Haredim in burkas. Street thugs with peyot. Modesty squads and torched stores. That's the Bet Shemesh we've all grown to "love."
The Jerusalem Report has a good feature on the town that is rapidly becoming Mea Shearim #2.
And it's got some great analysis from…
…Professor David Assaf and from a local haredi fighting the zealots, "Moshe Cohen" :
Tel Aviv University Jewish history professor David Assaf, an expert on the 19th-century hasidic movement, says historically ultra-Orthodox infighting was common and is usually connected to some hidden agenda. Assaf says ultra-Orthodox tumult over women's modesty or Sabbath observance or any other theological topic often masks a true issue of "economic self-interest." For example, one ultra-Orthodox group may want to assert a monopoly over kashrut supervision, or ritual slaughter and may orchestrate riots as a display of power. Mainstream ultra-Orthodox silence in Beit Shemesh over zealot aggression, he says, may be part of a wider strategy on that group to "flush out the modern Orthodox like they did in Har Nof," an ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem suburb largely cleansed of moderate Orthodox and secular residents.…
"The zealots are convenient henchmen," meaning that they do the bidding of the mainstream ultra-Orthodox, says Assaf. He says Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox Jews are generally more intolerant than Sephardi, and that the clash between modern Orthodox religious Zionism and Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodoxy is especially keen because of their sharp differences on Zionism. (Indeed, graffiti in Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet likened Palestine's first chief rabbi, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, godfather of religious Zionism, to Shabtai Zvi, the 17th-century kabbalist who claimed he was the messiah and converted to Islam.)
"Moshe Cohen," 33, an ultra-Orthodox man who immigrated from New York some 11 years ago and asked that his real name or profession not be published out of concern for his personal safety, agrees with Assaf but says what is unfolding in Ramat Beit Shemesh is more complicated and nuanced and underlines changing norms in ultra-Orthodoxy. He was roughed up by a gang of zealots several months ago for his efforts to cooperate with modern Orthodox residents to end the violence. "Cohen" believes that the conflict in Beit Shemesh reflects a power struggle between mainstream ultra-Orthodox groups and the Eida Haredit, which he says is deeply fragmented, has lost its Jerusalem power base to the vagaries of real estate and modern times, is widely ignored by mainstream ultra-Orthodox and hopes to reinvent itself in Beit Shemesh…
Read it all here:
[Hat Tip: Yochanan Lavie.]