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| Hatzalah rescuing infants at a daycare center (United Hatzalah) |
That these deaths are heartbreaking does not need to be
said. As has so often been the case when I hear about tragedies like this, I
cannot imagine what the families of these young victims are going through.
But I am not going to talk about fault here. There is plenty
of responsibility to go around in these tragic incidents - a discussion
is beyond the scope of this post. My concern is how the Charedi leadership and
their politicians react to such events - placing the blame entirely on their
usual whipping boy, the leftist/Zionist court.
Here is how Rabbi Natan Slifkin put it:
Yesterday, following the tragic deaths of two infants at an unlicensed daycare center, Charedi MKs and pundits, along with Likud MKs and other supporters of Bibi’s government, blamed the “Leftist/Zionist” court for recently halting daycare subsidies to Charedim in kollel, claiming that this “forced” Charedim to resort to cheaper, unlicensed, dangerous daycare.
As Natan noted, this daycare facility had been in existence
for 30 years and had been widely used during that time because it was cheaper -
and, I assume, because parents believed that a daycare center run by religious
Jews did not need a license in order to be safe.
What troubles me greatly is the hatred inherent in blaming
the court, as though the court’s entire existence were devoted to destroying ‘Torah-true
Judaism’, as though leftist/Zionists hate the Torah and hate God. It never
seems to occur to these Charedi leaders that many of the challenges they face
could be addressed in the same way that non-Charedi Jews address them. Many of
those being just as devout.
To these Charedi leaders, everything the government does
that they disagree with is seen as an attack on God and His Torah, and
therefore are to be hated and blamed for all that has gone wrong in their
world.
This is what I do not understand. The idea of hating any Jew
simply because they are secular Zionists with a left-wing ideology is morally
reprehensible... Even if that ideology appears to be anti-Torah, don't blame the messenger. It is far more
likely those beliefs are the result of ignorance of the Torah, having been replaced by modern
progressive values. While many of those values are indeed anti-Torah, that is
not why they hold them. They hold those values because they do not know any
better having been raised with little or no authentic Jewish education.
Such Jews should be viewed as a tinok shenishba - a
Jew who was captured as an infant by non-Jews and raised with non-Jewish values
presented as truth. Instead of hating them, they should be reaching out to
them.
I know this is hard to do when you believe you are in the
midst of an existential struggle. But that is precisely the time when one must
reach out. There is no telling what even a small act of loving-kindness can
accomplish when confronting someone whose values are so anathema to your own.
Hatred and name-calling can only make matters worse. Instead
of holding demonstrations against the Zionist Left, there should be dialogue.
Let them see the positive side of the Charedi world. The side that exemplifies Chesed
- loving-kindness toward fellow Jews. The Charedi world has many great Chesed
organizations that help fellow Charedim in times of need. They should expand
that help to include secular Jews as well. Not judging them. Not arguing with
them. But winning them over as exemplars of non-judgmental loving-kindness. By
being role models, rather than screaming, name-calling protesters who blame all
their troubles on others and in the process cause a great deal of damage. Both
to property and their own image.
The refusal to take any responsibility for these tragedies tells me something about the character of their leadership...
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