JERUSALEM — There is not much you can do about the threat of suicide bombings other than to recite psalms, says Professor Menahem Friedman, a sociologist at Bar-Ilan University.
Friedman was commenting on a recent advertising campaign encouraging Israelis to be more aware of the Book of Psalms.
The campaign was not specifically planned for the present conflict with the Palestinians, when neither a political solution nor military efforts appear to provide security, said Raphael Hakuk, 30, the volunteer coordinator of Beyahad, the organization running the campaign.
Even so, after every terrorist attack there is an increase in the number of callers to the campaign’s hotline, said the Mir Yeshiva student.
The idea that reciting psalms might protect people and their families is part of the message imparted by the volunteers who answer the hotline.
The campaign is staffed by about 20 volunteers, and the organization also sends out free copies of a selection of psalms “for time of trouble for the people of Israel,” Hakuk said. The radio and billboard advertisements cost a “great deal” of money, he added.
Hakuk, who works out of a small office on the fringes of Jerusalem’s Geula neighborhood, said the campaign is not politically motivated nor is it affiliated with any specific stream within the religious community.
It is the initiative of donors from North and South America who appreciate the beauty of the psalms, are mindful of their popularity in the non-Jewish world, and want Israelis to be more familiar with them, he said.
The idea originated before the intifada, but it took many months to raise the money and plan the logistics. It is unfortunate, said Hakuk, that because the campaign began recently, it is identified with the conflict.
The campaign asks Israeli Jews to open the biblical book and discover what it contains, he said: Some chapters speak of the beauty of nature, others express our emotions in a special way, while others are a guide to life.
Hakuk said there are all sorts of callers, including some members of the haredi community who call to find out what the campaign is about. Some callers are doctors who would like to have copies on hand to give to patients or their families. Others call with personal problems.
“Some people pour out their hearts to us,” Hakuk said.
Friedman, an expert on the religious world, says one of the basic principles of sociology and anthropology is that people turn to a higher power when faced with a situation over which they have no rational control. It is a principle, he says, propounded by the pioneer anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, who noted that the fishermen in the Trobriand Islands in the Pacific consulted their shamans before fishing in the open seas, but did not do so before fishing in the relatively safe waters of the lagoon.
For Israelis, the present situation is something like the Trobriand islanders fishing in the open sea, Friedman suggests: It is almost impossible to act against someone who is willing to die for a cause.
“At least part of the Israeli public feels that rational solutions don’t work. They have nothing else to depend on,” Friedman says.