Voting with their feet

The uproar caused by the attempt to pass the conversion bill last month seems to have ended, at least for the time being. This resulted in large measure from the vociferous opposition to the legislation voiced by Diaspora Jewry, primarily in the United States. No doubt the bill - which would have placed authority over religious conversions in Israel exclusively in the hands of the country's official, but increasingly ultra-Orthodox, rabbinate - will return, one of these days. For this reason, it's worth recalling the uprising of the grandparents and great-grandparents of today's American Jews against the Orthodox religious establishment and Jewish elite in 19th-century Russia.

During the years 1881-1914, more than two million Jews left the czarist empire and immigrated westward, the majority to the United States. Their primary motivation was economic: They felt that the oppressive and at times violent atmosphere in Russia gave them and their children little hope for a better future. But there is another aspect of this immigration that has often been overlooked: Many of the immigrants were reacting to the inequitable manner in which their community's Orthodox rabbinate and Jewish leadership ran things. This opposition often took the form of "voting with their feet," as they left their communities for the freedom and promise of America.

An early harbinger of this occurred during the reign of Czar Nicholas I (1825-1855 ). In 1827, his government passed a conscription law that resulted in the drafting of an annual quota of Russian 18-year-olds to a period of 25 years of military service. The law also applied to Jews, but with a difference: Jewish recruits could be taken from the age of 12, and in some cases from as young as 8 or 9. These children were called cantonists, because of the special army camps (cantons ) they were kept in until they reached the age of 18, when they would begin their 25-year service. Consequently, many cantonists ended up serving 30 or more years.

The local Jewish community was responsible for implementing the law. Its leaders - the more wealthy members and the rabbis - decided who would be drafted. They did not select children from the well-off and better-connected families, or the children of rabbis. They chose young people from the poorer and most vulnerable sections of the community or those they considered undesirable or troublemakers. In order to fill their quotas, community leaders employed khappers (literally, "grabbers" ), most of them Jews, to seize the children, either off the street or by invading private homes. It has been estimated that 70,000 Jewish conscripts, among them 50,000 minors below the age of 18, served in the Russian army from 1827 to 1855.

Parents employed various means to save their children: They hid them, sent them to other villages or out of the country, and even mutilated them by cutting off fingers or toes to make them unfit for military service. The actions of the community's leaders created anger and bitterness and divided the community. A Yiddish song from the period exemplifies this:

 

Tears flow in the streets

Our hearts are torn by fears.

Alas! How great is our dismay;

Will never dawn a brighter day?

 

Tots from school they tear away,

And dress them up in soldier's gray.

Our leaders and our rabbis

Do nothing but deepen the abyss.

 

Rich Mr. Rockover has seven sons,

Not one a uniform dons;

But poor widow Leah has an only child

And they hunt him down as if he were wild.

 

It is right to draft the hard-working masses;

Shoemakers or tailors - they're only asses!

But the children of the idle rich

They must carry on, without a hitch.

 

(As translated in Salo Baron's "The Russian Jew Under Tsars and Soviets" )

 

Although the cantonist clause of the draft law was repealed in 1856, the sentiments this song expressed remained part of the community's folklore and collective memory. The resentment toward rabbinic and Jewish communal authority persisted in America. And since separation of church and state and religious freedom were enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, rabbinic or communal decrees, including excommunication, had little effect in the United States. Jews in America enjoyed freedom of religion and freedom from religion. As a result, in America rabbis and community leaders could no longer demand obedience, they could only request it.

The American Jewish experience has shown that separation of church and state and religious freedom is anathema to religious coercion. And American Jews have proven, once again, that the public has power. It is clear that their massive protest to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forced him to make the decision to shelve the conversion bill - something that he may otherwise not have done.

Only when Judaism in Israel is divorced from politics will it become more attractive to the populace and constitute a unifying, rather than divisive, force. Unless this occurs, the monopoly exercised by a small, extreme group of rabbis over the population will continue to alienate Israelis from Judaism, and may lead them to eventually do what their European brethren did more than 100 years ago: vote with their feet.

 

Robert Rockaway is professor emeritus of American Jewish history at Tel Aviv University.