In 66 CE, a minor conflict developed between Jews and Greeks in Caesarea.
The dispute focused on the right to cross the path leading to the synagogue. During it, a pagan site was erected to anger, which served as a worship of birds. The sides did not reach a "broad agreement" on how to resolve the crisis, and the issue was transferred to Rome for decision. According to Flavius Josephus, in The War of the Jews with the Romans, the verdict sided with the Greeks, and riots broke out over a trivial matter. They developed into the great Jewish revolt throughout the country. Four years later, 1953 years ago tomorrow, the battles ended with the burning of the Second Temple.
I once asked Israel Prize laureate, the historian of the Second Temple period at the Hebrew University, Prof. Menachem Stern, if he thought that without that minor quarrel, the fate of the Jewish people would have been completely different. Stern, who was murdered in 1989 by a Palestinian terrorist in the heart of West Jerusalem, believed that the animosity was so significant that had it not been for the bird worship in Caesarea, another minor event would have sparked the revolt of the Jews in the Roman Empire.
In these days before Tisha B'Av, I wonder if the judicial coup led by Yariv Levin's aggression and insensitivity is merely an event of bird worship, and in fact the tension in Israeli society has inevitably led to a broad culture war, from which there is no escape. In other words, would Israel have not experienced an unprecedented phenomenon of mass refusal to serve in the reserves and a dangerous struggle between violent police and a demonstrators who are losing patience?
Nonetheless, as someone who participated in 105 demonstrations (including the "first round" that preceded the ouster of Netanyahu's government), I cannot identify and predict what the "bird cult" of the 21st century will serve as opposed to the substantive controversy mixed with such deep animosity.
For half a century, secular society has been in the process of adopting and absorbing Western culture. The high school curriculum shrunk the focus on the humanism of the ethics of the biblical prophets and the classics of Hebrew poetry and Jewish history. This trend was combined with forgiveness towards emigration from Israel and the fashion of holding two passports in one hand. The Declaration of Independence is steeped in clear Jewish and democratic values, but we were forgotten until we suddenly remembered it and leaned on it in our struggle. This is because we were alarmed by the dictatorial trend reflected in Levin's bills and those following him (for extreme religious or national reasons), which threatens freedom and the school of "personal exhaustion" prevalent in the democratic West. We didn't want to resemble Hungary but France, not Poland but Sweden.
What, then, is the struggle about? For example, it is inconceivable that the style that omits the application in the female gender will be renewed when a tender for a position on behalf of the state is published. Nor should divorce proceedings be forbidden in civil courts, but only before rabbinical judges.
It is very fitting that the protest was hung on the Declaration of Independence. David Ben-Gurion invested heavily in formulating it, even though he had already been in the midst of the War of Independence for six months. This dependence renewed the secular interest in Jewish, humane, Zionist and democratic values, which waited for many years on the margins of the public arena like an irreversible stone. In practice, assuming that the protest movement will eventually succeed in preventing the infiltration of the dictatorial tone and the halakhic trend into the centrality of the government, the secular-liberal majority will benefit from the struggle, renewing its awareness of the worthy values that have disappeared from Western consumer culture.
But even this optimistic scenario is in danger of collapsing. Another Yona Avrushmi B and Emil Granzweig B, and Levin's iron hand – as the justice minister seems to threaten in his dialogue with Yoav Galant in the Knesset – is enough to feel anxious that Tisha B'Av III is also a tangible danger. At least at the level of fiery animosity remembered from the civil war in the previous round.
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