Loving the OTD Child

Chasidim walk past a “modesty sign“ in Beit Shemesh (JTA)

Long simmering tensions between haredim and teenage dropouts recently erupted in violence, necessitating police intervention in a city known throughout Israel as a microcosm of the religious kulturkampf being waged across the country…

On July 16, a haredi mob attacked a teenage girl. In a video of the incident posted online and shared widely on social media, the girl could be seen running down Nahar Hayarden, the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare, chased by what appears to be dozens of men in black hats and black coats who could be heard screaming about her allegedly immodest attire…

Less than a week later, shortly after the end of the Tisha b’Av fast, a second incident led to clashes between residents and several dozen teenagers who had gathered in the neighborhood. The police were called and several teens were arrested.

“I saw the girls come to the square and the extremists were here and suddenly I heard yelling and saw the haredim chasing the girls,” recalled Rudi, a 17-year-old dropout who hangs out on the corner of Rival Street. “The cops didn’t do anything. They call the cops every time we sit.”

Others had a different perspective on that evening.

“It was like a pogrom,” said Avner Steinhalt, one of the small number of non-haredi residents left in Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet. “It was one of the worst nights in this neighborhood.”

He recalled how tensions rose higher and higher during the days leading up to the Tisha b’Av fast day in July. Several days before the fast, a fight erupted between haredim and the teenagers, leading to the hospitalization of one of the teens. Finally, on the evening after the fast, some 60 young people gathered “to have revenge on the haredim.”

They found a small synagogue on Rival Street and “destroyed everything,” Steinhalt said. “Then they went out and started to hit some people in the road even though they did nothing.” 

Deputy Education Minister Meir Porush’s car was mobbed in Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet in April. Several months earlier a soldier driving through the city crashed into a lamppost after his car was pelted with stones and trash. Last month, a local extremist was arrested for breaking a woman’s iPhone. 

When Mr. Rogers says in his deliberate and gentle way, “Everyone longs to be loved. And the greatest thing we can do is let people know that they are loved and capable of loving,” it is not difficult to think about our relationships with loved ones, particularly children, and recognize the truth in his words. “Love is at the root of everything. All learning, all relationships. Love, or the lack of it,” is one of Mr. Roger’s most famous quotes.