After the ultra-Orthodox members of the Knesset aligned themselves with Netanyahu in all the election campaigns under the name ‘Gush Haimin’, Rabbi Bonim Schreiber, one of the greatest yeshiva leaders of our generation, came out strongly against the phenomenon and warned against the connection that Torah observers feel towards the bloc and its leader. ‘In ultra-Orthodox rooms’ with the full transcript
The Gaon Rabbi Bonim Schreiber, head of the ‘Nativ Ya’ath’ yeshiva (Kaplan) in Jerusalem and one of the greatest heads of the Lithuanian yeshiva of the Degal HaTorah movement, strongly attacks the affiliation of the ultra-Orthodox parties to the ‘Right Bloc’ and its leader, Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu.
The head of the Yeshiva spoke about morals and outlook as part of a conversation at a third meal given in the yeshiva and published in Kovacs Gilyonim, Rabbi Bonim Schreiber referred to the phenomenon that has recently occurred in the connection of the ultra-Orthodox to the right-wing bloc and identification with Netanyahu “the persecuted” in the words of Rabbi Schreiber.
The head of the Yeshiva explained and said: “On the sidelines of the matter, there is a reason to point out a bad case that happened in the last generation, after the misguided took over the Land of Israel by force of arms and built a state within it, that there is a phenomenon even among those who fear God’s word, as if there is some kind of relationship between us and them. Of course, everyone understands We have no part with them and what do we have there, but here is the place to ask a simple question: who do we hate more, them or the bloodthirsty Arabs who rise up against us for our brides?”
“If we ask mankind, and even the residents of the Beit Midrash, we don’t have to think much to know the answer. But therein lies the problem: ‘Have you learned that the one who makes a mistake is harder for him than the one who is killed?’ As for those who come to mislead us – we have a terrible hatred that does not allow us to cling to him until the end of all generations. If so, what is the relationship between the hatred we hate the Ishmaelites and the hatred of those who come to mislead us? Where is there even room for an analogy between the two?”
According to the head of the Yeshiva: “Sometimes when the Arabs are pressuring us to lose lives from Israel, and by the grace of Heaven the Almighty saves us from them, there is a feeling as if ‘our forces’ have harmed ‘their forces.’ But how should we feel towards the wrongdoers a feeling of ‘our powers’? What relationship do they have with us? Of course, the Arabs are not our forces either, and there is no problem in hating them, but they are at least still called cousins, while the stray brothers do not belong to us at all and we are commanded to hate them with an abysmal hatred that will never expire.”
Here the head of the Yeshiva commented on what happened in the recent election campaigns that the ultra-Orthodox only go with Netanyahu: “Especially in recent years, when we have to fulfill our duty and go out to vote in the elections again and again, there has been a feeling of connection, as if we are connected to a certain bloc, and the bloc’s victory is our victory, and the newspapers For years we have been pumped about who we belong to – whether to one side or another. There is also a feeling of identification with the persecuted, and with those who have walked with us from day to day.”
“But we need to know the simple fact, not as bigotry and the like at all, but as a real reality that is not clear,” said Rabbi Bonim Schreiber and attacked Netanyahu harshly: “When it comes to one of the great blunders of the Rabbis, who for years while he was at the head of the state was an oppressor of Israel, barren the Torah and proved that he has no part in the God of Israel, as we have seen in the education of the children and other matters, there should be a tremendous hatred towards him that cannot be measured, and how is it appropriate to feel some kind of feeling of a certain connection as if there is something in common between him and the keepers of the Torah? The hatred towards him and towards those like him should be without attitude towards the hatred we have towards Zera Ishmael”.
The head of the Yeshiva explained the context to the Arabs: “There is nothing new in this, but this is what the Torah commands and says, ‘There shall not come to them a tenth generation in the congregation of God.'” As every Dardaki knows from the scriptures and the sayings of the Sages, if only a little, how far things go, and with all this we do not have a commandment to hate or end the world, but already a third generation will come to them in the congregation of God, while the Ammonites and the Moabites who wanted to lead us astray – there are no words at all that can adequately describe the distance between us and them, and the Torah only warns that they will never come in the congregation of God. It is true that people can come and say that our lost brothers are also our brothers, and that we should teach them a right like captive babies, but none of this is relevant to why the Torah itself commands us to hate them with a hatred that has nothing to do with it. And the verses in the psalms already scream and say ‘I will not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and I will quarrel with your rebels, the purpose of hatred is the hatred of my enemies’, to teach you that the hatred that should be towards those who come to cause Israel to sin is a ‘purpose of hatred’, a hatred that does not belong above a greater hatred, all because they come to miss – and the miss is immeasurably worse than the one who comes to kill.”
He concluded his words: “Those sinners and mistakes who stand and run the country, they are the ones who lost and are losing millions of souls every year from Israel and displaced them forever, they made those Jews disappear from them and did the worst thing on earth, and their wickedness does not come close to those who only tried to kill the body and disappear from the world This one. They came to the whole of Israel and destroyed it from within, took out of the community countless souls that will never return to the world and brought them down according to Saul, and who can put into words the magnitude of the destruction they have brought upon us and the intensity of the hatred we are supposed to feel towards them.”
The Garib Schreiber said that once a man came to the Amor HaGaon ztzel (Rabbi Pinchas Schreiber ztzel Gab’d Ashdod M.V.) and told him that the grandson of one of the great Mishchilim (Y.G. Shari) had returned in teshuvah , and today they are a Torah and mitzvot observant family living in Beit Shemesh. Amor immediately responded: ‘It’s not possible, it can’t be’. The same person challenged him, because we both learned in the Gemara in the Sanhedrin, that the sons of Haman studied Torah in the Bnei Brak… The Amor answered him: The sons of Haman’s sons – yes, the sons of Haman The sons of that evil – no… Whether those grandchildren were indeed privileged to return to the furnace from their quarry or not, the same natural feeling of Amor did not allow him to believe that such a person would have the privilege of having his descendants keep the Torah and Mitzvot. It was in his eyes as something that would never be possible. As for the sons of Haman’s sons, it is still possible, after all He only came to destroy the bodies of Klal Yisrael, but such a man who was a sinner and erred and lost Israel from their Father in Heaven – how is it possible in reality that his descendants will return to repentance?… After all, there is no creature inferior to him on earth.
“So even when we sit out of necessity in the vicinity of the people of the state and save Harry from the hand, it is not appropriate to feel some sort of connection as if there is a thread connecting them to us.”