A spit in the face
By AVIAD HACOHEN
Jerusalem Post, Israel
Oct 15 2004
Why has the assault on an Armenian clergyman in the Old City met with
rabbinical silence?
One fool spits and 10 wise men cannot dry it up. The Jerusalem yeshiva
boy who, a few days ago, spat at the Armenian archbishop of Jerusalem,
Nourhan Manougian, and at the crucifix he was carrying in an Old City
procession, was probably expressing the secret wish of more than a
few extreme fundamentalists who dwell among us.
There’s never been a shortage of lunatics in Jerusalem. Some of them
– ram’s horn-carrying messiahs or saviors bedecked with crowns of
thorns – suffer from Jerusalem Syndrome, which has provided fodder
for mental health researchers and psychiatrists throughout the world.
We need not be overly troubled by sufferers of Jerusalem Syndrome.
The ones we should worry about are the silent majority of Orthodox
Jews, led by the rabbis and yeshiva heads, who said nothing about
this disgrace against the Armenian archbishop.
Except for a strong condemnation by MK Rabbi Michael Melchior,
the leader of Meimad, religious leaders remained silent in the
face of this act of folly. Not the yeshiva heads nor the rabbis
nor the representatives of the religious denominations rushed to the
microphones and the cameras to express revulsion over this desecration
of the holy name.
Instead of crying out against the act of the young Jerusalemite, they
kept mum. Thereby, they became unwitting partners in the act. The
foolish act, whether done out of mischief or malice, madness or
mindlessness, will from now on serve as further justification (as
if there weren’t enough already) for talk about the need for the
internationalization of Jerusalem, for incitement against Israel
charging that we are desecrating the holy symbols of Islam and
Christianity, and for the murky wave of anti-Semitic attacks on Jews
and on Jewish religious institutions throughout the world.
RELATIONS BETWEEN Jews and Christians have experienced many
vicissitudes – the Christian Bible’s description of the Crucifixion,
the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the silence of the Holy See during
the Holocaust.
More recently, it seemed as if Christian-Jewish relations were
improving. The belated recognition by the Catholic Church, and the
establishment of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the State
of Israel, marked a new era in the history of the relations between
the faiths. The widely covered and moving visit by Pope John Paul to
Israel unfolded seamlessly, despite fears. As hundreds of millions
of amazed Christians watched in a live broadcast around the world,
the pope kissed the stones of the Western Wall with the Israeli flag
waving over it, shed a tear at Yad Vashem, and breathed new hope into
the world.
But it turns out that in Jerusalem, that is not enough.
The fragile fabric of religious communities in Jerusalem has for
hundreds of years been comprised of a colorful mosaic: Jews –
Ashkenazim and Sephardim, haredim, hassidim, and Lithuanians;
Christians – Copts and Maronites, Greek Orthodox, and Ethiopians;
and Muslims.
As a result, the slightest move – of a key in an Old City church,
for instance – can set off violence.
The world watches what happens on the Temple Mount, and even the
progress by which the government handles the appointment of Greek
Orthodox Church Patriarch Irineos.
The Armenian archbishop who was attacked, Nourhan Manougian, is well
aware of these sensitivities. During Easter 2002 tension was high
within the walls of the Old City in the wake of charges that the Greek
Orthodox patriarch had been pushed in the Holy Sepulcher compound
on his way out to pass on the holy fire. The Armenian patriarch
Turkoum Manougian, it was claimed at the time, took advantage of the
opportunity to take the fire on his own to his followers who were
waiting outside.
This led to a fist fight between thousands of worshipers who were
in the compound. Only thanks to the resourcefulness of hundreds of
Israeli policemen deployed at the site were the rivals separated,
the riot quelled, and the dispute put to rest.
Various Christian traditions have lived with this sort of tension for
hundreds of years. In 1808 a fire broke out in the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher, and the different denominations blamed each other for it.
On the “Sabbath of Light” in 1834, Ibrahim Peha, the son of Muhammad
Ali the ruler of Egypt, visited the compound and during his visit
100 pilgrims were killed inside the building.
Just two years ago, a Greek priest discovered that a carpet laid by the
Copts in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher exceeded the area designated
for the Copts by three centimeters, which led to an escalation of
the conflict between them.
Last year a dispute erupted between the Copts and the Ethiopians
following an argument over whether one was allowed to place a chair
at the entrance to the roof.
THE RECENT attack is another unfortunate result of long-standing
hostility. The barbarian demon of spitting to express revulsion and
loathing suddenly made a visit from some God-forsaken Jewish village
in Eastern Europe.
Needless to say, that custom never entered the mainstream of halachic
literature. Even if they did not accept the doctrine of Rabbi Menahem
Hameiri – one of the greatest Jewish scholars of Provence in the 14th
century – that today’s Christians who show courtesy are not idolators,
halachic scholars knew to distinguish ancient idol worshipers from
the Christians among whom they lived.
In spite of the great suffering Jews endured, the rabbis knew that
spitting at any person created in the image of God was equal to
spitting in the face of God Himself.
Therefore, the silence of the leaders of the Jewish religion in
light of the latest incident is all the more unfortunate. Instead of
mobilizing religion to ease the tensions and create an atmosphere
of conciliation, they mobilize religion and its values to increase
animosity and hostility between the different denominations.
The latest spitting incident is a mark of shame on Israeli society in
the 21st century. A mark of moral and, no less, religious shame. That
Jerusalem hooligan really did spit in someone’s face. But not in
the face of the archbishop alone. Rather, he spit in the face of the
Jewish people of Israel.
The writer is a lecturer on Jewish Law and Constitutional Law at
Shaarey Mishpat law college and Hebrew University Law School and is
head of Mosaica- Research center for Religion, State & Society.