There is a tendency in the Israeli Torah community to view the world as a zero-sum game, in which that which benefits the secular population is at our expense and vice versa. An intelligent friend of mine once argued with a straight face that the chareidi community is overtaxed because the funding we receive for education constitutes a lesser percentage of national budget than our share of the population. When I explained to him that we also use the roads, are protected by the IDF, and drink the water, he reacted as if he had never thought of that.

Of course, everyone appreciates that we are in a common boat with respect to security. An Iranian nuclear attack would not distinguish between religious and non-religious. When a decree of destruction. comes to the world, it sweeps before it the tzaddik and ordinary person alike. But common interests are by no means limited to matters of security. The perennial problem of Israel’s lack of drinking water is another example of a crisis affecting one and all.

A few weeks ago, I wrote in these pages a piece summarizing some major lessons from the life of Rabbi Moshe Sherer, zt”l. I now realize that I left out a very important lesson: Rabbi Sherer was extraordinarily careful never to let anyone close to him whom he feared might ever reflect badly on Torah Jewry. Many times, he rejected out of hand suggestions that Agudath Israel of America honor particular people out of a concern that the award might come back to haunt the organization one day.

Though I described this trait in Rabbi Sherer, I don’t think I fully appreciated it. I did not realize how great the temptation is nor how rare is the ability to resist. We are not talking about turning down money to do something that is clearly wrong or where the potential downside is evident to all, but about something much more subtle: Refusing an immediate and obvious benefit because of a slight suspicion that it may one day generate a negative fall-out.

The Tiger Woods saga hardly rises to the level of Greek tragedy. A taste for cheap women is not exactly the type of tragic flaw to warrant the attention of the great tragedians. It is too ubiquitous.

In Greek tragedy the hero’s tragic flaw is always intertwined with his greatness. An outsized sexual appetite is not self-evidently related to the quality that – even more than his physical prowess – made Tiger Woods arguably the greatest golfer ever: his phenomenal cool under pressure.

Yet watching the wreck of Woods’ career, one experiences something of the horror that Athenian audiences felt. His descent was every bit as precipitous and sudden as that of Oedipus upon learning that Jocasta was his mother. A month ago, he was the most admired man in the world. One could not walk around the corner in any major metropolitan airport in the world without confronting Tiger’s smiling visage or his hand raised in triumph on some 18th green.

Today, he is the non-stop butt of every comedian on the planet, and could not show his face in public without the sure knowledge that everyone is pointing at him and sniggering. The advertisers who made him the first sports figure to garner a billion dollars in endorsements are dropping him right and left. It is not even clear that he can regain his status as the world’s best golfer. Last year, after reconstructive knee surgery and missing the opening months of the golf tour, he still won six tournaments, far more than anyone else. But as one competitor put it, “He could still be the greatest golfer in the world with a broken leg; it is less clear what impact a broken psyche will have.”

Yehudah begins his plea to Yosef to spare Binyamin, “My lord asked his servants, ‘Do you have a father …?” Yet Yosef never asked the question in precisely that fashion. Everyone has a father. Rather the Torah is hinting to a basic distinction between Yosef and his brothers.

Yosef truly had a “father:” The image of Yaakov Avinu was so powerfully etched in his consciousness that even far removed from his father’s home, the image of Yaakov appeared to him and enabled him to overcome temptation in Potiphar’s house. But when the brothers sold Yosef, the image of their father, whom they had just recently seen, failed to guide them.

Unfortunately, many yeshiva students today have never experienced a close relationship with an adam gadol (great man), and have no image constantly before them that elevates them and provide strength in moments of weakness. Many do not even know what they are missing. In their immaturity, they have come to view consulting with someone wiser and more experienced, as a sign of weakness and lack of independence. When asked for the name of a rav to whom they are close, they cannot name one.

[Editor’s note: Rabbi Rosenblum originally submitted this as a comment, responding to one reader’s feedback to an earlier piece. This piece is too valuable to allow it to go unnoticed to the many of our readers who do not look at the Comments section. At my suggestion, therefore, we are publishing it as a stand-alone submission.]

More than anything I’m saddened by the comment of KollelGuyinEY. Probably because I can visualize him writing with a feeling of self-righteous virtue that he has defended the honor of the gedolei Torah. He has not.

KollelGuy seems to think that because he has not seen a front-page announcement in Yated Ne’eman that it is now permitted to work that the exalted figures he mention believe that every yungeman must stay in kollel indefinitely. I would start the other way: Have you ever heard of a yungeman who went to one of the figures mentioned and told him — We have no food on the table; my wife is breaking down; our shalom bayis is a wreck because of fighting over money; or just that he feels that he is stagnating after many years in kollel, with no prospect of any kind of position in sight – who was told that he should nevertheless continue in kollel no matter what? I suspect that I’m a bit older than KollelGuy, and I can say that I have never heard of such a case, and I have heard of plenty of the opposite.

Immediately after the War, there were those who were urged to stay in kollel, even when their chances of success in learning full-time or possibility of satisfaction were slight. In a well-known story, Rav Aharon Kotler told a father who complained that it had been obvious from the start that his son was not suited to kollel: We are in a war, and in a war there are always casualties. The war was one to establish the legitimacy of long-term kollel learning. And, as Rav Mattisiyahu Solomon declared already years ago, that war has been won.

Yaakov Avinu represents the highest level of perfection among the Avos. Avraham Avinu produced a Yishmael; Yitzchak Avinu produced an Esav. But Yaakov’s progeny became the Twelve Tribes; each one of them entered into Klal Yisrael.

Avraham’s defining middah (characteristic) was chesed (loving-kindness); Yitzchak’s was the opposite, gevurah (strict judgment). Yaakov’s characteristic of emes (truth) can be viewed as a synthesis of the two.

The above schema is well-known. But it raises an interesting question. Why did HaKadosh Baruch Hu have to proceed through Avraham and Yitzchak to reach Yaakov? Why could He not have just started with the embodiment of emes in Yaakov? Apparently, emes could only arise out of a creative tension between chesed and din. That tension was a necessary condition for reaching the ultimate perfection.

My friend Rabbi Aharon Lopiansky first articulated this insight while counseling a young ba’al teshuva who was torn between his desire to deepen his own Gemara learning and his sense of obligation to share what he had already learned with the great majority of Jews who have never tasted Torah in their lives. The most important thing, Rabbi Lopiansky told him, was to continue to live with the tension rather than try to deny the validity of either goal.

Frum voters in New Jersey faced what was in many ways a wrenching decision in last week’s gubernatorial election. On the one hand, the incumbent Democratic governor John Corzine had proven to be highly responsive to the concerns of the Torah community in his first term in office, a fact attested to by Agudath Israel of America’s New Jersey representative and the endorsement of the Lakewood Vaad and senior figures in Bais Medrash Govoha in their private capacities.

Given Corzine’s record on matters of immediate concern to the Torah community, including school funding, there was a strong argument to be made that he deserved the community’s support as an expression of the basic Torah middah of hakaras hatov. Even leaving aside any ruchnios considerations, the Torah community has an important practical interest in being seen as a community that remembers its friends. And that consideration applied even though the Republican candidate Chris Christie led throughout the campaign. Those who are seen as fair weather friends will end up not being trusted by either party.

Once the Lakewood Vaad endorsed Corzine, there was yet another practical consideration in favor of supporting the incumbent. The more that community leaders are perceived as being able to deliver a bloc of voters, the greater their pull in the corridors of power. That ability to deliver a bloc of voters is why, for instance, Hillary Clinton so assiduously courted Skver in her first run for the Senate from New York.

On the other side, there were a number of factors in favor of Christie, or, perhaps more accurately, against Corzine. As a liberal Democrat, Corzine staked out unambiguously anti-Torah positions on a host of social issues. Nor was his conduct in his private life anything to hold up as a model for our children.

I envy the ability of my fiction-writing colleagues to sometimes get under the skin of readers in ways that mere “deah zoggers” rarely do. Recently, A.M. Amitz hit a sensitive chord with a story, “Goldmine,” about a family that chooses young women in high-earning fields for their sons, each an outstanding bochur. In one respect, things work out pretty much as planned. The wives are successful, the husbands do not have to work, money is even set aside for the next generation, and the husbands’ parents are spared immense financial strain.

But, as the great economist Milton Friedman used to say, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” Part of the package is that the young mothers are too tired from their high-pressure jobs to ever bring the grandchildren to visit; the grandchildren are raised by babysitters, and the major responsibility for nurturing, as well as housework and cooking, falls on the husbands. Rather than the husbands being left free to devote every moment to learning, all we get is an inversion of the traditional roles, with the woman as the breadwinner and the husband as the mainstay of the home. The story provoked a spate of letters arguing about its meaning, the implications, and the relative guilt of the various parties.

To me, the story highlighted the plight of many of our daughters, who are receiving in subtle and not-so-subtle ways conflicting messages. On the one hand, their entire education is designed to instill in them a feeling that raising children is the most noble and rewarding task possible – the one for which they are naturally inclined; Chava, the name of the first woman, explicitly refers to her quality as a mother (Bereishis 3:20).

Ever wonder where the report featured that Israeli soldiers kidnap and kill Palestinians in order to harvest their vital organs for transplants originated. Palestinian Media Watch provides the answer. It was lifted in toto from the December 24, 2001 edition of Al Hayat Al Jadida, the official Palestinian Authority newspaper.

Daniel Bostrum the intrepid reporter for Sweden’s largest circulation paper Aftonblandet who plagiarized this fabrication has said of his handiwork, “Whether it’s true or not, I have no idea. I have no clue.” Given his indifference to truth of his journalistic offerings, what further “scoops” can we anticipate from Bostrum? Again, Palestinian Media Watch provides the answer.

Here are just some of the charges one can read in the official Palestinian press or hear from leading Palestinian Authority officials. Israel will pay 4,500 shekels to any Palestinian who can prove he is a drug addict. Israel produced and distributed to Palestinians two hundred tons of drug-laced bubble-gum designed to destroy the genetic systems of Palestinian youth? It also distributes carcinogenic food and fruits for Palestinian consumption and children’s games that beam radioactive x-rays. Beautiful Israeli prostitutes are sent to infect Palestinians with HIV-virus. And don’t forget Suha Arafat’s accusation to Hilary Clinton that Israel poisons Palestinian wells.

Readers of Chananya Weissman’s piece “Shidduch crisis? What shidduch crisis?” (Jerusalem Post, October 21) will quickly discern that he does not think too highly of sixty American roshei yeshiva who recently published a public letter addressing the “shidduch crisis” in the Orthodox world. They are variously compared to Balaam’s donkey, accused of being “disconnected from logic and reality,” and described as attaching their names to “foolish words” comparable to declaring a chicken to be an ostrich.

As someone who runs an organization devoted to helping older Orthodox singles find a spouse, one might at least expect Weissman to express appreciation that the sixty roshei yeshiva publicly called attention to the fact that hundreds of girls from non-Chassidic haredi homes are failing to find a spouse. But no, they are castigated for having denied any such crisis until now, or for having said the phenomenon only existed in the Modern Orthodox world, or having claimed that it results exclusively from exposure to Internet or movies or television.

Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz, zt”l, in his classic Sichos Mussar, makes a striking statement: The true measure of a man is the degree to which he accepts responsibility for his actions. That quality of taking responsibility (achrayus) has several aspects. The first involves not blaming others for the consequences of one’s decisions.

The tendency to blame goes back to the beginning of time. Adam attributed his eating of the forbidden fruit to Chava: “The woman whom You gave to be with me – she gave me of the tree, and I ate” (Bereishis 3:12). And Kayin blamed Hashem for his murder of Hevel, with all manner of excuses: You created the yetzer hara; You could have protected Hevel from me; If You had accepted my offering with the same favor that You accepted his, I would not have become jealous and killed him (Tanchuma Bereishis 9).

Yehudah merited kingship because he took responsibility for his deeds and words. He acknowledged the signet ring, wrap, and staff sent to him by Tamar as his own. Later he argued with his brothers as to whether his promise to Yaakov Avinu to ensure Binyamin’s safe return required him to substitute himself for Binyamin as a prisoner, with Yehudah adopting the strictest possible interpretation of his surety.

“A prince,” is the description that comes most immediately to mind when thinking about Rabbi Shlomo Lorincz, who passed away last week. That’s what I thought sixteen years ago, when I interviewed him for a biography of Reb Elimelech (Mike) Tress, the inspirational leader of the early American Agudah movement, and my initial impression only grew stronger with each subsequent meeting. Even the briefest time together with Rabbi Lorincz’s presence was sufficient to leave one with the feeling of having been in the presence of royalty. Such was his refinement and nobility.

In his preface to the first volume of B’Mechitzasam (the translation of which into English I had the honor of supervising), Rabbi Lorincz describes how he recorded only those stories of the Chazon Ish, the Brisker Rav, and Rav Shach that can inspire others to increased Torah learning, fear of Heaven and good deeds. He entreats the reader not to read the book as a storybook, but to contemplate each story, analyze what it teaches us, and think about how that lesson can be applied in practice.

And it was clear to anyone who every had the privilege of meeting him that he had himself thought deeply about what he had learned from the towering figures with whom he enjoyed an intimate relationship and applied those lessons in his own life. In the above-mentioned preface, he describes two aspects of the impact of the gedolei haTorah on a person. The first is intellectual and includes both that which one hears from them directly regarding all facets of life and Torah hashkafah and what one culls from observing their ways and character. That can be conveyed.

The second aspect is emotional, and cannot be conveyed in words: “One feels oneself being elevated and suddenly aware of a previously unknown spiritual dimension.” In Rabbi Lorincz’s presence as well, one felt oneself be elevated by his example.

No day of the year is so filled with promise as Yom Kippur. In Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner’s unforgettable words, Yom Kippur contains the potential not just to be a better person (bessere mentsch) but a completely different person (andere mentsch).

Yom Kippur is a day of rebirth. Just as the convert to Judaism is like a newborn infant by virtue of his acceptance of the Torah, so too can we become a new person on Yom Kippur. Conversion requires immersion in a mikveh, which symbolizes rebirth. And HaKadosh purifies us, as if in a mikveh, on Yom Kippur: “Rabbi Akiva said, ‘Happy are you, Yisrael. Before Whom do you become purified and Who purifies you? Your father in Heaven. . . and it says, [G-d is] the mikveh of Yisrael’” (Yoma 85b).

The forty days between the beginning of the month of Elul and Yom Kippur correspond to the forty days that Moshe Rabbeinu spent on Har Sinai preparing to receive the second Tablets of the Law. They form – at least ideally – one continuous process of teshuva (repentance). The most essential ingredient in that process is deep introspection on our part. Only if we know who we really are, and understand the myriad ways in which the yetzer hara has managed to insinuate itself into our lives and taken control, can we hope to change in the coming year.

Unfortunately, thinking deeply about ourselves, or anything else for that matter, is something at which we are ever less adept. The prospect of being alone with our thoughts, without any outside stimulus, terrifies us. If we find ourselves in any of those places or situations where thinking was once possible, we immediately start casting about for people to call on our cell-phones.

The Swedish government refused to condemn a totally unsupported article in the country’s largest circulation newspaper alleging that Israel routinely kidnaps and murders Palestinians to harvest their organs. To comment, said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, would be a violation of the country’s principles of free speech.

Those who called for donors to withhold giving to Ben Gurion University after BGU Professor Neve Gordon penned an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, in which he advocated an international boycott of Israel, were accused of threatening academic freedom.

Both responses reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of freedom of speech and academic freedom. Just because the content of speech is legal does not make it proper or immunize it from criticism. I have the right to express my thoughts. But I do not have a right to have The Jerusalem Post publish them, or to demand that it not publish letters ridiculing its “haredi apologist.”

Freedom of the press and speech protect Aftonbladet from sanctions by the Swedish government. But the Swedish government has its own interests – or so one would have hoped – in disassociating Sweden ancient anti-Semitic stereotypes, as the Swedish ambassador to Israel rightly recognized. Had a major Swedish paper printed anything offensive to Muslims of a violent bent, the government would have fallen over itself to express its regrets.

Elul is a month devoted to deepening our connection to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Ultimately, that process must take place on the individual level. But, as the Baal Shem Tov and Rabbi Yisrael Salanter each recognized, in response to spiritual crises in their times, it also has a communal aspect.

A short book by veteran mechanech Rabbi Dovid Sapirman, A Mechanech’s Guide to Why and How to Teach Emunah deals with one such contemporary communal aspect. Published by Torah Umesorah, the booklet carries the haskomos of two of North America’s leading poskim, Rabbi Shlomo Eliyahu Miller and Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Loewy.

Rabbi Sapirman begins with a startling statement: “Emunah is not usually included in the curriculum of our educational system. Yeshivos and Bais Yaakovs rarely address the thirteen ikarim (principles of faith), and most students don’t even know what they are.”

These subjects are not taught, he asserts, because it is assumed, wrongly, that our children have somehow absorbed emunah by osmosis, as a consequence of being raised in “homes permeated with emunah, trained in Torah institutions, and immersed in a frum atmosphere.”

My op-ed “Under the Guise of Learning in Eretz Yisrael ” in the July 23 Hamodia has occasioned more than the usual amount of comment, both in the form of an unusually large outpouring of published letters to the editor and in phone calls and private comments conveyed to me. Some of those comments have been favorable, even effusively so, and some no less critical – at least one anonymous caller took the time to call from the States to convey his opinion that I had lost my Olam Haba, chas ve’shalom.

Most of the comments to date have focused on what I am assumed to have meant rather than on what I actually said. About the latter there has been relatively little dispute. So perhaps it would be well to first review the areas of broad agreement. My first major point was that the year or more of learning in Eretz Yisrael has changed in important ways in recent decades. Whereas once only individual bochurim, who were self-selected and tended to have high aspirations in Torah learning, came to Eretz Yisrael to study, today it is pretty much assumed that all yeshiva bochurim will spend one or two years in Eretz Yisrael. The latter run the gamut of commitment to learning and spiritual levels.

One or two readers did write that I should not overly idealize the situation of 35-40 years ago when they studied in seminary or yeshiva in Eretz Yisrael. But, in general, there was agreement that the situation is radically different today. Whether that reflects a change in the quality of bochurim or has some other explanation can be debated. At least one maggid shiur in a major yeshiva in Eretz Yisrael, who learned in Eretz Yisrael as a bochur, told me that in his opinion the major difference between then and now is not the quality of the bochurim but the multitude of lures to which today’s bochurim are exposed, which simply did not exist then. He mentioned Internet and DVD’s at the top of the list.

My second major point was that parents should not feel that they have fulfilled their parental obligations with the provision of a plane ticket, tuition, and spending money. They do not cease to be parents just because their son is thousands of miles away, and that means that they still have a responsibility — perhaps even a greater responsibility given the temptations — to monitor his behavior and spiritual development. I included an illustrative, but by no means exhaustive, list of ways that parents can remain involved across the ocean.

No Torah Jew finds it difficult to justify Israeli government expenditures on Torah education. For us, it is clear that without the citadels of Torah that all the efforts of the IDF to protect us from the dangers all around will be for naught.

But obviously few secular Israelis share that view. From their perspective, the most notable aspect of Torah education – at least that of males – is that it leaves many of its recipients lacking basic numeracy and unable to enter the workforce at anything above menial jobs, which will, in any event, prove insufficient to feed their large families. At most, some will acknowledge that the intellectual acuity attained in Talmud study makes it possible for many chareidi men to acquire later some of the missing skills and knowledge.

In Yoder vs. Wisconsin, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Free Exercise Clause of the United States constitution prevented Wisconsin from enforcing its mandatory school attendance laws against religious groups who opposed education for those over 14. In reaching that conclusion, the Court noted that the religious groups in question are, in general, law-abiding citizens almost never found on the welfare roles. Few secular Israelis look at the chareidi community in the same way.

Haredim think that the media shows a persistent and blatant bias in its coverage of the community. They are right.

For proof one need look no further than the coverage of the grisly July 23 attack on a counseling center for teenage homosexuals in Tel Aviv, which left two dead and more than a dozen others injured, three critically.

Before the blood had even been wiped from the floor, the media was rife with the presumption of haredi culpability. Some were quick to assume that the perpetrator was himself haredi. A moment’s reflection should have made clear how unlikely that was.

For one thing, murder is not a haredi thing, as Anshel Pfeffer noted in Ha’aretz. Second, despite Israel’s large Orthodox population, there is no history of religious Jews seeking out homosexuals and attacking them. Finally, the venue of the counseling center was not public knowledge, and would have been unlikely to be known to any haredi.

The final stanza of Eli Zion, the last kinnah recited in many shuls on Tisha B’Av, reads, “. . . for Your Name, which was desecrated by the mouth of those who arose to torment her . . . .” Following the interpretive principle that the conclusion (chatima) is determinative, we infer that the greatest tragedy associated with Tisha B”Av is the Chilul Hashem caused by the destruction of the Temple.

That insight strikes with particular force today. What gentile looks at us and thinks, “Perhaps they really are the Chosen People?” What non-religious Jew looks to the Torah world and finds his curiosity aroused about the source of such refinement and simple mentschlikeit? The janitor in an Orthodox-owned factory recently asked his boss, “If you really are the Chosen People, why are you all so corrupt?”

We each carry around a set of adult pacifiers to grab onto at such moments. Who has not repeated many times Rabbi Berel Wein’s famous line, “Don’t judge Judaism by the Jews.” But the Torah is judged, for better or worse, by the behavior of Torah Jews. Meeting a Torah Jew who exemplified something he or she has never before encountered serves as a major impetus for virtually every ba’al teshuva.

Rabbi Zev Leff likes telling a story of the Telshe Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Chaim Mordechai (Mottel) Katz. A non-religious Jew once asked him, “Rabbi, how do you explain all these religious Jews who lie, steal, and cheat on their income taxes.”

Whenever some scandal breaks involving Orthodox Jews, as happened with a vengeance last Erev Shabbos, I’m reminded of a story about Rabbi Yaakov Kaminetsky. When Reb Yaakov was Rosh Yeshiva in Torah Vodaath, a high school student was caught helping another student on the state-sponsored regents exams. Reb Yaakov immediately expelled him. Decades later that former student was involved in a major financial scandal, which made front-page headlines.

At that time, Reb Yaakov expressed his bitterness at other institutions that had been quick to take in the expelled student. Had they not been so quick to forgive his cheating, Reb Yaakov felt, the student might have come to realize that cheating is a serious matter. Instead it became a way of life for him.

Reb Yaakov did not make exceptions for cheating on secular subjects. He knew that dishonesty is habit-forming. He also knew that children must learn early that actions have consequences, sometimes very serious ones, and that those consequences cannot always be wiped away by saying, “I’m sorry.”

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky delivered a similar message recently to a yeshiva bochur who sought his blessing prior to his trial for driving without a licence. The bochur in question had hit a wall while driving. (A few weeks earlier, another chareidi teenager severely injured an infant whom he struck while driving without a license.) After Reb Chaim found out what the trial was about, he refused to give his blessing that the bochur not receive a prison sentence, “You are mamash a muderer. Adaraba, let them put you in prison,” Reb Chaim told the shocked young man.

A great woman passed away suddenly last week in Jerusalem. Lifsha Feldman was only 45, but she had in the last decade of her life deeply touched the lives of hundreds of Jewish children with serious physical and mental disabilities and their families.

She was the daughter of a gadol — Rabbi Ephraim Zuravin; the daughter-in-law of a gadol — Rabbi Aharon Feldman, Rosh Yeshivas Ner Yisroel; and the wife of one of Eretz Yisrael’s most distinguished young talmidei chachamim — Rabbi Shlomo Feldman, the author of important volumes on Seder Taharos. Yet the thousands who attended the levaya came because of Rebbetzin Feldman herself.

Black-cowled Yerushalmi women were seen hugging non-religious therapists at MESHI, the Jerusalem gan and school for children with serious disabilities founded by Lifsha Feldman, each trying to comfort the other. Simple Jews and gedolei Yisrael stood together sobbing along with the maspidim over the magnitude of the loss to Klal Yisrael and to her husband, ten children, parents, brothers and sisters. One young boy in a wheelchair asked his mother why he was being punished yet again with the loss of his beloved principal. It would have taken Rebbetzin Lifsha herself to answer that question.

Lisha Feldman’s passing was as close to literal mesirus nefesh as we are likely to see in our times. She joyfully took on herself burdens and pressures that no normal person could bear. Even with 65% of the budget covered by the government, MESHI must raise $2 ½ million dollars a year, just to cover operating expenses. And that does not include the cost of building a new facility to serve the ever growing number of children in MESHI.

With Meah Shearim resembling a war zone last week, and the top headline in every newspaper blaring, “Chareidim . . .,” I felt the need for a voice of sanity. I found him in the person of Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, one of the veteran leaders of the Eidah Hachareidis. Our conversation on Erev Shabbos left me feeling like a parched traveler who finds a desert oasis.

My talk with Rabbi Pappenheim was part of my efforts to get the inside scoop on the rioting in Meah Shearim over the arrest of a pregnant mother of four from the Toldos Aharon community on charges of having interfered with the medical treatment of her son. Even before I reached Rabbi Pappenheim, I had spent hours on the phone with various askanim who have been involved in negotiations with the police and welfare authorities. Each of them left me with an extremely positive feeling that our community has askanim of such mesirus nefesh and sophistication. They have built up relationships over the years that allow them to explain elements of the chareidi community to governmental authorities and the latter to the community.

A resident of Meah Shearim for seventy years, Rabbi Pappenheim founded Beit Lepleitot, a residential educational facility for girls whose families are unable to raise them – he has already attended the weddings of over 2,500 graduates – as well as Jerusalem’s first convalescent home for new mothers.

I wanted Rabbi Pappenheim’s perspective on the recent demonstrations and the ensuing violence. I was surprised both by his vigorous opposition to the demonstrations and his reasons. When I asked if I could quote him by name, he told me, “The minute you say, ‘But don’t quote me,’ you have lost 90% of your power.”

After every demonstration that turns violent in Jerusalem, there are inevitably a spate of frantic calls from American parents whose sons have been arrested at the demonstrations, sometimes after having been beaten badly by the Israeli police. And in almost every case, the story is the same: “My son just went to see what was happening out of curiosity, when the police jumped him.”

In most cases that is exactly what happened. Yet it is unfortunately not the case that every American bochur learning in Eretz Yisrael was innocently minding his own business when jumped by the police. Credible reports reaching those askanim who deal with these matters in recent weeks point to a leading role of at least some American bochurim in the recent demonstrations. Those demonstrations turned into riots, with stone throwing at police and burning garbage cans, which caused Meah Shearim to resemble a battle zone or downtown Newark circa 1964.

Even if the American bochurim present just wanted to see the “action,” rather than trigger it, their presence at the demonstrations would raise questions about their judgment, especially since every yeshiva in the vicinity posted signs warning talmidim against participation in the demonstrations. In addition, their arrests emphasize how little control or knowledge their parents have of what they are doing while learning in Eretz Yisrael.

The damage to the bochurim themselves from participation in demonstrations likely to turn violent can last long after the bruises and broken bones inflicted by out-of-control Israeli police officers have healed. Criminal records and being expelled from the country with orders not to return are just two of those consequences. During the latter years of his life, Rabbi Gershon Stemmer, the long-time leader of the Eidah Hachareidis, would no longer sign on any poster for a demonstration because he could not take responsibility for those arrested and what might happen to them in even one night in an Israeli jail.

The lead paragraph of a front-page story in Monday’s Jerusalem Post describes “the entire haredi public as having formed “a united front . . . to support the Jerusalem mother who allegedly starved her three-year old boy.” That statement is grossly misleading, as the article itself makes clear.

It would be accurate to say that the haredi public is united in its resentment of being tarred with the violence in Meah Shearim. It is also true that few haredim can understand why a pregnant mother was jumped and shackled by police as she left a meeting with her social worker, and then held without bail for three days in the most primitive prison conditions. (The municipal social workers in Jerusalem’s Bukharian Quarter social service office were besides themselves over the police action.)

Hadassah Hospital could easily have started with a civil proceeding to prevent the mother from seeing her child, which is what the mother was told was going to happen before her visit to the social worker. The police used imprisonment to force the woman to confess or submit to psychiatric examination by a psychiatrist of their choice (rather than a neutral court-appointed psychiatrist). None of the conditions for a denial of bail applied, especially if she were placed in the home of one of the communal rabbis who immediately offered to house her. She was in no position to interfere with the police investigation, did not present an ongoing danger, and was not a serious flight risk.

But it is absolutely false to state that there is any kind of consensus that the mother is innocent or a categorical rejection of the claims of Hadassah Hospital. In yesterday’s Mishpacha, by far the largest circulation haredi weekly, Rabbi Mordechai Gotfarb of the Toldos Aharon community is quoted as saying, “Of course, if she were diagnosed with Munchausen-by-proxy disease, then we would understand that the child would have to be taken away.”