this was because of feminism and liberalism.
I must say, on the one hand, that your nightmare of secular liberalism is my vision, so our views do not align. But on the other hand, I see your tremendous courage in saying these things from within the sector. And I appreciate it very much.
It is very jarring for me to see intra-sector criticism of Noam and the like that is always accompanied by reservations, apologies, as if they are a full wagon and the rest of the ציבור is an empty wagon rushing down the slope.
Thank you
You probably did not understand my position. I am entirely in favor of liberalism, and I do not think it is the preserve of secular people. I am against silencing, persecution, and political correctness that accompany it. And in general, against hysteria.
The main problem with Ben Haim’s thesis is that he carries it too far and presumes to interpret through it all the events that have taken place from the founding of the state until today. For example, he claims that the whole affair of Netanyahu’s trial is an attempt by First Israel to suppress Second Israel through legal violence.
He does indeed exaggerate, but there is a lot of truth in what he says.
Not a word about Lieberman the racist and homophobe, not a word about Sa’ar the right-winger, whose every imaginary coalition, or Bennett’s, would be extorted by those same minorities and would legitimize absolutely everything so long as their lust to see Bibi leave Balfour is fulfilled.
And where does the line begin at which exclusion is legitimate? Why is a religious person who does not encourage LGBT people and expresses reservations considered a benighted racist, while someone who opposes pedophilia is enlightened? Let people live and let go!! As long as in certain things you interfere in their lives, and you do not validate their desires and even lock them in pens because of their natural urge, you are no less benighted. Talmudic hairsplitting about harm because the minor is not sufficiently competent is nonsense with no basis.
Nitzan Horowitz’s support for the court in The Hague also gets pampering and media silence because he is from the community, and “holy, holy,” shall be said.
The political deadlock stems from a number of lunatics whose lust for revenge has gone to their heads, from Avigdor Lieberman to Elkin and Sa’ar. Lieberman made the biggest deals with the Haredim while the Arabs were on the roulette wheel; all the rest will make even bigger deals with the most extreme elements if their wet dream of seeing Bibi out of Balfour comes true. The only person with an ideology in the Knesset today is Merav Michaeli, and even she will make deals with the Haredim if half her desire is fulfilled
For anyone who likes to see the other side… here is the site owner’s response from just a week ago..
I see no moral or value-based problem in a political decision to rely on someone, so long as it is not a harmful and corrupt person because of the damage he will cause (not in the very reliance, which only looks bad and has an educational flaw but not a substantive one). The agreements should aim as optimally as possible under the existing circumstances at the goals the party wants to achieve. Therefore I see no problem at all in relying on Ra’am so long as the government’s policy lines are the optimal ones under the existing circumstances. But I most certainly do see a problem in relying on the Likud.
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%d7%a4%d7%95%d7%9C%D7%99%D7%98%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%94
An anyone-but-Bibi agenda; all the other vegetables regarding Noam, the Haredim, and the Arabs are apparently serving that agenda at the moment.
A brilliant analysis, in my opinion. And incidentally, regarding Avishai Ben Haim’s thesis, precisely the fact that Bibi passed through all the stations of the elite and accumulated credit there (General Staff, academia, English, etc.) gives him an even stronger standing. Like Moses our teacher, who grew up in Pharaoh’s house, the masses know how to appreciate someone who could have defected to the opposing side, but instead courageously absorbs in his own body the arrows of criticism from the old elite for the sake of the oppressed Jewish masses.
I just saw on Yair Lifshitz’s Facebook column that you brought Prof. Vered Noam’s response, a scholar of Second Temple sects (among other things), and this was her wording –
Vered Noam
Separatist and rebellious sects tend to be more stringent, and to rage against the lightheadedness and sloppiness of the mainstream. See the Dead Sea sect, which attacked the Pharisees for having “chosen ease” and “the goodness of the neck,” that is, for being lenient and seeking the good life. Lightweights…
And by the way, when I quoted the words of Rabbi Kook I absolutely did not mean the words of the above Mr. Shauli, but rather that war (including an election war) shakes reality up, flings it to the ceiling, and causes it to fall and rearrange itself in triads – and in the process causes us to understand it better (and of course to go back and organize it along axes, or in trenches, or in any suitable scientific-literary-historical structure).
With respect, I think the rabbi is doing here to the Noam party (whose supporters I am not among) exactly the sort of thing you usually strongly protest against. As far as I understood from their platform, they are only demanding that there not be coercion of values on society and reeducation. It does not seem that they oppose (as if anyone is asking them) there being gays, etc. As for women too, the demand is that a person’s appointment to a position be according to ability and not according to gender. There is no demand to restrict the steps of either women or LGBT people. Therefore, calling them benighted and anti-women does not seem relevant to me, just as someone who opposes a law against conversion therapy (double negative) is not a homophobe but rather supports freedom, and someone who demands transparency in the High Court is not an enemy of democracy. So it seems to me
That is your poor understanding, but not theirs.
Fine words, but I fear that the religious confusion is intentional, or at least unintentional but convenient to them. Noam is the greatest gift of the moderate wing in religious Zionism, because it pushes the conversation about gays backward. It is easy to oppose the encouragement of conversion therapies, conspiracy theories about the destruction of the family, and the filthy rhetoric from Noam’s beit midrash. It is harder to say what yes: what kind of life the liberal/moderate religious stream offers the religious gay man, whether he has the possibility of partnership, sexuality, and family life, etc. In these respects, there is no epsilon small enough in the world to distinguish between the rabbis of Har HaMor and the rabbis of Tzohar.
What there is, however, is to treat a gay person (religious in other commandments or secular, it makes no difference) no worse than someone who eats a cheeseburger
Without expressing an opinion on the comparison itself, is that really the situation? Would a religious person who invites secular family members and friends to his home also invite a gay man with his partner and children? I do not think that is the situation (however, this is already a second-order consideration; I was speaking mainly about the matter itself, what they have to offer the gay man who is חרד לדבר ה' besides a life of loneliness, celibacy, and childlessness)
You asked for a small epsilon and got a giant epsilon (they will not humiliate him, they will not deny him public recognition and funding like other couples, they will not try to make him undergo the tortures of conversion therapy, they will not pin plagues and wars on him, and they will not treat him as a walking danger to society. These are things that the sweet and pleasant people of Noam will try to promote). Now you are also asking for a large zeta (that he invite him home with the partner in front of the children), and that indeed perhaps does not exist. By the way, he also may not let someone who eats a cheeseburger in around the children. And it is not certain that everyone would keep such people away from the children, and so on (and then there would be a zeta too).
If (today) there is nothing to offer a gay man who is חרד לדבר ה' in terms of a practical dispensation, that is an entirely different matter. That is already the halakhah itself, not additions and inventions. At the moment it is like the halakhah not having much to offer a mamzer
I did not ask for anything; I tried to describe reality as I see it. Nor did I ignore the rhetorical and political differences (is there really in the religious ציבור a willingness for public recognition of such a relationship? I doubt it. Under-the-table funding is something that even Noam can live with), but rather argued that it is convenient to drag the discussion there in order to ignore the issues that in my view are more important and significant. As Rabbi Abraham noted, Noam’s political power is nullified in thirty or forty, and therefore dealing with it is pointless; the epsilon is big, but the measure is 0.
If that is the halakhah and there is nothing to be done, then at least one can avoid blurring it through schmaltzy verbiage on the one hand and self-congratulation at the expense of the disgrace of the people of Noam on the other (or at least not attribute to them what they do not have; if I didn’t fear to say so, I would say that even in your response there is a trace of that. Do the people of Noam really humiliate the individual gay person? From my acquaintance with some of them, that is simply not true).
I find your support for Avishai Ben Haim horrifying. In my opinion he is anti-intellectual (he recently wrote that Karl Popper is dry and boring and insignificant). Why do you think he is right? What makes the oppressors in his doctrine one group? And what makes the oppressed one group? You cannot define the groups merely by the fact that they are not in the other group. He simply took the existing war between right and left (and the emphasis on the left as an elite pushing aside the minority) and gave them different names, First Israel and Second Israel.
To Oren – greetings,
Regarding Avishai Ben Haim’s view of Karl Popper as dry and boring. Our teacher and rabbi, the crown of our heads, the Ramda, may his light shine, has already taught us that Karl Popper is to be read during the reader’s repetition of the Amidah. And here lies the profound difference.
When the repetition of the Amidah is recited dryly and hastily, as among our Ashkenazi brothers – naturally Popper is much more interesting. But when one hears the repetition of the Amidah with a pleasant tune and lovely melody, as among our Sephardi brothers – the heart grows warm, and finds no need or interest at all in the musings of Popper, which are read without melody and repeated without song 🙂
With blessings, Ben-Zion Yohanan Halevi Radetzky
Oren, since I do not deal with a person’s body, it therefore does not trouble me what horrifies you and what does not, but only the arguments you raise. Nor do Ben Haim’s shortcomings as a person interest me, or his attitude to Popper, or whether he is an intellectual or not, but only his arguments. I wrote that he exaggerates, but his basic argument is entirely correct. Troubled? Life is hard. Get over it.
With God’s help, 23 Nisan 5781
The interesting innovation in these elections is that Mansour Abbas “changed direction.” From the traditional role of the Arab parties of promoting in the state the rule of the left, which naturally supports far-reaching concessions in the direction of establishing a Palestinian state – Ra’am has become a sectoral party, which has no central interest in shaping government policy on foreign affairs and security, and whose main concern is advancing the interests of the sector that sent it – regulating illegal settlement and fighting organized crime in Arab society.
The Arab parties were the successors of Rakah, the Communist party that saw itself as representing the advancement of the struggle against the occupation by Zionist imperialism and the advancement of the left. From the revolutionary perspective, the worse things are for the Arab public – the greater its revolutionary motivation will become. The worse it is for the people – the better it is for the revolution 🙂
Mansour Abbas simply learned from the Haredi parties, that despite their distaste for both right-wing and left-wing Zionism, and despite the tendency of a considerable part of them toward a less right-wing policy in the areas of foreign affairs and security – in the political sphere, what interests them is the interest of the sector – budgets for Torah and educational institutions and better conditions for obtaining housing at prices the Haredi ציבור can afford.
Abbas decided to adopt the method and exploit his status as a “balance-tipper” in order to promote the interests of his voters, and to leave the matters of high politics in the hands of the real powers – the great powers, the U.S., the European Union, and Putin, who will already take care of “advancing the Palestinian cause.” It may be that deep down Mansour Abbas and those who sent him understand that the good of the Palestinian people will be advanced far better by the Zionist kingdom of kindness than by the murderers of Fatah or Hamas.
In short, one could define my analysis as: “On the Course of Ideas among Ishmael” 🙂
With blessings, Shams Razal, Qubbat al-Najma
On the other hand, there is also the precedent of Hamas, which at its beginning Israel supported and encouraged as an organization engaged in religious, educational, and social activity, in the expectation that occupying frustrated youth with positive activity would prevent them from turning to the terrorist path, and the end is known…
In short: the question of whether cooperation with Mansour Abbas is feasible is not simple…
With blessings, ShaR"Z
On Mansour Abbas and his teacher Sheikh Abdallah Nimr Darwish – see the article by the Middle East scholar Dr. Nesia Rubinstein-Shemer, “Dr. Mansour Abbas – Genuine Good News or a Deception?”, on the Arutz 7 website.
With blessings, ShaR"Z
However, see the article “The Real Mansour Abbas,” in which his words in Arabic are quoted (translated by Assaf Gibor), from which emerges his view of the Palestinians as “survivors of the Nakba.” It seems that pragmatism and the willingness to cooperate with Israeli society do not make him and his public forget the aspiration to unite with “the great Arab nation.”
With blessings, ShaR"Z
You are inviting us to adopt a coordinate system of liberalism versus conservatism instead of “the traditional divisions between right and left being taken (at least in Israel) from the security-political field, but these are not very important questions today.”
I disagree. It shows us another perspective, but the emphasis is on “another.” You have basically replaced one oversimplification with another oversimplification. The situation is more complex.
For example, both Religious Zionism (the list) and Yamina have recently been speaking mainly about governance within the Green Line – especially in the Negev and the Galilee – theft from private homes and IDF bases, agricultural terror, protection rackets, etc. This is an issue that greatly concerns the residents of those areas, and it is a relevant issue. The attitude toward terrorists (also in Judea and Samaria, where it is daily) is still relevant. These are “projects” of the right. I do not see a right-wing government that wants to advance these issues (in security and internal security) doing so together with Abbas’s party.
Every party rides several axes (the main ones being the right-left axis and the liberal-conservative axis and perhaps a few more), and the question
is which clashes among them are tolerable (ideologically/pragmatically/for appearances’ sake) such that a functioning coalition can be formed.
I am not speaking at all about the problem of oversimplification. On the contrary, every sharp ideological division along some axis will be simplistic, and there is no escape from that. Politics must be conducted on the basis of coarse axes. The question is which is the main axis along which it is correct to give the simplistic description (the watershed line): nationalism or liberalism. In other words: Religious Zionist or Modern Orthodox? And here the answer is very clear in my opinion.
And by the way, the question of governance really does not divide today’s right from left at all. That is sand being thrown in the eyes by liars on the right (like Bibi, the greatest liar of them all). A right-wing government does not display greater governance. Quite the opposite: left-wing governments were more capable of governing. In any case, there is no contradiction whatsoever between enforcing the law on Arabs and leftism, and I am speaking not only theoretically but in reality. The right talks about it (as about everything else. Since Jabotinsky, the right’s strength has mainly been in talk) but does nothing. That is another reason why the important axis is the axis I described, and the diplomatic axis is almost irrelevant.
Could it be that Mansour Abbas’s willingness to consider cooperation with the right is also connected to the fact that the left sees Mahmoud Abbas (known as “Abu Mazen”) as its natural ally, being perceived in their eyes as more “moderate” than the Islamic elements? A strong right in Israel means weakening the secular factor in the Palestinian Authority and strengthening the Islamic forces,
In short: Mansour Abbas vs. Mahmoud Abbas 🙂
With blessings, Shams Razal, Qubbat al-Najma
Okay, now it is clear. I agree with you regarding the first paragraph.
Regarding governance – nowadays that is true, and Ben Gvir’s fantasies and those of the true right will not be realized as long as Netanyahu is in power, but again – the problem is Netanyahu/Likud and not the right. And I do not see Yesh Atid, Labor, and Meretz making an effort on this matter. It seems they are making an effort to hide and downplay (in the media) the problems I wrote about. By the left’s governance you may mean Olmert (the Second Lebanon War, the bombing of the reactor in Syria, Cast Lead…), but it seems to me that he is a somewhat different left from the left we know.
With God’s help, 1st of Rosh Chodesh Iyar 5781
It seems to me that there is a way to sustain a broad right-wing government that both Smotrich and Sa’ar would join, while Netanyahu would also preserve his political standing as chairman of the Likud.
Netanyahu would continue to be chairman of the Likud, while alongside him a “political leadership” would operate that would determine Likud’s policy in leading the government, and its members would be the senior figures of the Likud.
The chairman and the “political leadership of the Likud” would choose a “deputy chairman” who would form a temporary government (until Netanyahu’s full acquittal, with God’s help) headed by the Likud, while the “deputy chairman of the Likud and temporary prime minister” would undertake to obey the decisions of the political leadership headed by Netanyahu, and vacate his place for the chairman when Netanyahu is acquitted in court.
This situation would ostensibly allow Gideon Sa’ar and company to join a government headed by the Likud, since there would not be a prime minister on trial, but would leave the political leadership of the Likud in Netanyahu’s hands.
With blessings, Yaron Fish"l Ordner
In my humble opinion, also from the standpoint of the trial against him, it is desirable that Netanyahu be more occupied with the evidentiary material and study it well so that he can add significant information for his lawyers, and so that when he gives testimony he will master the material and present a clear and consistent position that will impress the judges. In the end, even if a person is sure of his innocence, he must overcome a body of opposing testimony, and the more focused he is on the matter – the more effective his defense will be.
The rabbi is mistaken. The real axis here is not conservatism versus liberalism but conservatism versus progressivism (which is even more fanatical than conservatism). And since the progressives are enemies of the Jewish nation (in fact enemies of any nation whatsoever insofar as it is a nation; they want to erase the very concept of nationhood) and want to erase the name of Israel (a state of all its citizens, which the rabbi too wants in the depths of his heart, though his mouth does not reveal it), and in this they are enemies of Israel in spirit – not only because they want to secularize the people of Israel but because they want to deny it its national cohesion – its nationhood (“so that the name of Israel be remembered no more”) – therefore these axes ultimately really do represent those who are for the people of Israel versus those who are against it. And the proof is that Smotrich is ultimately unwilling to sit with Abbas.
Liberalism as such is fine (I am in principle somewhat liberal), but as it seems the progressive parties (Labor and Meretz) are the ones leading the left in Israel. It seems that at the legislative level Lapid and Gantz too are drawn after them. And now Sa’ar as well (whose daughter is dating an Arab). They have a reflex to do everything opposite of what the conservative right believes in. And the opposite of conservatism is progressivism. Just as the opposite of religiosity is not secularity but anti-religiosity (which is a religion in itself). In fact, just as the rabbi wrote in his book that modernism contained within itself the seeds of postmodernism and the latter grew out of the former and is its natural continuation, so too progressivism grew out of liberalism and the latter grew out of the former and is its natural continuation.
So perhaps Likud voters are right that the left are traitors. Or at least at this pace of madness at some point they will be (see the case of Mordechai Vanunu). The rabbi too is showing such signs here on the site, and they are developing over time. Let the rabbi take his ways to heart.
Whenever I hear Benjamin Netanyahu promise, or perhaps threaten, that he will establish a “full-right” government, I am reminded of Menachem Begin, who disliked the term “right.” He never used it to define himself or his party in its various incarnations: Herut, Gahal, Likud.
For Begin this was not a semantic matter; he refused to call himself “right” not only because he thought the seating arrangement set for the French National Assembly did not bind him, but for two deeper reasons, embodied precisely in the phrase he chose to use instead: national-liberal.
Begin, the first leader of the Likud, believed, rightly, that there is no connection whatsoever between the idea of Greater Israel (“the wholeness of the homeland,” in his terms) and a deep Jewish national consciousness, on the one hand, and specifically a right-wing ideology, on the other. “Right” is a term lacking any Jewish, Zionist, or Land-of-Israel context. But the second reason was no less important in his eyes: Begin and his movement were no less liberal than national. What have we, he would say, to do with a term that historically was intended to describe parties of the moneyed classes, whereas we are a party of the ordinary people of Israel, of the simple Jew. “In the beginning God created the individual,” he would quote Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Individual freedom and human liberty were sacred in his eyes. I am convinced that he would have thanked Viktor Orbán and Jair Bolsonaro for their support of Israel, but would in no way have seen himself as their ideological partner.
Rivers of ink have been spilled over the breach of balance between the “Jewish” and the “democratic” in the character of the State of Israel. The time has come to discuss also the relation between the national and the liberal in the ruling camp. Here we are not dealing merely with a breach of balance, but with the total erasure of the liberal component, alongside the radicalization of the national component.
A few days ago, a reporter from the hardal weekly Besheva flung at me that I — former chairman of the Yesha Council — place “small politics before great ideology.” That is not true. I once thought that a shared belief in the idea of the wholeness of the land was enough to nullify other disagreements, and that it enabled Bezalel Smotrich and me to belong to the same camp. No longer. Perhaps this is דווקא Benjamin Netanyahu’s success in pushing away the danger of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. He deserves credit for that. But in order to create the Israel I wish to see at the present moment, with the current order of priorities — extreme conservatism is an obstacle, not a partner.
Netanyahu’s dream government, a full-right government, would be bad for Israel not only because of the identity of the person expected to head it, a man blessed with talents whose damage today outweighs his benefit. It must not arise also because of the ideological line that would guide it. Israel currently needs a liberal government, one that will institute civil marriage, including between people of the same sex. A government that will respect the liberal streams in Judaism and allow egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall, extend a hand to our brothers across the sea, and understand that the evangelicals are not a substitute for Diaspora Jews.
Thirty-two years ago, my wife and I left the comfortable life in Tel Aviv and settled in Samaria for ideological reasons. For that reason, Samaria will, God willing, be our home forever. I led the Yesha Council for six years, during which the Jewish population in the area grew by dozens of percent, and of that I am proud. A visit to the Cave of the Patriarchs moves me to tears. Under different diplomatic circumstances, my priorities would be different. Perhaps they yet will be again. Today, the ability of every couple to marry officially in Israel is more important to me than evacuating Khan al-Ahmar. That is what I am: Jewish, Zionist, national, liberal.
And in short:
49 MKs of the left and the Arabs, from the parties of Yair Lapid, Merav Michaeli, Tamar Zandberg, Benny Gantz, the Joint List, and Ra’am, together with 13 representatives of Yamina and Sa’ar – will preserve the “wholeness of the homeland,” the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria, and the Jewish character of the State of Israel 🙂
With blessings, Zisl Leivish Zaltzman-Corinaldi
Dani Dayan is confused and thinks the left is liberal like him. But in truth the core of the left, and even Yair Lapid and Gantz, are basically no longer liberals but rather progressives (see the conversion-therapy law, and that is only the opening shot. In the U.S. the capital-gains tax has already risen to 40%! It is true that this is only for high earners, but it is the first swallow on the way to a tyrannical regime the world has never known). Progressivism is anti-religious and anti-conservative and not liberal at all. It is a much greater threat to liberalism than conservatism (certainly the kind in our country). Dani Dayan has much more in common with the hardalim than with Meretz and Labor (who are even anti-national) on this issue. The man is stuck in the past and does not understand the world in which he lives. Rabbi Michi will yet cry a great deal when these lunatics get their hands on the steering wheel of government (and he will also have nowhere to flee to, because they are taking over all the Western countries)
You can see a long and detailed article on the relation between liberalism and progressivism here:
https://iyun.org.il/article/perils-of-liberalism/classic-liberalism-and-progressivism/
A more corrected response:
Dani Dayan is confused and thinks the left is liberal like him. But in truth the core of the left, and even Yair Lapid and Gantz, are basically no longer liberals but are on the way to becoming progressives (see the conversion-therapy law. And that is only the opening shot. In the U.S. the capital-gains tax has already risen to 40%! It is true that this is only for high earners, but it is the first swallow on the way to a tyrannical regime the world has never known). Progressivism is anti-religious and anti-conservative and not liberal at all. It is a much greater threat to liberalism than conservatism (certainly the kind in our country). Dani Dayan has much more in common with the hardalim than with Meretz and Labor (who are even anti-national) on this issue. The man is stuck in the past and does not understand the world in which he lives. Rabbi Michi will yet cry a great deal if these lunatics get their hands on the steering wheel of government (and he will also have nowhere to flee to, because they are taking over all the Western countries)
You can see a long and detailed article on the relation between liberalism and progressivism here:
https://iyun.org.il/article/perils-of-liberalism/classic-liberalism-and-progressivism/
Sorry, I meant this article (on the relation between liberalism and progressivism):
As usual, your honor writes in an interesting and original way.
Still, I did not understand: in your opinion, are all the excluded people of various kinds (development towns, etc.) against gays and exclusionary toward women?
Are they excluded only on these issues?
And one more thing: do you not think that among Netanyahu’s voters there are people who are not excluded, but rather educated people who simply think he conducts himself well and is far more talented than his alternatives?
Some time has already passed since the column was written, and I do not know exactly what your remarks refer to.
No generalization is completely correct. Generalizations are judged through large numbers and not through total precision. Are all the excluded against gays and exclusionary toward women? Of course not!
Obviously among his voters there are people who are not excluded and are educated. What kind of question is that?!
In addition to the ideological “change of axes,” the electoral threshold should be lowered or abolished, and then the purists will be able to say: X is not one of us; despite the outward resemblance, he is in a different party.
P.S. “Noam” is a clear example of a movement that arose as a reaction to a progressive drift in public discourse. Suppose that right now the average religious person does not care about his secular brothers who eat creeping things. If suddenly eating creeping things were to become an agenda and be adopted by government ministries, including a “workshop on getting to know creeping things and their nutritional value” in the state religious school system, a movement would arise that would fight this loudly.