Rally

[debka_notion]

I attended my first rally tonight. It was in reaction to a woman having been arrested a couple of weeks ago for wearing a tallit at the kotel. It was a walk and then a big crowd listening to some sort of speakers whom I couldn't understand. So after a bit of that, I left early to walk home with a friend who had to get back to working on application essays for next year. The rally was an interesting mix of people, and included a wide variety of folks I knew- I saw many, many of my classmates, some friends from RRC, other friends from the Conservative Yeshiva, etc, etc.

It got a little confusing as part of the rally ended up being more general "take back Jerusalem from the Hareidim" in ways that were about letting more things be open on Shabbat, instead of being focused on the kotel issue and religious freedom there. One of my friends commented that it was like there were two rallies squished together: one of non-hareidi religious people talking about the kotel, and another of secular folks talking more broadly about control of Jerusalem. So the posters around me said things (in Hebrew, but I'm too lazy to type in Hebrew right now) like "There's more than one way to be a Jew" and "Free the Kotel a Second Time".

At one point some folks behind us lit a very small fire and got some sort of hot air balloon lit and going, and then released it, so that it flew away over the crowd. It distracted pretty much everyone briefly. It was a lovely thing to watch, but left me quite concerned as it was this flying thing with fire in it, roaming freely on the winds. I just dearly hope that it burned out before it hit anything inflammable...

Comments

[lordameth.livejournal.com]

Sounds like quite the event. Wish I might have been there to take part and march with you.

It really saddens and frustrates me sometimes that some Jews feel the need to be divisive and exclusive, when there are so few of us, we all ought to be sticking together. Is Israel a state for all Jews, or just some Jews? Is the Kotel for all Jews, or just some?

I love those posters.

[flintknappy.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's crazy. If you can't pray at the Kotel where on earth are you supposed to?

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

You can pray, you just can't do it in a group or wearing ritual prayer-gear- if you happen to be a woman...

[hotshot2000.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I figured it would become. It seems to me that a better use of time would be to talk about what Shabbat ought to look like in contemporary Jewish culture (leaving aside the textual loyalty issues); if they got the values right, it wouldn't look like a bunch of economically-privileged people being served (in cafes or malls) by less economically-privileged people (either Jews or non-Jews).

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

The thing is that I doubt you'd have gotten all those people there for such a conversation, and you couldn't have had it in that big a group anyways, without a Heck of a lot of planning and training. So better something than nothing, for one thing.

For another, brushing off halakha, Jewish history, longer term norms, and the segment of society that you generally inhabit as "textual loyalty issues" seems rather disingenuous. Aka, you got my hackles up.

[hotshot2000.livejournal.com]

Well, unless the something is really problematic, which I think it is.

Sorry about the hackles-raising; ideally one would be able to incorporate the insights of all the things you mention, but in reality I'd be willing to bracket them in order to try to begin a conversation that wouldn't devolve into either mutual cultural paralysis or pointless "I'm OK you're OK"ness.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

You think that the situation is really problematic, the rally was really problematic, or both? Sorry I couldn't quite catch your referent. I'd love to hear a quick explanation of what your thinking on the topic is- otherwise I don't really know how to react to it.

The problem is that the way you framed it, I think a significant section of people would take it as outsider criticism rather than as useful, since you're not going to be perceived so much as part of the culture that I think that you're criticizing. And that seems like it would be just as paralyzing to change as doing the "I'm ok, you're ok" thing.

[hotshot2000.livejournal.com]

Something = rally.

And I wasn't talking about outside criticism (you're right that people can only talk within their cultural context), I was talking about people getting together and saying: "What's good about Shabbat practices that I do/have witnessed/imagine? What's bad about them?" That would allow dati people to talk about both "traditional" things (like not being able to run errands which allows them to spend time with family/friends/community) and also to say things (if they felt free) like: "It seems nice to be able to go to the beach on a day off." Ditto hiloni people, if they didn't feel under attack, could say: "Yup, I like going to the beach, and not feeling pressured to run errands sounds like a good idea to me." Once you've created a certain amount of consensus, you could then fold back in the other issues (textual loyalty, slippery slopes, etc.) and figure out how to incorporate those concerns without losing the consensus that had already been generated.

[wotyfree.livejournal.com]

Holding a conversation about what sorts of Shabbat practices are nice does not strike me as a reasonable response to violence against people who are perceived as behaving heretically.

[hotshot2000.livejournal.com]

I was referring to a conversation between the dati and hiloni people who jointly made up the rally, not to a conversation with the haredim (although that would obviously have to be a step along the way, but better to pick the relatively low-hanging fruit first). If the message of the rally had been for the police/government to actually enforce extant laws when haredim (or any groups) riot, that would have been one thing; it's quite another thing to have a rally of mixed and conflicting messages about the extent to which stores in Jerusalem should be open on Shabbat (as Maya testified). That issue, although related to questions of haredi influence, is also orthogonal to it, and should be the domain of reasonable discourse (i.e., discourse that actually identifies the different issues at play and tries to negotiate between competing tensions) between different groups in Israeli society.

[wotyfree.livejournal.com]

I don't have to have an extensive discussion with chilonim about Shabbat observance to know that I support their right to open their businesses on Shabbat if they want to.

That's a conversation for another time.

I agree that a more focused message would have been better, but I think that trying to do religious dialogue between participants could only have derailed it.

[wotyfree.livejournal.com]

Or, to clarify, holding a discussion between Masorti, Reform, Conservative, and Choloni Jews about Shabbat observance does not strike me as a reasonable response to religious coercion and charedi violence.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

The rally reminded me a bit of a story a high school friend told me of a protest that she drove by in Utah. There were about 8 people there, and each one had a sign. Each sign was protesting something- but each sign was protesting something entirely distinct and separate from what each other sign (and the person holding it) were protesting.

But protesting alone is pretty useless, so you join up, even if the messages aren't quite the same. There's some underlying core of shared belief, even if it's poorly articulated. I think the rally wasn't necessarily a bad move- but better planning to articulate what vision is shared and focusing on that would have been more effective and more honest- if perhaps less impassioned.

Still, dialogue might build bridges, but it isn't going to convey anything much to the government, while a rally might. Dialogue to go along with a rally would be great- but dialogue alone (as much as I honestly love dialogue and the openness and connection it can create) is not going to do a lot for the legal situation.

[hotshot2000.livejournal.com]

אה"נ, which is why conversation (I don't like the word dialog because of the formal connotations it has picked up) is so important _before_ coming together to rally for change. (I'm also cynical about the effectiveness of rallies in general -- I think personal relationships between people who want to make change and people who can effect change are what really do things; rallies often have only the effect of making the ralliers feel good about themselves and politicians able to make empty declarations of support.)

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

I agree with you there. It may be a good idea anyways, in terms of building bridges between disparate pieces of a society that tends to put each category into a box separate from everything else, rather than perceiving sliding scales and connection, but it isn't really a response to the issue that at least I was at the rally in response to.