The religious-secular divide: How to calm the water, and how to stir them up – analysis

Suddenly, “religious war” is this country’s buzzword.

Not a war between Judaism and Islam, as one might expect when using this phrase in the context of the Middle East, but rather between Jew and Jew.

On Saturday night, United Torah Judaism MK Moshe Gafni said that the anti-government and judicial reform protests over the last nine months are nothing less than a religious war.

“You are not referring to judicial reform or anything of the sort. You are waging a religious war against us,” Gafni said. “What we saw on Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv is proof.”

Gafni referred to protesters who violently broke up Kol Nidre services held in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square because the organizers had put up an improvised mechitza separating the genders in part of the square. A couple of days later, in Jerusalem, secular activists tried to break up the screening of a movie for women and girls only in a public hall in Jerusalem’s Ir Ganim neighborhood.

Whether this is a full-fledged “religious war” or just the most recent permutation of religious-secular battles that have continued unabated since the State’s founding is a matter for debate.

Ways to deal with the tensions

Over the last two days, the country was provided with two good examples of possible ways to deal with the current tension.

The first came in directives circulated by Interior Minister Moshe Arbel (Shas) to regional and local authorities regarding the issue of gender-separated activities.

“Unfortunately, the citizens of Israel are exposed to violence daily from people who want to pull to the extreme on both sides and crumble the unifiers of Israeli society regarding separate cultural and religious events,” wrote Arbel. “Working according to the instructions of the attorney-general will allow every sector to receive municipal services legally, and the clarity will restore public order and decrease the tension and anger that have unfortunately characterized Israel recently.”

Former attorney-general Avichai Mandelblit drew up the instructions referenced after the Motty Steinmetz affair in Afula in 2019. Steinmetz, a hasidic singer, was slated to give a concert geared toward the haredi community. The district court ruled at first that the municipality may not hold a concert where men and women sit separately, but three days later it approved gender separation on condition that a third mixed-gender area was provided.

This decision was appealed to the High Court of Justice, which ruled that separate seating at publicly funded events at public venues is illegal. That decision, however, came even as the concert was already underway.

Mandelblit’s guidelines, drawn up after this saga, said that gender-separate events are permissible if the local authority is certain that all or a significant part of the target audience would not attend the event if it is mixed. He also said that a mixed section should be made available for people who don’t want separate seating.

There you have a common-sense approach. An event catering to the ultra-Orthodox can have separate seating, provided that a mixed area is provided. Those who want to sit separately can do so, those who wish to sit together can do so, and there is no coercion. In other words, live and let live – again, for events with a religious dimension or catering primarily to a religious audience not offended by separate seating.

That’s one way to deal with the tension.

Another way is the path chosen by Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef. During the first 3 minutes in an hour-long speech on the laws of Sukkot on Saturday, he touched briefly on the events of the last week in Tel Aviv and spoke in generalities about the secular population.

Judging by the media, he said, it appears that most people hate religion. However, “This is not true. Most of the Jewish public in Israel love Torah, love religion, and respect the sages. There is a very, very small minority who the media like, unfortunately, who make noise, but most of the people of Israel love and respect the Torah.”

Yosef said that as head of the Rabbinical Court, he sees what is happening in secular society bcause of the cases that come before him.

“They are to be pitied; they have no satisfaction in life… everything is for pleasure in this world. It is unbelievable… You see the permissiveness in secular society and all the problems it leads to. They are jealous of us [the haredim]. It is all envy. They see the haredi community: the holidays, the children, they go out with them on the holidays. It is jealousy, and that jealousy turns into hatred, but you should know it is only a minority of a minority – most of our public, especially the Sephardim, but also the Ashkenazim, respect the Torah.”

Yosef said that what is needed is to bring people closer to Torah, which is something that his father, former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, had encouraged. Yosef said that his father stressed that kashrut was the first thing to be observed when dealing with the newly religious.

 “There are those who say no, Shabbat observance is more important,” Yosef said. “Kashrut is the first thing. Someone who eats non-kosher, his mind becomes stupid, and it is difficult to grasp things. If he eats kosher, this will influence him to move forward in love of Torah; that is the first thing.”

There is a lot to unpack there, including his comments about keeping kosher, which need to be viewed within the context of what to emphasize for those becoming newly religious. Still, the patronizing attitude behind those words definitely doesn’t help at this time. The haredi and religious communities resent it when secular leaders refer to them as “unenlightened” or “living in the dark ages” or “messianists.” They should be careful about trading in the same currency.

And this is one of the problems right now: the different communities’ condescending attitudes toward each other. Yosef’s OFFENSIVE words were pounced upon by others, such as Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman and Moshe Ya’alon, who responded by insulting him and the public he represents. Instead of calming the waters, at a time when the waters need to be stilled, all this did was make everything worse.

Mandelblit’s directives, re-issued by Arbel, were a common-sense approach aimed at finding that middle ground where everyone can live together. Yosef’s words, and the reaction to them, just make living together that much more difficult. 

JPost