In his speech to supporters last night after the release of results of exit polls indicating a triumph for his Habayit Hayehudi party, Naftali Bennett declared that one of his aims was that every child in Israel should learn about their Jewish heritage. In particular, he said that every child should know who Maimonides was. Perhaps what they really need to know is what Maimonides said.
It's no secret that many Habayit Hayehudi supporters registered as members of Likud with no intention of voting for it. They wanted to ensure that people sympathetic to their nationalist cause like Moshe Feiglin would be high on the Likud list of Knesset candidates, and that dubious types like Dan Meridor, Michael Eitan, and Benny Begin, who have the rule of law too close to their hearts, would be nowhere. I don't wish to imply that Bennett himself encouraged this tactic. It could even be said to have been against his interests, as it meant less sharp differentiation between him and Likud in his political market. But those of his persuasion did thus plant a fifth column in the ruling party. Habayit Hayehudi voters were even reported in this morning's "Ha'aretz" as glorying in their participation in this exercise whereby they stole undue influence over Israel's political future, and swindled genuine Likud supporters. "I registered for Likud just so that I could vote in the primaries and make sure Moshe Feiglin got in," one such voter is quoted as saying.
It may well be that poetic justice will be done, in that the make-up of the Likud list appears to have been one factor that drove former supporters into the arms of Yair Lapid, whose centrist Yesh Atid party looks like being a pillar of the next coalition. It may also be that Habayit Hayehudi voters were not alone in this kind of scam, and that in general our political system is in need of reform. The point however is that in this case the exercise was carried out in the name of Jewish values. This is one of many symptoms of a disease that afflicts the Jewish religion in Israel, whereby, in the political arena, the end is seen as justifying the means. There has grown up a kind of religion without conscience.
Now it would be very hard to prove that a registered Likud member who voted for Habayit Hayehudi did not simply change his or her mind. Nevertheless, such conduct does not come under the heading of "kosher but stinking" - it stinks alright, and it's not kosher either. The technical term in Jewish law for the Habayit Hayehudi voter scam is genevat da'at, literally "theft of the mind", or deception. This is what Maimonides writes on the subject in his code of Jewish law "Mishneh Torah" ("Laws of Ethical Qualities", 2: 6): "A person is forbidden to be ingratiating and sly. Nor should he be one thing in his speech and another in his heart, but should be inwardly and outwardly the same. He should say what is in his heart, and is forbidden to deceive people, including gentiles… Even a single word of slyness and duplicity is forbidden, but there should rather be genuine speech and a true spirit, and a heart pure of all wrongfulness and guile."
It is clearly desirable for Israeli children to be acquainted with the Jewish classics. Incidentally, this aspiration is also to be found in the platform of the Meretz party, at the opposite end of the political spectrum from Habayit Hayehudi. But in the end, what is it for? As it happens, I have written a doctoral dissertation on Maimonides, which I mention only to justify the belief that he is no less precious to me than he is to Bennett. All the same, I think it better to have decent people who have never heard of Maimonides than to have people who have heard of him, and may even have read him, but who pay no attention to him.
Postscript: The above article has been criticized for failing to provide more than hearsay evidence. In fact, as a comment has pointed out, numerical evidence is available of people registering for Likud to vote for Moshe Feiglin in the Likud primaries and then voting for other parties in the Knesset election. Results by candidate and location of the Likud primaries are available at www.mida.org. Results of the Knesset election by location are available at the election committee site. There are discrepancies in places in Judea and Samaria that look too large to be explicable by genuine changes of heart - after all, the Likud primaries only took place two months ago, in November 2012.
In Beit El, for example, Feiglin received 280 votes in the primaries, but Likud received just 212 votes in the election, while Habayit Hayehudi received 1,842 votes. For Shilo, the figures are 326 for Feiglin, 127 for Likud, and 687 for Habayit Hayehudi. For Kochav Hashahar, the figures are 135 for Feiglin, 54 for Likud, and 598 for Habayit Hayehudi.
Even if Knesset voting areas do not completely correspond to Likud primaries voting areas, the figures are still telling. Registering for Likud, it should be remembered, is a rather more cumbersome procedure than voting in a Knesset election, and theoretically indicates much greater commitment. It involves filling out a form, including a declaration of identification with the aims of the party, and costs 64 shekels for an individual, 96 shekels for a couple. One would therefore expect the number of registered members of the party to be far lower than the number of its voters in any one place. There were 123,351 party members elligible to vote in the Likud primaries. Nationwide, with almost all the votes counted, Likud-Beytenu has 880,972 votes in the Knesset election, of which at least half can be assumed to be from Likud rather than Yisrael Beytenu supporters.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 23, 2013
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