Orthodox Hegemony, Fragmentation and the Yearning for Coherence.

By Yaacov Mascetti*

As of last Sunday, the (ultra)Orthodox parties control all of Israel’s religious services – this includes conversions, marriages, divorces, funerals etc. This is the most recent, and I would say also the most worrying stage in a long process which has seen a restricted group of rather extremist rabbis take control of the State funded rabbinical establishment.

The religious strata of the Israeli society are quite different in their behavioral formats, and alas the modern orthodox, or better those who are commonly known as the “National religious,” are growing more and more weary of this haredi putsch on the Rabbanut. I am worried – a lot of us are. This is a problematic moment in the history of Israel, and of the Jewish people as a whole. It’s certainly not the first time we have had to deal with this tension between a multi-vocal pluralism expressing the variegated nature of religiosity on the one hand, and a more dogmatic and univocal current of voices stating that there is one truth and one orthopraxis.

The argument igniting Korah’s claims against Moses and the centralization of prophetic and political power, and of holiness, are widely known, and yet they leave the reader with a series of questions, which Jewish traditional exegetes have tried to answer or at least set aside. A similar discussion of unity and fragmentation can be found in parashat Re’eh where, while describing various prohibitions relating to avoda zara, the Torah includes that of “lo titgodedu”, namely the excessive mourning for the dead through self-mutilation, which later interpretations have completely changed into a prohibition known as “lo ta’asu agudot agudot” – acknowledging this pull for fragmentation, the exegetes have forced upon the text a worried prohibition to break up the unity of the people into an uncontrollable variety of currents.

As Rav Moshe Taragin from Yeshivat Har Etzion has written, “the prohibition appears to be aimed at guarding against the disintegration of accepted halakhic behavior or the splintering of shemirat ha-mitzvot.” Multiple currents and opinions entail disintegration of unity and coherence. Rav Tagain, though, also acknowledges that “given the robust role of the machloket [debate] within our tradition, this issur of “dividing into groups” seems odd. Given that there are numerous acceptable halakhic practices, what is wrong with observing one which differs from that of others?”

In the Gemara, Yevamot 13b, Rashi points to the fact that this prohibition intends to contain the pull for the development of multiple traditions. Unity and univocal truths seem to have always been a powerful pole of attraction for Jewish exegetes, mainly depending on the fact that as there is one G-d, do must there also be one Torah, one tradition. Multiple traditions present not only a factor of theological disruption and confusion, but they also endanger the cultural unity of the people of Israel.

The Maimonides in his Mishne Torah (Hilkhot Avoda Zara ch. 12) sees this prohibition to have important social consequences – when the Torah tells us to prevent from forming groups and fragmenting the unity of the people in the creation of parties and currents, it is providing us with the tools to deal with the natural pull in a social group for debate, disputes and, at times, breaks. In a society like that of the biblical people of Israel, where the social sphere is always already religious and theological, allowing different and at times contradictory halakhic practices would undoubtedly yield disunity and confrontation.

It is not a case that this prohibition is found in a verse that deals with pagan rites and the prohibition thereof. In a way, the disputes that are not entirely based on tradition, even though engaging it in order to change it from within, are not “le shem shamayim” – social unity is not the result of a social network of discourses from which difference and variety have been entirely uprooted, but rather it is found within the delicate tension that must be kept within the fragmentation and the debates. In order to be “Banim atem le-Hashem Elokeichem,” “You are all children of G-d” and to avoid the pagan-like breaks in the social body (similar to the mutilations in the human body prohibited in that verse), a group should engage, courageously, in public discussions and allow, up to a certain extent, the flourishing of dissimilar positions.

Milton wrote in his Areopagitica, addressing the advocates of censorship and control of the printing press, fearing the dismembering of the English commonwealth:
Yet these are the men cry’d out against for schismaticks and sectaries; as if, while the Temple of the Lord was building, some cutting, some squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there should be a sort of irrationall men who could not consider there must be many schisms and many dissections made in the quarry and in the timber, ere the house of God can be built. And when every stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous in this world; neither can every peece of the building be of one form; nay rather the perfection consists in this, that out of many moderat varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly disproportionall arises the goodly and the gracefull symmetry that commends the whole pile and structure. Let us therefore be more considerat builders, more wise in spirituall architecture, when great reformation is expected. For now the time seems come, wherein Moses the great Prophet may sit in heav’n rejoycing to see that memorable and glorious wish of his fulfill’d, when not only our sev’nty Elders, but all the Lords people are become Prophets.

Rather than preventing difference, the government, the rabbanut and our schools should work harder to provide each individual with the tools to engage tradition, to ask questions and initiate intelligent discussions – we need to educate our children to engage with tradition in a creative way, and not encourage them to a supine acceptance of “things already said.” We must, dare I say so, encourage difference, and not strangle it in the coherence of a centralized theological establishment. For, Milton concludes, the coherence of the house of G-d is not attained with a forceful elision of difference, but by including those very brotherly dissimilitudes within the graceful symmetry of the sanctuary. Unity is a mature understanding of difference and variety, and not the quiet and stagnant acceptance of forceful dogmas.

*Yaakov Mascetti holds a Ph.D. and teaches at the Department of Comparative Literature, Bar Ilan University.