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May 30, 2003
Not a Miss Congeniality
Ragen lecture elicits both agreement and dissention.
JANNETTE EDMONDS SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Author, activist and political commentator Naomi Ragen poured her
heart out about many things at her Schara Tzedeck speech last week.
And when the applause finally died down at the end, two things became
obvious. First, even though one may not agree with her views on
the Palestinians and the proposed Road Map to peace, one had to
admire her honesty and courage in speaking them. Second, although
she took the 600-plus audience down a path to the deepest areas
of Israel's despair, she marched them out from there to talk about
the country's hope, along with her own optimism and pride of Israelis
as "the bravest people on earth."
Ragen began her talk, which was hosted by the Canadian Friends of
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Vancouver chapter, and the Women's
Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation, with less controversial
matters of her own journey into Orthodoxy, writing and the land
of Israel. Born in 1949 in New York City, she lost her father when
she was seven and the family suffered in poverty. She got a scholarship
to an Orthodox Jewish school and fell in love with the beauty of
religion. A desire to fight for, protect and put her arms around
the Jewish people "blossomed within her." She called the
pinched, lost faces in newsreels of the Holocaust "the real
heros."
Early on, she realized, "I was a princess and part of a nation
of priests" and this knowledge she called "truly the most
wonderful thing that ever happened to me."
Her love of Torah and her commitment to it wove through her talk
and twice she refered to experiencing a kindred feeling with Abraham.
When she and her husband, both fresh from yeshivot and newly married,
moved to Israel in 1971, they had never even visited the country.
She said she never wanted to be like the biblical spies who had
checked the land out first. Years later, when she saw her son off
to the army, she felt "like Abraham, you bring your first born
son ... and place him in God's hands."
As apparent as her love of Judaism was, so was her love of Israel,
a land she found beautiful and idyllic, where "we were free
to wander our crime-free and children-friendly streets." Her
love for her people and her nation led her to want to protect them,
and this led to her writing.
"Women don't usually get a chance to stand up in synagogue
and tell people what they think, so I decided to create a platform
for myself through my books," she told the crowd.
She said she gets satisfaction from the part her books have played
in changing the attitudes toward domestic violence and the code
of silence within the Jewish community. Today, there are Jewish
women's shelters where there were none before, she added. The stories
she heard from her friends and neighbors in Jerusalem about rape
and adultery broke her heart, she said, and she realized no one
was writing about it. Since winning her first essay contest in Grade
3, where she won a gold charm, she learned "I could turn a
piece of paper into a piece of gold by writing on it."
And she did turn it into gold – in the form of a successful
writing career with five novels under her belt and a new one coming
out next year, in the form of a platform to speak her views on all
kinds of issues touching the lives of Jews and especially women,
and in the form of a wide audience from her work as a former Jerusalem
Post columnist.
But it cost her.
After her first novel, Jephte's Daughter, in which she depicts
an arranged Orthodox marriage that ends in abuse and tragedy, she
was "vilified, absolutely vilified." It was based on the
true story of a neighbor, an abused wife who took her own life,
that made Ragen "so angry it took me through the first 500
pages of my first book."
The rage she felt that "normal women, good women," were
being totally destroyed by domestic violence and social injustice
did not make her popular in the Orthodox community and many never
forgave her.
"I learned that if you tell the truth, you are going to offend
those who are profiting from the lie," she said.
She learned what she called her first great lesson, which is, "tell
the truth and don't worry about winning any Miss Congeniality contests."
The truth is something she speaks fearlessly, with quiet authority
and a gentleness strengthened by steely resolve. Her books deal
with topics of controversy, attitudes towards race, women who, through
no fault of their own, find themselves on the wrong side of social
norms, violence and injustice perpetrated on innocents. She works
on fighting codes of silence and that's why she wasn't going to
be silent herself.
Which brought her talk into more controversial areas. She told the
audience how all the time she was writing her books and raising
her children "there was a war on, with little bits off in between."
And before the Oslo accords, "we still felt safe enough to
sit outdoors and drink tall drinks on summer nights on Ben Yehuda
Street." All that ended with an accord that brought only terror,
some of which she felt personally last year, when she and her family
narrowly escaped physical harm at the Passover massacre at the Park
Hotel in Netanya. The explosion was horrific and a wall of glass
shattered towards them. Still, they were able to walk out.
Then, she and her family had to don gas masks in fear of deadly
gas from Iraq.
"To go through that the same year, to sit wearing masks because
someone else was trying to kill us was just too much," she
said. "I don't think I will ever forgive or forget having to
watch my mother-in-law, who survived three years in Auschwitz, having
to put on a gas mask and watch her children and grandchildren put
on gas masks because they were once again threatened by poison gas."
She admits no ill will to the architects of Oslo, though it took
them "eight years to prove it didn't work.
"I thought the risks were enormous, to give them guns, to bring
that murderer Arafat back and give him power and arms, only kilometres
away from our population centres. But we suspended belief for hope,
and there is really no shame in leaving no stone unturned, no opportunity
unexplored if it meant the slightest chance that we could bring
up our children in peace."
She is not so magnanimous towards those touting what she describes
as "the latest Mideast fantasy" – the Road Map.
"This plan is not good for Israel and it will not bring peace.
"Seven hundred and eighty-nine Israelis killed and that number
just went up ... and thousands more crippled for life," she
said. "How many more thousands will have to die in order to
prove the Road Map will not work?"
She said that the song is a familiar one – the Palestinian
Authority going to stop violence, going to co-operate with Israel
on security, and Israel going to pull out it troops, release prisoners.
"Where have we heard this before?" she asked. "The
last time this happened, we were banging on the doors of the Palestinians,
begging for peace. We didn't know then that when they opened up
the door they would have a shotgun aimed right between our eyes.
But now we do know. We know who the other side is and what they
really want. They told me and my family loud and clear at Passover
2002. We heard them and the world heard them.
"When a bomb goes off, that's a language," she continued.
"That's someone speaking to you and it's unmistakable. You
know what they're trying to tell you. And that is the language in
which we have to answer the terrorists."
Ragen commented on how Israel is being asked to give goodwill gestures,
to free terrorists.
"We freed a bunch last week. And this week we got the results,"
she exclaimed, referring to the five bombings that took place the
day before her talk.
"If the Israeli government caves into this pressure and agrees
to the Road Map, makes the same mistake twice, there is no forgiveness,"
she said. "It is one thing to play Russian roulette and shoot
yourself in the head once, but to survive just to do it again is
absolutely unforgivable."
Still, she holds on to hope for Israel and its citizens. She said
she is an optimist who believes they are not alone.
"We have God, each other and our friends," she said. "It
is Christians who are the ones filling up the hotels now."
She calls Israel a home of miracles and believes it may all turn
around some day. Until then, she has her own road map, she said,
which calls for an immediate roundup of all weapons, and trials
and deportation for those Palestinians still holding arms past a
certain date. She also calls for an education system which would
instil "love of freedom, life and justice" to offset all
the years of organized incitement to hate.
She would love to sit down with a Palestinian people who truly want
peace, she said, but until there is such a people, "there is
nothing to talk about. All concessions are only aiding and abetting
terrorists who want to kill us and our children."
And until such a day, Ragen will continue to raise her voice and
encourage her audiences to think about the issues at hand, issues
that will affect how the world looks in future years. She gets her
strength from God, she said, stating emphatically, "the more
time we spend with our God, the more we will be free of fear."
She certainly seems to be free of it, and she left her audience
with the injunction to "use your time to the fullest and go
forward with courage."
Following the lecture, Ragen took several questions from the audience
that they had written on prepared sheets which were included in
the program. Many questions just wanted Ragen to expanded on comments
she had made earlier. The last question, however, asked her to comment
on her view of groups of Israelis and Palestinians who are working
together and co-operating. She said, "I would gladly comment
if I knew of any." She then thanked the crowd and sat down.
She may not have won Miss Congeniality with all her audience, but
she definitely gave everyone present a lot to ponder.
Jannette Edmonds is a freelance writer living in Vancouver.
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