It was a stormy session at the Degel Hatorah Convention in Kibbutz Chafetz Chaim on Wednesday, 27 Adar-II. Data was presented to participants documenting a historical injustice pertaining to the division of Yahadut Hatorah as Degel, the litvish stream, now maintains it is larger than Agudas yisrael, the chassidish stream despite the fact the latter has always maintained it is larger and it therefore deserves a larger portion of the pie. What is clear is that after the convention, there will be more machlokes between the Degel Hatorah and Agudas Yisrael factions of Yahadut Hatorah and it will remain to be determined if that machlokes gets bad enough to cause the parties to split as they were in the past. There were also personal assaults leveled by speakers at the assembly at Agudas Yisrael members, which YWN-ISRAEL will not be reporting.
Much attention was paid to litvish verses the chassidish at this forum rather than discussing the troubling issues facing chareidi Jewry in Eretz Yisrael.
Degel announced it is going to hold a census to determine just how many litvish voters it has. The head of the party’s municipality unit, Menachem Shapira, showed participants a number of slides in which he explained shows Degel is clearly larger than Agudas Yisrael. The graphs showed the voting breakdown for chareidim in Jerusalem, Modi’in Illit and Bnei Brak. He showed in those cities, among Yahadut Hatorah voters, there are more Degel voters than Agudah. Degel is calling on Agudah to take part in the census, announcing if the chassidim are unwilling to cooperate, Degel will go it alone.
It was added that in the last Knesset elections, there were 32,434 litvish voters in Jerusalem as compared to 19,231 chassidim and in the database of potential voters there are 34,189 litvish voters and 24,816 chassidish voters listed.
Bnei Brak
28,354 litvish votes
18,624 chassidish votes
Database of potential voters shows 32,819 litvish and 23,630 chassidish.
Modi’in Illit
12,336 litvish votes
2,798 chassidish votes
Database of potential voters shows 13,108 litvish and 3,241 chassidish.
Clearly slides of Betar Illit and many other areas that are strong chassidish strongholds were not presented by Shapira.
It is explained the data is presented this way because the Yerushalmi faction of the litvish, Bnei Torah, ran in those communities in the elections and those potential voters come from the Degel (litvish) tzibur.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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3 Responses
Instead of focusing on the minor differences between the two factions like children, why can’t the leadership put their egos aside and focus on their similarities. Unfortunately, A black hat and a smicha certificate don’t give someone da’as Torah or derech eretz.
It is 100% mathematically certain that under Israel’s new election laws that if Degel breaks off of UTJ/Yahudas HaTorah, then they will lose all representation in the Kenesset and end up with zero.
It is a big chutzpah for YWN to have such a negative and one sided report about this event. Clearly the writer is sympathetic to the chassidim and couldn’t help it coming out in his report. Shabby journalism.
Degel has Gedolei Yisroel leading them and while I would not say that they are aware of every word spoken at the events, never the less I am sure the general tone was approved by them.
I for one think it is a good thing to remind everyone of why Degel was founded in the first place and to shake up the Chassidim a bit so that the Litvishe get their fair share. Any personal attacks made by the speakers were, I’m sure paid back with keifel by the other side, groy’se tzadikim.