March 12, 2013 12:44 am
David Ben-Gurion, first Prime Minister of the State of Israel
As the latest round of coalition-building maneuvering plays out in
Israel – with Bibi Netanyahu, Naftali Bennett (the new false-messiah of
religious nationalists; the previous one being Ariel Sharon), and Yair
Lapid locked in that time-worn political dance we’ve watched so many
times in the past – it is critical to understand the history behind one
of the issues so fiercely debated in the current political situation:
the “universal” draft of yeshiva (rabbinical) students. It is this very
issue which has, until this point, prevented the formation of a
government. Bennett has declared that his Jewish Home party will not
join Netanyahu’s coalition unless a universal draft law is enacted. The
fight over yeshiva students and army service is at the core of much of
the tension between the secular/non-observant and religious/hareidi
communities in Israel. In fact, the roots of this tension extend back
well before the founding of the State of Israel in 1947.
A little bit of background information is in order here. Most people
have a profound misunderstanding regarding the nature of the
secular/political Zionist movement which was inspired by the
publication, in 1886, of Theodore Herzl’s manifesto
Der Judeenstaat
(The Jew’s State). The movement was about much more than creating a
homeland for Jewish people. Most of the leaders of political Zionism
were swept up in the
zeitgeist and were ardent socialists and
nationalists, two of the great ideological movements of those times.
Many were rabidly secular/anti-religionists who looked with contempt at
the “backward” and “anti-modern” Hareidi/Hassidic/Orthodox Jews. Their
contempt for the “medieval” Sephardic/Arab Jewish communities ran even
deeper. Ben-Gurion (the first Prime Minister of the State of Israel)
once referred to Moroccan Jews as “savages.”
The secular/political Zionist dream was to create – along with a
Jewish homeland – a completely new definition of the Jew and the Jewish
People; a Jewishness that unambiguously excluded the concept of a
covenantal people loyal to the Torah and the commandments. In other
words, the Judaism that had sustained the Nation of Israel for the
previous 3,400 years was to be discarded and replaced with a modernistic
amalgamation of nationalism, socialism, enlightened western culture,
and ethnic Jewish identity.
Naftali Bennett, head of the "Jewish Home" party
From the
World Zionist Organization website:
For some Zionists, especially the East European Jewish
intellectuals, Zionism was not only a national movement committed to the
establishment of a Jewish homeland. It also wished to create a modern,
secular Jewish identity. According to this formulation it was not
religion that was to provide the basis for Jewish identity but ethnicity
and nationalism. The Hebrew language, the land of Israel, Jewish
history, literature, customs, folklore and their interplay were to
provide a new more open-ended paradigm for Jewish identity.
Historian, Rabbi Ken Spiro, in his essay on
Modern Zionism elaborates:
The key factor which shaped their [secular Zionist thinkers]
worldview was a nationalism based not only on the notion of creating a
physical Jewish homeland, but also of creating a new kind of Jew to
build and maintain this homeland. Many of these early Zionist thinkers
felt that centuries of ghettoization and persecution had robbed the Jews
of their pride and strength. To build a homeland required a proud,
self-sufficient Jew: a Jew who could farm, defend himself, and build the
land.
The pious, poor, ghettoized Jew—who presented a pathetic image of
a man stooped-over and always at the mercy of his persecutors—had to be
done away with. To build a state required something all-together
different—a “Hebrew.” The early Zionists called themselves “Hebrews” and
not Jews, and deliberately changed their German or Russian or Yiddish
names to sound more Hebraic and nationalistic (for example, David Gruen
became David Ben-Gurion. Shimon Persky became Shimon Perez). It was a
deliberate attempt to create a totally new Jewish identity and rid
themselves of any aspect of the religious, Diaspora Jewish
identity…These early Zionist leaders knew of course that religion had
preserved Jewish identity in the ghettos and shtetls of Europe,
but in the modern Jewish state, they felt there would be no need for
it. Of course the Bible would be used as a source of Jewish history and
culture but there was no room for religion or ritual in the modern
Jewish state.
This obsession with creating a “new Jew” even trumped the basic
values of Jewish brotherhood, the imperative that all Jews are
responsible for one another, and that
nothing takes precedence over saving lives. David Ben-Gurion shockingly wrote the following in 1938, one month after
Kristellnacht:
“If I knew it was possible to save all [Jewish] children of
Germany by their transfer to England and only half of them by
transferring them to Eretz-Yisrael, I would choose the latter—-because
we are faced not only with the accounting of these [Jewish] children but
also with the historical accounting of the Jewish People.”
In a cloud of obliviousness born of arrogance secular Zionist leaders
were certain they would emerge triumphant in their plan to redefine the
entire direction and purpose of the Jewish people. Left-wing politician
and journalist
Urey Avnery wrote the following in 2002, capturing the attitude shared by many of the early Zionist ideologues:
People of my age can remember the situation. Ben-Gurion, like all
of us, believed that the Jewish religion was about to die out. Some old
people, who spoke Yiddish, were still praying in the synagogues, but
with time they would disappear. We, the young new Israelis, were
secular, modern, free from these old superstitions. Not in his darkest
nightmares could Ben-Gurion have imagined a time when religious pupils,
some of whom are not taught in their schools even the most basic modern
skills, would amount to nearly half the Israeli Jewish school
population.
The number of religious shirkers now deprives the army of several divisions. [Orthodox yeshiva students are not required to serve in the army, one of several concessions Ben Gurion granted Orthodox leaders in return for their political support.] Step
by step, the religious community is taking over the state. The
religious settlers, the religious anti-Arab pogromists, their allies and
ultra-right collaborators are gaining new footholds by the day. Just
now the army has announced that 40% of candidates for junior officers’
courses are wearing kippahs. In 1948, when our army came into being, I
did not see a single kippah-wearing soldier, not to mention an officer.
Dr. Chaim Weizman, first President of the State of Israel
(As an aside, note the schizoid attitude – shared by many
left-wingers in Israel – expressed by Avnery. First he complains about
the number of “religious shirkers” who do not serve in the Army. He then
goes on to express his shock and disgust that
40% of candidates for officer’s courses in the Army are kippah-wearing religious Jews! Like the joke about the elderly woman who complained that not only did the food at her hotel taste terrible….but they served
such small portions!
Avnery’s hatred of religious Jews creates such cognitive dissonance
that it’s impossible for him to perceive the absurdity of his position.)
The stage was now set for the inevitable clash with the great Torah
sages and the Orthodox community who certainly had no intention of
accepting David Ben-Gurion’s “new Jew.” Even before the turn of the
century, the illustrious Talmudic scholar,
Rabbi Tzadok HaCohen Rabinowitz
(1823-1900), wrote the following: “It may be assumed that if the
Zionists gain domination they will seek to remove from the hearts of
Israel, belief in God and in the truth of the Torah…they have thrown off
their garments of assimilation and put on a cloak of zeal so that they
appear zealous on the behalf of Judaism. They are in fact digging a hole
beneath our faith and seeking to lead Israel from beneath the wings of
the Divine Presence.”
By 1918, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, President of the World Zionist
Organization (WZO) and later to become the first President of the State
of Israel, was already embroiled in bitter personal debates with
Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, Chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazic Hareidi community of Jerusalem, which had roots going back to the late 18
th
century. The debates were over the future of Jewish education in the
Holy Land. Weizmann tried to convince Rabbi Sonnenfeld that the Hareidi
schools must change their curriculums to be more “modern” and that if
they would agree, WZO would provide much needed funding to the
impoverished Hareidi community. Rabbi Sonnenfeld was outraged that a man
who cared nothing for the Torah and traditions of Judaism would try to
dictate to his entire community how they should educate their children.
It goes without saying that he flat out refused both to make any changes
in the educational system and to accept any funding from WZO.
Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld (1848-1932), Chief Rabbi of the Hareidi community in Jerusalem
The majority of the world’s leading Torah Sages, vehemently and
indignantly denied WZO’s claim that it represented the entire Jewish
people. Rabbi Sonnenfeld, in the name of
Agudas Yisroel (a European based organization representing Orthodox Jews) and the
Eida Chareidis
(the official name of the Hareidi establishment in Jerusalem) was
determined to conduct his own negotiations with both the British rulers
of Palestine and with the surrounding Arab leaders, particularly in
Trans-Jordan. They were not interested in WZO’s dream of an independent
Jewish state, not only because of its secular/anti-religious nature, but
because they rightly feared the inevitable bloodshed that would occur
in a conflict with the Arabs if the drive for statehood continued. They
wanted to have a harmonious relationship with the Arabs, were fully
prepared to accept British rule, and only wanted autonomy so that they
could continue living as a Torah-based community. As it turns out, the
Hareidim were the original “Peace Now” movement. (Ironically, in modern
Israel, nowhere is the hatred of the Hareidi community stronger than in
the leftist “peace camp.”)
Dr. Jacob Israel de Haan,
a secular Dutch journalist and intellectual who had become increasingly
religious while forming a close relationship with Rabbi Sonnenfeld,
represented the Eida Chareidis in negotiations with the Arabs and
British. His prominence, intellectual acuity, and skill as a negotiator
represented a real threat to WZO’s self-appointed position as the
exclusive representative of the Jewish community in dealings with the
British or Arabs. De Haan was labeled a traitor by the Zionist
establishment. On June 30, 1924, in a shocking display of arrogance,
brutality, and abandonment of Jewish values, the Haganah (para-military
wing of WZO), under the leadership of Yitzchak Ben-Zvi (a future
President of the State of Israel), assassinated De Haan as he emerged
from the synagogue of the Shaarei Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem. It was
this same sense of arrogance and self-aggrandizement that Ben-Gurion
used in June, 1948, to justify his ordering the murders of 16 members of
the Irgun, a group representing his political rivals.
The murder of De Haan achieved its goal inasmuch as it effectively
stopped the Orthodox community from further progress in their own
negotiations. However, the Zionist leadership faced a much bigger
problem. A large percentage of the new immigrants were from Arab
countries. They had religious traditions stretching back hundreds or
even thousands of years in their respective communities and had no
interest in the concept of a “new Jew.” These immigrants represented a
serious political threat to the Ashkenazi (European Jews) dominated
Socialist Labor party. It was imperative that their children be
prevented from continuing with their traditional Jewish education and to
be indoctrinated with modern Zionistic ideology.
Jacob Israel de Haan, assassinated by the Hagganah in 1924
Although Israeli law mandated that parents could choose a religious
or secular stream of education, it was decided by the Ministry of
Education not to extend this option to the immigrant camps. The only
education available was the secular curriculum. In order to ensure
implementation of this indoctrination process a Department for Imparting
Culture and Absorption for Immigrants was formed, headed by Nachum
Levin. In his book,
The Melting Pot in Israel: The Commission of
Inquiry Concerning the Education of Immigrant Children During the Early
Years of the State (Suny Press, 2002), Zvi Zameret writes:
“The instructions to the teachers in the immigrant camps reflect
the overall worldview that the Department of Culture wished to instill
in the children. The pedagogical objective was to draw the immigrant
children closer to accepting the Zionist revolution and the image of the
“new man” that it wished to create.”
Many young boys had their
peyot (sidecurls) forcibly cut off
and everything was done to coerce them to violate the Sabbath and eat
non-kosher food. A prominent religious intellectual in Israel, Dr.
Yeshayahu Leibowitz complained of religious coercion in Kfar Lifta near
Jerusalem. He claimed that the local instructor explicitly threatened
the new immigrants that should they insist upon religious education,
they would be penalized in terms of provisions of food, clothing, and
jobs. In his testimony before the Frumkin Commission (established to
investigate the scandal) he said:
“I came into contact with the new immigrants in a number of
moshavim (new towns)…I found the local instructor used threats against
the new settlers…there is interference [in their religious observance
and education] and at times…brutal means of threats and coercion. We are
forced to put up a fight in each and every place.”
If there is any doubt as to the truth of these accusations, here are
the words of Nachum Levin himself, Director of the Department of Culture
and Absorption and the man responsible for the educational system in
the immigrant camps. He spoke these words in a closed session of the
Histadrut (Israel Labor Federation):
“All of the camps today are flooded with yeshiva students…they represent the powers of darkness.
They will not educate these children or youth to a life of pioneering
or to go to the Negev. The struggle here is a struggle for the character
of the immigrants…this is a battle not about religion, but for political influence over the immigrants and the future image of the State of Israel.” Enough said.
Yemenite immigrants on their way to the new State of Israel. Immigrants like these posed a political threat to Labor Zionism
It is against this backdrop that the conflict arose over mandatory
army service. Under no circumstances was the orthodox community prepared
to put their young sons – during the most impressionable years of their
lives (18-21 years of age) – in the hands of a government that looked
at their way of life with disdain, contempt, and outright hatred; a
government that was even prepared to murder other Jews to achieve their
goals.
David Ben-Gurion realized that any attempt to force the issue would
result, literally, in civil war. The government reluctantly amended the
draft law to exclude orthodox men who were learning full time in
Yeshivot (rabbinical seminaries). However, none of these men would be
permitted to work legally unless they did Army service. This act of
spiteful cruelty was a typical outgrowth of the unbridled arrogance of
Ben-Gurion and his ilk. The message to the Hareidi community was the
following:
If you don’t do it our way, we will strip you of your
basic human dignity; that is to say, the ability to work and support
oneself and one’s family. If you want to live your way of life you will
be forced to live on either government handouts or charity. In other words, the Hareidim effectively became 2
nd
class citizens in the new State of Israel. After forcing the Hareidi
community into this situation and forbidding them to work unless they
toed the secular-Zionist line, they then accused them of being
“parasites” because they didn’t work!
The “parasite” canard along with the accusation that the Hareidim
refuse to “share the burden” of serving in the army, has been used as a
stick with which to beat the Hareidi community since the founding of the
State of Israel. It has also been effectively used by secular
ideologues to demonize Hareidim among non-observant Israelis. Imagine
how different it would have been if instead of doing everything in his
power to marginalize the Hareidi community Ben-Gurion had held out his
hand in brotherly love and said the following:
“We are brothers, the sons of one man” (Gen. 42:13) All of us are
here because we are Jews. We all love the land of Israel and we all
agree that a Jew must serve the needs of the Jewish people. Our sons
will serve by joining the army, your sons will serve by keeping alive
our moral and spiritual legacy by studying Torah. After both complete
their years of service they are free to work and become productive
members of our society.
How different it could have been indeed.
Now, in 2013, Naftali Bennett – ostensibly an orthodox Jew – instead
of using his newfound political power to help heal these terrible wounds
in the Jewish people, has decided to pour salt on them instead. It is
obvious that something is horribly wrong when even the radically
left-wing Ha’aretz (!) in a
3/6/13 op-ed piece
points out that Bennett’s approach may destroy all the progress that
has been made until now in healing the religious/secular rift in Israeli
society.
My
son, Danny Averick, who was stationed at the Erez/Gaza Border Crossing
during his service in the Israeli Army. The girl gleefully posing with
him wearing his army beret is his little sister Malka, with her twin,
Tirtza, to the left. This picture was taken in Jerusalem, at the
engagement party of my oldest daughter, Sara Razel.
All of this is a shameful chapter in Jewish history which is unknown
to most Jews and rarely talked about by those who do know. It is time
for the Israeli government to confess its sins and accept the
orthodox/Hareidi community for what it is. What could be more absurd
than a group of people tripping over themselves while trying to make
peace with those who have been violently trying to destroy us for the
past 70 years, and yet are unable to reach out and make peace with their
own brothers?!
Let us all pray that soon we will truly enter an era that reflects the words of the Psalmist:
“How goodly and sweet it is when brothers sit in peace together.”
Rabbi Moshe Averick is an orthodox rabbi, a regular columnist for the Algemeiner Journal, and author of Nonsense of a High Order: The Confused and Illusory World of the Atheist. It is available on Amazon.com and Kindle. Rabbi Averick can be reached via his website.
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http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/03/12/the-true-source-of-religious-secular-tension-in-israel-the-arrogance-of-ben-gurion-and-now-naftali-bennett/
Thanks, Aryeh.