My righteous wife

My wife and I were heading home after a visit with our son, who is a soldier somewhere in the reserves. On the way, we stopped to sit at a coffee cart in nature, trying to calm our nerves with plenty of sugar.

A group of Haredi ultra-Orthodox men of military age and above were sitting nearby. “I’m going to talk to them,” my wife suddenly tells me.

“Leave it alone,” I said, “Why stir up a riot?”

But my wife, a “kosher” godfearing woman who yields to nobody’s will but her own, was already on her way to them.

“Hello, can I ask you something?” she says in a quiet tone.

“Sure.”

“Have you done or will you do military service?”

“No, we haven’t,” they answer, somewhat defiantly.

“And do you study in a yeshiva?”

“Some of us do, and some not so much. Why?”

My wife pulls out her cellphone and shows them a picture of Yehonatan.

“This is Yehonatan, my son. He fought in the war and was killed.”

“We know that picture,” they say, to her surprise, “We heard about him. He touched the hearts of many Haredim.”

And she continues in the same quiet tone: “I’m really asking in order to understand. How do you go out on trips at a time like this, while, for almost two years, your peers have been fighting and risking their lives in a war that is obligatory under Jewish law? Why aren’t you helping us? What happened to [the Bible’s exhortation] ‘You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor’?”

The question hangs in the air. They and she are silent. Meanwhile, I’m making plans to swoop in and rescue my wife.

One of them breaks the silence.

“You’re right,” he says almost silently.

“You’re right,” says another.

And the rest are silent, looking away.

And she’s right. She’s always right.

I’m telling you, don’t learn from me, learn from her.

The summer vacation now overlapping with the break for Yeshiva students offers many opportunities for chance encounters along the way, face to face, between Haredim, secular, and religious, without the filters of the media or the activists or the Knesset committees.

Sit down and talk.

Speak about what hurts you.

Listen to what hurts others.

Just talk.

––

And, in this spirit, there is a beautiful initiative by the ‘Partnership for Service’ movement called “Dabru El Halev,” which encourages dialogue across the divide. (Hebrew only.)