Religious Warfare Haredim promise all-out battle against their former hero, Ariel Sharon. Likud's covenant with the haredi parties — first with the Ashekenazi Agudat Yisrael, later adding Shas. The alliance was based on mutual conservatism, "Jewish Jerusalem pride" and antipathy for Labor and its liberal, socialist ways. he "secular revolution" in Israel is still a • Not only has Likud now broken that covenant, but long way off. Orthodox yeshivah students the deed was done by Ariel Sharon, who was Likud's will continue to get draft deferments. chief emissary to the haredi world, the politician the Orthodox rabbis will remain the only rab- men in black admired and trusted above all others, a bis who can perform legally recognized Jewish mar- secular ex-general who liked to say he was a Jew first riages. Shabbat will still be Shabbat. and an Israeli second. But the anti-clerical Shinui (Change) party's entry "There isn't an admor [rabbinical leader of a haredi into the government, and the civic reforms it man- sect] whose home wasn't familiar to Sharon," said aged to wrest from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Nitzan Chen, who covers the haredim for Israel coalition partner the National Religious Party and, Television. above all, the absence of ultra- Why did Sharon push the haredim Orthodox, or haredi, parties in the out and take in their worst enemy, government, means that theocracy in the firebrand Tommy Lapid and his Israel has just been dealt a powerful Shinui party? Likud Education blow. Minister Limor Livnat says Sharon "Shinui proved that Israel can move wanted the haredim in the govern- forward, and it's fantastic," says Anat ment, but he wanted a national unity Hoffman, head of Reform Judaism's government with a large party from Israel Religious Action Center, and for- the center-left even more. When mer long-time leader of the dovish, Labor refused to join, that left only secular Meretz party faction in the Shinui, which refused to sit with the Jerusalem City Council. haredi parties, and vice versa. So The most important changes Sharon Sharon bit the bullet.- and the National Religious Party Now the haredim, who make up agreed to are: Rabbi Menachem Porush an estimated 7-10 percent of the • Putting the Interior Ministry, a Israeli population, are focused on one Shas (Sephardi ultra-Orthodox) strong- thing: responding. hold and the bane of the lives of hundreds of thou- Rabbi Menachem Porush, the 86-year-old elder sands of Jews without Jewish mothers, into the hands statesman of the community, admits he was "very sur- of Shinui's Avraham Poraz; prised by Sharon's move. "Wherever he got in poli- • Bringing local religious councils, a massive, largely tics, he got there thanks to us," he says. Rabbi Porush unsupervised source of haredi patronage and potential promises that it will all "boomerang" against Sharon corruption, under the control of local municipalities; and his party. and "This government will not stand," he vows, quoting • Canceling the Large Families Law, which greatly passages from the Passover Haggadah about God's . inflated child allowances for every child after the deliverance of the Jews from Egypt. Asked what the fourth, a financial godsend to the haredim. But beyond the specifics of the new deal, the advent haredim would do, Rabbi Porush says only, "Time will tell." of a government without haredim is a shock to the Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, who in years past organized Israeli political system. It used to be thought an the largest, wildest, most disruptive haredi demonstra- impossibility because neither Likud nor Labor could tions in Jerusalem, • is more specific. "This is a religious put together a majority without the haredi parties, war and nobody knows how to fight one like the and neither paity was willing to risk the haredim haredim do," he says, promising protests of 500,000 wrath by keeping them out. haredim in Jerusalem, with support from haredi com- munities in the U.S. and Europe. Sea Change Another shocking insult for the haredim is that a religious party joined forces with Shinui against them. The new Sharon government is the first since the Consequently, a vilification campaign against National Likud's ascent to power in 1977 to be formed deliber- Religious Party leader Effi Eitam, laced with anti- ately without haredi parties. There have been govern- Christian bigotry, is well underway. ments since then that haredi parties quit. But never in Shas leader Eli Yishai calls the coalition partnership the last 26 years has a ruling party rejected the hared- between Eitam and Shinui the brit hahadasha, which im. means "new covenant," but also means "New This is a startling departure. It was Menachem Testament." Haredim have long denounced Lapid as a Begin who, after toppling Labor in 1977, forged the LARRY DERFNER • Special to the Jewish News T 3/ 7 2003 24 "goy"; now Eitam is getting the same treatment. Meshi-Zahav, who used to be known as the hared- im 'commander of operations," speaks now in terms of war. "People thought we were only going to have to put up with one war, the war on Iraq, but now we're going to have another war to contend with, a civil war," he says. "But the good thing that's coming out of this is that it's uniting the haredim. 33 Russians Helped While haredim are the big losers in the new deal, the big winners are probably the Russian immigrants and other Israelis who aren't Jewish according to Jewish law, and who were put through the ringer by the Interior Ministry under Shas' control. Hoffman says that during her last decade on the Jerusalem City Council and in the Religious Action Center, she received 50,000 complaints from Israelis claiming that they were victimized by religious dis- crimination. "About 90 percent of the complaints were made against the Interior Ministry, and most of the people complaining were new immigrants," she says. For example, she notes the recent case of two Russian immigrant children who were orphaned when their parents died in a car accident. Their grandmoth- er from Ukraine came over to care for them. But the grandmother isn't Jewish, so the Interior Ministry ordered her to leave the country after six months," says Hoffthan. She calls Poraz' appointment as Interior minister a "blessing," but adds that the ministry has a "huge machine" of Shas-appointed clerks and managers, and Poraz will find it extremely hard to break their power. Lapid and Shinui have a hugely ambitious agenda: They want to take away the draft deferments and yeshivah stipends from haredi men so they will work and serve in the army like other Israelis. They want to end the Orthodox monopoly on conversion, marriage, adoption, burial and other matters of personal status. They want buses to run on Shabbat. Lapid got none of this from Sharon. But during the campaign, he was frequently asked if he was willing to compromise, and he always said he would — on the timetable for achieving his demands. He would settle for a little at a time, for making a promising start. This he has certainly done. In haredi eyes, though, this is not a start, it's the end — "the end of the Jewish state," as Yishai put it. "The mother of all betrayals," says United Torah Judaism MK Moshe Gafni. A "religious war" has been launched against them, says Meshi-Zahav, and now it's their turn to fight — not only against Shinui, but against Sharon, Likud and NRP, and now National Union as well. Says Ya'acov Guterman, mayor of Kiryat Sefer, the largest of the haredi West Bank settlements: [Former Labor Party Prime Minister Ehud] "Barak talked about the secular revolution, but these guys did it."