opinion
The Settlers’ Attack on Huwara Is Not
the Orthodox Judaism I Grew Up On
Aviad Houminer-Rosenblum
N 12
MARCH 9, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
Jewish rioters look on as the cars they set on fi re burn in the Palestinian town of Huwara in the West
Bank on Feb. 26.

permanently, for the land belongs to Me, for you are
strangers and [temporary] residents with Me.”
By contrast, the Judaism that the militant
settlers imbibed — or distorted — led one of the
pogromchiks, he too in skullcap and sidelocks, to
speak in Hebrew words I understood but whose
language I could not not comprehend. “There is
something very moving here,” he told a reporter.

“Jews won’t be silent. What the army can’t do, what
the police will never do, simple Jews come and
carry out a simple act of vengeance, setting fi re to
anything they can.”
The same Judaism led Davidi Ben Zion, deputy
head of the Samaria Regional Council, also an
observant Jew, to say blithely, shortly before the
pogrom, that “Huwara should be wiped off the
earth — no room for mercy,” and “the [Jewish] guys
in Huwara right now are behaving precisely like
guys whose brothers were massacred in cold blood
at point-blank. The idea that a Jew in Samaria is a
diasporic Jew, who will be stabbed in the heart and
politely say thank you, is childish naivete.”
That same Judaism led Israel’s fi nance minister,
Betzalel Smotrich, the de facto governor of the
West Bank, to publicly support a tweet by another
coalition member calling to “wipe out” the village.

In the name of this Judaism, denizens of hills
and outposts abuse the Palestinians daily, with
the aid or under the blind eye of the IDF. A national
Jewish settlement endeavor has been taking
place for two generations now, which despite the
good intentions of some of its practitioners, has
included land theft, institutionalized discrimination,
killing and hatred. An endeavor under which
See Houminer-Rosenblum, page 13
Screenshot Via Twitter
ighttime in Huwara, a small Palestinian town
in the West Bank. Jews in large skullcaps
and sidelocks, prayer fringes dangling from
their waists, responding loudly to the cantor: “Yehei
shmei raba mevurach leolam u’leolmei olmaya”
(“May His great name be blessed, forever and ever”)
— the words of Kaddish, a regular daily prayer that
can also be said to mourn the dead.

The gloom outside is illuminated by an enormous
bonfi re of cars, shops and homes belonging to
the Palestinian residents of the village, which the
Kaddish-reciters have set on fi re, in revenge for the
horrifi c and heartrending murders, hours before the
pogrom, of brothers Hillel and Yagel Yaniv (may their
memory be a blessing) and for other recent terror
attacks in the area.

One Palestinian was killed during the rioting
by these Jewish settlers. Dozens of wounded
Palestinians were evacuated to hospitals, some
from smoke inhalation, others from beatings and
stabbings. A family was evacuated by IDF troops,
moments before they might have perished in the
fl ames that took their home.

This wasn’t just any Kaddish, yet another one
of those said and repeated by any observant
Jew multiple times a day, sometimes in
mumbling fashion. This time it was a Kaddish for
Judaism itself.

I grew up in a small town in central Israel, in a
classic “dati leumi” or national religious community
whose ideology combines Zionism and Orthodox
Judaism. I studied in typical religious institutions:
a school in the state-religious education stream,
a high school yeshivah and a “hesder yeshivah,”
which combines advanced religious studies with
military service. I was also very active in the religious
Zionist Bnei Akiva youth movement, as an educator
and leader.

Even today I live in a religious community in
Jerusalem, and my young children study in schools
that belong to the state-religious education stream.

The Judaism that I know and by which I try to
live is a Judaism that operates according to the
commandment “walk in His ways” (Deuteronomy
11:22) and the Talmud: “As He is gracious you should
also be gracious, as He is compassionate you
should also be compassionate” (Shabbat 133b:4-
6). This Judaism operates according to the verse
from Leviticus, “The land shall not be sold