Jerusalem – Haredi Rioters Deeply Guilty In Desecration of Hashem’s Name

Jerusalem – Yes, yes, there is a media double standard when it comes to haredim. That’s nothing new.

And so, when thousands of Iranians poured into Tehran’s streets in protest of what they saw as a fraudulent presidential election, the press emphasis was not on the protesters who threw rocks, set trash bins aflame and vandalized public property. The focus, rightly, was on the bulk of the crowd, peaceful protesters of what they believed to be a fraudulent election.

When tens of thousands of haredim, though, demonstrated in Yeushalayim in reaction to a decision by the local municipality to open a public parking lot on Shabbos, increasing traffic in the heart of the Holy City and disturbing the peacefulness of the day of rest, the main coverage was not of the overwhelming mass of the crowd, peacefully standing up for the sanctity of Shabbos – but rather of the tiny fraction of the crowd that… threw rocks, set trash bins aflame and vandalized public property.

But that fraction of the crowd cannot be ignored by those of us who cringed at, and remain shamed by, its ugly behavior. The rioters may have been boys, but they were our boys. And if boys of ours can imagine that acts of destruction and hooliganism are somehow the right way to stand up for Shabbos’ honor (leave aside the way to bring non-observant Jews to appreciate the day that is me’ein olam haboh), there is much, much work to be done to teach them what Torah is and what it isn’t.

And, yes, yes, again, there are unanswered questions about the arrest of a Chasiddishe mother of a long hospitalized child on suspicion of having starved him. The media, quoting hospital authorities, said that the woman was suffering from a mental illness that compels a person to invent or create symptoms of illness, sometimes in another person, in order to garner medical attention.

The hospital video footage, moreover, that authorities said showed the mother removing the child’s feeding tube 20 times has yet, at least at this writing, to be released. And why did the hospital not act after the first tube removal? Or the tenth?

Why, further, if the woman is in fact mentally ill, was a simple restraining order not obtained, barring her from contact with the child? Why did the police choose instead to slap handcuffs on the five-months pregnant woman in public (and in front of a summoned press) and place her in a jail cell (with an accused spouse-killer, an Arab woman, as a cellmate)?

None of us can know with certainty at this point the answers to those questions – or whether the woman at issue is a would-be murderess, a sufferer of mental illness or a caring mother wrongly accused.

What we can know, though, is that the reaction of some members of her community and some other haredim was horrible abuse of its own sort. To review in any detail even a sampling of the repulsive behavior in which some religious Jews engaged would only increase the desecration of Hasehm’s name it embodied. There may well have been grounds for protest – and civil protest is a fundamental right in a democracy – but there were no grounds for violence. None.

That judgment was made unequivocally by, among others, Rav Moshe Sternbuch. “Anyone,” he wrote, referring to the riotous behavior, “who commits acts of violence declares that he doesn’t belong to our community.”

Insulting another, of course, is a grave violation of halacha, as is causing him physical harm. Destroying another’s property – or communal property or, for that matter, one’s own property – is also forbidden by the Torah. No exceptions have ever been made in the poskim for instances where a government policy or action is not to one’s liking. How ironic that the idealization of boorishness and destructiveness – most prominently embraced by the criminal world and Hollywood – should have managed to infiltrate the relatively insular haredi world – a world that clearly stands for diametric ideals.

This time of Jewish year, Torah-conscious Jews are focused on the destruction of the Botei Mikdosh. The second Beis Hamikdosh, whose destruction led to our current golus, was destroyed, Chazal teach, “because of sin’as chinom,” “baseless hatred.”

The recent rioters in Yerushalayim may well have believed their hatred to have had ample basis. But, whatever their rationalizations, their actions evoked disgust in Jews the world over, some of whom, tragically, will generalize from the rioters’ bad example and bear ill will toward haredim as a group.

And so, even if the violent protesters believe that they are innocent of baseless hatred, they should be made to confront the fact that they are deeply guilty of promoting it.