Earlier this week, social media lost its mind. The morning was off to a stormy start with a viral video featuring a middle aged woman yelling rudely at a Chabad hassid who was encouraging passersby at an airport departure lounge to fulfill the mitzvah of putting on tefillin.
The Torah commands Jewish men to bind tefillin onto their head and upper arm every weekday.
In the video, the woman was seen demanding that the hassid move to an area where there were no people, arguing that he was "bothering" her, and then taunting him repeatedly with a high-pitched laugh.
Thanks to the prominence of social media in this day and age, Israel is engaged in an important internal dialogue. Tensions that have simmered for years have now erupted. While the Left – the sector that has enjoyed most of the fruits this country has to offer over the years – consistently accuses the right-wing public of incitement and divisiveness, everyone else knows that it is just a result of ongoing discrimination. Mutual mudslinging isn't necessarily bad – it's better than mutual alienation, and it is certainly better than a reality where one side gets every platform and the other side can do nothing but listen.
But now we have gone too far. The first people to share the airport lounge video were a number of prominent influencers in the religious community, experts at fighting back against the "anti-religification" campaign (resulting from widely shared sentiments among the secular public that Israel's religious population is trying to introduce religious themes into the secular sphere and indoctrinate the secular public).
The individuals who shared the video argued that the woman's outburst was a direct result of the public's strong resistance to the incorporation of Jewish values in the public sphere. The woman was not just an angry individual, she was a symbol. Later on, others joined in. In a show of solidarity, an ultra-Orthodox radio presenter spent his entire show wearing tefillin. MK Shelly Yachimovich, a left-wing secular lawmaker, tweeted her dismay at the woman's outburst, and many other non-fans of religion remarked characterized her behavior as a kind of anti-Semitism rarely seen in Israel to date.
The madness reached a fever pitch when an image of the woman from the video was digitally added to an iconic photo of Nazi soldiers humiliating a Jew wearing tefillin. And if anyone thought that this infuriating comparison would be condemned, they were sorely disappointed. Yes, some people were shocked, but many other, usually intelligent people, shared this horrendous image, accompanied by sharp-tongued explanations of how every murder starts with incitement and that there is obvious anti-religious incitement in Israel.
It's imperative to spoil this party. In Chabad's long history of spreading Jewish values, the group has faced a lot of criticism. I grew up in a Chabad family, among Chabad institutions and I have stood at street corners hundreds of times offering tefillin to passersby, inviting them to light Hanukkah candles or encouraging them to hear the reading of the Book of Esther on Purim. I was met with a hurtful comment about once or twice a month, but other than that we were warmly welcomed. None of us had Facebook accounts, and it never crossed our minds that a sporadic insult here and there could be a symbol or harbinger of a wider trend.
Ironically, Chabad members largely stayed out of this particular heated debate. I am not authorized to represent Chabad views, but I can shed a light on the current reality, and this is what I see: With the exception of a handful of individuals, most Chabad members didn't even understand what the fuss was about. We have no time to deal with these things – we have too many Jews to think about, they said.
