A Week of Insanity

We have been through a week of madness here in Eretz Yisroel. On the front lines, the IDF suffered more fatalities, while the domestic battle between the Torah world and the government took another painful turn: Last week, a protest outside the home of Justice Noam Sohlberg turned violent and led to a massive wave of arrests. Of course, no one denies that violence is deplorable. For some reason, though, when leftists protested outside the homes of government ministers and burned garbage dumpsters outside the prime minister’s residence, no one seemed to have a problem with it, but the same type of behavior triggered sharp condemnations when it targeted a justice of the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the election for the next state comptroller generated its fair share of drama as well. In the first round of voting, retired Supreme Court justice Yosef Elron received 60 votes while attorney Michael Rabello received 57. Since Elron fell short of the threshold of 61 votes, it was necessary for another round of voting to take place. This time, Rabello won the election with 61 votes. This, of course, was a win for Netanyahu precisely at a time when his opponents are trying to depict him as a lame duck.

Shooting Spree Ends in Tragedy

No overview of this past week’s news would be complete without mentioning a couple of events at the beginning of the week. First, the terror attack on Sunday has shown us once again that our survival in Eretz Yisroel is predicated on miracles. Unfortunately, it is far too easy for bloodthirsty terrorists to murder a Jew in Eretz Yisroel. In this case, an Arab resident of Taibeh (i.e., an Israeli citizen) left his home in a car with a yellow license plate (again, marking him as an Israeli citizen) and headed to the gas station near the communities of Tzur Yigal and Kochav Yair, where he opened fire on innocent passersby, wounding two people. The terrorist moved on to the community of Tzur Natan and opened fire on civilians again. His next step was to fire on a car, killing the driver, which was followed by a gun battle at the entrance to the community of Salit. The murder victim was 55-year-old Chaim Kalomiti, a resident of Tzur Natan and an officer in the IDF. And this leads to a chilling thought: Who knows how many more murderers are living among the Arab citizens of Israel?

My second observation concerns the men who were arrested for participating in the violent riots at the home of Justice Noam Sohlberg; the court recently extended the detention of 52 of those suspects. Without commenting on the violence itself, let me say simply that the mass arrest was clearly collective punishment. Perhaps there were a few people among those 52 whom the police and the judge have the right to imprison, but why are so many men being kept behind bars? Is it simply that the police do not know exactly which of them are culpable?

Finally, there is another noteworthy development in the draft crisis: The Basic Law: Torah Study might be approved this week, in response to a demand from Aryeh Deri (who visited the bochurim being held in military prison on Sunday) and Degel HaTorah. This law might be the solution to the aggression of the Supreme Court; the judges have based their own decisions on the Basic Law: Equality, which they contend makes draft exemptions for lomdei Torah unconstitutional. Another Basic Law would carry the same legal weight, and the hope is that its stipulation about the importance of Torah study as a service to the nation will restore the legal validity of the draft exemptions. Bli neder, I will report to you on any further developments.

The Attorney General’s Obsession

The rest of the country has its attention focused on the borders and the White House, but Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has her own agenda. Her behavior, in my view, can no longer be classified as a function of legal concerns or even political maneuvering; instead, it demands full psychiatric assessment. Her obsession has exceeded all reasonable bounds and has crossed every red line. Let us put aside her habitual stance against the government (keeping in mind that she is supposed to be the legal advisor to the government, not against the government) and her passion to oppose everything done by the government and especially the prime minister, including the appointments of new officials. Instead, let us focus solely on her war against lomdei Torah, in which she has actually demonstrated originality and single-minded obsession that borders on madness. While it’s true that the judges are steering her in this direction, she is clearly taking the matter much further than they are. Last week, I mentioned that yeshiva bochurim have become afraid even to walk in the street. At this point, not only are the arrests continuing but the army is talking about actively broadening them.

The attorney general recently announced yet another economic blow to yeshivos and kollelim: As part of her legal battle to prevent funding from reaching lomdei Torah who are subject to the draft, she decided to cancel the Section 46 status of any institution attended by draft evaders. Section 46 is a clause in the tax ordinance that makes it possible to receive tax refunds in exchange for donations to approved institutions. To receive this status, an institution must file a request with the Finance Ministry, where the specifics of its operations are examined. If the institution meets all the legal criteria, the application is transferred to the Knesset Finance Committee for approval. The attorney general’s decision therefore means that donations to yeshivos will no longer be eligible for tax credits. Of course, she conveniently ignores the fact that the same yeshivos also serve students who are not classified as draft evaders. Why should the government prevent yeshivos from receiving donations when at least some of their talmidim are not required to enlist? This is a fundamental flaw in her decision, but the attorney general is blithely unconcerned about it. In any event, the majority of donations for yeshivos come from Jews in other countries, where the donors receive tax credits from their own governments instead, so the impact of this blow might not be as severe as she hoped.

The attorney general’s move came in response to an appeal to the court from the Reform movement, in which the petitioners argued, “Yeshivos that have become places of refuge for tens of thousands of draft dodgers, who have chosen at a time of crisis to ignore the nation’s needs and to refuse to participate in the defense of the state, should not be able to allow their donors to benefit from tax credits worth tens of millions of shekels.” Baharav-Miara made absolutely no effort to defend the government in her response to the court; instead, she sided with the petitioners and even published her decision on the subject before the judges could even debate it. As I said, she is even more extreme than the Supreme court.

But that wasn’t the end of the matter. The attorney general discovered that it would be very complicated to determine which institutions should be subject to her decree eliminating their Section 46 status on account of the draft. As a result, she decided that for the time being, until the matter is clarified, no organization or institution will receive Section 46 approval. She therefore ordered the Treasury to freeze the approval process for every institution and to refrain from sending the list of organizations to the Finance Committee. Of course, this evoked an uproar that extended beyond the chareidi community. This time, the attorney general had caused damage to secular organizations as well, and a torrent of outrage emerged from the secular community. At the same time, petitions were filed with the Supreme Court against the sweeping ban, and the Igud Bnei Yeshivos filed a petition on behalf of the yeshivos as well. I am not sure what argument they used to claim that the decision was illegal regarding Torah institutions; perhaps it was the fact, as I mentioned, that yeshivos also cater to students who are not subject to the draft.

Once again, the wave of fury against the attorney general was ferocious, but she seemed unfazed by it. She is simply obsessed with persecuting bnei Torah. Just as an angry person is incapable of listening to others who try to reason with him, the same is evidently true of a person who is blinded by hatred. The chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee, MK Chanoch Dov Milwidsky (Likud), minced no words when he announced, “The attorney general is preventing all nonprofit organizations in Israel from receiving Section 46 status because of her persecution and hatred for the chareidi community.”

Yungeleit Excluded from Subsidized Housing Lottery

While the judges on the Supreme Court push for increasing sanctions against bnei Torah and the attorney general continues issuing draconian decrees, some people seem to be observing these events with equanimity. The real-life impact of these decisions isn’t immediately evident to everyone, and for some people, the attorney general’s moves seem to be theoretical and removed from reality. But the problems and damage are very real. These decisions, when translated into action, have a tangible impact on every kollel yungerman and every yeshiva bochur. The most serious measure that has been taken, of course, is the attorney general’s decision to halt government funding for yeshivos and kollelim. This led directly to the establishment of the Keren HaTorah fund, an absolutely correct response to an unjust situation. Another major cause of harm is the decision to revoke government subsidies for children in day care whose fathers learn in kollel, especially the children of draft evaders. This has caused genuine financial damage to tens of thousands of yungeleit. The decision to revoke property tax discounts for draft evaders has likewise been deeply harmful; until that decision was made, the average kollel yungerman paid only 10 or 20 percent of the municipal property tax on his apartment, and yungeleit will now be hit with much higher bills.

But all this was apparently not satisfactory for the judges, as they also decided to cancel the public transportation discounts and other benefits previously received by bnei Torah. One of those benefits is the ability to participate in programs run by the Ministry of Housing to assist young couples purchasing their first homes. Two weeks ago, the Israel Lands Authority announced that it had approved a dramatic change in the lottery program for discounted housing in conjunction with Chaim Katz, who is filling in for Yitzchok Goldknopf as minister of housing in the wake of the latter’s resignation. According to the latest decision, 50 percent of the housing units offered at a discount in the upcoming lottery will be offered only to soldiers in the IDF reserves, with priority given to combat soldiers, and the remaining 50 percent of the apartments will be offered to the general public provided that they have regulated their draft status. “This is a very significant step that was taken in accordance with a directive of the attorney general,” the statement added, “according to which it is necessary to immediately implement an outline that will strengthen the preference for active reserve soldiers.”

The decision states that anyone subject to the draft who hasn’t regulated his status with the IDF will not be eligible to participate in discounted housing programs. In practice, this means that most chareidim will be filtered out of the process before they can even reach the point of signing up for a lottery. The revised program requires all applicants to sign affidavits confirming that they have settled their draft status. If a participant wins the lottery and then his affidavit is found to be false—which would be the case for any chareidi man who learns in kollel—he will lose his right to receive a discount. What will happen to the apartments in chareidi communities, where no secular Israelis will be interested in participating in the lotteries? The answer to this question is unclear, but the Israel Lands Authority has taken the unequivocal stance that chareidim are to be left out. And while this evoked widespread fury, there is very little that can be done about it.

Knesset to Discuss Discrimination Against Yungeleit

A few days after the Israel Lands Authority announced the new rules, the following notice was circulated: “Registration for the 11th lottery of the ‘Apartment at a Discount’ program of the Ministry of Housing and Construction and the Israel Lands Authority will open today [last Monday] and will include dozens of lotteries in 19 cities and settlements throughout the country for a total of 7,922 residential units. According to the new regulations, the members of the chareidi community, kollel students, and yeshiva graduates are not entitled to participate in the lottery. The settlements participating in the lottery include Rishon Letzion, Rechovot, Mazkeret Batya, Ashdod, Beit Dagan, Kfar Manda, Kfar Saba, Maale Adumim, and Nahariya, among others. Registration for the lottery will close on Monday, June 22, 2026. As in previous lotteries, all eligible participants may register in only three cities, for all the lotteries taking place in each. The exact date of registration during the registration period has no significance.”

The infuriating statement continues, “Following the Supreme Court ruling, eligibility to participate in the lottery is contingent on the fact that, according to IDF data, the individual or either spouse is not defined as someone subject to conscription who has not regulated his or her status. We will note that this eligibility will be determined after registration closes, by synchronizing the data transferred from the Ministry of Defense to the Ministry of Housing and Construction.”

In other words, to put it bluntly, chareidim should consider themselves out of the running, even in cities that are supposedly chareidi. Minister Chaim Katz declared with satisfaction, “The Apartment at a Discount lottery is getting underway, with thousands of apartments designated for the lottery and with preference given to reserve servicemen and combat soldiers. Those who left their homes, their families, and their jobs to serve the state will now get something back for their efforts. We will continue removing barriers and advancing real estate marketing and additional lotteries to increase the supply of housing and to make residential solutions accessible to the younger generation.”

There was nothing for the chareidim to do in response other than shout and protest. Many members of the Knesset objected vehemently to this malicious exclusion. Meir Porush filed a motion for the Knesset agenda pointing out that the measure was discriminatory, since kollel yungeleit were deemed ineligible for the program but draft evaders from other sectors weren’t excluded. Porush enlisted the support of six other members of the Knesset: Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionism), Tally Gottliv (Likud), Avi Maoz (Noam), Mishel Buskila (United Right), Moshe Abutbul (Shas), and Tzvika Fogel (Otzma Yehudit). The group wrote to the Knesset speaker, “An examination of the reality on the ground paints a serious picture of a double standard, which constitutes blatant, intentional discrimination against the chareidi community. While yungeleit who spend their days on Torah study are excluded from the plan and denied the basic right to a roof over their heads, other sectors of the Israeli populace who do not serve were not deprived of this eligibility, and they continue to enjoy full access to lotteries and the right to apartments at a discount. This policy creates an illegitimate distinction between citizens based on cultural and sectoral affiliations. The denial of housing solutions to the chareidi public, which is already facing a severe, unprecedented housing crisis, under the false pretext of rewarding those who serve—at a time when other sectors are excluded from these rules—is an intolerable social and economic injustice.”

The proposal was approved, and a discussion will be held in the Knesset. But will that solve the problem? Will a debate in the Knesset actually put an end to this? Allow me to speculate that it will not have such an effect. The outraged Knesset members will blow off steam and create headlines, but that is all. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to defeat the justices of the Supreme Court and the attorney general.

New Laws Keep Coming as Knesset’s Term Winds Down

The 25th Knesset is approaching the end of its days, yet the legislators continue piling new bills on the Knesset table with the energy of youth, as if we were at the beginning of a new term. Before Pesach, Meir Porush introduced a law calling for Israeli sovereignty to be extended over certain parts of Yehuda and Shomron; at the same time, the chareidim opposed a similar bill concerning Beitar Illit that was submitted by Yisroel Beiteinu. Porush’s bill calls for Israeli sovereignty to be applied to Ariel, Beitar Illit, Modiin Illit, and Maale Adumim. He does not mention that his bill was copied from a different MK; the bill bears his name alone. Porush is also the sole author of another newly submitted bill, which calls for inmates in prison to be provided with all their religious needs. The original version of this bill, which came from Degel HaTorah and relates to the religious needs of all prison inmates, was the initiative of then-MK Eliyohu Bruchi, who was outraged when the Shin Bet denied a chareidi detainee access to a Gemara. Meanwhile, MK Yitzchok Goldknopf submitted a bill calling for the Value Added Tax to be reduced to 17 percent, a proposal that received the signatures of 16 MKs from all parties except Shas. But none of these bills stands a chance of being passed into law.

I won’t bother with an exhaustive list of all the bills that were placed on the Knesset table, even though some of them are fairly interesting, but I must still mention a few. Tzvi Sukkot is interested in reducing the noise of the muezzin and has replicated a bill authored by Tzvika Fogel for that purpose. Ram Ben-Barak introduced a law regulating the training of dogs; it would be interesting to find out if this is somehow due to his prior experience as deputy director of the Mossad, which regularly uses canines in its work. Meir Cohen has proposed denying government benefits to anyone who hasn’t fulfilled the obligation to serve in the army, and Eli Dalal copied a law authored by Nachman Shai in the 19th Knesset, which calls for a non-Jewish soldier killed in the line of duty to be buried in the same cemetery as Jewish soldiers. This touches a raw nerve, and Dalal writes that about 20 percent of the soldiers in the IDF are estimated to have immigrated to Israel under the Law of Return—in other words, they are not Jewish. On that note, here is a telling anecdote: Many years ago, President Ezer Weizmann visited the immigrant family of a soldier in the IDF who was killed in action. He praised the parents for their Zionist ideals, and they replied, “What are you talking about? We came to Israel because we were starving in Ukraine.”

“But what about the dangers of serving in the army?” he asked.

They replied, “The probability of dying in Ukraine in a fight between drunken soldiers is much higher than the odds of dying in the Israeli army.”

Let’s round out this list of newly proposed laws with two original bills submitted by Moshe Abutbul. First, there is a proposal to require devices testing a person’s alcohol level to be installed in stores where liquor is sold, so that patrons can easily check to determine whether they are permitted to drive. This is an interesting idea, and it is Abutbul’s brainchild; he did not copy the law from anyone else. He also came up with another bill, which would require facilities where blood tests are performed to be equipped with devices to help the staff locate veins. “I have personally seen babies, and even adults, suffering when nurses cannot find veins to draw blood from them,” he explained.

With that, let us wish the members of the Knesset a pleasant vacation as the country’s legislature adjourns for the election campaign. We will surely be reunited with some of them in the 26th Knesset, but definitely not with all of them.

Judicial Ombudsman Slams Court’s Chillul Shabbos

After Pesach, I reported on an incident in which three members of the Supreme Court—Justices Amit, Yechiel Kasher, and Khaled Khabub, the Arab judge—held a hearing on Shabbos to discuss a petition against the Home Front Command’s restrictions on leftist protestors. Although the hearing was conducted by telephone rather than in person, many were outraged that the court met to conduct its business on Shabbos. The judges claimed that they were dealing with a situation of pikuach nefesh, since the protest was scheduled for motzoei Shabbos. Of course, the judges ruled in favor of the protestors and against the police and the state.

After a firestorm of outrage and condemnation erupted in the wake of that Shabbos, the judges realized that they were in trouble and blamed the Home Front Command and the police for “forcing” them to meet on Shabbos, claiming that their responses to the petition hadn’t been sent until after Shabbos began and they were left with no choice. That would have been a shaky excuse even if it were true, but the police quickly released their own statement disputing the judges’ version of events and asserting that their response had been delivered in advance of Shabbos.

This is an old story, but it is merely the background to the latest development. There is a government entity in Israel known as the Office of the Ombudsman of the Judiciary, which is headed by a retired judge named Asher Kula. This office, which provides oversight for the courts, received complaints about the judges’ decision to meet on Shabbos, and Kula released a decision this week condemning them for the violation of Shabbos. Under the circumstances, he wrote, there was no reason for intensive judicial activity to take place on Shabbos, including demands for material to be submitted to the court and the issuing of operative injunctions. Kula declared that the actions of the panel of justices harmed the judicial process and the public trust in the court system. Had the court refrained from meeting on Shabbos, the complainants emphasized, the result would have been simply the postponement of the protest at most; there was also a chance that it would have been held under more limited conditions. Contrary to the judges’ claims, they asserted, there would have been no immediate danger to human life. One of the complainants was MK Yinon Azulai, who argued that the judges had violated the Hours of Work and Rest Law and had betrayed the public’s trust.

The three judges, who were ordered to respond to Justice Kula about the complaints, tried to dismiss the matter outright, claiming that it was a matter of judicial discretion that wasn’t subject to the ombudsman’s oversight. They also responded to the substance of the complaints, arguing that there was an urgent need to give direction to the police, the protestors, and the organizers of the protests, since it was clear that the demonstrations were going to take place on motzoei Shabbos in any event. Given the threat of missile fire, the judges said, an immediate response was necessary.

Kula rejected the judges’ claims that he lacked the authority to discuss the complaints. In his decision, he wrote that the judges of the Supreme Court are expected “to cloak themselves both in their Jewish robes and in their democratic robes” and that Shabbos should be their “guiding light and the cornerstone of their conduct.” Kula also pointed out that the petition had been submitted with very little time remaining before the planned protest. “The submission of a petition immediately before the holiday of Pesach and the desire to hold a demonstration on the following motzoei Shabbos do not constitute sufficient grounds for the judicial system to violate Shabbos,” he asserted. Kula concluded that the complaints were justified and quoted the timeless words of Rav Avrohom Ibn Ezra, “When I observe Shabbos, Hashem will protect me.” Legal experts observed that Kula’s response was one of the most sharply worded decisions issued in recent years regarding the behavior of the Supreme Court justices.

On an unrelated note, let me add another comment about the Supreme Court: A report was published on the court system’s expenditures, and some people found its contents most amusing. On February 18, for instance, the Supreme Court signed a contract worth almost 40,000 shekels for a fitness coach for the judges of the court. The coffee industry also cashed in; on March 1, a contract for over 127,000 shekels was signed for the Supreme Court’s coffee station for the year 2026. In addition, the judges spent over 2,000 shekels on the purchase of coffee capsules for the office of the court’s director, and close to 2500 shekels on coffee, tea, and sugar for the court in general.

Violent Arabs to Pay Over a Million Dollars

The courts recently ordered Arab defendants accused of assaulting Jews in three separate instances to pay monetary damages to their victims. The Arabs appear to be less deterred by the threat of imprisonment and more pained at the thought of shelling out money. In all three cases, the Jewish victims had given up on receiving anything from the courts, where it seems that the wheels of justice do not turn at all, but the legal aid organization Chonenu insisted on continuing the judicial proceedings. In one case, a judge required an Arab who assaulted Jews in the Old City of Yerushalayim five years ago to pay 15,000 shekels in damages to the victims. This was a settlement agreement; the victims had originally sued for much larger sums. Advocate Bleicher, representing the plaintiffs, summed up the case as follows: “The plaintiffs were walking through the Old City toward the Kosel, when the defendant, who was coming from the opposite direction, spotted them and decided to attack them solely because they were Jewish. When the plaintiffs drew near the defendant, he veered toward them and deliberately collided forcefully with the shoulder of one of the plaintiffs. The victim asked, ‘What just happened?’ and in response, the defendant shoved him forcefully while shouting and displaying aggression. An altercation developed between them, and the defendant punched the victim with his fists and kicked him…. We consider it very important to exact a price from violent agitators who attempt to harm the Jewish presence in the heart of the capital city of Israel. Alongside the criminal proceedings, there is great importance to civil proceedings, in which we often manage to exact monetary penalties from the rioters and thus to increase deterrence and add to the security of the citizens of Israel.”

In the second case, the judge ruled that three rioters who had attacked a Jew in Yerushalayim were required to compensate him with the sum of 3,340,000 shekels—over a million dollars. (Incidentally, you are probably aware that the dollar has fallen to an extreme low. When you donate a dollar to Israel today, it yields less than three shekels!) The assault took place about ten years ago in the Old City of Yerushalayim, where Professor Avrohom Ehrlich was participating in a tour of the Old City in a course for tour guides arranged by the Ministry of Tourism and Haifa University. Ehrlich was riding an electric bicycle, and since the group was passing through areas with stairs, he separated from them and rode through the streets alone. At one point, Ehrlich arrived at a restaurant owned by Arabs and parked his bicycle outside the restaurant. The Arab employees of the restaurant arrived on the scene and began shoving him and ordering him to stop filming them; one of the assailants then seized his cell phone and broke the screen. Ehrlich managed to escape from his attackers but then returned to the area to retrieve his bicycle, and when he entered the restaurant, one of the assailants pounced on him again and began beating him with a stick, while other men joined them, some of them armed with baseball bats, and began striking his head and his entire body. The Arabs then dragged him into an alleyway while continuing to beat him. After a long time, Ehrlich finally managed to escape, but while he was rushing through the street and calling for help, other Arab passersby took the opportunity to attack him as well.

Ehrlich called the police, and the responding officers helped him collect his bicycle and identify the attackers. The incident left Ehrlich with injuries to his forehead, leg, and arm, and he suffered from severe post-trauma and was unable to return to work. The three assailants were convicted in a criminal trial, given suspended prison sentences, and ordered to pay damages to Ehrlich. Chaim Bleicher of Chonenu, who represented Ehrlich, welcomed the court’s decision. “In the past, there were those who believed that they could assault Jews with impunity. We want to completely eradicate those thoughts from our enemies’ minds. We will continue fighting with the weapons we possess to stamp out this violence and to ensure that anyone who commits an assault will pay the full price.”

Eighty Years Since the Passing of Rav Moshe Blau

We are currently marking the passage of 80 years since the passing of Rav Moshe Blau, who was the leader of the Eidah Chareidis in Yerushalayim and the head of Agudas Yisroel in Yerushalayim. Those two movements are separate today and do not always see eye to eye, but there was a time in the past when they were united. Rav Blau was a leader in the political and communal sense. He was also the brother of Rav Amram Blau, who later established Neturei Karta, which waged an ideological battle against Agudas Yisroel, especially with regard to the approach to Zionism. Rav Moshe Blau passed away in Sivan 5706/June 1946.

The spiritual leader of Agudas Yisroel was Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, who passed away 14 years earlier, in Adar 5692/March 1932. Rav Yosef Chaim arrived in Eretz Yisroel in the year 5633/1873 and settled in the Old City of Yerushalayim. He never set foot outside the boundaries of Eretz Yisroel again, except on one occasion when he met with the king of Jordan. He, too, took a strong stance against Zionism and the concept of a Jewish state, but he was considered the leader of Agudas Yisroel in Yerushalayim. In 1919, Rav Kook was chosen to serve as the chief rabbi of Yerushalayim, but his appointment was not recognized by Rav Sonnenfeld or Rav Diskin, who waged a campaign against the Chief Rabbinate.

When Rav Sonnenfeld passed away, there was great fear in Yerushalayim that Rav Kook’s followers would seize control of the rabbinate of Yerushalayim and take over Rav Sonnenfeld’s position in the vacuum left by his passing. One of the community’s strongholds was the Diskin orphanage, and some of Rav Kook’s followers wrote to the institution’s supporters in America, suggesting that the time had come to appoint Rav Kook as the president of the institution. This was clearly part of a broader scheme to seize power, and this was when Rav Moshe Blau leapt into action. On behalf of the gedolei Yisroel, Rav Blau was asked to embark on a mission abroad to find a new rabbinic leader for Yerushalayim, someone in the mold of Rav Sonnenfeld, who would lead the chareidi community of Yerushalayim (as opposed to the religious Zionist community) without fear.

The newspaper Hamevaser, which was founded in January 2009 by Rabbi Menachem Porush, included a special supplement titled Manhig Labirah marking Rav Moshe Blau’s eightieth yahrtzeit and featuring a fascinating overview of his quest to find a new rov for Yerushalayim. We know that after several months of searching and meeting with various rabbonim, the position was filled by Rav Yosef Tzvi Dushinsky, a talmid of the Shevet Sofer of Pressburg. The community of zealots had debated between Rav Dushinsky and Rav Yoel of Satmar as possible candidates to replace Rav Sonnenfeld, while the Yerushalmi leadership had considered a number of distinguished rabbonim for the role. Hamevaser owes its wealth of historical information to the archives of Agudas Yisroel in Yerushalayim, which were established by Rabbi Menachem Porush, who was known for his penchant to hold on to every scrap of documentation that came his way.

Rav Moshe Blau’s quest for a rov for Yerushalayim took him to many cities in Europe, including Frankfurt, Riga, Dvinsk, Vilna, Warsaw, Gur, Pressburg, and Vienna. He left Eretz Yisroel with a list of rabbonim who seemed likely to meet the criteria for the position, and he planned to meet with all of them. At every step of his mission, he consulted with two of the generation’s leading gedolim: Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky in Vilna and the Imrei Emes in Warsaw. He shared his impressions of the rabbonim he had met with each of these gedolim. The supplement to Hamevaser contains fascinating excerpts from Rav Moshe Blau’s diary describing these encounters. You may be astonished to learn the identities of the rabbonim he considered approaching for the position, most of whom he met in person: Rav Elchonon Wasserman, the Rogatchover Gaon, Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, Rav Meir Shapiro, Rav Menachem Ziemba, Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz, Rav Moshe Mordechai Epstein, Rav Shimon Shkop, and Rav Pesach of Kobrin, among others. It is fascinating to read Rav Blau’s accounts of their reactions; every one of the rabbonim explained why he was not interested in the position or considered himself unsuited to it. Some of them said that they would accept a role as a rov but not as a president of institutions. One candidate told Rav Blau that he was not capable of paskening on dinei Torah. Rav Blau’s diary also describes Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinsky’s opinion regarding each of the candidates. But as above, the position was ultimately given to Rav Dushinsky.

The Chazon Ish Turns Down the Post

There are many fascinating stories regarding Rav Moshe Blau’s quest that I would like to share with you, but let us settle for discussing his account of his meeting in Vilna with a humble man named Rav Avrohom Yeshayahu Karelitz, who would later become known as the Chazon Ish, the leader of chareidi Jewry in Eretz Yisroel. Rav Blau relates, “Rav Chaim Ozer instructed me to visit the gaon Rav Avrohom Yeshayahu Karelitz in Vilna, whom he described as ‘a genius and tzaddik who despises profit and shares the traits of our late rov.’ I recognized that he [Rav Chaim Ozer] felt that if [the Chazon Ish] was told that the position was offered to him as a last resort, there was a chance that he would accept the rabbonus in Yerushalayim. However, he merely hinted to this and didn’t say it outright.”

Rav Blau’s report continues, “This brilliant talmid chochom is the anonymous author of the sefer Chazon Ish. I did as I was asked and met with him, and he certainly made an exceptional impression. He resides in a dark, narrow room and lives in terrible poverty. His sole occupation is learning Torah; he toils over it without interruption and certainly creates an impression of being an alert and sagacious person with outstanding character traits. He, too, told me clearly that the rov of Riga would not come. He felt that I should not be looking for a famous authority, in the sense that ‘the get and the hand come together’ [a Talmudic principle indicating, in this case, that the rov’s prestige would come along with his appointment rather than preceding it]. I left his cramped room with the impression that even though we haven’t yet reached the ideal state in which a person who has had no involvement in worldly affairs can be appointed as a rov, nevertheless, in my opinion he would be an outstanding candidate for the position of head of the bais din, and he would be satisfied with very little in the way of material accommodations. The young people in Vilna speak about him with incredible admiration, referring to him as ‘the second Vilna Gaon.’ I told them to send one of the volumes of Chazon Ish to Yerushalayim; perhaps it has already been received. I would like to know what sort of impression it made on our lomdim.”

As Rav Chaim Ozer had anticipated, the Chazon Ish turned down the offer of a position in Yerushalayim. Rav Moshe Blau reports on the response and adds, “I spoke to him about it explicitly, and he rejected the offer. He also made a stipulation that he would never have to preside over a din Torah and would only broker compromises. His associates, however, told me that if we pressed him strongly, they believed he might eventually agree. I will reveal further that I wrote to Rav Grodzensky about him and asked him to speak with the rov and to let me know the outcome, and I also corresponded with one of Rav Karelitz’s close associates, but I received no response from either of them. I also asked Mr. Rosenheim to ask Rav Chaim Ozer to let him know if there was any chance that Rav Karelitz would accept the position of av bais din.”

Shortly thereafter, Rav Blau received a letter from Rav Yaakov Rosenheim, who wrote, “Yesterday, I received a letter from Rav Chaim Ozer dated on the 13th of Tammuz, in which he informed me that he had spoken with Rav Avrohom Karelitz, who vehemently refused to accept the position of av bais din of Yerushalayim, which he felt does not suit him.”

To Hear and to Learn

The State of Israel is waging a relentless war against those who learn Torah. The greatest problem facing the Torah community is that there is no one to talk to; there is no one to whom they can explain the importance and significance of the Torah. We have always been taught that Zevulun receives ample reward for supporting Yissochor as he learns Torah; if that is the case, then Yissochor himself must surely earn an even greater reward. The average man on the street, however, does not have the ability to comprehend the priceless value of Torah, and that leads to the endless, burning hatred that they feel for bnei Torah. As I’ve mentioned in the past, Rav Chaim Kanievsky points out that in the brocha of ahavah rabbah, we daven to “understand and to be wise” before we ask Hashem to let us “hear, learn, and teach.” How can we understand something before we have even learned it? Rav Chaim explained that the brocha is referring to a different type of understanding—the comprehension of the value of Torah.

Someone once asked Rav Elyashiv where to insert a tefillah in the Shemoneh Esrei asking Hashem to help him have the desire to learn Torah. “What do you think is the right place for it?” Rav Elyashiv asked.

“In the brocha of Hashiveinu, where we ask Hashem to bring us back to His Torah,” the questioner suggested.

“No,” Rav Elyashiv replied. “This request belongs in Atah Chonein, the brocha in which we ask Hashem for intelligence. Because if a person lacks a desire to learn Torah, it shows a basic lack of intelligence or discernment!”

I attended a wedding in Yerushalayim where the priorities of the Torah were clearly on display. Rav Avrohom Betzalel was marrying off his son, a talmid in Yeshivas Bais Mattisyohu. The roshei yeshiva and talmidim of Bais Mattisyohu and its associated yeshivos were present, as were roshei yeshiva and yungeleit of the Mir yeshiva world, to which the chosson’s father belongs. You see, Avraham Betzalel, who served until recently as a Shas Knesset member, left the Knesset and returned to the benches of Mir.

The speaker of the Knesset was not present at this simcha, but leaders of the generation and those who truly uphold the world were. Among the guests were many prominent marbitzei Torah, including two Rishonim Letzion, Rav Shlomo Amar and Rav Dovid Yosef. Also in attendance was Rav Binyomin Finkel (“Rav Binyomin Hatzaddik”), who receives much admiration. I watched him patiently bless dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people who approached him. I also saw him approach Mendy Weiss, who was singing at the wedding. Naturally, I asked Weiss what the distinguished rov had said to him.

Seeming flustered, Weiss replied, “He said to me, ‘You are fortunate that you bring joy to other Jews.’”

Lessons from a Fake Barrier

Let me conclude the column with an amusing anecdote. My son recently came to the Knesset building to borrow my car. (Do not envy me; it is a 15-year-old Toyota, and there isn’t much reason to be impressed by it.) Moments after he drove it out of my parking spot, he called me and exclaimed, “There’s a barrier ahead of me! How do I get out of the lot?” I explained that I had forgotten to tell him that the barrier rises automatically when a car that wishes to exit approaches it, and I added that the same was true of the barrier just before the right turn toward the adjacent cemetery. (That cemetery, incidentally, is the burial site of the Zhviller Rebbe; I often see many people visiting the kever, since there seems to be some sort of segulah to visit it on a Monday, Thursday, and Monday in succession.)

We agreed that there was a mussar haskel to be derived from the barrier: A person should never give up. Even if he seems to be heading toward an impassable obstacle, he should continue doing everything in his power to make progress, and he can be assured that the barriers will be removed from his path.

That night, my son remarked to me that he had come across a similar concept in the Michtov Me’Eliyohu: Rav Dessler explains that spiritual growth takes place in stages, and when a person climbs to the end of a level, he discovers the next one before him. In a similar vein, he added, Rav Boruch Weisbecker used to say that a person receives an infusion of strength for further spiritual accomplishments only when he reaches what appears to be his limit. For instance, if a person is capable of learning for one hour and works hard to spend that hour learning, he will find at the end that he has been infused with enough energy for another hour. And if a person marshals all of his strength in an effort to understand a sugya, he will receive the enlightenment he needs to develop a new understanding of the topic.

In short, a person should always invest the maximum possible effort in every spiritual endeavor; as long as he makes every effort available to him, he can rest assured that the path to further growth will open before him, just as the barriers in the parking lot move out of the way as soon as a car draws near.