Wednesday, July 21, 2010

In Honor of 'The Twelve Spies': Speaking Out Against Atrocity on Tisha B'av

Yesterday marked Tisha B'av, a Jewish holiday remembering some of the very bad things that happened to the Jews on this day throughout history, the original set being known as 'the five calamities': the destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians, the destruction of the second temple by the Romans (supposedly creating the Jewish diaspora), the Roman crushing of the Bar Kokhba revolt, desecration of the temple grounds following the Roman siege of Jerusalem, and the original calamity, the slander of 'the twelve spies' against the land of Israel and their subsequent punishment by God. The last guys were probably some of the first people ever referred to as 'self-hating Jews'. More on them later.

Some of the other calamities to befall the Jews on this tragic day have been the Pope's declaration of the first crusade, expulsion from England in 1290, expulsion from Span in 1492, start of World War I, and the transfer from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka. On Tisha B'av in 2010, or the 9th of Av, 5770 on the Jewish calender, calamities continue, although this time around some of them take the form of having to bear the ethical, spiritual burden of the oppressor. An Israeli tank attack on Gaza which killed one supposed militant also left ten wounded, two of them children (a fact buried in many news stories). Israeli Border Police in the Al Baqa'a valley near Hebron dismantled a cistern and irrigation pipes used to grow vegetables, while the farmers who came to protest were cleared away by ear drum shattering sound grenades. In Jaffa, settler extremists attempted to burn down the historic Hassan Bek mosque; like the other times when settler's have attacked this mosque, no arrests have been made. On the eve of the holiday, the IDF demolished 55 homes in the West Bank village of Farasiya having declared it a military area, while the Israeli courts sentenced an Arab man to prison for raping a Jewish woman based on the fact that he had led her to believe he was a Jew (both admit the sex itself was consensual). Meanwhile, it was revealed that even more Israeli courts would be built on top of to-be-demolished sections of historical Maman Allah cemetery, which has seen sections desecrated previously to make way for hotels, bars, and parking lots.



What a terrible irony that a holy day mourning the demolition of the first and second temples would be marked by desecration of sites revered by Muslims, to make way for racist courts no less - a legal system built on the dead. The expulsion of Jews from England, Spain, and Warsaw now commemorated via ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their own villages and farmland. Traditionally, Tisha B'av is a day of fasting, not only from food and drink, but from entertainment, from bathing or using cremes/oils, from sitting or sleeping comfortably, from wearing leather, from fucking. Many observant Jews also refrain from working. Perhaps there should also be a fast from acting as the oppressor. Indeed, Israel hasn't taken time off from it's military routines since 1973, when Egyptian and Syrian forced attacked Israel during the other holy day of fasting, Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, something Israel could really use right now. Yom Kippur can't come fast enough this year.

This year saw Tisha B'av being used by right wing rabbis to rouse the rabble. If part of the fast for observant Jews is refraining from work, shouldn't they take the day off from their jobs emotionally provoking crazy people? Settlers gathered near an abandoned IDF base near Hebron to hear rabbis press for a movement to 'save the base'; the way they spoke about it, this ugly utilitarian military facility, one of hundreds, might as well have been the third temple. In Jerusalem, rabbis politicized the traditional reading of "Lamentations" by lamenting the "settlement freeze", a disingenuous method of mobilizing their bases given the fact that settlements currently continue to be expanded. They were joined by Women in Green, who are not environmentalists, but a pro-settlement group snidely playing off the name of the human rights organization Women in Black.

Rabbis in both Jerusalem and Hebron expressed heartfelt desire to construct the third temple, which doesn't sound so bad, until taking into account the very specific place they feel they just have to build it: on the site where the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque currently sit, one of the holiest sites of Islam. Who knows how many other Muslim holy places they'd have to bulldoze to make way for all the tourist parking and temple gift shops. What seems as an insane proposition that might destroy any sort of peace with Muslims, based on kooky biblical prophecy, is actually supported by almost 50% of Israelis, with 27% agreeing that the State should take active steps towards it's construction (48% are against active construction, with the rest unsure). Certainly there's got to be some space in the desert with ample room for parking where they could build a temple (one that hopefully wouldn't look like America's crass mega-churches), but there's three dependable factors that time and again get in the way of any sensible Israeli decision: Location, location, location! Speaking to Haaretz, Tel Aviv's Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau explained, "All the Prophets spoke about the fact that [the Temple] had been destroyed by fire and would be rebuilt by fire in the future." One hopes that this fire doesn't come in the form of the holy sites of other religions reduced to history's ashes.

Elsewhere, other Jews were doing a much better job at honoring the spirit of Tisha B'av by being actively involved in struggles for justice. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions was engaged in rebuilding a few of the 18,000 homes destroyed by Israel. ICAHD spokesperson Meir Margalit explained, "We are here because we are embarrassed and ashamed of our government. A decent person cannot handle what this government puts innocent people through. We are doing this for both sides; for the innocent families and to keep the moral values of Judaism alive." Rae Abileah of CODEPINK Women for Peace decided to fast as a statement in support of Palestinian human rights, echoing the sentiment of a group of American rabbis who have started Jewish Fast for Gaza. Israeli youtuber gangreentv put together a special Tisha B'av video remix of the Flobots song "Handlebars" in protests of recent legal clampdowns on free speech and citizenship. While the mainstream Jewish Telegraphic Agency ignored all of these actions, they did mention a nice sounding Tisha B'av protest that united Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and seculars in condemning the US government's poor handling of the BP oil spill; the holiday marked the third month anniversary of the environmental calamity.

Finally, I'd like to return to the so-called calamity of 'the twelve spies' I referred to in the first paragraph. I didn't remember this story from my Jewish education, so I had to refresh myself via Wikipedia. It's quite interesting, I think:
God had promised the Israelites that they would be able to conquer the land with its incumbent Canaanite nations, but the Israelites wanted to scout out the land for themselves. Moses specifically instructed the spies to report back on the agriculture and lay of the land. During their tour, however, the spies saw fortified cities and in-dwelling giants, which frightened them and led them to believe that the Israelites would not be able to conquer the land as God had promised. Ten of the spies decided to bring back a false report, emphasizing the difficulty of the task before them. Two of the spies — Joshua and Caleb — did not go along with the majority and tried to convince the Israelites that they could conquer the land, but the Israelites believed the majority's conclusions.
The Israelites' acceptance of the false report amounted to the acceptance of lashon hara (slander) against the Land of Israel. This was considered a grave sin by God. Corresponding to the 40 days that the spies toured the land, God decreed that the Israelites would wander in the wilderness for 40 years. Moreover, the entire generation of men who left Egypt during the Exodus would die in the desert, save for Joshua and Caleb who did not slander the Land.
The sin of the spies produced the annual fast day of Tisha B'Av. When the Israelites accepted the false report, they wept over the false belief that God was setting them up for defeat. God declared, "You cried for no reason, and so I will establish for you weeping for all generations." The night that the people cried was the ninth of Av, which became a day of weeping and misfortune for all time.
I quipped earlier that the spies may have been the first people to be labeled 'self-hating Jews', and like many Jewish critics of Israel today who get slapped with that label, I think they were correct.  It was truly a stupid, unnecessary decision for a wandering tribe of recently freed slaves to try to conquer a fortified nation of giants. I also like to believe that perhaps the spies who rebelled against Moses' authoritarian leadership saw it as ethically unsound to conquer another people's land, even if it's supposedly commanded by God (who, conveniently, only Moses spoke to). In Deuteronomy 20:16-17, God says:
"...in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them - the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites - as the LORD your God has commanded you."
It is quotes like this that have led Richard Dawkins to remark, "The God of the Old Testament is one of the most unlikable characters in all of fiction." Seriously, what a schmuck. I have to give it up to progressive rabbis who have to somehow try and find redemptive qualities in a statement like this, and shudder from the knowledge that right wing rabbis unapologetically take this sort of cruel, blood-thirsty language at face value, replacing the Canaanites and co. with the modern day Palestinians. 


Perhaps there should be a holiday to honor dissenters such as the spies, who have popped up throughout Jewish history to speak out against injustice, stupidity, and chutzpah, even if it went against popular opinion and the word of God himself (sorry for the gendered pronoun, but the patriarchal lunatic God quoted above is definitely a bro). God punished the spies' disloyalty by forcing them (and everyone who listened to them; take caution blog readers) to wander 40 years in the wilderness, and suffer terrible tragedy on that day for generations to come; todayIsraeli dissenters who advocate for boycott, divestment, or sanctions from any Israeli individual or institution could be facing criminal charges, and terrible tragedy for Israelis and Palestinians continues to occur year-round as a result of occupation, militarism, and racism. Perhaps this is still part of the old man's punishment. Or perhaps not. Regardless, who will step up to be the 'twelve spies' of today?  

3 comments:

  1. Haha, Adam, I don't know if you were serious about the 12 spies, but anyway,the story has generally been used to support opinions of dissent, as only 2 of the spies were willing to speak out to describe the virtues of the land of Israel, whose settlement was the aim of the Exodus in the first place. From the 10 spies opinion, 40 years of exile proceeded, which, yeah, is pretty Draconian of the Biblical God, but he is kind of a tyrant like you said. Looked at from a different perspective, however, you could say it expressed a certain ingratitude and faithlessness on the part of the spies, but that's a matter of literary analysis, not reality anyway. Joshua and Caleb's reaction of tearing their clothes and declaring the land good has always been a moving image for me, even after I stopped observing, and has always stood principally as one of dissent in my mind. In my agnostic/ God-fearing atheist mind, while I consider the intentions of the Bible's God genocidal when it comes to the tribes of Canaan, people standing up for the Good, God's position on Earth( supposedly) even when it means a protest of anger from a nation too willing to settle for the status quo, is a powerful assertion of belief in that Good and a moral protest in the name of doing the right thing. There are many "2 spies" today, throughout the world and in Israel standing up to the oppression you note, living up to the tradition of Joshua and Caleb, and saying "The land is good, but we will do good too," perhaps (metaphorically) compensating for the genocide which occurred then, and preventing any possible future genocide from ever occurring. Or so I hope.

    As to the poll about rebuilding the temple, it's from Arutz Hasheva, one of the most right-wing religious papers in Israel, so I tend to doubt it's veracity. In any case, the statements made by religious polemics throughout Israel are always disheartening, especially when they seize on a tradition which counteracts their own extremism and violence. I'm surprised you haven't noted the putting forward of the "Loyalty Oath" bill by Yisrael Beitenu, at the same time as Lieberman has proposed a plan to allow the EU to help develop Gaza economically. Ten steps back, one step forward always seems to be the name of the game here.

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  2. interesting take on the twelve spies story. guess it's pretty open to interpretation. i don't even remember hearing about this story in the Conservative temple/hebrew school i grew up going to, pretty sure they just left out most of the hardcore stuff and focused on the more feel-good getting out of slavery part.

    as for the poll regarding the temple, arutz hasheva was just reprinting the findings of another study by the panels institute commissioned by the knesset's official tv station. i'm sure it could be biased too, but it does show that those who actively want the govt to pursue it are in the minority (albeit a significant one). also, i've read some stuff about the loyalty oath bill and the economic plan, was going to talk about the former in this post but didnt end up fitting it in. too much chutzpah to cover!

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