Rabbi Reuven Hammer Decries Growth of Religious Intolerance in Israel

Religious intolerance is growing in Israel. Writing in The Jerusalem Report (Oct. 2, 2017), Rabbi Reuven Hammer, a past president of the International Rabbinical Assembly, notes that, “I have never been able to fathom how religious Jews can justify actions, including rabbinic injunctions, that discriminate against non-Jews, be they Muslims or Christians. Do they not realize that such discrimination is forbidden by Jewish teachings?”

Since 2009, at least 53 churches and mosques have been vandalized in Israel and in the occupied West Bank. The vast majority, 53, have been closed without any charges against perpetrators.

In an attack on Sept. 20, vandals shattered a statue of the Virgin Mary, broke stained glass windows and destroyed a cross in St. Stephen’s Church in the Beit Jamal Salesian Monastery west of Jerusalem. This was the third attack on Beit Jamal in the past four years. No arrests have ever been made.

Wadie Abunassar, adviser to the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land, says, “We are fed up with repeated attacks on holy places and with Israeli authorities who have failed to deal with the phenomenon.” He reports that there is constant incitement by extremist rabbis inspiring such actions and cites the 2009 best-seller, The King’s Torah, written by Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur. The book declares, “The prohibition ‘Thou Shalt Not Murder’ applies only to a Jew who kills a Jew.”

Among figures encouraging attacks on churches and mosques is Bentzi Gopstein, the head of Lehava, a vigilante group that opposes marriage between Jews and non-Jews. In 2015, Gopstein publicly called for the burning of churches and mosques. The Vatican urged Israel to charge Gopstein with incitement to violence and terrorism. Months later, Gopstein wrote an article calling Christians “blood-sucking vampires” and urging their expulsion from the country. No action has been taken against him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ignored calls from Christian religious leaders to discuss this growing problem.

Rabbi Hammer recalls that after he moved to Israel, when his children were in state religious schools, “I was astounded when my son would recount that when their bus would go through Arab areas on school trips, many of his classmates would shout anti-Arab curses through the windows and the teachers would not reprove them. As time goes on, I have witnessed actions worse than those — yeshiva students spitting at non-Jews; attempts at burning churches; and the actions of revenge, including burning an Arab house, killing several inside, and the murder of an innocent Arab teenager. We have read about rulings by official rabbis forbidding Jews to rent rooms to Arab students and worst of all, we have witnessed the publication of a book such as Torat Hamelech, written by rabbis and endorsed by well known rabbinic figures, permitting the killing of Arabs, including children … If such a book had been written by a Christian or Muslim cleric we would have condemned it as nothing less than incitement to murder. Have we come to our own state in which Jews are a majority only to see Judaism used as an excuse to despise non-Jews and discriminate against them?”

In Jewish tradition, Rabbi Hammer says, there are indeed individual rulings and statements that argue that Jews are superior to non-Jews and rulings that permit discrimination. But, he argues, “These negative ideas were far outweighed by teachings of the Torah, the sages and medieval authorities … Such prominent figures as Rabbi Akiva and Rabban Gamaliel actively opposed such laws and even nullified them … As for Jewish superiority … the sages constantly cite the Torah’s declaration that all humans are made in God’s image and that all humanity has only one set of parents … Judaism in Israel, all too often, has become the exclusive tool of fanatics — both religious and political … Judaism teaches that all | human beings are made in the divine image and that other religions are to be respected. To condemn all Arabs is to do to them what was done to Jews throughout history … Let us not do unto others what was done unto us.”

In November, religious intolerance in Israel manifested itself at the Western Wall when a delegation of Reform movement leaders tried to hold a Torah-reading service at the site.

According to Haaretz (Nov. 16, 2017), “Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, was roughed up by security guards employed at the Western Wall, one of whom threatened to spray him with mace, according to eyewitnesses. Anat Hoffman, chairwoman of Women of the Wall, the feminist prayer group, was accosted by an ultra-Orthodox man, who tried to pull a Torah scroll out of her hands. Rabbi Gilad Kariv, executive director of the Reform movement in Israel, was detained for questioning by police after the incident, which he described as ‘one of the most violent’ he ever witnessed at the Jewish holy site.” •