Meir Margalit
Occasionally an insignificant detail conceals layers of illuminating information. It can also shed light on the inner world, symbols and beliefs that motivate the dramatis personae. It’s said that God is in the details, and the matter at hand has a large helping of divinity, although God might be dissatisfied with the use made of his Torah. The picture below is of an unimportant notice placed at the entrance to a building seized by settlers in the Moslem Quarter of the Old City.
It deals with the allocation of dates for cleaning the shared parts of the building, between the three families living there. What’s surprising is the way the dates allocated to each family is written. Instead of the usual way people write a notice, according to the Gregorian calendar, or the Jewish calendar - often the case in religious Jewish families - here, the dates are written according to the parasha – portion – for which each day is named in the bible. An explanation for those unfamiliar with Jewish traditions - it is an obligation to read every day a section from the bible, and each portion has a name, generally formed from the first words. The author of the notice who used the names of the Weekly Portion attests that by using a different calendar from the kind everyone else uses, he may also come from a planet other than that of normative people. Using the Weekly Portion proves the dominant weight of religion in his personality. He leads his life by different rules, distinct not only from those of his Muslim neighbours, but from much of the Jewish Israeli public as well. He also differs from most of religious Israeli Jews who use the Hebrew calendar, but would not consider using the Weekly Portion to set their daily agenda. Using the Weekly Portion to define whose turn it is to clean the steps and empty the garbage is delusional in religious terms. Taking into account that these are not extremist ultra-orthodox people, but people connected to modernity, we can understand that the use is largely ideological, and makes a statement that is not just religious but more political. These people live in different spheres, cut off from the world around them. And there are few prospects that this settler will conduct a dialogue with his Arab neighbours.
