Religion in Israel: The Differences Between and Within

Today's New York Times has an article about the sexism in Israel among the Haredim Jews, those Ultra-Orthodox including Hassidim, who recently gave an award to a woman pediatrician for her research on Jewish genetic diseases, but made her husband accept the prize for her because, being female, she was contaminated. The Haredim Jews are increasingly monopolozing the Israeli government and way of life. Like the Islamists threatening to take over the revolution in Egypt from the more moderate Egyptians, the Haredim are a growing fanatical faction that used to live in self-contained enclaves where your car would get stoned if you ever drove through on the Sabbath and now live all over Israel, trying to spread their ancient and often despicable values, like the adult men who spat on a Modern Orthodox eight-year-old girl from the U.S. on her way to school recently because they felt she was immodestly dressed, and called her a prostitute. The girl is now terrified to walk to school.

I have a particular hatred of Haredim. I was sexually abused by one, a friend of the family in Israel, when I was ten. He was my uncle's best friend at the time, a Mr. Toledano. They grew up together in Tangiers. I always considered my uncle kind of creepy, too. He used to play scary, sadistic chasing games with me as a child. He convinced me at one point that he would flush me down the toilet. I was only five.

I must have at least  a hundred Haredim relatives in Israel and have never talked to the men (nor told anyone about the abuse). Their matriarch, my mother's sister, was a loving, accepting women who survived Auschwitz with her, when they were teen-agers. I loved her house when I was a kid, when the boys were still little ruffians who could laugh it up with girls. My uncle worked in the diamond business in Switzerland and has become wealthy enough to support all seven of his children and each of their zillions of grandchildren, up to ten each. Which is a good thing, since Haredi men pridefully don't work and instead get subsidies from the government to study Torah. They boycott the army, not for any humanitarian reasons, but because they claim their Torah study is superior to military engagement in keeping Israel safe. Given their hatred of that ten year old girl, you can imagine their dehumanization of Arabs. They are pathetic, mysogynistic cowards. My sister visited one of my cousins a few years ago and talked about how great it was that our cousin's husband drove her everywhere. He has eight children. His wife does some teaching. He doesn't work at all and they don't take attendance at Torah school, apparently. Sure, I'd drive relatives around too if I didn't have to work.

When I lived in Israel in 1974, I remember people saying that it was a good thing the Israelis were in conflict with the Arabs, because if they weren't, they'd kill each other. The divide between the religious and non-religious Jews in Israel is deep and bitter. The Haredim tend to monopolize all agendas. The Haredim have always taken an ambivalent stance against the state of Israel itself, viewing it as doomed to failure because it's premature: the Messiah has not yet arrived.  Nevethetheless, it has not stopped the Haredim from manipulating and taking advantage of the government for subsidies and special treatment and pushing their agenda of making Israel a state so religious as to rival the Taliban.