Rabbi David Stav, the chairman of the Tzohar rabbinical organization, spoke to Israel National News - Arutz Sheva about the widespread protests against the government's planned judicial reforms and the heated discourse and divisions in the country over the issue.
"Rabbis are not politicians and they are not experts in this, so they should not bother with these details. But I ask myself, when a Torah-observant and mitzvot-observant Jew does not shave during this period (The Three Weeks), is careful not to listen to music, and couples are forbidden to marry, what goes through his head," Rabbi Stav asked.
"All the mourning customs, according to Maimonides, are supposed to remind us of what happened at the time of the destruction of the Temple," he noted. "We talk about unity and do the opposite, we talk about the need to rebuild the nation and do the opposite. So what should we do? Just today in the Daf Yomi we read about Rabbi Zechariah ben Abkilus (who is blamed in the Talmud for the destruction of the Second Temple), and I think about the silence of the rabbis, and of course, I am one of them. It doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong, because even during the Second Temple period no one asked who was wrong and who was right."
"I want to call for a different discourse. A discourse that calls for love and not hostility and hatred. If we speak a language of hatred, submission, a language of' we have defeated you and we will show you,' if this is how anyone thinks the country will be built, I think they are wrong," he said.
"Whoever thinks that the love of brothers is built by submission and victory, and not by embracing and loving and talking, has probably never tried love. I don't know a couple that came to a peaceful home by one subduing the other, instead, they talked and talked until they reached an agreement.
Rabbi Stav called on the rabbis of Israel to make their voices heard in order to lower the flames of the current discourse in the country. "As of this moment, it seems as if we are treading a very difficult path, and if rabbis and Torah people do not raise a voice about this path, I do not know who will. It will not come from the extreme left and right, but will come from people of Torah who have a sense of historical and religious consciousness, of responsibility for all of Israel. Of course, those who see their opponent as something that needs to disappear think that a victory needs to be reached."
"I allow myself to assume that during the Second Temple period the people weren't thugs, and I allow myself to assume that then and now, the majority of the people want to reach a broad agreement. It is clear to me that the extremes want a victory, and I am also not saying that the government does not have the legitimacy to decide, it was elected by the majority and has the legitimacy to make decisions. But the question is not only if you are right morally and legally, but what you will tell our Father in heaven, what you did to prevent this terrible rupture" in Israeli society, he said.
"The people of Israel have a lot of challenges, and we need to think carefully about whether this is what is the highest priority to do. I think it is illogical that a Torah-observant and mitzvot-observant Jew who mourns the destruction of the Temple during these days, ignores what is happening at the moment and does not see these same processes happening even today," concluded Rabbi Stav.