The girls deserved to be punished

This is the latest story making waves..

Seven pupils at a Beit Ya'akov school in Netanya were punished after they stood up for the siren that sounded Monday in honor of Holocaust Memorial Day (Monday), Yediot Aharonot reported.
According to the report, the school principal removed the girls from their classroom and forced them to stand up for the rest of the day and read psalms.
In haredi circles, using sirens and "moments of silence" to mark memorial holidays is considered a gentile custom and is discouraged. Haredi rabbis often encourage their followers to recite psalms or other prayers silently during the siren.

I saw the original article in the Yediot, and then Jameel sent it to me.. I agree with Jameel's position that the method of punishment was wrong, though that is not what I want to write about.

We were talking here about Yom Ha'Shoah on Yom Ha'Shoah eve over dinner with the kids. We were talking about different aspects of it, including the siren and what to do when the siren blares, and what their schools would be doing and what we remembered they had done in previous years.

The kids asked me what I do and what I think should be done when the siren goes off. I told them that if they are in school, and I would assume (never safe to do so, but I am anyway) that the school would make sure the kids were in class at the time rather than at recess, they should do whatever the school does and whatever the teacher tells them. If, on the other hand, they should find themselves outside in public, or anywhere else around other people, during the siren, then they should stand still during the siren.

I told them that the way we commemorate the Holocaust and Memorial Day in Israel is by standing still and contemplating the events behind the day, so to not do so in view of other people is grossly disrespectful and inappropriate, and furthermore because we are religious it would clearly constitute a chillul Hashem and cause anger and even hatred of the religious.

Some of the common arguments against standing still are; it is not a Jewish way of remembering the dead, it is a waste of time and better to learn or say tehillim or something like that, etc.

I, personally, do not find standing still for a minute to be such a bad thing. I waste plenty of time doing other things (blogging could clearly be in the list) that standing still for two minutes during the wail of the siren is completely insignificant as far as the amount of time wasted. The only people who can be concerned about the wasted time are people who are careful to utilize every minute of the day properly, and there are not too many of those people.

That time can be used to think about the events of the day, which is not such a bad thing. How often do we take the time to stop and think about them? This gives us that opportunity. If one is truly worried about the time wasted, he could say tehillim while standing still, or find ways to not waste those two minutes while standing there.

I believe these excuses are exactly that - excuses. not reasons. They are excuses that have been found to rationalize not participating in an event that Israeli society holds.

So, my daughter (11 years old) smirked and told me that I sound like a chiloni (a secular Jew) saying they should stand when they are outside.

I told her that standing is not important on its own. If someone is learning Torah when the siren goes off, they should not stop learning and stand. That would be a waste of time and learning Torah is much more important that standing still. However, if one is not learning and is found among other people then they must stand still and behave as part of society. We live in Israel - a country with rules and all sorts of people, and we have to behave accordingly, even if sometimes we do not agree.

She seemed to accept that.

That being said, back to the story reported of the girls who stood up during class and got punished. I feel the punishment was probably ill chosen and Jameel said it better than I can, so I will leave that issue.

I do feel the girls were wrong. They disrupted a class that was studying and they should not have done so. If they felt so strongly about it, they could have asked to be let out, or they could have come late that day to school or stayed home or whatever. They were not standing up because they believe in it (or at least I doubt it), rather I think they were pulling a prank and looking for a way to make a disruption in class, and they succeeded.

They are studying in a school that does not commemorate the day in that fashion, they live in a community that does not do so, and they come from families that do not do so. The impetus that pushed them to stand in class was not belief in the idea, but to make trouble. They deserved to be punished (and as to what the appropriate punishment should be, I have no idea) because they were wrong for disrupting their Torah studies and the classroom.