Religious Violence 79
Sabbath 24:4; compare the ruling by Rabbi Moses Isserles that it is forbidden to take a step on the Shabbat of more than a cubit’s length(56 centimeters or 22 inches)(Shulhan Arukh O.H. 301:1).
Even when they are not running, the way in which the ultra Orthodox speak is a violation of the Sabbath . According to Mai monides ,“you should not speak on the Sabbath in the fashion you speak on weekdays”(ibid.). According to the press, these demonstrations are regularly accompanied by shouts of“Shabbes ! Shabbes!” and curses against the municipality, the police, and cinema-goers. Such loud and uncouth speech is utterly forbidden on the Sabbath .
In fact, and as a general rule, all disputes are forbidden on the Sabbath . According to the prominent twentieth-century decisor Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan of Radun, known as the Hafetz Hayyim(1838-1933),“the Zohar and the kabbalists warned strictly against any dispute on the Sabbath , Heaven forbid.” Yet the rabbis of the ultra-Orthodox community, who should have expert knowledge of the Sabbath halakhot, provoked a severe quarrel almost every Sabbath. By so doing, they violated the ruling of Rabbi Hayyim Joseph David Azulai(1724-1806):“On the Sabbath it is strictly forbidden to stir up quarrels or to get angry and it is twice as severe as when done on a weekday.
These rabbinic prohibitions stand in utter contrast to the Nature of protests in which demonstrators push against police barricades and chase nonreligious youth on the Sabbath . Such behavior is forbidden even during the week; how much the more SO on the holy Sabbath ! It is hard to understand why the chief rabbis and the Chief Rabbinate Council, an official state body, Never issued a pronouncement calling on the observant to refrain from demonstrations that profane the Sabbath .
Itis equally hard to understand how a pious Jew, who maintains that Torah is his profession , can fail to understand that he Must distance himself from every form of Sabbath desecration. Apparently the ultra-Orthodox rabbis, eminent Torah scholars, do not teach their students that such is their obligation.
Have the ultra-Orthodox nevertheless found a halakhic precedent that gives them a license to desecrate the Sabbath or to prevent Sabbath desecration by others? If they have such permission, they should publish it for all to read. Both their silence and intensive halakhic research indicate, however, that there is no such rulIng anywhere in the rabbinic literature.