Rebutting Relativism in Beit Shemesh

Marina opens a very compelling feminist take on civil unrest in a religious Israeli town by writing, “As a Jew, a liberal, and a lover of the State of Israel, it is with great sadness that I reflect on what has transpired over the last few days in Beit Shemesh, Israel.” As a friend, I know that Marina and I share very similar feelings about Jewish identity and State of Israel – and despite differences in degree and flavor, belong to the same general tradition of Enlightenment liberalism. However, her examination of the situation in Beit Shemesh hints at a stark difference in the priorities of our different liberalisms.
Beit Shemesh presents a classic paradox for good contemporary liberals the world over: the row between ultra-Orthodox and secular Israelis is a conflict between an illiberal minority group and a basically liberal majority. Like many present-day problems of religion in society, this case puts the liberal sympathy for minority cultural preservation at direct odds with universal liberal values like women’s rights, freedom of conscience, and creativity.
From her treatment of the subject, it seems as though Marina privileges the relativistic side of the Beit Shemesh issue quite a bit more than I would. I’m writing to tell you why – amidst her very important argument – she misses the point, by partially forgiving the people who would much sooner throw rocks at her than thank her for defending their perspective on femininity.
I don’t mean to wax Manichaean: most Haredim, like most people of any kind, think that they’re doing the right thing and are perfectly pleasant on an individual level. But I have nothing for their community’s intolerance but equally sharp intolerance in return. I’m of the Christopher Hitchens/Ayaan Hirsi Ali school of liberalism (not at all neatly conterminous with American political liberalism), which is unafraid to privilege liberalism and its practitioners over the atavistic illiberalism of religious and cultural fundamentalists. Remember, neither side of this exchange between my friend and me would be possible in Beit Shemesh, or in Mecca for that matter. Nor would this magazine’s publication. Point being, I’m not ashamed to say that our culture is superior to theirs.
If there’s one good thing about the degree of religious polarization in Israel’s Jewish population, it’s that most non-Orthodox Jews would probably agree with my assertions – at least in private. I implore them to go public, as some have begun to in the streets of Beit Shemesh and Jerusalem. More critical to Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state than conflict with Arabs beyond the Green Line or unequal birthrates within it is the threat posed by a Haredi minority growing in size (thanks to massive government welfare for large families), political influence, and disregard for civil behavior.
In a society where atheists constitute about a quarter of the total population, the Haredi political parties manage to wrest absurdly illiberal concessions from the government, like the closure of public transportation on the Sabbath, the removal of women’s images from billboards in the nation’s capital, and the toleration of de facto modesty laws for women in select neighborhoods. It’s no wonder that secular protestors have taken to chanting, “This is Israel, not Iran!”
And as their community leaders have repeated time and again, Haredim hope and expect to take over Israel within a few generations. Never mind wondering how the state would earn its keep (sympathetic right-wing Russian-Israeli oligarchs in gated Tel Aviv suburbs?) or maintain its massive defense infrastructure (African mercenaries?) – a Haredi Israel would become a place highly hostile to Arabs, women, gays, foreign laborers, and ordinary secular Jews like Marina and me. It’s hard to imagine either of us continuing to identify as ‘lovers of the State of Israel’ if the Jewish state were to join the ranks of Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Marina is right to note that the West is far from blameless in its routine objectification of women as sex objects. But let’s not rush to draw equivalencies: in Israel, as in all Western countries, women are expected to govern their own affairs, make their own decisions about sexuality and family, and dress however they damned well please. This rarely comes without a small dose of paternalistic flak, but the notional equality of women finds support in every corner of liberal Western society.
I don’t for a second buy the Haredi rationalization (or other religious conservatives’ rationalizations) of protecting modesty as a means to liberate women from Western objectification – it’s a cheap ex post facto argument crafted for the ears of gullible liberal relativists. A matter of anthropological fact: from time immemorial, fathers have been shutting their daughters up in towers, draping them in veils, suffocating them with corsets, and cauterizing their genitalia in order to signal possession, chastity, and restriction of movement. The invocation of the Abrahamic god in the matter changes nothing. Because conservative religions create an air of forbidden sexual mystique around femininity, women walking the streets of north Jerusalem and Cairo in modest clothes face notoriously worse harassment than women walking the streets of Stockholm and Sydney in ‘immodest’ clothes.
For the sake of women, Israel, and the forward march of human progress, we must not fall into the trap of relativism – which privileges group norms over individual opportunity. This is not an easy commandment: to be sure, it’s against the basic nature of liberals to be uncompromising. But let’s be proud to admit that an open, liberal society is the best kind of society – lest we be outbred by people who think otherwise.