Spitting in public is bad.
Spitting on the ground as people walk by is really bad.
Spitting at people is really, really bad.
Those are things most normative people probably learned from their parents growing up. That this needs to be repeated by public figures, senior government officials, and religious leaders is – for lack of a better expression – just plain nuts.
It seems so obvious, so basic.
But here we are, following a spate of Jews – often, but not only, haredim (ultra-Orthodox) or religious Jews – spitting at or towards Christians in Jerusalem, and the obvious and basic needs to be forcefully stated.
Spitting at people – at their feet, their places of worship, on their clothes, in their faces – is bad and repulsive and unkind and disgusting and wrong. Plain wrong.
And it’s wrong simply because it’s wrong. Because that is not the way human beings are to treat one another.
Once that is stated unequivocally, one can move on to other reasons why it is bad: because it makes Jews look bad, because it will incite antisemitism around the world, and because it puts Israel in a terrible light.
But first things first, this type of behavior is bad and wrong, has no place in society, and needs to be uprooted. Plain and simple.
Now it is possible to talk about all the other stuff, which is also true. Jews spitting as they pass churches and monasteries do make Jews look bad; Jews spitting at clergy as they walk Israel’s streets in clerical garb does invite antisemitism abroad; and Jews spitting at Christian tourists making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land does paint Israel in a negative light.
In fact, in a horrible light.
A UK-based website called Middle East Eye, with a pronounced anti-Israel slant that likes to paint Israel in dark hues, has, over the last few months, uploaded clips of Jews spitting at or cursing Christians in Jerusalem.
One short video posted five months ago showing a group of haredim spitting as they pass nuns – erroneously titled “Israeli settlers (sic) verbally abuse and spit at Christian nuns in Jerusalem” – got 5.6 million views.
Another short from four months ago showing Israeli youth with knitted kippot and sidelocks shouting at Christians passing by an archaeological site near the Western Wall to go home merited 2.4 million views, and a third, called “Israeli spits at Christian clergymen in Jerusalem,” got 625,000 views two months ago.
So, yes, this does put Israel in a bad light and is used by those who want to portray Israel in that light.Some will say that it is wrong to color a nation or a people by the actions of a few of their members. That is also true. But that truth does not keep it from happening.
At this very divisive moment in Israel’s history, another truth emerges from all this.
As much as there are those in the country who – because of passionate disagreements – no longer view their fellow Jews as brothers and who say as much, they are interconnected: the action of one Jew here will affect the lot of another Jew somewhere else. Some crazy act by a Jew in Jerusalem could lead to an act of retaliation against an innocent Jew in Brooklyn.
Whether we like it or not, we are tied together
We are all in the same boat. This brings to mind the famous boat parable in the midrash Vayikrah Rabbah.
“Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai taught a parable,” goes the midrash. “Men were on a ship. One of them took a drill and started drilling underneath him. The others said to him: ‘What are you sitting and doing?!’ He replied: ‘What do you care? Is it not underneath my seat that I am drilling?’ They said to him: ‘But the water will rise and flood us all on this ship’.”
Indeed, our fates are intertwined; the act of one impacts the other, whether we like him or not, whether we agree with him or not, whether we want him to be part of our people or not.
So what is to be done in a situation like this, where someone is drilling a hole in the boat – or is spitting on Christians – something that will have a deleterious impact on the collective?
Simple, you stop the drilling.
That, finally, is what the police started to do on Wednesday when they took the spitting incidents seriously and arrested five people on charges of assault, four adults and a minor, for expectorating toward Christians.
For many Israelis, the clip that went viral on Tuesday showing haredim spitting at the feet of Christian pilgrims carrying a wooden cross through the Old City was an eye-opener, a phenomenon they were unaware of.
This is, however, not a new phenomenon. In June, the Open University hosted a conference on the matter entitled “Why Do (Some) Jews Spit on Gentiles.” If this were a new or minor problem, Open University would unlikely have dedicated an academic conference to it.
Following Tuesday’s incidents in the Old City, Channel 11 found an interview done six years ago with Itamar Ben-Gvir – today the national security minister, but at the time a private lawyer – defending a girl arrested for spitting at a monastery, arguing that this was an “ancient Jewish custom.” In other words, similar incidents have taken place on Israel’s streets for some time.
In fact, on January 18, 2010, JTA ran an article headlined: “Spitting on Christians in Jerusalem draws rabbinic rebuke.”
Nearly two years later, in December 2011, when the government did not include Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, but Ehud Barak and Matan Vilnai, then-ADL head Abe Foxman issued a call on the Chief Rabbinate of Israel “to publicly denounce the repulsive decades-old practice by ultra-Orthodox Jews of spitting at Christian clergymen they encounter in the street.
“This repulsive practice is a hateful act of persecution against another faith group and a desecration of God’s name according to Jewish law,” Foxman said in response to several such incidents at the time. “This display of hate and bigotry has no place in Israel and is inimical to Jewish values of treating all people with respect and kindness.”
That was written 12 years ago. What was true then is equally true now. The shame is that this practice wasn’t completely uprooted back then and is making a reprehensible comeback now.