Religious Services Minister Matan Kahana described non-Orthodox Jews as “brothers” during his rebuttal to a motion of no-confidence on Monday, lambasting the interruption of a Conservative prayer service at the Western Wall on the Ninth of Av fast by hardline Orthodox activists.
In a tempestuous session in the Knesset plenum in which the minister frequently could not be heard over the screaming and shouting of ultra-Orthodox MKs, Kahana denounced such activists and the ultra-Orthodox opposition to his kashrut reforms as lacking faith in God and confidence in their own religious path.
Kahana was defending the government from a motion of no-confidence submitted by the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism Party and co-signed by its haredi partner Shas, a motion which was labeled the “non-kosher government.”
The minister’s words were met with bitter denunciation by the ultra-Orthodox MKs in the plenum, with UTJ chairman MK Moshe Gafni going so far as to call Kahana “Antiochus,” the ancient enemy of the Jews in the time of the Hasmoneans who sought to eradicate Jewish practice.
The motion, together with two others, was easily defeated 59 to 49.
Kahana’s comments represent his first personal reference to the Fast of the 9th of Av events, which he said stemmed from the activists’ own fear.
“Someone with no confidence in their Judaism, someone with no confidence in their faith, someone with no confidence in their path, someone with no confidence in God is always in fear,” said the minister.
“How much fear and fright, how much lack of confidence, does it take to make people think that the best idea on the eve of the Fast of Av – which commemorates the destruction of the Temple due to baseless hatred – is to go and disturb people who have come to Jerusalem to cry over the destruction of the Temple!” he declared.
Kahana said that “we are not afraid… we are certain of our path,” adding that, “When people who think differently from us come to pray at the Western Wall, even when we are certain they are mistaken, we are not horrified. They are our brothers – we don’t want to fight with them – because someone who is not afraid, someone who does not live in fear, knows that the way to draw people close is through baseless love and not unbound hatred.”
Senior UTJ MK Yaakov Litzman had proposed the no-confidence motion from the podium, denouncing the coalition as “the government of division” for what he said were its attacks on the ultra-Orthodox community and religion.
And he took particular pains to denounce the non-Orthodox Jewish movements.
“This government has incited the general population against the ultra-Orthodox, against religion and against Jewish tradition,” said Litzman.
“You have opened war against our children,” he continued, in reference to pending cuts to child-care subsidies for families in which the father studies full time in yeshiva, adding that the government had “transgressed all 10 commandments.”
Litzman again described the coalition as “a Reform government,” as he has done on several occasions, saying that “the Reform [movement] destroyed religion in America – and this government wants to do the same thing here in Israel.”