I would like to address something that had been keeping me up in the last few nights, which really shook me to my core.
I am generally someone who keeps away from politics, especially in the frum world where we are really playing with fire. In that path, I made sure to keep away from the ongoing back and forth about voting in the WZO. I asked my Rav what to do and will following his psak. I avoid coffee clutches or groups in which they are talking about the controversy, as not to involve myself in Lashon Hora or even worse, Bizui Talmidei Chachamim.
With that in mind, last night in shul, I couldn’t help but bump into a group of people talking about the merits of yes or not voting. Someone pulled out a video of Rav Chaim Kanievsky, where he allowed voting in the WZO. Being curious, especially because I heard people denying that Rav Chaim has allowed voting, I went over to watch. Unfortunately, what I saw really shocked me, and put a lot of uncertainty in my trust of frum people.
Since the video was in Hebrew, there were included subtitles in English, which I will quote.
Grandson: A year ago, they were here, You (Saba) said that they should go in to the WZO, Chareidim like us. To be able to minimize the reform’s power as much as possible. The question now is regarding the UK, should Chareidim like him go in, to be able to minimize the Reform? What does Saba say? Should they go in?
Rav Chaim Kanievsky: “Yes”
Grandson: “Yes.
They then go on to ask for a Bracha, as well as permission to say it over to Rav Avraham Gurwitz in Rav Chaims name, which Rav Chaim allows.
However, as someone who had lived in Eretz Yisroel for over 10 years, (even though I now live in the US), my command of Hebrew is pretty good. What I heard Rav Chaim answer was “לאן” which translates as “to where”?
If I heard correctly, then the exchange was very different then portrayed, and would go like this:
Grandson: “A year ago, they were here, You (Saba) said that they should go in to the WZO, Chareidim like us. To be able to minimize the reform’s power as much as possible. The question now is regarding the UK, should Chareidim like him go in, to be able to minimize the Reform? What does Saba say? Should they go in?”
Rav Chaim: “To Where?”
Grandson: “Yes”
Unclear if that’s what I heard, I asked them to play it again, and still heard the same thing. I then asked the others standing around, which included people who had voted for the WZO, if they heard what I heard, and they agreed.
Please don’t rely on me, but please watch the video for yourself.
Now I don’t want to draw conclusions about Rav Chaim’s positions, but what really bothers me is this question: are we being taken for a ride on other things Rav Chaim had supposedly said?!
Are people doing this for other gedolim too?!
Signed,
Shalom Katz
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30 Responses
The mail bag is basically the ywn form of trolling
The grandson repeated what he thought he heard from Saba to Saba and If Rav Chaim wasn’t with his his full capacity then, then no one would have consulted with him. The Tzaadik Horav clearly understood the question and the repeated answer questioned herein and did not protest any misunderstanding. Besides that, Rav Chaim very clearly stayed at the last election YES to vote as presented here by Yitzchok Pindrus. His position is clear and undebatable.
Shalom Katz needs to learn Yiddish.
Reb Chaim’s response was not La’an but “Yah” – yiddish for yes and at 1:01 in response to whether Rav Gurowitz can say over in Reb Chaims name, Reb Chaim said the same response – Yah
The posted video is from vimeo
Here its on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppQnuJHep6Y
Rav Chaim clearly said Yah (yes), not La’an
It actuall very much sounds like “l’an”. There’s clearly a shva and a patach instead of a segol
I’m sorry, this debate has gotten out of hand and overblown. Folks on BOTH SIDES, just move on. This is getting tiresome and drab. Stop overblowing things on either side.
My issue was not with the answer but with the way it was presented, what they told R’ Chaim ztzal was they if they join they can get remove the reform, anyone would say yes to that. But that is a gross misrepresentation in what the goal is.
Are you suggesting that the conversation went as follows: The grandson asked whether it was permitted to “go in,” R’ Chaim responded, “To where?” No one answered, and then R’ Chaim said they could quote his response, “To where,” in his name?
That doesn’t make sense given the context of the conversation and the people who were present. He would have either said yes or no, not “To where.”
Wackyway is correct, and R. Chaim’s slight nod and vocal inflection (falling pitch) when saying this word proves it beyond doubt. Aside from this, the very suggestion that R. Chaim would have asked “to where” after being told very clearly to where by his grandson, and moreover acquiescing to his grandson’s positive response if he did not understand the question altogether, is an unwarranted chutzpah.
The problem isn’t that “he said le’an”, he said Ken and he said it again to the next question – which wouldn’t have made sense if he still hadn’t understood the first question.
The real issue in this video is that they feed R Chaim questions instead of just asking the gadol ha dor his opinion on different subjects they want to know das Torah about… ask what the gadol gadol thinks about X and hear what has to actually say….
(Sigh) really when I thought I had heard everything…YWN, can you make it a requirement to post that you should be over five years old?
First of all, right in the beginning, he says Zionist Organization (America) and then again, a little later, just “Zionist Organization”, not “The World Zionist Organization”. The former are of little meaning (YU fits that criteria, too, for example) while the latter is very specific and has always been forbidden. So, even according to this video, nobody, including Rav Chaim, ever permitted joining the WZO.
This is anyways so silly, though, that they think this is some proof that Rav Chaim said to vote. There is no written teshuva, no context of what was or was not told to Rav Chaim to attempt to justify this abomination and, again, they never asked him about the WZO specifically.
The video obviously does not at all support overturning the universal mesorah of Klal Yisrael against joining the WZO and the severe prohibitions involved in joining the WZO. It is almost beyond belief that anyone would give any practical credence to this (clearly edited) video, if they know even just the concept of a “shu”t sefer and even the very basics of horaah.
This is ridiculous. He is clearly saying Yah (even nodding his head).
The Rav never wasted a moment even a word, he said his generic Roshei Teivos for “Brachc Vehatzlacha” i.e., ב״ה. It is the same response he gave to the rest of them, when he says yes he simply shakes his head so..
I don’t know why people get so worked up by Rabbanim having different opinions, it’s ok if one Rav says one shitta and another even if he’s greater says another. I find it strange that people feel the need to say that everyone says like them, it sounds pathetic.
The Tzadik said his generic roshei teivos for “Bracha vehatzlacha” ב״ה.
I still can’t understand why not voting in the WZO elections when we can get a billion dollars so easy and destroy the reform. The party that gets the most votes gets the most money. We get money for yeshivas from the government and there we could be drafted but here it’s just an organization that distributes its money. In these hard financial times we can use that money and it is not connected to any draft
The body language is very significant.
The Rav clearly NODDED in the affirmative the last time he responds, “Yah.”
To put this into perspective…
“L’an?” is a question, and the body language would have shown him quizzically waiting for an answer.
That being said, l agree with the letter writer that often, people ask questions to influential people in a dishonest attempt to control the narrative. They really don’t have a question. If they come to a Rav with an answer. They then present their statement in question form, so that it looks like they are being respectful. But the truth is they’re trying to put words into the Rabbis mouth.
Lawyers do this in court all the time. One very famous question, posed to make a man look guilty, is
“Mr Jones, when did you stop feeding your wife?”. The point is, it’s not a question. It’s a statement, formed as a question, in order to sway a jury.
Gedolei Torah who find themselves at the center of Jewish world politics, are very aware that people try to use them. They find it fascinating that the Yetzer Hara dresses up in G-d fearing clothing to try to control the narrative. If and when they are not successful, they go so far as to defame the rav who they just spoke to.
Think about this: you have a man who has spent his entire life trying to save minutes and seconds so that he can learn more Torah. People come in, take his time away from learning, supposedly for the good of klal yisrael. And even after he answers, there are people who are going to twist his words.
There was a video clip of people asking Rav Shteinman, ZT”l a question about accepting young students into a cheder. There was a remarriage at the time, and the man in question wanted to enroll his new wife’s children in the same cheder that his sons attended. The administration of the cheder went to Rav Shteinman. But the truth is they didn’t want his opinion. They just wanted him to justify their refusal to accept the boys
They try every which way to get him to say not to accept the children. They claim that the children are going to be a bad influence on the rest of the school, because their mother is from a different community then most of the students. Rav Shteinman is not fooled by their false piety. He calls them out and says that they are ba’alei gaava.
*correction*
The misleading question above was supposed to say…
“Mr Jones, when did you stop BEATING your wife?”
PROOF READing is harder to do on a phone!
I didn’t see the video until now. Rav Chaim ztz”l’s opinion is clear.
I don’t believe for one second that the writer of this letter is someone who generally keeps away from politics. Nobody else would be parsing this video like that.
If there is a question about his holy voice, then one can clearly see from his facial expressions as well as head movements throughout that he is an agreement (yes). They even asked him to use his name and he does the same headshake. The head shake for no is very different and the answer of Lo, does not sound like ken or Lean.
According to the logic of this letter writer, we have no Torah, because anything a gadol said might have been misheard or mistranslated, anything a gadol wrote might have been transcribed wrong or forged, anything a gadol did might have been misinterpreted or made up. Having ten witnesses is what the gadol said isn’t good enough because they all could be mistaken. We might as well close all the yeshivos, because how do we know that anything is accurate?
“I went over to watch. Unfortunately, what I saw really shocked me, and put a lot of uncertainty in my trust of frum people.”
You’re saying R’ Yanky Kanievsky distorted what Rav Chaim zt”l said? And now you don’t trust frum people? Sounds like paranoia.
Doesn’t make sense that he said “Yah”.
First of all, that’s not the way its pronounced in yiddish, that’s German… Yiddish would be “yuh”.
Second, Why would he respond in Yiddish? The whole conversation is in Ivrit!
What did he say? It does sound like “l’an?”, but definitely not “Yah”
Rest easy! though maybe a hearing test is warranted
You heard wrong
and he clearly nodded
And the three people in the room decided to just go with it? Thye idnt have subtitles, thye preplanned that if he has follow up questions like “to where “we will ignore it and just pretend he said yes?
Although, later on R’ Chaim uses that same sound seemingly to indicate a “yes” answer…
לה׳ הישועה…
To All,
I Don’t have an opinion one way or another re’ WZO. However to pasken or put down other Yiden ,based on what someone thinks he heard Reb Chaim said, is really pushing the envelope a bit.
I decided to get an unbiased opinion of what was said by feeding the video into the OpenAI Whisper model.
Here is the text returned…
היו אצל הרב לפני שנה וחצי בקשר להסתדרות הציונית באמריקה לנסות לדחוף את הרפורמים החוצה להכניס אנשים חרדים לגבי אונגליה, האם גם כן להכניס אנשים חרדים תדי להוציא את הרפורמים החוצה גם שמה בהסתדרות הציונית? סבא אמר שהכנסו להסתדרות הציונית יהודים חרדים שלנו כדי שאת הרפורמים לצמצם את ההשפעה שלהם כמה שפחות עכשיו השאלה האם גם באנגליה שיכנסו יהודים ירשומיים כמו הוא להוציא כמה שיותר את הרפורמים? מה סבא אומר? שייכנס לזה? כן כן? אז זהו, הוא רוצה שיהיה לו ברוכה הוא שואל את זה ערב גורוויץ ואנגליה הוא רוצה להגיד לרב אברום גורוויץ בשם סבא אז הוא יכול להגיד לו את זה בשם סבא? הוא רוצה שיזכו לקדש שם שמים ברוכה
It would seem open AI heard כן כן.
***People hear what they want to hear!****
AI doesn’t have any skin in this game….
Follow whatever your Rav tells you to do and you won’t go wrong!
Heimisha guy:
Because it always was and remains forbidden to join the WZO, no matter how much money they claim they will get and how much they fantasize that they will destroy reform.
We have a Torah which has rules about what we can and cannot do. The rest is up to G-d to take care of. He can take care of the reform (and the WZO, for that matter) when He chooses to do so.
anordinaryjew:
היו אצל הרב לפני שנה וחצי בקשר להסתדרות הציונית באמריקה לנסות לדחוף…
As mentioned above, he stated Zionist Organization of America. There are many organizations that fit that description, but the WZO is not one of those. The rest of the video is thus irrelevant even if he did say yes. It’s also irrelevant because even if he really did say yes, nobody know to what it is he did or did not say yes. There’s no written teshuva, etc. supporting voting, only a universal mesorah against joining the WZO for over a century prior.
“There are many organizations that fit that description, but the WZO is not one of those.”
I’ll take the bait. Whats the difference? Why is WZO worse than any other one?