If this is how we are perceived, perhaps we need to work on correcting the impressions we make
MY recent column, “Democracy or Demography” (Issue 954), suggested that the passions that secular Israelis are expending on the (un-spontaneous) judicial reform demonstrations are misdirected. In place of the crocodiliatics about the future of Israel’s democracy, their energies should be directed to their own personal future: Will their grandchildren even identify themselves as Jews? The column suggested that thoughtful secular leadership realizes that they are losing the future, having raised generations that know zero of Jewish heritage, are in thrall to Western culture, and view Israel as just a Hebrew-speaking version of Spain or Greece or the US.
We contrasted this with religious youth: an appreciation of the Land’s sanctity, a negligible rate of yeridah, rejection of superficial Western values, and, among the chareidim, a large segment that willingly sacrifices material pleasures for Torah study, thus forging new links to our heritage.
The column resulted in a letter of protest from a prominent secular Israeli that contained a litany of complaints against religious and chareidi Jews. I cannot cite the entire letter — he sent it to me personally and not for publication — but in any case his arguments were quite familiar: that we look down on nonobservant Jews; that we seek to impose our ways upon others; that we are intolerant fanatics and refuse to listen to other points of view.
Although these slogans are not new, they should not be dismissed out of hand. If this is how we are perceived, perhaps we need to work on correcting the impressions we make.
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