"As Israel mourned on Holocaust Remembrance Day, [Israeli actor] Oz Zehavi and [Israeli pop star] Ninet Tayeb were filming a television series," Kikar Hashabbat an ultra-Orthodox website reported last Tuesday evening. The report was motivated more by a desire for revenge than a desire to inform readers of Tayeb's and Zehavi's activities. The report attempted to give "the seculars" some of their own medicine, especially in light of reports in the secular media this year, suggesting that many ultra-Orthodox Jews had enjoyed festive barbecues at Jerusalem's Sacher Park on Holocaust Remembrance Day. This year, just like every one of the 65 years since the establishment of Israel, the relationship between the haredim (ultra-Orthodox) and the rest of Israel became more volatile than ever during the week between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism, followed immediately by Independence Day. Just as it always does, the same familiar embarrassing situation will once again replay itself this year: A relatively small group of extremist haredim from the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim will invite reporters and photographers to document them publicly disparaging the national moment of silence on Memorial Day and burning the Israeli flag on Independence Day. Every year, the more mainstream haredim make sure to condemn this behavior. But this year, something changed. The debilitating political blow that the haredim suffered this year (when the ultra-Orthodox parties were edged out of the prime minister's coalition, and left to serve in the opposition), prompted the haredi public to voice the kinds of hateful sentiments previously unheard in the ultra-Orthodox mainstream. Suddenly, there are public calls among the haredi public to stand up for the "authentic" haredi point of view rather than try to fit in with the secular population. The main point of contention in recent days has become whether or not to stand in silence during the siren that sounds on Holocaust Remembrance Day and on Memorial Day, denoting a moment of silence honored by Israelis countrywide. The first to jump into that ring was attorney Dov Halbertal, considered a close confidant of the man who, until recently, was the leader of the haredi population the late Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv. Referring to a photo in the Israeli media depicting haredi families enjoying barbecues on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Halbertal said that "I'm glad that they caught those who were barbecuing. It is about time that instead of just groveling, we show the secular public a thing or two, precisely in this sensitive context. It is entirely obvious to everyone that those same people who wrote about the incident will, in a few days' time, desecrate the Sabbath in public, eat nonkosher food and continue to live in sin with their non-Jewish women without feeling for one minute that they might be hurting the feelings of the haredim, offending Judaism or insulting the holiness of Israel. But when it comes to secular values they expect me to be sensitive to their needs? Nothing could be more hypocritical or callous." "It is time to say this to the secular population: When the siren sounded on Holocaust Remembrance Day, we should have gotten up and walked out as a form of protest, to show them how it feels when your values are defiled and belittled. Of course in practice, that is not done, because that is not the way of the people of the Torah. They are considerate of the secular population's feelings," he added. Halbertal admitted that the context behind his harsh remarks was indeed the fact that the ultra-Orthodox parties had been edged out of the coalition "just for being haredi," according to him. In recent months, this move has been perceived among the haredi population as an insult and a crossing of a line. They view it as racist discrimination. "These days, with [Finance Minister Yair] Lapid and [Economy and Trade Minister Naftali] Bennett and their gang coming around and destroying all that is holy in Israel, we have a chance to tell these people: You are the ones who desecrate the values of Judaism every day. You have no right to complain about anyone desecrating your holy day. There is venom and there is destruction. The entire election process was founded on the sanctity of Israel. Now we are at war. The education minister has initiated certain processes and there is war over conversion (to Judaism) and marriage laws. We need to fight back with just as much, if not more force," Halbertal said. Halbertal insists, however, that he does not disrespect the memory of the Holocaust. "I remember the Holocaust in my own way. A hundred years from now, it will be only the haredi Jews who keep the memory of the Holocaust alive, when we continue to wonder what it was that God wanted from us. But just because some Judoka from Lapid's party or some feminist from the Labor Party decided that this is how we will mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, Rabbi Elyashiv is supposed to stand at attention and observe the moment of silence-" What about mutual respect- The haredi representative who did rush to condemn the barbecue incident was Shas Co-chairman Aryeh Deri. He explained that it was indeed an ugly act, but having said that, he also explained his point of view, in an interview with the haredi radio station Kol Barama, that "the Chief Rabbinate ruled that the 10th of Tevet is the general day of mourning, and that is the day, religiously speaking, that we remember the victims of the Holocaust. Then came the state, the secular authorities, and they decided that because the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising happened in the month of Nissan, during which we traditionally do not mourn, we have to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day then." But that was not enough for Deri. He also had criticism for the fighters in the actual Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: "In the haredi world there are stories about great rabbis who lost everything and rebuilt themselves and their communities. That is courage. But the 200 or 300 young people who launched the uprising, leaving no survivors in the ghetto? In other ghettos there were more survivors. Isn't the grandmother who survived in Lodz worth more than those 200 who launched the uprising- The interviewer, Yaakov Rivlin, then said: "Zionism viewed the Holocaust as a sort of failure a sign of Jewish weakness. In the events surrounding the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising they finally found one instance where Jews fought, and that is why they adopted it as the day to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day." To this, Deri replied: "No one can presume to teach us about the Holocaust. Even me a Moroccan and my wife's adoptive parents who raised me, my two children are named after them. The Holocaust Remembrance Day that 'they' decided to declare because of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising does not apply to us as haredi Jews. But I hope that our youth, our yeshiva students and young women, understand that we are expected to behave differently. We are expected to be sensitive." Deri also voiced sympathy to Halbertal's arguments about a lack of mutual respect in honoring sacred days. "Do they honor Tisha B'Av? That is our day of mourning. Shabbat, is there a holier day? All the stores are open. So I don't have a problem with people barbecuing, but they should do it at home, not in public, not where they provoke the secular public. That is blasphemy." You can't coerce respect It is doubtful that the extreme views held by Deri and Halbertal represent the haredi majority. Rabbi Menachem Brod, a veteran spokesman of the Chabad movement, maintains his movement's consistent policy: A love of Israel. "It is true that there is the reporter and the photographer, but there is also the resident idiot who deliberately lights the fire, who gives fodder to the enemies of the observers of the Torah and the commandments, and gives them the tools with which to criticize us and alienate us from the general population," said Brod. "When it comes to the memory of the Holocaust or the memory of the fallen soldiers who died in Israel's wars this is an extremely sensitive subject for the entire public. It is close to impossible to find a single family in Israel that didn't lose a loved one in the Holocaust or doesn't know someone who lost a relative in a war. True, there is a debate over how to remember and when to remember, but in practice, when the entire population commemorates the people they hold dear, and others come and denigrate the memory there is nothing more hurtful. Even on the level of basic interpersonal relations, why go for the most painful sore spot? We have to be careful." Rabbi Brod explained that while there are those who criticize the haredim, he has also noticed that there is another reality emerging one involving secular Israelis who respect Judaism and the ultra-Orthodox lifestyle. "I see many Israelis who actually feel respect. I see people who, when passing by a synagogue on Shabbat while smoking, put out their cigarettes or hide them. These people should also be taken into account. "There is a difference between groveling and provoking. Disparaging Memorial Day isn't an affront only to Jews outside the religious world. It can be an affront to baalei teshuva [Jews who were secular but became religious later in life]. Imagine, for example, what a person who became haredi must feel if he has a friend who died in a war," Brod said. The head of the social haredi movement "Tov" Chanoch Werdyger echoed the moderate tones. "I rise during the moment of silence siren, even when I am at home by myself. I think that doing something in public cannot be representative if a person does not believe in what he is doing. Besides, the customary standing is a convention among the Israeli public. In any case, anyone who has ever sat shiva (the seven-day Jewish mourning period) knows that most mourning practices stem from various customs, and there are very few clear-cut rulings about it in Jewish law. Customs are a product of the place where a person grows and becomes educated. The customs of the place where we live are the customs that we must honor." Werdyger was not concerned about the haredim appearing to suck up to the secular Jews. "What does it mean to suck up? When the haredi media mercilessly criticizes the new government and the new education minister and then he is invited to tour the haredi seminar, is that sucking up? There are those who would say yes, and there are those who would say that it fulfills certain needs." According to Werdyger, the barbecue incident was marginal. "We have to keep in mind that the main argument is about Memorial Day. You can't suspect the haredim of being against Holocaust Remembrance Day. The haredim lost family members in the Holocaust too. The young people in question must have forgotten, or perhaps they just weren't paying attention." The argument over Memorial Day has brought some of the most respected members of the haredi community to some rather interesting insights regarding the general attitude of the haredim toward the state. A close associate of one of the most prominent Ashkenazi rabbis in the haredi sector said that "without realizing it, we have turned into a Bolshevik nation that requires its inhabitants to believe in the state. There is no other country in the world that prohibits the burning of its flag (note: factually, this is entirely untrue), or that requires its inhabitants to be sad on a certain day." "And what if I am not sad on Memorial Day? A Mizrahi girl comes home on Holocaust Remembrance Day and tells her parents that the Holocaust has nothing to do with them, so she is not sad. What are you going to do to her? Make her? There are dozens of secular youth who don't care about the Israel Defense Forces or the Holocaust, so you will force them to feel pain? We have turned these days of remembrance into shallow events if you don't have a sad expression on your face then something is wrong with you. For me, it is far more painful when people don't observe Yom Kippur, but what can I do about it? Nothing. So don't coerce me to be sad," he said. It is not a day of courage And still, despite all the fighting words, all the prominent haredi rabbis support honoring the national days of remembrance. They generally oppose upsetting the secular public. "Rabbi Elyashiv specifically said that everyone must rise during the moment of silence and that things that could provoke hatred must not be pursued, but when there was a lesson at the Caravan Rabbi Elyashiv's mythological synagogue and the siren sounded, it didn't even occur to anyone to rise up and observe the moment of silence," Halbertal maintained. Even the current leader of the Lithuanian Ashkenazi haredi sect, Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman, is of a similar mind. One of Shteinman's associates recounted that "one time, the rabbi was traveling to Haifa, and on the way the siren sounded. The rabbi instructed [the driver] to immediately stop on the side of the road, just to honor God's name. Obviously at home he would not have observed the moment of silence. But in public, he does." Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef also has the same attitude toward the siren, but his stance is slightly more complex. In his books, he quotes the Chazon Ish (Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz) and writes, "The proposal to observe [a day of mourning on Holocaust Remembrance Day] is to belittle, God forbid, the foundations of the Halachah (Jewish Law), and it should be removed from the agenda before it is even raised." Rabbi Moshe Shafir, editor of the Torah supplement of the Shas mouthpiece Yom LeYom, explained that "according to the rabbi (Yosef), it is not proper for us to decide when Holocaust Remembrance Day should be, because God intended to strike us. He who gets slapped stands ashamed in the corner. He doesn't mark it as a day of courage." According to Shafir, "The rabbi respects the memory of the victims in the Jewish way, through prayer and Torah study. Everyone remembers how the rabbi gave his soul to release the widows of missing soldiers from binding marriages after the wars. He didn't sleep for days in order to ease their suffering. Therefore, the issue of standing during the moment of silence is marginal."
