''People saw him as an angel': Shari Roth on Channel 2 about the future of the Haredi leadership

March 20, 2022   

Liat Regev: I want to talk about what will happen next, what will happen to the Haredi community after the passing of Rabbi Kanievsky. This is a community that has gone through quite a few crises in recent years, starting with the coronavirus, moving on to the shocking events of Yehuda Meshi-Zhahav and Chaim Walder and the Meron disaster, etc. Rabbi Kanievsky's passing now is a continuation of the events that are shaking the Haredi community and maybe even breaking it apart, in your opinion? Sherry Roth: Shaking it up, for sure, a hard day for everyone, we haven't experienced such a shock in a long time. But breaking, breaking apart - no. That is, not beyond the natural breaking up that happens all the time, with youth dropping out and the like. This is exactly the question I asked myself and was asked when Rabbi Schach passed away, and then when Rabbi Elyashiv passed away, and then when Rabbi Shteinman passed away, exactly four years ago. And the truth is that after his passing, the Lithuanian public, of the Degel HaTorah movement, was divided into two at first, and there were even clashes, I remember myself describing them in bloody columns: how the houses were divided, and there is the Degel HaTorah of Rashbam Street, which is Rabbi Kanievsky who has now passed away, and the Degel HaTorah of Rav Edelstein, of Maran Rabbi Edelstein. I think that now the leadership will naturally pass to Rabbi Edelstein, who is the Rosh Yeshiva of Ponevezh, and he will lead the Degel HaTorah, and I do not see a division or separation in front of my eyes, because he too was the leader of the Lithuanian public until now. They were together. During the Corona period, he aligned himself with Rabbi Kanievsky. And not only then. For example, there was a different thinking regarding For the elections in Elad, there was a very difficult affair in the Haredi community, who were divided then about who would be the mayor, there were two leading candidates. And Rabbi Edelstein thought one thing, but he overruled his opinion in the face of Rabbi Kanievsky's opinion. So that they were able to unite in the end and even the two houses made peace between them at a certain point and led together. Now, I think that naturally the leadership will pass to Rabbi Edelstein from a spiritual and political perspective. Members of Knesset will come to him with questions, whether it is about the conscription law or about who to support for prime minister and all the other questions. Liat: Will he have different positions, in your opinion, than those of Rabbi Kanievsky? Shari: It's hard to know. In the end, every rabbi has different decisions. Liat: Because during Corona he ruled differently. He ruled that the educational institutions should be closed. Shari: That's right, he thought, not ruled, that the educational institutions should be closed. But as always, he overruled his opinion in the face of Rabbi Kanievsky's opinion. And Rabbi Kanievsky's opinion was very firm on the matter. He told the girls to close But whites never close. Because you can't close the page of the Gemara. And by the way, Liat, you see that the new government of change thought the same way, in fact, and came and said, both Shasha Biton as Minister of Education and Nitzan Horowitz as Minister of Health, that it is impossible to continue to leave children at home with their parents, it is demoralizing the entire system and harming education. And now, as if by magic, they found solutions for how to study in such a way that they can maintain the rules of the Corona. Liat: You can argue about that, because this is already a different period of the Corona. Sari: In terms of the dead and the sick, there was no significant difference, you are right that there were no vaccines then. By the way, this is what Netanyahu says all the time. Liat: There was a period when all educational institutions were closed, except for the Haredi institutions. Sari: That is exactly what I am saying. The government of change came and said, we will not close educational institutions like we did in the past, and by the way, that was Shasha Biton's opinion when she was still the chairwoman of the Corona Committee. Liat: When Rabbi Kanievsky made the decision not to close the Haredi institutions, how was this decision accepted within his public, within the Haredi public? Sari: You see the funeral, you see the sights, you see people who took blankets and mattresses at night, to the streets of Bnei Brak, some of us with all kinds of families, you see the mass gathering of people who come from north to south to his funeral, and you understand that his image in the eyes of the average Haredi, and by the way, not just the Lithuanian because you see many Hasidim marching to his funeral - his image was something that united everyone. And when he said something, people saw in him an angel saying something. There was no argument at all. People would have jumped into the fiery furnace if he had said to do so. Of course, he would not have said that. People understood that if Rabbi Kanievsky said to study Torah at all costs, of course while following the guidelines and finding solutions to do it in a way that would not harm or make people sick, they understood that if he said that, it was a sign that it was something heavenly and people did not argue. Liat: I want to look with you at the continuation of the Haredi leadership, because you said, the leadership will now pass to Rabbi Edelstein. Sari: The political leadership. Because there is another segment here. There is the issue of blessings. People, even traditional ones, it is important for them to come and receive a blessing from a Jew whose image they think is angelic, heavenly. It used to be Rabbi Yaakov Edelstein, a blessed righteous man, who would receive people for blessings, and since his passing, Rabbi Kanievsky's house has become a house of prayer. Even Justice Minister Gideon Sa'ar, before holidays, would come to be blessed. Not exactly Haredi people. Traditional people and even those who are not, would come to ask for his blessing, and believed in his blessing. Not long ago, Defense Minister Benny Gantz came to him, both to consult, but it was also important for him to receive the blessing in the end. The one who does this today is Rabbi Shimon Galai, the righteous gaon - full disclosure, he is my uncle, so maybe it's not fair that I mention him - but as a political commentator I can't help but, because he is a magnet for receiving blessings. If you go to his house on Purim, there are guards and fences because it really is flooded. I think in terms of blessings, he will be the address, but since he doesn't like or want to get involved in politics, if he doesn't change his decision, I see that the political leadership will be united under the banner of the Torah. Rabbi Gershon Edelstein will make the decisions and that will bind all factions of the banner of the Torah. To what extent will that bind the other members of Torah Judaism? It is not clear, because in fact, since Rabbi Steinman passed away, there has not been anyone Lithuanian that the Hasidic public listens to. When he was alive regarding the conscription law, just for example, his decisions bound both the Rebbe of Vizhnitz and the Rebbe of Belza, they listened to him. After his death, they became independent and their opinions are very different. You see, for example, the faction of Eichler and Prus, which is a faction within Agudat Yisrael and is a little more inclined to Bennett's change government than the other members, and in Deg HaTorah there are even those who are angry with them. In other words, everyone there has become more independent. If you ask whether in Deg HaTorah everyone will be independent, in other words, will Gafni think differently from Maklev or Yaakov Asher or Pindarus? I don't see that happening. Liat: In other words, they will make a pilgrimage to Edelstein. Shari: That's what I think. Liat: I'm trying to see many years ahead with you, because you're describing a process that the Hasidic faction is going through, since Rabbi Shteinman passed away, there is basically no leader who unites all the streams in the Haredi community. Could this also be what the Lithuanian Deglai public can expect in the future? Sari: So first of all, even in the days of Rabbi Schach, if we go back decades, even then the Hasidic public behaved differently from the Degel public, as evidenced by the establishment of the Degel Hatorah party. Liat: The Hasidic have always behaved differently from the Lithaim. Sari: True, but during the time of Rabbi Steinman they listened very much to his decisions. Liat: I'm trying to understand if you see any future in which there will not be a rabbi who will be both political and spiritual leadership at the same time, for the Haredi community. Are you heading towards this place of dissolution? Sari: So first of all, recently you don't see the entire Haredi public, the entire five-seat party or even when they had seven seats, behaving the same way. It's not called dissolution, Litzman once gave it a name: 'Nehra Nehra and Pashtia.' That is, everyone can think differently and listen to their own Rebbe, and that's fine. Liat: But it's a disintegration compared to what was in the past. Sari: It's not a disintegration. For example, now you see the Belz Hasidism that has now gone towards state education, with more Liva studies, and their Rebbe told them so and that's what they do, and you see 'Yated Ne'eman' attacking it, and it's still not a separation - because every Hasidism listens to its Rebbe. The question is whether you call it a disintegration. Every Knesset member or every two Knesset members listen to a particular rabbi, listen to his instructions, and from their perspective it's not a separation, it's a union. Will there be a rabbi who will unite all the factions of 'United Torah Judaism,' as it calls itself even though it's not that united? It's hard for me to see that happening, it hasn't been in recent years either. It hasn't been and it won't be. The more specific question is whether there will be some kind of conflict within Degel HaTorah that will break it into parts, which almost happened after Rabbi Shteinman's passing, when they almost broke up in two, there were a few difficult months like that. Then they came to their senses and came together. Will it happen now? I see less danger now that it will happen, because in fact Rabbi Edelstein will capture all four Knesset members they have today - Gafni, Maklev, Pindrus Yaakov Asher - all of them will unite under one baton. Liat: That is, United Torah Judaism consists of two parties. Sari: Yes. The danger is when each faction between the two disintegrates on its own. So today the Hasidic faction is disintegrated, you have the Litzman-Wiznitz group, while on the other hand you have the Porosh-Eichler faction, who make different decisions than the other faction and there are conflicts between them, and there was even supposed to be some kind of mediation agreement between them that did not come to fruition. And you have the Lithuanian Torah banner, - and the question is whether it will disintegrate, and right now I don't see that. Apparently Yaakov Asher, who is more associated with Rabbi Edelstein's court, will be more dominant, obviously, naturally. A real disintegration? I don't see it. They will simply go up to the house on Raved Street, to Rabbi Edelstein's house, to ask the questions.