Focus on Issues: Polarization and Discord Still Divide the Jewish People

It has been eight months since the Jewish world shuddered in collective horror when Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by another Jew.

It has been eight months since leaders from one end of the Jewish political and religious spectrum to the other called for introspection, and eight months since Jews were forced to consider who they had become if some of their mainstream religious institutions could produce a Yigal Amir.

On Tisha B’Av, the holy day that commemorates the ruin of the First and Second Temples and that falls this year on Thursday, tradition reminds Jews that the place where God dwelled was destroyed because of “Sinat Chinam,” the baseless hatred of one Jew for another.

Does hatred today threaten to destroy the peoplehood of the Jews just as it brought down the physical building that once housed the purest manifestation of divine will?

Some see that kind of hatred between Jews being played out today, while others say the degree of polarization has been diminished, that Jews have learned the lessons about the power of words from Rabin’s murder.

Several recent events in the United States and in Israel reflect what many agree is a deep animus and polarization dividing Jews into enemy camps, where opinions are framed in extremes of black and white and there seems to be little common ground:

The Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, Eliyahu Bakshi Doron, termed Reform Judaism “a plague” and compared Reform rabbis to a biblical figure who was murdered because of his involvement with a non-Jewish woman. The rabbinic leader praised the killing of Zimri by Pinchas as a terrible deed done for the greater good, much as a doctor must excise a cancer.

When Jerusalem leaders agreed to close off on Shabbat Bar Ilan Street, a road that links one end of the secular part of the city to another but runs through a devoutly religious neighborhood, violent demonstrations ensued.

Fervently Orthodox protesters screamed “Nazis!” at police brought in to restore order. Secularists drove through the street on Shabbat just to irk the haredim and some haredim responded by hurling rocks at them.

Several dozen of the 3,000 people attending a reception in New York for the new prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, booed when Israel’s consul general in New York, Colette Avital, was introduced.

When the executive director of Americans for Peace Now identified himself before directing a question to the new prime minister at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, several people in the audience hissed at him.

Shortly after Netanyahu was elected, some supporters stood outside New York’s Israeli Consulate holding a banner addressed to Avital that said: “Shalom Chavera,” echoing the phrase “Shalom Chaver,” which was coined by President Clinton in his eulogy for Rabin.

Some see parallels between what is happening today and the Sinat Chinam that destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, the very center of Jewish life.

“Some ask why we still fast on Tisha B’Av. It is this very Sinat Chinam that we are now seeing,” said Rabbi Andrew Sacks, who runs the Israel office of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly.

“Until there is an end to this behavior by Jews against other Jews — then there is a need for Tisha B’Av to remind us,” he said in an essay about the protests on Bar Ilan Street that he distributed on the Internet.

Others say that when hatred is based on religious ideology, when one Jew hates another because he or she believes that the other is going against God’s will, it does not qualify as “causeless hatred.”

Rabbi David Zwiebel, a leader of Agudath Israel of America, which represents the interests of the fervently Orthodox, subscribes to this view.

But he takes exception to the mode of opposition.

The Talmud says “destroy the sin, not the sinners,” Zwiebel said. “Even when we need to be intransigent, we need to do so with civility.”

There are differences of opinion about whether the recent booing and hissing is part of the same phenomenon as the incendiary rhetoric that many believed gave license to Rabin’s murderer.

In the months leading up to Rabin’s assassination Nov. 4, some at rallies protesting the peace process carried signs of Rabin’s and Peres’ faces over Nazi uniforms and called them traitors. A few rabbinic authorities deemed them a threat to the existence of Israel.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents, believes that there is a difference between the recent booing and hissing “and the language of violence and accusations we heard a few months ago.”

Rabbi Norman Lamm, president of Yeshiva University, agreed.

“Hissing a Peace Now man whose policies you are opposed to” is different than calling for the murder of the prime minister of Israel, he said.

“I don’t think the situation is as bad as before,” the rabbi said. “Lessons have been learned. The general feeling I get in the Orthodox community is that there’s been a real change. People are no longer quite as loose with their tongues as they used to be.

A leader of the Israel Policy Forum, a pro-peace process group, said he had noticed the same shift. But he attributed it to the way Peres’ supporters had handled their loss.

“As much as pro-peace process American Jews may have been disappointed by the results of the election, there is no fanatic element trying to create a fear- dominated atmosphere,” said Jonathan Jacoby, executive vice president of the forum.

Has the Jewish community learned the lesson from Rabin’s assassination that words contain the power of life and death?

In haredi circles, “there’s been a lot of writing and reflection on it, but things have gone on in the world that trouble those of us who think civility is a precious commodity which needs to be nurtured,” said Agudath’s Zwiebel.

“Whether it’s the few loudmouths who are dominating the headlines or is more endemic, it is hard to say.”

Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary, said, “I don’t think that we have lowered the decibels since the assassination.

“There were a lot of expressions of determination to do so in the anguish of Rabin’s murder, but I don’t see a lot of restraint out there in the community.”

In the view of the Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center, some Jews have “sadly not learned the lessons of Rabin’s murder.”

He pointed to the fact that American Orthodox organizations have not condemned Bakshi Doron’s remarks about Reform Jews, while the Reform and Conservative movements had.

It “offers a very pessimistic outlook as to whether we can reconcile our differences and enhance understanding,” he said.

By the same token, a representative of the Orthodox Union faulted the Reform movement for ratcheting up the rhetoric in its response to Bakshi Doron’s remarks by misinterpreting them.

“You have to be a dope to think that’s what Bakshi Doron meant,” Rabbi Menachem Genack, the O.U.’s rabbinic administrator said, referring to those who interpreted the chief rabbi’s remarks as a license to kill Reform rabbis.

“Those who promote pluralism ought to be more generous in their assessment of other people. It shows that there’s a very polarized climate,” he said.

On that point, at least, there is widespread agreement.

“There’s no dialogue any more,” Schorsch said. “The communities are totally different. They live in different neighborhoods, go to different schools. They certainly don’t speak.”

“That separation promotes antagonism and suspicion,” he said. “There is desperate need for some dialogue, for each group to begin to think about what’s good for the welfare of Israel and not just what’s good for the welfare of their own community.”