A SINGLE photograph on the front page of the Hebrew newspaper Ma'ariv yesterday sent Israel into a fit of mini hysteria. It showed a boy in Jerusalem, dressed in the black hat and long coat of the ultraOrthodox Jewish community, tossing the blue and white Israeli flag onto a flaming bonfire.
Initially, ultraOrthodox spokesmen argued that the picture was a setup, that the secular photographer had provided the youth with the flag and encouraged him to throw it onto the bonfire, which had been lit in a traditional celebration of a minor festival, Lag Ba'Omer.
But then callers to radio phone ins reported seeing flag burnings elsewhere in the country too, including in Bnei Brak, an ultra Orthodox neighbourhood on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
Throughout the day, radio and TV news programmes debated the significance of this snapshot of apparent ultra Orthodox revulsion for the secular state. Ultra Orthodox callers and their sympathisers argued that only a tiny minority of the most zealous Jews feel such hatred for the country as to burn its symbol, and explained that, for this minority, the secular rebuilding of Israel before the prophesied arrival of the Messiah was a crime against the faith.
Most Israelis, though, expressed horror and despair at the rift between some sectors of Israel's ultra Orthodox community and the rest of the population. "They want to burn us as well," said a Tel Aviv man on a radio phone in last night. "They don't serve in the army. They don't pay taxes. They will be the end of us."
The flag burning was the most potent recent demonstration of antipathy for the state, but it was not the first. A few weeks ago, ultra Orthodox Jews were seen on TV cheering and clapping as a siren wailed nationwide in memory of fallen Israeli soldiers. During the two minute siren, ultra Orthodox demonstrators at a controversial Jerusalem road junction even shouted abuse at policemen who were standing silently to attention.
Incidents such as these have deepened a longstanding religious secular divide here, a split over the very nature of the Jewish state. Many observant Jews, including members of the Knesset, would like to see the country run more along the lines of the halacha - Jewish religious law. Secular Israelis accuse religious Jews of trying to turn the country into a theocracy. In recent months, secular commentators have suggested establishing two Jewish states - centred around "religious Jerusalem" and "secular Tel Aviv".