How it really was – and is: Who’s meshugge anyway?

My blessed Yiddishe mother used to ask, when something was weirder than real life, in Yiddish of course, “Am I meshugge, or he is meshugge?”

By AVRAHAM AVI-HAI
Bezalel Smotrich, interim minister of transportation (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Bezalel Smotrich, interim minister of transportation
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
My blessed Yiddishe mother used to ask, when something was weirder than real life, in Yiddish of course, “Am I meshugge, or he is meshugge?”
This came to mind when we returned from Italy, a country whose politics, corruption, bureaucracy and artistic magnificence exceeds Israel’s. I once defined Italy as a society and economy that function without a government. Now I am afraid the economy is on the verge of implosion or collapse, maybe by default – who knows? It is a country where people are polite and helpful. Take this example: with my cellphone out of order, without Waze or Google Maps, we tried driving out of Bologna. After enough circuits to ensure that all its walls were about to fall, we were finally able to spot our Italian mobile phone service provider.
Of course, the sign on the door read: “Closed between 1400 and 1500.” Of course, that’s when it was. Why those hours? Why not?
We asked a middle-aged motorcyclist who happened to park next to us, in our best Italian, “How do we get out of Bologna on the route to Ferrara? ”
He began a series of directions, accompanied by hand waving and facial expressions: “Straight, left, right, straight on, wait, turn…” When he looked at our faces, he said, as though he were an Israeli commando officer, “Seguimi!” (“Follow me!”) We followed him about five kilometers, maybe 10 to 15 minutes, and with a wave he put us onto the A14, and drove off before we could even thank him.
We came back home “tired but happy,” and actually not that tired. People here can be very helpful, kind, and friendly. And terribly impolite.
While abroad, I had not let myself follow the convoluted Italian eco-political tsuris – I have enough meshuggas at home, I thought to myself, no need to import more. But the headlines used a word I had never seen since beginning to study Italian many years ago. I looked it up and yes, it told of threatening economic news. Well, our economy seems fine, and what’s a bit of impoliteness when it’s your own people? (Actually, it’s worse when it’s your own, but I must be positive – 67 years in Israel takes positive thinking.)
Well, I came home, and my mother said in my head. “Are you crazy or are they crazy?” But in truth “meshugge” doesn’t mean crazy in a clinical sense. As a matter of fact, “crazy” is not a diagnostic or clinical term at all. Meshugge really means something like “screwed up in the head,” or “weird,” and probably best: “Are you for real or are they for real?”
What do I mean? It’s the good government test. The last election shows that the majority of the nation is what is called right-wing. Whether the next election will see a coalition of Likud and Blue and White depends on how long the present prime minister can hang on, and whether the post-Netanyahu Likud will abandon its haredi and near-haredi Zionist Orthodox partners. This is Avigdor Liberman’s tactic, and as of now, it does not seem that he will succeed. However, how much the Likud is Netanyahu and how much not will eventually be the key question. If the election results turn out more or less as the recent one, Likud as a party has nothing to gain by “legitimating” Blue and White as a partner in governance.
Therefore we must recognize that there will be a right-wing government in place for a long time to come, and mainly for seminal reasons. (Look the word up, “seminal” and “seminary” derive from the same source.) Even if there should be a Blue and White-Likud coalition, it would similarly be right-wing.
Given these probabilities, we must recognize that Israel will look for a way to loosen some of its hold on some of the West Bank – Judea/Samaria – if pushed hard enough by the Americans. Under Abbas, there will be no chance for much progress in the Palestine regime. It is – once more – cutting off its nose to save face by refusing even economic progress for its people. In that case, all of us who see social justice and a decent society as an aim must demand of the Likud more competent government.
Right now, incompetence and appointing more ministers in order to have a coalition with enough jobs for the boys and girls is the level of groveling the negotiators have shown. This I can demonstrate very easily – unfortunately – by using my mothers’ formula. So what did we find was meshugge? It is the “I talk, therefore I am” syndrome. It is often “first day foot in mouth” stupidity.
The most recent, and perhaps most unfortunate, was an example of both. The highly touted Interim Minister of Justice Amir Ohana, while barely in office a week, said that he is ready to disobey rulings by the High Court of Justice if they go against his view of what is necessary to keep Israel’s citizens safe. The High Court make people unsafe? The now and probably future justice minister said that? “Am I meshugge…?” And the safe/unsafe example was of a non-existing ruling. Never happened! I must be meshugge, eh?
I am not even sure that he has the power to not follow Supreme Court rulings. But it makes no difference, because even his mentor, the prime minister, had to wash out Ohana’s mouth with a gentle but clarative detergent.
While discussing Ohana, much was made of the fact that he is the first (openly) gay minister ever appointed in Israel. I understand the importance, but that says zero about his political judgment. Again, I must differ with my colleague Ruthie Blum, who like many others wrote that Ohana was a potential PM for the messianic (that is, long-delayed) post-Netanyahu days. I can hardly see Rabbi Litzman, or even Rabbi Peretz and Betzalel Smotrich, join a coalition led by an avowed homosexual. I am not sure how many covert homophobes exist in the Likud itself who would vote for him as their new Netanyahu.
Smotrich already has made two great statements. Being appointed interim transportation minister, the new boy says he works for God and for the good of the people of Israel. First of all, hats off – or rather kippot on – for a man who speaks the truth. It just frightens me that he knows exactly what God wants. Moses, Elijah, Ezra, Bezalel.
Best of all is his brilliant command of our history. This a quote from The Jerusalem Post: “The State of Israel and the state of the Jewish people will return to be governed as it was governed in the days of King David and King Solomon – by Torah law, obviously in accordance with our days, our challenges and economy, and how society lives in 2019.”
Oddly enough, I also believe that as many aspects of Jewish law – especially those treating justice, protecting the weak and helping the poor – should be used as a basis for our modern legislation. That, of course, is a far cry from Halacha as interpreted by rabbis whose skills were honed in a different reality, and whose education is narrow and whose politics are corrupt. His statement just proves that the breadth of Chief Rabbi Kook has been creased, crumpled and crushed by the yeshiva that bears his name in vain, Merkaz Harav.
Rabbi Kook, in his pure Hebrew, famously said: “It is not heretics I fear, it is ignoramuses.” Mr. Smotrich takes the crown of ignorance. The days of kings David and Solomon were lawless, murderous days. Anyone who reads the text of the books of Judges, Samuel and Kings knows that there was no Halacha, idolatry was the norm, and the priesthood – already corrupted in Samuel’s days – was supposed to interpret right and wrong.
David himself, in spite of the midrashic halo spread over him, was probably – counter to the seemingly homophobic Torah prohibition – a homosexual lover of Jonathan, a small-time gangster and leader of “empty men,” a cold-blooded murderer of a loyal commander in order to possess his wife, whom he had voyeuristically seen, and hardly a great moral figure. His dying orders were those of whom to kill. The “sweet singer of Israel” also wielded a bloody dagger.
His “wise” son Solomon broke the biblical fiat against a king having many wives, and horses. His wives and concubines were often political alliances involving daughters of non-Jewish royalty or nobility. Solomon turned away from God, the Bible tells us. His son, a failure as his heir, admitted that his father “punished the people with whips. What Torah, what Halacha? “Am I meshugge?”
Smotrich, you must have been at home, sick that day.
This paragon of Jewish knowledge is now minister of transportation. He takes over from an “able” minister, who has nothing to do with the frequent failure of normal train service, with the total failure of the “fast train” not yet running, after more than 10 years, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Never in railway construction has a fast train been built so slowly.
Rewarding this track record by making him foreign minister, Netanyahu was repaid with the first statement of the new top foreign affairs master: “Poles imbibe antisemitism with their mothers’ milk.” Diplomacy 101 – failed!
None of this is to forget the “competent” Minister of Economy and Industry Eli Cohen, who is responsible for safety at the workplace. The numbers of killed construction workers keep mounting, and I have not heard one statement condemning this nor one site visit made by Cohen (No. 2 on the Kulanu list.) This article has not mentioned the lack of schoolrooms, the lack of hospital beds, and other day-to-day governmental failures.
So… Okay! Mom, I am meshugge, they are all normal! And Mom, No. I cannot go back to Italy, they invented the Berlusconi Principle: that is, the “Left and the Media” are conspiring to make the prime minister fall.”
I’ll just stay here and read and study, now that I am sure we’ll have good, capable ministers. I bet Bezalel Smotrich will get the trains to run, and run on time. Meanwhile, I start with Isaiah, Chapter One.
Avraham Avi-hai, as background to this article, writes: Another of mother’s sayings was ‘M’veys nisht tzu lakhn oder tzu veynen’ – one doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry!