Do you know that little boy who is afraid of the story about the wolf and therefore covers his ears with both hands, closes his eyes tightly, and is no longer in business?
I think, and I have some proof of this, that the Haredi public is in this place, that of that tiny, innocent child.
The vast majority of the public doesn't want to hear what's between Yishai and Deri, what's between Etz and G, what's between Yaffe Deri and Rebbetzin Bar Shalom.
Most of the public wants you to be quiet.
He asks you to stop confusing his mind with the story about the wolf.
He doesn't want to see the sights, doesn't want to hear the thunder, he doesn't want to experience the power.
Tell me: You don't know what goes on in the kollel, young men can't learn from too much talk about Yishai and Deri, you don't know yeshiva meetings and the emotions of young men - and I tell you: Maybe you entered the "wrong" kollel or infiltrated a government meeting.
In most kollels, the controversy in the Gemara is much more interesting than the controversy between Yishai and Deri.
I personally know such young men who, until I defiled my lips and told them what was going on among us, knew nothing. It was only when I asked in great astonishment: Didn't you hear that Shishi started a separate party? They remembered hearing something about it.
The problem begins with the fact that the disagreements at the top are so loud that I can see with my own eyes how they forcibly remove the hands of the avrechim and yeshiva students from their ears, and forcefully open their eyes.
They are intensively pushing another flyer into the hands of a young man, whose sources of information about what is happening in our world have so far been limited to what he may have heard on the bus on the way to the kollel or at the grocery store, because they know that he won't stop to look at the bulletin boards.
A guest page is inserted into the peg or the level in the box so that it will reach the hands of the yeshiva student, whose only ambition until now has been to finish another page of Gemara, and an election rally is announced on behalf of the party, on a loudspeaker that was once effective for announcing funerals, so that things that fail to reach the eyes can enter the ears.
Then we marvel and marvel at our yeshiva students who followed the easy alternative and the fascinating items and stopped studying.
First we forced the creeper into their hands, eyes, and souls, and finally we cry over them because instead of sitting down to study, they are drawn to the news.
Dispute over Abaye and Raba
And yet, with all the attraction, with all the public peddling of political theory, with all the incitement and with all the forcefulness of pulling hands from ears and stretching eye sockets, with everything together, yesterday I saw a spectacle on the street that you, the men, and the yeshiva students see much more than I do.
They stood and shouted at each other, children crowded around them. I approached the scene.
I didn't know how to separate two hawkish men who were certainly much stronger than me. I was afraid they would pull out their knives any moment.
Fights between people, according to what is said in the news, are everyday matters. Is it far from reality that this will happen before my eyes?
I thought about calling the police. I picked up the phone and in the meantime, I pointed the camera's viewfinder at my eyes. Only then did I manage to hear that the dispute was not about everyday matters like neighbor disputes, or a minor damage to the car's mirror, or about other matters I could imagine. It was much older, the dispute between Abaye and Raba, or two others, I don't know exactly.
Why, I don't know, because I wanted to stand and listen, but it was no longer pleasant for me, I didn't feel comfortable because I suspected that their dynamic, alert, and lively quarrel was a quarrel of flesh and blood.
Because flesh and blood, it seems to us from the outside, cannot stand against the winds of storm and temptation, but there is apparently still a complete monopoly outside of all this.
Last week I came to Kiryat Sefer twice to give lectures to women. It was in the midst of the news, at the height of the wonderings about the balance of power in the various parties, and I found a world there full and intense of everything else, except curiosity about what was going to happen in the world of politics.
Women asked about their children, about a child who had been weaned a long time ago and was back to his old self, about a girl who went to school happily and suddenly started causing problems, they asked about a two-year-old child who gets rude when they forbid him to take another piece of candy, after the ten he had already received - and asked about fights between siblings, how to stop them.
The fights between the brothers immediately ignited my imagination, and I almost began to compare them to the problematic, topical fights in which we have been wading for a long time, those of the hawkish brothers Deri and Vyshy, who came from the exact same family.
But then I looked into the eyes of those in front of me. Yes, a lecturer must look into the eyes to know what to say and to whom - and I saw that they would not recognize it. It would not speak to them. It is outside the camp in this place. And I compared it to Joseph and his brothers, whom I knew they knew much better.
My child in politics
On the way to the waiting taxi, one of the women accompanied me. She didn't want to ask in front of everyone. She probably thought she was the only one in the world with this problem.
""My son is only 12 years old, but he never stops being interested in politics. He collects every scrap of paper from the street, he reads every word of the neighbors' newspaper, to know exactly what happened with every Knesset member and everyone who wants to be elected to the Knesset. Then he comes home and asks me and my husband a lot of questions that we don't know the answers to, and he announces that he wants to be a Knesset member when he grows up." On behalf of Gimel, of course.
I wanted to reassure the woman that he was a little boy and instead of being interested in marbles or gogos or rabbinical stickers, he was simply a little more mature.
But the woman added a sentence and said: "I'm afraid he'll be like our eldest child. At first it was just politics and today not only is he not in the yeshiva, but he rejects every word of a rabbi with a wave of his hand.".
Say the Middle Ages, say turning a blind eye, say abject ignorance, and I also know the opinion that says: Don't give it to him – he'll take it by force. Say what you will.
I'm telling you that there is an entire nation that doesn't know who Aryeh Deri is and certainly isn't interested in the details of what happened between him and his brother.
Should we take our hands off his ears? Should we open his eyes? Because the approaching wolf doesn't disappear the moment we hide it?
And perhaps we should know that there is such a people, large and vast, that is separated from all other peoples, has a different religion, a different vision, and does not read our words here?
Perhaps this people who, instead of talking, take action; instead of shouting politics, shout Torah; instead of quarreling with our Rabbi, quarrel with Abaye and Rava; perhaps they are the true Jewish people who reside in Zion?
perhaps?!
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