While Orthodox Jews spitting at Christian clergy and churches in Israel is not a new phenomenon, the police arresting the culprits is a welcome surprise. With the advent of video recordings of these horrible incidents going viral on social media platforms combined with pressure the prime minister is receiving from political and Christian leaders from around the world, the police are finally enforcing the law. This week, five Orthodox Jews were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
A question many of our government, rabbinical and religious organizational leaders should be reflecting on these days is why does Twitter dictate the enforcement of law when it comes to attacks on Christians? In the last two decades, there have been over 100 attacks on Christian holy sites and hundreds of spitting incidents from Orthodox Jews. What should be shocking until this week is that only three people were ever incarcerated. Christian clergy simply don’t bother about reporting about the spitting incidents since the police rarely do anything to curb these issues unless something makes the headlines as it did most recently.
The fact remains that spitting on someone out of racial or religious grounds can lead to a prison sentence of up to 2 years. Anyone desecrating Christian holy sites can face a prison sentence of 7 years. Many of the spitting incidents and attacks on holy sites take place in Jerusalem. The capital is full of security cameras, and yet, hardly anyone is ever arrested. Yet, our Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, prior to entering politics justified spitting at Christians, and still believes that spitting at Christians should not be a criminal case.
The State of Israel consistently boasts of the freedoms that Christians enjoy compared to other Middle Eastern countries, but is this the true litmus test? When we experience physical attacks, vandalism or anything that smells of antisemitism in other countries, our organizational and political strength springs into action and we expect immediate results. However, when the local Israeli Christian community or tourists visiting the country face the same thing, all they get is an occasional statement from some government leaders condemning the act. We seem to be comfortable with the “few bad apples” excuse and move on. If our government truly does not tolerate these attacks on human dignity and sacred sites, then why weren’t more people arrested and imprisoned prior to Ben Gvir? Furthermore, why has no one from the right or left side of the political aisle ever introduced a piece of legislation that these acts should be categorized as hate crimes like what the United States has already done?
It would be nice to argue that the few hundred individuals involved in these acts over the years do not represent 2.2 million Orthodox Jews (1.2 million ultra-religious and million who affiliate with other traditional streams of Orthodox Judaism) in Israel. The fact remains there is a passive tolerance to this issue by the Orthodox community. If the heads of our yeshivot were truly representing the belief that “all are created in the image of God,” then why has no yeshiva student been suspended from their schools for committing these acts? Furthermore, no heads of yeshivot, as a collective alliance, came together to address this issue within their schools.
Many of the spitting incidents are being committed by religious teenagers. While our people live in the collective memory of what the Church has done to the Jewish people, the split-second spittle revenge move of the yeshiva student does nothing except fuel more antisemitism. The person receiving the spittle and the millions who watched the video of the incident do not automatically think, “oh, this was about Jews being persecuted by the Church during the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, pogroms and other periods of history.” There is no justification to spit at someone or a church. Besides breaking Jewish law, it violates the commonsense principles of human decency.
For the very first time in history a Jewish state is responsible for proper governance and protection of a Christian minority who are citizens and residents of the country. Furthermore, Israel has become a faith destination for over 1.5 million Christians a year and the state is required to ensure their safety. No Christian should feel when walking our streets that they need to be on “saliva watch” when passing religious Jews. Furthermore, the Orthodox Jewish leadership in Israel needs to reevaluate their teachings of contempt on Christianity and reeducate their students when they leave the halls of the Bet Midrash, they are living witnesses of Hashem. The young students need to internalize that their local actions have ripple international consequences.
Rabbi Judah the Prince is known in Jewish circles for his famous dictum to help one avoid sin:
Know what is above – a seeing Eye; a hearing Ear, and all of your deeds written in a Book (Avot 2:1)
Twitter and public political pressure should not be our compass in handling issues involving the sensitivity of human dignity. Both our government and religious establishment answer to a Higher Authority!
David Nekrutman is an Orthodox Jewish theologian with over two decades experience in the calling of Jewish-Christian relations. He currently serves as the Executive Director of The Isaiah Projects and is the Jewish Adviser to The Chosen. In 2018, he received his master’s in Biblical Literature from Oral Roberts University.
