FOOTBALL AND FORESKINS
Gerda Cohen talks to
the ultra-orthodox Jews who can break the Israeli government
Jerusalem IT IS a deep-scented night. The cicadas are pulsing away like mad; and the God- Fearers are out all over the city, rejoicing. For 'they have won. They are the real victors of this election. Buttoned into their dense black overcoats and their hard black hats and their ramparts of beard, they can be well pleased: 'The Messiah will come one day sooner.' Their electoral victory of 18 seats (of which no less than 11 accrued to the Anti-Zionist Union of Zeal, the Bible Banner party, the party of Oriental Jewish Zeal and the Penitent Sons Cove- nant) means, surely, that the Messiah will be readier to come. For that, the God-Fearers strive; other political gains are merely incidental. Of course it would be nice if the shrines at Hebron, now shared with the Moslems, who inconve- niently venerate the same patriarchs, re- verted wholly to Jewish control. But that can wait.
Meanwhile, demography is on the side of the faithful. The massed Daughters of Zion are pushing their laden perambula-
7 wish he's stop calling me "me old pal, me old beauty".' tors up King George Street, looking hap- py, but pallid. That is always the way they are, the God-Fearers and their women- folk, pallid. No family planning is allowed. On the contrary, enjoined to be fruitful and multiply, the women are forever in the family way. Quite apart from religious precept, the aim is to out-breed the Arabs. 'I don't see anything weird in that,' re- monstrated my cousin from Wembley, who Saw the Light some while hack. 'I'm expecting my fifth in January, and I find motherhood the most rewarding experi- ence in life; more than gardening, any- how.' She darted a scornful look at me. She now lived in Ephrat, a roomy commu- ter suburb near Hebron, whose most admired couple had recently produced their tenth. 'And I'm only up to my fifth.' She used to be a dentist. 'Funny to think of it. My priorities were wrong.'
Child-bearing is now almost obligatory. and any impediment almost unthinkable; so that abortion is a heinous sin. Now that the God-Fearers have won so much politic- al leverage, one must expect a ban on abortion. Often in the past, key ministries controlled by the forces of piety have attempted to make abortion illegal, along with Saturday football matches. They failed on both counts. Israelis are ardent about football, even if it means desecrating the Sabbath and further delaying the Mes- siah. In addition, the football teams are trained and sponsored by different political parties, including the far Right, which rules out any direct interference. As for abor- tion, well, it's a relatively simple issue, compared to the central, fiendish question of 'Who is a Jew?' or whether Chinese cuisine can ever be considered ritually pure. Some rabbis say yes, some no. Given the unexampled ferocity that exists be- tween rival rabbis, dynastic sages who have been feuding for a century, the wonder is that the God-Fearers polled so greatly.
'I see the hand of the Holy One, blessed be his name,' remarked Rabbi 'Firebrand' Vishnitz, not looking at me, lest he be tainted, but a point on a nearby wall. 'I see divine intercession. We must at all costs keep another football stadium out of Jeru- salem.' Athletic pursuits are shunned as 'Hellenistic'. Rabbi Vishnitz referred me to the Maccabees. Still regarding the same wall, pointedly, he told me how the Greeks wished to pollute Judaism. 'But that was 1,500 years ago!' And so?' he asked. 'Take your stadium back to Mount Olympus,' read a placard at a recent demonstration of Penitent Sons and Tremblers in their bible- black gear and trilby hats. If they gain the Ministry of the Interior, as a prize for supporting Mr Shamir's coalition, one can expect further incursions into personal liberty.
'It's the Dark Ages again,' pronounced the pale and gloomy Mr Zuckerman, whose Civil Rights party had polled a decent five seats, but on the losing side. Poor Dedi Zuckerman, so earnestly nice, looked wishy-washy, lost, as if he'd stum- bled in here from a rural deanery. His type is doomed to decline. Like the old National Religious party, with its cosy Home Coun- ties Judaism, the liberal front is waning. In the swift ascendant are Oriental Jews who have lived with Islam for a thousand years and are deeply interested in only two things: football, and foreskins.
They throng the Saturday soccer match- es and they hold vast circumcision parties. `Do you know what David brought to King Saul, in order to become his son-in-law? No, of course you don't know.' Rabbi Nahmias thundered the answer at me: 'Two hundred Philistine foreskins! King Saul had demanded two hundred fore- skins, and David, our blessed royal ances- tor, slew the uncircumcised Philistines to obtain them.'
Rabbi Nahmias, whose family originated from Iraq, looked like a rabid estate agent, in a pearl-grey suit and diamond tie-pin, topped by a wiry beard whose curls and coruscations trembled with the vehemence of his argument. `No Jew,' he told me, `no male Jew, can be considered Jewish unless he is circumcised.' The political import of this might not be immediately apparent. Rabbi Nahmias belonged to the Oriental Zeal party, Shas, which has done well in this election. Its leader, Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz, resigned from the previous govern- ment on a matter of foreskin principle. As Minister of the Interior, he would not accept a Jewish convert who had merely been received into the faith by the Reform Synagogue. 'He is no Jew,' argued Rabbi Peretz, 'he is a Gentile.' Critics at the time noted that the Nazis were more lenient: a Jewish grandmother would be enough for them.
Now the Oriental Zeal party is in a stronger position to enforce its demands; indeed they would be unassailable but for the power of the Reform synagogue in the United States. American disgust at this exclusion of the Reform community led to a most unseemly rout at the last Zionist Congress here in Jerusalem. That was a year ago. And how long ago! Since then, brutality, intolerance, the Dark Ages. , 'There's nothing for it but to emigrate, said my friend from Israel Radio, cheerful- ly. He has been on the point of emigrating for years. We were having a sad drink at the 'Y', one of the very few neutral zones in Jerusalem — a great monument to the daft and celestial hopes of the 1920s. We sat out in the cool cloister. `So beautiful: but it's time to emigrate,' he repeated. 'You can eat ham here, the waiters are Jewish, the cooks Christian Arab.' Its great tower is unmistakable, a phallus 20 foot high, uncircumcised. 'I mean, how long can this place survive?' my friend won- dered gloomily. 'I'm thinking of Harrow, or . . . Ruislip'.
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