Still catching up on late submissions before Shavuot:
The dog and the covenant
Adjoining my synagogue is a lovely garden, Not many enter it as it is not on street level and there are bushes and flower pots that define its boundaries. And it is special for the shul.
Nevertheless, there are people in my neighborhood who bring their dogs into this lovely holy reserve
It happened yet again this morning.
As I left the morning prayer service, I noticed someone walking their dog as it was crouching rather ominously on the beautiful grass. My first reaction was one of disgust. Obviously, the dog owner who entered the synagogue property with her dog did not share my sensitivities.
Most of my fellow worshippers do not engage in conversation with the dog masters. They probably are not happy about what they see but like most people, do not want to "get involved" so they hurry on and put it out of their minds.
What can I say? I know that I am different and it isn't always popular.
So there I went again.
I asked her if she thought that a synagogue garden was the proper place for a dog to be roaming about?
She wasn't happy about my addressing her and said something like," Did not God also create dogs''.?
Instead of answering her with a philosophical/theological thought I simply asked her the following: "would you walk your dog in the garden of a church or a mosque?
Would you not respect "the other '' and multi-cultural sensitivities...?
Why do you show disdain for your own?
She wasn't expecting anything like this response to her wise guy comment.
She did not answer.
I repeated my question as she made her exit from the shul's garden.
What can one learn from this encounter and similar ones?
As is becoming clearer lately, there is a showdown looming in Israel.
The tension has always been below the surface but recent events are revealing sensitive issues hidden under the carpet for a long time.
This lady was an Ashkenazi middle-aged /elderly secular Jew, the kind that dominated the antigovernmental demonstrations lately and have similarly dominated Israeli society until today..
My assumptions are based on almost half a century of observations:
I assume that she is high on the socio-economic scale and is well-educated in secular studies yet ignorant of things Jewish.
I assume that she was not raised to appreciate her Jewish roots or her forebears who were true to the Torah despite every "practical" reason not to. If they had succumbed to the easy way out, she would not be Jewish today. But those are not her heroes or models .
In Israel, one finds that the most ideologically motivated sector is the Ashkenazim - European Jews.
It is usually they who are the ideologues and leaders of the Left and of the Right, of the religious and the anti-religious. It has something to do with the European experience. There, one had to take a stand and choose a position and a group to belong to in a world of political and intellectual upheaval and debate.
It wasn't as clear in Sephardic, non-European Jewry. In those lands, life was not as jolted by great waves of intellectual and political revolution.
Life there carried on the way they were for the most part.
So it is today in Israel; the large majority of Sephardic Jews in Israel have a natural understanding of why one should not walk their dog in a synagogue garden. They respect their own. That is the norm. If one did bring his dog into that garden and someone like me made a comment, he would understand and quietly leave. He would naturally understand
Not so with the arrogant, educated lady I met today.
Not so the woman who would never bring her dog to a church or mosque garden but feels smug doing the same to a Jewish house of worship.
She is Jewishly insensitive. She is the Israeli who underplays if not hostile to things Jewish.
I became an Israeli because I am a Jew. Her Israeli identity tries to cover and hide her Jewish identity
A million like her now live outside of Israel where they can breathe fresh air, free of the burden of Judaism, and thus do not need their Israeli identity. Free at last!
I remember a time when all Israelis would be ashamed to even suggest leaving the country. Those times are gone. As the Jewish moorings progressively weaken, the tree no longer has a reason to exist or even pretend.
These Israelis are lining up for foreign passports (which has become a burgeoning industry of late)
Years ago, one of the intellectual /political leaders of the anti-religious Left, Yaakov Chazan bemoaned, "We hoped to raise a generation of apostates but were left with ignoramuses"
These ignoramuses are leaving. They are raising fewer families. They are disappearing.
On the holiday of Shavuot, we are told that the entire Nation stood as one at Mt Sinai to receive the Torah covenant that defined us as a Nation. The entire Nation no longer stands together
but those who remained faithful to that covenant are still standing.
tour guide and author
"Jews, Israelis, and Arabs".
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