Many people asked themselves yesterday, after seeing the video in which demonstrators spray-painted the word "shame" on the wall of the rabbinical court in Tel Aviv, what was the reason for this. After all, this is a demonstration against the grounds of reasonableness - what is the connection to the courts?
To understand how the rabbinical courts get into the turmoil, it is necessary to understand what is happening behind the scenes of the protest. While the main protest deals with the legislative process, many believe that the big picture should be looked at.
Vandalism: Demonstrator spray-paints the walls of the Tel Aviv Rabbinical Court // Credit: Israel Hayom News
In recent decades there have been quite a few struggles over the issue of religion and state. There are prominent elements within the protest who believe that it should be shifted from the legislative issue to the broader one, to the religious issue.
Seize an opportunity to protest against religion
There are those who believe that the opportunity that has come before them should be used to change the character of the state. True, they say, the main campaign is the democratic part of the well-known phrase "Jewish and democratic," but alongside them quite a few of them are interested in reexamining the "Jewish" part.
At a demonstration in front of the Chief Rabbinate, photo: Anat Azaria
This phenomenon has been intensifying recently, especially in the Tel Aviv protest against the Ma'ale Eliyahu Yeshiva. After many years of activity in the city, prominent activists united and acted against the yeshiva, along with other protests in Israel over religious-secular relations.
The government's hands are also not free of tense-generating events. Recently, the Knesset has been promoting a law that seeks to appoint hundreds of new neighborhood rabbis, bypassing city councils. In addition, a legislative initiative was published that allows the rabbinical courts to enter the issue of the amount of alimony. Take these phenomena, along with the fact that the rabbinical courts have already been perceived for years as the head of the religious junta in Israel and as a symbol of inequality and freedom from religion, and you will get public anger and a desire to attack the religious establishment.
This is a phenomenon that should be stopped as soon as possible. It is legitimate to oppose the activity of the rabbinical courts and to oppose religious control of the public sphere. But spray-painting graffiti on the establishment simply because it is a religious symbol is disturbing. When you paint a swastika on top of a synagogue in New York, it's anti-Semitism, when you spray graffiti on a house in Abu Ghosh it's a price tag, but when you write "shame" on a rabbinical court - it passes in silence. This is not how there is a struggle for equality, this is how a protest is conducted whose purpose is to denounce the other side and erase its religious legitimacy.
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