A Revealing Obfuscation

Daas Torah has made its position clear.

With the fall-out over R. Landau’s horrific attacks on Dati-Leumi Jews and the IDF continuing, there has been a revealing development. But first, I would like to talk about a controversy involving Rambam that it reminds me of.

One of Rambam’s many controversial statements was regard to korbanos, offerings. He talks about how it’s impossible to transform people rapidly, and thus while korbanos are not an ideal form of religious service, the Torah included them as a necessary concession to the primitive state of religious worship that was standard in the world at that time.

Now, this is obviously a rather shocking notion for many people. And so there have been all kinds of ingenious reinterpretations according to which Rambam wasn’t actually saying anything controversial at all.

But there is one fatal problem with all of these ingenious explanations.

Rambam himself admits that his explanation is going to be very difficult for people to accept! And consequently he goes to lengths to try to make it more palatable. But at no point does he simply proffer one of the non-controversial explanations that later people devised!

A similar phenomenon is taking place with R. Landau’s statements. There are people trying to give various reinterpretations. “He wasn’t talking about what the IDF actually does, just about a theoretical possibility.” “When he said that IDF soldiers kill people, he meant that they themselves are killed as a result of wrongful political decisions.”

The problem with these explanations is threefold. First is that they do not actually match the words that he said. Second is that the Mir Roshei Yeshiva who nodded along did not claim that that’s what he said. But third is that with the firestorm that erupted, R. Landau and his representatives themselves did not present any such explanation!

Degel HaTorah’s official statement was that “people who are outside the world of Torah do not understand his words, and should not criticize them” - but they made no attempt to explain what he allegedly actually meant. And R. Landau himself weighed in, with a public video statement that was also published on the front page of Yated, in which he stated as follows:

“One must be careful to avoid all ideological debates. Our outlook is clear to us from our teachers, the mighty pillars of the earth, whose waters we drink. In particular, one must be extremely cautious about debating with people who, under the guise of their beliefs, persecute the Torah and those who study it, and who are incapable of understanding or delving deeply into our outlook—the outlook of our great teachers, the Chazon Ish and Rabbi of Brisk, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing. This was demonstrated over the past day, when remarks I made in a private conversation were publicized, and, with the hatred characteristic of the ignorant, were treated in a distorted manner and with a complete lack of understanding.”

He says that people who rated his words as appallingly offensive and slanderous are ignorant haters of Torah who distorted his words and didn’t understand them. Let’s put aside that this “clarification” is itself offensive and slanderous, and instead ask a simple and obvious question: So what is the non-distorted understanding?

Silence.

It is similar to when R. Bunim Schreiber gave his notorious speech to Mir students stating that “there’s no need to express gratitude to soldiers fighting in Gaza any more than to street cleaners” along with other horrifying statements. After the resultant uproar, a statement was published in Yated declaring that his words were “taken out of context and thereby distorted.” Which was a difficult case to make, seeing as his entire speech was available as a video online. But nor did he clarify what he actually purportedly meant to say!

Someone put out a biting piece of satire that perfectly encapsulates the situation. It doesn’t work so well in English translation, but here goes:

“CLARIFICATION: My remarks that “all secular people are deviant, drug-addicted pieces of excrement who are going to thoroughly burn in hell, and the Religious Zionists are no better than them” were taken out of context, and there was absolutely no intention to demean anyone. Someone who is unfamiliar with the slang and does not know the community may misunderstand and attribute all sorts of mistaken intentions to the words, but of course that was not what was intended.”

In any case, R. Landau’s comments are exactly in line with numerous other comments that he has made over the last few years. He’s made his views very clear, for those who are interested in listening to what he has actually said: The state should never have come into existence, the Arabs would have happily allowed hundreds of thousands of Jews to come from Europe and live peacefully in Palestine, Zionists are responsible for all the terrible things that have happened, religious-Zionist soldiers die because of the corrupt teachings of their rabbis, Jews should only learn charedi-taught Torah, and charedim should not participate in the war effort, even if they are not learning, and should not even do any acts of kindness for soldiers - they should not visit them in hospitals or attend funerals or raise money for their wellbeing, and anyone who wants charedim to be subject to the same rules as everyone else and forced to help with the war is evil.

R. Landau is the revered leader of the Litvishe charedi community, and nobody in that community will criticize him. He’s made it very clear that this is not the same socio-religious community, not the same nation, as that to which the rest of us belong. We need to acknowledge the truth of that.

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NOTE: I have availability as Scholar-in-Residence for Shabbos of August 29th, and it can be anywhere in the US. If you are interested, please write to me. Also, if you are traveling from Teaneck or West Hempstead to Israel, and can bring something for my museum, please be in touch.