Unawareness is the chronic illness of overly smug people, so it shouldn't be surprising that we have so much of it here. In some cases it can be funny. Not knowing English, for example, is quite legitimate. Neither iniquity nor disgrace. But not knowing that you don't know English, and surrounding yourself with people none of whom warn of a chain accident at your expense, is already a problem that Minister Smotrich must deal with.
More difficult cases of lack of awareness can be much less funny, such as Ehud Olmert's insistence on being interviewed in the studios on the basis of a moral compass.
Sometimes it's just sad. Here, on Lag B'Omer, a murderous attack took place at the entrance to the synagogue in Djerba, and the reports, so to speak, were almost incidental. I looked around and realized that most of the people who reported on the murder of cousins Ben and Aviel Haddad had no idea about the importance of this ancient and holy place. Many found it difficult to pronounce the name of the Algarve synagogue correctly, and would certainly have gotten by much more easily with challenges such as the Intercontinental Hotel in Massachusetts.
Djerba Island is one of Tunisia's only tourist attractions, and the local government had every reason in the world to numb the event and make it as small as possible, but that still doesn't explain the fact that we ourselves, Jews and Israelis, didn't turn worlds upside down. Or at least a table.
• • •
The eternal political debate often raises the question of "who was here first?" Personally, I don't see much point in this claim, but if everyone waves it over and over again, then it is not superfluous to remark that the Algarve synagogue was indeed there before. Much earlier. Yes, before Islam. Shabbat prayers and Jewish holidays, priestly blessings and longing for Jerusalem in beautiful Hebrew with Ein and Chayat were heard there long before the first muezzin in the area practiced his first mwal from the top of the mosque.
This is probably the holiest Jewish place in North Africa. A world in which the Jewish presence has always been an inseparable part of the landscape. And more than once, as mentioned, also preceded the landscape. I don't think there's a single person in the universe whose surname is Jerbi and he's not Jewish. In Hungary, too, by the way, the Jews preceded the Magyars - the Hungarians of today - and needless to say, the very fact that the Jews were there before never caused the Jewish community to claim political sovereignty over the place. Why would they do that?! They just asked to be allowed to live their lives.
In the past two weeks, by the way, a TikTok video has been circulating online documenting Aviel Hadad's last moments. He stands in front of the Jewish audience, his back to the orchestra and holding a microphone. He is a talented poet and singer, and he opens his vocals with a beautiful and strong curl of "Allahu Akbar" with all his heart and soul, which he naturally connects to the Shema Yisrael. For a moment you forget that you have a person in front of you in the last moments of his life. For a moment you are filled with optimism.
I immediately remembered what I had heard from the Tunisian elders of the family. That's exactly how they spoke. For them, this was the natural and obvious connection. They had no doubt that religious faith and feeling were not meant to be focal points of tension or barrels of gunpowder, but opportunities for connection and brotherhood among God's children. But then the video ends, and a weight falls on the heart.
When my grandfather, who wasn't particularly religious, would tell me about Algarve, I would get confused. I didn't understand if he was telling me about an important place or about a mysterious beloved woman. The forehead wrinkled. I went back and asked who was Griba? Is she something or someone? Only after many years did I realize that this is exactly the way to know that a certain place, date or concept is sacred to Judaism. Once they also become a beloved, human and almost concrete figure, there is no escape from realizing that they have entered the list.
Shabbat, for example, which is on the one hand the seventh day of the week. It's all a diary page. On the other hand, she is a queen, and she is a bride, and love songs are sung to her and she is told, "Come." And no, I'm not talking about songs that talk about Shabbat. After all, there are quite a few songs that talk about Friday, or "Monday Monday". But there are songs that appeal to Shabbat.
The same can be said about Jerusalem, and about the Torah, which is never just a book and not just a text. And this is precisely the special status of "Algarve", which in most years, out of love, completely deviated from its status as just another religious public institution, with an address and a role, and became someone. Unfortunately, most of us are not aware of this, and if we were, I assume that the murderous attack would have stirred us, and the world, a little more. If anyone is having trouble understanding what I've written here, that's totally fine. I never thought for a moment that decades of neglect could be corrected in a few hundred words. Lack of awareness, I've already said. Problem.
• • •
Hatred of the ultra-Orthodox is a sickening phenomenon. Like all collective hatred, hatred of the ultra-Orthodox succeeds in unleashing all restraints and making the speaker feel for a moment that he has public backing. The heart of this ugly and dangerous lashing out mechanism is centered on the thought that you are saying what everyone else thinks. I mean, you're not a nasty filth, but an honest cultural hero whose mouth and heart are equal, and all sorts of blah-blah-blah.
So, once in a while an incident happens here, like we had this week with Galit Gutman. The inclusion was criminal; The words that came out of her mouth were horrifying; Shikma Bressler's immediate supportive response was something worth writing down as a souvenir, and the apology, oh the apology, well, that feeble verbiage, as weak as a tea bag in the third use, shocked the severity of the expression like a leisurely concession of an elevator to the second floor is a proportionate response to a dish of shawarma bluff. Result? Complete neutralization of the serious and painful claims against ultra-Orthodox politics.
When I speak out against "hatred of the ultra-Orthodox," I would like to disapprove not only of hatred directed against the haredi public, but also of hatred that often emanates from the haredi side outward. Hebrew is a deceptive language, and that, too, is "hatred of the ultra-Orthodox." Let's put it this way: I would love to see such decisive, shocked and uncompromising reactions every time an ultra-Orthodox public figure "spoils" entire publics with endearing titles like "Amalek."
I'm not a child, but you might expect a word of condemnation for the terrible receptions that await ultra-Orthodox soldiers when they go home on vacation. This insults not only them, but everyone for whom the IDF is dear. We would love to hear reservations, however feeble in Gutman's style, that the criminal known as "Rabbi Berland" once again beeped at everyone and somehow managed to set fire to Lag B'Omer on Mount Meron. Enough cynicism. Stop the hatred.
• • •
I watched Gad Elmalach's American stand-up comedy show on Netflix this week. Stand-up comedians have always been considered sharp-eyed outsiders, but Almach, in English, redefines outsiders. He is a French Moroccan Jewish actor who comes to New York. In Paris he is famous for not being able to pass on the street. In New York, he is a complete unknown.
He openly and curiously touches all his labels and identities, except for the Jew, who is silently present. Even when he talks about the day he dressed up as a cowboy as a Moroccan boy, he refrains from saying a word about Purim. I wonder if this intriguing silence is the result of the European, Moroccan, comedian or American side of Almalah, and anyway I recommend seeing the identity plotter who makes fun of every page of this wandering Jew's overflowing passport.
shishabat@israelhayom.co.il
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us