'Barbaric Behavior': Ancient Jewish Custom of Spitting Near Priests Was Nothing Like This - Israel News - Haaretz.com
The video clip in which young Jews are seen spitting at a Christian parade in Jerusalem’s Old City this week aroused a stormy reaction.
One of those who reacted was a far-right activist, Elisha Yered, who claimed that the custom of spitting next to a church or at priests is an “ancient and long-standing custom.” This statement infuriated a huge number of people. The president, the mayor of Jerusalem and even National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir condemned the custom of spitting and Yered’s statement.
But Yered is right, the custom really does have deep roots in Ashkenazi Judaism. The problem is that it was an entirely different custom. The original custom was invented as a quiet and internal protest of a small, persecuted minority and was done in secret. The present spitting at Christian churches and parades in Jerusalem is an act of public defiance and humiliation of believers who belong to a minority group.
“Perhaps there was some minimal justification for it because they persecuted us, and even then it wasn’t done in a demonstrative manner, but today the relations have changed, we’re the sovereign and there are minorities who are our responsibility, to whom we are obligated to provide protection. In such a situation it’s no longer possible to justify it, neither to yourself nor to others,” says Dr. Yaakov Maoz, chairman of Lishana, an organization for the renewal of Aramaic in Israel, which has ties with Christian communities.
Jewish sources maintain evidence of this custom. In the 16th century Book of the Maharil, which is considered the authority on the customs of Ashkenazi Jewry, the writer Rabbi Yaakov Halevi Ben Moshe Moelin mentions a custom of spitting during the recital of the prayer “Aleinu Leshabeah” while saying the words referring to idol worshippers.
Jewish worshippers in Jerusalem's old city on Wednesday.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
The Maharil also mentions that it was customary to spit while passing near churches. But this custom is totally different from what was done this week in Jerusalem, argues A., a young religious man, a former Haredi, who studied the custom.
“When I used to walk with my father he would teach me to spit, but it’s like shouting “Shabbes” at cars on Shabbat, it’s not a mitzvah, it’s an educational act. You educate the child to reject Avoda Zara (idol worship). The idea was to do so quietly, not demonstratively, the purpose is not to humiliate someone else, but there’s an internal purpose, that I do for myself,” A. says.
“It was never a common practice,” says Dr. Amnon Ramon of the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research. "It was done in certain places, mainly in Eastern Europe, and in secret. It’s the act of a minority who in secret would pass near the church at night without anyone seeing. It’s a custom and there’s no halakha (religious law) regarding it.
Likewise, it also seems that the ancient Ashkenazi custom fit in well for some of the spitters with new and more aggressive ideas about Christianity. “All the anti-Christian halakhot become harsher in the second half of the 20th century,” says Dr. Karma Ben Johanan, of the Department of Comparative Religions at Hebrew University.
“In connection with the question as to whether Christianity is idol worship there are three halakhot, but it’s clear that we follow Maimonides who ruled that it is, and it is also claimed that rabbis who said otherwise were afraid of the Christians and now there’s no longer any need for these apologetics," he says.
The characterization of Christianity as idol worship is well suited to the Hardali (ultra-Orthodox, right-wing Zionists) and Kahanist ultranationalism that speaks of the need to eliminate Christianity from the country. That, for example, is what motivated those who torched the Church of the Loaves and Fishes near Kinneret sea, and those attacking churches.
A chronicle of spitting
For decades, Christian believers and clerics have been very familiar with the custom of spitting and have been suffering from it. As opposed to the police’s claim about the difficulty of prosecuting spitters, in the past people were prosecuted for spitting. In 1995, an indictment was submitted against a man who spat during a parade in Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter. He received a two-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 750 shekels.
In the appeal that reached the Supreme Court his defense attorney Naftali Wurzberger claimed that freedom of _expression_ gives a person freedom to spit “even in the presence of a parade of clerics carrying a cross,” and adding: “It’s impossible to ignore the halakha prevalent in Judaism to the effect that it’s a mitzvah for a Jew to spit when he passes by a church or encounters a cross.” But the district court judges rejected the argument.
In 2004, a young man from the right-wing Har Hamor Yeshiva in Jerusalem spat at the Armenian patriarch during a religious parade in the Old City. Patriarch Nourhan Manougian slapped the young man and the police detained Manougian for questioning. Afterward, there was a reconciliation meeting during which the rabbis of the yeshiva, one of the leading Hardali yeshivas in Israel, apologized to the patriarch and claimed that they don’t educate their students to this custom.
Police and demonstrators at the right-wing protest against an Evangelical event in Jerusalem's Old City in May.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
In 2011, the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court judge acquitted a Greek Orthodox priest who hit a young Jew who had spit at him. “It’s intolerable that a Christian cleric should be humiliated because of his religion, just as it’s intolerable for a Jew to be humiliated for being Jewish,” wrote the judge, adding that the authorities are unable to handle the problem.
“The spitters aren’t caught and aren’t punished for their deeds. This isn’t a new phenomenon, it has existed for years. The spitters are not only violating the law, not only harming their victims, but harming all of us, our image, tourism and our values,” ruled the judge. He therefore decided to acquit the priest by reason of justified self-defense.
But although the phenomenon isn’t new, it’s changing in nature and becoming more common and more extreme. The most important development in recent years has been its spread to the Muslim Quarter. In the past it was mainly the members of the Armenian Church, which is adjacent to the Jewish Quarter, who suffered from the spitting.
In recent years it has expanded to the route of the Via Dolorosa that passes from Lions’ Gate to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which passes mainly through the Muslim Quarter. This is a route on which hundreds of thousands of Christian pilgrims march every year, and with the increased presence of religious Jews in these areas they have also become victims of the spittings.
The video clip that stirred up the country in recent days was filmed on Lions’ Gate Street. It was shot during a parade that circles the city gates. These parades have become popular in recent years among Hardali and Haredi groups as a kind of response to the movements that ascend to the Temple Mount. The tour includes walking around the Temple Mount and prayers at the gates of the mount. It frequently involves friction and defiance against Muslim and Christian passersby.
Credit: Ammar Awad/Reuters
On the eve of Yom Kippur, a group of Jews was filmed praying and singing on graves in the Muslim cemetery opposite the Golden Gate, which came also in the context of the circling of the gates. The time of year is also of importance. Jewish holidays are considered a bad time for spitting, especially Purim, when many Christians customarily refrain from going into the street in order not to encounter spitting and violence.
After the recent stormy reaction, the rabbis of the religious Zionist community also hastened to condemn the spitters and called to stop this custom.
Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, one of the heads of the Hardali stream, the spiritual father of a large percentage of the settlers in East Jerusalem and himself a resident of the Old City, wrote Tuesday: “There is no Jewish law that you have to spit at idol worship. There is no such rule in the Gemara, nor in Maimonides, nor in the Shulchan Aruch. If we spit on idol worship and that would end all the idol worship, then it would be an interesting question, but it doesn’t help at all. It simply causes disputes and quarrels and we lose from it. We have to educate the children to behave respectfully.”
Dr. Ramon adds, “That reflects the problem of the inability to undergo a change from being in a situation of a persecuted minority that tries to compensate for its persecution, to the situation when it is now a king and is tested among other things by its attitude towards minorities.”
Hanna Bendcowsky, a tour guide, veteran researcher of Christianity and director of the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations, protests against the very discussion of the historical roots of the custom. “This discussion shouldn’t be opened, if you’re opposed to Christianity keep your spit in your mouth. The very discussion means legitimizing the question of whether it’s legitimate to spit. The discussion should be about barbaric behavior in the 21st century.”