Rav Yaakov Medan Shlita, a Rosh Yeshiva in Yeshivat Har Etzion speaks out following Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein addressing the ‘exclusion of women’, attacking the chareidi way of life and declaring gender separation illegal.
Rav Medan explains that the decision to declare these areas of life illegal is no accident, but “malice”. In his column in the weekly Makor Rishon the rav states “I posit the attorney general would not take the same measures against Muslims or Druse which are also careful to maintain a standard of modesty between men and women. I believe it is being done against the chareidim davka at this time, because he now feels the blood of the chareidi tzibur is hefker as a result of statements from Finance Minister Yair Lapid and his assistant, Mickey Levi.”
“The attorney general at present permits himself to set guidelines for people brushing against one another in a line, on a bus or elsewhere, and this is no mistake – it is malice. Chareidim already view themselves persecuted for their beliefs vis-à-vis the government, and they are already entrenched in their homes, and we are now in danger of losing the achievements, the integration seen to date in the IDF and society at large.”
Rav Medan adds “We are the ones who should be shouting, not the chareidim for after they are taken out of the picture we will be next in line.”
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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7 Responses
Finally a sane voice. We need a united voice against the Lapid/Piron/Lipman hate machine.
I am so proud that Rav Medan shlita is my son’s Rosh Yeshiva. He is an example of a talmid chachum and a leader. He cares for Am Yisroel as a klal. He forgives insults directed at him from both the left and the right, and always focuses on the EMES.
The Medan family have always worn the crown of TORAH, Yiras Shamayim and SHEM TOV.
The central social and political problem in Israel today is the refusal of the unJews to abandon their psychotic fantasy of turning Israel into a communist utopia. This has not changed since the pre-State days of the Jewish Agency. In their utopia, they, the Ubermenchen, will rule and be served by a docile and obedient proletariat who will operate their factories, farm their land and serve in their army. It has always been the Torah community that has prevented their tyrannical plans from fruition. Any time they felt strong enough to attack the Torah community they have. The moment Rabin could rule without the white Kippot, he threw them out of the Government. Now that the Betrayer of Hevron can rule without the black Kippot, they are out. The unJews have no loyalty to the Jewish people at any level whatsoever. Their loyalty is either to themselves or to some enemy of the the Jewish people. Having realized that they have lost both the demographic and ideological battle for Israel, they are now engaged in a full press to loot as much of the country as possible and then open it up for destruction. We will see more and more malicious and irrational decrees by them. Each one more obnoxious than the previous. This will continue until the public will no longer be able to hide from the fact that the greatest danger to the Jewish people today is the Government of Israel.
1. The Dati Leumi camp will be increasingly getting uncomfortable with the direction the Lapid/Bennett coalition is going. The coalition is now talking about mass arrests of yeshiva students and seizing funds raised abroad by non-zionist yeshivos, and this is not going to go well with Bennett’s primary constituents. Cutting off money from a group of yeshivos they disagree with is one thing, but now that the plan involves throwing people in prison one should expect even the most “modern” kipah srugah to object. More will realize that an attack on hareidim is also an attack on all Shomer Mitsvos.
2. At some point, Bayit Yehudi can pull the brake, since there is always the option of “trading” the Hareidi parties for Lapid in the Netanyahu coalition. Netanyahu is also going to get increasingly uncomfortable with the way things are going.
3. Already both Shas and the Ashkenazi hareidi parties are putting out feelers to the “peace camp”, and this is starting to show up in the secular press as well. The Israeli left could suddently realize they don’t approve of consciption, and that the hareidim agree with the socialists on economics (as opposed to Bayit Yehudi which favors fiscal responsibility, meaning cutting welfare state benefits). It is in the interests of both Likud and Bayit Yehudi to prevent an alliance of Hareidim and Labor, meaning they need to stop pushing the Hareidim into the arms of Labor.
#4 The Dati Leumi as the Charedi communities are not homogenous. There are loud voices in various directions, the Dati Leumi lets those voices speak while the Charedi quiet the dissenting voices.
PEACE CAMP & Socialist agenda will destroy the kehillos of Beitar, Ramat Shlomo, Pisgat Zev and Emanuel and the socialist agenda will destroy the economy. Arabs aint the Arabs of the early 20th century, they died just like the socialists of the early Medinah died…
#6– There are many voices in both communities. The Eidah Hareidis has always said the state is a mistake, whereas the rest of the Hareidim since De Haan’s assassination have made their peace with the zionists – a peace the zionists have broken. The dissenting voices, calling for an end to zionism and rejecting ties with zionists, have always been there but now they are increasingly appearing to have been vindicated.
There are also dissenting voices in the Dati Leumi community and they are beginning to be heard, since not all Dati Leumi types are anti-Torah and contemptous of mitzvos (though the elected leaders are).
Most of the hareidim living in the West Bank are on border settlements rather than ones separated from the Green Line (the 1949 armistice line) by areas with Arab populations. In any event, if hareidim are being actively persecuted what value is living in the West Bank. The Labor party has advocated keeping much of the West Bank, so it won’t be hard for the Hareidim to ally with them. THe more radical religious zionists will be discovering that by supporting Bennett’s decision to stab the Hareidim in the back, they will lose their outpost and dreams of keeping the whole of the West Bank. Given their agreement on economics, if the Israeli left can support an end to conscription, and allowing autonomy for the hareidim minority, there will be lots of room for productive collaboration – much to the chagrin of the religious zionists who thought to gain by attaching the hareidim.