Rabbi Marc Rosenstein writes the Galilee Diary in the Union for Reform Judaism's 10 Minutes of Torah e-mail and blog. Today's struck me as particularly worthy of sharing and inviting your commentary. He references a bill put before the Knesset by MK Anastassia Michaeli of the Yisrael Beiteinu party. This bill seeks to make illegal the sound of the Muezzin's call to worship for Muslims. Again, I am concerned about the extremes to which some people believe we can go in our intolerance. I will not be blogging on the Haredi riots over the arrest of some in their community for collecting tzedakah money for fraudulent causes. We need to be a light to the nations, not another example of extremists perverting their own belief system. But read what Marc has to say. And weigh in.
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GALILEE DIARY
Call to prayer
by Marc J. Rosenstein
...With the realization that our brothers
are capable, in their moral qualities, of relating in this way to the
members of another people and of crudely desecrating their holy places, I
am forced to wonder, if the situation is like this now, what will be
our relationship to others when we finally do achieve ruling power in
the land of Israel. If this is the Messiah, then "let him come but let
me not see him."
-Ahad Ha'am, in a letter on news from Palestine, 1913.
Typically, a village mosque has two religious functionaries, an
imam, who leads prayer, preaches, teaches, and provides pastoral care and communal leadership - and the
muezzin, a sort of combination of cantor and
shammes, who deals with the day-to-day administration and upkeep of the mosque. The major function of the
muezzin
is to call the public to prayer, five times a day, from the tower
of the mosque (and to relay other important communications as they
come up, most commonly death announcements).
In Israel, both of these
functionaries are government employees, like [Orthodox] rabbis. In
many villages, one or both are part-time positions, and I know
imams who also work as gym teachers, auto mechanics, etc. I think that most
muezzins are autodidacts; most
imams
receive some kind of professional training - at seminaries in
Jerusalem or Jordan or Egypt; some, as in the Orthodox community, are
privately ordained by a local teacher. The division of religious
affairs in the ministry of the interior, which is responsible for
non-Jewish religious services, provides in-service courses and
occasional seminars and enrichment programs for
imams and
muezzins.
The reason that mosques have minarets is to provide a high platform for the
muezzin
to chant the call to prayer so that it will be heard far and wide;
indeed, traditionally, the municipal boundaries of a village were
considered to be defined by the area in which the
muezzin could be heard. Today there are loudspeakers mounted on the minarets, and the
muezzin
chants from downstairs - and can be heard over a much wider
radius than in former, unplugged, times (in answer to one FAQ, by the
way, the chanting is still live, not recorded).
The advent of
electronic amplification has led, it seems to me, to a diminution in
quality of life for village residents. Often I have been visiting
near a mosque - in a school, on the street, in a living room - when it
was time for the call to prayer, and been frustrated and annoyed by the
blast of sound that makes conversation impossible for several minutes
(think of a low-flying jet). And for the locals, this happens every
day, five times. I wonder if this nuisance is seen
as a result of incompetence, a manifestation of religious
assertiveness, or simply a fact of nature/culture that is taken for
granted.
Our home in Shorashim is on a hillside
overlooking the Hilazon valley; it is about a mile across the valley as
the crow flies, from our bedroom window to the minaret of the mosque
in the village of Shaab. When we first arrived, we were very conscious
of the
muezzin's
call, especially the one that comes between 4:00 and 5:00 am.
However, it didn't take long for us to tune it out; if I happen to be
awake at the time of the morning call, I notice it, but I don't think
it has actually awakened me in many years. Indeed, I find the plaintive
chant pleasing. And while my Arabic is rudimentary, I can identify a
funeral announcement and generally even make out the name of the
deceased.
Not all our neighbors are as laid-back about
this as we are, and one hears complaints about "noise pollution" and
the disturbance to sleep caused by the
muezzin's call. Now, a
number of them are enthusiastic about a bill proposed by a member of
Knesset to enforce decibel limits on the loudspeakers of houses of
prayer. Needless to say the bill was not submitted by Arab
parliamentarians concerned about quality of life in their villages, but
by Jewish lawmakers seeking to protect Jews from Muslim noise
pollution.
All those centuries we had to suffer from the
wailing of the muezzin - or the cacophony of the church bells every
hour; finally we have our own state so we can shut them up. Somehow I
don't think that this is what Herzl (or Achad Ha'am) had in mind.
