The rabbi gets a rapping
Everyone and their sister hits back at remarks from a pre-army religious school head disparaging female soldiers
Joshua Davidovich is The Times of Israel's Deputy Editor
Barcelona’s stunning come-from-behind victory against Paris Saint-Germain in EUFA Champions League soccer is plastered across the front page of all the major Hebrew-language newspapers on Thursday morning. But it isn’t the only comeback making news in Israel, as the country responded with a collective “oh, no he didn’t” to a fresh set of disparaging comments — this time about female soldiers — by the head of a pre-army religious program.
Israel Hayom leads off with the words of yet another man – in this case Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who stopped short of condemning Rabbi Yigal Levinstein but made sure to praise female fighters. Even with Netanyahu going only halfway, the paper reports that “the country’s top officials condemned his words, the national religious community was divided in its reactions and even Levinstein clarified, ‘I’m sorry for the way [it was said] but I don’t take back a single word from my worldview.’”
Yet another man, columnist Haim Shine, comes to the female fighters’ defense, mansplaining why Levinstein can say what he wants, but not while holding his position, and using the case to also justify pulling state funding from artworks that don’t toe the government line.
“A democratic country has free speech for everyone, especially those who deal with education and instilling values. It’s Rabbi Levinstein’s right to say what he wants, but someone who is at the head of a pre-army academy and gets significant financing from the IDF needs to act with a degree of restraint,” he writes. “Just as there are justified claims against cultural figures who receive state support and hurt the state with their works; just as the chief army rabbi needs to remember that the army is made up of a wide array of soldiers with different points of view even during a Torah class – so it’s expected that the head of a pre-army program won’t express ideas that contradict the policy of the IDF as long as he heads the program.”
Yedioth Ahronoth’s response to the scandal goes to the other extreme, letting womenfolk do the condemnation and explaining of everything that’s wrong with Levinstein’s statements. The paper posts pictures of several religious female army vets holding signs that say, “I served in the army and am still Jewish,” a rejoinder to Levinstein’s comment that while the girls may go in to the army Jewish, they don’t leave that way.
As for those still-Jewish girls whose army service hasn’t rendered into pork eating, Shabbat-driving Scientologists (or whatever) by army service, the paper quotes a number of them who were none-too-pleased to hear the rabbi’s words.
“Exactly because of the post Rabbi Levinstein holds I was saddened to hear what he had to say, but that also sharpened for me the significance of the revolution in recruiting religious women, and I understand that I have a mission here: To put the issue in a positive light,” Dana Shlusky is quoted saying.
On the paper’s op-ed page, Chen Sror Artzi writes that in spirit of the upcoming farcical holiday of Purim, when everything is turned upside down, Levinstein’s attempt to thwart religious female soldiers and glorify halacha will have the opposite effect.
“These young religious girls did a thorough investigation before joining up, an investigation that did not cast an askance eye on Levinstein and his ilk. They come with bellies full of Torah, the phone number of a rabbi or rabbanit for guidance and strength, and in their eyes – this is their mission. Quality manpower from the best girls schools are coming en masse to the IDF induction center. Levinstein and his friends can continue to rage, rave and slander, but in the end, as always, the public is leading ahead of the leaders. The public has said its piece. Who will pay the price is respect for the Torah and those who learn it.”
Haaretz’s lead editorial takes aim at another of the rabbi’s remarks — “The army is drafting our religious girls” — which may not seem chauvinistic at first, but the paper says reveals a very unenlightened mindset.
“The rabbi sees religious women as a proprietary pool that belongs to religious men (‘our’), while the women themselves have no choice. (The army is drafting them; they don’t enlist of their own free will.) Levinstein would surely be disappointed to learn that every year there’s a 10 percent rise in the rate of military enlistment by religious women, nine percent of whom serve in combat and combat-support units. This is a welcome trend, since the military can be a springboard to higher education and a career, and is a melting pot for Israel’s divided society,” the paper writes.
The sound and the fury
While Levinstein’s views may have been bashed to a pulp, all the condemnation in the world couldn’t stop the controversial ‘Muezzin Bill’ from moving ahead Wednesday, another major story tackled by the press. The fact that the bill’s passage in preliminary reading was accompanied by an especially stormy Knesset session doesn’t hurt coverage either, and makes up a major focus for the papers, which don’t pass up a chance to riff on the fact that all the noise was made over a bill meant to lower the volume.
“The Muezzin and the outcry,” reads the headline in Yedioth, which gives a play-by-play of various Arab lawmakers getting up to denounce the bill, with some even tearing up its text.
“This is a war between the ignorant and the enlightened,” the paper quotes Zuheir Bahloul (Zionist Union) as saying, noting that he also shed tears during the debate. “This is a stain on this house. This is a mark of Cain on this building that time after time declares war on us. This is an unambiguous declaration of war on the Arab minority.”
Israel Hayom’s headline focuses on the fact that the Arab MKs yelled out “Allahu Akhbar” in protest during the session, but saves for the fine print the part where MK Oded Forer (Yisrael beytenu) answered it by calling MK Jamal Zahalkha (Joint List) a “terrorist.”
The question of who is and isn’t a terrorist is a loaded one in Israel, possibly more so than in some other places. That fact was dredged up earlier this week when an Arab town came under fire for naming a street after Yasser Arafat, the late Nobel Prize-winning Palestinian leader who also happened to have been the head of a terror group. In Haaretz, Gideon Levy opines that – surprise – he would have no beef with living on an Arafat Street. Instead, he notes, the streets in his neighborhood in north Tel Aviv (natch) are named for Jews from the Lehi pre-state militia who did as bad or worse than Arafat did, showing no compunction in calling them “terrorists.”
“Ramat Aviv Gimmel is a neighborhood of terrorists. Almost all its streets are named for Jewish terrorists who blew up buses, attacked trains and murdered people. Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Beit Zuri, the murderers of Lord Moyne; Meir Feinstein, who attacked a train station; Shlomo Ben Yosef, who attacked a bus; Moshe Barazani, who blew up a train in Malha; and Yehiel Dresner, who attacked a train in Lod. The blood of innocents is on their hands. Even more blood is on the hands of Rehavam Ze’evi, who also has a street in the city named for him, near the port,” he writes. “Every nation and its heroes, all of them stained with blood. Some of the heroes for whom Israeli streets are named have a lot more blood on their hands than Yasser Arafat did.”
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