It appears that an article submitted by a journalist was corrected in content, but the Belz Chassidus affiliated BaKehilla newspaper neglected to check the banner headline story, resulting in a storm. The newspaper quoted Maran Rav Yosef Sholom Elyashiv Shlita permitting the publication of “inaccurate” stories towards eliciting a greater response from the tzibur.
The response was reportedly one of outrage among the gadol hador and his gabba’im, prompting the paper’s publisher, Shmuel Meir Hirschson, to order the copies taken out of stores and a second edition, a corrected version, was printed and distributed.
Hirschson apologized, explaining the error was caused by a misunderstanding on the part of the journalist, who did not understand the gadol hador’s words, as if Rav Elyashiv permits publishing stories that are not accurate or true.
When the final version of the weekly newspaper was being prepared for print, the wrong version was taken, and it was not detected.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)
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5 Responses
I am a Belzer chosid, but not me or anybody I know in Belz aren”t “in the know” that Bakehila is affiliated with Belz.
Yechiel Spira strangely seems to be obssesed with this, for every time he qoutes the Bakihella, he writes “Belz Chassidus affiliated BaKehilla” as if its the official name of the newspaper.
I think he is probably getting mixed up with the Machane Charedi paper, which is affiliated with Belz. Yechiel Spira should take note for future items
“…as if . . . permits publishing stories that are not accurate or true.”
Who are we kidding? The Yiddishe velte has “…an image to maintain…” That from a Rosh HaYeshiva from a flagship institution, as quoted in the Jewish press (small p) sources a number of years ago on the banning of The Making of a Gadol.
And this is not a critism – I was at a presentation at a shul last year where the point was made quite cogently that the teaching of “empirical history” is a relatively modern phenomenon, and that in all traditional cultures history popular was transmitted from elder to younger with image very much in mind. The “right wing”
Some examples today:
1. Current tznius standards are all well and good – but how do we deal with photos of the wives of the Gadolim of the last gerneration that clearly show that tznius then was not as chumradik as it is now – that out standards are either “better” oy “oy vay over the top,” depending on one’s prediliction. At the presentation we were given a first hand account of an author of a popular tznius guide advising Mesorah Publications to airbrush photos to make them conform to current standards;
2. Photos of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe as a young man in Berlin show him wearing a yarmulka, when originals show no yarmulka at all – when Rav Soloveitchik was asked if one would have worn a yarmulka publicly in Berlin. his answer as reported to us was “…it would have been unthinkable…;”
3. A Haskoma from Rav Kook from the 30s, a hoskoma that appeared as the first of several, that was simply deleted in a photo offset republication of the sewfer in the 90s – Beca=use it was photo offset, you can see the blank space;
4. A perish of the Rambam in which he says that Torah accounts of malachim, including the account from the bris shel Avraham thru to the destruction of Sodom, are dreams and not to be taken literally – simply removed from current editions without so much as a footnote;
5. Anyone who regular regularly reads the two popular newspapers of Torah Jewery knows full well that that praise of, or stories in support of, certain haskofas or Rebbeim will simply never appear in this paper or that.
There may be very important reasons to justify all of this – but let’s not pretend it doesn’t exist.
yup. He makes up tons of stuff. He’s got an agenda of sorts.
YonasanW, what is truly unthinkable is that the LR would have gone four amos with an uncovered head. Sitting for a passport photo is obviously different, but if RYBS thought he went like that in the street he was very badly mistaken.