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April 30, 1999/14 Iyar 5759, Vol. 51, No.31
Deri, O.J. and the law
Good motive does not excuse unlawful acts - even for rabbi
GARY ROSENBLATT
New York Jewish Week
It's difficult for American Jews to appreciate the significance of Israel's Aryeh Deri case, one which took nine years to investigate and prosecute, and which resulted in the former Talmudic and political wunderkind being sentenced the other day to four years in jail for bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
The closest analogy I can come up with is the O.J. Simpson trial here. Both cases transcend the specifics of the principals involved and speak to the national psyche, revealing not only how people view the legal system but the society they live in - its prejudices, biases and social conditions.
Some facts are clear. Deri, 40, is a brilliant and charming man who wields immense political clout in Israel. He served as interior minister while in his 20s, and even today, after his conviction, he continues to lead Shas, the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic group that he almost single-handedly fashioned into the third-largest political party in Israel. His supporters, including the revered former Sephardic chief rabbi, Ovadia Yosef, are so loyal to him that they insist on his innocence and fervently maintain that he, as an Orthodox Jew and Sephardi, has been the victim of prejudice.
When the Deri verdict came down several weeks ago, it was read, live, on national television, and there was fear of widespread civil unrest from Deri sympathizers, not unlike the mood in the United States when the Simpson murder trial finally concluded and authorities prepared for riots in case Simpson was found guilty.
Deri's supporters assert that the system, not their man, is corrupt. They charge that Deri was singled out and charged with criminal activity because of who he is, and because of the threat he represents to the Ashkenazic, secular culture. He had risen too high, too quickly and had to be put in his place.
How else, they say, can one explain why Deri was the only one of several politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, involved in the Bar-On political scandal two years ago, who was charged in the case?
Why was Israel party leader and former army chief Ehud Barak recently cleared of responsibility in leaving the site of a fatal military training mishap several years ago, while Deri was hounded by prosecutors for a white-collar crime? Because he is Sephardic and ultra-religious, and the others are secular, Ashkenazic Jews, his supporters insist.
Despite the fact that the primary judge in the Deri verdict was himself Sephardic and Orthodox, the Sephardic masses are convinced that the judicial system is prejudiced against them. They dismiss the judge in question as a court Jew. Fueling the issue further is Rabbi Yosef's fervent proclamation that Deri is innocent in the eyes of halachah (Jewish law), suggesting that religious law is in conflict with, and should take precedence over, democratic law in the Jewish state.
Just as in the Simpson case, where blacks and whites viewed the same evidence and drew wildly different conclusions about the defendant's alleged guilt, the Deri case underscores the divergent ways Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews see their society.
The Ashkenazic Jews tend to view Deri as a crooked politician, a clever but unethical man who received more than $150,000 in bribes in return for providing millions of dollars of public funds to a yeshiva. He broke the law, they say, and he should be punished - another example, they charge, of unethical abuse of the system by ultra-Orthodox schemers.
But Sephardic Jews, who see themselves as outside the political and social establishment, consider Deri a victim of discrimination along ethnic and religious lines. Despite calls from critics that he resign his post as leader of Shas, Deri remains resistant, and it is quite possible that his conviction will only make him, and Shas, more popular than ever to Sephardic voters in the May 17 national elections.
This phenomenon, where the guilty party defiantly portrays himself as aggrieved, victimized and justified, applies as well to the most recent case of an ultra-Orthodox rabbi in New York pleading guilty to federal charges of conspiracy. Just last week Rabbi Hertz Frankel, a 68-year-old principal of the Beth Rachel School for Girls in Brooklyn, was sentenced to three years' probation and ordered to pay $1 million in restitution for siphoning off $6 million in public funds to the school over the last two decades. He said he felt the end justified the means because the money he received was used primarily as a school voucher effort to benefit the poor students at his school. His attorney claims that the prosecutors in this case were anti-Hassidic.
But how can religious leaders rationalize breaking the law of the land? Do they believe that the law is secondary to furthering Torah studies? That is why the judges in the Deri case took pains to cite traditional Jewish sources in their verdict, quoting Deuteronomy, and the prophets Isaiah and Micah on the prohibition of accepting bribes. Still, one hears few if any rabbinical authorities, speaking out publicly against the guilty parties. And what about the concept of chillul Hashem, of the embarrassment to God's name when rabbis break the law?
Each of these cases is complex and unique in some ways but all three - involving Deri, O.J. and Frankel - underscore how surprisingly subjective we are in assessing the "facts" of a given situation. So much of our opinion of right and wrong depends on where we're coming from and how we rationalize our own view of "the truth."
The Deri case in particular is another warning signal for Israelis to come to grips with the serious and growing rift between the haves and have-nots, along religious, social and/or economic fault lines. It's time for our rabbis to speak out and remind us what the Talmud teaches: "The law of the land is the law of the Jew."
Gary Rosenblatt is editor and publisher of The New York Jewish Week.
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