torat hamelech part two

Yitzhak Shapira, one of the two authors of Torat Hamelech, was arrested today.

vaad bayit

The apartment residents in my building just finished a meeting. It was hilarious.

There were twelve people including me. Most of the time, two to five of the participants were speaking and gesturing vigorously. The three main topics were the gardener, a potential addition to the building, and the building manager.

Gavriel, the older man who lives closest to Ari and me, would raise an occasional objection and be shushed by almost everyone else present. There were two people named Yaniv, one of whom was the building manager and one of whom translated for me once in a while.

The garden hasn't been tended for months but Gavriel objected to bringing the gardener back. Yaniv the translator explained that Gavriel hated the old gardener.

Yaniv the translator introduced a proposal is to add a room and a porch to each existing apartment and two floors to the whole building.

Yaniv the building manager said there were a lot of rude people (chutzpanim), so he wanted to turn his duties over to a professional, which would cost more. But he'd be willing to continue in his role if he got as much money as would have to be paid to the professional.

torat hamelech

I regularly participate in a discussion group run by Habonim Dror for movement people around my age. One issue we discussed today was the book Torat Hamelech. I did not know about the book until I saw this article in the Forward, but its publication apparently got some news coverage a few months ago. Israeli officials arrested 10 settlers on January 18 from the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, which published Torat Hamelech, for burning a mosque in an Arab village in December.

My understanding is that Torat Hamelech presents itself as a halachic analysis of when it is acceptable to kill non-Jews. From the Forward:

Despite the precedent set by previous Israeli attorneys general in the last decade and a half to file criminal charges against settler rabbis who publish commentaries supporting violence against non-Jews, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has so far remained mum about "The King's Torah."

Why is Mazuz remaining mum?

Previous governments took a tougher stance against such publications, [Yair Sheleg] said, but "paradoxically, because the tension between the general settler population and the Israeli judicial system…is high now, the attorney general is careful not to heighten the tension."

Zohar, an Israeli who helps lead the discussion group, translated a few excerpts from Torat Hamelech. From what Zohar showed us, it looks like the first chapters establish a principle that killing non-Jews is justified in a variety of specific situations. The later chapters broaden the principle and essentially condone violence in many situations.

Here is one excerpt translated by Zohar that supports individual, rather than collective, decisions about when to attack non-Jewish communities:

There is no need for the nation to decide to allow the killing of a different nation, and individuals of the attacked nation can also hurt them; for Simeon and Levy are not the authority but individuals in the house of Jacob (that resist their acts), and yet it was allowed to kill the people of Shechem since a nation has hurt another nation, and it is not the official decision of the attacked nation that allows the attack on the offensive.

I have a gut feeling that this book is a distortion of halacha, but I am going to leave the argument about its halachic validity to others who know better.

Even if it is halachically valid, the laws of the state must be enforced, and Torat Hamelech violates them by inciting violence.

the game

My roommate Ari and I enjoy pointing out to each other "Israeli things" we find frustrating. One frustrating thing is that service employees have a mentality which is not very service-oriented. I doubt anyone from Bezeq, Orange, or Discount Bank has ever said "the customer is always right". I wouldn't even want employees to treat customers like they are always right, but a slight shift in that general direction might be nice.

Since such a shift seems unlikely, I've started treating my interactions with service employees like a game: the Frustration Game.

The inspiration for the game came when Ari and I went to pick up a modem from a Bezeq outlet as directed by a Bezeq employee Ari spoke with on the phone. I was just along for the ride, since all the interactions were in rapid Hebrew. The employee at the outlet told us initially that she could not give us a modem and that we should come back another day. After a long discussion, she gave us a modem. It seemed pretty clear that she reacted when Ari started showing the proper amount of frustration--the amount necessary for her to decide to help us.

Thus, playing the game means figuring out what the proper amount of frustration is and pretending to be that frustrated right away.

The game worked to great effect at Shufersal, a grocery store. I was expecting to get cash for returning glass bottles. I found out later that you're supposed to ask one of the clerks to count how many bottles you are returning, then put them in a grocery cart in the corner. I asked the wrong clerk, who directed me towards the cart rather than counting the bottles or directing me to the correct clerk. When I asked her for the deposit money, she refused to give me any money. If I was being polite, I might have explained that there was a miscommunication, most likely due to my poor Hebrew skills. Instead, I pretended to be offended and indignant. I wasn't rude, I just showed a bit more emotion than I was actually feeling at the time. The manager came by and approved my deposit money right away.

yad tabenkin

Yad Tabenkin is the "research and documentation center of the United Kibbutz Movement". The library of Yad Tabenkin at the seminar center in Ramat Efal is shutting down a substantial portion of its English language section. I have been empowered (through Hechalutz) to claim books before they are discarded and recycled.

Before the North American machzor of boneh, my tzevet and I raided a used book store on Allenby on a budget for books related to Jewish history and Israeli society. Now the only consideration is how many books will fit in my backpack.

Is this heaven? No, it's Yad Tabenkin.

shabbat with yisroel and the 402

I spent shabbat with my cousin Yisroel in Ramat Eshkol in Jerusalem. His apartment, for the record, it is just west of the 1949 armistice line, according to Google Maps. I met his lovely wife Eliana, whom he married at the end of October.

Yisroel went through a phase of working out compulsively. He seems to have retained his appetite--and some of his physique--from that phase. I felt obliged to keep up with his eating while I was there, so I'm planning to eat my next meal on Tuesday or Wednesday. Did you know that it is a mitzvah to taste all the shabbat food before shabbat begins, and that "taste" means eat almost half as much as I would at a normal meal even though I had already eaten lunch? I learned that this shabbat from Yisroel.

Yisroel and Eliana are in Israel for another six weeks. I think this is a sort of honeymoon for them. He is studying at the Zichron Aryeh yeshiva.

The language on the street in Yisroel's neighborhood was English, not Hebrew. The dvar torah (sermon) at the service on Friday night was nominally English, but I probably would have understood more if it had been in Hebrew because it was so littered with Yiddish or Ashkenaz phrases that I did not recognize.

My understanding of the labels used for sects within orthodox Judaism improved over shabbat, specifically "haredi," "frum," "mitnagdim," and "litvak." I'll skip the explanation now to get to a more interesting conversation on the ride back to Ramat Gan.

I took the haredi (ultra-orthodox) bus from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, route 402. It has two major distinguishing features. Unlike most intercity buses, it does not stop at the central bus station in either of the cities. Instead, it travels through the orthodox neighborhoods in both. Technically Bnei Brak, on the Tel Aviv end, is its own city, but whatever. The second distinguishing feature is that it is segregated by gender. Women in the back, men in the front.

Yisroel and I argued for a little while about the significance of this. I think the symbolism of having women always sit in the back is clearly that they are second class. I told him I would accept the segregation more readily if the women sat in front half the time. Yisroel does not like the segregation either--he got in an argument with another passenger when he rode the bus one time and tried to sit in front with Eliana. He said that probably the justification for women always being in back is that men are more easily aroused and that putting men in front reduces the amount of times men might be tempted by women. He doesn't abide by this justification and would prefer mixed seating, but he also disagreed about what I claimed was the symbolism.

I stuck out like a sore thumb on the 402. These days I am wearing my hair pulled back in a ponytail. I wasn't wearing a kipah, and certainly not the white shirt black pants uniform of the haredim. A four year old boy in the seat in front of me stared at me for most of the ride. A man in his mid-20s named Yehuda sat next to me and to my surprise started a conversation with me.

We started with basics. Where are you from, what are you doing in Israel, etc. We exchanged family histories and current occupations. I think he was mostly motivated by trying to figure out why on earth I was riding the 402. (Answer: I was visiting my dati (religious) cousin in Ramat Eshkol and I live in Ramat Gan, which is next to Bnei Brak.) Now that the context is set, I'll give an abridged translation of the most interesting part of the conversation, which was entirely in Hebrew because Yehuda spoke no English. Keep in mind that I'm simplifying things significantly.

Yehuda: What kind of religious Jew is your cousin?
Ben: Litvak. [Yisroel self-identified as Litvak when I asked him.] What about you?
Y: Also Litvak. What about you?
B: Conservative.
Y: Is your father conservative?
B: Yes.
Y: Really? [He seemed shocked by this.]
B: Yes.
Y: Why not orthodox?
B: What do you mean?
Y: Orthodox is real Judaism. ["amiti" - a word I learned from reading the label on mayonnaise]
B: Orthodox is real Judaism, and conservative is real Judaism.
Y: Jews in the time of King David were orthodox.
B: In the time of King David, they weren't even called Jews yet. They were Hebrews or Israelites. The term "Jew" comes from the kingdom of Judea, after the split between the northern and southern kingdoms.
Y: The Judaism they practiced was orthodox Judaism. They had the temple and the holidays.
B: There are many differences between their Judaism and orthodox Judaism today, and there are also many differences between their Judaism and conservative Judaism today. Judaism changes over time.
Y: Orthodox Judaism today can be traced in a direct line through the rabbis back to King David.
B: It is inaccurate to talk about King David as a part of the chain of tradition that goes back to Moses at Sinai because the kings and the priests were excluded from that chain.

At some points in the conversation I made nitpick-y points (particularly the last one) because my Hebrew wasn't good enough to say what I really wanted to say. I'm quite pleased with the conversation in general because we were disagreeing politely and engaging honestly.

Yehuda and I exchanged phone numbers. I think he wants to recommend a seminar to me. I want to find a Litvak who is willing and able to talk to my chanichim about politics.