A loaded gun of doubt and longing - Haaretz

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A loaded gun of doubt and longing

By Benny Mer

Elohim lo marsheh ("God Won't Allow") by Chanoch Daum, Yedioth Ahronoth/ Hemed Books (Hebrew), 213 pages, NIS 88

On the one hand it is said: "Know from where you have come, to where you are heading - from a putrid drop to a place of dust, worms and maggots"; but on the other hand we are told: "You have chosen us from all other nations." On the one hand is the individual as a worthless being; on the other the collective stands as all-important. Is that not the secret power of all religions, and of Judaism in particular?

In his book "God Won't Allow," Chanoch Daum portrays the tension between the individual's sense of being "the lowest of the low" and the brazen self-confidence of the national ultra-Orthodox public. In one of the book's four confessions, which address the national-Haredi "sector," Daum writes: "Maybe everything is fine in our sector. The social and political Jewish and religious codes - all perfect. But we will never know for sure unless we start out from the very opposite assumption: that we are settlers by inertia, religious by inertia, and above all, suffer from a huge, almost existential, superiority complex. We live with a sense of self-righteousness, harboring the insufferable belief that we know something others don't, and should the day ever come when everyone will think the way we do, we will all be better off. We think that everyone should keep the laws we keep, observe the commandments we observe, and have a political agenda with the same priorities we have."

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The "orange crowd," as the national-Haredim refer to themselves, have received the "cup of affliction" from both Judaism and Zionism - a cup that turns those who drink from it into elites (at least in their own eyes). The Jews of the Diaspora have always known that "'Lo me'rubkhem mikol ha'amim hashak Hashem bakhem" - it was not because the Jews were more numerous than others that they were loved by God. They also knew that the Jewish state came into being through "days of labor and nights on the firing line."

But today, in keeping with Western norms since World War II, many Israelis are more concerned about the individual good; the collective good only comes afterward. In Israel, this change toward the priority of the individual occurred somewhat later, perhaps after the Yom Kippur War. At this juncture, the secular parted ways with their former partners, the crocheted skullcap wearers, who became national-Haredi and vied with the strictest of the strict when it came to religious observance.

The national-Haredi camp belatedly discovered what the Haredim have always known: that observing all the commandments, large and small, is impossible, and human beings are shamefully inadequate. But the more they reproach themselves for their sins and feel downcast, the higher they hold their heads in public and believe in the purity of their camp. In the eyes of the "orange crowd," Israel exists thanks to a handful of Mercaz Harav yeshiva graduates from the 1960s who fathered a large crop of students and numerous offspring. Are they not dying for the sake of Torah and the state, carrying a double burden? Observing the commandments to the hilt, and safeguarding the Land of Israel to the hilt? But the more the Land of Israel is bought with suffering, the more the sins of the individual gleam.

Religious fundamentalist grandchildren

In the first decades of the state's existence, national religious Jews were the secular Jews' nice neighbors. Almost the things that distinguished them were their skullcaps and a Shabbat clock. But since their children have become settlers, profound changes have occurred that may not be discernible from afar. Suddenly, the grandchildren visiting Grandma and Grandpa in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are "hilltop youth," sporting large, crocheted Bratslaver skullcaps and long, curled sidelocks. They have gone off in a completely different direction, and embraced new goals. And yet many non-religious Israelis make light of this. They imagine that these are the moderate, peace-seeking religious Jews of old, the kind Haim Be'er writes about, or that they are just a negligible minority. This is not so: They have the self-confidence of religious fundamentalists, and they are growing.

Secular Israelis have not yet discovered the national-Haredim, maybe because they do not look as exotic as the Haredim. To a large extent, Chanoch Daum's book will constitute their first exposure to this community, all the more so from a first-hand source. The book is praiseworthy if only for that narration, and for the author's courage in writing it. Throughout the book, Daum tries to alter the balance between individual and collective. He tries to boost the self-confidence of the individual, in an effort to ease some of the suffering, while deflating the confidence of the national-Haredi public.

Daum knows from personal experience how difficult it is to break out of the loop. As a teenager, his efforts to be like everyone else cost him dearly, both emotionally and physically. There are some who find it relatively easy to be part of a group, but for Daum and others like him, studying at a yeshiva boarding school was intolerable. Both at the yeshiva and in the army, Daum found a release in masturbating.

It is not for nothing that he calls upon the national-Haredi community to abolish its fearsome halakhic ban on masturbation. The ban should be lifted not only because of its hypocrisy and the terrible guilt feelings it arouses, but because of the ideology behind it: That there is no act more symbolic of selfishness and immorality than one aimed at individual pleasure that contributes nothing to the group.

Heartwarming sins

Daum wants his camp to admit that it is not pure, and to learn to enjoy life instead of wallowing in its sorrows. He wants to shatter the taboo on other sins in the realm of sexual morality, like homoerotic love, and confesses his own love for a fellow yeshiva student: "Everything that was holy and pure, anything connected to the yeshiva, weighed on me and caused me suffering; on the other hand, everything that was sinful and forbidden, anything connected to my relationship with Eran, was heartwarming and energizing, and added meaning to my life."

What Daum seeks is to observe religious commandments out of love, not fear. He wants to put on tefillin when he feels like it, to have Shabbat dinner but sit down at the computer afterward. Many secular readers may not understand what the fuss is about. All this pathos for a swig of Coke on Yom Kippur? Many of them would prefer a clear-cut message at the end of the book. They would like to see the author tossing away his skullcap and leaving Gush Etzion. But Daum wants to have his cake and eat it, too. He has learned to write trendy Hebrew with no trace of a "religious accent." His imagery stems from secular culture. "I am a loaded gun of doubt and longing," he writes on two different occasions. The book is laden with apologetics, especially the final confession to his wife, in which he seems to be using his emotional problems to win sympathy from her for having written such things.

Daum is anxious to set off a wave of soul-searching among the national-Haredi community because he is well-aware of the fact that he is a walking bomb and the tiniest spark could blow him up, together with everyone else. He also knows that this community will pass him off as a clown, and even worse, brand him a heretic for the very act of separating himself from the group. The orange crowd knows just what to say to deflect this criticism, even the parts of it that are justified. There is no question that Daum's admission of his emotional problems will be used to dismiss his carefully aimed and painful attack.

Perhaps that is why Daum turned to the Yedioth Ahronoth, rather than a Beit El publishing house, to publish his book. His critics will say the book is not literature and he is no Saint Augustine. Never mind: Daum's book is important for other reasons. It is written for other loners in the "sector," male and female. They will read it secretly in the bathroom, ban or no ban, and come to realize that they are not so alone. This book will be a comfort to them. They are all too few, but their numbers are multiplying.

Benny Mer is on the editorial staff of Haaretz.

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