The first major protest against the Israeli Supreme Court was held in Jerusalem on February 14, 1999, when an estimated 350,000 demonstrators called on the justices not to interfere in matters of religion.
Nearly all of them were ultra-Orthodox Jews, though a few came from the Nationalist-Haredi community. The protest was held on the orders of the senior Haredi rabbis. The prime minister at the time was Benjamin Netanyahu, near the end of his disastrous first term in office. He tried to urge the rabbis to call off the protest, saying it would harm “unity.”
The truth was that, back then, very few outside the Haredi community opposed the top court and Netanyahu was afraid of losing votes in the upcoming election. Rabbi Yitzhak Levy, then-leader of the National Religious Party (the forerunner of today’s Religious Zionism party), made it clear he would not be taking part. Furthermore, in at least some of the religious Zionist yeshivas, rabbis told their students that respect for the law courts was a fundamental part of Jewish belief.
Fast-forward 24 years and another large demonstration was held against the Supreme Court in Jerusalem on Thursday. This time, the organizers were members of Netanyahu’s Likud and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism parties. The slogan for the demonstration promised a million protesters; in the end, there were large crowds in the demonstration - Israel's television channels reported approximately 150,000 people participated - but nowhere close to the one million mark. One key group was missing.
You would expect the Haredi leadership to be overjoyed that the rest of the religious/right-wing ruling coalition had come over to them and was now united with them against the judiciary. They are. But they didn’t join the protest.
In fact, many senior rabbis and yeshiva heads expressly told their students not to go. Yated Ne’eman – the mouthpiece of the “Lithuanian” non-Hasidic rabbis, and also the approved font of Haredi ideology – even ran an editorial Thursday with the headline “What is a Cohen [priest] doing in a cemetery?” This was a reference to the talmudic saying that means a God-fearing Jew has no business being there.
According to Yated writer Yisrael Friedman, “We’re going with the right clearly under the instruction of our rabbis, but we are not part of and won’t embark on a joint campaign. We’re for the legal reform and against the liberal terror taking over the nation’s life dictatorially. But anyone who is Haredi will not be [at the demonstration]. … Whoever goes to the right-wing’s protests is not part of our community. Not one of us. His citizenship of God’s home is revoked. … We must not allow their type to sow an evil wind of blurring among us. Otherwise, God forbid, we could reap a storm.”
There are several levels to this ultra-Orthodox abhorrence at taking part in “non-Haredi” demonstrations. On the most immediate level, the opposition comes from political considerations. The leaders of the ultra-Orthodox parties were originally among the primary movers behind the Netanyahu government’s rapid judicial overhaul. However, they were also among the first to realize that the way it was being pursued was causing major damage to Israeli society – especially to their sensitive place in it – once the pro-democracy protests became overwhelmingly a matter of secular Israel objecting to a Haredi takeover.
That was when they started to quietly urge Netanyahu to back down and tried to minimize any connection they had with the legislation. The last thing they want now is to be seen as part of the campaign trying to salvage the “legal reform,” which even Netanyahu is now distancing himself from.
But there are deeper ideological reasons. The Haredi leaders know that their ideal version of a Jewish state is very different to that of their non-Haredi allies on the right. They don’t want to reform the Supreme Court – they want it to disappear.
The very idea of a secular Supreme Court, even a much weaker one that doesn’t interfere with government policy or legislation, is anathema to them. Any court that doesn’t rule according to their narrow version of the laws of the Torah is a heresy. Especially if such a court is in the Jewish state.
The theocracy the Haredi leadership dreams of may have some elements in common with the authoritarian dreams of some of Netanyahu’s hard-core acolytes. But it is still a very different place to the uber-nationalist, illiberal democracy that today’s Likud desires.
Also, unlike the pro-Netanyahu right that has convinced itself that it and the Haredi parties are “natural allies,” the rabbis understand that this is a tactical-political alliance, not an ideological one. It is imperative to them that their own followers, especially the younger ones, understand this.
Some Haredim have joined anti-Supreme Court protests as individuals. The rabbis can take that. But if hundreds of thousands were to have joined, it would have been an erosion of their power over the community. They cannot allow a situation whereby non-Haredi politicians could summon a large part of their flock. For them, such a connection would have been insufferable. It would have been a legitimization of an alternative leadership.
Ultimately, the success of Jewish ultra-Orthodoxy in rebuilding itself in Israel and the West, after so many of its members were exterminated in the Holocaust and their center of life in Eastern Europe had been destroyed, is down to self-isolation. Only by complete separation from the outside world could the alien influences be kept out and new generations be educated “with purity.”
That was eight decades ago and today’s Haredi community, in Israel and overseas, is larger and more successful than at any previous time in history. But the rabbis can’t adapt. Even though the self-isolation is rapidly eroding and many of today’s young Haredim yearn for more contact with the outside world (and are increasingly finding ways to have that contact), the rabbis must keep up appearances.
There is no way they could ever sanction Haredim joining a non-Haredi-organized event, even of their political allies.
They Hate Israel’s Supreme Court, but Didn't Join the Right-wing Protest Against It
11
0
27.04.2023
The first major protest against the Israeli Supreme Court was held in Jerusalem on February 14, 1999, when an estimated 350,000 demonstrators called on the justices not to interfere in matters of religion.
Nearly all of them were ultra-Orthodox Jews, though a few came from the Nationalist-Haredi community. The protest was held on the orders of the senior Haredi rabbis. The prime minister at the time was Benjamin Netanyahu, near the end of his disastrous first term in office. He tried to urge the rabbis to call off the protest, saying it would harm “unity.”
The truth was that, back then, very few outside the Haredi community opposed the top court and Netanyahu was afraid of losing votes in the upcoming election. Rabbi Yitzhak Levy, then-leader of the National Religious Party (the forerunner of today’s Religious Zionism party), made it clear he would not be taking part. Furthermore, in at least some of the religious Zionist yeshivas, rabbis told their students that respect for the law courts was a fundamental part of Jewish belief.
Fast-forward 24 years and another large demonstration was held against the Supreme Court in Jerusalem on Thursday. This time, the organizers were members of Netanyahu’s Likud and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism parties. The slogan for the demonstration promised a million protesters; in the end, there were large crowds in the demonstration - Israel's television channels reported approximately 150,000 people participated - but nowhere close to the one million mark. One key........
© Haaretz
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Andrew Mitrovica
Belen Fernandez
Marwan Bishara
Timotej Milanov
Tafi Mhaka
Grant Arthur Gochin
Ahmadi Ali
