Finally I found the time to leaf through a book that made some noise around these parts. The book is: “Torat Hamelech” (“The King’s Law”), and now I’ve got aquariums on my mind.
Published in 2009 at a yeshiva (School of Jewish religious studies) in the West Bank, the book deals with the killing of non-Jews according to Jewish law. Composed by Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur, the book states among other things that the killing of non-Jewish children is permitted when a risk exists that they turn into enemies of the Jewish people upon growing older.
At this point in history, the state of Israel still appears to take an issue with such a blatant call for genocide. shapira was arrested at the yeshiva and copies of the book were confescated.
Rabbis who condoned the book, among them members of the state rabbinical authorities such as Rabbi Dov Lior, were called to be interrogated. Lior did not report to the police station on the set date and was recently arrested. His arrest, however brief, provoked his desciples to riot and storm the supreme court building. It brought the book back into attention, and brought aquariums to my mind.
See, if you have an aquarium full of regular fish, and you throw in some predator fish such as pike, very soon your other fish will vanish and all you’ll have is an aquarium full of pike. think of Israel as an aquarium of Judaism. Is it possible that a violent breed of our culture endangers, within its bounds, the very existence of Judaism as we know it?
Reversing Jewish history
Granted, while violence in Jewish history was mostly used against jews, violent or at least incompassionate ideas do exist in Jewish literature. Our culture has its roots in ancient tribalism and ages of volnurability often made it too defensive to wave the flag of humaniusm. “The King’s Law” kicks off with a quote from Rabbi, doctor and philosopher Maimonides (12th century), who stated that the commendment “Thou shalt not kill” applies to the killing of Jews only, and that the killing of non-Jews is restricted by a warning given to Noah: “Whoever spills human blood shall have his own blood spilled by man” (Gen. 9.6).
Yes, but Judaism changed since the days of Maimonides, and came to be humanist to the core. At the turn of the 20th century, just as the panels were beginning to join to create the Israeli aquarium, at a time when antisemitism should have made Jewish culture more defensive than ever, Jewish culture was indeed synonymous with humanism. We were Einstein. We were Freud. We were Modegliani. We were the unique, creative and educated communities of Casablanca, New York, Monastir… We were my grandfather, a religious Jew who believed deeply in humanist values.
We are not all Dov Lior and Yitzhak Shapira these days. Not all religious Zionists are, either. However, those of us not so keen on killing children, and who are trapped inside the aquarium with them and their followers can’t be blamed for feeling a bit threatened. To the best of my knowledge, Shapira himself kills non-Jewish children only indirectly, by permitting heavily armed settlers and soldiers to do so. (Remember, this is no mystery novel, it’s a compendium of rabbinical decrees, read as law). He does, however, kill Jewish history direcly, by reverting it to Maimonidean tribalism.
Losing oxygen in the tank
To a great extent, this tribalism does not recognize me as member of the tribe. The pike does what it can to keep its habitat exclusive. Take the Reform and Conservative movements in Judaism, both of them stick with values developed over millenia of Jewish history, and their members are treated as unwanted guests in Israel. The result is a deepening void between Israeli Judaism and that of the diaspora. The glass panels of the aquarium are growing thicker and and less transparent.
Before finally quitting the ichthyological metaphore, allow me clarify. I am not speaking of predator Jews. This would be an obscene, antisemitic concept. Those who fall into the trap of Shapira and Elitzur are not wicked but blinded. I’ll be extra tolerant and say the same of The King’s Law’s authors themselves. They are delusional, not monsters. They are suffering from a serious lack of oxygen in the tank: the oxygen of empathy, the oxygen of common sense, the oxygen of humanism.
I am, however, speaking of predatory Judaism, or what proports to be Judaism, and which is the cultural current producing and spurring on these Rabbis’ delusions. Its chief victim is its own, non-predatory variant: the precious legacy of my ancestors, that which I wished to hand on to my children, but may not be able to do so on this soil.