Around a year ago I was listening to one of the Israeli talk radio shows when a caller calls up and says “Varda, my husband and I don’t have any communications anymore. We can’t work out our schedules to meet. Our family is falling apart.”

The caller was asked if there was no time, even an evening that the family could just sit and talk. The caller responded that even when her husband comes home from work on Saturday evenings, the only time both are home, he is too tired.

Neither caller nor radio host felt that there was anything wrong with the fact that the caller’s husband had to work on Shabbat if he wanted to keep his job in the shopping center.

Neither caller nor radio host thought that there was anything wrong with the fact that the husband would lose his main source of income if he refused to work on Shabbat.

In fact, neither caller nor host thought there was anything even unusual that the man was working on Shabbat.

One of the greatest gifts the Jewish people gave to the world is the Day of Rest.

Yet here in Israel (not for the better off mind you), secular coercion is forcing people to work on Shabbat if they want to keep their jobs, whether it is in the Intel plant in Kiryat Gat (notice that it was built in a low-income area), or one of the many shopping centers or restaurants that are open.

Secular Israelis talk about Freedom to Shop on Shabbat, and Freedom to Eat Out on Shabbat, and Freedom to go to Entertainment on Shabbat, but they all forget one thing.

They talk about laws allowing restaurants, entertainments centers, and public transportation services to be allowed to run on Shabbat.

Their freedom is someone else’s slavery (and I don’t use the word lightly).

They never consider the teenagers, or the middle/lower income families that find themselves forced to work on Shabbat if they want to keep their jobs during the week.

They never consider the families that can’t even get a common day together where they can all sit down and communicate, play, or even ignore each other.

Who exactly is working as their waitress, cook, salesman, bus driver, and projectionist?

Certainly it’s not someone who is on the same socio-economic level as they are.

Not at all - it is the poor person who has no choice -and that is exactly who the Shabbat laws are there to protect.

But all that matters is that there is Freedom to Whatever, even as it steals away the freedom of someone else.

That’s called Secular Coercion.

I wasn’t going to discuss this, but I’ve changed my mind. Next week the proposed abomination parade will be marching through Jerusalem (well, hopefully not actually).

Another Freedom to Whatever that infringes on the rest of us.

There is no other way to describe this, than as Sexual Harassment of the General Public.

The general public does not need nor want to see the exposed flaunting that will be on display.

This is both an abuse and harassment of the general public that will have no choice but to see this open provocation in our streets.

You want to have sex with each other, with animals or with little children. I don’t want to know about it. I don’t want to see it.

Keep you predilections to yourselves (or go to the police).

But this is unfortunately another example of Secular Coercion.

When it happens in the workplace, we prosecute it, because, for among other reasons, one’s fellow employees don’t have much choice as to working there and deserve a safe, comfortable working environment without feeling sexually harassed.

Well, we the general public deserve the same things in our streets. They can do what they want in the privacy of their own home, but why must they stick their sexual activities into in our faces where we don’t have a choice but to see it?

We want a safe, comfortable environment in our streets as much as we want it in our workplace.

This is Secular Coercion.


Moshe Feiglin had an interesting point. His party, his goals are less important to the religious man on the street than they are to the secular.

Why?

Perhaps because in many ways, we religious already live our lifestyle in the healthiest way possible (just look at the statistics on lifespan and other health indicators on religious communities in Israel - we top the charts). We watch out for our religious and social needs because the Torah commands it and because we are aware of them.

It’s the average secular Israeli on the other hand that needs the Shabbat laws.

The average secular Israeli is being exploited by those more well-off and powerful than they. The average Israeli doesn’t have the security net of their community when they don’t want to have to work on Shabbat despite the coercion to do so. They may not even be aware of the damage being caused to their families because of it because their society doesn't discuss it or accept it.

So they suffer instead or call up radio show hosts who haven't a clue either.

Secular Coercion.