I got this bit of news today from my JTA daily briefing:
"Unidentified vigilantes called for attacks on next month’s gay pride parade in Jerusalem."
"Fliers distributed Tuesday in several religious districts of Jerusalem offered a $4,500 bounty for anyone who “brings about the death of the denizens of Sodom and Gomorrah,” a reference to the WorldPride 2006 events scheduled to take place in the holy city Aug. 6-12."
"It was unclear who wrote the fliers; police said a probe is under way.
Jewish, Christian and Muslim clergymen and rightist Israeli politicians have been trying to block the parade or have it moved to Tel Aviv."
"A smaller gay parade in Jerusalem last year saw a stabbing attack by an Orthodox Jew in which three people were injured."
I have been debating whether to post about this little blurb …partly because of the fact that it is highly unlikely in the extreme that this has any mainstream backing at all. In fact one of the most prominent Charedi rabbinic figures, perhaps the most prominent after R. Elyashiv has come out very publicly condemning any violence. From today’s Jerusalem Post::
"Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, head of the ultra Orthodox Edah Haredit rabbinic court and a leading opponent of the planned Gay March in Jerusalem, said Tuesday that he was opposed to violence against homosexuals."
"We must protest the desecration of the Holy Land," said Sternbuch in a phone interview. "But we must do it nonviolently."
What is significant about this is the fact that Rabbi Sternbuch actually had to make this statement at all. Does he think that there is a possibility of violence? I think the answer is obvious.
Calls to murder a human being are truly the ravings of some serious sociopaths. And of course no normal Charedi individual would ever think of killing another human being as a way of stopping a homosexual parade… even in Jerusalem. But the idea of murdering a homosexual isn’t exactly a novel idea. Last year some zealot in Jerusalem was actually motivated to try:
“During last year's Gay March Schlissel a haredi resident of Jerusalem used an 18-centimeter knife to stab three people, two 18-year-olds and one 50-year-old man.”
How can it happen that some people who claim to be the Frummest among us can advocate murder? How do they get the idea that murder is OK? Is it possible that when our community speaks of homosexuality as an abomination that they overdo it just a bit? True it is a Toevah upon which the Torah mandates the death penalty. But the biblical mandate requires a Sanhedrin with Edim and Hasra’ah (witnesses and warnings). What we are talking about here is indiscriminate murder! I can understand the revulsion by those who are steeped in Torah observance… but murder?!
The answer may lie in the following.
“The Edah Haredit's rabbinic court has issued several notices or pashkevilim calling to "do everything in your power" to stop the Gay March. However, Sternbuch denied that this implied the use of violence. Often, the wording of the pashkevilim is not done by the rabbis. Rather they sign a general statement which is later expanded into a detailed notice by aides or functionaries, explained an Edah Haredit source.”
This is quite a telling statement. The fact that general statements are not clarified as this one wasn’t is a big problem to many innocent people, and has caused much damage. People who think they understand what a rabbinic leader wants then go and write up a Pashkevil (billboard poster) in their own words end up embellishing those words givng them meaning far beyond the original intent of the rabbinic leaders. Without clarity things can and do get out of hand and they often do.
Instead of signing on to a general statement which can be interpreted the way these sociopaths interpreted it, the rabbinic leadership ought to not sign on to anything they didn’t write themselves. It seems to me that anything less is an abdication of their leadership responsibility. And that seems to be what has happened here. We end up with people offering bounties for murdering other people claiming it to be in the name of God.
And this isn’t the only time clarity such things happened. Many people have been hurt by allowing ambiguity to prevail. Rabbi Nosson Kametsky and Rabbi Nosson Slifkin are but two of the more prominent examples. In both cases bad things happened because the leadership failed to be clear and their words were manipulated.
For the sake of Klal Yisroel I would go a step further at this point. I would urge our rabbinic leadership to ban Pashkevilim… those posters one finds plastered on various walls in Yerushalyim. They are rarely accurate portrayals of the words of these leaders. They are all too often interpretations designed to incite hatred. Raely do they express the accurate wishes of those they are purported to represent... and end up being counter to their real wishes. The only notices that ought to be allowed are those written by the rabbinic leaders themselves. This may not solve all of our worldly problems. But it would be at least one small step in the right direction.
