American Enclave Stands Up to Extremists

[Valin]

Jewish Daily Forward:

Letter From Beit Shemesh
Allison Kaplan Sommer
12/29/11


Stand and Fight: Secular Israelis face off with Jewish fundamentalists in the town of Beit Shemesh.

Beit Shemesh, Israel — Little Na’ama Margolese is not the first Israeli child to be harassed on her way to school by members of a fundamentalist ultra-Orthodox sect who resent her presence in or around their neighborhood. But the 8-year-old girl is the first to have her plight featured on Israeli television and turned into an international news story. And she is definitely the first to have a determined, organized group of politically and media savvy families behind her, a cohort made up almost entirely of Modern Orthodox immigrants from the United States.

“They messed with the wrong crowd this time,” my friend Sara Eisen, a marketing executive and member of that community, told me. “This time, the bullies came up against Americans.”


Since a television crew captured Na’ama’s fearful walk to school — in recent months, she and her peers have been called “whores,” spat on and had tomatoes thrown at them — the little girl’s story has been dominating national headlines. The attention culminated on December 27 with a Beit Shemesh rally that drew thousands, including members of my own family, and featured speeches by representatives of every major political party.

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