There is no one like Yaakov B. Friedman, the author of the Mekhelah column, to whip his readers with a pure view. His columns, written in eloquent and fluent language, often even enter the "pocket" of dailies full of opinion columns.
One of his best columns this year was the one that referred to the "Breakup" series created by Avishai Ben Haim, the commentator on Haredi affairs for News 10.
Friedman recounts how, after his uncle Topaz's "Tchachachim speech," he had a conversation about it with his teacher and rabbi, Rabbi Zalman Rothberg. "Guys talk a lot about the word, like, 'What, what, what, what's up?'" (I know? Tchachachim).
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Friedman tried to explain that it was someone from television...someone named David Topaz.
""Who?! Rabbi Zalman wondered, 'Who is the Kofez?!'?"'
Friedman tried to go back on his words and explain. "What is he? Der Topaz, a Minister? A Chief Rabbi? An Ambassador?..." (What is the Topaz? Minister? Chief Rabbi? Ambassador?).
When he heard that it was an entertainer, he tried to understand what it was...is there such a job?
Well, he's someone who makes jokes, Friedman explained to him.
And is this what he works for? - the rabbi wondered, and when he heard who the man who said 'the speech of the Tzachachim' was, he stopped being interested and returned to his Talmud.
""Did we not exaggerate?" - asks Friedman. "The Haredi community, with its nearly one million members, its many varieties, its hundreds of yeshivas, its hundreds of thousands of Hasidim, its dozens of courtyards - volunteered, on a day of poor ratings, to completely disintegrate in order to help a secular journalist create a television 'item' drenched in sweat and tears, thereby helping him to cope with a colleague who had invaded his field and started publishing his own series...
""We took a broadcast article by a secular journalist, whose ignorance of Haredi is less than that of his colleagues in the profession, and we were insulted to the point of bloodshed... And where is the good and precious Rabbi Zalman when we need him... who would blush to the core and say to me half-heartedly: 'Who? Is Avisha in my life? Is he a minister? Or a general?'..."'
