From Tulkarm to Ashdod: Kidnapping or kedusha?
Religious coercion is ugly. It can take the most benign of facades, or be carried out by the most sadistic militants. In Israel there has been a surge of missionary activity, as Evangelicals continue their ultra-Zionist push for all Jews to go to Israel, and have already, in some instances, expressed their willingness to take up arms and fight for Israel. This pro-Israeli push is often combined with thinly veiled attempts to get more missionaries in contact with more Jews, in hopes of finally getting them to abandon the Torah and halacha and to begin to become churchgoing Hebrew Christians.
Following the baptism of a young man in Arad, Rav Shalom Dov Lifshitz's Yad L'Achim began to launch protests countering the missionary activity. Perhaps due to the fact that a born-again Christian is in the White House, or perhaps due to financial concerns, the missionary groups have been largely successful in getting Israeli government assistance in preventing counter-missionary protests.
Yes, religious coercion is digusting. But, regardless I'm still torn about today's story.
A girl was taken from her father's house in Tulkarm by Yad L'Achim. Arutz Sheva called it a rescue of a girl from her Muslim father's home. The Jerusalem Post called the girl Palestinian and acknowledged that she was "in fact, Jewish". And the Australian Melbourne Herald-Sun said the girl was "taken" by "Jewish gunmen".
I feel very torn. I don't know what to feel.
On the one hand, this girl has a Jewish neshama. To save a Jewish child from being "captured among the nations" of the world is a huge mitzva. But I can't just look at this like a regular tinok she'nishba/captured child:
The girl's father was quoted in Ma'ariv as saying that he and the girl's mother met seven years ago, fell in love and married.The mother converted to Islam and moved to Tulkarm where he had another wife and five children.
Together they had a daughter who was raised as a Muslim.The mother told Yad L'achim that her husband had pretended to be a French-American Jew, the organisation said.
She said she hadn't known that her husband was already married and that after their wedding, she wasn't allowed to leave the house.
So the daughter, now 12, has been raised as a Muslim her whole life. Perhaps she was looking forward to putting hijab on for the first time. She has no idea of her Yiddishkeit, her connection to Torah. However, I find it hard to believe the stories of the parents.
How were they married? Under a chuppah? His "pretending to be a Jew" couldn't have lasted that long. How can one pretend to be a Jew to one's own spouse?
I place part of the blame on the mother. Especially after getting married -- and presumably she spoke Arabic. This isn't a child who was captured by the nations, this is a child of a mother who went to live among the nations and then changed her mind. While I applaud her teshuva -- and hope that the little girl grows up to be a Torah-observant eshet chayil one day -- this is, regrettably, more complex than just that.
Now this little girl -- who may or may not have fond memories of her father -- has grown up in Palestinian schools. We know what she already probably has heard about Jews.
Now here come a group of Jews who capture her and her father at gunpoint and take her back to a place she doesn't remember, after telling her she is Jewish. On the other hand, "eye opening dialogue" is much easier in New York than in Tulkarm.
I can't really say either way. I'm quite torn. I pray G-d heals the hearts of all involved.
Comments
Its hard to forecast what this girl's religious views are, and how she will react to her mother's action (done by the jewish org.).
I do know, however, that in just about less then one year she'll feel liberated andfree as a jewish woman in Israel, comparing to her formar life as a muslim woman in the terror territory.
She now can be whatever she want to be, and not what she is told to be. A free human being.
Posted by: Avi | September 29, 2006 04:41 PM
B"H Yitz, what does the hallacha tell you? IMHO the hallacha is not as politically-correct, anti-racist, egalitarian, and dependent upon feelings as some would believe. I believe that those young men are heros. They will undoubtedly get flack from Atty. Gen. Mazuz, as well as criticism if they have never done army service.
Posted by: Ben-Yehudah | September 30, 2006 06:31 PM
I'm not suggesting that halacha is chas v'shalom dependent on feelings. However, again, this isn't so simple as for me to just say "oh who gives a damn about the father" or "baruch Hashem now she can go to seminary". She's going to need a lot of adjustment time, and her father is now an xtremely irate Palestinian man with a daughter in Ashdod -- who no doubt would, if she is traumatized, help her dad with anything he'd need. I'm inventing scenarios for shock value but I think you see my point.
Halacha IS anti-racist and egalitarian to a certain extent. And don't get me wrong -- I applaud Lev L'Achim 1000% for their work. It's just that this particular "work" has me concerned. However, doesn't the Torah say lo tikach es b'naihem l'vnoseichem? This is why I say I place part of the blame on the mother from the get-go.
Posted by: Y-Love | October 1, 2006 01:47 PM
B"H Yeah, actually, I do think you're making good points. Regarding the woman, without trying to make excuses for her, let me just ask ourselves what kind of education she received. Even much of the religious education (IMHO as a teacher of 8 yrs here, including in Yaffo) in this country, is just an indoctrination into secular Israeli society. Your pasuq is in the the third person plural possessive. It's on her parents (or society). I will play devil's advocate here, and take liberties with the traditional "mamlachti" and "moderni" favorite term, tinoq shenishbah. Was this women educated sufficiently to know better? Did the leftist, multiculturalist regime do enough to protect her? I think not. The daughter's future actions? Maybe she would be traumatized into doing something. I don't believe that supercedes the misswah of rescuing her from him.
Posted by: Ben-Yehudah | October 3, 2006 08:03 PM