There are things about which there are no questions. For example, the low murder rate (for example of women) in Haredi society.
After all, it’s obvious that here you can’t hide women’s bodies under the rug, and Haredim murder less. And they don’t murder their wives at all.

I don’t know the data, especially when making comparisons against other segmented populations (not against the rest of the population as a whole). Not to mention access to weapons and skill in using them. But you may be right regarding the murder of women. So what?

I just remembered Berland’s tricks, which as is known include murders.

I didn’t understand your “So what?” question.
You wrote:
“Incidentally, this day also raises a few other sad points about Haredi society. The question is how to relate to the data about low crime rates in Haredi society, about the exemplary behavior of Haredim as opposed to others.”

So I replied that there are things regarding which it’s clear that Haredim commit less crime (even compared to developed populations).
And the question only gets stronger here, because Haredim are a poor population, lacking education, and also a population committed to Jewish law, which apparently discriminates against women (Jewish law).
Seemingly, it should have been obvious that we would see more murders of women among Haredim.

Regarding Rabbi Berland:
A. As I understand it, no women were murdered there.
B. Even if the two cases that were publicized really happened, I still think Haredim murder much, much less.
C. In the case of Rabbi Berland’s public, I understood that many of them may be criminals who entered Judaism. I don’t know how much one can extrapolate from them to the rest of the Haredi public (Hasidim, Lithuanians, Sephardim).

Attached are the remarks that Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, may he live long, sent to be conveyed in the educational institutions.
The remarks themselves are puzzling and strange, and they somewhat explain why again and again last night at the funeral the eulogizers were heard accusing people of cold-blooded murder and of having permitted Walder’s blood…

While Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu has taken a clear line against the Haredi writer Chaim Walder, who committed suicide, and has strengthened the victims, last night another voice was heard, attributed to one of the leaders of the Lithuanian Haredi public, Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, claiming that publicly humiliating him was more severe than the acts attributed to him, and that the shaming done to him was akin to “murder.”

“It is completely clear that the great pressure they put on him brought him to mental illness and he killed himself under compulsion. This is called murder,” it says in a letter published in his name.

“Even if there is a teacher who thinks he has an opinion on the matter, etc. etc., one is obligated to convey to children only the Torah view and to cry out how dangerous it is to publicly humiliate one’s fellow, and to tell them that wicked people spread slander about him and publicized that slander everywhere until they caused him to be ashamed to show his face outside and caused him to become mentally ill to the point that he killed himself.”

Dimi,
I don’t think it takes a long day of study to understand what I wrote. I said that in light of the silencing tendencies, one should treat the data regarding low crime in Haredi society with suspicion. You point to a certain context in which there is indeed less crime among Haredim (maybe. I have no data, but let’s assume for the sake of discussion that you’re right). So what? Does that change anything I wrote? Do you think the data in a silencing society are in fact reliable? What does the Sabbatical year have to do with Mount Sinai? Is the silencing praiseworthy because it lowers the crime rate? What exactly are you trying to claim here? I hope you do understand, because I don’t.
As for the excuses about Berland, that these are criminals who entered the Haredi world—it’s amusing and predictable, of course. It’s the old claim that there is no religious thief, because if he’s a thief then he isn’t religious. Not to mention the silencing and lack of criticism in the Haredi world regarding Berland. For years, his opponents have not managed to get rabbis or religious courts to issue a clear ruling condemning his deeds and instructing people to stay away from him. In your opinion, is that too a good policy that reduces crime?

What I don’t understand is Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu.
After all, once the article was published in Haaretz and the subject became the talk of the day, and Chaim Walder was suspended from every place where he had any position or influence, he became completely harmless.
There is no commandment to kill the pursuer, only to save the pursued, and if it is possible to save him by injuring one of the pursuer’s limbs, it is forbidden to kill him.
What motivated Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu to keep crushing Chaim Walder until he committed suicide?

Michi,

I’ll explain what I’m trying to argue:

You claimed that maybe one could question the low crime figures in Haredi society. Maybe it’s suppression.
I brought evidence against your approach, and it goes like this:
Suppose that factually, Haredim murder less. From here one can infer that there is no reason to suspect that in the other data where they commit less crime (for example, theft) it’s a bluff and concealment (as you claimed), but rather a real situation of a population that commits less crime.

If the near-zero murder rate among the Haredi public cannot serve as evidence against your statement, you need to explain why. In my opinion it is indeed an argument against the puzzlement you raised.

I am not claiming that someone who murdered in Rabbi Berland’s community is not considered Haredi. He is considered Haredi all right.
What I claimed is that within the Haredi public this is a very, very specific population (which probably has a not-small percentage of criminals who became religious).
By the way, in the same way I would recommend taking out of the equation secular Jews of Ethiopian origin who murdered their wives, because here too we are dealing with a specific population with a certain background.

We’re repeating ourselves, and there’s no point repeating it again. I answered you well on everything. We’ve exhausted it.

Here is Yated Ne’eman’s contribution to crime prevention:
https://mobile.twitter.com/yaircherki/status/1475595871987421185?t=tdp9A1SF1zLSV8AByllXow&s=08

I argued that your statement is baseless. That’s what I was trying to claim (you claimed that I don’t understand what I’m trying to claim). I brought support for my position.
Is it at least clear to you that I do understand what I was trying to claim?

It could be that you understood what you yourself were trying to claim, but if so then it’s a claim irrelevant to the discussion. I’m not sure what’s preferable: to understand what you’re claiming but have it be an irrelevant claim, or not to understand what you’re claiming in a claim that’s trying to be relevant.
Let me clarify again, because I feel you really don’t understand: I didn’t say that crime rates in Haredi society are not low. What I said is that the data about this don’t say much. Therefore there is no point in bringing arguments that show that crime there is low. That’s not the discussion.
And if we’re already on the subject, sexual violence in the family and in general among Haredim is probably higher than in the population at large. Without examining broad surveys, simply from a conversation with a judge who deals with this.

I understood that the letter circulated in Rabbi Edelstein’s name and quoted above in the comments is forged.

Yerachmiel,
Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu does not operate according to what happens in the newspaper Haaretz. He set up a religious court to examine the matter, and after investigations and inquiries they reached the conclusion that Walder really was guilty. Therefore he said that he must be distanced. Apparently he said it again (about a day before Walder committed suicide) because more testimony and so on had reached him. So that people would understand that these are not mere speculations, but that he really must be distanced.

Sexual violence among Haredim is indeed something that is common, in my humble opinion (unlike, for example, theft).
Here, to the best of my knowledge, nobody claimed that Haredim are saints, and precisely here, when there are data (and there aren’t always), one indeed sees that it exists in Haredi society as well.
For example, there once was a site called “Wall of Shame” or something like that that exposed very many dozens of pedophiles, and the percentage of Haredim there among all pedophiles, if I remember correctly, was like their percentage in the population.

Michi, I still think one can rely on data that come regarding Haredi society. I explained why I think so.

Yishai,
From where did he need to be distanced?
He had already been removed from every place where he could have harmed someone.
Can it really enter one’s mind that after the affair exploded he would have continued doing something that only Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu could prevent?

Yerachmiel, see Chafetz Chaim, rule 4, law 7, where he cites in the name of the Talmud and the medieval authorities that regarding a person about whom there is a persistent public rumor that he transgresses one of the well-known sins, it is permitted to accept negative speech about him and judge him unfavorably; and as the Talmud says, it is a commandment to publicize the hypocrites so that people should not learn from their deeds. If so, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu conducted himself as expected.

From the page of Y. Yifrach:

Trying to understand the stream of consciousness that allows newspaper editors to publish something like this.

One can understand a position that supports the man and claims he was subjected to a lynching,

One can understand a cautious position that prefers to sit on the fence until things are clarified in an orderly process,

One can even understand a position that prefers silence or systematic ignoring so as not to pollute the air of the pure worldview with horror stories.

It is very hard to understand a culture of lies.

Fine, don’t write anything—but how can you write such a blatant lie?

What goes through the minds of editors who lead their readers with deception and falsehood without even blinking? It’s not even “a matter bound to become known,” because everything here is already visible here and now.

Sometimes it seems that more than poverty and economic conditions, what will crumble Haredi society from within is its crumbling ethics.

A culture of lies

Petah-Tikva Resident,
Please be so kind as to explain to me in simple words what Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu wanted, and why he was so eager to publicize Chaim Walder’s deeds, which were in any case already publicized.

Rabbi Michi and Eli,
I can understand that the newspaper (Yated Ne’eman) had pity on the honor of Chaim Walder’s poor family, and therefore wrote as it did.

In my opinion there are several reasons why Rabbi Eliyahu saw fit to publish the matter.

First, Rabbi Eliyahu has served for many years as a kind of outsourcing address for the Haredi public on matters for which no modest discretion is appropriate. So he was approached and asked what to do with Walder’s books, whether to keep sending people to him for treatment, about the various platforms that gave Walder their microphone and their column. What did you want—that Rabbi Eliyahu send them to a newspaper or to some ratings-hungry TV show?

Many in the Haredi public not only do not get their information from the media; they think the media persecute them and are constantly after them morning and night. Now here there is a rabbinic figure who went down to investigate the matter and to distance a vile person fifty cubits from the city. While their rabbis remain silent, Rabbi Eliyahu went into the field, collected testimony, heard details directly, and published his conclusion—for people to see and fear.

I think that with a person like this, who is a ticking time bomb, with the capacity and power even to intimidate the religious courts of Rabbis Silman and Eliyahu, there is a need not just once a day but hour by hour to sound an emergency siren, even on the chance of saving one more soul.

From Rabbi Eliyahu himself:
Question:

How did the Rabbi’s court determine that Chaim Walder was guilty without hearing him, especially since you had already ruled that he was guilty?

Answer:

A. Jewish law obligates us as rabbis to act against people who defile the house of Israel. (Taanit 12b; Moed Katan 6a; Beit Yosef 565). This treatment is not carried out according to the usual rules of a religious court, and testimony does not have to be received in his presence. (Responsa Shoel U’Meshiv, first edition, part 1, siman 185). All the more so when he is accustomed to threatening the women and they are afraid of him. (Rema, Choshen Mishpat 28:15).

B. Even so, we examined, investigated, and inquired thoroughly. Witnesses came before us and testified that he committed adultery with married women for many years until he caused them to divorce and become forbidden to their husbands. We saw a court record about this and strengthened the matter with additional unequivocal proof. We also heard recordings in his own voice testifying to severe sexual transgressions that he committed, and we found him guilty beyond any doubt.

C. Even though it was clear to him that he was destroying homes, and even though it was clear to him that he was causing others to sin and defiling the house of Israel, Walder continued on his path without stopping for a moment. We received testimony about 22 women and girls whom he harmed, and there is no doubt that these cases are only a small part of the harm he caused.

D. The Torah teaches us to relate to Walder’s deeds with revulsion and severity as though this were murder: “For as when a man rises against his fellow and murders him, so is this matter.” Such deeds bring divine wrath upon Israel, bring evil decrees, stop prayers, and thus the Torah warns: “Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations whom I am casting out before you became defiled. And the land became defiled, and I punished its iniquity upon it, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.” (Leviticus chapter 18:24).

E. According to Jewish law, we are permitted to flog such a person publicly (Kiddushin 81a; Shulchan Arukh, Even HaEzer 178:20), to excommunicate him (Moed Katan 17a), to disgrace him publicly (Maimonides, Sanhedrin 24:5), to remove him from serving as prayer leader (Magen Avraham 53:7), to forbid him to teach the children of Israel (Responsa Shoel U’Meshiv, first edition, part 1, siman 185), and many other things that are not practiced today. (Maimonides, Sanhedrin 24; Shulchan Arukh, Choshen Mishpat 2.)

F. We do not use all these means, but we must stop him. If we do not warn the public about his deeds and he continues them, the blame will be on us, Heaven forbid. (Niddah 61a.) By virtue of the obligation imposed on us to stop the next cases, we are acting to put an end to his abominations.

G. We called on Chaim Walder to undertake a path of repentance. We sent people to persuade him to recant so that