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Jul 23, 2023
tearing it down
the Gemara tells us about different "sins" or bad behaviors that caused the batei mikdash to be destroyed, whether it was sinat chinam, baseless hate, lashon hara, the transgressions of the three cardinal sins, etc..
I used to think those gemaras were telling us higher religious lessons, morals. We were no longer deserving because of our sins, because we spoke lashon hara or harbored enmity towards other Jews that was unjustified or whatnot, and we need to correct all that within us to become deserving again.
Not discounting all that, but in today's reality I see it very differently now. I now understand, I think, what the Gemara meant when it said those reasons for our losing the mikdash, and they are far more practical and pragmatic than just telling us higher moral lessons of how to behave and earn merit. They are very practical. When there is baseless hate or lashon hara or whatnot, there is incessant fighting. The extremists on both sides continuously increase their anger and hatred to the other and take things increasingly more extreme until things just blow up and society gets destroyed.
I see that happening today. Maybe we havent gotten to that point just yet, but it seems we may be headed there, unless things somehow get walked back. The extremists on both sides scream at each other, protest, take actions that hurt the other and also hurt the state. At some point, if it continues, things will fall apart and it wont be [just] a Divine punishment, but will be a direct cause of the sinat chinam going on, a direct cause of the lashon hara, that led to more and more increasingly extreme behavior. All this hatred and extremism will lead people to taking actions that they are sure is what God wants them to do, they are sure it is in the best interests of the State, it is the right and moral and ethical way for society to function, but it will just end up tearing everything down.
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You know more than you know. The first person to say that "sinnat chinam" was a cause of the Churban was Josephus, and he was speaking strictly pragmatically, that the different factions of Jews couldn't unite in how to deal with the Romans.
ReplyDeleteBut look, I know it's all fashionable to talk about "both sides," but there is, basically, only one side here doing all the yelling and screaming, as they have in fact been doing for years. Honesty counts. I favor all the reforms, and no, I have nothing to apologize for if people invent all sorts of conspiracy theories and decide to add every grievance they have to the mix.
it may be one side doing the screaming but thats because the other side has taken extreme positions on changing the makeup of the functioning of the state so both sides are involved in this mess
DeleteI'm sorry, "extreme positions" and "makeup of the functioning of the state" is utter, absolute nonsense. Please, try to give me an example if you can.
DeleteI just had a screaming, drum-banging, horn-blowing mob march past our house at 11:00 PM and then keep making noise. There's no excuse for that. None.
Agree. No excuse for that. Reprehensible. Same as I felt about the late-night horn-blowing drum-banging crowd outside of Bennet's house during the last government. So, no moral high ground on this, please.
DeleteI really don't get why people feel compelled to try whataboutism, nor why they think that if I am opposed to one thing I must support another. I hold no brief for Bibi; never voted for the man. The way he and his acolytes acted toward the Bennett government- on the street and, even more so, in the Knesset- was reprehensible indeed. I claim moral high ground because I think it's all ugly.
DeleteAnd if we're going to go there, for two years before *that*- during lockdowns- we had constant protests as well in front of our house. (In fact, the pro-Bibi side was closer to us, so we suffered from them more.)
The assumption these days is that you must take a side and if you don't take my side, you must be opposed to me. That you might be standing back, looking at both sides and thinking "Both of you are disgusting" is incomprehensible.
DeleteI have an ongoing argument with a cousin who's on the pro-reform side and his automatic assumption, when I point out the hypocrisy of the left, is that I must support Bibi and the reforms. He just can't understand that maybe I also have a problem with it but that the temper tantrum the Left is throwing is also disgusting.
For me, it's the hypocrisy of the Left that makes them impossible to deal with. When the Right protested against Oslo in 1993 and against the Gaza retreat in 2005, there was no talk about endangering the country. No threats of mass emigation. No threats of economic vandalism. Even soldiers who threatened not to follow orders in 2005 limited those threats specifically to the situation in Gaza, not elsewhere. The Right protested but never brought its loyalty to the country into the argument.
ReplyDeleteThe same folks who pushed back in 1993 and 2005 saying "We are the government! You have to obey the orders of the government! Don't like it? Too bad and wait for the next election!" are now saying "We don't care that you're the government. We don't have to obey the orders of the government! And we're not going to wait for the next election because we probably won't win that!"
The Right always noted the concerns about the Left - we get it, you want peace. You're desperate for peace, enough to make this gamble. The Left has done the opposite - we don't understand why you want reform. The court is fine the way it is. You are terrible for thinking otherwise!"
I dont remember how it went down in 1993-94 but in 2005 there were definitely threats from the Right to refuse army service (and that wasnt just volunteer reserve duty being threatened but actual army service). not at the level of today but it was mainstream Right voices calling for army refusal. If I am not mistaken, Betzalel Smotritch as late as 2016 was still calling for army refusal...
DeleteThey will never admit out loud that they're not going to win elections. Instead they make up wild ideas like, "Bibi will cancel the elections!"
DeleteI'm sorry, you don't remember 1993? May I ask your age?
DeleteAnd did you see what Garnel wrote about what, specifically, was being refused in 2005? Soldiers were like, "I'll serve, just not there." In the end, barely anyone did even that.
The thing is, the way things are going, there's a good chance that they will win the next elections. The anger they've harnessed and the numbers of centrists and moderate rightists that have been convinced that Bibi and Co are trying to destroy Israel will hand them a slim majority. And knowing that this is the last time they'll ever win, they'll do what they can to reduce democracy to ensure that SLI's rule Israel forever.
DeleteI am 50. I remember 1993, and I have been in Israel since 1990, and of course remember Oslo and the protests (which I took part in), but I dont remember anything specific about calls for refusal or whatnot.
DeleteI dont feel a need to defend the current protests. I think they have gone way too far in many ways. I think Netanyahu and the Likud brought this upon himself the way they acted when Bennett and Lapid were running the government and they showed that red lines are not important, and the current protestors from the left have now taken his lead and gone even further. I am not a fan of much of what they are doing and am not going to defend it (but in general bringing tens or hundreds of thousands of people out to protest for 30 weeks straight is pretty impressive)
I don't think anyone claimed there were refusals during Oslo. It was only connected to throwing Jews out of their homes, and *only* for those operations. This is much worse, because it's a piece of legislation that has nothing to do with anything specific, so they're basically saying, "If we disagree with a law, we just won't serve, period."
DeleteAs I said above, I don't see why people have to engage in whataboutism. And of course what they did to Bennett was really, really ugly and stupid as well. In fairness, they learned well from the preceding two years, of course.
Bringing out huge numbers of people isn't hard nor impressive. People are sheep. It's no coincidence that the "father of public relations" was a two-time nephew of Sigmund Freud.
it isnt that "we disagree with a law we just wont serve". I have heard and read in several interviews with people no the other side that have said they are an elected government that has the right to pass laws but they do not have a right to change the system of governance, not without broad support.
DeleteBut again there's the hypocrisy. An elected government making these kinds of sweeping changes are bad because they don't have wide-enough support. Meanwhile, Aharon Barak with only the support of his close "enlightened" friends made the sweeping change to the court's power that brought us to this mess. But they were okay with that.
DeleteAgain, this is not "changing the system of governance." Not by any stretch of the imagination.
DeleteLook, I have family on the other side and although we have agreed to keep our disagreement civil, it's not really possible to discuss thing when the other side starts with "Let me explain to you why you're wrong."
ReplyDeleteAs previous posts have pointed out, there really seems to be one noisy side in this squalid affair, aided and abetted by a left wing media who use demagoguery when describing their opposition. The language has now reached crescendos not seen since 1995 and we know how that ended.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be prudent not to follow in the media's footsteps and tarnish those on the "other side"(the right) as extremists mainly because it is simply untrue.
The left has one last bastion of power before they fade into obscurity, politically, and understandably, they are fighting tooth and nail to hold on to it.
to be fair, most of the right and most of the left are not extremists, but there are extremists on both the right and the left and they are the ones who seem to be setting much of the tone
DeleteThe only actions the Right is taking is in the halls of the Knesset. That's the opposite of "extremist".
Deleterafi, if you could point out the exteemists on the right in this particular situation, i would be grateful (i.e. those getting arrested daily for disruption of normal life)
Deletethank you
the extremists in voice, not talking about action. the people saying extreme things, about the need to push forward despite the country burning. Obviously the people on the right are not doing extreme things right now as there is nothing extreme for them to do but their extreme voices are being heard loud and clear
DeleteI did not mean anyone calling for the reform is an extremist. I did mean that some people are calling for it in extreme voices and riling things up and making threats to the other side and what will happen if not, etc
DeleteNachum, dangerous extremists aren't always the ones out protesting and rioting. L'havdil, Germany in 1933 and Russia in 1918 were completely transformed by extremists who worked in the halls of their parliaments.
Deleteperhaps your definition of extremists need recallibrating Rafi. Pushing through reforms, unpopular with less than 10% of the voting public, doesn't really fall into the "extreme" category. One can disagree with them on all or some of the proposals, but the proposals themselves are not so extreme.
ReplyDeleteThe left, goaded by a hysterical media, has done a wonderful job of painting them as extreme - the threats eminating from sections of the left regarding refusal to serve in the IDF, calling for general medical strikes as well as retails strikes, giving interviews to foreign media stating "there is civil war" are all much more egregious examples of extremism.
Perhaps you have been persuaded by the left wing media and many voices therein of the "catastophe" which will follow implentation of these reforms. I owuld humbly suggest that 95% of their projections are nonsensical and arise from the very real reduction in their only power base remaining.
For what it is worth i did not vote for a right wing party in the last election, and whilst agreeing with some of the proposals i do have serious reservations about others.
I have yet to read of any threats from the right if their proposals do not get passed.
there are plenty of extremists. the ones screaming about anarchists and calling them names and threatening all sorts of things if the law didnt go through like this or that. to name some names I would say off the top of my head people like Ben Gvir, Tali Gottlib, shlomo Karhi, May Golan, among others. Additionally, in Gan Sacher at the leftists protest overnight when they slept before going to the knesset there were right wing activists going through Gan Sacher making trouble. Yes, there are extremists on the right wing as well.
Delete