Israelis were shocked to hear that the new candidate for the “IDF Rabbi” position referred to homosexuals as “perverts”, but they were soon calmed by the explanation that this was only an academic biblical discussion.
What’s this nonsense – ‘only an academic discussion’ – or in its Jewish flavor – ‘only a halachic commentary’? As if the Jewish code turned over night into something theoretic, intangible, that has nothing to do with our lives here and now.
Haven’t our leaders, during the recent coalition years, repeatedly mentioned that our judicial system should rely on the ancient “Hebrew judicial system”, or at least be inspired by it? And what exactly is the function of this entity called “Rabbinical Court”? On what does it base its judgment? On the legal code of Venezuela? Haven’t our leaders, during decades of modern Israeli regime, abandoned all family decisions in the hands of that court?
An interview with Emunah Alon, the wife of Israeli right-wing minister and parliament member Benny Alon, took place in March 2003 on the IDF radio channel. The interviewer asked her about certain rumors, saying that Yigal Amir had discussed Rabin’s murder with her husband before performing the act. Mrs. Alon explained how that specific discussion was about something else altogether: It was a halachic discussion – an academic conversation about a specific Biblical text, you know.
The trick of fooling secular people with double meanings – is not the sole invention of Jewish religious politics. Quite a few Muslim scholars, for example, explained how the killing of “heretics” instructed by the Koran, should not be interpreted literally, and that the problem lies in the ways old metaphoric text is applied to our modern times – the times of the World Trade Center and the Bataclan theater in Paris.
So if ancient Hebrew interpretation applies only to Krypton, please restore here on Earth the public transportation on weekends. Also stop, by the way, the humiliating ceremony of the removal of shoe under Levirate law, for widows who are interested in religious laws less than in last years’ snow. That’s the snow in which the righteous rolled naked nine times, according to the “only” religious interpretation of Rabbi Batzri.