My family and I made the ultimate sacrifice in order to live in the one free and Jewish State in the world where we can practice Judaism openly without fear. What Jews are facing on the streets of Tel Aviv is a culture of intimidation and coercion.
The late British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks described anti-Jewish sentiment as a virus that mutates. The earliest haters of Jewish practice blamed it on us being their god killers. Then they burned our Talmud in the streets and claimed it was our ideology. Later on we were a race that had to be eliminated. More recently we have become a Nation that is abhorrently accused of being apartheid. And so it goes on.
I would add to this that many of these mutations were innovated by Jews before they reached the non-Jewish world. The Epistles were written by Jews, Rabbeinu Yona burned the books of the Rambam just before the French started burning the Talmud in Paris and the “modernized” Jews of Frankfurt asked the mayor to ban Orthodox Jewish practice in the late 19th Century, some 60 years before the Germans started carting us off in rail cattle cars to be exterminated in the 1940s.
Today we face a new mutation of anti Jewish sentiment, again innovated by Jews, but this time made in Israel.This mutation is insidious and dangerous and inverts truth in a most ingenious way. I feel compelled to speak out because it, like previous mutations, could be fatal to innocent people and could endanger Israel’s safety and security.
This mutation perverts human rights and autonomy and presents the evil result as a value
This new “anti-human rights” movement claims that people should have the freedom “from” being exposed to religion, the freedom “from” being exposed to the speech of people it disagrees with and the freedom “from” being governed by the democratically elected majority.
I have had a traditional education and worked with human rights activists for a number of years. Until now I understood human rights as being about respecting the rights of others, not about just protecting my own. Until now I understood that human rights were about the freedom “to” practice the religion of one’s choice, the freedom “to” say what one likes (if it doesn’t incite violence against others) and the freedom “to” elect a government democratically.
By twisting human rights to create a self-serving vehicle for one’s own ideology, this movement creates a dangerous monolithic autocracy which stands 100% in opposition to the Jewish autonomous approach.
Judaism is about everyone in society having the duty to study law and ethics in order that they can independently decide what is right and wrong. It is about autonomous thought and action based on a sophisticated understanding of traditional values. It has been peer reviewed over millennia and is the best available set of morals that exists on this planet and it is respected by billions of people across the globe. Perhaps God wanted the decentralization of moral decision making across His whole people precisely for moments like these when charismatic leaders come forwards with sophisticated, but twisted, arguments to convince us that right is wrong and wrong is right.Isaiah already stated (5:20) “Woe to those who say that evil is good and good is evil.”
Now is the time to stand up against those who claim it is their right not to have to witness others praying in public. Because this is just the tip of the iceberg and, as usual, Judaism is its first target.
And that’s why I arranged to pray at Dizengoff Square yesterday morning against the wishes of the mayor of Tel Aviv and the Israeli Supreme Court. And I call upon all Jews who care about autonomy and truth to come to Tel Aviv in the coming weeks and months to pray publicly with, or without, mechitzot, chazanim, mixed seating, female rabbis, segregated seating, black hats, pink bows, red noses, or whatever way you like. Religious freedom applies to everyone and an attack on our religious freedoms is the beginning of the end for our human rights.
The Torah creates the greatest freedom for the greatest number which is why it has spread its influence across the globe over millennia. Let’s protect “Jewtonomy” for the future of this free and Jewish State and for the future of our children and grandchildren in the years to come.
The writer lost his wife Lucy and two daughters, Maia and Rina, in a terror attack during Passover 2023. He is the author of Transforming the World, a book that describes how the Torah brings shalom to the world and to individuals. He is striving to do just that.