The differences between dancing, parading and rioting.

June 18th, 2007

5 Comments

It’s nearly a year since our wedding, and we still get the same reaction when the topic comes up around friends or family:

Your wedding was really something – everyone danced together, it was so fun. Everyone was just so happy, for the same reason, and dancing all together. It really was something.

The reaction is related to the fact that our wedding was a clear mix of stereotypes: charedi Israelis, charedi Anglos, secular Israelis, modern Orthodox Anglos, dati leumi Israelis, olim of various types and birthplaces and mother tongues.

Yet they all participated, from the longest payot to the smoothest scalps. They all held each other and danced and watched a Jewish couple get married.

It makes me proud every time someone mentions it. I’m not one to accept compliments gracefully, but I don’t consider this a compliment for me or my husband or both of us together. It’s a compliment to the people who joined us, became involved and just didn’t look left or right before crossing into the dancing circles (separated by gender as they may have been). At that time and place, derech eretz had actually come before Torah. It’s the best wedding gift the two of us could have asked for.

Now, if only it were the same all the time, sometimes, or even rarely. If only the organizers of the Jerusalem gay pride parade and the charedis against it could stop looking left and right for a minute to just realize one thing they have in common: their Jewish souls, born from Jewish mothers. Gay pride parade organizers sin, charedis sin. I sin, you sin. But we all do good at some point, right?

What if Thursday – the day scheduled for the next parade – was about realizing that, instead of dissonance? What if everyone gathered and did something together for people we can all agree are troubled – the sick, the poor, the starving, the hunted, those left behind?

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Eliesheva (Israel & USA)

June 18, 2007

Just in case –

charedi: Ultra Orthodox observant Jew
Anglo: English-speaking
dati leumi: national religious
olim: Jewish immigrants to Israel
payot: hair grown below the jawbone on men, usually noticeable on charedis
derech eretz: literally, ‘the way of the land’, meaning, acting on values (“derech eretz comes before Torah” is a Hebrew-Jewish phrase meaning, acts of kindness and good come before study)
Torah: Jewish bible

More background: The Gay Pride Parade that is annually scheduled for Jerusalem is always clashing with the charedi and much of the Jerusalem community; it is believed not to be in the taste of Jerusalem and therefore should occur in other cities. The LGBT community obviously wishes to promote its free speech abilities and rights in their identities and tolerance. It is scheduled this year for this upcoming Thursday, and so far has not been canceled. I guess we’ll see…

Esra'a

June 18, 2007

Awesome post, its conclusion couldn’t be any better… here’s to hoping someone reads and applies this.

AntonGarou

June 18, 2007

What do you propose that the parade organizers do?I follow that issue rather closely and they do what they can:No partial and/or full nudity, parade path in totally non-religious areas, etc.I was there last year and honestly I see less modest wear every day in BIU- a nominally religious university, and more balagan in every student I attended.Personally I didn’t see much hate speech and/or action from that side, although there certainly is some.

The Charedi side is less vehement then last year as well- most of the Rabbis went public with opinions and Halachaic verdicts against rioting and even against public protests, holding that the “protest” should be by prayer etc., to the extent they published a joint call in one of the major Charedi newspapers “Yated Ne’eman” that placed the burden of keeping Yeshiva students out of the streets on the Yeshiva head.The only ones arranging protests and rioting are the extremists of the “Eda Charedi”.OTOH hate speech still flourishes quite well on that side(comparing LGBT people to beasts for example) and much of the “against protest” crowd are against simply because they fear that it will cause more awareness in the younger generation.

AntonGarou

June 18, 2007

It should be “every student day” of course

eliesheva

June 18, 2007

I’m coming from the perspective that what is truly needed here is dialogue, not necessarily showing off your right to freedom of expression in a form that is just going to distance the very people that need to be reached. Maybe they deserve the right to parade, but at the end of the day, isn’t it more important to dialogue?

Let’s encourage conversation. Have you ever thought stereotypes about a certain population, and then met a person of that population, and realized, duh, they’re not all like that, or even like that at all? Or they’re not so bad? Not what we had thought?

Let the rats of the charedi community stay in their holes and the ones who care about humanity – who already do good for communities and already have an inkling of care for Jews of all types – stand side-by-side with LGBT community members at a soup kitchen, a Sderot drive, and have a valuable conversation.

In my opinion, getting to know people is always better for the long term than a mass showing of solidarity – which yes, is important as well – but now, no one seems to worry about the personal side of dialogue, the dialogue that hits home stronger. Parades are important, but they’re not human, and are they so worth it when it’s going to cost the dialogue side of things, or have people ignore the dialogue side in favor of the publicity? Wouldn’t freedom of speech be more valuable if it was face to face with the person who thinks s/he hates you?

I think that would spread a stronger message over time – it would seep through the ranks of Jewry, and while extremists stay extremists, the ones who question will get their answers.