Channel 2 reported on Monday that a certain Yoram Ben Saadon seems like a front-runner (absent any public competition) to become a supervisor of Kashrut (Jewish dietary law) in the Haifa area with the most remarkable conditions: an enviable NIS 9000 net pay for a part-time job (just under $2500/month, but about twice the average national salary) and a plush package of benefits: car and all related expenses, a cellphone, a cushy insurance plan. Reporting on a leaked memo, Channel 2 goes on to explain that he doesn’t have to show up at all: the job can be done “from any place, the main point is that everything run well, with God’s help.”
It’s lucky he doesn’t actually have to be on location in Haifa. The man has a busy practice at his home in the Western Galilee as a mohel (performing ritual circumcisions), a kosher butcher, and performing marriages. After all, times are tough and sometimes people need several jobs – which is certainly easier if one is not real.
The candidate is considered a close contact of the Chief Sephardic Rabbi Shlomo Amar. There was no tender or open selection process, and the Channel 2 item claims that the Ministry of Religions (it’s officially “the Ministry of Religious Services”) was directly involved. The whole thing reeks of Tammany Hall.
I assume religious people of Israel are more outraged than anyone. If Saadon doesn’t show up for work as the memo allows, the Ministry would be responsible for all of the religious folks in Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, eating unsupervised – and therefore non-kosher food without knowing it.
The Ministry of Religious Services is a disaster for Judaism and for Israel. It guzzles money: According to the business daily paper Calcalist it received the second largest budget increase this year – a 34% boost from NIS 279 million to NIS 373 million (Hebrew) – the Environment Ministry came in first, with a 39% increase to NIS 532 million, according to the Ministry website.
In the past, the religious services under the Ministry’s domain involved the religious councils, the Rabbinate, and the religious courts. Disbanded in 2003 (Hebrew), its responsibilities not cancelled but scattered – and then revived under the Kadima government in 2008, the Ministry’s authority is now limited to religious councils and burial. But does it really matter which Ministry is doing what? The difference between these nebulous constructs is a mystery to me. Let’s just call them all “the authorities responsible for making the lives of Israelis miserable.”
These are the guys (as in male) who may decide that a woman cannot get a divorce and therefore, may never remarry, or they may prevent a Jewish Israeli couple from marrying altogether. These are the horrifying “military conversion” authorities for immigrant soldiers who perform a sickening recital of Jewish prayers and an oral exam before a green-garbed council of elders. Watching such a scene in a critical documentary of the IDF, “A People’s Army,” by veteran retired news anchor of state television Chaim Yavin, was absolutely painful – especially the humiliation pouring from the eyes and words of young immigrant soldiers interviewed. If the council had been Islamic it would have been self-righteous proof that Islam is a religion of violence. It is these same rabbinic authorities who have prevented fallen soldiers from being buried with their people if determined not to be racially sound.
After the massive J14 social protests and a painful discussion over reshaping budget priorities, aren’t these people ashamed? Surely there are better things to do with NIS 373 million than smear the Jewish religion with corruption, nepotism and uselessness represented by the Ministry, for the sake of a manipulative political minority. In the US, the equivalent concept is called “pork,” ahem.
The political authorities in Israel – or anywhere – cannot be entrusted with the sacred duty of preserving the soul of the Jewish people. In a recent Jerusalem Post op ed, Rachel Canar eloquently blames the ultra-orthodox hegemony – I blame the unholy alliance of synagogue and state.
It seems so obvious: wedding religion with politics is the surest, fastest form of suicide for the tradition in whose name we have built, fought, killed and died for 63 years. Save Judaism and Israeli society: disband the Ministry of Religion – then go on and give religion and politics a “get.”
