Climate Change (Article# 100) 12/18/2008

Traveling makes for a strange life. I know that there are plenty of people who travel for their jobs on a regular basis. Until we made Aliyah I was not one of them, and had really never thought that I would join their ranks.

I have to give credit to the families of the traveling parent. I calculated that my 5 or 6 trips I take each year translate into my being away for more than 10% of the Shabbatot of the year. With little kids in the house, this is a significant amount of time for me not to be home, especially since it is the only day we get to spend together as a family (remember – Sunday is a full work/school day here). This absence is certainly felt at home.

This past month was my busiest ever. I was home for 6 days (including Shabbat) out of 24 and it seemed strange trying to get back to a routine. I cannot imagine how the people who travel 8-10 times a year can manage. Thankfully, I am home for 6 weeks straight and can finally get back to a “normal” routine.

Two major events happened here in the past couple of weeks. In the first, the slates for the national elections were selected by each party. We now know who the candidates are and in what order they will get into the Knesset. We also saw how flawed the primary system for the parties is and how easily the system can be manipulated by our “leaders” (not that I have any gripes about Feiglin’s treatment – I am sure some other columnist in the paper will cover that angle for us).

The other major development, at least for Bet Shemesh, was the installation of our new Chareidi mayor. Yeah, I know it is getting boring hearing me rail on about the Chareidim, but it’s news. Since the mayor assumed his office, it appears that the more radical fringes of his community have felt emboldened to step up not just their rhetoric, but their actions as well.

It started with the mass resumption of the Shaaaaaaabbbbiiiiiiiiiiiiissssss shouters – our lovely neighbors who feel an urge to remind us all just what day it is at 3 AM. It continued when a group of thugs (there is no other word for them) came INTO OUR NEIGHBORHOOD (not theirs) and threatened to beat up a group of teenagers who were talking together in the street on a Friday night. It hit its lowest point (so far) when 3 teenage girls, all of whom were dressed appropriately, were accosted in the Chareidi neighborhood and verbally abused.

Two of them ran to safety. The third did not escape what was quickly becoming a mob. They grabbed her, threw her to the ground and proceeded to kick her. A local teen saw the beating and ran to try to get her away. He too was beaten and then told that if the Chareidim ever saw him again they would kill him.

They only got away when a woman called to them from her building (next door) and they managed to run to her apartment, where she kept them for over an hour until the thugs left before she and her husband walked them home. Although the kids were not hospitalized, they were certainly terrorized and have multiple bruises and scratches.

The initial response from the police and city were muted. They took a report and then went back to business as usual. It was only after they were flooded with calls from the greater Anglo community that they stepped up to the plate to say that they were trying to find ways to address the problem. They will not find one.

Unfortunately, the only thing these thugs respond to is the same thing that bullies respond to. Someone standing up to them. I am convinced that someone will have to be seriously injured before the “official” authorities step in and I am absolutely positive that “unofficial” authorities will end up taking matters into their own hands. There could be a real war here if things get out of hand.

The tragedy is that none of this has to happen. In my opinion, if the mayor called a meeting with the most radical of the Rabbis and told them that he will personally make sure that their schools’ discretionary funding will be cut, that the police will be scrutinizing their shuls and Yeshivot for violations, that quite frankly he will make sure that the municipality does everything to make life difficult for them – they will eventually cave in. I believe that a lot of their recent boldness is a direct result of their confidence that a chareidi mayor would never stand in their way (the same way that the general chareidi public, while not publicly supporting these people, still do nothing to thwart them in their terrorist behavior).

I know my neighbors are going to say, “How could you paint such a bleak picture of Bet Shemesh?” I can only answer that this is the truth of what we are living with in Bet Shemesh these days. I would also add that no community is free from infighting. Be it the school district election wars in the 5 Towns to the anti Semitism that is growing worldwide to the infighting between the various Chassidic sects in NY, tension is always a step away. Hopefully we will get through this as well as we can.