Thursday, July 14, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.
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Jerusalem, July 14 - A stalwart supporter of this city's Premier League team, known for the jingoistic, often-racist, and sometimes-violent passion of its core demographic, plans to return from this evening's match too late to catch evening services at his synagogue, forcing him to look for nine other men who can take time away from their customary after-hours vandalism to form the necessary quorum for communal devotionals.
Shimon Abutbul, 30, told reporters on his way to the Beitar Jerusalem game against B'nei Sakhnin that he hopes to catch Ma'ariv, the evening liturgy, after the match, while acknowledging that doing so will require assembling a minyan, the ten necessary men over the age of thirteen, while hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fans express either their jubilation at a victory over the mostly-Arab opposing team, or their frustration at losing to them, by smashing windows, beating up people wearing anything other than yellow-and-black Beitar colors, strewing trash, spray-painting nationalist slogans, and harassing passers-by.
"I'm still saying Kaddish for my mother," explained Abutbul, a produce-stall proprietor by day. "She was always supportive of the things that kept our family connected to our community and heritage, and support for Beitar has long been a staple of that culture. I've managed not to miss a single time since she died six months ago. We'll have to leave some things to God, and I don't mean just the performance of our boys down on the pitch tonight. We have to show those filthy Arabs who's boss now, on the field and off. Black and yellow!"
Jerusalem-Sakhnin games often devolve into fights between opposing groups of fans, who bring the resentments and animosity of the Arab-Israeli conflict to each match between the two clubs. Conservative sensibilities among Beitar's Jewish supporters assign symbolic political importance to the rivalry and feel the need to reassert, by proxy, Jewish sovereignty after centuries of life as an underclass under Islamic rule; Sakhnin fans bring to the confrontation both the shame of Arabs having lost their dominant position despite outnumbering and outgunning the Jews of 1948 and 1967, and the cumulative grievances of discrimination against their minority since the founding of the modern state of Israel. More than once, law enforcement has ordered games between the two squads to take place with no fans in attendance, both as a penalty for the disorder and as a preventive measure.
Abutbul boasted that he once succeeded in assembling a minyan after a Grateful Dead tribute concert, but conceded that not all the participants were necessarily in a mental state to realize they formed part of the quorum
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