For those of us living here, chillul Hashem is just the awful beginning of our concerns

Like many people in Yerushalayim, I live in a quiet, peaceful area that’s not far from a bustling, passionate area. It’s a passionate country, after all. For the last few years, the city has been constructing a rail line meant to ease traffic, and the construction on nearby Bar Ilan Street drew nightly protests from young men opposed to the plan.

At one point, I saw graffiti scrawled across a concrete construction barrier: “Seventy years after the Holocaust, once again they’re forcing Jews into trains.”

This was so ludicrous that I had to laugh… or maybe cry. The light rail is a municipal project, one of many projects aiming to adapt an ancient city built for horses and wagons to the needs of a modern metropolis. No one is forcing anyone onto a train. There are no Nazis or death camps involved here.

Are there complaints and concerns? Yes, some people are concerned about new rail lines bringing secular passengers into staunchly religious areas.

Beneath the passion, as Rav Ahron Lopiansky once explained in these pages (Issue 844), is a matter of identity. The protests were largely conducted by people whose entire identity stems from their self-perception as targets of persecution. They spend their entire lives fighting, because if they’re not fighting, they don’t know who they are. If there are no actual Nazis threatening them, they’ll hurl the term at their local law enforcement — some of whom are third-generation survivors just as they are.

There’s a great danger to our children, to our essential selves, when our self-concept isn’t built on positive principles — this is who I am, this is what I believe in, this is what I live for — but rather this is what was taken from me, these are the people who are out to get me, this is the antagonism I must brave just to survive.

Not only does that breed a sense of grievance, negativity, and festering resentment, it also stunts our growth and our goals. Train or no train, it leaves us stranded without much of a destination.

The facts are still emerging about Sunday’s terrible events in Bnei Brak, an event roundly condemned by the mainstream gedolim and community. What we know: Two female IDF soldiers entered the chareidi stronghold. As of press time, it’s unclear whether they were handing out fliers encouraging the draft — a clear provocation — or making a home visit to a specific draftee. What is clear: Local teenagers assumed that the soldiers were entering an army deserter’s home to make an arrest. (These days, basically any yeshivah bochur or avreich who’s received three army summons and, in keeping with the instructions of the gedolim, does not report for service on his specified enlistment day, is classified as an IDF deserter and liable to be arrested.) An improvised alert system sprang into action. Angry crowds of teenagers arrived and thronged the area; the two soldiers, fearing for their safety, were then removed under police protection; and the crowds rioted violently, causing damage to police vehicles (one of which had a set of tefillin and siddur inside).

It was a very low moment for the chareidi community, a moment of shame and condemnation. Rav Dov Landau and Rav Moshe Hillel Hirsch swiftly reacted with clear instructions that this was completely unacceptable; yeshivah bochurim should remain in yeshivah and avoid not just protests, but even areas where protests are occurring. They decried the extreme chillul Hashem.

And in fact, no matter where you live — be it across the Atlantic Ocean or in the steamy environs of Bnei Brak, you surely tingle with that same overriding concern: “Chillul Hashem!” What a terrible thing for chareidim and violence to appear in the same sentence. What a terrible thing for a crazed mob mentality to overtake the calculated thought and sensitivity that should be our hallmark in every private and public interaction.

But for those of us living here, especially parents bringing up children in this very passionate place, chillul Hashem is just the awful beginning of our concerns.

What other worries do these protests evoke? As the demonstrations get uglier, the media and political responses more vicious, the air more charged, we worry how our people will ever find shalom in this country. Because we need shalom. We have so many enemies. We share so much history. And yet the gulf between us just gets wider and wider. We’ve heard people calling not just for chareidim to shoulder the national burden, but for chareidi blood. We’ve reached a point where soldiers in an insular religious neighborhood are seen as a provocation. This is where we are, and it’s beyond frightening.

Then there are other worries. There’s the fact that despite our Anglo-bubble homes, our children absorb a very different culture. For better or worse, sabras aren’t much concerned what you think of them. Israel’s dismal hasbarah efforts are just Exhibit A. If something is important to Israelis they’ll do it. If something is true they’ll say it. Let the Americans cringe.

In this robustly opinionated country, there seems to be a protest every week; blocked roads or highways are as endemic to the region as falafel and hummus. Protests are an accepted lever of power that the masses use often — and often very effectively — to wield influence on politics and policy.

Even from my quiet, boring neighborhood, I can tick off so many protests I’ve experienced: the massive Ethiopian protest that sealed off the entire city, the paralyzing protests after Yoav Gallant was removed from his post (that night, after hours of driving through back roads, I finally arrived at a wedding to find barely 30 guests in attendance), the disabled citizens’ protest, the elderly pensioners’ protest, the “bring them home” protests, the solidarity protests for Arabs suffering through-the-roof homicide rates, and of course the Kaplan anti-judicial-reform protests that snarled Tel Aviv every Motzaei Shabbos. This is a country where people take to the streets regularly, almost religiously. It’s what our children imbibe as they walk home, scan the headlines, breathe the air.

And while the purely ideological protests of the legendary Rav Amram Blau have deep, real, and holy roots, too many of the protests our children see — protests marked by rock throwing and name-calling — have diluted his pure approach beyond recognition. We certainly don’t want our young sons with their still-soft cheeks and bright eyes, on their way home from yeshivah at 9:30 p.m., to stop and watch with fascination as vigilante protesters set garbage dumpsters alight, or taunt and block bus drivers. That’s not the entertainment we aspire for them to enjoy, nor the brand of courage we dream of them acquiring.

It’s confusing, though, when said protesters claim they are standing up for our most precious values, while no one else seems to be giving so much as a krechtz when yeshivah bochurim are incarcerated. We can explain that this is a knotty problem, something that has to be solved strategically by politicians and legal experts. We can rue how the mainstream chareidi representatives and liaisons have poured all their energy into a deadlocked process, with the best of intentions and so much effort. But what do our youngsters see? They see a yeshivah bochur exactly their age thrown into jail, and no one is yelling except for those people we tell them are “fringe elements who don’t represent us.”

The other worry sparked by these ugly protests is a very primal question: What is shaping our children’s identity? We know how destructive it can be to see oneself primarily as a victim, a target, as someone whose value stems only from negatives — we’re shut out, we’re punished, we’re persecuted. Or worse: The biggest indicator of how special we are is how much our own brothers hate us. That’s not the kind of identity we want our children to have.

On the other hand, it’s hard, isn’t it, to imbue our children with a sense of elevation, with a core identity that doesn’t begin and end with being persecuted, when practically speaking, to be a long-term learner in the Jewish State currently means to be a criminal. When a young woman aspiring to marry a full-time learner also knows her children will face sanctions and degradation. When military police — not those two female soldiers who visited Bnei Brak, but many others — do actually visit private homes and arrest yeshivah bochurim or avreichim.

If you’re not the protesting type, if you stay away from strife and conflict, then you blanch at the terrible chillul Hashem in every ugly provocation and Nazi slur. You worry about the gaping holes in whatever shared social fabric once existed here. You worry about not just the future but the present, so much and so often.

And being a parent, you stay up late at night agonizing over those young people growing up in your home. What do they see in those protests; where is their personal red line between heinous and heroic? Beneath the calls for restraint, do they intuit any deep concern for their well-being? You wonder what they think of the approach they’ve been advised to take — be quiet, bend your neck, willingly submit your wrists to the handcuffs. And you pray that despite all those questions, despite your worries and concerns, they will manage to forge a positive, elevated identity in this pressure-cooker they’re living in.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1100)