On Pogroms and When to Criticize (Column 292)

Once a young man came to a rabbi with a verse saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, understands him when he commits transgressions:
"He who fashions their hearts together, who understands all their deeds" [Psalms 33:15].
The rabbi answered him: He understands you—but it doesn't say here that He agrees with you.
And that is enough for the wise.

Very nice.
It reminds me (just by association) of a story in which a man comes to a rebbe and tells him that a disaster has happened to him: his son converted to Christianity. The rebbe answered him: You won't believe it, but it happened to me too. The two of them prayed to the Holy One, blessed be He, to help, and He immediately answered them: You probably won't believe it, but …

I get the impression that your criticism (which, as I understand it, contains more than a grain of truth but is extremely exaggerated) comes from a deep familiarity with Haredi society and its weak points.

By contrast, the talk now spreading in the public sphere points to a different phenomenon. A large proportion of the speakers are not longing for sounder decision-making processes or for more responsible public leadership; they are longing for the death of the black, filthy bloodsuckers. It is clear to any observer that there is an ugly outburst here of hatred, contempt, and gloating. It's hard to find substantive arguments there, and easy to find death wishes and disgusting generalizations.

So yes, one can understand them: they grow up on a story according to which the Haredim are simply leeches sucking their blood (I also have the impression that you yourself definitely believe that this story correctly reflects reality), and now it is bursting out, as usually happens at times like these.
One can also understand the Germans, of course. But in the face of evil of this kind one must not remain silent. The duty of protest here is first and foremost against the evil people, not against those whose decision-making methods or infantilism you have complaints about.

And no, there is no symmetry here. Among the Haredim there is indeed contempt and condescension toward the secular, but not pure hatred and death wishes. These are things that are both more dangerous and more wicked than all the flaws you found in the Haredi worldview.

In my opinion, hurling criticism at one side while the opposing side is putting on a revolting display of pure hatred and racism (which may be understandable but not justifiable, etc.) is a serious distortion. At the very least, it would have been appropriate in the same breath to condemn statements that justify murder and violence and will no doubt also cause them.

I'm sorry, but I really don't agree. This is once again evading the required soul-searching and placing the responsibility and blame on the other side (the sitra achra). The claims being voiced are for the most part justified, and if there are people who because of this want to murder (I doubt it), those are phenomena of isolated individuals. There are no shortage of furious talkbacks online in every direction. I am speaking about the conduct and ideology of a society and its leadership, not about weeds. And so long as there are good reasons for those weeds to grow, it is wrong to focus on the weeds rather than the reasons.

There is not the slightest trace of shirking responsibility in what I said.
(Aside from the fact that I noted parenthetically that your criticism is exaggerated.)

In my opinion, you are the one evading the criticism directed at you here, and not only by me.
And its essence is that, from the style in which you formulate yourself, it appears to an outside observer that you are participating in the discourse of hatred.

And lo and behold, in your arsenal of excuses one can find the usual Haredi excuses: I doubt there is such a phenomenon, and if there is, then these are just weeds.

Phil, why do you live with the feeling that every secular person looks at the Haredim and sees before his eyes “blood-sucking leeches”?
I don't remember that in my childhood the Haredim interested anyone. The point is that the Haredim were exposed to the public, and this is the reality the public sees before its eyes. On the contrary, if there is some “beautiful” side to the Haredim, let them put it on display…

Pogroms were usually carried out by an oppressive and failing regime that needed to divert the anger of a disgruntled people toward the stranger, who would attract the feelings of rage so that they would not begin criticizing the regime. And as Sartre already said: anti-Semitism is not the Jews' problem.

With blessings, Jean-Paul L'Vange

As people also remarked to the rabbi, the previous column was extreme and exaggerated, and in addition there were also several instances of lack of integrity/fairness toward the Haredi public.

Here is a quote from the rabbi:

"The riots of the intellectuals in Mea Shearim and the Jerusalem Faction, who are throwing stones and keeping the army and police busy these days with an intifada of their own."

Someone who reads this quote and doesn't have a TV at home could think that tens of thousands of Haredim took to the streets and pelted the police and army with stones. Actual “October 2000” events or the tunnel-opening riots—throwing giant rocks with the aim of murdering the security forces.

In reality, it was no more than a few isolated groups that demonstratively came out against the security forces, and even among them perhaps only a few threw stones at the security forces (like yesterday in Mea Shearim, when some lunatic or two threw stones at an MDA bus). Can this be called an “intifada”? Obviously not.
But Rabbi Michi will surely philosophize and say that as far as he is concerned, even if two or three people do stupid things like throwing stones, that counts as an intifada.
Yes. Why not? A real rebellion!

Another thing is that the rabbi wrote regarding pogroms:

"Suddenly I begin to understand how that happened then."

Now, it is true that one can *perhaps* begin to try to understand how, in certain situations, pogroms might have arisen against the Haredi population in exile, if indeed they had behaved in such a way (problematic mutual responsibility, etc.).

But who said that 99.999% of the pogroms didn't happen simply because the gentiles had a lust for murder and automatic hatred toward Jews,
like in the severe anti-Semitic incidents that still exist in the world?

From Rabbi Michi's writing it gives the impression that the Khmelnytsky massacres, Kristallnacht, the massacres during the Black Death, were all understandable. Whereas the truth is probably the opposite.

What I wrote about Rabbi Michi may be harsh, but unlike what he wrote, they are at least true.

It happens that a person makes a 'faux pas' and some improper expression slips out of him, like the aforesaid one who 'understands why they carried out pogroms'; everyone has 'lapses' from time to time, as our Lapid once said about his former partner. It's not critical.

As a former ram at Yeshivat Yeruham, Your Honor knows the verse, "He who confesses and forsakes [them] shall obtain mercy" [Proverbs 28:13]—in Hebrew: u-modeh ve-ozev yerucham, sounding like 'Yeruham'—so one is allowed from time to time to learn something from the verse, and simply admit the mistake and move on; it's a shame to keep chewing it over and adding unnecessary justifications.

There is a joke that "if you saw a Torah scholar commit a transgression, do not speculate about him, for he has certainly repented"—which surely means that he already had time to write a reasoned responsum justifying what he did 🙂

But as is known, "that was not the poet's intention." Whatever happened, happened; and from here on, let's make a good accounting.

With blessings, Shim Shoin Genug

With God's help, the 12th of the month of spring, 5780

The expounders of hints said about the verse, "Do not rebuke a scoffer lest he hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you" [Proverbs 9:8]: do not rebuke a person by hurling at him, 'You are a scoffer, for you did such-and-such'; rather, rebuke the 'wise man'—that is, say to the one you are rebuking: 'Since you are wise, why did you do such-and-such?'

The approach that throws harsh words at the rebuked person and defines the sinner as a 'scoffer' creates in him resistance to accepting the words, and therefore is ineffective. By contrast, when one speaks to him words of appreciation for his personality, there is a chance the criticism will be accepted.

That, in a nutshell, is the 'theory of effective rebuke,' and someone as wise as you will surely know how to develop it!

With wishes for a happy holiday and Aviv Kochavi, Shatz

And of course the second principle is that before criticizing and rebuking, one must toil in trying to understand the other person's words. This is especially true when criticizing a Torah scholar outstanding in Torah, regarding whom one should act according to the advice of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin: "Be dusted by the dust of their feet"—the language suggests wrestling; argue with the scholar and do not accept his words with your eyes shut, but let the argument be "in the dust of their feet," out of recognition of his tremendous greatness, a recognition that leads to a great effort to get to the bottom of his mind and not dismiss his view with the wave of a wheat stalk.

You, like many others, focus on the (incorrect) argument as if the main problem, in reality and in Rabbi Michi's description, were that group of extremists from Neturei Karta or even the Jerusalem Faction. The main problem to which Rabbi Michi's words referred, as at least I, the little one, understood it, is the environmental backwardness—let's call a spade a spade—in which Haredi society lives and for which we will all now pay a price.
The mainstream is the story here, not—as the Haredi media keeps retreating victim-like into a small shell—a handful of people who broke the law. The problem is not those who threw stones in Mea Shearim but the indulgence toward a kollel where 50 of its members were infected and 150 of its members, according to reports, were infected but 'don't feel like approaching the authorities because they can't imagine Passover away from home.' The indulgence toward that.
The problem is that the society was built around gedolim who make decisions without any rational axis, and this time their decisions have significance not only for their own little society but globally. This model of social disconnection from the world has collapsed, and therefore a new Haredi society needs to be built—one that can live without cell phones and without internet, but on the other hand does not pay for it in human lives. If, when a danger to life overrides the whole Torah, one cannot rely on its great leaders, then in what can one? And until society starts talking about this and focuses only on fending off anti-Semites (who certainly exist and are awakening), it is not entitled to empathy. This is exactly the tearing of the strips that is required in the laws of repentance.

Although I too criticized (and still criticize to some extent) the use of pogroms as an example, I agree with the main point made in the article.
The victimhood discourse that has developed among Jewish publics here in Israel—where every tiny bit of criticism of a particular Jewish group, of Judaism in general, or of the State of Israel is called anti-Semitism—is something intolerable, and claims that because of the Holocaust gentiles may not criticize Jews, or Jews may not criticize Jews, are intolerable.

I have always been troubled by the question of how a chief rabbi in Israel in the 2000s, who merited a mass funeral upon his death (and rightly so—a great scholar, God-fearing, and a lover of Israel; I'm not saying otherwise), can make statements in the style of: listen, these gentiles are just inferior creatures meant to wash our feet (and hang a clear-cut thesis of this sort on an aggadic midrash) and not merit condemnation—not by Torah scholars of stature who are engaged with the understanding of people, nor by the government; while the religious and Jewish world carries on as usual. Whereas if a Christian leader in the United States were to express such a view about Blacks, or heaven forbid about the holy Jews, the whole world would be in uproar.

Things of this sort are part of the phenomenon of thinking that in the wake of the Holocaust Jews are allowed to say anything, do anything, and think anything; anyone who tries to criticize is a vile anti-Semitic gentile or an erev rav (which, incidentally, is a metaphysical ideology detached from reality).

People also said about the Zionists' claims that they resembled anti-Semitic claims, but there was a difference between them. The Zionists wanted to save Jews. The anti-Semites wanted to kill Jews. And that is enough for the wise.

Regarding Gurevitz's article—I would note that it does not in any way justify the Poles' hatred of the Jews; rather, it explains the abnormal reality of Eastern Europe during the war, which trapped the Jews between a rock and a hard place and forced them to choose a side—and of course the communist one (what else? Would they choose the Nazis?)

For most Poles, the Nazis and the Soviets were a case of “this one is carrion and that one is trefah”—both equally bad—and that was true for most Jews as well, except that for the Jews it was a choice between someone who wanted to murder every last one of them and someone far from righteous but not interested in exterminating them. The Poles did not understand this and identified the Jews with the communists, pure and simple.

This in no way justifies the Poles, but it gives a look at where the hatred came from—it explains, not justifies.

The holy Rabbi Berland himself brought about the persecutions in heaven in order to atone for the generation and to break all desire out of himself. Therefore there is no reason to blame the policemen and the whole system, because heaven caused them to act through the power of our holy Rabbi. And the Haredi public too, although part of it still has not merited to draw close to our Rabbi, could not help at all, because our Rabbi himself acted so that they would not be able to help, and even acted so that they would not want to, in order to break out of himself the desire for honor, and this is known.

Moshe, shalom,

What you just wrote does not contradict what I wrote.

Rabbi Michi is probably right that his main arguments are directed at Haredi society, and especially at the fact that no rabbi, however great he may be, is God. (On the issue of providence I don't agree with him, and it's a shame he pushed it into the article at all.)

It's just a pity that he had to season the main argument—as stated, about the backwardness of Haredi society—with all kinds of falsehoods (yes, it is an outright lie to call what the Haredim did an “intifada” or to hint that a gentile pogrom suddenly becomes understandable and clear).

Rabbi Michi should have written in a more substantive, truthful, and measured way, and then his column too would not have aroused so much antagonism, but rather more understanding.

Was he in a storm of emotions?

Fine, he could have exercised more control over what came out through the keyboard.

To Natan:
I don't know where you got this information from, and I would be happy if you could give me sources.

I think you are just clowning around, because you are not ashamed to call yourself by the name of Rabbi Natan, and also because you are hinting as though our Rabbi has desires (as though, as though, as though).

Therefore I warn you: "Their whisper is the whisper of a fiery serpent, and their sting is the sting of a scorpion."

Dear Rabbi Michi,

I admit that the first part of the column grated on me very much—you expand at length on the difference between understanding and justification, you even removed the most jarring word from the previous column—the word "justifiably," which also caused me shock when I read the column—and still you come with complaints about your readers' reading comprehension, calling them childish and lacking understanding. As for poor me, when I see someone write "justifiably," I think he is not merely understanding but justifying. That is the meaning of "justifiably." I specifically, after the first moments of shock, did not think that you were really justifying, but only because I know you and know that you do not mean to incite people to a pogrom in Bnei Brak. But you cannot say "justifiably," refuse at first to delete the word, explain at length the difference between understanding and justification—and then come with complaints against someone who was horrified by the word "justifiably," and rightly so.

Drawing lessons is good and important, and I do say that perhaps for you too it would be worthwhile to draw a lesson—this is not the first time that your style has cast a heavy shadow on the content and prevented it from being read in the substantive way you wanted it to be read. Sometimes it is worth listening to the critics and knowing that it is a shame, simply a shame, to use language that is too blunt—the language is a tool, and when the tool is too strong, all one sees is the tool and not what is inside it. Yes, the readers definitely bear responsibility too, to try to understand what you are writing and intending, and also—especially readers who know you—to judge the text and you favorably when possible. But really, sometimes it seems as if you are trying to make it hard for us on purpose. You too, and perhaps especially you—as a person known for his ability to use words precisely—have a very great responsibility to be careful with your words and not place the responsibility on the readers. It was not for nothing that our Sages said: "Sages, be careful with your words."

(These words are written with much love and appreciation, out of the knowledge that you are always attentive to hearing—as the deletion of the word from the original text proves—and out of my desire that your incisive words be heard.)

It was reported that the Haredi political leaders are coming out with fierce attacks against the intention to impose a lockdown on all Haredi areas throughout the country.:

https://www.jdn.co.il/health/1306630/

They quote various sources in the prime minister's circle saying that the lockdown is intended to roll responsibility onto the Haredi public. They also argue that the lockdown creates a very severe stigma that has very severe consequences with respect to Haredi employees throughout the country (for example, residents of Bnei Brak were forbidden from entering the Knesset building, and similarly in the private sector).

In your opinion, are their claims factually correct? That is, if we put aside what has happened until now, was the lockdown intended for political needs?
In your opinion, should one take into account, when implementing a lockdown, the various consequences suffered by a private person in Bnei Brak when he himself is disciplined and obeys the rules?

To Moshe: I am a student of Rabbi Natan, and it is a mitzvah to call a son by the rabbi's name; and especially in this generation, when there are those who use Moharnat disparagingly, all the more so one must clothe oneself in the brazenness of mitzvah and not be ashamed before scoffers. Sources on the internet I don't know how to give, and may God help me distance myself from it entirely, but these matters are known to every understanding person. And it is clear that outsiders have no hold on our holy Rabbi on their own, except for the sake of atoning for the generation and the complete rectification. Our Rabbi too has desires, but they are of such a subtle degree that it is impossible to understand at all (I'm not sure one can call them desires, but the root of the tendency that every simple person has also exists in our Rabbi in a very abstract form, because that is the difference between a human being and the Cause of Causes, and we were created in order to rectify and elevate all the sparks), and that subtle inclination our Rabbi rectifies in order to merit complete purification. I am very surprised at you for thinking that the great events that happened to our holy Rabbi just happened on their own through the decision of some policeman and judge. If you have simple faith in our Rabbi, you know that everything is directed for the sake of the complete rectification.

In response to: 'And good advice for the post's author,' in the last line
… Whatever happened—happened. From here on—let's make a good accounting.

So there you have it—not an aggadic midrash but the words of the prophet: …“The nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the small dust of the balance”…
They are a drop from a bucket and what remains beneath the scale-weights… so what now?

That particular verse is not relevant—there it is speaking generally about all humanity (including the people of Israel), which is as naught and nothing before God. "Whom did He consult, and who gave Him understanding, and taught Him in the path of justice, and taught Him knowledge, and showed Him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the small dust of the balance; behold, He takes up the isles as a very little thing."

And two more things on the substance of the issue:

1. In my opinion, the use of "pogrom" in this context is unjustified because it ignores the dynamic that creates a pogrom (in my humble opinion). A pogrom is not a collective punishment imposed on a wayward population. To a large extent, a pogrom is a situation in which one population uses another population as a punching bag in order to vent violent emotions that in fact have nothing to do with them. The choice of Jews as the punching bag can be reasoned through various ideologies or reasons, more or less realistic, but at the root of the matter all these reasons are nothing but an excuse. Therefore a pogrom is, by definition, unjustified. If it had justification, it would not be a pogrom. I know this may be only a semantic point, but this column is, among other things, about semantics and word choice, so it is relevant.
2. In family psychology there is a concept that I find very wise: the "identified patient." For example, there is a family in which one of the daughters develops an eating disorder, or one of the children behaves in a bullying way, and so on. He is considered the "identified patient"; he is the reason they come to treatment and he is defined as "the problem." But from this perspective, he is not the problem but the symptom. The problem is systemic and related to the family dynamic as a whole, and the identified patient becomes to a large extent the scapegoat who cleanses the rest of the family of responsibility; and the situation will be corrected when the family dynamic becomes healthy, not when the therapist too focuses on this patient and tries to "heal him." In this sense, I think that the Haredim in this case (and in other cases it could be the settlers, the Arabs, the Bedouin, the infiltrators, and so on) can be considered the "identified patient" of Israeli society: just as the adolescent who behaves with bullying is not free of guilt and responsibility but is also a victim of circumstances, so too here, despite the fact that Haredi society, and especially its leaders, bear responsibility for the situation and cannot throw it onto others, it seems to me that in a certain sense it is serving here as the "identified patient," when the more root problem lies in the social fabric of the various sectors in the state: the suspicion, the distrust, the mutual blaming, the loss of solidarity, which are the possession of substantial parts of society. Therefore, in my view, a column full of very, very aggressive criticism toward Haredi society—even if all the facts written in it are correct!—not only does not solve the problem, but to a large extent exacerbates and perpetuates it. And the proof is the automatic closing in of every sector within its own boundaries as a response to criticism. It may be that my analysis of the situation is not precise, but it seems to me that there is a point here worth thinking about, at the very least.

Many thanks for the remarks and for the appreciation. I stand by my position that this is a problem of reading comprehension. The meaning of a word is not always its literal meaning, and there are countless examples of this. But since literally it could be understood that way, I deleted it.
As for the style, I hear you.

As a rule, from my point of view every decision by Bibi is suspect as an irrelevant decision. The fellow is self-interested and has quite a few conflicts of interest. These statements too are certainly suspect as self-interested. The decision about the lockdown was made by people who seem to me fairly reliable, although one can never know for sure. One thing is clear: the Haredi representatives are the last people in whom I have any trust.
The lockdown is not a punishment but a preventive measure, and therefore I do not see how or why one should distinguish between those who are disciplined and those who are not.

1. I disagree. Again, this is an easy and convenient solution for us. True, there are hardships that give rise to pogroms, but they usually hang on justifications external to them. One doesn't just go and slaughter someone because I'm angry. Usually I need to explain and justify why I am doing this to him. I spoke in the fourth Ein Ayah class about complex explanations, and this is exactly that. It is worth listening there.
2. Here too I disagree. Obviously no one is perfect, but here this is really not arbitrary picking on the Haredim, nor an expression of a broader problem. They earned it honestly through their own approach and actions. The problem is first of all with them.

Hello Rabbi,
As a regular reader of your books and posts, I am amazed at you.
It is evident that you discuss a great deal the levels of human morality and ethics, and also a great deal our responsibility as human beings, which is not outcome-dependent.

Here you explain that not everything we understand we justify.
It seems to me that in the original post one can understand your motive for anger/rage at the Haredim.
But these do not justify causing violence of this kind, which, as you testify, may lead someone to take matters into his own hands.
There is an essential difference between explanation and a severe act or its justification.

I would add that at a time when there is a significant call for violence against the public,
it seems to me that one should weigh very carefully the use of any terminology.
Thank you very much.

I also commented at length on the previous column, and even spoke with you by phone. There is just one thing I still do not understand (and I am speaking mainly about the generality of the critics, who criticized the conduct regarding the coronavirus, not the entirety of Haredi behavior): why should there not arise a pogrom of all the citizens against those who torpedoed the Health Minister's attempts, already at the very beginning of the epidemic, to close the borders here and place all arrivals from abroad into isolation, with all sorts of pretexts about dictatorship and other such evils? At the end of the day, surely it is proper to blame the person who brought the disaster and not the one who was naïve and insufficiently careful; especially since it is obvious as eggs in dairy sauce to anyone with a brain in his head that the simple reason the Haredim disdain orders coming from above is that they have experienced many cries of wolf, wolf (according to their worldview, of course). So one should blame those in authority for the severe failure of explanation in a society that feels that if anyone gets the opportunity to harm them, he will rejoice and be glad to do so; after all, it was proven that the moment the Haredim grasped what had happened, they went back into their holes trembling and frightened.

Another thing: at the beginning of the coronavirus you brought several dubious homilies put out by a few witless people connecting the coronavirus to punishment of the secular public (for example, the closure of public transportation—and not only on Shabbat—and other nonsense), and you dismissed it outright, arguing that if one tries one can write the same about veganism and other superstitions. I would like to know whether the lovely example you brought regarding the Ukrainians could not, in Haredi eyes, also be written according to their worldview—that they are the ones who came to preserve here the very right to live here, and other notions that come into their heads, like the rabbi of Brisk whom you mentioned in passing. And would that then also justify a pogrom against the secular? If and when, apparently that is what the Neturei Karta people and the Faction do, and they are worthy of understanding (not justification..)

There are a few glitches in the text unfortunately; the above was caused by the genius of autocorrect..

Arik Badoar,
As has been written many times here on the blog as well, the Bible cannot be a source of conclusive proof for any worldview (and I don't mean here to say that because Maran Rabbi Michael Abraham, may he live long, said it, therefore it is so, but only to note that I agree with this claim, which was also presented here on the blog). One can extract from it all sorts of worldviews—so you extract from it a worldview that the gentiles were meant to be slaves; Uri Sherki extracts from it an evolutionary worldview in which the Jews are the superman of humanity and the nations in the future will be on the level of Israel and the Jews on a kind of super-priestly level; the Reform and Abraham Joshua Heschel extract from it only universal messages (and that on the basis of verses like “For then I will turn to the peoples a pure language,” “My people Egypt and Assyria,” and things like that). In short, any message can be found in the Bible, in the midrashim of Hazal, and in the Rishonim and Aharonim—about the cursed gentiles and their role in the world (the Ran, if I am not mistaken, writes in the name of some midrash that all the gentiles in the future will undergo full conversion)—and likewise in many other moral and social areas. Someone who wants to argue that all the inhabitants of the earth were created to sit and wash his feet would do better to say that this is his personal opinion and that he follows certain opinions in Judaism that determined this—that is his right (so long as he does not claim it in the name of Judaism as a whole). Even so, it is fitting for a chief rabbi, a Torah scholar and great man in Israel, also to be versed and engaged with the understanding of people, and at least to phrase things properly and not in the speech of some 16-year-old thug in the market (and in this context I refer you to a favorite column of mine on the site titled: “On Apes and People,” about Maran Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef).
That is to say: even if you have reached the reasoning that there is a certain functional hierarchy between you and the rest of the inhabitants of the world, and even if you have reached the reasoning on the basis of some interpretation of a midrash or verse or another that everyone's role is to wash your feet, it is still fitting at the very least to speak respectfully toward human beings and to relate to them as human beings who have free choice, and not as sophisticated beasts (and it seems to me that regarding free choice, which every human being in the world has and which distinguishes him from a cat or a horse, there are many more midrashim and verses).
And it is a great shame, in my opinion, that such a basic principle—a drop of basic manners and common sense—is absent from many religious leaders of our time.
And the rest—go and study.

1. Obviously there are justifications—the claim I am making is that in a pogrom the justifications are an excuse for an outburst of violence, not its cause. But as I said, this is already almost a matter of definition, so I will let it go.
2. I want to sharpen the point—even in the case of the identified patient there is no arbitrary picking on him! The identified patient really truly is ill. He really does have a problem. The girl really does have an eating disorder and the boy really does behave in a bullying way; the idea is not that one should make allowances because “there is no bad child, only a child who feels bad.” The idea is that what appears to be a personal problem, especially when it focuses on a specific person within a system, is often a symptom of a deeper and systemic problem in which no one is the sole culprit. I have no proofs for this claim in the Haredi context, especially because the problematic aspects you are talking about are real and true; they are not imaginary and not invented. But in my view there is here at least room to consider the possibility that this conduct is not only a symptom of Haredi society in itself, but a symptom of Israeli society as a whole, or at the very least a symptom of Haredi society within general Israeli society. There are many other Haredi communities in the world, and this conduct did not characterize all of them (in the U.S. yes, but I haven't heard about other Haredi communities). So there is at least room to think about it, in my opinion..

Not for nothing is the title of the post "When do we inspect?" for the inspection of the Paschal offering is four days before its sacrifice, and the Rishonim disagreed whether the day of sacrifice itself is included, and they further disagreed whether the law of inspection also applies to later generations' Passover offering.
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https://daf-yomi.com/DYItemDetails.aspx?itemId=12171

So if the Temple is speedily rebuilt, it may turn out retroactively that the day the post was published was the day of inspection of the offering, and about such a thing they said: "A spark of the holy spirit flashed within him."

But there is a catch: the Hebrew date (only) is wrong! At the top of the article it says: 12 Nisan 5780 – 05/04/2020, instead of: 11 Nisan 5780 – 05/04/2020, the time when the post was published!!!

But because of that there is no problem, for we learned (Shevi'it 10:5): "Antedated debt documents are invalid, and postdated ones are valid."

By the way, there is an amazing phenomenon among certain parts of the leadership of the Haredi and Hardali publics (and also among those publics themselves): their tongues and lips often do not drip honey toward liberal/intellectual religious publics, or even toward more moderate circles within themselves, and they use very sharp and grand labels like Amalek, erev rav, curses including wishes for death; and when criticism is leveled at them that is not so pleasant, even if milder than the sharp way in which they label their opponents—the cry of the robbed Caucasian and the persecuted pitiful minority is heard so strongly that in another second I almost feel like crying already. (Of course among leftist academics and secular elites, in all their nicknames, and Gurevitz is an example of such people, there is a parallel and much more hypocritical phenomenon—but this column is not about them.)

As far as I know, Gurevitz is a refugee from the religious-Zionist public (and his fire is directed at it, not at the Haredim); there is nothing elitist about him, and he is not much of a whiner either. If you can expand, it would be appreciated, with God's help.

From the posts by Gurevitz that I used to read in the past, he generalizes very much about the entire religious-Zionist public and the settlers, and in general about the whole right-wing line of thought—as though they are all the very children of Satan, while the enlightened and righteous left is a tiny little minority of people who still have some human image left. (True, this is not whining, but presenting things in such black-and-white fashion you will find in his post “Patriot of a Nonexistent State”; not whining, but there is a certain tone of victimhood there.) In short: he protests so much against racism toward minorities and hatred of leftists, while his whole blog reeks of hatred toward every religious person, settler, and clear-cut right-winger. It seems that from his perspective anyone belonging to one of those three categories is utterly repulsive, regardless of that person's specific views. That would have been perfectly fine if he did not preach day and night for a just society that “accepts and sees the other.”

True, his anger is not naturally directed at Haredim; people on the left in Israel are against the religious-Zionists because they represent the settlement enterprise.
So what? (In my comment I also referred to the Hardali public, who are part of the religious-Zionist public, at least part of the more conservative religious-Zionists.)

A person belonging to a group tainted (in his view) by positions and policies that are a manifest moral injustice is indeed negative. Several long columns here on the site were devoted to collective responsibility (he should have acted and did not act; he should have detached himself from the wrongdoing and plundering collective and did not detach himself). Seeing the other means demanding that one behave fairly toward everyone, but a collective that acts unfairly (in Gurevitz's view) is certainly worthy of criticism. I am not deeply versed in the teaching of this Gurevitz, but I did not get the impression at all that he avoids judging a person on his own merits when given unique information. Obviously, if there is no additional information, then statistically a God-fearing yeshiva man at Mercaz HaRav holds hard-right positions—and on their basis one can certainly criticize him. In addition to the very fact of his belonging to a collective that behaves very negatively.

G, I agree that every individual in a collective has responsibility for acts done in the name of that collective—to a certain limit.
An average yeshiva student in Mercaz HaRav has no responsibility for the fact that, for example, Hardali rabbis published a book called Torat HaMelekh, or for the fact that an article was published on the Ma'ayanei HaYeshu'a website calling for the establishment of extermination camps for Amalekites
(for the sake of example).. The political story of religious Zionism is complex—I can understand the great criticism against the idea of Greater Land of Israel at any cost because the redemption of the nation and the whole world depends on it. One can understand it and also criticize and detest the whole idea as such (I myself do not have a settled position on the matter). And one can also detest the very people who hold it. Here I am touching on another point: Gurevitz generalizes all wings of the religious-Zionist public as one block, including moderate people like Yuval Cherlow, Rabbi Yaakov Nagen, Rabbi Yaakov Medan, and many other religious-right political figures who call for a moderate line—some with a strong and clear right-wing outlook, some more dynamic, and some more center-leaning. For him they are all racists who aspire to a theocratic state, whistle at human and civil rights, and hate Arabs and people—in short: labeling and non-substantive discussion..
Okay, let us assume that indeed in the entire religious-right enterprise there is terrible moral injustice and anyone who takes part in it is a partner (from Gurevitz's point of view) in unbearable and violent oppression of human beings, of an entire population, and against that he protests—great. What about a bit of criticism of the Arabs and Palestinians? Of their representatives in the Knesset, who support terrorists and murderers of Jews? What about the responsibility of the Arab voter in Israel for his support of these parties? The answer from Gurevitz's point of view, of course, is simple: from his perspective they are the oppressed, so everything is permitted to them—to incite to murder, support terrorists, and the like. He himself votes for the Joint List. In my view this is a hypocritical and whiny approach. If, in addition to his criticism and generalization of the entire right-wing public, he also imposed responsibility on Arabs and Palestinians inside and outside Israel who support terrorism, I would appreciate him even though I would think his positions mistaken.

Marginal phenomena like Torat HaMelekh are not of the essence, because the criticism is of the entire right-wing and religious-Zionist position. If anything, Torat HaMelekh serves only to illustrate the intellectual infrastructure that was taken to an extreme in Torat HaMelekh. And the criticism is directed at the intellectual infrastructure itself, which is admittedly (much) more moderate but still the direct object of criticism.
You have explained Gurevitz's view very well, and I don't really understand the criticism. If indeed Israel unjustly oppresses the Palestinians—meaning it creates the blood-soaked conflict—and the Palestinian does what he can to remove the unjust boot from his neck, then what is there to criticize him for? A violent conflict gives rise to violence, and one cannot expect on the one hand that he should sit quietly and wait for the light of morality to shine upon the Zionist state. Let Israel kindly accept the Palestinians' just demands (in his opinion)—the 1967 lines for now, without a demand for demilitarization, a capital in Jerusalem, the right of return, compensation for refugees and for those abused for 50 years—and avoid the conflict. If Reuven comes with rifles to rob Shimon and beat him, then it makes no sense to expect Shimon to wrap himself in a self-righteous moral cloak and absorb the blows with love. The main question is “who is right,” and the one who is wrong is guilty of the whole conflict. If you find that Gurevitz refrains from expressing criticism of Hamas (a theocratic movement with heightened vampiric appetite, whose official plan is to erase the State of Israel), I will be very surprised.

That is the point of disagreement.
In my opinion, even if Gurevitz is right and the Palestinians are victims and pitiable, they are still forbidden to use terrorism against Israeli civilians.

Look, I don't think Gurevitz (and certainly not I) justify terrorism. But the criticism is not of the acts of terrorism themselves but of the political/moral position that gives rise to the conflict. What do you propose that the Palestinians do against the IDF? Put Abu Mazen on permanent standing duty at the UN and ensure him a regular supply of lemon juice to clear his throat? Throw explosive diapers at APCs? You, who condemn Palestinian terrorism—what about a bit of criticism of the IDF for putting itself in a situation where it is compelled to kill Palestinian civilians? It is very easy to define the rules of the game in such a way that one side is guaranteed to win. If the Palestinians are allowed only to attack soldiers, and the IDF is allowed to carry out targeted killings with unavoidable collateral damage in order to protect Israeli civilians, the meaning is that the Palestinians get blown to bits and continue suffering quietly until the sun rises in a can and goes into hibernation. The side that is right is entitled to take any action to persuade the side that is wrong to retreat, and the responsibility hangs around the neck of the side that is wrong.

And in general, the distinction between the IDF and civilians is pointless. The IDF is the agent of the citizens who chose the government that sends this IDF. By way of analogy, if someone is raining punches on me, am I forbidden to strike his stomach and allowed to strike only his hand? The most effective way (and in practice the only one) for the Palestinians to stop the punches in the long term is by striking the stomach. And that is what they do. Because in their view they are right. (In my opinion, incidentally, they are not right, and therefore they are to blame for both Israeli suffering and Palestinian suffering. And even if they were right from the standpoint of a higher justice, I would not be willing to endanger myself and my family and my acquaintances and my people in order to fulfill that demand of justice, with all due respect to the demanding Jupiter mentioned above.)

I explained these matters to you in our conversation. People make mistakes. No one is perfect. But there are mistakes whose basis lies in long-term ideological choices that are the fault of those who err. And when this comes together with parasitism, and with condescension, and with refusal to share the burden, and with ingratitude, it leads to anti-Semitism. The Haredi disingenuousness that focuses on one aspect and tries to find analogies for it (and doesn't even really succeed at that) does not faithfully represent the Haredim. Instead, it would be better to read carefully and draw conclusions.
You yourself mentioned what I explained to you: that my criticism is not about the coronavirus. It is only an extreme symptom of much deeper failures. I suggest stopping this pathetic apologetics.
And regarding the Ukrainians' narrative, anyone can write anything. The question is who is right. You are dragging me into the question of “narratives.” You have found the wrong man for that. I couldn't care less what the Haredim can do (and in fact do, all the time). They are simply wrong, and if they want to stuff their brains with baseless comparisons, then good health to them (apparently not so much at the moment).

Gurevitz indeed usually writes against the religious-Zionist public from which he came (Gurevitz comes from a religious family in Petah Tikva and studied at Nehalim), but he also does not spare the Haredim his rod.

Precisely his last post came somewhat to defend them from the attacks they have recently been undergoing (he defends the Haredi public but attacks their fixers).

It's a bit absurd to ask what I propose the Palestinians do that does not include massacring civilians.
Let's say there are one or two steps, not even violent ones, that they could have tried first and did not try.

And I am a bit less inclined to be impressed by the argument:
"What else can they do? Throw diapers at APCs?
Clearly the next logical step (because it's the only possible one) is to stab children sleeping in their beds! After all, that's a punch in the stomach of the IDF, and there is no difference between the IDF and civilians!"
I believe you are capable of stronger logic than that, if you'll forgive the bit of demagoguery in welding together sentences from your comments.

As an aside, justifying the institutionalized murderousness in Palestinian society does not help them,
and our own eyes see that in the end they are the ones who pay the heaviest price for it, at their own hands.

And may Rabbi Michael forgive me for diverting the discussion, since this is not the topic at all,
but there are things to which it is proper not to remain silent.

It is indeed proper not to remain silent, but it would be worthwhile to make a bit more effort to write actual arguments. I rummaged and searched through your words and found no hint or allusion to such a thing, and your whole message could be taken as combinations of His blessed names beyond human understanding. If you have more effective proposals for the Palestinians than what they are doing, then you are welcome to suggest them (and certainly, if one can reach the same goal by injuring one less person, then injuring him is a crime even if the basic position is just). I think they are doing everything they can, short of compromising still more (and after all, Israel too does not compromise beyond what it agrees to). We are dealing here with the assumption that the Palestinian position is correct. In that case, if the Israeli government is not interested in Israelis dying, it is welcome to evacuate them from the areas in which the Palestinian claim is correct. And quite apart from that, the learned distinctions between terror and war and defense, etc., are rules of the game set by one side, and they have no real content, as explained above.

You are again justifying the murder of children on the grounds that no better way can be found.
I understand that you are assuming they are right. And still, it amazes me how your eyes are so plastered over that you do not see all the protests in the world, some of which even succeeded—without including the protest action that you apparently deem essential: stabbing children in bed.
I am not going to get into operational proposals for the Palestinians. You can always claim that it would not be effective, and I will not be able to disprove that because they did not try. But it is begging the question on your part to say they are doing everything they can. More than that, it is moral blindness to say there is no other way that would work and to ignore everything that does not fit your agenda.

And consider in your own eyes: if even that would not help, would it then be justified in your eyes to murder??? And why is it clearer in your eyes that murdering children would help the Palestinian cause more than harm it???
As for learned distinctions between war and defense—even morality itself can be argued to be rules of the game set by one side, and yet for some reason in parentheses you pay lip service to the idea that you think murder is immoral.

And you cannot hide behind the claim that you are only trying to understand and not justify, because you wrote explicitly that there is nothing to criticize them for. And as Rabbi Michael reminded in the post—understanding certainly does not stop criticism.

To sum up—even if you think the Palestinians are right, there is a great distance between that and justifying the murder of children. Usually, those who do this do not bother to traverse the whole distance but leap straight from one to the other, as you did here, and therefore in my opinion Rational (Relatively) is right.
To make a logical mistake in proving a mathematical theorem is a faux pas. To make such a mistake in justifying the murder of children is a moral disgrace.

You claim that even if there is no better way, it is forbidden to murder because the cost (death + murder) is not worth the return (territory, independence, and compensation)? I remind you that Israel also commits killings, and it seems to me entirely irrelevant that these killings are of armed Palestinians or intended as prevention. Why is it obvious to you that those killings advance the situation? And if death is so severe, then why should Israel not accept the Palestinians' demands? Rather, in your view Israel's position is just and worth sacrificing human life for (Israeli and Palestinian). So in their view their position is the just one, and for it too it is worth sacrificing human life (Israeli and Palestinian).
To say that the current situation must remain frozen and neither side is permitted to take violent action is basically complete acceptance of the Israeli position. And that is laughable. Any robber with the loot in his pocket can cry out that he is a man of peace and why is the police harassing him and using violence against him, and he expects the policemen to set up a floral protest tent around his house. The question is who is the robber and who is the policeman.
In the given situation things are clearly deteriorating into mutual killings, and someone here has to be guilty. And there is one culprit for all the killings (those necessary for the goal, which both sides agree is more important than human life). Either it is Israel, or it is the Palestinians. I absolutely justify the Palestinians' actions under the assumption that they are right in their general political position. The position itself, however, I do not justify. And there is no connection here to the distinction between understanding and justification. Understanding is that because of the weaknesses of human nature and flawed judgment, one may be swept along. I do not need the weaknesses of human nature.

G, I am shocked by what you are saying.

There are limits to protest and also to struggle, even if we assume it is justified (and in my opinion the Palestinian struggle, at least from my point of view, is not justified—I am not the UN and I am not neutral in this whole story).

It seems from your words that there is no place at all for the morality of war, purity of arms, and the distinction between civilians and fighters.

Notice that in your "learned" comments you are justifying terrorism, and do not try to evade this by saying that you are speaking on the theoretical plane.

There are things one simply does not do, period!

If my words had any public weight and would reach the public, then of course I would be careful with this theoretical discussion. At the moment I am an anonymous fellow using a temporary name because he is uncomfortable writing this under his regular name, and therefore I have the freedom to write what seems true to me. And I do not think I have written things here that are so outrageous.
The distinction between civilians and fighters has validity only within the framework of a general agreement between the two sides. If one side has a weak army but the ability to harm the other side's civilians, and the other side has a strong army and no ability to harm the first side's civilians, then there is no sense in the world that the first side should march its army into defeat and not attack civilians. And if the other army wants to protect its civilians, let it kindly retreat. The question of who performs the "action" is devoid of any speck of meaning in my view. What matters is only the result. And if the other side prefers not to retreat even at the cost of its civilians' lives, then why should it complain about the first side?

You again ignored the heart of my argument, but you returned to justifying the murder of children for no reason at the end of your response.
No! Even if I think the Palestinians are right in their general position, I am not obliged to justify their actions.
The fact that you justify the murder of children with no reasoning other than “nothing else will help” is a moral disgrace.

And as for your question: from my very first response I argued that they have other effective courses of action they can take to advance their agenda.
I did not argue that they must remain in this situation.

I disagree with other assumptions in your arguments as well (must one person be guilty for everything? Perhaps also for tribal wars in Africa and global warming while we're at it?), but Rabbi Michael's column was devoted to another subject. It is proper that arguments on unrelated subjects, like Gurevitz and conflict resolution, be left for a relevant column—or for a private discussion. I am sure Rabbi Michael would be happy to put us in touch, if only so that we stop flooding the comments.

And I will continue to repeat like Cato the Elder:
To make a logical mistake in proving a mathematical theorem is a faux pas. To make such a mistake in justifying the murder of children is a moral disgrace.
Even if you think the Palestinians are right, there is a great distance between that and justifying the murder of children.

Okay. What you call disgrace I call simple and obvious things.
Let the one who hears, hear, and let those who refrain, refrain; and let them follow vanity and become vain.

One thing you do not blame the Haredim for, and which I think there is room to consider, is the manipulations of their leaders. Litzman and Deri, who know the situation very well, are squeezing Netanyahu not to shut down this public until further notice and to allow the public to return to life and to educational frameworks after Passover. But because of democracy, which does not discriminate between Haredi and non-Haredi, they cause him to fold. And in fact Netanyahu the manipulator, who forges an alliance with the Haredim, is also to blame for this.

The list of accusations I did not raise is as long as the sea.

…Wait, and you don't think (and believe) that you are absolutely right that there is a Creator who exercises providence. Ah… ah..

Saying that something some public did justifies carrying out pogroms against it like the Ukrainians did to the Jews (even if the writer intended in his heart not to justify—and I believe him that he really did not intend to justify—that is in practice what was written) is one of the most extreme statements there is, so the things you wrote are not relevant.

Some understanding and certain explanations were heard here for the pogroms in Ukraine, and in my opinion trying to explain those Ukrainians is absurd, because we have grown used to the umbrella term pogroms and it seems to us like violent rioting that also caused deaths. But anyone who has read descriptions of many of those pogroms knows that there was inconceivable cruelty there—like chopping off limbs while people were alive and other descriptions of organized, sadistic abuse—and that is a bit hard to explain by anger at Jews as leeches and usurers, because that might perhaps explain violence and looting, but no more than that. And as the writer explained, not justified but understandable. My personal opinion is that it is not understandable at all, but even on the writer's view I would say that from the story it appears they were groups of barbarians who hated Jews out of benighted anti-Semitism, pure and simple. And when dealing with pogroms in which communities, cities, and families lost everything, one must act with great respect and not throw out potentially justificatory conjectures without examining them carefully.

Hello, honorable rabbi,
I think (as a Haredi, full disclosure) that the main points the rabbi made about the Haredi way of thinking are correct, and unfortunately the major problem is that any mainstream Haredi person who reads them would also identify with them—he just would not understand what the problem is.
But even so I think that precisely here you are making a bitter mistake.
If we take for example the well-known quote of Rina Matzliah that caused such a storm, which led most Haredim to hear her name for the first time, we can see that at first glance she indeed says what you said. But if we look more deeply at the examples she gave, we see that she is not talking about the classic Haredi for whom citizenship does not matter, but who is constantly careful to preserve a balance and avoids as much as he can colliding with the state, which is foreign to him. Rather, from there she jumps straight toward the more anarchistic movement in society and speaks about tax officials needing police protection in Bnei Brak and police officers taking stones in Jerusalem. And if that is the point of view, we have lost the concept of the whole idea, because now the criticism is not of the lack of control mechanisms and lack of public responsibility arising from a parasitic position that sees the state as an authority that does not interest me and is merely a candidate for extortion, but of active terrorism, of indifference to the “people” here and not only to the state, and of a willingness to bang one's head against the wall even if it harms everyone—which, as can be seen, indeed remained in those groups even now (!) long after the Haredi public explained to itself that this was a matter of "halakha" and therefore it would protect itself and others.
I think that on this point you too erred a bit, and it would be better if you noticed that in light of your thesis the change the Haredim have made in recent days in all their behavior is not understandable at all.
Beyond that, it should be noted that the figures in the other religious societies are only slightly lower than among the Haredim, which led me to think that the scope of the damage from Haredi negligence (with all that it is certainly utterly criminal) is not really that great. Rather, it is specifically the religious and communal way of life, which at the beginning of the story was considered reasonable in terms of the damage, that is the great producer of the damage.
P.S. I know that now I sound like all the victimized Haredim of the past week, but the truth compels me to add also the issue of density and the much greater difficulty in keeping the rules.

Everything you wrote is mentioned in my words.
I will only note that the failure to distinguish between the groups is not such a great mistake. At bottom there is Haredi ideology, and the difference is only in the degree of pragmatism. Therefore the fringe groups represent a problem that exists in the society as a whole.
When the Haredi press talks about the harms of secularity (crime, divorce, drugs, etc.), no one points out differences between groups or says it happens on the margins. When they talk about secularization in the religious-Zionist world, it is criticism of the entire religious-Zionist public. And rightly so, because fringe phenomena represent the problems in society as a whole.
Rina Matzliah's words were entirely reasonable (even if not everything was perfectly accurate). Turning her into the new anti-Semitic devil is nothing but the customary lying victimhood of the Haredim.

Unlike a book, a "post" can be deleted. I have a few suggestions for how to climb down from the tree. But the two posts, including the supposedly "explanatory" one about the first, not only did not convince, but naturally surpassed the first in its hatred, since it had to justify the first.
Think whether you would write two posts in the same style about any other public in the Judaism of the Land of Israel!? Haven't you noticed that you are simply inciting? Truly shocking! I would still be astonished if the next post were “the final solution.”

You probably didn't hear Rina's words. The problem was her insistence on saying “most” of the Haredim.
By God's grace upon her, she felt that the situation was sufficiently ripe to say “most” of the Haredim, just as for the same reason Your Torah Honor gave yourself free rein with posts like these—after all, you are a learned fellow and understand the motives.

By the way, do you really think that hatred of the Haredim has only one layer—“the army and what follows from it”—and that this is the solution? How can a learned Jew like you …? After all, the whole country is captive to Bennett, Smotrich, and Peretz!

After the storm of responses died down, I wanted to ask what purpose the rabbi sees in the exaggerations he introduces into his articles.

As an extreme example: let us assume that understanding the word "justifiably" as a justification of pogroms is a reading-comprehension mistake on the part of some readers. Was it hard to foresee that there would be some readers who would make that mistake? What was missing from the article without that word in the first place?

(I refrain from adding further examples both in order to keep it short and focused on the point, and because I am not sure which things were said as exaggeration and which were meant literally.)

Hello Arik.
I do not exaggerate any statement. I write what I think. What I wrote is exactly what I think. The phrase "justifiably" was intended to express that it was done in a way that can be understandable from their point of view (that of the Ukrainians, or of the extreme fringes among them). When I saw that it was not understood that way (in my eyes simply out of disingenuousness and habit from the brainwashing about "words kill," etc.), I changed it.
The question that may perhaps arise is why I do not moderate, not why I exaggerate. And here too the answer is the same answer: I have no interest in moderating. I write what I think.
So in conclusion, set your mind at ease. Nothing was said as an exaggeration. What I write is what I think. Of course, it is always possible that I did not formulate something precisely. We are all human beings, and certainly with the amount I write, mistakes can slip in. But there is no exaggeration in my words for the sake of exaggeration.

Since the comment thread is nearly endless, and in truth I value the rabbi's time enough not to trouble him with complaints, I will only write this:
As a Haredi, the rabbi's words are indeed like a punch in the stomach. My relation to the Haredi conduct (regarding the coronavirus, of course) is ambivalent, both regarding the degree of influence of the rabbis' decision and regarding the benefit that in the end did indeed grow from blind obedience, which found expression in the change in the rabbis' ruling. That is, it may be that here we see some benefits that sometimes exist in such an approach.
But regarding the substance of the rabbi's article and his responses, I will only note that since there was a claim about the need for external "help" (with which I actually tend to agree), I do not understand the rabbi's insistence on writing "as he thinks" and not considering the effect of his words. By the way, it may be that in this case precisely the sharpness contains such a positive effect. But it may also not. I am convinced this is not a platform for venting feelings. And more than that, what harm could come from some additional thought about the possible benefit that may emerge from the rabbi's words?

There is room to consider the benefit, but there is also value in the truth. Especially in a place where it is constantly being denied. But in my opinion the words will definitely bring much more benefit precisely this way (in the long term). It is time these fellows understood how they act and what the meaning of things is. The (fake) empathy used toward them only harms, mainly them.

The question one needs to deal with is how it can be that those very scholars, whose lack of critical sense you wonder at, testify to supernatural events they saw in the rulings of those rabbis. For example, when they ruled against the opinion of doctors and it turned out they were right. I myself heard this from people for whom I have absolutely no reason in the world to suspect lying. And there are many such testimonies. How does one explain this? See the case of the pigeon and jaundice. When something works, the burden of proof shifts to us to explain how, even if it does not fit our paradigm and perhaps requires us to adopt another or upgraded paradigm.

As a general reference, I will note that the rabbi also addressed the phenomenon of denial and hollow pilpul in the face of data indicating the supernatural.
As I recall, in God Plays with Dice, in connection with findings that point to a positive response to prayers for the sick. Although, if I remember correctly, the rabbi noted there a possible criticism that would undermine it… In short, according to the rabbi too, the phenomenon indeed exists.

As part of our program, 'The Robbed Cossack,' we bring you the next chapter in the series:
https://news.walla.co.il/item/3354175

The claim about understanding the Holocaust on the basis of the Jews' behavior is delusional. The entire Nazi ideology was based on there being a problem with the Jewish people and not with their behavior. Even people who assimilated were murdered by the accursed Nazis. There was no communist Holocaust because that was not systematic murder. (By the way, masses of Jews were also murdered in the communist murders, so that is not a good example.) The “uniqueness” of the Holocaust is that the murder was ideological and was carried out independently of the war against the Jews (as with the Armenian genocide), and it even harmed the war effort.
The communists did not at all conquer Poland; it was the Nazis who conquered it alone, as was signed in the Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement.

Earth calling Yishai: are you with us? What are you talking about? Who mentioned the Holocaust?

Test

With God's help, 8 Cheshvan 5783

Even the High Court ruled regarding the Balfour protesters, who stand, with God's help, 'to return to their place,' that there is no evidence whatsoever of infection in open areas, and who is there that would challenge their ruling?

With blessings, Shefatyahu Abu-Shahada Gilron