I just arrived in Israel for a visit with my family after a three-year absence as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps even more than usual, it is a blessing to be here, in our homeland.
On the long journey from Los Angeles, I read one of the most disturbing articles about Israel I’ve ever encountered (which is saying quite a lot, considering the tragic stories of terror and loss that are too often a part of the Israeli news cycle). The article describes an incident that occured last week at the Kotel, in the designated egalitarian worship space known as Ezrat Yisrael.
Ezrat Yisrael is a section specifically set aside for families who wish to pray near the Kotel in an egalitarian setting. In this one place, in accordance with an agreement sanctioned by the Israeli government, both men and women can chant Torah, put on a tallit, and wear t’fillin. Parents, siblings, and grandparents of all genders can stand side by side, watching with pride as the next generation places its link in the chain of tradition. Such behavior, so natural and even ordinary for us, is not allowed at the Kotel proper, which is under the control of the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate. This compromise gives the Israeli Conservative Movement (known as the Masorti movement) control of Ezrat Yisrael.
Three families visiting from the United States were each celebrating a bar or bat mitzvah ceremony for one of their children last Thursday. They had arrived at Ezrat Yisrael early in the morning to beat the Jerusalem heat.
A group of about 50 ultra-Orthodox men and boys came to Ezrat Yisrael specifically to disrupt these beautiful b’nai mitzvah ceremonies, ceremonies which they consider to be an affront to their religious sensibilities since women are included as full participants. They interrupted the worship in ways that are simply painful to read about: They ripped up the families’ prayer books, with one young man caught on film using a torn page from a Conservative siddur to wipe his nose. They shouted names at the worshippers, going so far as to call them animals, heretics, Reformim (Reform Jews, even though these three ceremonies were all conducted by Conservative Rabbis), and Nazis, even though the grandfather of one of the b’nai mitzvah is a Holocaust survivor.
Imagine the pain of the families who had traveled a great distance for this sacred moment only to see it ruined. Imagine the trauma felt by the young adults (children really, age 12 or 13), who had prepared for months to read from the Torah for the first time in the holy city of Jerusalem, only to watch this horror unfold.
Over the years, I have had the privilege of officiating at dozens of b’nai mitzvah ceremonies at Ezrat Yisrael, many for members of our temple. Thankfully, I’ve never experienced anything like this, but I have seen this hatred firsthand when I attended worship at the Kotel proper on Rosh Chodesh (the New Month) over the years with Nashot Ha’Kotel (Women of the Wall), sometimes with my wife and daughters.
Deborah Lipstadt, the United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism, is in Israel this week and commented: “Let us make no mistake, had such a hateful incident—such incitement—happened in any other country, there’d be little hesitation in labeling it antisemitism.”
This type of intra-religious hatred (Jews hating other Jews for denominational, ideological, ethnic, or racial reasons) is, sadly, nothing new. The rabbis of the Talmud called it sinat chinam (hatred without a cause) and blamed it for the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. Although the destruction happened almost two millennia ago, it is timely now as we enter the period known as the Three Weeks, the time when we recall those tragic events liturgically. It begins on the 17th day of the current Hebrew month of Tammuz, which this year corresponds to July 17.
We have an obligation, I think, to pay special attention to these moments and to respond. We need to raise our voices collectively and demand that those in positions of authority be held accountable, especially the heads of yeshivot in Israel where these young men are trained, who are paid in part by government funds. We need to demand that the Kotel agreement be codified into law in the next Knesset. We also need, in our local communities, to ensure that there is active communication between the leadership of the various movements, local synagogues, and clergy.
According to tradition, sinat chinam led not only to the destruction of a building—the Second Temple—but to the destruction of lives. Tens of thousands of our ancestors died—according to our sages—because of our own pettiness and hatred.
Make no mistake: If incidents like these aren’t stopped, there will—God forbid—be bloodshed. As we enter the period of the Three Weeks, let us commit ourselves all the more to what some call ahavat sinam (“senseless love”), mutual concern and love that flows freely not necessarily because we know each other so well or spend so much time with one another, but simply because we are family, part of Am Yisrael, a stiff-necked people who share a common history and a common destiny—and a deep love for Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Yoshi