Two recent events in Israel have thrown a light on the inner temper of the country, and tossed up questions about where we are as a civilization.
One was the suicide of Chaim Walder – a haredi Orthodox superstar author and broadcaster – after the revelation of his sexual “misdemeanors” with adults and minors; the other, David Reeb’s “Jerusalem” exhibition in Ramat Gan, in which the well-known painter was told to remove his painting depicting a haredi Jew praying at the Western Wall with the logo, “Jerusalem of Gold/Jerusalem of Shit” attached to it.
It is interesting to note that none of the newspapers that commented on these incidents saw a connection between them. They treated them separately, as if they existed in different universes.
But in fact they are intimately related to each other. Walder’s suicide was not only dramatic in itself but so were the responses to it, especially from the haredi community (which numbers 12.6% of Israel’s population). It did not take long for one of the leading rabbis of the haredi community, Rabbi Gershon Edelshtein, to point a finger at the real culprit. Walder’s “suicide” was actually a murder caused by the revelations of his sexual misconduct by the secular-liberal newspaper Haaretz. This was for the rabbi, and the many who followed his dictates, a clear example of lashon hara – badmouthing – the punishment for which, according to Jewish law, is severe.
The immediate reaction to this, by both haredi spokespersons and non-haredi groups, was one of disbelief. How could the venerable sage not understand that Walder, by any stretch of the imagination, was not only a repellent, sinful individual, but had defied the very halachic basis that he had publicly promoted for over 30 years in his publications, his various media programs and his much sought-after therapy sessions?
Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safed, tried to soften these criticisms by saying that he had told Walder he could repent and that he would then be exonerated. As if this would console the many victims of his immoral behavior!
Another reaction to this attempted whitewashing was the really tragic suicide of one of Walder’s victims, Shifra Horovitz, a young haredi woman who was so appalled by the official haredi response that she took her own life. The hundred or so people that accompanied her bier could not compare in size to the thousands of haredim that accompanied Walder to his resting place.
The reactions to this nauseous event continued over the following days as commentators tried to make sense of the implications of these revelations and responses. Was it possible that there was going to be a sea change in the haredi community, which has always prided itself on possessing the moral high ground in Israeli life? Were the stories of Chaim Walder – and a few months prior to him of Yehdua Meshi-Zahav, also implicated for sexual “misdemeanors” – going to have a lasting effect on this community?
One response came from Haaretz’s resident curmudgeon, Rogel Alfer, who takes every opportunity to criticize the religious community. “It is,” he wrote not without cynicism, “permissible for Walder to take his own life,” hinting perhaps on the very negative attitude Jewish tradition has to suicides.
Another reaction came from psychiatrist and philosopher Dr. Azgad Gold, who wrote, also in Haaretz, that Walder’s behavior was compounded by his giving personal advice to people who asked for it, without sufficient, professional training. Gold clearly forgot the many cases of professional psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and others who have been found guilty of similar sexual misdemeanors. One fairly recent case comes to mind of a rabbi, professor, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Jerusalem who was jailed for such offenses.
This brings us to the second event that took place on the other side of the country, in Ramat Gan, where the new Museum of Israeli Art exhibited David Reeb’s latest works, which included the soon-to-be notorious Jerusalem painting. On this canvas, divided into four oblongs, Reeb depicted two similar scenes of a haredi Jew praying at the Western Wall. On the other two oblongs he wrote “Jerusalem of Gold” and “Jerusalem of Shit” in Hebrew.
Precisely what this means is debatable. But what stands out is the use of words rather than a visual image to convey his message. Could the artist not have depicted graphically a gold bar and a turd instead of the written phrases? Some artists have done such and earned a lot of money by doing so. But they exhibited in another country and under different artistic traditions.
One of the peculiar responses to this painting was given by the architect Ranana Yardeni, a member of the museum’s committee. Her plaint was that it was “anti-Zionist and... crossed any reasonable border.”
What is amazing in this comment is that the Jew depicted in the painting is haredi. Haredim are not generally known for their Zionism. The painting, by Reeb’s own admission, is open to a variety of meanings, but what exactly is one to gather from the depiction of a haredi Jew as representative of Jerusalem inhabitants as a whole? What of non-haredi Jews who constitute the majority, or the Arab population who count as a third of the city’s total? Are they also to be tarred with the same excrescence of turd?
This is where the two events discussed here are related. It is precisely because of the content of the discussion in Ramat Gan that the haredi world of Jerusalem (and elsewhere) will never coalesce with the Zionist or post-Zionist world. The fear of the haredi world is that if they step out of their ghetto-like existence, then they will be exposed to the secular world, a world lacking in even the basis of a moral order. Their public debates, as witnessed in this unseemly row in Ramat Gan, typify for this community the low level of national discussions. The level of public debate revolves around human turd. This is the secular alternative to traditional Judaism. Thanks, but no thanks.
So even with the profoundly disturbing saga of Walder, it is difficult to see any major move on the part of the haredi community as a whole. Certainly there will be a small percentage of haredim who will leave the haredi world, out of disgust, or out of a desire to break with out-of-date fiats of nonagenarian rabbis. But for the majority, their catholic upbringing has sentenced them to a life of poverty and blinkered perceptions of what a normative, moral Jew is meant to be. A light to the nations, but firstly a light to ourselves. ■