JERUSALEM — Long-building tensions over pandemic restrictions within Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods erupted in violence Sunday night as rock-throwing crowds pushed back police attempts to clear yeshiva classes and religious gatherings being held in violation of lockdown rules.

Rioters burned trash and toppled street signs and light poles in several cities across Israel. In Bnei Brak, a bus driver was pulled from his seat and pepper sprayed before the vehicle was torched, according to news and social media reports, leading to several buildings being evacuated as the blaze damaged electric lines. At one point, a cornered police officer fired into the air to halt the advancing crowd.

The riots were eventually quelled in some neighborhoods by police wielding stun grenades and water cannons.

The unrest has been growing in recent weeks as police have stepped up enforcement within insular ultra-Orthodox communities, which traditionally resist government authority. On Friday, protesters attacked a police vehicle patrolling Bnei Brak.

That some may find this form of Christian witness troubling makes sense, considering that many preachers in America specialize in positive affirmations and promises of personal and national prosperity. It can be easier to find comfort in the conciliatory tones and feel-good phrases that can be found in their churches on Sunday mornings. Some see those who appease and affirm the cultural markers of power as more hopeful than clergy who channel the seeming doom and gloom of the jeremiad. But in the prophetic tradition, hope comes from our ability to confront the worst of ourselves as a nation, progressing toward our better selves, not from sentimentality or naive optimism.

When Warnock inveighs against politicians who “pick the pockets of the poor” to “line the pockets of the ultrarich,” that doesn’t make him anti-capitalist. He’s making the charge that certain policies and policymakers willfully ignore the concerns of the most defenseless among us and insisting that our nation can do better. Saying “nobody can serve God and the military” at the same time isn’t a shot at the faith of our troops. It’s a reminder to the faithful of the teaching in Zechariah 4:6 that true victory, according to God, comes “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit” — that ultimate hope is grounded in love and justice, not weapons of warfare.

These appeals to love and justice have animated progressive Christians to fight to protect rights and expand opportunities for the socially marginalized. This has been true during every epoch of this nation: Abolishing slavery, women securing the vote, defending labor rights and dismantling segregation are just a few examples. In this tradition, clergy must call out the folly of power, industrial efficiency or wealth predicated on the unjust treatment of any segment of society. Whether the ill is human trafficking or the warehousing of the vulnerable by lucrative privatized prisons, “dishonest money dwindles away” (Proverbs 13:11).

For 10,000 years, the Swinomish tribe has fished the waters of northwestern Washington, relying on the bounty of salmon and shellfish not only as a staple of its diet but as a centerpiece of its culture. At the beginning of the fishing season, the tribe gathers on the beach for a First Salmon ceremony, a feast honoring the return of the migratory fish that binds the generations of a tribe that calls itself the People of the Salmon.

At the ceremony’s conclusion, single salmon are ferried by boat in four directions — north to Padilla Bay, east to the Skagit River, south to Skagit Bay and west to Deception Pass — and eased into the water with a prayer that they will tell other salmon how well they were treated.
In recent years, though, the tribe’s harvest, diminished by vanishing habitat and warming waters fueled by climate change, hasn’t been sufficient to feed the hundreds of people who come to pay homage to their ancestors and to the fish that sustained them.

“We don't have that abundance anymore,” said Lorraine Loomis, an elder who has managed the tribal fishery for 40 years. “To get ceremonial fish, we buy it and freeze it.”