You can drive to our shul by going east on Oliphant street. About a block before the shul, the sidewalk ends, and then, a few meters before the shul, the street ends. The street is continued by a courtyard paved with bricks, kind of like a pedestrian walkway. On one side is the shul, and on the other side is an apartment building.
Most residents of the apartment building, like most residents of Tel Aviv, are not particularly frum. The building is usually quiet, but one Friday night, one of the apartments was hosting a loud party. As I walked past the building on the way to shul, I could hear
Beat It blasting from the windows.
A month or so later, Michael Jackson passed away. I saw a few posters on Shenkin mourning his passing. (The posters were styled to look like the death notices of prominent rabbis and other Haredim, which one sees posted every so often.) I was a bit curious as to what he died of. I looked at Wikipedia, which, curiously, did not say. So I did a little bit of googling. I never found the answer to my question, but I did come across an article featuring some lite lit crit of Michael Jackson's songs. This article referred to "Beat It" as a pacifist song. This, IMAO, totally misses the point of the song. I think the song is pretty clear. "You better run, you better do what you can," Jackson sings.
Why?
Because "they'll kick you and they'll beat you and they'll tell you it's fair." Not because violence is bad, but because you don't have a chance. It's kind of like "he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day". It's like those Gemaras in Gittin which everyone reads on Tisha B'Av: this is why Jerusalem was destroyed, this is why Betar was destroyed, this is why [City I don't remember] was destroyed. The Jerusalem story is kind of complicated, so many people are distracted from the point of the three stories taken together: we stood up for our pride, ignoring the threat of Roman retaliation; the Romans retaliated; and we got our butts kicked. If we'd only bitten our lips and submitted to the far superior power of the Roman Empire, the Holy Temple would still be here. Don't throw rocks at someone holding a gun.
So who was supposed to beat it, that Friday night in Tel Aviv? The Haredim? I don't think so. You don't sing "Beat It" to your enemies. You sing "Beat It" to your friends. Sometimes, you sing "Beat It" to yourself. Times are changing. It's not the Haredim who need to beat it anymore, not even in Tel Aviv.
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