A Time for Taking Stock

MYguess is that judicial reform in Israel is largely dead, at least for the time being. But the fallout from that reform effort — one that I wholeheartedly supported — will long be with us. And that fallout will likely be radioactive for the Torah community.

As many have noted, the battle raging in Israel is not primarily about the definition of democracy, but rather about demography — in particular, the rapidly growing percentage of the Israeli population that is chareidi. Most of those demonstrating against the reforms, when questioned about their opposition, quickly reveal that they know almost nothing about the substance of those reforms. They are blissfully unaware of all the ways that the Israeli judicial-governmental legal system is sui generis in the developed world, and are unprepared to defend those departures from accepted judicial norms.

Rather, they are likely to say something to the effect: “I want to live in a normal Western country, not in one in which women are required to wear hijabs or sheitels.” The expression of such fears may strike us as wild, but they are real, and the opposition warnings of all the religious legislation that the Likud and its allied religious parties want to foist upon the entire population have been enormously effective.

The questions we as a community ought to be asking ourselves are: Where did we fail? And what can we do now? Have we, for instance, ever tried to explain to the secular public that we do not seek to impose a theocracy as a political goal, and are content to wait for that day when Hashem will fill the entire world with knowledge of Him? Iran is not our model.