All the excuses that we’ve been hearing about why religious people shouldn’t join the demonstrations are just that – excuses.
By EFRAT SHAPIRA-ROSENBERGTel Aviv protests 521(photo credit: REUTERS/Amir Cohen)
I WAS SURPRISED WHEN A FRIEND, WITH WHOM I HADN’T spoken in years, called me. But before I even had the chance to be pleased to be speaking with him again, he made his position clear.“I’m calling because I just can’t believe what I’ve heard. Are you really supporting the protest?” I couldn’t deny it: the previous Saturday night, I, too, had stood in Tel Aviv with 300,000 other people, chanting rhythmically, “The people...want... social justice.”It was hard for him to believe that I had been there, he told me, because “we had been taught moral values. We don’t go out and demonstrate for money.”And that’s when it all became clear to me.All the excuses that we’ve been hearing about why religious people shouldn’t join the demonstrations are just that – excuses. The reasons we are not supposed to go to these demonstrations have nothing to do with what rabbis and other so-called leaders of the religious-Zionist community have been saying – the lack of modesty in the tent camps or the breaking of the laws of the Sabbath at the demonstrations. And they certainly have nothing to do with my own personal favorite: that we shouldn’t go because there was music at the demonstrations and it is forbidden to listen to music during the nine days of mourning that precede the fast of the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av.No, none of these excuses were the real reason that we were supposed to stay home and not join the “secular” protest. The real reason is that the cause isn’t considered “meaningful” or “morally significant” enough. Sure, just like everyone else, we religious Jews have to mortgage our homes to fill up our cars and given the cost of milk products, we should be storing them in a safe and not a refrigerator. And we don’t have enough money at the end of the month to send our children to music lessons so that they’ll enjoy a bit of culture, instead of sitting in front of the computer all day. And in order to consult with a specialist, we, too, have to pay extra money into our health plan.Ah, but we have been inculcated with values, my friend says. We don’t demonstrate “just because we’re short of a little bit of money.”So let me challenge my friend to open his eyes and his ears. Are the thousands of members of the socialist youth movements demanding a redistribution of the wealth out there “just because they are short of a little bit of money?” Are the physicians who are on strike because the medical system is falling apart demonstrating “just for a little bit of money? Or the social workers who earn so little that they themselves are on welfare? Or the reservist soldiers, who bear the brunt of our nation’s security on their backs?Of course they aren’t. There’s a lot more at stake here, and I can’t think of a more arrogant, condescending or patronizing way to refer to this protest movement than by referring to it as a demonstration of “spoiled people who want a little more money in their bank accounts.”So once and for all, let’s really talk about those “values” that the religious community loves to talk about. For quite some time now, we have used the word “values” as a code word for the “the Greater Land of Israel.” If a protest or campaign isn’t connected to maintaining our hold on the land or to the struggle between the Right and Left – then you won’t find the religious Zionist there.Oh, but give us a struggle over the evacuation of settlements, or at the least, the dismantling of some small outpost – and then you’ll really see what we can do! At some point along our way, someone convinced us that these are the only really important values, and that everything else is “just about a little bit of money.”So forgive me, all my morally upstanding co-religionists, but I sent my disappointed friend straight to the synagogue, to listen to the haftara (the readings from the prophets) that we had read that same Shabbat: In his first prophesy, Isaiah tells us:“What need have I of all your sacrifices?” Says the Lord. “I am sated with burnt offerings of rams… And I have no delight in lambs and he-goats. That you come to appear before Me – Who asked that of you? Trample My courts No more… Your new moons and fixed seasons Fill Me with loathing; They have become a burden to me, I cannot endure them. And when you lift up your hands, I will turn My eyes away from you; T hough you pray at length, I will not listen. Your hands are stained with crime – Wash yourselves clean; Put your evil doings Away from My sight. Cease to do evil; Learn to do good. Devote yourselves to justice; Aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; Defend the cause of the widow.”Isaiah teaches us what is really important, what “values” should really mean: Not fast days; not sacrifices; not holidays; not the Shabbat.And not the Greater Land of Israel. Goodness. Justice. Concern for the orphan and the widow. The war against corruption. For Isaiah, upholding our “values” means that we should reorder our priorities, “offer our compassion to the hungry” – feel the pain, despair and soul of the other as if it were our own.So yes, we can continue to sit at home, cluck our tongues and feel that we are morally superior. But the education that I received compels me religiously and morally to be there on the front lines of those demonstrations.And if my disappointed friends won’t come to demonstrate with me – well, that’s OK. Isaiah the prophet is there with me, and his company is certainly morally valid enough for me. Efrat Shapira-Rosenberg is a project officer at the Avi Chai Foundation in Jerusalem and a host on Channel 2 TV.
