Judge for the stone-ages criticize Linor Abergil's religious headdress

The Yom Haatzmaut torch-lighting ceremony was wonderful, and it was hosted by Linor Abergil.

Abergil is an interesting personality. She is a former model who had won the Miss World competition. She eventually became religious, and studied law and became a lawyer, giving up her modeling career. At some point she was critical of her previous environment and publicized that she had been raped while competing in the beauty pageants. Abergil has become an advocate against sexual violence.

A retired judge, Oded Alyagor, posted on his Facebook page, a post that he later deleted, criticism of Abergil's hosting of the ceremony. Alyagor wrote a very vulgar post criticizing Abergil's elaborate hair covering, at the same time as commenting on other body parts of hers. There was some other criticism of Abergil hosting the ceremony being religious and whatnot, but there was very little and the noise was almost completely Alyagor's comment.

The post caused a firestorm of comments and op-eds in support of Linor Abergil and against this judge in particular and and against the anti-religious sentiment expressed. Even the court system and former Justice Ministers criticized him saying he retired a long time ago, he was never representative of the courts, he was problematic even when he was a judge saying horrible things against Arabs and against Haredim and because of the things he said, he was never advanced past his little courtroom and that led to his early retirement.

So basically this idiot said something vulgar and stupid and it should not really be worthy of comment. Not every time someone says something stupid do we need to weigh in. But by now it has snowballed into a movement. MK Sharon Haskel of the Likud blew it up by posting online that in solidarity with Abergil she will wear a similar headdress for a week and called on others to do the same. Good for her. Abergil did a fine job, was very classy in her role as host, and Alyagon was crass and vulgar and the opposite of refinement and high culture of liberalism and acceptance of others.

One thing Alyagor clarified, after the fact, is that his post, which he removed, was really about Abergil being a hypocrite. He says that her elaborate headdress speaking to an extreme level of modesty, was in contrast to her tight dress showing off some of her other body parts in a less than modest way. His clarification did nothing to fix what he initially said.

One thing he does not get, as many do not, especially among the non-religious but even among many religious, is that people are not perfect. People are not all black or all white, or all of any color in between. Just because a woman likes a certain headdress, even if it normally means one thing or another, does not mean she is perfect in all aspects of modesty. Just because a person is religious does not mean he or she does nothing wrong ever. We all have challenges, we all have desires, we all have inclinations and we all have weaknesses. We try our best, and sometimes we win and overcome our challenges and sometimes we do not. Far be it from me to know or suggest what challenges Linor Abergil has to deal with and what her weaknesses are, but nobody is perfect and even if somehow Alyagor has the right or knowledge to judge that Abergil was dressed inappropriately, which he does not, people, including Linor Abergil are not perfect and it is a constant challenge to try to do the right thing and we do not always win. And sometimes we are at different stages where we are prepared to take on one aspect of religion fully but not yet ready to take on another aspect fully.

As an aside, I had another comment about this issue being that the secular demand Haredi, and religious in general, integration into society, yet when it actually happens, they get upset. They are worried about the face of the country suddenly looking more religious than they are comfortable with. It seems they dont actually want integration, they just want to control other sectors. Then I realized this protest was of one man, and maybe a few other militant secular people who jumped on the bandwagon, but even the general secular community generally, and admirably, criticized and rejected Alyagor and his comments. So perhaps my comment on integration was wrong.

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