How the rule of the rabbis is fueling a holy war in Israel
13 February 2019
ed note–an absolute 'must read' and especially for those who insist upon remaining permanent residents on Fantasy Island vis the often-repeated yet baseless assertion that Israel is not a theocratic state based upon the violent and racist teachings of the Torah.
Jonathan Cook
In which country did a senior, state-salaried cleric urge his followers last week to become "warriors", emulating a group of young men who had murdered a woman of another faith? The cleric did so with impunity. In fact, he was only echoing other highly placed colleagues who have endorsed a book – again without penalty – urging their disciples to murder babies belonging to other religions.
Where can the head of the clergy call black people "monkeys" and urge the expulsion of other religious communities?
Where are these holy men so feared that women are scrubbed from billboards… and women find themselves literally pushed to the back of the bus?
Where does a clerical elite wield so much power that they alone decide who can marry or get divorced – and are backed by a law that can jail someone who tries to wed without their approval? They can even shut down the national railway system without notice.
Where are these holy men so feared that women are scrubbed from billboards, college campuses introduce gender segregation to appease them, and women find themselves literally pushed to the back of the bus?
Is the country Saudi Arabia? Or Myanmar? Or perhaps, Iran?
No. It is Israel, the world's only self-declared Jewish state.
Which 'shared values'?
There is barely a politician in Washington seeking election who has not at some point declared an "unbreakable bond" between the United States and Israel, or claimed the two uphold "shared values". Few, it seems, have any idea what values Israel really represents.
There are many grounds for criticising Israel, including its brutal oppression of Palestinians under occupation and its system of institutionalised segregation and discrimination against the fifth of its population who are not Jewish – its Palestinian minority.
But largely ignored by critics have been Israel's increasing theocratic tendencies.
This hasn’t simply proved regressive for Israel's Jewish population, as the rabbis exert ever greater control over the lives of religious and secular Jews alike, especially women.
It also has alarming implications for Palestinians, both under occupation and those living in Israel, as a national conflict with familiar colonial origins is gradually transformed into a holy war, fueled by extremist rabbis with the state’s implicit blessing.
Control of personal status
Despite Israel's founding fathers being avowedly secular, the separation between church and state in Israel has always been flimsy at best – and it is now breaking down at an ever-accelerating rate.
After Israel's establishment, David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, decided to subordinate important areas of life for Israeli Jews to the jurisdiction of an Orthodox rabbinate, representing the strictest, most traditional and conservative stream of Judaism. Other, more liberal streams have no official standing in Israel to this day.
Ben Gurion's decision in part reflected a desire to ensure his new state embraced two differing conceptions of Jewishness: both those who identified as Jews in a secular ethnic or cultural sense, and those who maintained the religious traditions of Judaism. He hoped to fuse the two into a new notion of a Jewish "nationality".
For that reason, the Orthodox rabbis were given exclusive control over important parts of the public sphere – personal status matters, such as conversions, births, deaths and marriages.
Please go to The Ugly Truth to read the entire article.
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A few demo video clips on rabbis...
Say what?! Technology?
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