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| First responders apply first aid to stabbing victims at Jerusalem Pride Parade 2015 |
The American Orthodox Rabbi, Irving Greenberg, once wrote something
that really stuck with me. He
wrote: I don’t care what kind of
Judaism you affiliate with, as long as you are ashamed of it. I understood immediately what Greenberg
meant. He didn’t mean that one should be
ashamed, period, of one’s movement in Jewish life. Rather, he meant that one should feel ashamed
when that movement does not live up to its best vision of itself.
Last Friday, as we began to celebrate
Shabbat here in Australia, two deadly acts of violence took place in Israel. Yishai Schlissel, who had just been released from
prison after serving almost a decade for attacking marchers in Jerusalem’s 2005
‘LGBT Pride’ Parade, stabbed six at the 2015 iteration of the same event. And in the village of Duma, in Samaria, an arson
attack on an Arab home killed a toddler and sent other family members to
Israeli hospitals with life-threatening burns.
Religiously-inspired
violence is not new. For the past 18
centuries, Jews have repeated been victims of violent attacks. Most Jews can recite a litany of such grievances. The Crusades.
The Almohades. The Expulsion from
Spain. The Expulsion from England. The Inquisition. Cossacks.
Pogroms. Chmielnitski. Babi Yar.
Auschwitz. Et cetera, et cetera. When we look outward at the world, we see
people of other religions suffering religiously-inspired violence. Back to the Crusades. Various wars of Europe, in which church schisms
were part of the struggle. Hindu-Muslim
strife in India. Bloodshed between Shia and
Sunni. Purges of Christians in Sudan and
Egypt. Bahai’s in Iran. And on, and on,
and on.
But we tend to
forget that Jews have also perpetrated violence: against other Jews, and against those of
other religions. We forget, or downplay
it because the amount seems paltry when compared to our grievances against
others. And it is. But that does not in any way excuse or
mitigate it.
The dirty truth is
that there is a tendency toward violence in sectors of the Jewish
community. We can dismiss it because its
manifestation is limited, or we can confront it. We would do well to take the latter course,
because it would help us to understand the phenomenon of religiously-inspired
violence in general.
I am not approaching
this topic from the viewpoint that religion is the source of all – or even most
– evil. A viewpoint that would line up
with, for example, that of Richard Dawkins.
Let’s be objective here. Yes,
religious zeal has resulted in more than enough suffering in human
history. But take a look at the
bloodiest century in history: the
Twentieth Century of the Common Era. And
look at the movements that caused the majority of that suffering and
death. Nazism. Communism.
Need I say more? Two profoundly anti-religious
movements. So, if one paints
religion as the villain in all of the world’s suffering, and dismisses
secularism, they are simply not being honest.
Or at least, are not thinking clearly.
And in acknowledging
Jewish violence, I am not dismissing the possibility that it wasn’t Jews
who set the fire in Duma. As I write
this, no suspects have yet been identified. Yet it isn’t for lack of honest effort by the
Israeli police. Whilst it is reasonable to
suspect Jews, let’s not jump to conclusions.
I would not put it past Palestinian extremists to torch a Palestinian home,
then scrawl Hebrew graffiti on the wall to turn suspicions towards those ‘evil
settlers.’ It may very well not have
been Jews. But even without Duma there
have been enough instances of Jewish violence that we cannot discount it. And it is undeniable that there has been an
escalation of violence by Jews in Israel, in recent months. The very fact that the phrase ‘price tag
attacks’ has been coined, reveals that there is a problem.
Does this mean that
Judaism is by nature a ‘violent’ religion? No, and again the small amount of Jewish violence
attests to this. I’ll never forget an
incident that I witnessed in Jerusalem while I was studying there. Tensions were high because of the recent
Intifada and Palestinian glee over the Scud rocket attacks on Israel during the
Gulf War. One day on Jaffa Street, a
crowd of Jews was roughing up an Arab man. I don’t know why; I did not see the start of the
incident. But a woman in a snood, the
head covering characteristic of Orthodox Jewish housewives, came to the defence
of the Arab, placing herself in between the mob and the Arab, admonishing the
Jews and daring them to attack her. It
was a moment that makes one proud to be a Jew.
But…had there not been a Jewish mob, the brave woman would not have had
to stand up to them.
If we’re honest,
there have been plenty of violent encounters of Jews towards Arabs, as well as
between Jews and other Jews. Like the killing
of 29 Arabs in Hebron by Baruch Goldstein in 1994. Or the killing of Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir
in 1995. And many other incidents,
including the attack by Schlissel on the Pride Parades in 2005 and again on
Friday.
As I sometimes say, religion brings out the best and the
worst in people. Whilst it can inspire
us to righteous deeds, it can also influence us to see humanity as divided into
‘us’ and ‘them.’ This makes it easier to
lash out at The Other. The key is to
keep advocating for a Judaism that is true to the Torah in its entirety. To remember that the Torah came into the world
to create peace, not strife.
The attack on the
Pride Parade Friday, in which Schlissel fatally stabbed a 16-year-old girl and
wounded five others, need not make us ashamed to be Jewish. But it should make us ashamed that
Jews who are outwardly devout would commit such an act. And it should goad us to examine how we think
of those, with whose religion, or politics, or lifestyle we disagree deeply. Whom we see as being in grave error, even to
the point of being in rebellion against G-d. It should cause us to ask what each one of us
can do, personally, to create for ourselves a Judaism that does not lead its
devout to such acts. Shabbat shalom.
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