“The extremists are taking over” October 2, 2008

We Orthodox Jews aren’t a huge group of people.

Numbering only 9 percent of affiliated Jews, we are the smallest stream of Judaism in America population-wise. Of all groups who do not need to develop radical offshoots, we have to be up there.

But unfortunately, dispute and disunity have never been foreign to the Jewish Nation, despite their horrible outcomes.

The British Jewish Chronicle has an article this week entitled “The Extremists are Taking Over”, which details, among other things, the music ban and “modesty squads” which have been gaining notariety in the Jewish world as of late. The (himself apparently Orthodox, or at least “fundamentalist”) author decries these recent developments, alluding to them as a “form of tyranny”:

In Israel media attention has recently focused on the tyrannical leanings of rabbis Ephraim Luft and Yitzhak Meir Safranovitch. Rabbi Luft has established a “Committee for Jewish Music”. He contends that much of the music played at Orthodox functions or public events is not kosher. What exactly (you may ask) is music that is “not kosher?” Apparently, any music that is contemporary, and any that is “Western”. Any that uses “modern instruments” and any in which percussion (”the beat”) is emphasised at the expense of the melody.

Modern music, he adds, is “disrespectful”, and leads people - especially young people - astray, resulting in low moral standards and threatening the collapse of civilised society as we know it. No wonder, therefore, that his committee has compiled a black-list of treifah musicians, and that, no doubt inspired by him, Charedi activists were recently able to secure the sacking from an Israeli radio show of a well-known disc jockey, Menachem Toker - despite the fact that Toker is himself Charedi.

So now one of the only charedi DJ’s in Israel finds himself out of a job.

(As an aside, being “blacklisted” does not necessarily negatively impact sales. The “Rap in Yiddish” CD of B’nei Brak infamy sold thousands of copies after it was banned by name, and Lipa Shmeltzer packed Madison Square Garden after being banned by name. Being “banned” or “forbidden” does wonders for publicity in the Jewish world.)

And it doesn’t stop there. Apparently the story of “M”, beaten in Ma’alot Dafna by a modesty patrol, was not the limit to the horrors being inflicted for want of a quieter shoe, or a few square inches of fabric:

Under Rabbi S.’s patronage, “modesty” squads operating under the umbrella of his Va’ad…patrol the highways and byways of Jerusalem beating up women who, in their view or in the view of their husbands or families, dress or behave in an “immodest” way.

In one instance a husband contracted with a “modesty squad” (to which he paid around £1,000) to attack his ex-wife with a club. In another, a Charedi wife who had left her husband and his lifestyle was beaten up. How they could have touched her when they could not have known her menstrual state is beyond me, but what need have we of Yiddishkeit when morality as defined by these yobs is itself at stake?

In Meah Shearim one local “enforcer”, Yoel K., boasts that through his strong-arm tactics he assists people to become “moral”. If his spies report that a Charedi home has a computer, he makes sure the children are thrown out of school. Non-religious girls, he explained to one newspaper, “don’t dress properly. They make me sin.”

But of course it is not they who make him sin. It is his own emotional immaturity, and his conviction that the sort of prejudices he holds sit squarely within Jewish Orthodoxy.

When will this “conviction” — that prejudices “sit squarely” with Jewish Orthodoxy — be proven and shown to be the lie that it virtually always is? What would the source for this be, that someone is allowed to react out of prejudice like this? Ohavei Hashem, sin’u ra’ — those who love the L-rd, hate evil! — is written in Psalms. A hatred of evil, one would think, would drive one to try to improve the world — or at a minimum, would not drive one to beat women with clubs for £1,000. While one could argue that immodest dress, being a violation of halacha, would fall into the category of “evil” that must be “hated”, how do these actions — better yet, how do these organizations really think that beatings and terror make the world more of a dwelling place for G-d, more spiritual, more Divine? Did the blood emerging from M’s wounds after her assault “atone” for something?

And now, worldwide, we are talking about it, and fuming. In other words, our radical offshoots are detracting from our already fragile attempts at unity.

And of course, the gigantic question is, were we truly talking about zeal for the Word of G-d, why we don’t see radical groups advocating forcibly giving 1/3 of peoples’ assets to charity (the general maximum), or beating bosses who refuse to pay their workers (”on that day you shall give him his wage”), or seizing houses whose construction involved the destruction of fruit trees (bal tashchit)?

Why is it only women’s dress? Why music? Is it because of “the children” — who obviously can hear about a pedophile before hearing about a sheer stocking or exposed toe? Does a hiphop beat wreak more havoc on the soul than an abusive rabbi?

I love Judaism, I love halacha, and I love the Torah. I only wish that these actions were wholly based in any of the three.

May this year 5769 be a year of good news, of good occurrences and of the beginning of the realization of a beautiful future.