5/10/99

Against journalists and dinosaurs

    The missionaries are getting to me. If haredim would like a brass-knuckled crack at these peddlers of holiness, they can start with the saintly folk at 10 Matityahu Street in Bnei Brak.
    It's not Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons who've been ankering for my soul, it's haredim themselves.
    If I stayed home, I could avoid them, those hawkers, mongerers and pushers of a product -- God -- that should not be bamboozled at stray passersby. But now, I discover, even if I stay home, they snare me here.
    "Freedom of religion," they may squawk, but no, it's a question of freedom from religion.
    I don't care to be badgered downtown by God salesmen mumbling "Psst! Are you Jewish?" I don't like being nagged to put on tefillin by strangers when I'm shopping. If I want religion, I know where to find it: Jerusalem does not lack for synagogues and yeshivot.
    A new thing is haredim swarming at intersections, shtupping through car windows a wide array of photos, audio tapes and blessed paraphernalia from their reverential gurus.
    No thank you.
    The other day, I didn't have to stray far from my front door to get a bit of this spiritual uplift. Sharing my mailbox with all the rest of the junk mail was a holy tape recording. This was a whole new way of invading my privacy, and I actually smiled bemusedly at the ingenious chutzpah of these people -- the Shofar Organization -- finding the most effective way to place this stuff into unsuspecting hands. If in the past I was successful in spurning their materiel, this time, they got me.
    I listened to the tape only because I have to -- curiosity is my job. I tapped into their Website for the same reason.
    I can't explain it, but an amazing thing happened to me: nothing at all. I wasn't transfixed, transformed, transcended into a believer.
    It is very possible you also fished this tape out of your mailbox, because according to their Website, "The Shofar organization has to date distributed millions of audio and video cassettes."
    The tape is a lecture by Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak, a dynamic speaker around whom his followers are intensifying a cult seduction -- an apparently Sephardi version of Habad's messianic mesmerism.
    (The effect is undermined, however, by the odd selection of background music added to the tape recording, to spice up the holy rabbi's words: a comical medley of Mexican, marching-band, salon, jazz and doobeedoo tunes. Nary a Jewish note to be heard.)
    The Website (www.Shofar.net) tells the story of Yitzhak's religious awakening: "It was about twenty years ago, when young Amnon Yitzhak made his first discovery of the magnificent teachings of the Torah. This came about through his 'chance' introduction, heavenly foreordained, to the holy 'Shulchan Aruch', the Code of Jewish Law. In those days, 'Amnon' was a non-religious Jew...
    "He chose to dedicate his every working moment to research ... this sacred wisdom. In his free time he would roam Tel Aviv with his old bike, reasoning with the non-religious populace on all the significant issues. He was a tough debater and his viewpoint was virtually irrefutable, convincing, and sacrosanct."
    The subject matter of Shofar ("For the Advancement of Jewish Awareness") is, at first, innocuously positive, espousing Jewish unity and winning over the faithless. But continue reading the site,  and you catch the bristling, confrontational antagonism in the tone and content.
    The site attacks various echelons of Israeli society -- politics, education, science, "the secular atheists," the liars, manipulators and haters --  and bemoans a persecution complex the organization feels it is subjected to:
    "Recently we have seen another prophecy coming true. That is the war between the faithful and the agnostics. Many secular politicians, armed with the media, try to do away with every sign of Judaism. They manipulate and lie and thus spread much hatred between the Orthodox and the Non-Orthodox Jews. Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak confronts these falsehoods directly by exposing them to those that will listen. The secular atheists employ everything they can to achieve their goal of undiluted power, and the battle against the 'dark' is arduous, but by the grace of G-D the light is shining through.
    "... We are using the Web to spread Judaism among Jews, especially here in Israel, for this is the only democratic method left to us."  
    The most sustained attack is targeted at my colleagues in the news biz. In a section titled "Hatred in the Israeli media," the text offers proof of "hundreds of examples of antisemitism in Israeli media," the "usual lies" and "conspiracies" we publish, the "trail of lies and hate spreading on Israeli TV, radio and [news]papers that contributed to tension between Jews."
    The venom against the abomination of the media shows up in unexpected, almost laughable, places. A cassette offered for sale is described thus: "Contains lots of proofs on video against evolution, dinosours, age of the earth, noach ark, israeli media."
    According to the introductory text, "This site ... was especially intended for the Non-Religious Jew, as a means of finding their rich heritage, by the grace of G-D, according to the Holy Torah."
    If our rich heritage, Godly grace and Holy Torah combine to spew divisive hostility, this is definitely the place to discover Judaism. I may be just an antisemitic media liar, but I think they're disgracefully wrong.