Ramat Gan and Selma, Alabama

The below post was picked up by Israel National News and appears here as well. 

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The other day I read a disturbing piece of news.  Updates about the situation appear here. 

Apparently, a small of group of Israeli high school students had begun praying on a regular basis the afternoon prayer service (mincha) during a break in classes at their Ramat Gan school.  The school, which is a part of the regular — i.e., non-religious — government school network, felt this was a violation of their principles — in fact, a provocation! — and ordered the students to refrain from praying on school property.  The students were then threatened with punishments ranging from the prohibition of taking necessary tests to expulsion.

Such a ban is, in my mind, abhorrent.  After all, this is not a case of religious coercion of, nor even religious intrusion into, the lives of secular students.  No one was asked, let alone pressured, to join the group, and certainly in a school of 2,000 people, having 15 people gather in a small, unused room in an out-of-the-way part of the school should not have made any non-attending student feel uncomfortable about the situation. 

I remember as a child in my U.S. public school I was told by my parents to step outside the classroom each morning during the morning prayers (as these prayers certainly were not inclusive of my religious beliefs).  Yes, then I did feel a little awkward being the only one separated out, but here, obviously, the case is not in any way parallel.  Here, the issue is not state sponsorship of prayer, perhaps to the detriment of a student’s right to be free from such an obligation; here, the issue is whether or not a group of students may gather to exercise their freedom to engage in legal, non-intrusive behavior during a break in school.  Certainly other groups of students were gathering for a whole array of other purposes during this time, from playing sports to spreading rumors about teachers to comparing the latest fashions.  It seems highly unfair that the only gathering banned is one in which the students want to pray. 

And the excuse the administration used to justify their actions? If they want to pray, they can go to another school; i.e., they’re not welcome here. 

When I read that, two images immediately popped into mind.

The first is the old joke about a young boy who needs to enter Synagogue on Yom Kipur to give his father a message that his mother needs to talk to him outside for a moment.  The security guard at the entrance refuses the boy entrance since he doesn’t have a ticket.  “But I just need to see my father for a moment.  May I please enter the Synagogue?” the child begs.  The guard retorts: “Fine, but just for a moment.  But if I catch you praying inside, you’ll be in big trouble!”

The second image that popped into my mind was Selma, Alabama.  In 1965, when Blacks in the city began registering to vote, the white population prevented them from doing so through formal discrimination and informal intimidation and harassment.  When civil rights activists protested this situation three weeks later in an attempted march to the state capital, Montgomery, the powers that be, including the Police and the local Judiciary, brazenly defied the activists and the law, beating many of them up in the spotlight of the media present, unashamedly declaring the righteousness of their cause — i.e. discrimination — and preventing the march from taking place. 

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As I note above, I found this story to be quite disturbing, believing it to be a sign of much of what is bad about Israel, a place that I generally love and am inspired by but sometimes am discouraged by the lack of civility, tolerance and common sense.  But then I remembered another story and reconsidered my disappointment.

At the conclusion of the Holocaust, an American Army Rabbi was one of the first to enter Auschwitz.  There, as one might imagine, he found barely breathing skeletons nearly devoid of any sign of physical life.  Spiritual life, however, was a different matter.  The survivors instantly took to rejoicing at their good fortune and were all to pleased to join a religious service the Rabbi organized shortly after his arrival.  One individual, however, stood apart and was clearly bothered by the whole thing. 

The American Rabbi approached him and asked why he separated himself from the service.  “Rabbi,” he said, “I cannot possibly ever pray again.  I cannot possibly believe in God again.  I don’t want anything to do with religion.”  The Rabbi wondered why.  Certainly the man had every right to feel however he felt considering the suffering he had undergone … but so many others had suffered equally devastating cruelties and they flocked to the religious service.  The man explained: During his time in Aushwitz he witnessed a despicable act.  One man had succeeded in smuggling in a small sidur, prayerbook.  This was quite a valuable asset, and everyone in his bunk was thrilled by the opportunity to pray from it.  But rather than freely offering the right to use the sidur to whoever requested it, this one man insisted on payment for each use, very often a significant amount of the measly portion of bread each prisoner was given each day, the sole source of his physical nourishment and for some the only thing keeping him on this side of the life and death continuum.  “After I saw such cruelty from this Jew, after I witnessed him cynically take advantage of religion for his own well being to the detriment of others, I became so disgusted with religion that I vowed never to return.”

The American Rabbi understood the survivor’s words and feelings.  He was right, after all.  When a religious person does something despicable, it does ‘turn off’ others, and not just to the individual but to the entire system which he represents.  But he also realized that there was more to the story.

“Why do you only look at the terrible deeds of the man who sold the right to use the sidur to people willing to make a payment that for many threatened their very lives?  Why not also look at all the people so dedicated to the words of the sidur they were willing to take such a risk in the first place!  Look at their amazing courage and willingness to sacrifice.”  At that point in time, the story goes, the survivor cried and entered the service, rejoining his people and realizing his community was much more special than he had initially thought.

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I believe we owe it to the courage of those brave 15 boys who chose to pray in their school — despite the administrative and peer pressure brought to bare to discourage them – to look at the good in this story as opposed to the bad.  These kids are not from religious families and by most accounts don’t view themselves religious in the classical sense of the word.  They simply want to pray, and are prepared to give up a lot — perhaps not quite as much as their last piece of bread but a lot nevertheless — in order to stick up for their right to do so.  When such a group of secular Jews demand the the right to pray in a secular school — and when others who have no interest in praying join them in solidarity as a large group of fellow students did recently – we need not be depressed about the wrong-headedness of the school administration (though, of course, we should argue that they ought to change their policy), but rather we should be inspired by the good of the story.

And one more thing.  Remember Selma, Alabama?  Two days after the abortive march to Montgomery, 2,500 friends from all over the country descended on Selma to attempt the march once again.  They failed yet again … but a week later a Federal Judge stepped in and declared that the march must be protected.  “The law is clear that the right to petition one’s government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups . . . and these rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways.”  

May what happenned in Ramat Gan symbolize a turning point in Israeli society as well.  May the courts decide that the law also protects the right to petition one’s God, even if that means using a public school.