(originally posted on LII)
Modiin has been going through a lot of religious fights recently. I think this is what happens when a city becomes much more religious than originally expected. the city of Modiin was planned to be a secular city, but has become a fairly religious, National Religious mostly, city.
Bet Shemesh was also originally planned as a secular neighborhood. When the religious chose to move to Bet Shemesh, the fights for control began.
It seems that has been happening in Modiin too, with the increase in religious residents. That is why we are witness to a number if recent incidents, such as the school banning the kid from wearing tefillin, the recent kid becoming religious and fighting with parents, a kid being banned from the soccer team because he wears a kipa, and others.
On the one hand it is easy to say we can buy apartments wherever we want, and they have to learn to live with us. And that sentiment is kind of correct. It is a free world, and if I want to move to a secular neighborhood, nobody can stop me.
On the other hand, perhaps the approach of those moving in is too heavy handed and not sensitive enough to those already living there. I do not have specific examples, but just the idea that some soul-searching might be in order.
Why do I say that? Why do I suggest that perhaps the religious people moving in to Modiin have perhaps been not sensitive enough to the secular residents?
only because of the recent incident on Simchas Torah in which a sefer torah was dropped. The torah was dropped after being given to a child to carry. The child was old enough that this act was not considered negligence.
Rav Dovid Lau, the rav of Modiin, therefore paskened that the community must fast. He differentiates between causes, saying that if the Torah was dropped out of negligence, then there is no need for a communal fast. When, however, the torah is dropped with no negligence, then it is a sign from heavan that the community must do soul-searching and improve its ways.
Rav Lau says that in this situation the child was old enough to hold the torah, and therefore there was no negligence. That means that they must fast and look for ways to improve.
I would suggest, perhaps rightly perhaps wrongly, that this incident indicating the need for soul-searching added to, and occurring in such a close time-frame to, all the recent incidents of secular fighting with religious residents, perhaps the soul-searching needs to be directed toward the way the religious have treated the irreligious when they have moved in en masse to a secular neighborhood. Perhps if they would find ways in which they could be more friendly, less threatening, mor eopen, etc. to their secular neighbors, and improve in those areas, perhaps all of these incidents would happen less frequently.
Thank you to the reader who sent me the scan of Rav Lau's original letter
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Buy his book. (please)
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