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I live on the seam in a neighborhood divided between Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox.
And in my neighbor’s words: It’s a dumpster fire. And we’re watching it spread across the country as everyone’s hands are tied, with a mumbled wish: “This too shall pass.”
I’d like to ask all of those who don’t live on the edge of this dumpster fire to please hold off on your kumbaya suggestions until you’ve lived with it consistently on your back porch. Not two streets away, but on your doorstep – where you witness hate-filled riots every single week, year in and year out, and see it spread.
You’re not seeing the scale, intensity, and insidiousness of this brand of Haredi extremism that realizes how easily and willingly its growing masses can shut down the country. But I hope the next election brings change or that someone higher up will wake up and unbind the hands of law enforcement.
Oh, the Difference a Front Row Seat Makes
I live on the street that borders both the dati leumi (religious Zionist) and the Haredi neighborhoods in Beit Shemesh, a city approximately halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. We have a front row seat to Haredi extremism that political, religious, and community leaders talk about in the abstract. A view that even our neighbors one street away in our same neighborhood do not have. Visitors and even new neighbors see a riot on our street and say, “That’s awful! But it’ll get taken care of. Just a handful of hundreds of extremists throwing a tantrum. Just add more ahavat Yisrael (love for the Jewish people)…”
Funny, I think. We/the world has made this mistake before. But I understand that it’s hard to predict the future. Even the CIA declared that “Iran was not in a revolutionary situation” in 1978 (the shah was overthrown by the ayatollah in 1979).
The line of thinking for most people goes something like this: It’s a small minority of kitzonim (extremists), not the vast........