1.
Some scathing texts were written this week on the Velder affair. Some scathing texts have been deleted this week on the Velder affair.
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You get a friend on WhatsApp a link to Facebook with the message “Have you read? Crazy ”, clicks on the link and receives a message that the post has been deleted. After a few minutes he writes a post explaining why he deleted that post. Then, in quite a few cases, the post about the deletion was also deleted.
One can understand why this is happening. This affair is so shaky, in so many aspects. It’s hard in a mental storm to think accurately, already in the first take. almost impossible. So if you were in a hurry and thought, and for some reason even wrote, you will probably delete it on second thought. And there are those who stand with a stopwatch. It is clear to them that they must respond immediately.
“How come you have not written about Haim Velder yet?” Someone asked me on Monday afternoon. How come I have not written yet? The truth? Because after hearing the news I had a technical problem writing. Motor problem: My hands were shaking.
But even the next day, and the next morning, which is today, it’s hard for me to write. First of all, because unlike social networks, text written in a column in a newspaper cannot be answered. There is no opportunity here to delete or even edit. The well-known cliché says that in today’s newspaper they will wrap fish tomorrow. But between today and tomorrow everyone reads what is written in the newspaper, no? Besides, no fish have been wrapped in newspaper for a long time.
2.
Unlike many others who wrote erasers this week, I did not actually grow up on Velder’s books. And I say this with a sense of missing out. I’m just from the previous generation. I grew up on Yigal Mosinson, Deborah Omer and Galila Ron-Feder.
Haim Velder broke out with the empowering books and from both of his consciousness only later. The first volume of ‘Children Tell About Themselves’ (under the pen name H. Yaari) was published in 1993, when I was no longer a child. But I definitely read and read his smart columns on the radio. Everyone described this week how much Velder was a pioneer in writing for children, less talked about his publicist writing. For example, for being the first to identify, as a writer, the great danger to the State of Israel under the rule of Aharon Barak. Then everyone came.
But other than one article or another, Velder’s character was a lot of inspiration. Fact is, I have no idea what Ron-Feder Scroll looks like, and it seems to me that so does anyone who grew up on her library. But generations of children, who had become parents, knew very well what life was like for Velder. How he speaks, how charismatic and eloquent he is, how charming he is.
According to this week’s publication, the special court of Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, Rabbi Aharon Yirchi and Rabbi Reuven Nakar, heard 22 cases of casualties (allegedly). This is of course the most suffering group. But there are hundreds of thousands of casualties (not apparent) in this story.
It’s a mega-attack with endless circles of people at different levels of injury. From boys and girls who have lost faith in the man they admired – and not just admired as they admire a silly rock star, but as admire a smart man who gives you strength and power – to parents who sat on Monday and feared from the moment the door opened and the boys returned from Hyder and Beit Yaakov.
What will they be told? What will they hide?
In retrospect, it turned out that when it came to the dry facts, this fear was quite unnecessary. The kids, of all ages, have heard everything, including everything, at school, or at the very least on the way back from it. The parents did not have to tell. And that is perhaps the most frightening. You will know exactly what they heard and from whom.
The days that followed were also difficult. And still difficult. I do not know this from my home, thank God, but I hear more and more parents about children sitting and crying. So what exactly are they being told? Hard to write.
3.
But mostly it’s hard for me to write because I imagine one house where they will read, sooner or later, this column I am writing now. This house is located at 3 Shimaya Street in Bnei Brak. Sitting there now is a dear widow, whom I know personally, with six children, some of whom I know personally, and mourning for a beloved and revered husband and father. And there are also dear brothers, some of whom I know. And there are parents and sisters-in-law in this story as well. And even grandchildren.
And I also knew the deceased. We were not soul mates. Yes we were friends. How many friends? On a level that is difficult for me with his death personally and I keep thinking about him.
But there is no choice, one has to overcome and write. How do you say in Breslav before the General Amendment? “I bind myself to all the righteous.”
Well, Harini connects myself to all the righteous, who may no longer be such righteous, because now, right now, when you read the newspaper on the Saturday after the meal, someone is doing terrible things to them. All those who deal with the issue will tell you that, along with all the terrible damage, many and good of the victims stop keeping Torah and mitzvos. In fact, it is the number one cause of abandonment in the ultra-Orthodox sector.
And Harini connects herself to all the offending wicked. The truth? It’s so easy to call them wicked, but that’s not the right word. We know that a dramatic percentage of them are righteous who have become wicked because wicked who were once righteous have harmed them. And even those who harmed the wicked who were once righteous were not born wicked, just those who harmed them, many many years ago, were also harmed by the wicked who were once… in short, you understand.
This circle must be stopped. So true, when I close my eyes I see in front of me Bracha Velder, and Moishe Velder (a gifted writer in his own right, who published a wonderful book a few weeks ago, which I so hope people will buy), and my uncle Velder and this whole beautiful family. The place will comfort them. Only he can.
But sometimes you have to open your eyes and imagine people who do not have names and faces. People who can and should avoid their terrible suffering. They do not sit seven, nor do they sit on them. Still.
4.
The day after the tragedy I opened the faithful stake and shuddered. Okay, I understand, you will not immediately write the next day an article in which you apologize to readers for giving decades a central stage to a person who you have not tested enough that he deserves. But what about not writing anything? Is it impossible to be satisfied with the family’s obituary?
Some told me “Oh really, a little humanity, it hurts a family that has not sinned”. Right. But is the honor of the family to write in the newspaper “Yesterday at noon, when he visited his son’s grave in the Purple Cemetery, he was abruptly taken to his funeral home”? Sorry, to me it is to make fun of the family, and most importantly it is to create another crisis of confidence in your broken readers.
After all, the facts are correct, we have already concluded, every baby and baby girl heard yesterday. So what exactly message are you conveying to them in this lie? So much so that you underestimate the intelligence of the most scholarly readership in the country? How about not publishing an obituary? Is not that an option? You know, over the years I’ve come across a case or two where you ignored the death of a person, even a rabbi, who would zero in, did not fit your very, very accurate worldview.
And how, for God’s sake, the mayor of Bnei Brak, instead of declaring a home inspection in the municipality – from the failure of accepting women for counseling at the center for a child and family by a man to holding the gun – stands and mourns at a funeral? No one expects him to attack the deceased now, at this moment. He is already under attack and standing. I do not even expect him to blacken the funeral. But what about silence? Is not that an option?
And I’m not talking about the veteran benefactor, who alongside his world-wide activities and that of his organization, has personally dealt with dedication, for years, in cases of casualties. I heard that he, too, was among the eulogizers.
I can not believe it even if only two weeks ago I heard from him in a personal conversation how much the public should be warned of harm and harm. How much is the danger to the generation. He told me with great pain about the terrible confrontation of people and cases he knew intimately. Well, then how exactly do we avoid the next case – sorry, this case, which is happening right now – if the message that the victims, who follow every detail in this story, get from us is that they embrace the alleged offender, and anyone who tries to shout otherwise is a sinner. “Defamation does not speak to me”?
And what message did people in distress receive this week? Since when does ultra-Orthodox society contain such suicides? True, in recent generations the arbitrators state that it is possible to bury inside the fence, because the suicide was not sane or must have repented at the last minute, but from here to such an embrace?
Not to mention generations of innocent children, who grew up on Walder’s stories and advice, and now understand, from the last chapter of the eighty books, that if someone does you an injustice (and in the world of children it can be even a teacher or principal who was a little insensitive) you end your life, Invite the offended to trial in heaven, and then everyone will say how good and sensitive you were and blame them for your death.
5.
It’s important for me to say something. First of all to myself, and also to whoever is reading these things, because otherwise we will really get out of this week feeling like we are in Sodom. No, Bnei Brak is not Sodom. Most not. It is a city of Torah and of Hasidism and of grace and of holiness. And sometimes precisely because of this it is unpleasant to deal with such things, because like this week, there is a wonderful family that should be very careful not to harm it, and there is a whole world of basic values that everyone lives by, like keeping their tongue, and suspecting kosher, and blasphemy. And in general who we are discussed in the law of souls, we are not the Sanhedrin, so maybe sit back and do not do better.
And most importantly, there is a lack of awareness of the severity and extent of this type of vulnerability. After all, we do not talk freely about this whole area. And this is another good thing in the ultra-Orthodox exemplary society.
But what to do that there are people who know how to take advantage of exactly this good and pure to hurt. And if the heads of the ultra-Orthodox society do not establish, urgently – not tomorrow, today! – A regulation forum, an orderly, organized, well-known body, with people with a floor rate who will stand in it, which will be a reliable and serious address for treatment – so unfortunately we hear about many more such terrible stories. Or worse: we have not heard of such stories.
The fact that today the special court headed by Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, not exactly one of the rabbis of Bnei Brak, is the only serious address for complaints of this kind is a default. Or rather: default.
I am no longer talking about the time newspaper. Do not the heads of the ultra-Orthodox public ask themselves how we came to this situation, that the one who saves the ultra-Orthodox public from itself, is the newspaper with the world of values that is farthest from them? True, it is really a problem to rely only on a press that pursues ratings, pursues yellow, and yes, also pursues the ultra-Orthodox public. But what to do? There is currently no better option.
After all, you were not able to take care of your company’s illnesses on your own. Without time newspaper, Israel Prize winner Yehuda Meshi Zahav would have continued to harm countless souls.
6.
At the end of this shaky week it should be said, in its horror and pity, to all the victims wherever they are: Do not lose your trust. Not in the human race nor in the religious world. Certainly not in the Creator of the world. How does Naftali Kampa sing? “Close to God for the brokenhearted!” Of all of them, he is the closest to you.
And one more thing: it’s hard to ask of you, I know, but even if you heard educators this week talking about values like “face whitening” and thus intensifying the terrible heat in the fiery furnace you were thrown into, you will understand that it does not come from evil intentions.
We believe in you, aware of your terrible pain. And even those who do not yet fully understand, will still understand. It’s a matter of awareness. Of processes that should be hoped for will happen soon, thanks to the same ultra-Orthodox regulation forum that will soon be rehabilitated with the help of God. What to do, sometimes takes some time. The world once thought smoking was healthy. There are very great rabbis who have smoked. There are many buildings built with asbestos ceilings. In the end the truth won.
And one last word to the offenders. We have already said, in many cases the circumstances of your life have led you to where they have led. You do not want to be there, that much is clear. Do not end up like this. Just as you must not hurt others, you must not hurt yourself. You are people who believe. You would not want to precede your encounter with a superior court.
First of all, because it is forbidden. This is the most serious offense there is. You will not kill. And secondly, because up there, you can not fix. It’s too late. Seek advice. There are solutions. There is a way out of the situation you have entered that is not in your best interest. Answer door did not lock, nor did treatment door. How was that wonderful children’s book written? The heart is not a storehouse.
• The column is published in Besheva