‘How do you remember their names?”

‘My Favorite Child‘ – in the Jerusalem Post

After writing my last piece in the Jewish Daily Forward about women in the ultra-orthodox community, I received a lot of emails like that.   Friends in the community in which I live wrote of their disappointment: some suggesting that I had turned a few stories into generalizations, others that I had betrayed the ultra-orthodox ‘camp,’ especially for writing the piece in the left-leaning Forward: ‘the ultra-orthodox don’t read that, so what’s the point?  And why, another friend wrote, ‘give ammunition to the opposing camp’?

Regrettably, some who see themselves in the opposing ‘camp,’ wondered at my naivete: ‘are you just figuring this out Kolbrener?’  Others applauded my article, though using it as an opportunity to point out the ‘social regression’ of the ultra-orthodox, their ‘violence’ as well as ‘their extreme anti-social views.’

But my intention was neither to betray the world in which I live, or to enable the energies of those for whom ‘othering’ is anathema, except when it comes to the ultra-orthodox.   To that latter group, I would first mention what Ernst Jones, Freud’s student and translator, once wrote: ‘we hate those most who arouse in us the most intense conflict or ambivalence.’   That maybe – even granting many of the criticisms of the ultra-orthodox world – the hatred betrays something more, an ambivalence that needs to be explored.

And then, I would say: that there is an underlying decency and goodness and value in ultra-orthodox communities  - something to be learned from even – masked by those who want to claim that they are the real authentic voices of ultra-orthodoxy, but in reality a minority of extremists.   Those whose embody Jewish values – and indeed are polite – are not only part of the silent majority as some people call them, but more the silent plurality – the many different kinds of Jews that make up the ultra-orthodox world here.  Though the leaders of factions and camps are invested in representing monolithic homogeneity, Israeli society – and orthodoxy – is, beneath the appearance, pluralistic, and in many ways thriving.   Those who value pluralism on the left should have the courage to look carefully – beyond the newspaper accounts that reinforce their prejudice – to see that difference.

To people in my community – I realize I may sound naive – I say: talking about a community’s shortcomings does not mean abandoning it or selling it out.  That we should refrain from speaking against injustices in our community is just an extension of the old Jewish argument for keeping silent in the face of possible repercussions from the non-Jewish world, now extended to anyone beyond ‘our camp.’  To be sure, we have to protect ourselves, but sometimes that means identifying the parts of our society – at least starting a conversation, wherever that can happen – that we feel we may be able to change.

To the friends in the same world who have encouraged me to return to the Jewish House of Study:  Yes, this is something I want to do, but because I want to learn Torah, not because I anticipate that my affiliation with an institution will change my perspective, and allow me to use my ‘platform’ to promote – in their eyes – a ‘kiddush Hashem,’ a sanctification of God’s name.  I would also say: we can have conversations, and we can create a public sphere of discourse beyond the black and white signs plastered on neighborhood poster-boards.  A conversation – true, it’s a risky business – is not on behalf of an agenda, not for a camp, nor for an affiliation, but for discussion and exploration: such a conversation may provide its own opportunities for sanctifying God’s name.

Finally, to the American rabbi who wrote me, telling me knowingly: ‘you see, you cannot live in the ultra-orthodox world in Israel. I told you so.’   I would have to say, you are right, it is hard to live in Israel.   But – and this was my motivation for writing my Forward article – I have seven children, four of them girls, and I want the world they live in – they are Israeli – to be better for them.

So can we talk?

I hope so; my kids are counting on it.

‘When Women Can’t Even Say Thank You’ – my piece in the Jewish Daily Forward

Last Saturday night, over a thousand men stood in Shabbat Square in Jerusalem and protested the ‘persecution’ of the ultra-orthodox at the hands of the ‘Nazi State of Israel’ and the ‘Nazi Liberal Media.’  And the leaders of the demonstration dressed their children up in prison uniforms from concentrations camps: Auschwitz, Treblinka, Dachua.  One of the leaders explained, ‘this protest reflects the Zionists’ persecution of the ultra-orthodox public, which we see as worse than what the Nazis did.’

The protests at the politicization of the holocaust have been heard from almost every corner; and there is talk of a law that will make the use of such terms in the public sphere a crime.  In the meantime, the protesters that  gathered last night should be given a mandatory tour of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, or they can come to my house, and we can flip  together through the pages of Memorial Book, to look at the pictures of my relatives who perished at the hands of real Nazis.  Mordechai Hirsch, you are invited.

But: in the ultra-orthodox communities, one of which I live in, there is silence.  I would emphasize – and this is not an apology – that almost everyone I ask is embarrassed by the ultra-orthodox violence against women and children of the past week.  And, though I have not inquired today, I am sure that most of my neighbors dismiss the demonstration of last night, as not representing the majority, but rather acts of lunatic marginal extremists.  They would also probably decry how the dance of co-dependence between different parts of society – religious fanatics and newspaper editors – is swinging more furiously than ever before.

But that is not enough.  In a community where billboards go up regularly – against the internet, against expensive baby carriages, against movies, against mixed buses: where are the billboards and the public proclamations that violence in the public sphere runs counter to the values of Judaism?  Where are the sermons in synagogue expressing rage against those who, in the name of Judaism, cause embarrassment or injury to women and children?  And for those who require it, where are the posters with citations of the Jewish Legal Code affirming that such behavior is forbidden?  Further, I wonder – though I think I already know the answer – where will the sermons be this coming Friday night decrying the shameful appropriation of the images of the holocaust?

The silence that reigns is not only the silence of resignation and apathy, but more than that, it is the silence of those, who even as they feel embarrassed and repulsed, hang on to the sense of Jewish identity that comes through being persecuted.  So while most all of  the ultra-orthodox whom I know acknowledge the extremity of the behavior – things are worse than they have been in the twenty years I have been in this country – they still nurture an identity based upon being the oppressed minority.  Everyone knows – Real Jews are Persecuted.

But real Jews of all persuasion, especially those in the ultra-orthodox community, should not now embrace a Jewish authenticity based upon being persecuted, but a different kind of authenticity, one based on three thousand years of Jewish history: the authenticity of Jewish conscience.  That conscience will dictate that when injustice occurs – even or perhaps especially when it comes from  those acting in your name – you must stop the silence, stand up and cry out in protest.

My name badge at Limmud says ‘William’ in big block lettters, my last name smaller below.  There is no title, no university affiliation.  In this way, the design of the name tag reflects Limmud principles – inclusive and without hierarchies.   Someone mentioned to me privately that he had come here with the sole purpose of selling his book.  But this person – if his attitude survived 24 hours of being part of the five-day 2500 person gathering at the University of Warwick in England – does not get what Limmud is about.

Limmud, now in its thirty-first year,  is not about a ‘vision’ as some who are skeptical about it, as I was before I got here this year for my first time – might think.   If the Jewish world is torn apart by competition between different ‘visions’ competing for primacy, then Limmud shows that the model of ideological competition is no longer useful, and does not reflect the reality in which Jews today – regardless of their affiliations – live.  Visions, ideologies and egotism don’t survive the chaotic energies of Limmud: its success is that its own principles do not get in the way of what it is: encounter and conversation.  Limmud is anti-visionary – this is its paradoxical and exhilarating virtue – in allowing these encounters and conversations to flourish.

There are some in the orthodox world who will not attend the conference claiming they do not want to give ‘legitimacy’ to other strands of Judaism.  One Rabbi reluctantly told a potential participant, ‘you can go to teach at Limmud, but you will not get shlishi, the third aliyah, in shul for it.’  The answer, depressingly, shows the distant that some rabbis have from the realities of contemporary Jewish life, starting with the insularity of reference points: there is a world outside of your local shul.  In reality, discussions of ‘legitimacy’ mask a fear about encounter, framed as they are by a mentality of opposed camps, of ‘us and them,’ where the only reason to encounter someone with different institutional affiliations is to bring them to your ‘side.’

I have met a lot of different kinds of Jews at Limmud – and I don’t share all of their affiliations.   And yes, I admit it: I give legitimacy to them.  But not as representatives of movements, or institutions or ideologies, but as fellow Jews.  Our conversations have been fruitful, thought-provoking, suggestive, not because one of us thinks that we are going to convince the other to abandon their beliefs, but because in our disagreement we learn from one another. After all, you can only learn from someone who has a different perspective than your own.

In the last of my four sessions here at Limmud, a session from 8:40 to 10:00 at night I presented to a crammed and enthusiastic room of  people from eighteen to seventy years old – half of whom I knew from having met them in the previous 48 hours.  The talk, even though I had given it a dozen times before, was unlike any previous version because of the dynamics of the room: people were not performing their expertise, trying to show me or any of the fellow participants up, but enabling a conversation, one of the thousands taking place here.  The culture of voluntarism – there is only one paid Limmud employee – is also part of the intellectual culture of Limmud: people are in this together.

For me, the most typical experience at  Limmud, happening at least a half-dozen times, is that of walking  with someone whom I had just met and then encountering someone else, whom we both also knew.  So Limmud works: both expanding circles, and at the same time  making them smaller.   Perhaps this is what the Jewish people needs more of today – public spaces where it is free to take risks, exchange perspectives and ideas, encounter difference without fear – opening up to the possibility, even as we maintain our affiliations, of connecting with those different from ourselves, maybe even learning something new.

Though not publicized, I was the literary expert for Sarah Shapiro, the plaintiff, and I provided extensive written testimony which was then subject to cross-examination by Ragen’s lawyers in the Jerusalem court.

In the now widely-publicized decision of ninety-two pages, Justice Shapira wrote according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “that the plagiarism was ‘tantamount to a premeditated act,’ saying that Ragen acted knowingly and copied work created by the plaintiff.”

In an article today in the Jerusalem Post, Ragen, who is a columnist for the paper, accuses Sarah Shapiro of “working out of a desire to silence my criticism of the Haredi [ultra-orthodox] community’s treatment of women, which I have done for years.”  Whatever her presumed motives, the decision rendered did not reflect an attempt to silence Ragen’s views, nor does the verdict, as some imply in the ultra-orthodox world, represent a triumph for the so-called “vibrancy” of an orthodox Jewish life style.  Justice Shapira did not render judgement in a culture war, but on a legal case in a court of law.

In the detailed decision, Justice Shapira adds “in a personal note,” that he “delved into what he calls ‘the two masterpieces’ in order to properly adjudicate the case.”  Within the painstakingly-argued decision, he writes, according to the story in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz, that he “adopted the testimony of Professor Kolbrener which determined, that Regan copied portions of Shapiro’s work, appropriating them for herself, and that the similarities between the two works are so essential that any explanation other than plagiarism is untenable.”

In the Jerusalem Post article, Ragen, citing what she calls a “distortion of justice,” claims that “this is a sad day for Israeli society and Israeli authors in particular, who will have to deal with the language of abrasive lawsuits from people looking to suppress freedom of expression and creativity in Israel.”

But, of course, the legal decision was not an attempt to limit free expression, nor was it based upon the presumed religious beliefs or worldviews of the experts who provided testimony in the case.  As literary expert for Sarah Shapiro, my own published views on religious life in Israel both in my book, Open Minded Torah, as well as my “Letters from Israel” for the Washington Post are, I would imagine, probably closer to Ragen’s than standard ultra-orthodox views. But none of that is relevant since Judge Shapira’s decision was based on testimony and evidence.

So not a sad day for “creativity,” but simply one in which a judge in Israel rendered his decision, establishing the facts.