Tel Aviv’s Proudest Day

I’ve lived in Tel Aviv already more than a few years, and I long ago learned to hide what I believe about any issue from the people I meet here. More than half of the girls I’ve dated in Tel Aviv have been draft dodgers, not including the one draft resister I fucked after I had to listen to her interminably long story of how she fought against the military’s draft board for five years before they relented and told her that she wasn’t going to have to put on a uniform. I’ve had coworkers invite me to remembrance ceremonies on Memorial Day to mourn for the enemy, and I’ve sat and listened while people openly called for the prime minister to be murdered (for those who forgot, we actually had a prime minister get himself murdered 15 years ago).

The bigotry and seething, sneering hatred toward Judaism, religiously observant Jews and Zionism-patriotism-nationalism is suffocating and it so saturates the Tel Avivi worldview that it’s better just never to share an opinion on any issue. It’s all in the name of democracy, of course: my lightbulb moment was in realizing that these people are the true democrats and that anyone who opposes them, by fighting for the particularism and uniqueness of Israel or Jews, is standing athwart democracy’s progressive advance.

So I go along, just keeping my head down and hoping that no one will ask me how I voted, so I won’t have to lie again and say I voted for Meretz, and then I see some staggeringly weird news: the rabbis of Tel Aviv have acknowledged that it’s against Jewish law to rent apartments to illegal aliens.

Well, who would have thought that there are even 25 rabbis left in Tel Aviv to sign such a document? And one so inflammatory? And so correct?

If you doubt that Judaism’s true position is reflected in the rabbis’ letter, all you have to do is read to the bottom of the attack in Haaretz: people with no interest, no idea, and no interest in getting an idea about what Judaism actually says foam at the mouth to oppose it, because it’s “racism,” “fear,” “xenophobia” and “incitement” (“incitement” is a crime in Israel, defined as saying anything to convince someone that progressivism is wrong). The proper role of a rabbi now is – what else? – “preaching love of Israel and all of humanity.”

Wrong! Buddhist monks and Quaker pastors are supposed to love all living beings. Rabbis are supposed to study Jewish texts and tell people what Jewish law says – if not for that task, there’d be nothing at all for a rabbi to do. Though admittedly I’m no authority, I’m not familiar with any authentically Jewish text from the time of Abraham to the present day that deviates from the position that these rabbis have taken. Illegal immigrants and other forms of outlaws are not supposed to get our acceptance. Nor are they supposed to get our approval. Nor our support. And very certainly not our endorsement.

I am a bit disappointed that the rabbis didn’t just go all the way and extend their letter to include the enemy population that does have Israeli citizenship. I understand why they didn’t – they understood that writing, “Don’t rent to Muslims,” is to throw away one’s job, to be prosecuted for crimes like incitement and discrimination – risking real prison time – and to put one’s family at risk of physical harm. I imagine they’ll probably be fired for this letter (“The Attorney General must investigate to find out if these rabbis are on the government payroll”) as it is, but at least they’ll live to tell the story.

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Tagged as: democracy, illegal immigrants, immigration, judaism, meretz, progressivism, rabbis, tel aviv