Haredi rabbi battles religious coercion, violence
Haim Amsalem brings iconoclast’s message in Whippany talk
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MK Rabbi Haim Amsalem, right, lights the menora with Rabbi Dov Lipman, far left, and the Modern Orthodox Margolese family of Beit Shemesh; eight-year-old Na’ama Margolese’s story of being spat on by Orthodox extremists sparked a flare-up about Israel’s identity last month. Photo by Michael Lipkin
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If you go
Who: Member of Knesset Rabbi Haim Amsalem
When: Thursday, Feb. 2, 6-7:15 p.m.
Where: Aidekman Jewish Community Campus, Whippany; the program will be also be videocast at the Central federation office on the Wilf campus in Scotch Plains
Sponsors: United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ and Jewish Federation of Central NJ
RSVP: crc@ujcnj.org by Jan. 30.
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January 25, 2012
JERUSALEM — He believes all fervently Orthodox Israelis, or haredim, should serve in the army and work for a living.
He spoke at a rally condemning haredi discrimination against women.
And he would facilitate the conversion of hundreds of thousands of people even though they do not intend to keep all the commandments.
At times, Haim Amsalem can sound like a secularist member of Knesset. In fact, he is himself a fervently Orthodox rabbi who lives in Jerusalem’s haredi Har Nof neighborhood.
He was elected to Knesset in 2009 as a member of the Sephardi Orthodox Shas Party but broke away following disputes over the party’s attitude to army service, secular studies, and conversion.
Now, with the country boiling over with charges of haredi coercion, violence, and intolerance, Amsalem stands to play a key role in bridging the divides between Israel’s secular majority and Orthodox minority.
“What’s happening in Israel is very problematic,” Amsalem told NJJN in an interview at the Knesset last week. “The extremism is a ticking time bomb. Only a haredi rabbi can shout out that we don’t need such extremism and that haredim must serve the state. Likud and Kadima shouldn’t be saying it; a haredi rabbi should.”
Amsalem will speak about those tensions on Thursday, Feb. 2, at 6 p.m. at the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany. The talk is being jointly sponsored by United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ and the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey.
Prior to that, at 4 p.m., a briefing with Amsalem for rabbis from both communities will be hosted by the Central federation on the Wilf Jewish Community Campus in Scotch Plains. The 6 p.m. program will also be available via videoconferencing on the Wilf campus.
Ahead of his visit to the United States, Amsalem said more needs to be done to encourage moderation among the haredim. According to figures released by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics on Jan. 1, haredim comprise 9 percent of the 5,802,900 Jews living in Israel today.
Amsalem has formed a new political party called Am Shalem (A United People) that will wave the banner of moderate Judaism ahead of the next election. The party will have religious and non-religious Jews and place an American immigrant — Beit Shemesh Rabbi Dov Lipman, who was born in Maryland and will accompany Amsalem to New Jersey — near the top of its Knesset slate.
They will speak about Israel’s struggle to define its Jewish and democratic nature at a time when the focus of local headlines has shifted from war and peace to internal divides.
The flare-up in the mixed city of Beit Shemesh brought Amsalem to the forefront. He was the only haredi MK to visit the home of eight-year-old Na’ama Margolese, a Modern Orthodox girl whose story of being spat on by Orthodox extremists became the focus of the news in Israel and beyond last month. He came to light Hanukka candles with the Margolese family after Na’ama said she was afraid of anyone who looked fervently Orthodox.
Police in Beit Shemesh have since cracked down on haredi violence and intimidation. But Amsalem said Beit Shemesh was a symptom of a larger problem of extremism that other haredi MKs represent rather than fight.
“Extremism must be fought without compromise,” he said. “Most Israelis and Jews don’t want to create Kabul here. It’s a shame for all of Israel.”
Amsalem has also come out strongly against segregation on buses in which the mostly haredi clientele request that women sit in the back. He believes there is no place for discrimination against women in any public area.
A lenient path
But the issue that drives Amsalem the most is conversion. He wrote a book asserting that Halacha, Jewish law, requires that more lenient criteria for conversion be applied to people of Jewish descent than for others who wish to convert.
In a statement that many haredim would term heresy, he wrote that the demand that converts commit to keeping all the commandments does not apply to them. He has even said that serving in the IDF indicates more of a commitment to the Jewish people than abiding by all halachic restrictions.
“There are 400,000 people in Israel and three million around the world who require a solution,” he said. “Every Jew we lose is precious. Others try to create problems. I believe in trying to create solutions within Halacha and sane Judaism with a more lenient path. Most of the problems with converts can be fixed within an Orthodox framework that the Reform and Conservative streams would accept. We just need to put the issue in the hands of rabbis who understand the people’s needs.”
Amsalem’s views on military or national service for the haredim are equally controversial within his community.
He wants to limit the right to avoid army or national service to a set number of elite yeshiva students via clear criteria.
“When I asked my colleagues in Shas why they send so many people to learn Torah who are neither fit for it not particularly interested in learning full time, I saw I was talking to a wall,” he said.
One of his own sons served in the IDF’s Central Command, and another is on the way to the Tank Corps. A third son served in the Nachal Haredi, a special unit of haredi men who have daily Torah classes and prayer services to accommodate their lifestyle.
Despite the many challenges Israel is facing, Amsalem said, he was optimistic that problems in Israeli society can be fixed.
“We have a tradition that the Holy Temple was destroyed by baseless hatred, so we must rebuild it with unconditional love,” he said. “But we have to do it fast, because what wasn’t done until now will be harder to do later.”
Central New Jersey federation executive vice president Stanley Stone said that both his community and MetroWest want to make a positive impact on the quality of life in Israel.
Max Kleinman, executive vice president of UJC MetroWest, said he invited Amsalem to the community because he believes it is important for his message to be heard.
The federations “have been warriors for Israeli hasbara [public diplomacy] and now The New York Times is making it look like Israel is controlled by Jewish ayatollas,” Kleinman said. “We have to do what we can to support a positive civil society and back liberal standards for conversion to make Israel livable for all Jews and prevent tension with the Diaspora.”
Comments
Stanley Feldman
January 25, 2012
The “holier than thou” sect known as the haredim are turning into a variation on the Klan. Anyone who is different in their midst must suffer the consequences. Having grown up Jewish, I never like people abusing me because I was different and I don’t think the haredim have the right to organize mobs to attack children, just because they are different.
This is a slippery slope in the area of civil rights and the Israeli government would do well to prosecute any assaults or other criminal behavior committed in the name of religion!
Let the Haredi try that in the US and see what happens. We didn’t like the mob telling us what to do in the 1960’s and I don’t like Jewish mobs acting like Klan members!
Bob Schultz
January 27, 2012
To Stanley Feldman:
Your comments are off base. The harassment of non-Orthodox Jews by Haredim is not tolerated by the vast majority of Israelis, including the religious. The government of the State of Israel prosecutes assaults committed by Jews against other Jews, Jews against non-Jews and non-Jews against Jews. I am unaware of “Jewish mobs acting like Klan members” either in the US or Israel. Perhaps you can provide evidence of lynchings, beatings, cross (or Star of David) burnings, or other activities associated with the Ku Klux Klan, committed by Haredim or “Jewish mobs”.
Haredim are not a monolithic “‘holier than thou’ sect” as you state. The term encompasses multiple groups, which range from the traditional orthodox (Agudath Israel) to Hassidic sects, such as the Lubavitch (Chabad), Breslov, Satmar, Munkacz, Ger, Belz, and Bobov. Some Haredim actually serve in the IDF. Each group has its own traditions and customs, none of which encourages them to “organize mobs to attack children, just because they are different.” In the recent past, Haredim of various groups, including the anti-Zionist Satmar, have turned their anger toward the Haredi group, Neturei Karta for their support of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Unfortunately, there are also non-Haredi Jews in the US and Israel, who would like to make nice with the enemies of Israel.
Your indiscriminate use of the term “Klan” is not appropriate, and blurs the actual atrocities committed by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Stanley Feldman
January 27, 2012
Fair enough! So you are saying that anyone may walk the public streets of Beit Shemesh or any place else in Israel, dressed how they are and on any day of the week, without an ultra orthodox “group” accosting them?
I don’t think that the ultra orthodox in certain areas of Israel should restrict the use of public streets on Shabos, but I believe it happens.
It seems well documented that the ultra orthodox “group” accosted the little girl whom they say dressed immodestly. The ultra orthodox individual who called the soldier a slut for being on the bus is another recent example. What is the reason given to justify these acts? It appears to me that the “group” believed the little girl was not dressed up to the group’s “holy” standards and that the soldier did not adhere to the ultra orthodox subjective view of segregation.
You may be right about my use of the “Klan” word, but mob action is abhorrent.
Alex
January 31, 2012
to Bob Schultz - thank you, very well put.
All of us are angry about what happened at Bet Shemesh.
However, what this group is seemingly trying to achieve, is to drive a wedge between Jews of different persuasions, something most Hassidic groups (Chabad, Breslov, Gur to name a few) are working to reverse.
If we start lumping everyone with long peyos and long black coats into the hated other, the criminals at Bet Shemesh will have achieved that goal. Not to mention that we’ll be acting like them.
We should deprive them of that pleasure.