According to dozens of public leaders and educators in Israel, Jews are forbidden from renting an apartment to Amar. He is a Druze, in other words, he is a minority, in other words, he is a non-Jew. More than 70 rabbis signed a Halachic letter in that vein in December, and according to dozens of rebbetzins, Jewish girls must not go out with Amar’s brother or cousin or, heaven forbid, fall in love with them.
The donkey is allowed to kick
The Border Policeman, Salman Amar, is a real hero. Were it not for his resourcefulness and courage, we might have found ourselves last week having to cope with the deaths of more than 100 passengers on board a burning train car. The doors to that train car would not open, and it was only Amar’s decision to shoot out the windows of the car that enabled people to escape the flames and smoke. The role played by the “human factor” is often cited in disasters. Sergeant Amar is the human factor who saved us from catastrophe this time.
Uri Misgav • Yediot
Translation: Didi Remez • Coteret.com / Special to FailedMessiah.com
Nevertheless, according to dozens of public leaders and educators in Israel, Jews are forbidden from renting an apartment to Amar. He is a Druze, in other words, he is a minority, in other words, he is a non-Jew. More than 70 rabbis signed a Halachic letter in that vein in December, and according to dozens of rebbetzins, Jewish girls must not go out with Amar’s brother or cousin or, heaven forbid, fall in love with them. Rebbetzins, in case you didn’t know, are the wives of rabbis. That is the source of their authority. That is why it is ludicrous to listen to them. But the time has arrived for a substantive debate about the role of those “rabbis.”
Richard Dawkins, a British ethologist and evolutionary biologist, notes in his book The God Delusion a simple fact about priests, rabbis and imams: theology is not science, since the existence of a divine being has never been proven. Religious clerics are merely people who have delved into what is referred to as holy scripture—books that were written by previous religious clerics. Dawkins says that it makes no more sense to rely on a priest or a rabbi than it does to consult with a gardener or a cook.
I disagree with him on a single point. Given the status that society has awarded them, one might expect that religious clerics would make just one commitment: to be a moral authority. To educate and to insist and to fight with all their might for the most basic human values of justice, equality, freedom, compassion, love and peace. Many rabbis from the Haredi-national-religious stream, who pollute the public atmosphere in Israel, are not only inciting racists in their own right, but they also lead their flock down those terrible paths as well. According to a poll that was published by the Truman Institute last week, 44% of the Jews in Israel support a ban on renting an apartment to non-Jews.
In the past number of years Halachic rulings have been published that permit IDF troops to kill Palestinian children indiscriminately, on the argument that those children will grow up in any event to become terrorists. Those are Nazi arguments. The ban on renting apartments to Arabs or marking them as banned from romantic relationships or marriage are classic racist behavior. I have grown weary already of explaining just how much the rabbis and rebbetzins who champion that philosophy had no real connection either to God or to Judaism. The rabbis who deceived Avi Cohen’s relatives and persuaded them against saving the lives of another seven people are not truly rabbis either. What is important at this stage is only to point out, time and time again, the unbelievable chutzpah of the Haredi-national-religious rabbis: the overwhelming majority of them draw their salaries from the state, gobble up every allowance and benefit given by it, but do not truly recognize its authority and supremacy. Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu from Safed was summoned this week to be questioned by the Jerusalem District Police for his role in the rabbis’ letter, and he quickly announced that he would not bother to show up. Rabbi Shlomo Aviner of Beit El, another Halachic prodigy, announced on Friday that Moshe Katsav was innocent, and that the court ruling on his case was of no value.
Seffi Rachlevsky recognized long ago what role the secular state played for those rabbis. We are merely “the messiah’s donkey,” a platform that ought to be used until redemption was at hand.
Except that a donkey also has the capacity to kick and to insist on its own needs. If Israel does not come to its senses quickly, it will be beyond redemption. The time has arrived to kick with all our might the rabbis of lies, racism and chutzpah.