Smotrich would impose biblical law on Israel

By Rabbi Dow Marmur

JERUSALEM — In his new book, Chazara bli teshuva – paraphrased in English as “the philosophic roots of the secular-religious divide” – Micah Goodman, whose praises I never fail to sing, makes an important distinction between influence and domination. To be influenced, he writes, is to grow and to develop as an individual; to be ruled and dominated is to be stifled and diminished into a mindless object.

He applies the distinction to Jewish teachings. If they influence us, they enable us to grow and become ourselves; if they seek to rule us, they stifle and turn us into objects. Halacha, Jewish law, is a case in point. If it helps us to shape our lives in the spirit of Judaism and in the light of its many variations and interpretations, we grow; if it seeks to rule us, we’re reduced from persons with minds and hearts into mindless objects, into zombies.

I thought of Goodman when I read about Bezalel Smotrich, the 39-year old lawyer who is a Member of Knesset and the leader of one of the right-wing parties aspiring to be part of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition government. He wants to be Israel’s next minister of justice in order to replace, by his own account, much of the current legislation in today’s Israel with Biblical law. He wants us to return to the time of King David and King Solomon. It’s the nearest to calls by contemporary Muslim extremists for Sharia law. As in Islam so in Judaism, a demand to return to ancient times is the most reactionary endeavor to shape contemporary society. It has no time for democracy, equality or human rights. It implicitly advocates a Jewish version of the Taliban.

Even Prime Minister Netanyahu, who will need Smotrich’s party if he’s to form a government after the general election in September, has dissociated himself from the call to return to Biblical law. As much as he’ll need Smotrich in his government, he knows that many, perhaps most, members of his own Likud party are, like himself, very secular. The thought of going back to archaic legislation frightens them, even as they strive to sit with proponents of such legislation in the next government.

Opponents of Smotrich’s call probably also realize that an affirmation of the laws of the Bible would, understandably, drive women, gays and lesbians and many other groups that Biblical legislation excludes or marginalizes to vote for more progressive parties.

Smotrich’s pronouncement has given Avigdor Lieberman – who has been held responsible for breaking up the current government before it was formed because of his refusal to yield to ultra-Orthodox demands concerning conscription – the opportunity to remind us that he, Lieberman, and perhaps only he is the authentic champion of freedom and democracy in the land, and not the left-wing renegade, as Netanyahu portrays him. Whether or not Smotrich’s declaration will help Netanyahu in the next election, it’s obvious that it’s helping Lieberman to get more votes.

The fact that Israelis are today seriously debating Smotrich’s proposition – and that the prime minister is said to consider making him justice minister with implied and explicit powers to change the democratic judicial system of the Jewish state – is alarming. Unless the outcome of the election will show that this is not the way of Israel’s future, a growing number of liberal Jews may leave the country. Though there’s anti-Semitism in the Diaspora, it may nevertheless be less painful to live there than in a Jewish state that seeks to stifle its citizens by ostensibly divine decree.
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Marmur is spiritual leader emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. Now a resident of Israel, he may be contacted via dow.marmur@sdjewishworld.com