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August 6, 1999/24 Av 5759, Vol. 51, No.44
Jewish values, knowledge only effective guides
DAVID ZWEIBEL
Special to Jewish News
The picture in the newspaper looked grimly familiar. Grief-stricken teenagers, tears streaming down their faces, brows knitted in consternation, mouths agape in horror, mourning the murder of one of their classmates - by another. Just the latest incident of murderous teen violence.
Except that the anguished faces in the photo were not those of the sons and daughters of Colorado, or Kentucky, or Arkansas, but of Jerusalem. They had gathered in East Talpiot on June 10 to mourn the murder of their 15-year-old friend Gilad Raviv.
Another group of teenagers had gathered one week earlier in Upper Nazareth to cry for their friend Yevgeny Yakobovich, also 15, who had been beaten and stabbed to death by five schoolmates, apparently because he had annoyed them.
These incidents reflect an alarming trend in the Jewish state. According to a recent survey of Israeli students in grades six to 10, some 25 percent of boys and 6 percent of girls carry a weapon for self-protection - with approximately 10 percent of all students bringing a weapon to school with them.
Here in the United States, much has been written and said about the cause of youth violence. Fingers are pointed at many targets: the easy availability of guns, the growing number of troubled children living in dysfunctional families, the bloody mayhem that passes for entertainment in movie theaters and on television.
And the paucity of proper values. Responding to the murderous rampage in Littleton, Colo., the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill allowing the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school buildings. Vice President Al Gore and other prominent public figures from both sides of the political aisle have advocated government funding for churches and religious organizations to enlist their involvement in helping address the social pathologies that plague modern-day society.
Constitutionally controversial though these initiatives may be, they speak to a widespread sense that the strengthening of values - old-fashioned religious values - may be an essential component of an effective response to the problems of the day.
Which brings us to the musings of best-selling author and columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who wrote an essay in The New York Times on June 22 to a lament over the insularity of Jerusalem's haredi (fervently Orthodox) community, whose children attend "18th-century ghetto schools, where kids are given no math, science or computing skills that might prepare them for the future."
Writes Friedman: "In Jerusalem's Har Hotzvim district, Israeli companies are designing the next generation of the Internet. ... Yet a mile away from Har Hotzvim, in Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim neighborhood, wall posters now regularly appear warning residents not to have Internet-linked computers in their homes because of the worlds it might open. These ultra-Orthodox don't like windows or Windows." As a result of this cultural divide, says Friedman, Jerusalem has become "part Teheran, part Palo Alto."
Put aside the offensiveness of Friedman's overheated rhetorical flourishes - an admittedly difficult task, especially at a moment when the real Teheran is threatening to execute 13 Iranian Jews. Put aside also the dreary monochromatic portrait Friedman paints of haredi schools, misleading though that portrait may be. Focus instead on the absence of any attempt on the pundit's part to consider why the haredim are so resistant to the forces of modernity, so insistent on the virtues of insularity.
It's not as if Mr. Friedman is oblivious to the dangers of our Information Age society. In an earlier Times opinion piece, for example, Friedman eloquently presented the case for what he calls "the most important thing parents need to understand about preparing their kids for the Internet world": Without a solid grounding in moral values, children who explore the World Wide Web are at extreme risk. In his own words: "With one mouse click you can wander into a Nazi beer hall or a pornographer's library, and no one is there to stop or direct you. ... The only really effective filters are the values, knowledge and judgment that your kid brings to the Web in his or her own head and heart. ... Unless parents are building kids with sound fundamentals, Lord only knows what can happen."
Why Friedman's relentless hostility, then, to those in the Holy City who want their children to know only God? And why his silent sanguinity about the breakdown in values that has infected the secular corner of Israeli society? To be sure, isolating one's children from the broader society has its costs. At the same time, exposing children to the broader society has its risks.
Striking a balance between building barriers and opening windows is one of the greatest challenges parents face. In attempting to strike that balance, haredim look for guidance to the sources and ideals of the Jewish religious tradition. If Friedman and like-minded folk are not inclined to look in that direction, they might do well to reflect upon the anguished faces in East Talpiot.
David Zweibel is executive vice president for government and public affairs at Agudath Israel of America.
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