LOOKING AROUND: Sunshine from Beit Shemesh
By Barbara Sofer
January, 03 2002
"Are you now satisfied?" So wrote a member of the e-mail discussion group in Beit Shemesh this week, criticizing those members of the community who didn't accept the proffered solutions to the burning of a New Testament in a school courtyard. He goes on: "You have contributed so much to the condemnation of the Jewish People and to desecration of God's name."
He's wrong.
There is indeed a lot of ugliness in the sad story of the book burning in Beit Shemesh, beginning with the missionaries preying on vulnerable immigrant youngsters. Each of us would be furious if our offspring were proselytized in the street. The work of missionaries is illegal, and law enforcement is supposed to protect our children from it. But the image of an 11-year-old bringing what he assumes is a Hebrew Bible to school, having his teacher confiscate it and publicly burn it, the teacher pronouncing the act an honor, also makes me wince.
Our people has had more than its share of book burning. Not only have anti-Semites torched our beloved texts, but we, too, have tried to burn away ideas that don't jibe with our outlook. We wince to remember that a group of pious Jews stood around a pile of Maimonides's works.
The narrow-mindedness of book burning is exactly what we don't want our schools to educate the next generation of Israelis to display. But in the ugliness, let us not overlook the sunshine. A new vocal community, mostly religious immigrants from English-speaking countries, overcame strong social pressure to stand firmly against the book burning. They demanded accountability by the putative educators who had taken part.
This community deserves our plaudits and support, not our censure.
The act of book burning, the principal's approval, the suggestion of a rabbi that the book should have been burned only in private, were discussed at length on an on-line list-serve that functions as an information and support system for people in Beit Shemesh. Most participants are English-speaking immigrants, and the list is part of the website of Beit Shemesh/Ramat Beit Shemesh (http://www.shemesh.co.il).
Log on to give yourself a treat. How many communities in development towns or elsewhere even have a Web Site, let alone a clear and useful one like this? You can post a job, find an outlet for charity and hesed, learn about a new babysitting service and rent an apartment. The website represents a community using the power of self-help to get through difficult times.
Likewise, the list-serve goes beyond exchanging tips, allowing issues to air in an intelligent, respectful way.
Even though the list-serve isn't usually of much interest to people outside Beit Shemesh, some participants were concerned about discussing such a hot issue, lest others hear of it. On one hand, like most Torah-observant Jews, they are anguished by exposing negative incidents in the religious world. None of us is so naive as to think that those who spurn the Torah aren't poised to seize "proof" to validate their views, be they self-hating Jews or anti-Semites.
On the other hand, they knew that hushing up immoral action within a community, supposedly to be taken care of internally, can turn malignant. Moreover, they knew that the more one is involved and committed to a community, the greater is the responsibility to create a set of checks and balances. Outside publicity, even when we don't welcome it, can firm our own flabby muscle in dealing with problems within our community. Exposure, like air on a wound, usually does more good than harm in the end.
Nonetheless, the parents of Beit Shemesh didn't call a news conference to make public their demands for the school to rectify its mistake. Their discussion simply leaked out, as interesting stories inevitably do in Israel.
That the incident was first reported in this paper and not the Hebrew press reflects the central role of English speakers in this conflict. Sixty percent of the children in the Orot State Religious School where the New Testament was burned are English speakers. I have to wonder if the readers who wrote criticizing The Jerusalem's Post's exposure of the issue would want to pay for a newspaper that skirts unpleasantness and prints only their views.
The author of "are you now satisfied?" made his fellow Beit Shemesh citizens the object of his criticism, instead of those who caused the desecration of God's name in the first place.
Meretz Knesset member Ran Cohen declared that he was "astounded" by the case. He demanded that Education Minister Limor Livnat deplore it.(She did.)
What was missing from Cohen's astonishment was praise for a community that simply wouldn't settle for a facile answer. These weren't secular Israelis who "saved" vulnerable immigrants from religious fanatics. The prime movers were themselves deeply religious immigrants who saw their protest as an expression of their Jewish and democratic values.
Let's break a few stereotypes, Mr. Cohen.
Often, those of us who have absorbed the positive values extant in such open systems of government feel self-conscious about expressing our positive democratic views, as if citizens who have lived under totalitarian regimes have a superior grasp of civics. On the contrary.
Thank you to the people of Beit Shemesh for modeling responsible citizenship and fear of the Almighty, and for preserving the sanctity of the Jewish people. May the rest of us learn from them and strive to create an atmosphere, with God's help, where such an incident could never take place.
