While most haredim do not, some haredim do serve in the Israeli Army. Image: religionandstateinisrael.blogspot.com

By Yaakov Gorr

This week’s parsha, Bamidbar, reveals the missing 614th commandment, particularly relevant as Israeli lawmakers debate drafting Haredi youth to the army.  Twenty-year old Jews are told to enlist in the army.

From the first portion we read: Take the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel… a head count of every male according to the number of their names. From twenty years old and upwards, all who are fit to go out to the army in Israel….

And from the second: Bring forth the tribe of Levi and present them before Aaron the kohen, that they may serve him. They shall keep his charge and the charge of the entire community ….You shall appoint Aaron and his sons, and they shall keep their kehunah; you shall kill any outsider who approaches.

What has this ancient history got to do with us in 2011?

A few months ago, a Knesset committee released a report saying that the Tal Law regarding Haredi IDF enlistment has failed, and Israel should focus instead on making military or other national service compulsory for Haredim The IDF will recruit 2,400 Haredim in 2011. The number of Haredi draftees will increase by 600 each year until it reaches 4,800 in 2015.

Today, 14% of eligible 18-year-old Jewish men evade military service by studying at an ultra-Orthodox yeshiva, more than double the rate 15 years ago. By 2020 the number of exemptions is expected to reach 25%

Now some Haredi youth do enlist, but clearly many do not.  As I understand the parsha, it’s a clear refusal to obey a divine decree: to put your name into the draft and partake in the call-up.

In Pirkei Avot, Ethics of our Fathers, we are told that the purpose of creation is to allow the Jewish people to connect with the Almighty. The task is great, and can only be achieved through a collective effort.

In this case, the “collective effort” is Medinat Yisrael, and through its strength the ingathering of the exiles.  Exiles are unlikely to be gathered into a state which is at risk. Not to take part in the collective effort is to betray it and the Jewish people.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov wrote that the land of Israel was “the essence, the foundation, the source of the holy faith – There is the root of the holiness of Your people Israel…”  His writings inspired HaRav Abraham Isaac Kook, unquestionably one of the most profound of all Zionist thinkers, who saw the rise of modern day Zionism as the onset of the beginning of the redemption of the Jewish people from exile, in expectation of the arrival of the “final redemption” of the Messiah.

Rav Kook was a messianist and had a very clear notion of the redemption of the Jewish People in Medinat Yisrael, a redemption that was part of the divine plan for the whole world. World redemption depended on our redemption and vice versa.

It was clear to Rav Kook: the Jewish people needed a Jewish state. Judaism itself needed to reflect every area of that national life. The true glory of G-d’s name could not be expressed when it was confined to study houses and synagogues and limited to the world of the spirit.

Religious Zionists see the establishment of Medinat Yisrael as a sign from G-d, part of G-d’s plan. The need for the exile has finished. The time for the beginning of redemption is at hand.
G-d has given we Jews the task of guiding the rest of the world towards righteousness. Despite our tribulations, we are the only democracy in the triangle formed between Morocco, Tajikistan and Pakistan – truly a light unto the nations.

And it has to be defended.  Parshat Bamidbar is authority for the proposition that each of us is called and that only a limited number get exempted on the basis of religious activity.  If you leave your post in the Army and attempt temple service, you’ll die.

And the Haftorah is right on point.  The second pasuk says that we shall appoint one head over us – so, a legitimate government, as we have.  There is one command, and uniquely it’s one we appoint ourselves.  If the temporal command says “enlist”, then enlist bli aval u’bli chaval (“without ifs and without buts”) .  That’s what the parsha tells us.

Those who tell us to have a more perfect observance of every mitzvah should remember the story of the Exodus from Egypt: in every generation someone rises against us, as we saw only two weeks ago on the Lebanese and Syrian borders.  Those Haredim who are forever telling us to have better observances, or a higher level of kashrut, or more restrictions on Shabbat, in this matter too, should do beyond the letter of the law. If the law says serve three years, the perfection of the mitzvah is to serve four years.

The author, Yaakov Gorr, has been studying Bamidbar to both leyn and deliver a drasha this Shabbat.

Greens Senator Hanson-Young, with some friends who just bought some new scarves at The Gap

By Yaakov Gorr

Whilst Shabbos shul-goers were leyning Parashat Metzora, the Victorian Greens were in their State Conference and dealing with a leprosy of a different kind.  A representative of the Greens’ NSW branch had been invited to attend in order to explain the policy adopted by several candidates in the recent NSW state election on “boycotts, divestment and sanctions” against Israel.  The national position of the Green, and also that of the Victorian branch, is not supportive of the idea of BDS.

According to a senior Greens member who I’m in contact with and who had attended the meeting “BDS is not the Victorian position and not the national position.  BDS has been proposed as a policy for the Greens a few times but the proposal has been defeated.”

And the red spots affecting the Marrickville Town Hall?  Well, supposedly the spreaders of evil speech will be taken outside the organisation until they are considered to be ritually pure, and this may involve Marrickville City Council reassessing several of its positions. According to my contact, it is not uncommon for municipalities to take points of view on international issues if there are members of that community within the municipality – for example Yarra City Council did a lot of work with East Timorese, many of whom were living in Yarra during that country’s struggle for independence, and currently does good work with asylum seekers.  There are, however, few Palestinians in Marrickville.  Many Marrickville politicians – both from the Greens and Labor – have viewed the backlash against the policy and are having second thoughts.

Those second thoughts ought to have been influenced by a reading of two new documents, produced by Arab intellectuals, which were made available to Victorian Greens, which showed that of the best countries to be an Arab in the middle east, ranked by education, unemployment rate and GDP per head, Israel was in the top six along with oil rich countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and UAE.  GDP per head is twelve times higher in Israel than in Egypt, eight times higher than in Syria and four times higher than in Jordan.  Unemployment rate for Arabs in Israel is half that of Egypt, Syria, Iran and Morocco.  School completion for Arabs in Israel is eight times higher than that of all citizens of Tunis, Mauritania or Algeria.  Israel doesn’t just rank ahead of every Arab country in the UN Human Development Index, it also ranks ahead of Finland, Austria, and the UK.

Some Victorian Greens now have a desire to meet “Green-minded” members of the Jewish Community with a view to thrashing out a new Middle East policy.  Many appear impressed not only by Israeli achievements in terms of the return to collective farming by disaffected city youth, water recycling, service taxis as a means of public transport, and take-up of solar hot water systems, but also of new industries of an ecological bent which could provide green jobs in Australia such as commercial fisheries, methane production from farm waste, and drip irrigation.

A flag with the capacity to unite the homophobic and the anti-Semitic in rejectionism

By Yaakov Gorr

Parsha Korach is a great reminder that Judaism is known for its great debates and great debaters – not only debates between Moshe and Korach but debates between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael, Rabbi Hillel and Shammai, Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz, Emma Goldman and Bella Abzug.  We aren’t like the Catholics – there’s no infallible leader for us. On the contrary, Judaism has flourished because of contests, verbal battles and political controversy.

So I have to say that I was disappointed by the recent meeting (3 June, Monash Caulfield) “A Pluralist Panel on Homosexuality and Judaism” organised by Hineni (Melbourne) and the Monash Jewish Students Society.  A well-attended event to be sure, and Kol haK’vod to the event organisers for organising what was apparently the first  public discussion in the Melbourne Jewish community on anything to do with homosexuality. However, you’d expect that even in a toned-down and respectful discussion, panellists of differing backgrounds would have a machloket (debate).

It is about disputes such as these, where each side (we’re Jews, an argument can have at least twice as many sides as it has disputants) is striving for the “sake of heaven,” that Pirkei Avot says that both sides of the argument will endure forever, because both the one and the other side of the argument are the words of the Living G-d (Elu V’Elu Divrei Elokim Chayim). But in this panel, the argument had only one side; perhaps this was because the haredi community reject pluralist thought and declined (I am told) an invitation to have a representative on the panel.

Former Deputy Principal of Bialik College, Michael Cohen, with Hineni’s Yardena Prawer, moderated the protagonists, who included Rabbi Shamir Caplan (Orthodox), Rabbi Ehud Bandel (Conservative), Rabbi Fred Morgan (Progressive), and Aleph’s Michael Barnett, who spoke of his personal experiences.
Michael Cohen noted that Reconstructionist Judaism has ordained gay and lesbian rabbis since 1985, and in 2007 it elected its first openly gay president in Rabbi Toba Spitzer. The Liberal tradition has ordained gay and lesbian rabbis since 1990 and allowed same-sex unions since 2000, while the Conservative tradition accepted both in 2006.

All three streams of Jewish thought represented by the Rabbis on the panel seemed to agree that gay Jewish women and men were equal within the community and their sexuality needed to be taken into account and not ignored.  The three rabbis seemed to concur that Judaism outlaws only one male-to-male sex act, that of anal sex. None condemned relationships that did not include that act. R’ Morgan went further  - I heard his message as being more supportive of same-sex relationships, which were loving and supportive, than of heterosexual relationships which did not produce children.

R’ Morgan’s position seems similar to that of Baroness Neuberger, the president of Liberal Judaism, who supported amendment to the UK Equality Act, passed by the House of Lords in March 2010. “Liberal Judaism has always stressed the importance of a loving, monogamous relationship, whether it is a same-sex or opposite-sex”. Liberal Judaism believes that any such relationship deserves “kiddushin”, the ‘sanctification’ that is part of the Jewish legal relationship between two members of a couple.

Perhaps even more radical is lesbian Rabbi Ariel Friedlander’s position on the pasuk,  ”lying with a man as if with a woman” is an “abomination” (Lev. 18:22). R’ Friedlander’s view appears to be that if we interpret that pasuk literally, it is not relevant to exclusively gay men given that they don’t have sex with women at all. R’ Friedlander however takes a very free position on torah interpretation: “[The Torah provides...]  the legal code of our Jewish ancestors. It was the rules, [but]… it was written for primitive people, who were often nomads. We just don’t live like that anymore. The job of the Rabbi is to reinterpret those ancient texts so that they are still relevant to our lives and faith. … How can you identify with something that was made for nomads in the desert?”

In the absence of a true machloket in the panel, I’ll quote the departed Rebbe Ronald Lubofski z”l, “The core of the philosophy, the religious philosophy, the political philosophy of being Jewish, is in the written word… Some would reduce it to the Ten Commandments etc. and that excludes the notion of homosexuality, and as a consequence it’s a contradiction in terms. You simply cannot consider the two ideals as being compatible…. You’re talking here of fundamentals of life, you’re not dealing here with a sporting organisation where people make a choice to do this or to do that. These are individuals who do not produce families, these are individuals who perform sexually in a way which is aberrant, to say the least, with regard to Judaism. It is something which runs counter to the fundamentals of Judaism, that is the family unit.” (ABC Radio National Religion Report 19/05/99 ).
Sadly the real debate is yet to be had, that with R’ Lubofski’s followers on the one side and R’ Friendlander’s on the other. At the centre ought not be the mere interpretation of the text, but whether our faith ought to have traditional family life at its centre. I myself have difficulty in identifying with an approach which “seeks to reinterpret those ancient texts so that they are still relevant to our lives and faith”. I thought that the job was to reinterpret our lives and faith so that they are still congruent with those ancient texts.

Homeless In India

By Yaakov

I’m sitting in a bare concrete room, no telephone, no computer, only a desk, a couch, a few battered chairs and two cupboards stacked with dusty papers.  The ceiling fan isn’t running because the power’s out.  Ten bankers have joined me for a coffee; intense women in colourful saris, some with silver chains on their ankles, some with wedding rings on their toes.  Welcome to Mandya, South India.

The main connection I have to this organization is that their roof body, Vikasana, incorporates textile producers and my wife and I are textile importers in Australia.  But it has come to mean more than just having suppliers- if we wanted regular, easy suppliers we’d restrict our supplier list to Chinese factories.  We believe in fair trade, and we like to go to the “limit of the law”- (li-fenim mi-shurat hadin) – “there are 8 degrees of charity, one above the other, none is greater than … making a partnership or giving somewhere to work” (Rambam, Rule of Gifts to the Poor, 10: 40). We want to encourage fair-traders by giving them some idea of what our clients want to buy, then paying for their training, and then through their co-operative bank, lending them the money to start production.

The Bank’s President, Mrs K, initially took a loan of Rs 10 000 (now around A$250) to modernize her home kitchen so that she could start making the rich, milk-based sweets Indians so love for local cafes.  She lives in a rented home, which costs her Rs 1000 a month.  She’s middle class – her husband is a factory foreman earning Rs 12 000 a month who owns his own motor-cycle.  She has two girls- one doing 11^th year of school – and a black and white TV. Her 30 square metre home has one bedroom, the kids sleep in the lounge which is also where everyone eats, and a small kitchen.  The bathroom is shared with two other families.  There’s no fridge.

For the working class, wages are low here. Waiters here – and even some semi-professionals like teachers’ aides – get Rs 2000 a month plus basic board and lodging. Vikasana’s target wage for employees is Rs 4000 a month but many work for somewhat less.  Mandya does have some wealth, however.  It’s a fairly typical small Indian city of 130 000 people, rumoured to be the “Malgudi” immortalized in the RK Narayan stories of 50 years ago, with large educational and manufacturing infrastructure .  The main street boasts electrical appliance stores and there are two new western-style supermarkets selling items which by their very price are out of the range of most working Indians.

“Be self-employed & help others to become self employed”…. That’s the motto of the Shakthi Self Employment & Co-operative Group Bank for Women, Mandya , a contribution of Vikasana Institute for Rural & Urban Development for women’s empowerment. Vikasana has set up over 330 self employment groups in Mandya district in the past 5 years.  Shakthi  pools the money from its stakeholders to have its own capital & by using that capital it will provide loans for the productive activities of the stakeholders.

Very few members of the self-help groups have earned an income before.  It’s the rural Indian custom to keep the women in the home with the children. Many are locked up and not allowed out by their husbands, and there are so many fights when women join self-help groups that Vikasana has had to employ a “Distressed Women’s Officer” to assist those who wish to become self-reliant. Indeed, quite a few women have been abandoned by their husbands.

Despite our achievements it’s not all sweetness and light, my friends.

Part of it is cultural …we look at things through the eyes of Westerners, from countries where appointment is on merit and good pay follows good performance. In Australia and in Israel, money follows audit trails and goods are listed in asset registers.  Regular accounting standards are applied.

India is not a Western country, however, and in the state of Bihar over 300 public servants, many of whom have spent time in prison for corruption, have unexplained personal wealth in excess of $2.5 million per person – this in a country where $1250 a year is a reasonable salary for a factory worker.  In some cases salaries continue to be paid during the period of imprisonment!

So why did it surprise us that the organisation to which we had given so much money, time and effort had such an inefficient management structure, including the Director’s brother-in-law employed as a very ineffective Training Manager?  Why did it surprise us that goods given to the organisation were seen, during a visit to the home of the Training Manager, to be in his kitchen?

Let’s not play “holier than thou” – this is real life and not a tabloid newspaper.  The names of Olmert and Sharon are signal reminders to followers of Israeli politics.  Our dilemma is the extent to which this knowledge ought to influence whether we continue to work with the organisation.  Would endless transparency audits merely add a level of bureaucracy to the organisation which would smother its work?

On a personal level, what makes the waste, poor planning, and nepotism of Vikasana distressing is that … it’s our own money, not some amorphous mass of taxpayer funds.  It’s the gas cooker and kettle we bought in 2008, which ought to have cut the working day of the training centre cook down from 10 hours to 8 hours, ending up not in her kitchen (where she cooks on firewood on 45 degree days for 50 people whilst sitting on a concrete floor) but in the home of the training manager..

We have not resolved this dilemma.  It does qualify our commitment to the organisation.  On the other hand, given the lack of resources and the huge inequalities in Indian society, it may be that nepotism is not the biggest problem facing organisations such as Vikasana.  Nor can we, who come from a culture where time is money, necessarily complain when people who have never used a computer, people from regions where 40% of the population do not regularly excrete into toilets but wherever they can, don’t quite want to pump the same number of widgets out of a working day as do we.

By 1936, remember the Jews in Palestine were only one-seventh of the population but had a productivity outstripping that of the Arab population; we became independent from the British only 9 months after the Indians did, but the work ethic which made us outstrip the Arabs is also very different from that of the Indians.  Indians in India are very different from Indians in the USA or Australia or Singapore – but as an Australian-Israeli who’s lived and worked in Singapore, knowing that doesn’t help me understand the cultural differences.

Fortunately, there are some signs of light and change.  The women in the programs are exercising self-empowerment and are no longer in need of the same degree of “assistance” from the largely male administrative structure.  Under our external pressure, some appointments are being made on merit.  The most productive units of Vikasana are now able to function independently.

The group’s founder, Dr P M Keshavan, is of the view that it can’t be changed in short order and that the smart thing to do is to take it in one’s stride and get on with it.  From our perspective it is hard to agree, yet we are unable to find any other project that has demonstrably better outcomes… and is any outcome better than no outcome at all? Transparency is a great organisational goal but it contains no protein.

Yaakov really just wanted to meet people and have fun, something he should have been doing in his 20s instead of cab-driving to pay his way through law school.  He certainly is meeting plenty of people working in a fair trade textile project in South India, which somehow fits into the textile importing business he and his wife operate in inner Melbourne’s Fitzroy.