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Between Ramot Beit Shemesh and Kabul

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Between Ramot Beit Shemesh and Kabul
By Bambi Sheleg  |  08/07/2010

In recent years, persistent rumors have filtered through to the editorial board of Eretz Acheret concerning the difficulties of secular Jews who need the services of health maintenance organization clinics located in ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jewish neighborhoods in the city of Beit Shemesh. It has come to our attention of late that 15 (!) Haredi education systems provide services to Beit Shemesh's Haredi population with generous funding from the Israeli taxpayer. Our attention was particularly drawn by repeated stories of various forms of terrorism employed against law-abiding Israeli citizens residing in the city's Ramot Beit Shemesh neighborhoods. We decided to check out what precisely was going on there and what was the meaning of the specific narrative of Ramot Beit Shemesh in relation to the overall Israeli narrative. In other words, we wanted to know how Israeli society was coping with problems arising as a result of the “clash of civilizations” occurring in its midst.

 
The research that was done for this issue of Eretz Acheret uncovered that, in Ramot Beit Shemesh, alongside moderate Haredi Jews who would never dream of engaging in violence, there are a number of fanatic and violent groups of Haredi Jews; the neighborhood also has Modern Orthodox and secular Jews. Ramot Beit Shemesh's violent residents are terrorizing the other groups in the neighborhood, who are powerless in the face of this reign of terror. In the upside-down world that exists in Ramot Beit Shemesh, people who should be behind bars are the ones with the veto power and the ones who are determining the norms of public behavior. And, of course, they are acting purely out of religious motives.
 
The research for this issue raises, in as acute manner as possible, the question as to whether the time has not come to deal squarely with multiculturalism when the application of that concept strikes a mortal blow at the dignity, physical wellbeing and rights of religious individuals living in a human environment that British anthropologist Mary Tew Douglas defines as an “enclave.” For example, to what extent is mainstream Israeli society responsible for protecting the rights of Haredi children who often find themselves in chaotic situations in their own families or in the educational institution that they attend? In both The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, reports have appeared over the past few weeks with grisly details of grave sexual offenses that are committed against children who are residents of Ramot Beit Shemesh and which are being “hushed up” by community leaders who do not want the neighborhood's “dirty laundry” to be hung out for everyone to see.
 
This is a case where mainstream Israeli society is grossly neglecting a major problem. The purpose of the present issue of Eretz Acheret is to ask how we have allowed this situation to develop and why no one is dealing with it at the national and public levels. Why have Ramot Beit Shemesh's residents been abandoned to their fate and who will save them from the hands of those who are harassing them despite the fact that these victims are guilty of no crime? Why, throughout the entire process of researching this entire story, have we been plagued by the feeling that most of the public agencies involved here – including the police, the Egged bus company, the municipality of Beit Shemesh and the various HMOs – are capitulating to the whims of violent groups? Why does the Israel Police not take the same kind of action in Ramot Beit Shemesh that it would take if such events occurred in Tel Aviv? Why have the vigilantes who took the law into their own hands not been interrogated and tried for their role in the lynching-style episode in 2006 concerning Uriah Friedheim?
 
As the research for this issue has revealed, the Haredi community in Israel is not some monolithic mass; there are many individuals and groups in this community that are seeking change. That fact is the first indication that the leaders of this community cannot continue ad infinitum to deny the responsibility they bear toward their constituents and toward the Israeli society at large in which both the leaders and the constituents live.
 
 
Translated by Mark Elliott Shapiro
 
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