Holy war
Patrick Marn ham
An occasion that took place last October lingers on hauntingly in the memory. It was the ceremony held to mark the unveiling of a bust of Lord Russell, which now stands not far from this office.
One hundred humanists gathered to pay tribute to the philosopher and to hear his widow Mrs (sic) Dora Russell pose the unanswered question: 'Bertie, do we live and labour in vain? You wrote that the good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Well, there is far too much knowledge in the world at the present time and far too little love.'
Assuming that Lord Russell was wrong, and that his spirit has in some sense survived his corporal extinction, it must be a double irritation to him that his eternal rest should be interrupted by these kind of damn fool questions. Bad enough for the great man to be proved in error about eternal life; much worse for his brooding to be violated by his anxious disciples. On the other hand such interruptions might prove a welcome distraction for the philosopher who was contemplating the way the world was going in the last two decades of the 20th century. Lord Russell might be astonished and appalled if he were to learn, for instance, that the 1980s look like seeing a revival of fundamentalist religious wars.
The Moslem religion is setting the pace in this field under the guidance of national leaders in Libya, Iran and Pakistan. But the future potential of the Jewish religion should not be dismissed out of hand. It was reported from Jerusalem last week that the Chief Rabbi of that city has directed Jewish hoteliers to ban all Christmas and New Year festivities within their hotels, and to prevent any Arabs from serving wine to their guests. The penalty for refusing to comply is for the offending hotel to lose its kosher certificate, which is essential if the hotel is catering for Jewish clients.
The Jerusalem Hotel Association is attempting to resist this directive on the grounds that the function of its members is `to run a business not to gain a place in heaven'. One hotel spokesman said, 'How can you explain to a Christian that the rabbis regard not only Christmas but also New Year's Eve as heathen festivals which are forbidden in the Holy Land?'
Last Christmas Jerusalem was the scene of numerous attacks on the property of various Christian institutions carried out by people described as 'extreme orthodox Jews'. The premises damaged included churches and bible shops, and Christian priests were spat on and threatened. The Israeli government spent over £2,000 making good the damage and promised to 'prosecute anyone who was caught. But a spokesman for the Brooklyn-born Rabbi Meir Kahane (alias Mike King) said that he supported attacks on Christians because 'they had no place in Jerusalem'.
Rabbi King has since been imprisoned on suspicion of terrorist activities against Palestinians. But no such sanction is in the offing for the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Mr Bezalet Zolti, who is a government official. Nonetheless many of his activities are deeply offensive to Israeli Jews as well as to the world's Christians. The injunction against Arab waiters, for one, though ostensibly religious is clearly racialist. Nor is this the first time that it has been used. In 1979 the Israeli newspaper Ha'olam Haze (29August 1979) reported that a celebrated Jerusalem restaurant, Mishknot Sha'ananitn, was no longer kosher because the Jerusalem rabbinate had discovered that they were employing Arabs as waiters and that 'an Arab was forbidden to touch the wine that a Jew drinks'.
On another occasion the Chief Rabbi of Israel ruled that if a Jew happened to acquire the Old Testament bound in one volume with the New Testament he was permitted to read the Old Testament for a short time on condition that at the first opportunity he cut out the pages of the New Testament and burnt them ( Yediot Ahronot 24 October 1979).
Under the previous Labour Party administrations the zeal of the Israeli rabbinate was carefully controlled. But the Begin government, which is founded on a reli gious party coalition, has positively encouraged it. One Israeli woman MP introduced a bill into the Knesset last year which was directed against the rabbinical courts, who had been insisting that women who wanted a divorce should answer a pornographic questionnaire about their sex lives. If the women refused to answer they risked their rights to alimony and the custody of their children.
It may be that Jewish religious teachers outside Israeli would disapprove of these and similar rulings. Indeed it sometimes seems that under the pressure of Zionism, the Jewish religion is.becoming as sectarian as Christianity. Perhaps there is something about the atmosphere of Jerusalem that makes religious leaders lose their heads. Each of the three great 'religions of the book' have ruled there. And each at various times has proved itself incapable of behaving decently to the other two. Now it is the turn of the Jewish religious leaders to imagine that by occupying the Holy City they can conjure into existence the kingdom of heaven on earth. In making this mistake they are of course very much in tune with their times.
Whether it is ultra-Zionist Jews smashing Christian images, or Moslem enthusiasts identifying Jimmy Carter as Satan, or defrocked Jesuits stockpiling bombs in Manhattan, they are all confusing politics with the life of the spirit.
It seems to be the only form of religious activity that this age finds at all bearable.
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