Baba Yaga Wears a Spodik

One of the classic scenes in Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the witch scene. The scene is a bunch of pitch-forked peasants blaming the witch (a woman with a parsnip on her nose) for all sorts of misfortune. After a series of torturous thinking (for peasants) they decide to burn her.

Peasants have always sought someone to blame for their misfortune.

During the Black Death it was the Jews

During the Chmelnicki uprising it was the Jews

During the Weimer Republic it was the Jews and we know where that led to.

Now the peasants are seeking a new bogeyman, or at least Liberman is seeking a new Baba Yaga, and very conveniently it’s the Haredim. With true bombastic cynicism he declares “ I say again, I have no claims against the ultra-Orthodox community, but the leaders who behave irresponsibly and endanger not only the health of the ultra-Orthodox public but the health of the State of Israel”

Baba Yaga wears a spodik.

On the heels of Rina Matzliach’s diatribe that Goebbels would have been proud of, Liberman adds his rusty two cents.

Shame on all of you who buy into this. No-one would tolerate such language against any other sector of the country, how do you tolerate, condone and lap up this type of language against Haredim?

The source of this contention is clear. The Haredi population is growing rapidly while the secular population is stagnating. In a matter of a decade the Haredi population will be a fif^th of the population in Israel and in two decades will be a thi^rd. The power balance is slowly but surely shifting. As long as Haredim were an insignificant portion of the populace they had to tolerate the scraps handed to them by those in power. This is changing. This scares people so they madly scramble to condemn, marginalize, demonize and ostracize the Haredi community.

It will not matter, the numbers are simply against the seculars.

Baba Yaga wears a spodik