Kana-us, the corrupted Hebrew word for kana-ut or zealotry has taken Israel along with the Jewish community worldwide by a storm creating unprecedented blowback. The proverbial straw that broke the camels back causing a robust and muscular backlash was the incident in Beit Shemesh the final week of December 2011 exactly where an eleven year old contemporary orthodox girl was spat upon and derided with opprobrious behavior and language because of her lack of acceptable deportment as per the standards of a deviant haredi community, traumatizing her towards the point exactly where she became apoplectic. This misogynistic attitude is nothing new inside the haredi community. Hitherto it has been camouflaged using a lot of double speak in search of approaches by which they could consume their cake and leave it whole. Praying for centuries the morning prayer "shelo asani isha," a confident recipe for subliminal brainwashing, tucking ladies away behind an just about impervious wall for services, dictating the nature of their clothes, and their head covering will be the potent ingredients for applied kanaus. The majority of haredim who were offended by the actions from the zealots more than the past few weeks had been surprisingly offended to see the fruit of their labor. It is not clear that their rejection of kana-us was principled or that they wished to distance themselves from a politically unpopular position. As soon as they saw and felt the swift, sharp backlash they could have realized that their time hadn't however arrived. Perhaps these putative moderate haredim will need to wait one more generation when their demographic numbers have swollen towards the point of important mass in Israeli politics and public opinion to effectuate placing females in their rightful areas (in the back of the bus and designated sidewalks).
Kanaus is firmly entrenched inside the psyche of the haredi community and the query, which begs to be asked, is when did kana-us turn out to be a mainstay within the haredi mindset? In a current post written by a haredi journalist troubled together with the recent outbreak of kana-us J. Rosenblum references Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz that "only 1 filled with Aaron's quality of pursuing peace and overwhelming love of every single Jew can fill the role of kanai. Anybody who does not act out of that closeness to Hashem or lacks the excellent of becoming a rodef shalom is often a murderer pure and easy." The difficulty with this can be that kana-us becomes laudable if it can be applied and executed by a person with the ideal qualifications. That's why, based on this warped reasoning Pinchas was able to run a javelin via the genital region of Zimri and Kozbi; regarded as a hero by some and made use of as a common for kana-us. The xenophobia demonstrated in biblical text too as the misogyny are two crucial ingredients which molded some within the haredi community into many of the worst human beings within the collective Jewish community.
Another ingredient that goes into the making of kanaus will be the idea of daas torah. A number of years ago I wrote an essay on the harm daas torah has inadvertently wrought on the haredi community:
"The idea of Daas Torah is firmly rooted in the recognition that Hashem 'looked into the torah and developed the universe' (Breishis Rabbah 1:1). The torah gives history's agenda,surgery to increase height, past, present and future, and encompass the world's each secret. Those who have merited to acquire Torah therefore possess the most beneficial credentials for properly addressing the world's troubles, and those that doubt the Torah leader's capacity to 'understand politics' thereby redefine the which means of Judaism."
This comment presumably self-explanatory wouldn't have been so stunningly audacious, had it been said by a naïve yeshiva bachur or possibly a disillusioned kollelnick. However, this was written years ago by the late Rabbi Sherer of Agudas Israel as part of an article entitled Torah within the Proper Location, which I stumbled more than even though researching the theme of authority and dissent in Jewish tradition.
Daas Torah, a term of relatively current origin, is understood to mean that through intense Torah study as well as the rigorous practice of the mitzvoth, a single will have a greater understanding of God's will. Daas Torah could be a compelling ethos for people in search of guidance, when they voluntarily seek it out. Having said that, when dissenting opinions aren't tolerated as in Rabbi Sherer's vision and description of Judaism along with the stature from the gedolim, than we have the makings of a cult, controlling folks via peer pressure and charismatic leadership. Sherer says in the similar article that "it will be the responsibility to remind ourselves and others in the truth that our gedolim are the foremost experts not just in matters of Jewish law, but in social and political problems also."
So the query then becomes, which gadol could be the one particular who sets the gold standard. Why ought it not be a gadol who believes actually that "shelo asani isha" indicates precisely what it says without having parsing words? Why can not it be the gadol who believes that misogyny could be the express intention of our sacred text as understood by that gadol devoid of the require for further elaboration? As odious as it might feel or sound daas torah is determined by a gadol who has a following and is recognized as 1 steeped in Torah, regardless of whether or not one agrees with him. Why really should these zealots give any credence towards the daas torah of much more moderate and maybe less intellectually truthful gedolim? Definitely the moderate gedolim have been compromised as Jonathan Rosenblum writes in Mishpacha Magazine, December 21,ted nugent fridays, 2011:
"A couple of years ago, I asked a gadol regardless of whether he had addressed particular socio-economic challenges... on modern issues. He told me that he couldn't do so since if he did the kanaim would say he was not really a gadol. In other words, he couldn't address pressing issues since if he did he would grow to be so discredited that nobody would listen to him anyway."
It would seem that this gadol was additional concerned about getting undermined and preserving his personal status than shouting out the truth from the rooftop of his kloiz. Sadly the kanaim have it up on the moderates because they have no need to have to spin or parse words. They call it as they fully grasp, and this, for them is daas torah.
Kana-us will continue to plague the Jewish persons and pose a threat to the fabric of democracy in Israel unless the moderate haredi community stops spinning when kana-us is often a superior thing, and rejects it in toto. It really is by no means excellent. Kana-us results in blood shed. Pinchas, in his kana-us murdered two persons and was responsible for a blood bath that made St. Valentine's massacre child's play. Furthermore, the mainstream haredi community must cease any social/religious practice that smacks of misogyny (and re-examine the appropriateness of "shelo asani isha" as did R' Abraham Farissol, a 15th century Italian rabbi who wrote a siddur replacing shelo asani isha with "she-asatani isha ve-lo ish) or xenophobia (spitting on Greek Orthodox priests). For the moderate haredi community to prevail they'll have to get it suitable.
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