I’m a great fan of Tamar Eisenman’s artistry, and of Asaf Avidan’s surreality, but what can I tell you – I’m an old-school Zionist. I’m big on our developing and Israeli-Jewish culture in Hebrew. You don’t need to – even I call me old-fashioned. I kind of think that if we can’t even create our own renewal of Jewish culture here in the Holy Land, then really what are we doing here?

But just now a great song came out by an Israeli woman who writes and performs in English. This one made it past my usual barriers. It’s one of those rare Israeli songs that while escaping the particularity of Hebrew, doesn’t feel the need to escape Israel and her issues.

The chorus is a powerful mix of rocked-up folk with a Cranberries-crack, and evokes the powerful image of the Carmel Forest up in smoke:

My country’s burning
Smoke is rising
You can see it rise from miles away
Driving by the flames
I pray
For rain 
I pray for sanctuary

The singer songwriter comes from my neck of the woods, and we could indeed see the smoke rising from miles away. It was an awful sight.

Along with the tears shed for the destruction and the deaths of so many brave people, there was a lingering frustration following the Carmel fire. An excruciating video went around, showing Labor Party leader Shelly Yachimovitch in the Knesset warning in 2009 that in pushing Israel’s firefighters towards privatization by drying up their public funding, the Finance Ministry was almost asking for a disaster to occur. It occurred.

It wasn’t until listening to the song by Ella Vs Mountain that I saw the connection between the Carmel Fire and the Israel’s summer protests for Social Justice. If ever we had required non-partisan confirmation that the State was not doing its job properly, the devastation of such a a beloved part of the country mostly due to poor preparation and chronic underfunding gave it to us. Maybe this was the fire that Ella recognizes burning under the protest movement.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But the video clip of the song does more than talk Israel. It cuts together images of popular protests throughout the world, so that the fire falls back into symbolism and the protests that gripped Israel become part of a global wave. Though the youtube cuts mostly show images from Israel (there are even a few rioting Haredim in there) they are also taken from the US, Europe, China, and throughout the Middle East. On the youtube page they even give links for all the clips they used.

The message of the video is clear: the local is global. Israelis in the streets were marching with the world, as part of the world, in order to address an issue for the world. It’s a bold – and mostly true – statement.

It’s a no-brainer to suggest that the general aims (and some methods) of the Occupy movement share a great deal with the Social Justice tent encampments of Israel, although I reckon Occupy could learn something from the Israelis about inclusivity. One can also see how the call for a more representative application of state power shares much with the protests in the Arab world. Though in Israel the protests were met with far less violence (and far less success?).

The video led me to think about what is going on in Tunisia, pretty much the only place in the Arab world where protesters were not beaten or shot at. The New York Times now points to a more complex issue that the Tunisians are dealing with: The tensions between religion and democracy.  

Ring a bell?

A TV director chose to air a film that upset religious Muslims, and he’s since been beaten up and taken to court for libeling religion and possibly harming “public order or good morals”.

“Certain Islamist factions want to turn identity into their Trojan horse,” Mr. Messaoudi said. “They use the pretext of protecting their identity as a way to crush what we have achieved as a Tunisian society. They want to crush the pillars of civil society.”

In describing a Tunisian issue, he uses almost exactly the kind of words one hears in Israel today with regards the fundamental religious encroachment on public life.

The article refers to Turkey by way of comparison, but so much of what it describes could as easily be applied to Israel. Check this out:

secular elites long considered themselves a majority and were treated as such by the state. In both, those elites now recognize themselves as minorities and are often mobilized more by the threat than the reality of religious intolerance.

Hello?

Not only that, but it seems that in Tunisia at least, the founding democratic government is keen to avoid making any bold decisions. Compromises will be made, rulings will be postponed, just as they have been in Israel for decades.

The spokesperson from the ruling party’s political bureau admitted that

the line between freedom of expression and religious sensitivity would not be drawn soon. “The struggle is philosophical,” he said, “and it will go on and on and on.”

And in a strange way I’m left hopeful. In a bizarrely Zionist way I’m proud that here in Israel we’re no longer dealing with the esoteric.

The tensions between religion and state are now no longer just a Jewish meshuggas – they’re international (dare we say “universal”) issues that we’re trying to tackle.

Likewise the Social Justice protests were nothing if not local – after all, no one bailed out failing banks in Israel. But we shared a shout, we called a call in common with the rest of the world.

In that way I guess it makes sense for Ella to sing her song of protest in English and not in Hebrew. Sometimes Israel isn’t a separate case – it’s part of the whole.

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As the UK’s Jewish Chronicle uncovers incident after incident of Jewish individuals and organisations ‘fraternizing with the enemy’, the mutterings in opposition to its stance grow louder and louder. You can almost see the two sides drawing their swords, shaping up for battle, determined to prove at all costs the objective truth of their position.

I don’t think this is going to end well.

Perhaps, fundamentally, the issue is about the extent to which we view the world with suspicion or trust.

It is undoubtedly possible to regard the organisation London Citizens with suspicion – there are, apparently, individuals involved who have said appalling things about Israel, and who have been associated with others who have said and advocated even worse.

It is equally, if not even more possible to view the East London Mosque with suspicion – preachers expressing sentiments that are abhorrent to many within the Jewish community are clearly given a platform there.

However, London Citizens is not defined by extremist Islamists. Indeed, the vast majority of people who are involved have never spoken about Israel or Jews, and are more than happy to engage in dialogue with members of our community both for its own sake and for the benefit of the people of London. They are open to learning about Judaism and Jewish life, and interested to hear about our range of opinions about Israel. There is no reason to be suspicious of them, and every reason to trust.

The East London Mosque is a more complex case, but even there, it is simply wrong to stereotype. We should be aware, for example, that construction work taking place at the mosque was stopped on Rosh Hashanaand Yom Kippur so as not to disturb Jewish worshippers at the Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue, which backs onto it. Indeed, there are both members and trustees of the mosque who are genuinely open to engagement with Jews, and welcome the opportunity to do so; they are willing to listen to Jewish perspectives, and appreciate the chance to discuss Israel. In the course of discussion, we may not always agree, but we may come closer to an appreciation and understanding of one another’s narratives, and, in this way, add an important human dimension to what is so often a fractious and damaging political debate.

On the spectrum of suspicion and trust, the Jewish Chronicle seems to sit closest to the suspicion end. They are not wrong to choose to sit there; certainly there is much about which to be suspicious, and there are genuine dangers lurking for Jews which we would be naive and foolish to ignore. However, the questions are: to what extent should we allow that suspicion to cloud all of our interactions with others? To what extent should we feel compelled to do our due diligence on everyone and anyone, just in case they may have associated with an unsavoury individual at some point in the past? To what extent should we assume the worst about people until they prove to us the opposite? In short, how suspicious do we really need to be?

One reading of our recent past would argue we should be highly suspicious. It would point to the Shoah, Arab states’ history of seeking to delegitimize and destroy Israel, two Palestinian intifadas, 9/11, 7/7 and Iran’s determined efforts to secure nuclear weapons, and conclude that we have no choice but to be. However, an alternative reading of our recent past would highlight the facts that we live at a time in which an All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism exists and has published a ground-breaking and highly influential report on the issue, a high profile Holocaust denial trial has been fought and won, Holocaust Memorial Day has become part of the UK’s annual calendar, learning about the Holocaust has become an established part of the national curriculum, and a controversial decision to provide a platform for the leader of the BNP on the popular TV programme Question Time, resulted in him being ridiculed and humiliated.

Viewed from a historical perspective, ours is almost certainly the most accepted and socially-integrated generation in all of Jewish history.

It is possible, indeed it is entirely legitimate, to read our contemporary circumstances in this way, and to situate ourselves on the ‘trust’ side of the spectrum. That is the side that Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg naturally leans towards – perhaps even feels compelled to lean towards – and I love him for it. It is what allows him to continually invite people into his home, to constantly reach out to those in need both within and beyond his community, and to actively seek out opportunities to engage across political and religious divides.

It is what drove him to write to the Chairman of an Orthodox synagogue in his neighbourhood at a time of particular difficulty and sadness within that community, simply to say he was thinking of them. It is what spurred him on during his recent fundraising walk from Frankfurt to London (yes – you read that right – he walked), when he stopped off numerous times on his journey to meet with Christian leaders to discuss with them, in impeccable German, how to heal the centuries-old rifts in Christian-Jewish and German-Jewish relations.

It’s why he recently wrote to Stephen Lawrence‘s parents, Doreen and Neville, to let them know that there are people within the Jewish community who feel their pain, and support and respect the tremendous courage and dignity they have shown in their pursuit of justice. And it’s what motivates him to be part of London Citizens. It provides a framework for him to genuinely engage with others many of us rarely bother to meet – people from different socio-economic backgrounds, people from different ethnic backgrounds, and yes, even the odd Moslem or two.

In each and every one of these instances, there was a possibility that his good intentions may have been spurned or used, and no doubt they have been on several occasions, but how much poorer would our community, indeed our world be, without his profound belief in the good of humankind? If that makes him a “useful idiot,” I aspire to such useful idiocy.

Trust and suspicion are both human imperatives; they are not either/ors. Ultimately, a balance appropriate to the circumstances needs to be struck between them. The wholly suspicious individual values safety above everything, and therefore never engages with anyone outside her closest circle for fear of what may happen, and remains eternally isolated. In her apprehension, she sees only the dangers of caricatures and stereotypes, and loses the opportunity to expand her horizons beyond her warm, all-embracing and protected shell.

In contrast, the wholly trustful individual values relationship above everything, and pursues those blindly despite the inherent risks, engaging with everyone and anyone in an on-going and possibly naive pursuit of redemption. In his openness, he sees just human beings, and seeks to build bridges, even when those with whom he is trying to engage are simultaneously blowing those bridges up.

It is the rare individual who sits at the extremities of the spectrum, and none of the characters writing, or being written about in the Jewish Chronicle situate themselves there; they, and most of us, are more than aware of the foolishness of doing so.

But each of us must find our place on that truth/suspicion spectrum; each of us must determine how we are to balance these two imperatives of human existence. And if we find ourselves leaning in one direction or the other, we should listen carefully to the voices on the other side.

As my teacher and friend Yonatan Ariel, Executive Director of Makom, said recently: “You will rob people of the richness of the educational grappling if you don’t bring a range of views to bear. There are idiots on the other side that disagree with you, but I promise you there are also smart people. And I promise you too there are idiots on your side, whatever your side is.”

As for me, fundamentally I choose to situate myself alongside the trusting and inspiring presence of Rabbi Wittenberg, whilst ensuring too that I read the editorial line of the Jewish Chronicle from time-to-time. I am no longer young enough to know whether that is the ‘right’ thing to do. But I don’t want to live in a world of suspicion, nor do I feel it is necessary to do so.

Whilst I fully acknowledge the importance of protecting the interests and security of the community, I don’t want my Judaism to be constantly on the defensive. It is possible to play the game by putting everyone behind the ball in defence, but it offers no guarantees and it severely hampers our chances of scoring any goals. And I want a goal-oriented Judaism that is committed to affecting change for the better, determined in its efforts to build a better world, dedicated in its pursuit of justice not just for Jews, but for all humanity. That, I’m afraid, involves taking some risks.

Perhaps the most important question facing the Jewish People today is whether or not we are courageous enough to do so?

Faith

An overwhelming 80% of Israeli Jews believe that God exists (or is that “exits”?), and 67% believe that Jews are the Chosen People. Some more secular anti-religious commentators (who make up only 3% of the population, apparently) have found this worrying, though the survey did not explore people’s interpretations of what being a Chosen People may mean. 

Democracy and Judaism

Most Jews in Israel 73% believe that Judaism and Democracy are not mutually exclusive, while an overwhelming 85% believe that Haredim should be drafted into the army. Coming back in the other direction, 34% fear that Jews who do not observe orthodox religious precepts “endanger the entire Jewish People”.

With regards Israeli Jews’ relationship to the Jewish world, we would point out a few interesting details.

Any heterogeneous Jewish community around the world would be over the moon to find that 90% of the community see Seder Night as important, 60% make kiddush on a Friday night, and even 20% study the night away on Shavuot. Who says that diaspora Jews have nothing in common with Israeli Jews?

Israel-Diaspora Relations

Auguring less happiness in the direction of Israel-Diaspora relations would be the resonant number 48 – the minority percentage of people who accept non-orthodox conversions.

• Law enforcement?
• A clash between separationists and integrationists?
• Generations of poor policy towards Haredim, 
• The place of women in Judaism,
• Or just common decency?

Some might suggest that when a girl is spat on by an adult, there is nothing more at stake than a individual behaving disgracefully. Others would argue that until the spitter, his supporters, and his violent colleagues, are put behind bars, this is not an issue of common decency, but a question of poor policing and inadequate sentencing. Yet more would point to the ongoing failure of a succession of Israeli governments to come to terms with the cumulative effect of state-supported Haredi separatism.

Women singing in the army

would seem to have nothing to do with Haredim, since the 1,200 Haredim serving in the army do not attend these ceremonies anyway, and rarely see a woman throughout their service. The soldiers who walked out, and the rabbis who supported them, would seem to be raising non-Haredi-connected questions: 

• As another group of women recently graduated from the Israel Air Force pilots’ course, what is the place of women in the army?
• Where are the implications of orthodox and ultra-orthodox rabbis’ changing attitudes to and growing influence in the IDF?

The gender-segregated buses charge us to ask

• What are the moral implications of women being sent to the back of the bus?
• What about freedom of choice? (For Haredi men, as well as women.)
• What can be done about the sexualization of the public sphere? (Haredim pull one way, while the secular commercial world pulls just as brazenly in the other.)
• What should be the rules governing public services (private bus firms offering the same services were not criticized)?

What are the questions that would seem to apply “across the board”?

• What price feminism in Israel? 
  A Western, modern understanding of a woman’s place in the world is challenging a very different approach.
• What price multi-culturalism in Israel?
  In supporting the autonomy of diverse sectors (Haredim, Arabs, Kibbutzim, etc) is Israel is undermining its ability to maintain a coherent society?
• What is the nature of the public sphere, and who controls it?
• What price “Jewish Peoplehood”? 
  Is there a way for us to accept our antagonists as part of the same people? What values of our own might need be sacrificed in search of mutual responsibility?
• What will Israel look like in the future? 
  With a rapidly-growing Haredi population what will this demographic reality do to our understandings of Zionism and the Jewish State?
• Do we need pragmatism or principles? 
  Behind the scenes, a quiet revolution is taking place. Thousands of Haredim are entering the work place, colleges for Haredim are sprouting up, and an openness to accommodation is spreading. Yet each time a principled protest against the status quo picks up steam, progress is stymied for another period.

In the Jewish community, here and in Israel, religiosity is (tragically, incorrectly) expressed by the treatment of women.

The more religious a community is, the more silent and invisible its women are in the public sphere; the less religious a community is, the more access its women have toward public ritual, leadership, and visibility. Witness our own confusion here in the US: “Traditional” communities are places where women do not count in a minyan; “liberal” communities are places where they do.

In my mind, the most religious, most traditional communities are places where the entire population is obligated: obligated to the public performance of ritual, obligated to joining the communal conversation about issues of vital importance, and obligated to the daily, unending work of raising children and creating homes that reflect deep observance of and commitment to Jewish life and law.

Rabbi Joanna Samuels is the Director of Strategic Initiatives for AWP – Advancing Women Professionals and The Jewish Community

• Why are we non-Ultra-Orthodox so unwilling  to draw red lines in the sand?

The Haredi world in Israel( unlike in the Diaspora) is exploiting the rest of the country’s feebleness.  We allow vast numbers of them not to work and not to serve in the army and not to educate their children in line with the rest of the citizens. For the sake of a few mandates we shut our eyes, write the checks and send our kids to serve. 

I applaud the Haredim who want to change this situation and so the 2nd question must be :

• What more can we (responsible Haredim and non-Haredim) do more to help the process advance speedily?

The writer is Executive Director of Melitz.

The same problems the West has dealing with radical others are reflected in the inability of the current Israeli political system to find modes of co-existence with elements inside Israel that feel excluded from the ethos of the social contract as it currently stands.

Thankfully, this is an internal conflict that rarely turns openly violent. Perhaps we have the consolidating impact of our enemies on the outside to thank for that. But the challenge itself is fundamental and it expresses itself in the ongoing discourse about what is a legitimate concern to bring to the public sphere.

The state of Israel today is a fascinating case study of a society that is in radical conflict over the very fundamentals of the social contract. Multiple voices and factions inside Israel are complaining that, as it stands, the social contract leaves them out.

In this context it is clear why Israel is engaged in an internal struggle over such fundamentals as; the legitimacy of the court system, the authority of the Knesset, the entitlement of the government to legislate in favor of the concerns of special interest groups, the right of the government to determine economic policy that serves the primary interests of the state itself (which in and of itself calls into question the notion that the interests of the state are equivalent to the interests of the citizens), the status quo between religious and secular in the army, the boundaries of what are considered legitimate public expressions of religious freedom in the streets, the boundaries of what might be considered “universal” human rights, the status of Non-Jewish citizens, the independence of the press and more.

Notice how many of these complaints go to the very core of the social contract.

The writer is the co-founder of Siach Shalom, and writer of A Prophetic Peace.

We continually appease sectors of our overly partisan population by lighting small fires which we naively believe will harmlessly smolder on a low flame. We then forget about these fires and only wake up to them when they are raging, out of control, and then we raise our eyes to the skies and ask “how could this happen?”

Our most problematic issues of social engineering are not only due to our negligence, they are often products of our own creation.

We are shocked at the violent, lawless behavior of (a small minority) of religious settlers – having endorsed, even romanticized, the illegal methods their parents used in founding their settlements. We are frustrated at the inability of our Russian immigrants to integrate into “Israeli” society, having passed unprecedented legislation that creates the ability for Russian enclaves to remain isolated. We are angered by our Arabs citizens distaste for the Jewish State, having systematically disenfranchised them from an Israeli identity by choosing ethno-religious symbols instead of values, as the cornerstone of our national identity.

And here we are with a ballooning Haredi population, a growing minority of extremist radicals and a powerful majority for who Democracy, Zionism and Human Rights take second place, at best, to their Rabbis’ interpretations of Torah law. Many in Beit Shemesh have seen the writing on the wall since the influx of extreme Hasidim to the town; but this is something we have been aware of for much longer than we are currently giving credit to.

There have been radical anti-Zionist Hasidim in Israel from the inception of Zionism, long before the State. Even the Haredi tactics that we see today of mass protest, violent rhetoric, religious aestheticism and coercion of broader society originate in the 1930s, with Rabbi Amram Blau and the infamous Netura Karta.

The radical Haredim are not a new phenomenon, neither are the democracy-ambivalent majority who have also been part of our political landscape from the beginning. If anything, the problem has been the lack of change since our early attempts at appeasing this population.

We succeeded in creating a sterile, climate-controlled environment, in which the Haredi community could grow, radicalize, gain political power and move further right in their religiosity. This we perpetuated, through sanctifying a counterproductive status quo, and ultimately using it for our own partisan political success. And now Dr. Frankenstein is fearful of his own creation. Yet unlike the fictional scientist, Israeli society seems unaware of its hand in the Haredi problem and its ability to slowly reverse the trend.

There are three main areas in which we have facilitated the Haredi reality, all of which can be reversed as quickly as they have been established and taken hold. That is to say, slowly.

1. Social Isolation

Israeli society (along with Diaspora Jewish society) is often quick to point an accusatory finger at Haredi non-participation in the Israeli Defense Force. However the Haredi community is not acting illegally and the legal provision of Torato Umanato (Torah study as an occupation) – the brainchild of Ben-Gurion -was an acceptable policy when it affected a few hundred young men a year, rather than the current tens of thousands.

Although this is the most visible case of social isolation, no less important is the tacit agreement by the Education Ministry not to regulate Haredi schools and allow them to jettison the secular requirements, this contributes to an isolation from Israeli values and ultimately the inability, in the rare case of there being a desire, to enter the modern workplace.

Lastly, there is a legal autonomy in many Haredi neighborhoods, which distances police, social workers and courts from the make-up of their communities.

2. Dominion of Religious Affairs

Secular Israel long ago handed the Haredim the keys to religious Judaism. Countless Hiloni (secular) Jews despair about the religious standards coerced upon them when marrying, yet being the majority in a democratic country, if they had a viable alternative it could be changed. The Haredi grip over the definition of Jewish religious practice in the State has been strengthened by Hiloni apathy. It has also led the Haredim to justify their worldview of being the true saviors of Judaism.

3. Political power

While other commentators have suggested that Israeli governments are coerced by Haredi political power, this is not in fact the case.

We have built a political dependency on coalitions with Haredi parties, and there has not been a break for almost 40 years. As the Haredi parties care little for the majority of the issues of Statehood and are generally absorbed with their own sector, and religious issues, governments led by Labor and Likud have found that they can coexist easily with the Haredim and turn a blind eye to the troublesome side-effects.

The State of Israel was created through social engineering on a massive scale. It was bold, brave and sometimes brutal.

Ben-Gurion, who was the central engineer, was known to speak in first person plural when presenting successes and first person singular when discussing failures. Israeli society needs to own the failings which have led to our current Haredi troubles. “We” are to blame as much as “they” are. And together with some of the more liberal elements in their community we need to embark on correcting the mistakes we have made.

The writer is Makom’s Community Shaliach and Israel Engager in Greater Washington